Death Qualified (51 page)

    "Did Mike get over and pick up the disks?" Barbara asked, trying to sound offhand but aware of a stridency in her voice.

    Nell did not register surprise, or interest either.

    "Yes.

    Travis was still home waiting for James. He said Mike was there and left again right away."

    John and Amy Kendricks, who had stayed back a few steps, now drew near. With a heartiness as false as amateur theatrics, John said, "We'll walk over. We can use the exercise, isn't that right, girls?"

    Barbara and Frank watched them walk away.

    "I think Doc's got a point about another trial," Frank said.

    "That girl's really at the edge."

    The whole issue of how to plead would arise again, Barbara knew. The thought occurred to her that the district attorney might even suggest a lesser charge, just to be rid of this, especially now that there were far bigger game fish in the waters. Could Nell resist? What hope could she, Barbara, hold out if she did resist? The next time, she also knew, she would not be allowed to bring in what had been declared irrelevant this time. Tony would see to that. But the odds were stacked against her being called upon to defend Nell a second time. The family, Clive, Doc, Nell herself, all probably would want someone else, and she could not blame them a bit. She felt tired and dejected as they started to walk toward the office. It was all falling apart, the way everything she touched always fell apart.

    Nell and her family sat in the lounge listening to the tapes. Tears ran down Amy Kendricks's face; she was oblivious. Nell looked like a sightless wax doll. Clive had returned; he sat across the room with a tortured expression, watching Nell. Barbara fled to Frank's office. Bailey would not arrive until eleven; he had left a message, and until then she had nothing she could do. She had tried Mike's house, his office, the department secretary, everyone she could think of. She sat behind Frank's massive desk and stared out his window at the life of Eugene, surging this way and that. Prank had said he would just mosey back to court and see if he could get in on me scuttlebutt about what was going on in the deliberation room.

    Early on, Barbara had written a list of questions; many, even most of them, were still unanswered. Now, every time her thoughts whirled back to Mike, she denied that the flutter she felt was fear but called it anger instead, and she forced herself to consider the questions. Why had anyone dragged Janet Moseley across the lava bed to the creek? Who had called the ranger to report the car, and why? What did Jessie know, if anything?

    If Mike ran the disks, she thought clearly then, and if the disks made people crazy, what form would his madness take? Would he be dangerous to himself, to others?

    Should she call Brandywine?

    She dropped a pen she had been twisting around and around and forced herself to consider Jessie Burchard. After a moment she picked up the pen again and this time began to jot notes. At eleven Bailey and Frank came in together.

    "Anything?" she asked her father.

    "Rumor is they're at seven to five and have been since yesterday afternoon. Seven guilty."

    "Rumor," she said with a dismissive wave.

    "Hello, Bailey."

    Frank shrugged; he knew how the rumor mill worked as well as she did.

    "You look pretty good behind the big desk," he said, and took a chair opposite her, a client's chair. Bailey took a second one.

    "Hi," he said.

    "You sent, I came."

    She described Mike, his family, his work, his house, everything she knew about him, and told Bailey to find him.

    "I don't care how much of a stink you make, either," she said grimly, her anger stronger than her fear at the moment.

    Bailey grinned.

    "I can take that two ways, you know.

    You're telling me I don't have to pussyfoot around, or you're telling me I should make noise. Which?"

    "Make noise. If you can't flush him, maybe one of his colleagues or buddies will pass the word that you' remaking noise." He nodded. Then she said softly, "And, Bailey I have another small job, and this time I don't want you to so much as peep about what you're doing. Really QT. I want to know if Clive Belloc got fired from his last position, or if he quit. And if he was fired, what jobs he messed up during the last week or so that he worked for them, where those jobs were, when he did them, every thing you can rustle up. He worked as a timber estimator for one of the big lumber companies. I don't even know which one." She glanced at her father, who was regarding her as if watching a horn emerge from her forehead.

    "Do you?"

    He shook his head.

    "He might have mentioned it, but if he did, I wasn't paying attention. One of the big ones is all I know."

    "So there you have it," Barbara said to Bailey.

    "And I want it yesterday."

    "Jesus," he groaned.

    "Give me a break. When did he leave the job? Do you have that much?"

    "Oh, yes. A week or so after Lucas Kendricks was killed. In June."

    Now Bailey looked interested.

    "Yeah? Okay, that's something. You got priorities here?"

    "Both ASAP."

    * * * As soon as Bailey was gone, Frank said, "Clive, huh?

    You want to enlighten an old man just a bit?"

    "I was brooding about what Jessie could know. I kept thinking of the scenario I painted in court, about the private detective going around to Nell's beach, up to the house, and so on. Okay, I admit I don't think either of them did it, but I think that must be how someone did it."

    "You're back to believing her story?" His voice was filled with wonder.

    "Yes, I'm back to that. Let's assume she's told the absolute truth as far as she knows it. I was thinking Jessie might be protecting Doc, but if Nell told the truth, and I think she did, he was home when she called that Saturday, so it couldn't have been him. Besides, I just can't put him on the other side of the mountain the day Janet Moseley was killed. And I can't bring myself to believe there are two killers hanging out around here." She paused, thinking, then said, "I tried James Gresham. Tawna would lie for him, I guess, but P can't place him on the mountain road, aware of the creek up there. And they both say he's never fired a gun in his life. And, finally, there wouldn't be anything for Jessie to know, or to hide, about him."

    Frank shook his head hard.

    "Whoa, honey. You're going too fast for me. Where does Jessie fit in?"

    "She was on her deck that Saturday, watching the search for the body of that girl. She could have seen someone-Clive, for example--head the wrong way, and put two and two together later. It probably amused her to think of him winning Nell after murdering her husband and letting her stand trial for it. I kept thinking there was something about the binoculars that I should pay attention to. Jessie had them on the deck; I saw them. But remember that day when Clive was supposed to go to the Forest Service road and let me find out if anyone could really see that far? I saw him, and I shouldn't have. Not ten miles. But I saw the flag, and a man's figure. He faked it. He must have been much closer than ten miles, no more than three at the very most. I got sidetracked when I realized that the ranger couldn't have seen any chrome on the car, and then I forgot about the whole thing. But why would Clive have faked the scene, unless he didn't want anyone to question the ranger's story? He didn't want any questions asked about who else might have known the car was down there."

    Frank considered it with a distant look on his face. Finally he nodded.

    "Could be. But, God alive, it's not much."

    "I know. That's why I want to find out if he was in the area where that girl was killed. He would have known about the creek being there. That really has bothered me.

    Who knew it was there, and why drag her body to it? The second part I don't know, but the first is Clive. He probably knows the forests better than anyone in the state."

    Again her father was silent, thinking.

    "If the police had picked up Lucas he would have taken the rap for the girl's murder. Aggravated murder, death penalty sure as hell.

    Lucas couldn't have beaten it. Not over in Deschutes County. Probably not anywhere."

    "Suppose that was the plan, but then he saw Lucas laughing, his arms outstretched as if about to hug Nell. I don't know. Maybe he went crazy. Maybe he thought Nell and Lucas would go back together, that she would stick by him. Otherwise it just doesn't make any sense not to let the law take care of Lucas. I think that was his one second of real passion; everything else was absolutely cold blooded."

    Her father walked to the window and stood gazing at the street below. He shook his head.

    "Boy, oh, boy, do you ever need one piece of hard evidence. It's all could be, maybe, probably, no doubt. And finding hard evidence six months after the crime is just about as likely as finding an ice rink in hell. What are you going to do?"

    "I don't know. Wait for Bailey to check in. And then, I just don't know."

    Neither of them mentioned Tony, or anyone else in the district attorney's office. Pointless, they understood. Once the prosecutors said black is white, they stuck to it. Too much was already invested in proving black was white;

    too many egos were at risk. Any unproven theory at this time would simply be written off as yet another defense attempt to get a client out of deep trouble. Barbara had no hopes now of the jury's bringing in a not guilty, not after this long a deliberation. If they brought in guilty, there would be the appeals procedures to initiate. The best she could hope for was a hung jury, and then find whatever it took to indict Clive before the district attorney's office announced if it would retry. After they were committed again, it would be just as difficult as it would be today to make them consider alternatives. It came down to a matter of saving face, she knew, and she also knew that image was far more important than substance to men like Tony De Angelo

    Prank jammed his hands into his pockets, paced back and forth a minute or two, and then cursed softly. She looked across the desk at him and waited.

    "It's going to take hard proof," he. said darkly.

    "They could indict the first time on circumstantial, but to disprove that, and to get someone else, is going to take proof, and I don't see how the hell we can get it."

    "Me neither. But thanks, Dad." When he looked blank, she added, "You said we. I needed that."

    No one could face a restaurant meal at lunchtime; they had food delivered to the lounge. Frank joined the family there, and Barbara went for a walk. At three. Bailey called in.

    "Barbara, you won't like it. The guy flew out this morning, to Denver. You want someone to go after him?"

    She shook her head numbly, then said no. She stared at the phone a long time without moving. Then she called Brandywine's hotel and learned that she had checked out.

    Denver, she thought distantly. He had gone to Denver.

    Like Lucas.

    At four-thirty the call came telling them to return to court. And by five they knew they had a hung jury.

    Snagged, Frank said, at seven to five. They got there and never budged again.

    THIRTY-THREE

    the way they all hugged her, anyone would have thought it was really over and Nell home free, Barbara thought sourly. Amy Kendricks was weeping again, and John was blowing his nose hard too often. Clive kept grinning and grinning, and Nell looked ten years younger than she had minutes before.

    "Can we talk tomorrow?" Nell asked.

    "When the kids are in school? Did Mike give you the disks?"

    "He put them in a safe place," Barbara said. Probably that was as true as anything she could have said. Nell and her family and Clive left together, once again with Frank acting the good shepherd. They stopped at the door to the hall where the press was waiting, and now Doc appeared;

    he went up to Nell and kissed her forehead, then quickly walked away. She watched him until Frank took her arm with one hand and Amy's with the other and propelled them into the crowd.

    Tony came over to shake Barbara's hand.

    "You pulled it right out of the fire," he said.

    "Didn't think you could do it. We'll be in touch."

    She nodded. Yes, she knew they would be in touch.

    Then she steeled herself and she, too, left the courtroom.

    She smiled and waved and said nothing at all as she pushed her way through the reporters and camera crews.

    "Home?" Frank asked, when they were both inside the car.

    "Home."

    She put her head back and closed her eyes. She did not have to think of a thing right now, she told herself. She did not have to plan out the next day, try to anticipate what anyone might utter, damaging or helpful, did not have to put on stockings and makeup, did not have to say a single word. If she could blank out her mind, how pleasant that would be. No words, no pictures, no memories, no fears, just a comforting blank. But her thoughts kept circling around Mike and the disks and Denver and Ruth Brandywine and Schumaker and Margolis. Around and around.