The Judge’s List

“No, Helen, it’s past our bedtimes and I have a splitting headache.”

“Wasn’t it a great band? What a lovely evening.”

Melba was waiting at the door and opened it for them. Bannick handed her the high heels, then handed her Helen, then turned and backed away. “Gotta run, dear, I’ll call in the morning.”

“But I want a drink.”

Bannick shook his head, frowned at Melba, and hustled to his SUV. He drove to his shopping center and parked near other vehicles by the cinema. He walked to his other chamber, cleared himself through the scanners, and once inside stripped out of his suit and tie and put on gym clothes. Half an hour after seeing the last of Helen, he was sipping espresso and again lost in the dark web, tracking Rafe’s latest adventures.

The vigilance was time-consuming and usually not productive. Still using Maggotz and sending Rafe to troll here and there, he was watching the police files of his cases. So far, no department had managed to successfully firewall its data and network. Some were easier to hack than others, but none had been especially bothersome. He still marveled at the lax and weak security used by most county and city governments. Ninety percent of all data breaches could be prevented with modest effort. Standard passwords such as “Admin” and “Password” were routinely used.

The more tedious work was keeping up with the victims. There were ten groups of them, ten families he had destroyed. Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, children, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. He had no pity for them. He simply wanted them to stay away.

The person stalking him was not a cop, not a private investigator, not some thrill-seeking true crime writer. The person was a victim, one who had been slithering back there in his shadows for many years, watching, gathering, trailing.

A new reality had arrived, and he in his brilliance would deal with it. He would find the victim and stop the letters. Stop the silly poems.

He had ruled out the families of Eileen Nickleberry, Perry Kronke, Lanny Verno, and Mike Dunwoody. He went back to the beginning, to his most satisfying triumph. He opened the file on Thad Leawood and looked at the photos: some old black-and-whites from his scouting days, one of the entire troop at a jamboree, one taken by his mother at an awards ceremony — Ross standing proudly in his smart uniform, merit badge sash filled with colorful circles, Leawood with an arm around him. He studied the faces of the other scouts, his closest friends, and wondered, as always, how many others were abused by Leawood. He had been too afraid to ask, to compare notes. Walt Sneed once remarked that Leawood liked to touch and hug a bit too much for a twelve-year-old’s liking, called him “creepy,” but Ross had been too afraid to pursue the conversation.

How could a seemingly normal young man rape a child, a boy? He still hated Leawood, so many years later. He’d had no idea a man could do those things.

He moved on, past the photos, always painful, and went to the family tree, such as it was. Leawood’s brief obituary listed the names of his survivors: his parents, an older brother, no wife. His father died in 2004. His mother was ninety-eight and living without her marbles in a low-end nursing home in Niceville. He had often thought about rubbing her out just for the hell of it, just for the satisfaction of getting revenge against the woman who created Thad Leawood.

There were so many targets he had thought about over the years.

The brother, Jess Leawood, left the area not long after the abuse rumors surfaced and settled in Salem, Oregon, where he had lived for at least the last twenty-five years. He was seventy-eight, retired, a widower. Six years earlier, Bannick, using a disposable phone, called Jess and explained that he was a crime writer and was digging through some old police files in Pensacola. Did Thad’s family know that he had a history of abusing kids? The line went dead, the call was over. It served no purpose other than to punish a Leawood.

As far as Bannick could tell, Jess had no contact with his hometown. And who could blame him?

The last poem was about Danny Cleveland, the former reporter for the Pensacola Ledger. He was forty-one when he died, divorced with two teenaged children. His family hauled him back to Akron for the funeral and burial. According to their social media, his daughter was now a junior at Western Kentucky and his son had joined the Army. It seemed impossible to believe that either would be old enough to put together an elaborate plan to track a brilliant serial killer. And it was safe to assume his ex-wife wouldn’t care who killed him.

He scrolled through other files. Ashley Barasso, the only girl he had ever loved. They met in law school and had a delightful fling, one that ended abruptly when she ditched him for a football player. He was crushed and carried the wounds for six years until he caught her. When she was finally still, his pain suddenly vanished, his broken heart was healed. The score was even. Her husband gave interviews and put up $50,000 in reward money, but with time it went unclaimed and he moved on. He remarried four years later, had more children, and lived near DC.