The Sign of the Book (26 page)

“Lennie Walsh. He was the arresting officer. A real bastard.”

“Only part of the scene is shown…just that slash down the middle of the page. What do you make of that?”

Lennie stood in the death room, radiating anger. He had a notepad in his hand and his mouth was open.

“He looks like he's screaming at somebody,” she said.

“Laura, no doubt.”

“Is he allowed to talk to her like this?”

“Depends, I guess. He shouldn't, if he is.”

“He looks like an ugly man. I don't mean necessarily in the physical sense.”

“I know how you mean it, and you're right.” I looked up at her. “This guy's a caveman, Rosemary. He shouldn't be allowed to talk to anybody.”

“I wonder why there's only that little slice of picture. Just on this one.”

“The kid was probably seeing them through a crack in the door. Didn't want them to see him.” I looked up at her and smiled. “But I think you knew that.”

“I imagine I could've figured it out.”

I went through all the pictures slowly, trying to burn them into my mind. A full minute later she said, in that same too obvious voice, “So I take it this is important.”

“Oh, please.” I held my hand over my heart.

A big piece of another minute passed. “Please,” I said again.

“I've got one more to show you.”

She had saved the best for last. When she showed it to me, I felt light-headed, almost faint at the implications. Again we were in the murder room. In the seconds after I had looked at it, I looked again and saw all the little things that didn't matter. I could see on through the front porch to the fierce rain falling on the meadow. I could see, half-lost in that mist, the fence where Laura had been standing when she heard the shot. I could see a hint of the hill across the way, where I had staked out the place and watched the Keeler boys drive up to the front door. None of this mattered as I looked again at what the picture really showed: the broken police tape that Lennie, that incomparable moron, had used to seal the room as a crime scene. I could only read part of it clearly but I knew what it said, I knew the words
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
by heart: I could see that image almost any night in my dreams. This one had been partly crushed and tossed over the table.

There was blood on the wall, bloody little handprints, fingerprints on the tape, smears everywhere. None of this had been mentioned in the evidence.

Be still my raging heart. First the stupid bastard had left the kids inside, then he had gone back up there and washed off the walls in an effort to hide what the kids had done. He had committed a crime and a second fatal error trying to cover up the first.

Rosemary smiled sadly. “Just be careful, Janeway. Let's do this right.”

Erin and I finally talked about the case after supper. She listened in stony silence as I told her about my adventure with the Preacher, my burglary of his house, and what I had found there. Gradually her eyes narrowed to slits, she suffered through the account to the sorry end of it, and then, in a masterpiece of brevity, said, “Okay, let's move on.” This was fine with me: she knew now and if she didn't want to beat it to death with too much talk, I figured there was a reason for that. She was much more upbeat about my conversation with Rosemary Brenner. The savant discovery was exciting but it had a troubling edge to it. Why had Laura failed to tell us about this? Could she possibly not have known? “I think it's reasonable that she never associated it with Bobby's murder,” I said. “She didn't know Jerry's abilities would suddenly become important.” Still, Erin said, now we had to ask her these things. The hearing on our motion to suppress was two days away. “I'm going over tomorrow anyway, so I can do that.” She had to tie up some loose ends here in the morning and she should be in Paradise sometime after noon. “I think I'm going on ahead,” I said. “I want to look at the house again.”

If she suspected anything, she didn't ask. I hadn't told her about the picture in the kids' room. If the picture had in fact been moved, there was probably a reason, and I didn't want to make that discovery openly on my own. I didn't want it to come from me at all. We went to bed at eleven; I got three hours of restless sleep and was on the road in the dark early morning. I turned in to Paradise just as the sun was breaking over the mountains. Parley was already up when I arrived at his house. “Just in time for some flapjacks and eggs.”

We sat at his table, eating a breakfast guaranteed to shorten any life span.

“I take it Erin called you,” I said.

He nodded and offered more pancakes, which I waved off with an appreciative gesture. “So where are we in the scheme of things?” he said. “Do I want to ask you what really happened between you and that preacher man?”

“Probably not.” A strained moment passed. “I think I should stay out of the court's way as much as possible from here on out. Not be an obvious part of the team, so to speak. Just between you and me, though, I'd sure like to go back up to the house before the world finds out about Jerry.”

“That's no problem. The DA turned the house back over to us. I've got the keys.”

He noticed my surprise. “Mainly what they cared about was getting those books out. The house had already been gone over, hadn't it?”

“That's what I understand,” I said. “Miss Bailey did say they were treating it as a whole new crime scene.”

“I guess Gill overruled her on that. Probably figured there wasn't much to be gained by doing it all over again, not after Lennie'd been plowing ass-first through it. And they didn't know what we know. If you still want to go up, leave those dishes and let's go do it.”

Twenty minutes later we came up the rise to the meadow. It looked different, peaceful now in the warm sunlight. We stood on the porch for a moment, gazing over the distant mountain range; then Parley unlocked the door and the dark interior pulled us in where death was still part of the air. I stared down at the black bloodstain.

“What is it you're lookin' for?”

“Just looking. Can I wander a bit?”

“Sure. Long as you don't mind me wandering with you.”

I wandered into the library, where long rows of empty shelves now faced the two doors. “Not much to see here anymore,” Parley said.

I went on back into a dark hall. I could feel his scrutiny and hear his footsteps just a couple of feet behind my own. At the end of the hallway was a closed door. I got down on my knees and looked at the doorknob.

“Is it possible to have some light in here?”

He turned on a dim hall light. “That's not much, I'm afraid.”

“I think there's something here. You got a flashlight in the car?”

“In the glove compartment.”

“I'll come with,” I said before he could ask.

We retrieved the light together; then, again in the hallway, I lay on my back and lit up the bottom of the doorknob.

“There is something here,” I said. “It's black now, but I think it's old blood.”

He lay down on the floor beside me.

“Don't touch it, Parley. I think it may be a fingerprint.”

“Damned small one if it is.” He shook his old head.

“Can I open this door? I'll be careful.”

The door opened into the kids' room. I rolled to my feet and gave Parley a hand, and he got up with a grunt. The room looked exactly as Jerry had pictured it: the calendar frozen on that day, the clock still going, the picture there on the wall where, perhaps, someone had moved it. I walked through the room looking at the walls. I looked out the window.

“You see something out there?”

“I don't know, I thought I did.”

He went to the window and just that quickly I touched the edge of the picture and tilted it slightly off-center.

“Nothing out there. You sure get jumpy when you come up here, Janeway. Must be something about the thin air.”

I laughed politely and waited for him to notice the picture, even though I had no way of knowing what if anything might be there. Parley looked up.

He sees it, I thought. But he turned away and said, “You finished in here?”

“I don't know yet. Let's look some more.”

Goddammit, Parley, look at the friggin' picture!

He stared out the window, his mind obviously in neutral. To him the case was in good shape and I was spinning my wheels. Annoyed, I said, “It takes you a while to wake up in the morning, doesn't it?”

He looked at me curiously. “Why, am I missing something?”

“Hell, how would we know, you're in such a helluva hurry to get out of here.”

“There can't be much left to it after that mob's been through here, can it?”

“I wouldn't say that. Didn't we just find a print on the door?”

“That could be an old Popsicle smear for all you know. What do you want to do, toss the place again?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah. I sure would like to give it more than just a casual once-over. Look, we know Lennie locked the kids in the house. We've already found what may be blood or Popsicle residue on the doorknob. Whatever it is, you should be excited about it, not walking around in some stupefied state.”

A flash of anger spread across his face, replaced by embarrassment. “Okay, so it takes me a while to get goin' in the morning. What do you want me to do?”

“You look on one side of the room, I'll look on the other.”

“What'm I looking for, more blood?”

“Hell, anything. Look under the bunk beds with the flashlight. Let's be careful, so we don't contaminate it any more than it already has been.”

“Hey, I'm awake now, you don't need to belabor the obvious. What're you gonna be doing while I'm crawling around over here?”

“I'll look in the closet and around the dressers.”

I tried to forget him then: just let him be, I thought; let him find it in his own way and in his own time. But as time passed I found my patience wearing thin.
What the hell are you
doing
over there?
I wanted to shout.
Does something have to rise up and bite you between the legs before you—

Then he said, “Cliff,” and I knew by his tone that whatever was there, he had found it. I leaned out of the closet. He had the picture off the wall and was holding it by its corners. On the wall was a full black palm print with four partial fingers.

By midafternoon the house was again crowded with people. Erin and Parley had agreed that the DA would have to be informed,
noticed-in
in legal jargon, and people began arriving just after one o'clock. For the third time there was a full-court press by the prosecution with cameras and lights and people coming in and out. Erin came in at two. Ann Bailey arrived a moment later, looking furious. She and Erin nodded crisply to each other. Meanwhile we began building our record of what we had found there. “We'll need our own photographer,” Parley said, but the only one in town was Hugh Gilstrap, who would also be our witness. “I don't think that'll hurt his credibility,” Erin said. “Let's hire him if he'll come up, deal with him like any other professional, and keep our distance otherwise.” Then she stood back and watched the circus, saying nothing in that first hour while the lab man shot his photos of the wall.

Gilstrap arrived and duplicated the scene for us, and in the late afternoon we conferred with Miss Bailey.

“We'll want to send this palm-print over to the CBI in Montrose,” she said.

“We'd have no objection to that,” Erin said.

“It does mean we'll have to cut this piece of wall out. I don't think we could lift that print off without destroying it.”

“Ann, it's pretty clear that one of the kids made that mark,” Parley said.

“Yeah, well, let's find out for sure this time.”

“You'll at least agree that it's not Laura's print.”

“I'm not agreeing to anything at this point.”

“Ann,” Parley said patiently. “You've gotta know—”

“What, that our deputy screwed up? Even if that's so, that's all we know at the moment. You want me to what, dismiss this case on the basis of that?”

“This case is bullshit.”

“Is it? Do I have to remind you that she confessed? She confessed, Mr. McNamara. The first words out of her mouth to your own witness were ‘I shot Bobby.' She said it at least twice after that, and we have witnesses.”

“This isn't getting us anywhere,” Erin said. “We'll see what happens at the hearing tomorrow.”

“We'll see,” Miss Bailey said. She sounded confident but Erin met her eyes and put on that enigmatic face and Miss Bailey looked away. Was that my imagination or was it the real crack in the wall of ice she showed to the world? She had to be seriously worried about Lennie at this point. What she might not know was how worried she ought to be and why. She spoke to Parley. “Can we agree on taking out that piece of wall? Or does that have to go through an act of God like everything else in this case?”

Erin nodded and Parley said, “The defendant gives you her blessing to desecrate her house.”

“Then let's get it done. I
had
a dinner date tonight.”

A technician came in with a drill and a small saw. “Take that whole square, everything the picture was hiding,” Miss Bailey said, and five minutes later the piece of wall was free and bagged. “I want the doorknob too,” Miss Bailey said, and it was carefully removed from the door and bagged.

Gilstrap shot pictures of the whole process. Miss Bailey said, “We're going to seal the house again, I'll need your keys, please,” and Parley turned them over.

They wrapped up their work in the early evening. Miss Bailey stayed until the end and Erin stood off to the side and watched her. Again the house was locked and sealed with crime tape and we all moved outside to the cars.

“Tomorrow, then,” Miss Bailey said.

Erin nodded. “See you then.”

 

That night we had a two-hour meeting with our defendant in the jail. Laura's defense, simple and old as time, would be that she hadn't done it. If she had confessed to anyone, she had done it under stress, out of fear for her eldest son.

This was it, then: the murder of Robert Charles Marshall had been the work of some unknown party, for reasons unknown and perhaps ever unknowable. This fit somewhat with the shadowy figure Bobby had become, and the burden of proving otherwise would belong to the state. In death no one could pin him down: there were no files in his cabinet, no letters from the Preacher or anyone else. “He burned a lot of stuff,” Laura said. “He was always burning stuff in the yard. As he got older, he seemed to be slipping deeper into paranoia. He had become obsessed with his privacy.”

Erin took lengthy notes. She couldn't imagine Bobby that way, she said: he had always been so outgoing when they were young. “He was like a different person then,” Laura agreed. “You can't imagine how he'd changed. I lived with him for years, and there were times at the end when I barely knew him.”

She had thought seriously of divorce, especially in the last three years. “But then I considered the children and I couldn't do it. The little ones loved Bobby.”

“He was good to his own children?” Erin asked.

“Oh, yeah. He loved them and they loved him. I have
no
doubt of that. And he tried with Jerry too, I'm not saying he didn't try. In his own way Bobby was a good man and he sure didn't deserve what happened to him.”

“How did he try? What did he do?”

“Oh, he'd take Jerry for walks…not real often, but sometimes they'd walk down the road and Bobby would try to talk to him. Then when they came back, he'd take Jerry into his room and they'd…”

“What? What did they do?”

“Talk. I don't know, they'd be in there for maybe an hour. I couldn't make out his words but I could hear Bobby talking through the door.”

“Not angry, though.”

“No, I'd have gone in and stopped that. Bobby's voice was always very soft.”

“Did he sound like he might be trying to teach Jerry something?”

She almost laughed at that. “God, no! Bobby was no teacher, that's for sure.”

“I don't mean teach like in schooling.”

“Then I guess I don't understand you.”

“Persuasion,” Erin said. “Like maybe he was trying to persuade Jerry to do something.”

“If he was, he never got anywhere. Jerry just didn't like Bobby, I told you that.”

Laura watched Erin writing in the long silence that followed.

“Did you ever suspect that Bobby had any improper relations with Jerry?”

Laura's eyes opened wide. “My God, what are you suggesting?”

“I'm just asking questions. What are you thinking?”

“But you can't mean anything like that. Jesus, Erin, you knew Bobby, you know he'd never do anything like that to a child.”

“As it turned out, I didn't know Bobby at all, did I?”

Laura stared at the wall. “I've told you before, you've got a right to be angry with both of us. But you can't believe that.”

“Look,” Erin said, “let me put it in very straight terms, okay? Did Bobby ever abuse Jerry, any of your kids, sexually?”

“That's offensive.”

“That's what I get paid for,” Erin said. She smiled slightly, perhaps at the fact that she wasn't getting paid yet for anything. “I get paid to ask offensive questions.”

Laura took a long time to answer; too long, I thought. At last she gave us a slight headshake.

“Did Bobby ever molest Jerry?” Erin asked.

“Of course not.”

“Pardon me for lingering on this, but you don't deny it with any real conviction.”

“What do you want me to do, scream?”

“Damn it, I want you to tell the truth.”

“No,” Laura said. “No, no, no.”

“No what? No, he didn't, or no, you won't tell me the truth?”

“He didn't. Of course he didn't.” But then, into the silence, Laura said, “What are you going to do? What are you thinking?”

“I'm asking you a question. Which you are doing your best to avoid.”

“What if I said…”

Erin arched her eyebrow.

“I never actually saw anything, but once or twice I wondered. That's all.” Her face was flushed as she stared at Erin. “That's
all
! There's nothing else to say! It's just something you think in an odd moment. Surely this won't come out.”

“Not tomorrow. But if it goes to trial, we'll have to see what's there.”

“It would give me a great motive for shooting Bobby.”

Erin said nothing, but I saw awareness light up Laura's face. It was also a sudden new motive for Jerry.

“You have any questions, Cliff?” Erin said.

“Yeah, I do. I want to ask a few more things about Jerry.”

“Oh, Christ, will this never end?”

“It's just that he seems to have an amazing talent.”

The silence stretched and became awkward.

“Laura?”

“What do you want me to say?”

I shrugged. “Just a reaction would be a start. Some kind of acknowledgment that we're on the same page.”

“He's an artist,” Laura said at last. “Jerry is a great natural artist.”

Clearly annoyed now, Erin said, “You never told us about that before.”

“You never asked me. Is it important?”

Parley gave a little laugh and looked away.

“Is this important?” Laura asked again. “What's it got to do with what happened?”

“You've
got
to stop making those judgments,” Parley said. “If I can only do one thing on this earth, I would like to get you to stop playing lawyer. Do you think you could possibly do that?”

“What don't you understand about what I did? I didn't want him to be involved in any of this, is that so hard to understand? I didn't want everybody probing him like he's some kind of guinea pig, like you're doing right now…upsetting him with all this terrible stuff. Anyway, how is it important?”

“Jerry's been drawing almost nonstop all week,” I said. “Scenes of the crime. Pictures of that day—”

“Jesus Christ, this is
exactly
what I was afraid of! It's not enough that he had to go through it, now you're all going to drive him crazy worrying about it.”

“Nobody's asked him to draw anything. From what I understand it was a spontaneous thing.”

“What difference does it make how it started? Now they've got him started, it doesn't matter how, and they're going to keep after him till they break him down. Jesus, hasn't he had enough trouble in his life?”

She looked at Erin. “I knew I shouldn't have tried to fight this, I knew Jerry would be dragged into it, and now here he is; he should be drawing pictures of the mountains and the streams, and instead they've got him reliving all this terrible stuff.”

The room went suddenly quiet. Then Erin said in her hard voice, “Get used to it. Jerry's a material witness in a murder case. The questions are just getting started.”

Laura shook her head. “I should never have agreed to this.”

“Agreed to what?”

“Any of this. You knew from the start I didn't want to do this.”

“Then tell me, please, what
do
you want to do?”

“What I should've done all along.”

“You'll have to say it.”

They looked at each other.

“Well?”

“I've got to change what I…”

Erin gave a dry little laugh. “Change what? Your plea?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“Then you can do it without me.” Erin began gathering her papers.

Laura, with a sudden look of alarm, said, “Where are you going?”

“Where do you think I'm going? I do have one or two other things to do in my life.”

“You're angry. I could always tell when you were angry. Still can.”

“It doesn't matter what I am. I told you before, I haven't got time for this.”

“Wait a minute—”

“What for? So I can watch you throw yourself to the wolves? I don't think so.”

Laura looked at Parley. “Can she do this? Can she just walk out on me?”

“I can do whatever I want,” Erin said. “I'm not your attorney of record. He is.”

“Wait a minute. Please, Erin,
please
! You've got to understand something.”

“No,
you
understand. What is your case? Did you kill your husband or not?”

They looked at each other.

“Did you?”

Laura shook her head.

“Then that's how you'll plead. Not guilty. Not maybe not guilty with footnotes for unanticipated contingencies. You will not even think of offering yourself as a sacrifice for Jerry or anybody else. No extenuating circumstances, no waffling. You are not guilty. Once and for all, can we at least be clear on that?”