Fighting Chance(66)

“She turned you in,” Gregor said. “That means she turned herself in.”

“We didn’t think we had to worry about it,” Janice said. “What kind of an idiot turns herself in in a situation like that. But she did. One day when the year was finally over, she went to the dean of students and spilled the whole thing. We all got F’s in the course, and we all got excluded from the college for a semester. That meant we had to leave campus and stay away for the whole next fall semester before we could come back. But Martha didn’t get excluded. She got put on probation and she just went on attending classes and living in the dorm as if nothing had ever happened. And if you ask me, she knew that was going to happen. She knew that if she blew the whole thing, she wouldn’t get punished much at all.”

“All right,” Gregor said slowly. “I would think that would be a natural reaction on the part of the administration, though.”

“Was it a natural reaction that they almost treated her like a hero?” Janice asked, sounding frustrated. “Everywhere you looked, you saw little notes in the alumnae magazine and the college newsletter, saying how awful we all were and what a wonderful person she was for coming forward and doing the honorable thing. It was worse than infuriating, it really was. And then, two years after all that, she did it again. She got this job as a camp counselor for the summer and the counselors pulled these pranks, like crop circles, and she was one of them and then she turned herself and all of them in. One of the girls in the year below us was one of the counselors. She told us all about it. And it was the same thing. It was almost as if she hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“Oh, my God,” Bennis said. “I know what she’s talking about. The thing about the black balls at the Athenaeum Club.”

“Exactly,” Janice said.

“Does somebody want to explain it to me?” Gregor asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Janice Loftus said. “It’s a pattern, can’t you see that? She gets herself into these things. She even started the first one. Maybe she started all of them. She gets into them and then she blows the whole thing up and she not only doesn’t get punished, people tell her how wonderful and principled she is. It’s like a thing.”

“And you think she was doing that here?” Gregor asked.

“There were all those rumors about her taking bribes,” Janice said. “And they were more than rumors. A lot of people just knew, even if they couldn’t prove it. You can’t tell me you think she was the only judge taking bribes from these people, and there have to be other people in the system taking them, too, not just judges. There have to be. And she’d done it at least twice before, and now look at it.”

“Three times,” Bennis said. “It was just that way with the Athenaeum thing. She was the only one who wasn’t forced to resign.”

“If she was taking bribes, I’ll bet you anything she was going to blow up the whole thing,” Janice Loftus said. “And if somebody was going to murder her, I’ll bet it’s one of the people who was taking bribes, too, or the person who was giving them.”

“And if that’s what happened,” Bennis said, “then whoever killed the woman wasn’t Father Tibor.”

3

Gregor Demarkian would have liked to tell Bennis that he never believed Father Tibor had killed Martha Handling, but after they saw Janice Loftus off in a cab, he couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

“None of the motives the police came up with made any sense at all,” Bennis insisted as they walked down the street to home. “And don’t tell me the prosecution doesn’t have to prove motive. You know as well as I do that juries want motive, and besides, you need motive for making sense of it. And there was never any motive for Tibor that made any sense.”

“Just try to consider this one thing,” Gregor managed when they came in through their front door. “Taking bribes as a judge isn’t like cheating on a history test. Or even ten. You go to jail for taking bribes as a judge.”

“Bet she thought she wouldn’t,” Bennis said. “Bet she thought she’d get probation.”

“She’d be disbarred.”

“You can be rehabilitated by the bar,” Bennis said. “My brother Bobby’s done it twice.”

“Your brother Bobby wasn’t a judge,” Gregor said.

“Nobody in his right mind would hire Bobby as a lawyer, never mind make him a judge,” Bennis said, “and that is, again, beside the point. If you can prove this woman was taking bribes, then—”