“Your uncle Pete,” Melissa said. “Didn’t he die in a boat accident? Drown or something?”
“There’s one,” I said.
“Do we know anything about Dorrie?” Melissa asked. “Did anyone know her very well?”
“Not many,” Brian said. “Judge Moreland was-and is- at all of the Denver society events and fund-raisers. I’ve seen him myself-he’s a fixture. But apparently she didn’t like the limelight, according to my gossips. She went back to the church big-time, apparently. She was a Catholic when they married, and she became very involved in the church here. Going to Mass every morning, that kind of involved. She was, well, very plain-looking from the wedding photo in the newspaper. John looked like some kind of movie star, and he married a homely girl on the heavy side. Later, she got very heavy. My best gossip described her as shy, overweight, and uncomfortable in a crowd. She and the judge were a mismatched pair.”
Melissa snorted. “She sounds inconvenient to a man on the make.”
“It gets better,” Brian said. “John Moreland married ex-model and heir to a cosmetics fortune Kellie Southards almost twelve months to the day Dorrie died. It was a massive wedding. And that same year-2002-he was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.”
“One year seems a little quick to me,” Melissa said, “for a man who was distraught and devastated.”
“Interesting,” I said, my mind racing. “But don’t forget that all we’re doing is speculating here. And we are talking about a judge who seems incredibly well liked and well connected. We might be jumping to conclusions.”
“And now we get to Garrett,” Brian said. “I’ll let Melissa take it from here.”
“GARRETT MORELAND SEEMS LIKE a very bright and a very troubled young man,” Melissa said. “I don’t think that information will come as any surprise to us. I also learned it is very difficult to get any background on a juvenile through official channels.”
“How did you get what you got?” I asked, impressed.
“A friend of a friend I used to work with downtown is a counselor at Garrett’s high school in Cherry Creek. We had coffee this afternoon while you were at the trial. At first, she was very coy about talking specifically about Garrett because she’s not supposed to, you know. But when I told her the situation we’re in”-she nodded toward Angelina in my arms-“she started telling me things. I’m sworn to secrecy, of course. But what she told me about Garrett makes me even more determined to fight them, Jack.”
“Not that you were wavering before,” I said.
“No. But I think we’re dealing with a very sick boy.”
“What did you find out?” I asked, chilled.
“Garrett had a reputation before he even got to high school,” she said, digging the pad she used for grocery lists out of the diaper bag near her feet. “He wasn’t an unknown quantity. There was an incident in middle school that made the rounds and she heard about it from a fellow counselor. Apparently, the middle-school counselor knew Garrett quite well because he’d talked to the boy after the death of his mother the year before. He said he thought the boy was hollow inside, and he couldn’t get through to him to get him to grieve properly. Anyway, since Garrett knew the counselor, he went to see him one day to complain that his friends wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore and he wanted the school to punish them. He gave the counselor a list of four boys who should be punished.”
I shook my head.
“The counselor asked why the friends should be punished, and Garrett told him they wouldn’t walk to school with him anymore, that they ditched him whenever they could.”
“Kid stuff,” I said, remembering how casually cruel young teenagers could be.
Melissa said, “Next to each of the boys’ names Garrett had written suggested punishments. He said two of the boys should be branded with a hot iron. He said one of them should be forced to wear girls’ clothes for a month. And the last should be castrated.”
Brian whistled.
“The counselor was alarmed and took the list to the vice principal. Keep in mind this was two years after the Columbine massacre, so school officials were ultrasensitive to anything that resembled a threat. But apparently the vice principal knew Garrett’s father, and they agreed to handle the situation quietly. John Moreland and the vice principal gathered the four boys and Garrett together in a conference room and asked them to talk it out, to work out their problems. What it came down to was the four boys thought Garrett was weird and scary. Garrett was reprimanded for making the list, but he wasn’t disciplined in any way. The counselor was furious at the outcome, and told his colleague-the woman I had coffee with-about it when Garrett moved on to high school.
“In high school,” Melissa said, “there were disturbing writings. Garrett was-or is-interested in creative writing, and he wrote several fantastically violent plays and short stories. The counselor I had coffee with had read them and agreed with the English teacher that they crossed the line. Torture, beheadings, that kind of thing. He was very interested in criminal behavior. She talked to Garrett about this, but Garrett said he had the right of free speech, especially since he was an artist. He said he would get his father involved if the school tried to stop him from being an artist.”
I said, “I thought these were the kinds of things that got kids bounced out of school these days,” recounting stories I’d heard and read about students who were expelled for things like bringing a plastic butter knife to school in their lunch sacks.
“They do,” Brian said, “but apparently it depends on who you are. And who your father is.”
Melissa said, “The counselor said Garrett brought in books he’d found in the school library filled with violence and violent images, and movies he’d rented at Blockbuster which were just as graphic as what he’d written. He built a case that his work wasn’t any worse than what anybody could get their hands on just about anywhere.”
“A future criminal defense attorney,” I said, thinking of Ludik’s performance that day.
“So nothing was done with Garrett,” Melissa said. “This empowered him, according to the counselor. And so did his money, which he flashed around the school constantly. He always has the best car, the best clothes, the best computer. He was the first kid at Cherry Creek to have an iPhone- that kind of thing. Other kids resent him for it, but they also want to be around him because he was always willing to pay for lunch, or give them rides, or buy them alcohol.”
“This is where his gang connection comes in,” Brian said.
Melissa nodded. “The counselor said when Garrett was a junior, he started showing up to basketball and football games with gang members from downtown. They were like his posse. Garrett played it up. The gang connections gave him power. So here was a kid who had both money and power in high school and nobody-including the teachers or the counselor-took him on. The school started having some serious drug problems that year as well, and the counselor suspected Garrett’s gang pals of selling crystalmeth and other drugs to students.”
“A criminal-defense attorney and a gang kingpin,” Brian said. “That’s a deadly combination.”
“Can we prove this?” I asked.
Melissa said, “In a court of law? Like in front of a judge if we could get a custody hearing to keep Angelina?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling hopeful for the first time.
“There have to be quite a few students in that high school who would say the same things the counselor told me,” she said.
Brian nodded, excited. “With the right bulldog lawyer and a parade of kids and teachers who know Garrett, I could see a judge ruling that you should keep Angelina for her own well-being and safety.”