Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

They impressed no one that evening. Matt put up 315 at a body weight of 162. His brother, with his longer arms, did 245 at the same weight. The only women in the gym were a couple of Spandex-encased Barbies being fondled between reps by their Kens, and a bodybuilder who outweighed them by fifty pounds. At eleven they were in the hospital parking lot where they could watch their mother leave the emergency-room staff exit and walk all the way to her car. She’d never have let them come to pick her up, saying they couldn’t run over to protect her all the time; she had to be able to go to work; that’s why they have the escort service. And they’d never rely on anyone else. So she wrote them notes and admonitions that they silently ignored. If she ever saw them in the shadows, she never said.

Matt was profoundly agitated at these times, a small part of himself wanting someone to try and accost her, to give him the reason to release four years of fury. He imagined that there’d he nothing but melted steel around a crater where he and the attacker had both vaporized.

They recognized her escort as Lucius Weems and watched them go to her car. Matt waited for her to back out and head for the exit as Sean swung by in the Subaru. He jumped in, and they left by another exit and were home, watching Wild Things, nodding in solemn agreement that Denise Richards was the hottest woman they’d ever seen, when they heard her key in the door.

The next morning, they were on the phone at nine to the law office of Joe Anthony, who told them that the Motion for Judgment was still valid. They had served papers for other cases Anthony had handled.

“Do you know where this guy is?” he asked.

Matt said, “No. We’re just cleaning house for Mickey. Toss out the ones that aren’t servable, get updates on whatever we haven’t served yet. We’re still looking; we want to be the ones to get this guy.”

“Well, you better get on it. The statute of limitations is running out on this one.”

“When does that happen?”

“End of the month. If you don’t find him, he walks away scot-free on this.”

“What does that mean?”

“He hasn’t paid child support in ten years. With interest, he owes his ex-wife over a hundred thousand dollars. This is an out-of-state case. The judgment was in Louisiana. They’ve got a statute of limitations of ten years. Even with the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, Virginia can’t enforce an out-of-state judgment after ten years. So he gets to give his wife, his kids, and the state of Louisiana the finger. That’s what it means. The paper you have is a Motion for Judgment. It has its own clock, a year. Once we filed that, it stopped the clock on the statute of limitations, but if we don’t serve him in a year, then the wife’s suit is dismissed and his clock starts up again. Our year is up in a week. I could nonsuit the case and refile it in six months, but his ten years is up in two weeks, so there’d be no point. It’s now or never.”

“What if he gets served and runs again?”

“That’s the biggest problem. You find him, we have to keep an eye on him until we get into court. He has twenty-one days to file a reply. In that time he can liquidate his assets and flee. We go into court, we win the legal battle. But it means nothing. She doesn’t get a cent. What I’d love to do is have you serve him, then go get an ABJ on him. I could file that on any motions day.”

“What’s an ABJ?” Matt asked.

“Attachment before Judgment. If I could go in and show he was a flight risk, I could get the court to attach all his assets immediately, so even if he goes, all his money stays here. It might not cover all he owes, but it’s a start.”

“What do you need for that?”

“Evidence that he would not honor the notice of suit. See, this guy hasn’t been served yet, you haven’t been able to find him, so I can’t argue that. That’s why we’d need to keep him under surveillance. So we’d know where he went if he ran, and he will. If you boys did the surveillance, what would it cost?”

“Uh, we’re twenty-five dollars an hour each, plus expenses. If we did it in shifts, that’d be six hundred dollars a day for three weeks, uh, twelve thousand, six hundred dollars.” Matt was woozy just saying the number. He wrote it on a pad for Sean to see.

“My client can’t afford that.”

“Well, we could only do it for a week. We’ve got to go back to school.”

Sean shook his head and grabbed the paper. He wrote, “I’ll go back late. My friends’ll cover for me. This is too good to pass up.”

“That’s still four grand. She can’t afford that. If she could, we wouldn’t be chasing him.”

“We have a deal with Mickey. On these old papers, if we can serve them we get to keep all the money. How much was he getting for this one?”

“Because of the amount of money at stake, he was getting two hundred for the paper. That would have been a hundred for you. I’ll tell you what, since we’re almost out of time. If you find this guy, it’s worth five hundred dollars, all to you.”

“How about our expenses?”

“Like what?”