The Past Never Ends Read online

  Morgan thought and looked at him. "You want me to find out for you?"

  Alan Kinman nodded.

  "Why do you think it's a murder?"

  "I guess I don't know if it is. Maybe I just want to know it's an accident but if-if not, I want to make sure the right things're done, legal things. Not-not have her treated like some poor dead girl who didn't mean nothing to nobody."

  "Where did she die?" Morgan asked.

  "Dunno."

  "How did it happen?"

  "Dunno. That's what I'm telling you. I don't know. People aren't saying and something ain't right."

  No one in the office spoke. Chester Morgan looked through the yearbook, set it down, and thought. "I'll look into it," he said. "I charge one hundred and thirty dollars an hour. I'll see what I can find out."

  The skinny, young man nodded. "I'll pay you the best I can."

  "I know you will."

  "I'll keep these," Morgan said nodding at the newspaper and book. "They may help. If you call, and Shawn or Marylin tell you I'm out, or with a client, or on the phone, I am. Leave a message. If it's an emergency, ask to speak to Marylin--she'll take care of you as well as I can, if not better. You'll see what goes out of this office on your behalf and what comes in. I return my calls."

  Alan Kinman stood and his hand jerked across the desk to shake Morgan's. "Thanks," he said and was gone.

  "Boss," Marylin said, "Why this time?"

  "Yeah, I know," he said. She had asked and he had heard the question before. Sometimes he had better answers. Sometimes he thought someone had been cheated or unfairly hurt. Sometimes he just thought somebody needed to be represented. Sometimes he didn't know. This time he did and, for anyone else, it may not have been enough, but for Chester Morgan, it was.

  "Look."

  He opened the yearbook where high school students scribble names and benedictions and Godspeed. The page was practically bare. A few friends had signed the book -- most nothing more than a line and a name. A "Good luck next year" written here. A "So long, Cheeseface" and a "Don't be a dick" written there. But down in the corner was a long paragraph surrounded by bursting stars and big hearts and signed "Love, Tanya."

  Marylin looked at him.

  "I know," he said. "I know."

  CHAPTER TWO

  A fat oily-faced man, twenty-five years old or less, puttered behind the counter with a recruit's enthusiasm. His starched blue uniform squeezed his beer and steak girth. He carried no gun. A green-faced computer glared at the man while two or three people, including Chester Morgan, waited in line at Police Records in The Corral, one of Vivia's solutions to crime.

  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Vivia, Oklahoma in 1998 was an urban area. With a quarter-million people, skyscrapers, freeways, and concrete, it was, but not comfortably. Born of the Land Rush, the oil boom, and before that, the railroads, the city happened, not wanting to be more than a big small town. At this time, a big small town no more.

  Old Vivia sits on the east side of Cottonwood River. A trading post in the Creek Nation of the early 1800's, a railway stop later, Old Vivia lives its past of exiled Indians, the Old South, freedman blacks, sharecropper whites, and corruption bred from opportunistic railroads and grasping interlopers. New Vivia, on the Cottonwood's west bank, ignores its fortuitous history: its one-day birth by grants of free Land Run earth. Smooth streets, tall shiny buildings, and prosperous white suburbanites who believe any problem can be solved by the right cowboy in a white hat.

  Maybe that was why Vivia's police chiefs in the 1980's and 1990's all had gimmicks -- shoot-from-the-hip solutions that promised but didn't work. Solutions that appealed to and soothed the fears of New Vivia, but ignored the reality of Old Vivia and its past of exploitation, injustice, and prejudice, and the vice deemed virtue of New Vivia: greed.

  The Corral, Vivia's new police and detention complex, had been the gimmick of the last chief of police. More space to lock 'em up, more space for an urban fighting force and thus less crime. The city then erected this post-modern structure remarkably reminiscent of Tombstone, Arizona's most famous landmark. From then on, it was known as The Corral, the building to conquer crime, the building with empty space where computers should sit, and one man to work the desk in Police Records because there was enough money to erect the monstrosity, but not enough to equip and staff it.

  Morgan wouldn't have used a computer if one had been available. He didn't really know how and didn't want to learn, so he waited and thought and doubted.

  He should have told Alan Kinman to come here himself. Kinman didn't need to pay him to get a copy of the incident report, a public record.

  Other clients, though, had retained him for stranger, less necessary things. Mitzi Doran, for example, an eccentric and wealthy seventy-year-old whose real name was Virginia, hired him once to meet with her twenty-six year old fiancé's parents to convince them she had no interest in their son's money. It should have been obvious. The young man was built like an Austrian weight lifter and had never worked in his life. Or Andrew Davis, an SMU-trained attorney and vice-president of a chemical manufacturing company. Two months after Morgan became a lawyer, Davis called a senior partner at the twenty-five-member law firm where Morgan then worked. Davis, whose company was a good client, insisted an attorney go with him to a meeting that afternoon with state environmental regulators. Somehow Morgan was the only lawyer available. He knew nothing of the company, had no background in the chemical industry, and no knowledge of the complex and esoteric regulations to be discussed. Do you still want him? the senior partner asked. Davis insisted, and Morgan remembered spending the afternoon in the meeting with eyes glazed and of no use to the brilliant vice-president of the chemical company, but Andy Davis was glad his attorney was present.

  Clients intuitively know when they need a lawyer, even if they shouldn't have to hire one to get their problems resolved. Ralph Heftern's brother owed Ralph fifteen hundred dollars. Ralph wanted Morgan to send a letter threatening a lawsuit if the money wasn't paid. He'll pay, Ralph said, if you send him the letter. Morgan persuaded Ralph to talk to his brother first. OK. Ralph called Morgan back the next day. Did you talk with him? Morgan asked. Nope, Ralph replied. 'Called him and he hung up on me. And Ralph usually told the truth. Morgan sent the letter and the brother sent a check for fifteen hundred dollars in the return mail.

  Maybe Alan Kinman knew he couldn't get what he needed. Maybe this trip to Police Records wasn't really necessary but maybe it was. It won't cost him too much and maybe it will help him -- what? Get over a lost love? Like anything could. Like anything could bring Morgan's own Cassie back?

  "Yes sir?" the blue-uniformed records clerk asked. His voice had a good-natured rural twang to it.

  "I'd like to see the report for this date and this victim," Morgan said, sliding a request slip to the man. "The only address I have is someplace in Kiowa Heights."

  "Tanya Everly," the clerk said as his pudgy fingers typed information into the computer and then stopped. "Here it is. Tanya Everly. 90403918.DBAM.CD. Let me pull it up for you."

  "Actually, I would like to see the file," Morgan said.

  "Well, with these computers, you can get just about everything you want just by pressing the right buttons."

  "Really I would prefer to see the file."

  "Oh, it'll just take a second. Here let me show you." The clerk hit a few keys and turned the monitor so both he and Morgan could watch.

  The screen went blank.

  "Sometimes it takes a few moments," the man explained.

  Nothing happened.

  "Let me try it again. Sometimes these things don't work like they ought to. You know, demons in the wires or something," the clerk said. "90403918. DBAM.CD." The clerk hit the enter button and the screen went blank.

  "What does all that mean?"

  "90403918 is our file number. DBAM.CD means death by accidental means, case closed. Investigation finished. It'll be here in a minute."

  It wasn
't.

  "Do you suppose the investigation wasn't really completed?" Morgan asked, looking at the solid green screen.

  "Heck no. It's got to be deader than a door nail before it gets those CD's after it." The uniformed clerk punched the buttons again and pointed at the screen. "See. If there was an investigation going on, there would be two asterisks after DBAM or whatever we thought it was and then there would be some asterisks down here saying something like 'Refer to Lt. Johnson' or something. But on this one, it says CD and if it says CD, it is once and for all, absolutely flat out dead."

  "Why don't you go get me the paper file?"

  "Guess I'll have to. It'll be a few minutes."

  "I've got time."

  Maroney returned in a few minutes as he had left -- with nothing. "I found out why that didn't come up on the computer. It's sealed. Chief's orders."

  "Oh, I guess the investigation is still going on."

  "No. Now buddy, I told ya, it wouldn't get those CD's after it if somebody was investigating."

  "Well then, I ought to be able to see it."

  "Hell, even I couldn't see that report if I wanted to. I mean it is locked up tighter than a Methodist's billfold. 'Hope you aren't a Methodist."

  "Don't worry about it. Do you know why the file is sealed?"

  The file clerk shrugged and looked over his shoulder. "Never known it to happen before," he whispered.

  "Nothing on the computer to indicate it was sealed?"

  "No. There wasn't."

  "Let me see your supervisor." Morgan handed his business card to the overweight oily-faced man.

  "You don't want to do that, do you?" the young man whined.

  "What's your name, officer?"

  "Maroney."

  "Listen, you didn't make the decision not to give me that file, did you, Officer Maroney?"

  The file clerk shook his head.

  "Then go get me whoever did or your supervisor, OK?"

  The overweight clerical worker waddled away. Morgan didn't want to get the kid in trouble; the guy was just doing what he was told. Morgan imagined a zealous bureaucrat with nothing else to do sitting in a windowless room reviewing files, deciding which ones were fit for the public's view and which ones weren't.

  A short man with greased back hair, a face wrinkled from tobacco and the sun, and with a hard glint in his eyes sauntered to the counter.

  "I'd like to see this file," Morgan said pushing the request slip in front of the man.

  "Ain't here," the short man sneered. He stared intimidation.

  "What do you mean it isn't here?"

  "What I said."

  "Where is it?"

  The man shrugged. A blink of the eye and that movement would have been missed.

  "Tanya Everly," Morgan said. "Death by accidental means. The file is closed. No investigation pending. It's public record." Morgan heard his own voice getting louder and knew his soul cursed government bureaucrats even as he spoke. "Maroney said--" Morgan looked at the fat young man and paused. A drop of sweat rolled down the young officer's puffy cheek. "Maroney said I could talk to you about it."

  "If Maroney told you it was gone, why talk to me? I got better things to do."

  "Thought you might be able to tell me where it was and when it'd be back."

  The hard, little man shrugged again. They must teach them that when they move to desk jobs, Morgan thought. "Out of luck," the man said.

  "We'll see," Morgan said. "What's your name?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Curious."

  "Hightower. Orin Hightower."

  Morgan left Maroney to be chewed out by the veteran Hightower for doing his job. Morgan felt sorry for the kid who was trying to do what he was supposed to -- honestly. The way elementary school kids believe all police officers are, but who learn all too often otherwise when they become adults.

  Morgan located a pay phone and slipped in a couple of quarters. They had the report, Morgan thought. Someone did. Maroney had told him that much and maybe more.

  "Morgan's Law Office," the young female voice said.

  "Shawn, I need you to start on something immediately. Go to our library and find the most recent cases on --"

  "Chester!"

  "Mandamus."

  "Chester, you need to -- Well, OK, wait a minute here. Mandame --what?"

  "Mandamus. We're going to have to get a writ of mandamus against, I guess, the chief of police. A court order requiring him or his department to do its job, to provide a simple incident report. Find the cited cases, too."

  "Chester, I'll do it, I'll do it, but you need to talk to Marylin right now."

  Shawn transferred the call to Morgan's private secretary.

  "Boss," Marylin whispered. "Mrs. Delano is here waiting for you. Her husband's probate hearing is at two."

  Morgan looked at his watch. Five till. "Oh, man. Apologize for me -- profusely. Tell her I'm running on attorney time. A half hour behind most people and --"

  "A half century behind the rest," Marylin finished.

  "Please get Mrs. Delano to Judge Powers' courtroom as fast as you can. If we're first up, I'll try to get it continued to the end of the docket."

  Morgan hung up the phone. Late for Judge Eldridge Powers' two o'clock probate docket and Judge Powers didn't brook delay. Didn't brook much of anything. He could, and might, dismiss the whole case. How would Morgan explain that to Mrs. Delano who had never imagined life without her husband? He couldn't and he knew it.

  Morgan's heart beat fast. He lifted his feet and walked as fast as destiny.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "All rise! The District Court of Vivia County, Oklahoma is now in session. The Honorable Eldridge Powers presiding."

  Morgan stepped to an empty chair near a counsel table as a snow-haired man in a worn black robe entered the room and said, "You may be seated." Judge Eldridge Powers, as flexible as the marble that lined the walls and almost as old.

  Morgan picked up a copy of the docket and saw The Estate of Ralph Delano, deceased, mid-way down the first page. Had he the breath, the attorney would have sighed. If Mrs. Delano arrived soon, he might escape Eldridge Powers' task-taking and might not have to spend the entire afternoon listening to the formalities of probate.

  Judge Powers called the first case. A young attorney seated her first witness, a middle-aged man with arms like Popeye's and thick fingers adorned with gaudy rings. The attorney began questioning. State your name. Where do you live? How were you related to... Morgan tuned out. In probate court, the questions were always the same and the answers only varied by names and dates -- most of the time. The grandeur of being a courtroom attorney, he thought, hurrying and waiting, always more of the latter it seemed.

  Morgan looked around the courtroom. Attorneys, plenty of them, and their clients who don't need the process at all -- most of the time. Probate insures one's last wishes are carried out according to one's last will and testament. A well-drafted and managed trust can transfer property at death and avoid the probate process altogether, but not all attorneys recommend trusts, and sometimes they shouldn't. In probate, the court's supervision protects one's estate from vultures and thieves -- some of the time, but most of the time, the deceased person's wishes are carried out without objection, creditors and taxes are paid, and the lawyers take home a nice fee for simply officiating in legal ritual that serves little purpose.

  The attorney concluded her direct examination, and Eldridge Powers determined the document presented was, in fact, the decedent's last will and testament. The man with a pawn shop's inventory of jewelry on his hands took an oath and became the personal representative, the current gender-neutral title for executor or executrix, of someone's estate.

  Judge Powers called the next case. No one responded. In a louder voice, he said the name of the decedent and the attorney again.

  Silence.

  "Case dismissed."

  Morgan looked at his watch. Four minutes past two. The fate of the Delan
o case almost, Morgan thought, and what accomplished? Someone would have to pay another two hundred dollars in court costs and the process begun again and that would cause at least a month's delay when the case simply could have been continued to allow for slow watches, bad traffic, emergencies, or, yes, mismanagement of time.

  Morgan shook his head. Probate court. Forty-nine hundred little rules, Morgan thought, half of them written in the arcane language of the Oklahoma Probate Code adopted at statehood and little changed since; a fourth of them hidden in thousands of pages of appellate court decisions; and, in Vivia County where Eldridge Powers presided over the probate court, a fourth of them unwritten and known to lawyers only by unpleasant experience and spoken word. Forty nine hundred little rules, Morgan thought, and most of the time they make no difference. Except to the Honorable Eldridge Powers.

  Judge Powers, a brittle-bodied man with a soft library-and-office pallor, carried the faint twang of his Iowa boyhood in his voice. He had been appointed to the bench in the aftermath of a judicial scandal more than twenty-five years before. Judges, from the lowliest justice of the peace to the most senior members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, had taken money in exchange for desired outcomes. Eldridge Powers remembered his legacy and went by the book even more than the book required. Lawyers dreaded his court; for in his odd school-marmish way, Eldridge Powers often embarrassed more than judged.

  "In the matter of the estate of William Harrison, deceased," the judge announced.

  Morgan tuned back in as did others in the courtroom. William Harrison, deceased. Morgan remembered the morning of his death. The image of the body in the water returned. It would not vanish.

  "Thomas Haney of the law firm of Massey, James and Peterson represents the proponent. Is the proponent ready?" Judge Powers asked.

  "Yes, your honor," said a lawyer Morgan did not recognize.

  "Anyone present in opposition?" the judge asked.

  Silence.

  "The jurisdiction of this court depends upon the heirs and beneficiaries being given notice of their right to object to the probate of the decedent's will," the judge continued. "Written notice was published in "The Vivia Daily Sentinel." Thomas Haney's sworn written statement on file -- his affidavit -- proves the heirs and beneficiaries have been mailed a copy of the written notice of their right to object. None are present, and none have elected to object. Randolph Harrison, the proponent, seeks the admission of a lost will into probate. Mister Haney, call your first witness."