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“Why did Alexaccept an appointment as a judge?” Virgil asked. “His firm is well known in the Cities, he must have been doing very well there, financially...”
Cooper smiled: “The fact is—and it was resented, I’m sure—he didn’t have to do well. He went in financially secure, so he didn’t care how well he did financially. What he cared about wastime. Being a judge can be difficult, but the job doesn’t consume vast amounts of time. Being a law-firm partner does. We had our boys...” She stopped, teared up, wiped the tears away and continued. “We had two boys who were growing up, and he wanted to spend more time with them. His father hadn’t spent much time with Alex. He was a go-getter, had the Army thing, got a law degree, big shot at 3M, had his cigars and his golf club buddies... a jerk, frankly. Alex didn’t want to be that.”
“Okay.” Virgil turned to Lucas. “Any questions?”
Lucas edged closer to Cooper: “Is Ann gay?”
Virgil swiveled back to Cooper. A faint blush appeared on her cheeks. “I... you know, that’s a—”
Lucas: “Did you have a sexual relationship with Ann?”
Now she showed anger: “Why would that—”
“She might resent a husband, a husband with children,” Lucas said.
“Does she look like she’s six feet tall and thin?”
“So you’re saying, yes, at some time you had a sexual relationship with Ann,” Lucas said.
“I’m not saying...”
“Tell the truth,” Lucas said. “You said you wouldn’t lie about anything.”
Cooper said, “Yes. We’ve had a relationship. Not serious, just fun.”
“Was it just fun for Ann?” Virgil asked. “Or was it more serious...”
“I don’t... know. Maybe it was,” she said.
“How recently in the past?” Lucas asked. “This year?”
She looked at him for several seconds, then at Virgil and back to Lucas: “Yes. But like I said, it was just fun.”
“Did Alex know about it?”
“No. I’m sure he didn’t. Alex was very... conservative in his own way,” Cooper said. “Too conservative. I really came of age in the theater business, where things are different.”
Virgil and Lucas peered at her and she started streaming tears, looked down into her lap, then asked, “Do you have to push Ann about this?”
“Should we?” Lucas asked.
“No. I don’t know. I don’t see how... I don’t see how she could be involved in anything, with murder...”
“Does she handle criminal cases?” Virgil asked.
“Not really. She mostly does estate work. The firm will do minor criminal stuff for wealthy clients—you know, people they want to come back. Like kids busted for shoplifting cigarettes, or whatever. Do you remember, a couple of years back, a boy murdered his girlfriend and another boy he thought was sleeping with her?”
They both did.
“That case came to Ann. She immediately sent it out to the firm of a man named Marvin Fingerhut...”
“We know him,” Virgil said.
“Our firm, Alex’s old firm, Ann’s firm... they didn’t want anything to do with it. That was going to be a big-money case. Lots of publicity. It needed specialist criminal defense attorneys. That’s not what we did. What Ann does.”
When they’d pushed the questions about Melton as far as they could, Cooper asked, “Do you have to ask Ann about ourrelationship? Whatever you’d call it? It was just like a thing, you know, not...”
“Yes. We have to ask. We know two things now that the other guys apparently didn’t,” Lucas said. “You had a relationship with somebody who might be jealous of what you had with Alex and your boys; and she had at least some access to criminals. Perhaps had access to somebody who might be willing to do her a favor.”
