"Tizzie?" said Jude. "What are you doing there?"
She did not respond immediately, so he repeated: "It's me. Jude. Is that you, Tizzie?"
"Yes," she said hesitantly, staring over at the man next to her, who was staring back at her with wide-open brown eyes. It was so bizarre beyond all reckoning — to see Jude's likeness before her and hear his voice on the phone — that she was stunned into silence.
"Tizzie," came the voice over the phone. "You must have met him by now. I know it's a shock. You won't believe what's been happening."
She found her voice, finally.
"I'll say," she said.
Jude couldn't say when he first became aware of the headlights trailing him. In retrospect, he thought it was somewhere in the South Bronx when he turned off the Major Deegan for the Willis Avenue Bridge, a shortcut that saved the $3.50 toll but that also meant driving through a stretch of back streets.
He wasn't really paying attention because he was deep in thought, turning the puzzle over and over in his mind. He looked at it from every conceivable angle — and it didn't make any sense from any of them. Hours earlier, he had driven up to New Paltz with the name of a dead man, suspecting only that the murder victim was somehow connected to the group Skyler was involved with. He hadn't known what he would find, but he had hoped that a little digging into the victim's past might turn up something, anything, one more clue to carry the tracker further down the trail. And what happened? He was driving back to New York even more confused than when he had left. It turned out that the victim was not a victim at all, but a living, breathing person, and a prominent local judge to boot. If that was so — and it clearly was — then who had been killed and mutilated? And why did his DNA perfectly match the judge's? And then, of course, there was the biggest question of alclass="underline" Why was the judge — whom Jude had never laid eyes on in his life — so upset at seeing him walk into his courtroom? The last riddle was especially disconcerting; it was one more indication that Jude was being dragged by the scruff of his neck into some nefarious plot about which he knew nothing. It was like coming into a movie halfway through — and finding your own face up there on the screen.
Jude had spent the rest of the day trying to unravel the mystery. He checked back in with McNichol, who was doubly annoyed by the second intrusion. Jude didn't want to alienate the temperamental medical examiner for fear he wouldn't perform the little chore he had left with him, but he questioned him enough to ascertain that McNichol stood one hundred percent behind his DNA analysis of the victim.
"Look," the M.E. had finally exclaimed, "I don't see how I could have made a mistake. Some of these hits aren't as clear as others. Some are doubles, some are triples. This one was a home run and it was out of the park."
Then Jude had run a check on the judge. He went into the local library, parked his computer in the "electronic work station area" and called up Nexis to retrieve the computerized file of newspaper clippings. He was surprised at how voluminous it was for someone so young — his own age, thirty. There were numerous articles about the various decisions he had handed down; he seemed to have a knack for drawing the big cases upstate. There were sex-abuse charges, school board zoning disputes, income tax violations, even one on silicone-breast implants. There were a few more profiles in the local press — Jude saw a byline by Gloria, and regretted more than ever that their relationship had soured before it had started. She might have proved useful.
He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the details: names of clubs and associations such as the Lions, Rotarians, and the Century Association in New York; judicial organizations like the American Bar Association and the Ulster County Bar Association; and various do-gooder groups like the Hudson Valley Conservancy, the Poughkeepsie Council for Better Hospitals, and Friends of the New York Neurological Research Organization. There were feature articles and brief mentions and photos taken at galas and society affairs. Jude found the clearest picture, which showed a smiling Judge and Mrs. Joseph P. Reilly at the Sacred Heart Benefit for the Physically Disabled, and downloaded it into his computer and then printed it out. There was even a short New York Times article dated June 2, 1998, when the judge had been appointed to a group called the Committee of Young Leaders for Science and Technology in the New Millennium, which was described as an association of "eminent people under thirty-five years of age in business, law, science and politics" whose purpose was to "open the doors to scientific innovations and set priorities for technology in the next century." It seems like our small-town judge cuts a big-time figure, he had thought.
Jude looked in the rearview mirror. Headlights that had been behind him for some time on the Deegan — they were identifiable because one was tilted up a bit and gave off an annoying glare — took the same turnoff that he did. When Jude stopped at a light, the car stopped, too, but it hung back thirty feet or so. No other car was nearby.
Jude registered this somewhere in the periphery of his consciousness, but paid it little attention. He was still absorbed in thinking about that afternoon.
From the lobby of the library, Jude had called Richie Osner, the computer whiz at the paper who could hack his way into any system if he was sufficiently motivated. Jude had given him the judge's name, gone out for a cup of coffee and a stroll, and come back to check his e-mail. Osner had been motivated, all right.
Jude had scrolled through the records he'd dug up. There were three months of the judge's credit card bills, which showed him to be a high spender with a penchant for hang-gliding and racecar driving; his selections in books and CDs, which revealed a taste for trashy novels and cabaret songs; and his driving record — no violations whatsoever, which was not surprising, considering that cops are occupationally reluctant to ticket a car with a judge's license plate. There was even a listing of the judge's prescriptions: various antibiotics, a monthly supply of Pravachol, for high cholesterol, and something called Depakote. Jude made a note to check that one out.
Frightening, he thought, how much you can find out about a person these days by just sitting down at a keyboard.
And, of course, most important of all, Osner had provided the judge's home address.
Jude drove out and found it on a dead-end street in the suburbs of Tylerville. The judge's house was the last one on the street, following a parade of ostentatious mansions that used a variety of stone walls and hedgerows to block the view of passing commoners. Exactly how ostentatious the judge's mansion was, Jude couldn't see, because it was hidden by a ten-foot-high Spanish-style wall of whitewashed rocks topped off by red tiles. How the guy had managed to buy such an estate on a judge's salary was beyond him. He had to be privately wealthy.
Securi-Corps signs were posted at strategic intervals on the strip of bright green grass in front of the wall; they featured a German shepherd guard dog, snarling and preparing to pounce. There was a large metal gate, and next to it a doorbell in its own foot-tall casita sunk into the wall.
For a moment, he contemplated ringing it. What the hell — he could pretend to be looking for someone or to be lost. Or he could just throw caution to the winds and ask for the judge and demand to know why his presence had discombobulated him so. Somehow, looking over at the decals of the guard dogs, these did not seem to be viable options.
Down the street, in the direction from which he had come, was a crew of three men standing beside a pile of dirt and rocks and looking down into a hole that was apparently of their own making. The markings on a truck nearby suggested they were workers for the town water-supply company. They were on a break, smoking, and from time to time they looked up at Jude — not in an unfriendly way, he thought, just curious.