Death Qualified (29 page)

    "The prosecuting attorney is not permitting the witness to finish an answer before pummeling him with another question!"

    Tony threw up his hands as if in disgust.

    "Withdraw the last question. No further questions." He gave John Ken dricks a look of contempt and sat down.

    Barbara led John Kendricks through a description of his family, his and his wife's relationship with their two children, and then asked, "When your son returned home from Colorado nearly seven years ago, did you see any significant changes in him?"

    "Objection," Tony said.

    "Let counsel be specific about changes, not use the word in such a loose, meaningless context."

    "Sustained," Judge Lundgren said. He seemed ready to add to this, but Barbara was already nodding in agreement

    "Did you think your son was mentally disturbed when he returned home from Colorado the first time?" Her voice was very gentle.

    "Objection. The witness is not qualified to make such a judgment."

    "On the contrary," Barbara said swiftly, and now she went to the books on her table and opened the top one to cite her first reference.

    "Rawleigh v. Rawleigh...." She read the decision.

    "And The State of Indiana v. Lomax."

    In both cases the judge had ruled, on advice from a panel of psychiatrists, that the immediate family was most often the first to notice behavioral changes that signified mental illness.

    Judge Lundgren listened intently, then nodded to her;

    that was as much pleasure as he would allow himself to show, she realized. He liked case law, liked having attorneys rely on what had gone before.

    "Overruled," he said.

    "You may continue."

    "Thank you, Your Honor." She walked back to stand near John Kendricks.

    "Did you think your son was men tally disturbed when he returned home that time?"

    "No. He was preoccupied and worried and unhappy, like a man with a hard problem to solve."

    Tony objected several times as she asked questions that allowed John Kendricks to describe the years that Lucas was gone the second time, his efforts to get in touch with his son, the returned mail, unanswered telephone calls.

    "Your Honor," she said in response to one of his challenges, "Mr. Kendricks tried very hard to answer the questions put to him by the prosecution, and he was blocked each time. My questions were all implied by the prosecution although no answers were permitted. The prosecution brought up the matter of the seven years of absence; I am trying to clarify what happened during that period."

    The judge allowed her to continue. She was beginning to appreciate the description of fairness that her father had applied to him.

    "What about Christmas, birthdays?" she asked John Kendricks then.

    "Did he write or call on special occasions?"

    "Not a word."

    Bit by bit the past was filled in. She did not rush him, and she met each one of Tony's objections head on now as she moved in a triangular pattern from the witness chair, to the jury box, to the defense table, making certain that those twelve good and true peers kept their attention focused on this witness and this defendant. She stopped moving back and forth at one of the answers. Seven years ago Lucas had driven off in a pretty new Honda, the same car that he had driven back last June.

    "Mr. Kendricks, you have told us that your son was preoccupied and worried on his visit seven years ago. How did he appear last June?"

    She was turned so that she could see Tony and the slight flush that spread over his face. He had got the point. That was the question she had prepared the ground for, had cited references to cover more than forty-five minutes earlier Tony did not moves.

    "He was scared to death," John Kendricks said in his deliberate way.

    "People were hunting him down, and he was scared."

    He finished describing the visit and finally came to the last time he had seen his son.

    "So he drove away without saying what he planned?"

    "Yes. He was pretty upset, and really scared. He said he'd be in touch and left."

    "In his Honda?"

    "Yes."

    "You never saw him again, or spoke to him again?"

    "No. Never."

    "What about the car, Mr. Kendricks? When did you see his car again?"

    "Objection! Defense counsel is trying to introduce matters that are irrelevant to this case, and she knows it."

    "Your Honor, Lucas Kendricks left his father's house in his car on Tuesday and four days later turned up on foot, having hiked for days in unsuitable clothing. I maintain that it is relevant to determine where he had been and what happened to his car." She walked to the defense table and moved aside one of the books she already had read from in order to open a different one.

    "I refer you to.. .."

    Judge Lundgren was smiling faintly; it would have been easy to miss the expression as a smile. He held up his hand. "No need, Ms. Holloway. I agree that this is a relevant issue.

    Please proceed. Overruled."

    That was just as well, because the only case she had been able to find was so weak that she would not have dared cite it without first calling up two very strong cases.

    John Kendricks described the ransacking of his house and the car. There still was not a word allowed about the rape murder of the young woman in the woods, or about how the sheriff had come to have the car, but Barbara was satisfied. None of that was within the scope of John Kendrick's knowledge. She took him back over his testimony about Lucas's careful handling of his backpack, which she introduced as evidence, and his fear that he was being pursued. That was where she had intended to lead him all along, where she had intended to end her cross-examination.

    When she sat down, she wrote a hurried note. Have B find out when L bought the car, how and when it was paid for, and how many miles on it. She passed it to her father without giving a thought to the fact that she was asking for his active help and that without hesitation he was giving it. He glanced at the note, nodded, and left his seat, left the courtroom. She listened to Tony make the same points he had made in his direct examination; he ignored all the new information as if he had not even heard it. But he had a dilemma, she knew. He had to open the case, admit the past, or she would have a good argument that the district attorney's office had not done its job in investigating the murder. By now the jury had been teased so much about the car that not to tell them about it would simply irritate them to the point where they could take their frustration out on Tony and his case. He knew that as well as she.

    But he also knew that once opened, the case could blossom like a field of daisies, making it hard, even impossible, to control what else would be introduced. He liked his cases simple: Prodigal husband returns home and is shot by abandoned wife. Simple. Easy to comprehend.

    Understandable. Natural. That basic simplicity now threatened to turn into chaos. She was pleased with the analogy. That seemed natural to her. From elementary simplicity to chaos.

    Tony was badgering John Kendricks; although tempted to start objecting, she resisted. John was a strong witness, not flustered, not visibly angry; he was calm and quiet, and he was making Tony look more boorish with every mid-sentence interruption.

    Instead of calling his next witness, Tony approached the bench after John Kendricks was dismissed. Judge Lundgren motioned to Barbara to come forward also.

    "Mr. De Angelo has asked for a recess until three this afternoon in order to present his next witness. If you have no objections, that is what we shall do."

    "None, Your Honor."

    "Very well. You may summon Sheriff LeMans." He nodded to Tony.

    That afternoon the courtroom was packed.

    "Someone leaked that the murder of that girl will be introduced," Barbara muttered glumly to her father.

    "Way it goes," he muttered back.

    Sheriff LeMans liked cowboy outfits and apparently saw no reason to dress differently for a court appearance. His boots had amirror finish, and his silver belt buckle gleamed. His shirt was embroidered in rainbow colors.

    Barbara had trouble trying to picture him playing Bach in a chamber music group.

    Tony had come on like a sophisticate trying to get a simple answer from a slow man when he questioned John Kendricks. With Sheriff LeMans that image yielded to a different one; he was detached and coolly professional as he led the sheriff through the events that led to discovery of the Honda.

    When Sheriff LeMans described the injuries suffered by the young woman, there was a collective gasp in the courtroom, as if many people simultaneously breathed, "Finally!"

    Tony made him repeat the list: She had been brutally raped. She had been sodomized with a foreign object, probably a stick. She had been badly beaten, her neck broken, her jaw broken, two teeth broken out. Her wrists had been tied with a rope, tight enough to lacerate them severely, and she had been dragged over the lava for hundreds of feet, resulting in further mutilation of her naked body. Cause of death was internal injuries and exsanguination:

    She had bled to death. Finally she had been dumped in the creek.

    Barbara heard Nell's choking gasp at the mention of dragging that girl over the lava, but she did not turn toward her at the moment. When she did, Nell's face was ghastly in its pallor.

    "Hang in there," Barbara murmured.

    "Do you need a recess?" Nell shook her head, but she looked as if she might vomit any second. Barbara patted her arm and turned her attention back to the sheriff.

    He told about taking the car in and, after the laboratory had finished with it, turning it over to John Kendricks.

    Tony had him point out on a map the location of the car, of the landslide that had closed the dirt road, and had him trace how the road used to meander around the mountain until it eventually connected to Old Halleck Hill Road, the same road that Lucas had used to reach the trail down to the ledge.

    "Why isn't this case marked closed?" Tony asked sharply toward the end of his direct examination.

    "I never close a case until I'm satisfied--" "How long have you known John and Amy Kendricks?"

    "--that all the questions have been answered--" "Just answer the question, Sheriff, please."

    "I'm trying to do that, Mr. De Angelo but one at a time, like you asked them."

    "Your Honor, please instruct the witness to respond to the direct questions."

    "I believe he is doing so, Mr. De Angelo Judge Lundgren said.

    Tony turned back to Sheriff LeMans, who said in his deliberate way, "I've known John and Amy Kendricks all my life, and theirs."

    "Thank you," Tony said with heavy sarcasm.

    "When did they tell you their house had been broken into?"

    "In July, the eleventh."

    "Ah. Was that when they claimed the car had been torn apart?"

    "Yes, it was. And the car was torn apart. I saw it."

    "You went out to their house on the eleventh of July to inspect the car? Is that right?"

    "Yes, it is."

    "And was the house torn up, too, Sheriff?"

    He shook his head.

    "No. They had cleaned up the mess long before that."

    "In fact, you don't know that there was a mess to clean up, do you, Sheriff?"

    "Yes, I do. They told me."

    "They told you. Did you check the car for fingerprints?"

    "Yes, we did."

    "And what were the results?"

    "Nothing."

    "Nothing? No prints at all?"

    "No, I mean no outsiders' prints. John had driven the car home. We found his fingerprints, his son's, Janet Moseley's, and some of our own people's."

    Tony stopped soon after that; he was satisfied, the expression on his face indicated. None of this would damage his case, he implied by that expression. So Lucas had done a heinous crime on his way home--that didn't change the events once he got there. He sat down, propped his chin in his hand, and watched Barbara approach the sheriff.

    "I'd like to start back when you first learned that Janet Moseley was missing. When was that?"

    "Wednesday, June seventh. Eleven in the morning."

    "And you immediately went to the town of Sisters to start tracing the movements of Lucas Kendricks and Janet Moseley?"

    "Sent a deputy, Bob Silverman."

    "Tell us what you learned in Sisters, Sheriff."

    Tony objected, and Judge Lundgren stood up.

    "The hour is getting late, and I'm afraid we're all fatigued. We will have a fifteen-minute recess and resume. Ms. Holloway, Mr. De Angelo in my chambers, if you please."