My Sister's Grave (14 page)

“Why did you drive the county road that evening?”

“It’s a shortcut. You learn them all when you drive as much as I do.”

“Did you remember the particular night?”

“Not initially, no. But I remembered it was in the summer because the storm surprised me. I’d even debated not taking the county road because of it. It’s dark. There aren’t any street lights.”

“Were you subsequently able to determine the night?”

“I keep a calendar of my appointments and went and checked. It was August 21.”

“Of what year?”

“1993.”

Hagen had his calendar in his lap. After introducing it into evidence, Clark asked that it be shown to the jury. Then Clark asked Hagen, “And do you recall anything else about that evening?”

“I remembered that I’d seen a red truck. It was driving toward me.”

“And why would you remember that?”

“Like I said, there were no other cars on the county road that night.”

“Did you get a look inside the cab?”

“Not really, no. But I got a good look at the truck. It was a Chevy stepside. Cherry red. You don’t see too many of those. It’s a classic.”

“What did you do then?”

“The news program put up a phone number for the Sheriff’s Office, so I called and told the person what I’d seen. I got a call back from the sheriff saying he was following up. So I told him what I just told you.”

“Did you recall anything else while talking to Sheriff Calloway?”

“I recall thinking that I had stopped to get gas and something to eat that night, and thinking that maybe if I hadn’t, I could have reached that girl first.”

DeAngelo Finn objected and asked that the statement be stricken. Judge Sean Lawrence, a big man with a full head of red hair, sustained it.

Clark left that final thought with the jury and sat.

Finn stepped forward, notepad in hand. Tracy knew DeAngelo and his wife, Millie. Her father cared for Millie, who had debilitating arthritis. Balding, Finn parted his hair low on his head and combed it over the top. No more than five foot six, the hem of his suit pants dragged on the marble floor as he made his way to the podium, and the cuffs of his jacket reached the palms of his hands, as if he’d bought the suit off a department store rack that morning and hadn’t had time to have it tailored.

“You say you saw this truck along the shoulder. Did you see anyone standing beside the truck or walking along the road?” Finn had a high-pitched voice that the expansive courtroom swallowed.

Hagen said he had not.

“And this red truck you claim to have seen, you didn’t get a look in the cab, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“So you didn’t see a blonde woman in that cab, did you?”

“I did not.”

Finn pointed at House. “And you didn’t see the defendant in that cab, did you?”

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t catch the license plate number?”

“No.”

“Yet you claim to recall this truck that you admit you saw for just a fraction of a second on a dark and rainy evening?”

“It’s my favorite truck,” Hagen countered, the salesman’s smile returning. “I mean, cars and trucks are what I do for a living. It’s my job to know them.”

Finn’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His eyes shifted between his notepad and Hagen several times. After several uncomfortable seconds, Finn said, “So your focus was on the truck and you didn’t see anyone in the cab. No further questions.”

CHAPTER 23

D
an flipped through his notes. “I’m having a hard time believing that, seven weeks after the fact, Hagen made note of a red truck he passed briefly on a dark road in heavy rain. Finn never really explored it in cross-examination?”

Tracy shook her head. “He also never questioned Hagen about the news station Hagen claimed to be watching, or sent subpoenas to get copies of any of the newscasts during that period.”

“What would he have found if he had?”

“I have every tape of every newscast. I didn’t find any newscast even remotely like the one Hagen described during the time period he claims to have seen it. Sarah’s disappearance was old news by then. You know how it is. The press, police, everyone in town was absorbed with it initially, but as the weeks passed, so did their interest. I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.”

“What about the reward?”

“That also never came up at trial.”

Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.”

Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes.

Far from it.

Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?”

“About two months later.”

“Can you explain the circumstances?”

“We got a witness tip.”

“And can you tell the jury where that tip led?”

“To Ryan Hagen.”

“You interviewed Mr. Hagen?”

“I did,” Calloway said, and over the next five minutes he confirmed what Hagen had testified the prior day.

“And what was the significance of the red Chevy pickup?”

“I knew Parker owned a red Chevy and I remembered seeing it in his yard the morning Sarah was reported missing.”

“Did you confront the defendant with this new evidence?”

“I told him we had a witness. I asked if he had anything to add.”

“And what did the defendant say?”

“At first he didn’t say much, except that I was harassing him. Then he said, ‘Okay, yeah, I was driving that night.’ ”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said he’d been drinking at a bar in Silver Spurs and was driving home on the county road because he was afraid of being pulled over on the interstate. He said he passed a blue Ford truck on the shoulder and a little farther down saw a woman walking in the rain. He said he gave her a ride to an address in Cedar Grove, dropped her off there, and that was the end of it. He said he never saw her again.”

“Did he identify the woman?”

“I showed him a photograph and he positively identified Sarah Crosswhite.”

“Did he provide the address where he claimed to have driven her?”

“Not the address, but he described Sarah’s home.”

“Did Mr. House say why he didn’t tell you this when you first questioned him?”

“He said he’d heard in town that a woman was missing, saw one of the fliers, and recognized the photograph on the flier as the woman he gave a ride to. He said he was afraid nobody would believe him.”

“Did he say why?”

Finn objected and Lawrence sustained it.

“What did you do next, Sheriff Calloway?”

“I brought the information to your attention and asked that you secure search warrants for Parker House’s property and truck.”

“Did you take part in those search warrants?”

“I executed them, but we brought down crime scene investigators from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab to do the forensic work. Based on the evidence located that day, we arrested Edmund House.”

“Did you talk with him again?”

“In custody.”

“And what did Mr. House tell you?”

Calloway turned his focus from Clark to Edmund House, who sat with his hands in his lap, face impassive. “He smiled. Then he said we would never convict him, not without a body. He said if the prosecutor cut him a deal, he’d tell me where to find Sarah’s body. Otherwise, he said, I could go to hell.”

CHAPTER 24

D
an paced near the flat-screen television. They’d moved to the family room. Tracy sat on the couch listening as Dan alternately asked questions and thought out loud.

“The obvious question is, if Calloway was telling the truth, why would Edmund House change his story? He’d already spent six years in prison, which means he’d likely received a pretty good legal education. One has to assume he would have known that changing his alibi would be enough for Calloway to get the search warrants. And if he was going to change his alibi, why would he tell Calloway he’d been drinking at a bar in Silver Spurs, something Calloway could so easily refute, though he apparently never did?”

Tracy said, “I spoke to every bartender in Silver Spurs. No one remembered Edmund House, and no one remembered Calloway coming in and asking any questions.”

“Another reason to suspect Calloway lied about the confession,” Dan said.

“Something else. Finn never cross-examined Calloway about it at trial,” Tracy said.

“A mistake, for sure,” Dan agreed, “but that’s not what got House convicted. What got him convicted was what they found at the property.”

Late in the afternoon, the storm intensified, causing the lights hanging from the courthouse’s ornate box-beam ceiling to flicker. The wind had also kicked up, the trees outside the courtroom windows now swaying violently, their limbs shimmering.

“Detective Giesa,” Vance Clark continued, “with respect to the truck, would you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you found?”

Detective Margaret Giesa looked more like a runway model than a detective, with long, light-brown hair and blonde highlights. Perhaps five foot four, she looked considerably taller in four-inch heels and wore well a gray, pinstriped pants suit. “We located multiple strands of blonde hair varying in lengths from eighteen to thirty-two inches.”

“Would you show the jurors exactly where your team found these strands of hair?”

Giesa left her chair and used a pointer to direct the jury’s attention to a blown-up photograph of the interior of the red Chevy stepside that Clark had set on an easel. “On the passenger side, between the seat and the door.”

“Did the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab run tests on those strands of hair?”

Giesa considered her report. “We examined each strand under a microscope and determined that some had been pulled out by the root. Others had broken off.”

Finn stood. “Objection. The officer is speculating that the hairs had been pulled out by the roots.”

Lawrence sustained it.

Clark looked glad to have the phrase repeated. “Do we humans shed hair, Detective?”

“Shedding hair is a natural process. We shed hair every day.”

He patted his bald spot. “Some of us more than others?”

The jurors smiled.

Clark continued. “But you also mentioned that your team found some hair that had been broken off. What did you mean by that?”

“I mean that we did not find a root ball. Under a microscope, one expects to find a white bulb at the base. Breakage is usually the result of damage to the hair follicle by external factors.”