"When you serve four SDTs"-subpoenas duces tecum, subpoenas for documents-"with the same guy's name on them, yeah, you kind of catch on. I'm figuring the judge has got something going on the side. Last time I checked, screwing wasn't a crime. Even for a candidate for the supreme court. And you're being way too quiet for this to be some kind of payback thing, just to rat him out to the press. So there's something big here. That the dish?"
Brand looked at Tommy, who didn't answer. He was thinking through what Rory had said. The documents she'd unearthed somehow confirmed Cantu, and showed Rusty had been stepping out.
"I gotta ask this much," said Rory. "We talkin a boy or a girl?"
Tommy felt his face drop. He said, "Female," eventually.
"Shit," said Rory, who apparently thought this was really going to be fun.
"We're hearing she's a lot younger, though," said Brand. "How's that?"
"Not the same," Rory answered.
"You know why he's doing a woman thirty years younger than him?" Brand asked Rory.
"Because he's lucky," she answered with a sick smile. She thought he was messing with her, talking to her as if she were a guy, the cop version of equal opportunity. Brand, however, was serious.
"Because anybody his age would know better. I don't think you score a lot of coffee dates off eharmony.com when you say in your profile, 'Once accused of murdering my mistress.'"
"I think that would turn some women on," said Rory.
"Why is it," Brand asked, "I never met those kind of women?"
"Anybody working here?" Tommy said. "Rory, how's it figure that Rusty's getting some? What came back on the subpoenas?"
"Actually, not much," said Rory. "We picked up his bank account number from his county payroll records. That was the best thing I got, his bank account."
Tommy asked if the bank had received the ninety-day letter ordering them not to talk. Rory gave him that look, I'm not stupid, then opened her file folder. Class began.
She handed out copies of Rusty's statements.
What Rory showed them over the next few minutes was that last April, Rusty had stopped the automatic deposit of his county check at his bank. That was just when a cost of living adjustment for the state judges had finally come through, after being held up more than two years by some cock-and-bull litigation by a taxpayers group. Instead of the electronic deposit, Rusty walked into the bank every two weeks with his paper check and deposited the same amount to the penny that had been going in before the COLA. He pinched off the remainder in cash, including more than four grand for the backlog paid to start.
Tommy wasn't getting the point.
"It means he wants some money the missus don't know nothing about," Rory said. Now and then she talked just like her old man, bad grammar and everything, as if she were sorry she'd been a Phi Beta Kappa.
Brand pointed at Molto. "Told you," said Jim. "The girl is good."
"No, I told you," said Tommy. "Only I'm not seeing how dollars equals dollies. Maybe the judge likes the ponies."
"Or crack," said Rory. "That was my first guess," she said, "since I'm just guessing." She gave Tommy another dark look. She was not letting him off easy. "Most of the cash, naturally, I can't tell you where it went. But I got a pretty good idea. Sometimes he'd come into the bank, make the deposit, and use the cash he was getting back, plus some extra he had in his sock, to buy cashier's checks."
"Nice get," said Tommy.
"Better lucky than good. The bank just coughed up the cashier's checks with the rest of the records. I never thought to ask. Usually with all the financial privacy laws, you gotta beat them like a drum just to get what you're entitled to. But they had it all in a package in less than a day. Probably the ninety-day letter gave them all a jolt. I don't think they see many of those out in Nearing."
She passed the first cashier's check around, dated May 14, 2007, for $250. It was made payable to a company called STDTC.
"Stands for?" asked Tommy.
"Sexually Transmitted Disease Testing Corporation."
"Whoa."
"Yeah, whoa," she said.
"Why's he got a dirty dick?" asked Tommy.
"Boy," said Rory, "I can give you a lot of theories. All of them fun. You already shot down the first one. Maybe he forgot his raincoat. Maybe the girlfriend and him wanted to go naked and were holding hands in the waiting room while they tested together. Obviously, though, if he brought something home, he wouldn't get too far with the missus telling her he got it off a toilet seat."
"Can we get the results?" Tommy asked Brand.
"Only if we ask the feds. Under the Patriot Act, they can get your medical info without you knowing. But the state assembly nixed that on the local version."
The feds would steal the case if they could. Chief judge. Supreme court. They always wanted everything that would make headlines above the fold. But Tommy didn't really need them. The bare fact that Rusty tested meant he'd been roving.
Tommy looked at Brand. "Maybe Rusty's girl's a pro?"
Brand waggled his head. It was a theory.
"Maybe he got some names from Eliot Spitzer," Jim said. They all laughed, but Rory wasn't buying that, because hookers were usually a habit, and Rusty had started depositing his whole paycheck, including the COLA, as of June 15 last year.
"How'd he explain that to the old lady?" Brand asked her.
"Tells her the COLA finally came through."
Brand nodded. So did Tommy.
"Assuming he wanted the cash to keep some girl, that must have stopped," Rory said. "At least for a while."
"Why only for a while?" asked Brand.
"Here's cashier's check number two."
The check, dated September 12, only a little more than a month ago, was made payable to Dana Mann for $800. The memo on it said, "9/4/08 Consultation." Prima Dana, as he was known, was the king of the high-end divorce bar, representing the rich and the richer. The street rap made him a preening jerk, cagier than he was smart, whose main skill was doing the United We Stand routine with grieving divorcees, but there were also some who credited his tact and judgment, and Rusty apparently was one of them.
"So how are you figuring this?" Tommy asked her.
"You mean why did he pay for a consultation?"
"No," said Tommy. He could explain that much. Prima Dana was up in the court of appeals all the time. If Rusty was sticking with Barbara and not becoming Dana's client, then as long as Rusty had settled Dana's bill, the judge didn't have to take himself off Dana's future cases, a move that otherwise would be as good as a public announcement that he had been thinking about divorce at some point.
"Divorce would be a little tough in the middle of a campaign," Brand said.
"Especially if there was another woman," said Tommy.
"Can we get Prima Dana's records?" Rory asked.
Tommy and Brand both shook their heads.
"Nothing but the bill and the payment," Tommy answered. "He'd never tell us what they discussed. It's privileged. Not that it's worth the bother. How many times in the last decade has Prima Dana filed an appearance in anything but a divorce case?"
Brand went to Tommy's computer. Jim was one of those guys who understood computers as though he'd been born inside the machine and could seemingly extract information by touching a couple of keys, all in the time it took Tommy to remember how to open his e-mail program.
"'Practice limited to matrimonial law,'" Brand read off Prima Dana's website.
Rory had another cashier's check to Prima Dana in July 2007 with a similar notation. So apparently Rusty had been lingering with the idea of divorce for a while. The earlier occasion correlated pretty well to the times he'd been seen traipsing around with his young honey.
"So how are you putting this together?" Tommy asked Rory.
Rory shrugged. "My way back machine got broke. Could be a lot of things, but you know, pretty for sure he had a girl. After that, we can just spitball. We all know the usuaclass="underline" She told him to cut the missus loose or the store was closed, he wouldn't, they split, and by this September he was having second thoughts. He was getting ready to bail. Then," said Rory with a little dramatic trill, "Mrs. Judge very conveniently passed away instead." She looked at Tommy, then Brand. Of course she'd figured it out. Of course. This girl was good. Rusty's second check to Prima Dana was less than three weeks before Barbara had died.