The Woman He Tried to Buy Had Already Seen Too Much

“Are you trained in forensic review of electronic docket systems?”

“No.”

“Are you the records supervisor?”

“No.”

“Are you an investigator?”

“No.”

“Then why you?”

Eleanor looked at Simone.

Simone did not rescue her.

“I did not trust the problem to remain contained if I announced it.”

“Whom did you distrust?”

“I didn’t know.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is the answer.”

Amelia waited.

Eleanor shifted in the chair. The wrist brace felt hot and restrictive.

“I thought someone inside the office might be altering records,” she said. “I believed notice could cause evidence to disappear.”

“So you conducted an unannounced visit alone.”

“Yes.”

“While injured.”

“Yes.”

“Without informing security.”

“Yes.”

“Without telling the court administrator.”

“Yes.”

Amelia wrote.

“Was that wise?”

“No.”

“Why did you do it?”

Eleanor looked at the blank wall behind Amelia.

“Because I thought I could handle it.”

“Could you?”

“No.”

The word left a bitter taste.

Amelia asked about Mason’s contact. Eleanor described the placement of his hands, the pressure, her movement against the cabinets, the pain in her wrist.

“Did you believe he intended serious injury?”

“No.”

“Did you believe he was acting independently?”

“No.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He looked at his father after speaking. Mr. Vale did not intervene. He appeared amused.”

“Did Mr. Vale instruct the boy to touch you?”

“Not in my hearing.”

“Did you threaten the child?”

“No.”

“Did you raise your voice?”

“No.”

“Did you display the badge before or after the check was thrown?”

“After.”

“Why?”

“To identify myself and establish authority over the office.”

“Did you say, ‘This office answers to me’?”

“Yes.”

“How do you think that sounds outside the room?”

Eleanor’s jaw tightened.

“Accurate.”

Amelia’s eyes remained on her.

“And imperious,” Eleanor added.

“Was it?”

“In the moment, I intended it to stop the behavior and prevent Mr. Vale from leaving with or altering records.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Eleanor looked down at the black brace.

“Yes,” she said. “It was imperious.”

Simone moved slightly beside her, not in disapproval. More like acknowledgment.

Amelia asked about Daniel, Tessa, Marjorie, Nora, and Leonard. She asked how often Eleanor visited the records office, whether she knew staff by name, whether employees had confidential channels for reporting misconduct, and when those channels had last been reviewed.

Eleanor knew the policy dates.

She did not know how many employees trusted them.

At the end of the interview, Amelia closed her legal pad.

“Did you notice anything else in the room?”

Eleanor described the blue folder, the checkbook, the receipts, the sticky note, Daniel’s notification, Tessa’s folders, the camera, Mason’s glance toward his father.

“The sticky note,” Amelia said. “Did you read it before or after displaying your credentials?”

“After security arrived.”

“Did you touch it?”

“No.”

“Did you instruct anyone to preserve it?”

“Not specifically.”

“Why not?”

“I assumed the workstation preservation included it.”

“Assumptions create work for investigators.”

“I’m aware.”

Amelia stood.

“Are you?”

Eleanor looked at her.

The question was not cruel. That made it worse.

On the fourth day, Marjorie Bell returned to the county with an attorney.

She had not fled because Preston threatened her. Not directly.

She had fled because she had accepted two thousand dollars from him six months earlier.

The payment had not been for changing a court record. At least, not at first.

Preston had hired Marjorie’s adult son, Eric, to do computer work for one of his companies. When Eric’s car was repossessed, Preston wrote Marjorie a check and called it an advance on future consulting. Marjorie deposited it. She did not report outside income because there had been no actual consulting.

Three months later, Preston asked her to help locate a misfiled exhibit in an unrelated civil case. She did. The request was improper but not obviously corrupt. Public filings were public. She convinced herself she had provided customer service.

Then he asked which employees worked late.

Then he asked whether an intake date could be corrected if a courier receipt showed earlier delivery.

Then he appeared after hours using a temporary badge Marjorie had requested for a vendor and never deactivated.

By the time she understood the shape of the arrangement, she had lied too many times to describe herself as innocent.

“She sent the meeting request to Nora because she wanted protection before she confessed,” Amelia told Eleanor in a confidential status briefing.

“Why didn’t she come to me?”

Amelia looked at her over the rim of her glasses.

Eleanor nodded. “Right.”

“Marjorie believed you would suspend her immediately.”

“Would I have?”

“I don’t know.”

Eleanor did.

Under the personnel policy, accepting undisclosed money from a frequent courthouse litigant required immediate administrative leave. She would have called it necessary. Marjorie would have heard punishment.

“Did Preston know about the email?” Eleanor asked.

“Possibly. Marjorie told Daniel she was going to request a meeting. Daniel denies telling Preston.”

“Do you believe him?”

“That is not a question I answer during an investigation.”

“What did Daniel change at two fifty-eight?”

Amelia’s face revealed nothing.

“I’ll tell you when I can.”

Outside the courthouse, public pressure kept changing shape.

A national commentator described Eleanor as an “unelected bureaucrat with a badge,” though she had been elected twice before becoming chief judge. A legal analyst pointed out that courthouse security records contradicted the claim that Preston and Mason had been detained. A parenting channel debated whether Mason had been manipulated by his father. Someone sold shirts printed with YOU DON’T BELONG IN THIS OFFICE.

Eleanor received two hundred emails in one afternoon.

Some thanked her.

Some threatened her.

One said she had humiliated a boy who would never recover.

Another said she should have hit him.

She forwarded the threats to security and stopped reading.

Lucy did not.

“You need somebody monitoring this,” she said over dinner at Eleanor’s house.

“Somebody is.”

“They missed the one with the map.”

“They didn’t miss it.”

“It stayed up for nine hours.”