Chapter 49: The same judge

Bruno called Cole before I could say anything.

She picked up on the first ring which told me she already knew.

"How bad is it?" Bruno said.

"The motion was filed at eleven fourteen," Cole said. "Judge Harwick reviewed it at eleven forty. He has requested a hearing at nine tomorrow morning." A short silence. "Harwick is the same judge who granted the emergency bail. The same judge whose name appears in Reeves's emails."

"He is compromised," Bruno said.

"Yes," Cole said. "We have known about Harwick for six weeks. We have been building the case against him carefully because a compromised judge requires a specific process and moving too fast collapses it." Her voice was flat and precise. "Richard's lawyers filing tonight has forced our hand."

"What does that mean?" I said.

"It means we need to move on Harwick before nine tomorrow," Cole said. "If he sits on that bench in the morning the motion goes through and Richard walks out of custody before we can stop it."

"What do you need from us?" Bruno said.

"The emails on Reeves's phone," Cole said. "The ones routed through the Geneva firm to the billing address at your father's house. Specifically the three sent to Harwick directly. I need those authenticated by an independent forensic analyst before seven tomorrow morning."

"Luca has the phone," Bruno said.

"Luca's analyst needs to start tonight," Cole said. "Right now."

Bruno ended the call and called Luca and I stood beside him on the quiet street and watched his face work through it and thought about Richard sitting in a custody suite somewhere in the city having filed a motion that might walk him out of a door before morning.

He was never going to stop.

Not voluntarily.

Not while there was a judge left to call or a motion left to file or a single move remaining on a board he had been playing for twenty years.

Luca answered and Bruno spoke for three minutes and Luca said his analyst would start within the hour and Bruno ended the call and put his phone in his jacket and looked at me.

"Come on," he said.

"Where?" I said.

"Home," he said. "There is nothing we can do tonight that Luca and Cole cannot do without us and you are not spending the night sitting in an office waiting for a phone to ring."

"Bruno—"

"Phoebe." He took my face in his hands right there on the street with the cold air around us and the gallery light still on behind us. "I need one night where I am not sharing you with Richard Simpson. One night where he does not exist in any room we are in." He looked at me directly. "Give me that."

I looked at him.

His hands were warm on my face and his eyes were steady and behind him the city was dark and quiet and the gallery woman inside was still moving between her canvases with her wine and her solitude and her complete indifference to everything outside her glass walls.

"One night," I said.

"One night," he said.

We went home.

He made tea and I sat on the counter and watched him and we did not talk about Richard or Harwick or the hearing at nine or the emails on Reeves's phone. We talked about the painting in the gallery window and whether the horizon was water or sky and Bruno said water and I said sky and neither of us conceded and the tea went the way all our tea went, cold on the counter while we found better things to do with the time.

Later we lay in the dark with the window open two inches and the city coming in cold and faint and his arm around me and my head on his shoulder and the particular quiet of a room that had been empty for too long and was not empty anymore.

"Tell me about the village," he said.

"Which village?"

"The one in France you cannot find on a map," he said. "Tell me everything about it."

I told him. The woman who owned the place and communicated entirely in gestures. The rosé that came in a jug. The table outside under a tree where we ate every meal for four days. The sound the cicadas made at night that was so loud it should have kept me awake and instead sent me to sleep faster than I had slept in years.

Bruno listened without interrupting.

At some point his breathing slowed and evened out and I lay beside him in the dark and listened to the city outside the window and felt the weight of his arm and thought about a village we were going to find after Lisbon and a studio with paint on the walls from previous tenants and a north-facing window because the light mattered.

I closed my eyes.

His phone lit up the ceiling at three in the morning.

He was awake before the second flash, which told me he had not been fully asleep either.

He read the screen without picking it up.

"Luca," he said quietly.

"What does it say?" I said.

He picked it up and read it and sat up slowly.

"The forensic authentication is done," he said. "The emails are verified. Cole has everything she needs to move on Harwick tonight." He looked at the screen. "She is executing a warrant at his home in forty minutes."

"Then it is handled," I said.

"Yes," he said. He set the phone down and lay back and pulled me back against him and I put my head on his shoulder and his arm came around me again.

Two minutes of quiet.

Then his phone rang.

Not Luca this time.

He looked at the screen and I looked with him and the number on it made no sense because it was a number that should not have been active.

It was Richard's number.

His real number. The one I had labeled twelve years ago and never changed.

Calling from custody.

At three in the morning.

Bruno looked at me.

I looked at the phone.

It rang four times and stopped.

Then a text message arrived from the same number.

Bruno opened it and read it and whatever was in it did his face something I had not seen it do before. Not the controlled professional stillness. Not the careful management of what showed and what didn't.

He handed me the phone.

I read the message.

Three sentences.

I read it twice.

Then a third time because the third time is when you stop hoping you misread something and accept that the words are exactly what they are.

Bruno was watching my face.

I handed the phone back without speaking and got out of bed and went to the window and looked down at the street to ease off what I carry.

"He cannot do this from custody," Bruno said.

"He already has," I said.

I turned from the window.

"He sent it to his lawyer before Cole arrested him," I said. "He planned for tonight. He planned for all of it." I looked at Bruno. "He knew we were coming."