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Chapter 10

10

We got back on I-10 for a few miles, then took the 231 exit toward Panama City. It took us about an hour, driving conservatively, to get to the PD’s office in Hainey. I wondered if Richard drove that way because he assumed I was a slow driver and didn’t want to lose me, or because he’d just pissed off too many of the area cops on cross-examination to risk getting pulled over.

The PD’s office was in a building so new, the landscaped palms and shrubs looked stubby and fresh from the nursery. “Nice,” I said, as Richard pressed a buzzer by the door to gain admittance.

“We shut the doors for lunch, and I forgot my key,” he explained. “Yeah, I’d rather have spent the money on something useful like more attorneys or investigators, but you can’t fight bureaucracy. Believe me, I tried.” Richard opened the door when the lock clicked in release, but before we entered he leaned back with the door to point around the side of the building. “Did you notice that other parking lot, and the other entrance?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Probably couldn’t see it the way we came in. We only have half the building. The State Attorney’s office has the other half. If you want to pay them a visit sometime, we share a stairwell.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. Wish I were. You can bet I raised holy hell about that, too, for all the good it did.” He grinned. “As if we’re all not paranoid enough.”

We took an elevator to the second floor. When the doors slid open, I was surprised to find myself facing a large room with about a dozen cubicles in the center and a few offices along one wall. The other wall was bare. Most cubicles were empty for lunch, but a few brave souls, attorneys and investigators by the sound of things, sat hunched over documents or phones.

Richard’s own office not only had walls, but was actually two offices in one. The outer room housed a desk, metal filing cabinets, and a woman filing papers who was presumably his secretary. I’d guess she was about Richard’s age, though she seemed older. She was dressed in a simple white blouse and teal blue skirt, and while her eyeshadow was a bit too dark and too blue, her make-up was otherwise unremarkable. It was the slightly frizzy perm in her short, dark blonde hair that set her age. Her hair made me think of grandmothers wearing polyester scarves over their rollers.

“Millicent, dear heart,” Richard said. “How goes the fort-holding? Any major catastrophes this morning?”

She wiped her hands on her skirt and shut the drawer she was working in. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

She held her hand out to me. “It’s Melinda, not Millicent,” she said.

“That may be what your birth certificate says, but trust me on this. You’re a Millicent, through and through. This is Sydney Brennan. So she says. I haven’t decided what her real name is yet.”

I tried not to cringe. I changed my name legally over a decade ago, but it still felt like a deep, dark secret I could be arrested for. Oh, the irony if he managed to guess my real name. I stammered a “nice to meet you.”

“Ah, Sydney of the Thomas case. Well, I’ve got good news for you. Since he was out of the office all morning, I was finally able to get some work done. The Thomas trial attorney file, the original and one copy, is on Richard’s desk. No, I take that back. There’s no room for anything on his desk. But it is somewhere in his office.”

Richard was surprised to find that it was only one box—full to the gills, but one box nonetheless. “I’d like to think there would have been more materials if we had gone to trial, but I doubt it. My files on capital cases generally run from two to five boxes, so that should tell you something.”

He offered to find me a place to review the file, but having seen the office’s layout I declined. Any space Richard could find me was sure to infringe on the cramped people who worked there on a daily basis, and I didn’t want to spend all my office capital at once. I did allow him to introduce me around. When Richard was paged for an important call (the high-tech page consisted of relayed yells across cubicles), I took the opportunity to chat up a few of the older attorneys and support staff, people who’d been there long enough to know Screaming Sammy. No one I spoke with had been very close to him, and they all confirmed what I had heard already. I was surprised that no one offered to tell me war stories. Melinda’s response was typical.

“I’d heard that Mr. Norton was called that, but I can’t say that he was screaming much when he worked here. Mr. Norton was in private practice in the Panhandle for years, and by the time he came to work at the PD’s office he wasn’t in good health. I think that’s why he came here, so he could have a steady check and health insurance. I didn’t see him often, but the poor man always had bad color. He took a lot of sick days, and from what I heard he didn’t make it to court very often except on plea days.”

“Were you his secretary?”

“No, not usually. His secretary, Rita, was an older woman. She died a few years ago herself. At that time, I was assigned to a couple of other attorneys who’ve since retired.” Melinda seemed to lose herself for a moment, then blinked at me. “It’s enough to make you feel old. Sometimes if there was a big trial, something high profile or a death penalty case, I’d pitch in to help out the regular secretary, but that was never an issue with Rita. She was incredibly efficient, and I don’t think Mr. Norton ever gave her that much to do.”

“Did you ever see him hang out with anyone in the office, commiserate about cases?”

“No, I didn’t. I got the impression he didn’t spend much time with people here, in or out of the office. I’d say he spoke to Richard as much as anyone else, but even then I wouldn’t say they were close. Richard could tell you better than I could.”

Eventually I gave up on Sammy and went to hang out with a young investigator named Mike Montgomery. When introduced, I’d been told if I had any need of technological assistance, computer searches, etc., Mike was the man. By the looks of him, pallid under chin-length hair and small-framed glasses, he was able to find out most things without ever leaving his cubicle. (Like I had room to talk about the pigment-challenged, with my fluorescent white skin.) “So, how long you been working here?” I asked.

His eyes rolled back a bit as he thought about it. “Must be going on six years. God, time flies.”

“You come here straight out of school?”

“No.” Some personal thought that went unexpressed seemed to amuse him. “No, I started out going to grad school for computers. I didn’t finish. Decided I needed a little fresh air and sunshine.”

Now it was my turn to be amused, but apparently my thoughts weren’t so obscure.

Mike laughed. “Yeah, I know you can’t tell it to look at me, but I do set foot outside from time to time. I’ve just had a dry spell lately. But I might go out on the water with a buddy this week. I don’t know. Anyway, I quit grad school, messed around for a while, did some traveling. Eventually I ended up here.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, for the most part I’d have to say I do like it. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d give my notice, but if I have to work I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing. I don’t get bored here, or if I do I just move on to something else for a while. When I can’t stand to look at the computer screen any more, I go track down some records, or interview witnesses. You know yourself that being an investigator isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds to everyone else. Sometimes it’s downright tedious. But then you move on to something else. I just don’t think I’m cut out for a ‘normal’ job, doing the same thing day in and day out. You know?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” I was sitting on the edge of Mike’s desk while he sat in his chair, and I lowered my voice and leaned toward him conspiratorially when I spoke again. “What’s the office vibe like?”

“Not bad. We’ve had a few rough spots, but nothing you wouldn’t find anywhere else. I think the key is to be sociable, maybe have a beer once in a while, but not try to be everybody’s best friend, to maintain our own independent lives so we can get away from this s**t. Richard and I do stuff together once in a while, but that’s about it.”

“What’s he like?”

“Okay, for an attorney.” He couldn’t hold the deadpan and broke into a smile. “He’s a good guy. I guess you could say he took me under his wing when I got here, and we work together a lot. When I—” Mike broke off suddenly, and I wasn’t sure he’d go on. He kept his eyes on his hands, tracing a bump on the side of his index finger. “He’s always been there when I needed him. His wife’s a good cook too.”

We sat in silence for a few moments until he recovered enough to turn the tables on me. “So what about you? What brought you to the business? The search for truth?” His voice lent an ironic air to the last phrase.

“Something like that.” He raised an eyebrow, and I reluctantly went on. “If you hear enough lies, they start to leave a bad taste in your mouth. I wanted something simpler, something cleaner.”

“And you decided to become an investigator? First day of work must have been a real shocker.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, it was. But it still fits the bill somehow. I wouldn’t do anything else.”

As I perched on Mike’s desk, I felt content, warm and fuzzy. Camaraderie, that’s what it was. Now that I’d gone private, I missed sharing my work, the excitement and the frustration, with colleagues. Wasn’t I a little young for nostalgia? Maybe, but—the sudden realization of actual, physical warmth next to me would have made me jump if my feet could touch the floor. Richard had finished his phone call.

“Find everything you need?” he asked.

I looked at my watch. Much of the afternoon had slipped away, even by central time, and it was time to load up the file and drive around for a while, get a sense of the area. My slide from Mike’s desk was relatively graceful, which for me meant I hadn’t fallen. “Like you said, time flies. I really ought to be going.” I reached for the box I’d left on the other corner of Mike’s desk.

“Let me take that,” he said, and scooted his chair back to rise.

“That’s okay, Mike.” Richard grabbed the box before Mike could stand. “I’ll walk Sydney out.”

I nodded my thanks, but said nothing. It wasn’t like me to do feminine demurral. I told myself I let Richard take the box because it was too heavy for me, but who was I kidding? My office was full of such boxes, with no burly men around to move them for me.

A sudden impulse made me turn back before Mike’s cubicle was out of sight. He was still watching us. “You should go. On the water. Wherever. Get a little Vitamin D for both of us.”

Mike’s face looked conflicted.

“Just do it. Call your buddy right now.”

His face cleared. “You’re right. I will.” He reached for the phone. “Thanks, Sydney.”

Richard led the way out of the PD’s office. He walked ahead of me to my car, and I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, not to look at his ass in his slacks. When he set the box on my back seat and turned suddenly to face me, I felt myself blush, sure that he could see where my eyes had been pointing. If he did he gave no indication of it, and I hoped he’d think the flush was from the sudden heat of the asphalt.

“Listen, I’ll review my file tonight and give you a call about meeting tomorrow. That should give you time to come up with some tough questions I can’t dodge. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

Richard held out his hand. I offered my own awkwardly, and he took it in both of his. My hands were chilled from air conditioning, and his warm hands felt good around mine. My eyes nearly closed with the pleasure of it.

“Tomorrow then,” he said, giving my hands a final squeeze before releasing them and heading back inside. I didn’t watch him go. I swear.