My face flushed. “Iris?”

“None other, baby,” she said. “Or you can call me the Last of the Mohicans. I wouldn’t take a buyout, so I was forced up here and promoted to ME. I’m also a third of my entire staff.”

Some detective. A nameplate on her desk read IRIS MILFORD.

“How long has it been?” she said.

“Let’s not think about it,” I said. “Math makes my head hurt.”

“Mine, too,” she said. “So tell me what you’re doing up here.”

“A student was given jail time for pulling a prank at dear old Blackburn High,” I said. “Kid’s mother is my client. I’m being told this judge doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“Joe Scali?” she said. “Shit. His face would fall off if he smiled.”

“Mean?”

“Yep.”

“Tough?”

“Yep.”

“Fair?” I said.

“Some folks aren’t so sure,” she said. “We wrote a four-part series last year on his record. He has sentenced more kids per capita than anywhere else in Mass.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“Would you believe another judge?” she said. “He didn’t like what he was hearing out of juvenile court and thought a little light needed to shine on the problem.”

“And Judge Scali apologized to all the kids.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “You know it. Right after he dodged me for about two months. When I finally got him to sit down and talk, he spoke to me like I was some little girl who hadn’t covered cops and courts longer than he’s been on the bench. He said figures don’t tell the whole story. He says that probation or house arrest has been proved to be worthless. Scali says he believes the only way to get the attention of these kids is to send them to these juvenile jails.”

“Even when they didn’t commit a serious crime.”

“He blames the parents,” she said. “Said we have a whole generation that doesn’t know how to care for their kids. He said what he was doing was being father and judge.”

“God bless him.”

“Since he was put on the bench, kids doing jail time has gone up ten times in this county,” she said. “Although they don’t call it jail. What do they call it?”

“Placement?’

“Yeah, child-care placement.”

“Still jail,” I said.

She nodded. “I asked him that,” she said. “I asked if he ever thought about some of the kids he sentenced who hadn’t committed a serious crime. And you know what he did? He just kind of stared at me. He’s good at that shit, just staring, letting the question hang in the air like you shouldn’t have been asking that.”

“I’m familiar with the type.”

“He said for every parent who complains to the courts or the newspaper, there are five kids and their parents who come to him and thank him,” she said. “He says he turned a lot of lives around.”

“Has he?” I said.

“We found a few of those. Some petty criminals who got caught with drugs or shoplifting or whatever. We talked to them. Their parents say they changed their minds about Scali when their kids got home. But a year away from family and school isn’t an ideal plan. Kids don’t exactly flourish when separated from their parents.”

“Why don’t the parents challenge the system?”

“If you hadn’t noticed,” she said, “ain’t a lot of money in Blackburn. Lawyers cost money. And if you don’t speak English, you tend to not try and buck the system.”

“How about that other judge, the one who tipped you. Can you give me an introduction?”

Iris shook her head. “I wish I could,” she said. “But he died last year. He had a heart attack. His wife and I still talk. She believes he died because of the stress over dealing with Scali. Apparently he took some real heat from Scali’s buddies when he spoke up. The presiding judge demoted him.”

“Maybe I could speak to his wife?”

Iris nodded, reaching for a pen and her reporter’s notebook. She scrolled through her computer screen and then jotted down a name and number. “I don’t know if she’ll want to talk,” Iris said. “I tried about three months ago, wanting to know if he left some files. She wouldn’t even open the door.”

“How could she resist me?”

“Maybe she can’t,” Iris said. “But Scali sure as hell will. Closest you’ll get to his court is standing outside those two closed doors.”

I stood and left my card.

“Nice to see you, Spenser,” she said. “You gonna stick around Blackburn awhile?”

“Why not.”

“I have to say you’ll definitely make this place a hell of a lot more interesting.”

“I doubt that would take much.”

7

Judge Price’s widow lived in a two-story Colonial in the toniest section of Blackburn, a neighborhood along the park called Belleview. I figured it was tony because all the houses were painted, driveways were shoveled, and two passing drivers eyed me with suspicion. The house was a flat gray, with white trim and a bright red door. There were two fireplaces, neither emitting smoke, and a garage stretching from the left side of the home. An iron streetlamp wrapped in plastic holly lit a gray day as I walked past. All the driving and sitting had not been kind to my knee.

I stretched it as I walked to the door and knocked. And then knocked some more. A bundle of mail had been wedged under a brass door handle. I reached for my cell phone and tried the number. I heard the telephone ringing inside, but no one picked up. I made my way carefully along the walkway to the garage. A blue Honda was parked there alongside an empty space. Being a master detective, I figured no one was home.

I’d come back later. The problem was how to while away the hours in Blackburn. I could see if Officer Lorenzo wanted to discuss crime-busting techniques over coffee. I could see if Vice Principal Waters wanted to go shopping for home electronics. Or maybe I could make my way over to the Blackburn Mill history museum to ponder the good old eighteen-hour workdays and the benefits of child labor.

Instead, I called Sheila Yates at work and asked for names of other parents who had similar problems with Scali. She gave me five different names and three phone numbers.

The first on the list was a woman named Trinh Tran who ran an Asian grocery about four miles away in the Hastings Corner district. The district was mainly a collection of one-level storefronts occupied by Asian businesses that branched off an old-fashioned tri-cornered building that sold liquor, cigarettes, and cell phones. There were a couple hair and nail salons, at least three Vietnamese restaurants, two bars, and another liquor store. I took note there was a sale on Boone’s Farm strawberry wine. Trinh Tran owned Saigon Le, a combination pho house and grocery. Besides selling rice in twenty-pound sacks, live carp, basil leaves, and bok choy, Saigon Le acquiesced to Massachusetts culture by also selling Lotto tickets, forty-ounce beers, and stale donuts.

I found Trinh in a back office, cleaning up a storeroom. A back door hung loosely off the hinges and the cold wind shot hard into the room lined with shelves and stacks of boxes.

“Are you the police?” she said. She had little, if any, accent.

“When my hair grows out, I’m often confused with Jack Lord.”

“You have a cop face.” The accent was a little more pronounced, somewhere between Saigon and the South Shore.

“Weathered lines of integrity.”

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed big sacks of rice had been cut open, spilling onto the stained concrete floor. Boxes had been slashed and emptied. “This fifth time I’ve been robbed this year,” she said. “They don’t even use what they take. They take because they want to show they own me. They own all this business.”