Clear and Convincing Proof (12 page)

Barbara introduced herself and Shelley, and Erica said, “Let's go to the kitchen. I was just putting on the kettle to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?”

“That would be nice,” Barbara said. Erica Castle was about her height and very handsome. Her hair was short and light brown with golden highlights, salon styled. Dressed in a simple black skirt and a
heavy blue sweater, a single gold chain necklace, little makeup, she looked like an idealized elementary school teacher.

The house appeared to be almost spartan, as bare as her own apartment, Barbara thought, but scrupulously clean and neat. They walked through a hallway, past a staircase closed off with a door at the bottom and an open door to the living room on the left. Apparently the living room had only two easy chairs, a small rug before one of them, a television, an end table and lamp or two and a filled bookcase. The hall floor was bare polished wood.

“You might want to keep your coats on,” Erica said as she led the way to the kitchen. “I just got home a few minutes ago and turned up the heat. It doesn't take long to warm up, but it's cool right now.” A kitten bounded out to meet them, then raised its tail that puffed out like a bottle brush when it saw strangers. “That's Nappy,” Erica said. “Todd's kitten. He hangs out down here when Todd's not around. You know about Todd?”

“Darren Halvord's son? Yes. Hi, Nappy.” Barbara held out her hand for the kitten to sniff. It obliged, then raced away.

The kitchen was roomy with space for a table and three chairs, and abundant countertops. Erica picked up a coat from a chair near the back door, and her purse from the table. “Excuse me,” she said. “I'll get rid of this stuff. Come on, Nappy. You, too.” The kitten followed her.

Barbara walked to the back door and looked out
at a small porch, a flagstone terrace, a ragged lawn and beyond to a garage. On the porch was a miniature pagoda made of bamboo with a tiny tree in it.

Erica returned without the kitten. “Please have a seat. The kettle won't take a minute.” She turned up a burner.

“You know who I am?” Barbara asked.

“Of course. Everyone at the clinic knows who you are and probably why you're around.” She smiled. “I also suspect you've come to verify that I could see Darren leave that morning. Well, as you can see—” she waved toward the garage “—there's a door at the side of the garage, and that's how he gets his bike in and out, not by the overhead door at the rear. I saw him wheel it out and close the door, then get on and leave. At twenty minutes before eight.”

“Good enough,” Barbara said. “You can be sure about the time?”

“Absolutely. I had a book to deliver to a boy at the clinic, and I had thought Darren could take it as he went, but I hadn't finished dressing yet. I didn't have my shoes on, and he was already getting his bike out, so I missed him. I was afraid I'd be late, and I was paying attention to the time. Twenty minutes before eight. I left a few minutes after that.”

The kettle began to whistle and she poured the boiling water into a teapot and brought it to the table, went back to a cabinet for cups, then sat down. “We'll give it a couple of minutes,” she said. “It amazes me to see so many people riding bikes all
winter. Believe me, you don't do that in Cleveland, where I come from. And Darren has a perfectly good truck in the garage. He says it would be insane to get it out to drive three and a half blocks to work.”

She poured tea and Barbara sipped hers, then said, “I imagine that there are few secrets at the clinic. You probably have a more objective viewpoint than the others I've been talking to. What's it like working there? What did the others think of David McIvey? Would you mind giving your thoughts about all that? I'm trying to fill in background.”

Erica hesitated, then said, “I've only been going over for a few months, and then only in the late afternoon to read to the patients. But, even so, I hear talk. As far as I could tell everyone disliked David McIvey. I think they hated him for being cruel to Annie. He was, you know. A real tyrant with her…. But it was more than just that. He was autocratic, a my-way-or-the-highway sort of personality, from what I heard. And they were all afraid that he was going to take over, turn it into a surgical facility. Most people would have been out if that had happened. I never met him, so I had no direct cause to like or dislike him, but I heard that he was out to get Darren, and that made people furious. They all love Darren, you see.”

Barbara recalled what Annie had said, that everyone fell in love with Darren. “Why is that?” she asked. “What makes him so special?”

“If you ever saw him with a patient, or heard him talking to one, you'd understand,” Erica said. A flush
rose on her cheeks and she jumped up. “I'll put on more water.”

When she hurried to the sink, Barbara and Shelley exchanged glances. Shelley nodded almost imperceptibly, as if to agree:
everyone
loved Darren.

When Erica took her seat again, Barbara said, “What about the patient who saw a demon or something? What do they say about her?”

“Oh, Mrs. Johnson. She's a dingbat. She likes to talk about her near-death experience and the various ghosts she's seen. She was in a car wreck and hurt her back pretty badly, I guess. She was there in the hospital for weeks, and still goes back to the clinic several times a weeks for therapy. No one pays much attention to what she says, of course.”

A few minutes later Barbara asked, “Are the people at the clinic talking much about the murder?”

“Not as much as earlier, but sure. Now it's pretty much agreed that Darren is in the clear. If McIvey was killed a minute or two after seven-thirty, that lets Darren out of the running as a suspect, unless you can imagine David McIvey standing out in the rain waiting for him. From what they say about him, he waited for no one. Ever. Everyone's pretty relieved about that.”

She looked at her cup, then at Barbara with a swift glance, then back at her cup. “I may be talking out of turn if Annie is your client,” she said. “But you probably should know that they all seem to think she did it, and that he deserved it. They hope she gets away with it.”

“Is that what you think?”

Erica shrugged. “I hardly know Annie, and I didn't know her the way others describe her, happy and laughing a lot, full of fun. I've never seen that side of her. As I said, I never even met David McIvey. I saw him around the clinic a time or two, and I must say he was extremely good-looking, movie-star handsome. But I have no idea why they got together or stayed together. He was a lot older than she. They say he got a servant out of the marriage, but what she got is a mystery. It seems that she could have walked away if it was a rotten marriage unless she thought it would pay off sooner or later, or else she is masochistic.”

Barbara nodded. “Fair enough. Is there talk about Annie and Darren?”

“No.” Erica looked at her watch. “I have to go in a few minutes. I didn't realize how late it was getting.”

Barbara and Shelley stood up. “Of course,” Barbara said. “Sorry to keep you so long. And you probably had a little rest in mind when you got home. Thanks for the tea and chat.”

They walked back through the house, then, outside, Barbara turned at the front walk to go to the side of the house and look at the stairs going up to the apartment. They started six feet or a little more back from the porch.

“Okay,” she said a minute later in the car. “Back to the office. What do you think? Would she lie for him?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Right. Shit.” She turned on the ignition.

“It seems to me that everyone would lie for Darren,” Shelley said. “I think we're right back where we started.” Then she said, “Shit.”

Barbara looked at her in surprise. Shelley never used language like that. She glanced at the yard with a six-foot high board fence and shrubs screening it from the neighbors. “More Bailey work,” she said. “Ask around the neighborhood if anyone saw Darren leave that morning. Not that anyone would remember now, but give it a try.” She started to drive and said, almost as an afterthought, “And ask if any of the neighbors think there's anything going on with Darren and Erica Castle.” Shelley made a note.

“I
'm stymied,” Barbara said in her office the next morning. “And that's what I told them yesterday at the meeting. We have to wait for the cops to make their move.”

Bailey was there awaiting marching orders for the day; Frank was there, as well as Shelley. Council of war, Barbara thought, but they didn't know who the enemy was, or where, or how to smoke anyone out.

“Seems to me that you might as well relax until there's an arrest,” Frank said.

“I know. And if it weren't for those damn shares, and Dr. Kelso pushing, I'd sit back and just wait to see what next. But he's anxious, and when people like him get anxious, they sometimes behave in very foolish ways. I'm afraid that he'll push Sid Blanken
ship to go after probate for a decision, and that might provoke the district attorney to go ahead with an arrest. I'd hate to see Annie stuck in a cell for the next six months or longer.”

“Be nice to know why they turned their sights on her so fast,” Frank said. “I could make a better case for either of the Boardmans. Greg Boardman walked out with him and shot him, went back home and made coffee. Plenty of time to hide a gun. Or Naomi followed him out and same thing. Then she got the car out to account for being wet. Again, plenty of time to hide a gun. Or a transient looking for a quick buck. Why Annie?”

“You could go ask,” Barbara said. “Speaking of making cases, how about Kelso? Who had more cause? His sacred clinic's at risk. He could have shot McIvey, and Boardman moved him. You can play that game with them all, as far as that goes.”

Frank snorted.

“Okay, Bailey,” Barbara said then. “That's it. See if anyone in the neighborhood saw Darren leave that morning. I'd like to have someone other than Erica Castle testify about the time. Poke around in her past. The police will be trying to find a way to discredit her statement. See if there's anything there for them to find. And after that—nada.” She frowned. “Damn, it's that close range that's a stinker. Who would McIvey have been willing to share umbrella space with? Annie for sure, both Boardmans, probably. Kelso. A stranger? No way, from what I've heard about him. Darren? Never.”

“Alex came up with an idea,” Shelley said when Barbara leaned back in her chair. “If that patient saw someone, he thinks he knows how to find out what she saw. That could help, maybe.”

This time Bailey snorted. “She's a nutcase,” he said. “By now she might think she saw a flock of little devils with tridents.”

“Tell,” Barbara said to Shelley, ignoring Bailey.

“Last night at dinner we were talking about perception,” Shelley said, blushing. She blushed a lot those days, especially when she started talking about Alex, about living with him, being with him. “He was saying how we try to make indistinct objects recognizable. You know, you see something from a distance and you think it's a tree, or a rock, or whatever, but when you get closer you see that it's really an elephant. But since you weren't expecting to see an elephant, you go through familiar things that it might be. If she saw something that she couldn't make out clearly, she might have called it something that made sense to her.”

“Like a demon,” Bailey said, deadpan.

“For her that might make sense,” Shelley said earnestly.

“Okay. But then what?” Barbara asked.

“Well, Alex has this great drawing program that lets you manipulate objects every way imaginable. He said that if you show someone just the most basic shape that could be like what they saw, then you can manipulate it, change it, look at it from any angle, above or below, and gradually you can get pretty
close to what they actually saw.” She drew in a breath. “If you start with a dwarf dressed in black, for instance, and begin to manipulate it, you might end up with a close approximation of what was there.”

“Could you do that?” Barbara asked.

“No, but Alex can.”

“Would he be willing to do it?”

“He'd do anything for you, Barbara,” Shelley said.

Barbara shook her head. Not for her, for Shelley. He would move the moon for Shelley. Grotesquely disfigured by a congenital birth defect, Alex Feldman had shunned the public, avoided people whenever possible and, until Shelley came along, had lived a hermitlike existence. This would be an ordeal for him, she knew. Was it even fair to ask him for help? When strangers first saw Alex, they drew back in revulsion or averted their eyes. His face was perfectly formed on one side, and hideous on the other, with a misplaced eye, too far to the side and too low, a little nose, lips dwindling to nothing and no chin. There were no muscles on that side of his face; it was frozen in a grimace.

“Barbara,” Shelley said, “Alex owes you a lot, you know. Six months ago he was facing the death penalty, and now…He knows there's never going to be a way to repay you. Let him do something to start.”

 

At three o'clock Barbara rang the bell at a duplex on South Seventeenth Avenue. Alex and Shelley
were with her on the small porch. Dorothy Johnson promptly opened the door.

“Come in, come in,” she said moving aside.

“Barbara Holloway, my associate Shelley McGinnis and our computer artist Alex Feldman,” Barbara said entering. “Thanks for letting us invade you like this.”

“Not at all, my pleasure,” Mrs. Johnson said, then she stopped moving as she looked at Alex. With what appeared to be an involuntary motion, she reached out and put her hand on his arm. He held perfectly still. “You poor boy!” She closed her eyes, but continued to rest her hand on his arm for a moment. “You have a very powerful guardian angel, thank God. And are bathed in God's gift of love,” she said softly, then opened her eyes and examined Shelley for a moment. She smiled and nodded. “We'll go to the dining room. I thought we might use the table there.”

She was fifty-two years old, Barbara had learned, a widow for seven years. She worked in the financial affairs office at the university, and was now on sick leave. Her hair was dark brown streaked with gray, and she was a few pounds overweight. She leaned heavily on a crutch as she led the way through an L-shaped living room to a dining area.

The living room was bright and colorful: a blue sofa, yellow-and-red cushions, a flowered rug, bookshelves with a pair of matching frog bookends, their legs dangling over the edge. In the dining area a collapsible wheelchair was set against the wall, and a
china cabinet was overfilled with figurines: fairies, elves, a giant or two, china angels, witches on brooms, porcelain birds, a cloisonné giraffe, a parade of frogs in diminishing sizes.

“Darren said I should use the chair when I get tired,” Dorothy said. “I shouldn't punish myself and deny myself the relief of wheels. He said that you do more harm than good if you drive yourself to exhaustion, but every day I stay on my feet a little longer. Or at least I try to.” She sank down into one of the dining chairs with a sigh of relief. “Will the table do for your computer?” she asked Alex.

“Perfect,” he said, and proceeded to get the laptop set up. He had brought a surge protector with four outlets and a heavy extension cord, prepared for whatever was needed. It took him only a minute or two to get ready.

He and Dorothy sat side by side at the table. Barbara sat opposite them.

“Before you start, would you mind telling us what you did that morning, what you saw? Various people have reported different versions. I'd like to hear it from you.”

“Of course,” she said. “I know how that goes. I woke up a little after seven and debated if I should get up or wait for one of the nurses to come and help me, and decided to do it myself. I was still in pretty bad shape, you see, but I detest meals in bed, and they were all so busy in the morning, the night nurses leaving, day nurses coming in. It was a struggle to get out of bed, get my robe on and then maneuver
myself into the wheelchair. But I did it and went to the bathroom. Then I had to go back to the bed to find the remote for the television, go around the bed to the other side where I could watch the news and reach the call button for the nurse to bring some coffee. Breakfast is at eight, but you can get coffee as soon as you want it, and I wanted it. I turned on the television when the commercials were starting at seven-thirty, and before I got the channel I wanted, I heard what I thought was a shot. I wheeled myself closer to the window where I could look out and that's when I saw it.”

“You thought the noise was a shot? What made you think that?” Barbara asked.

“Before Ralph died—he was my husband, you know,” Dorthy said, “we lived up near Junction City, on five acres, with a small orchard, big gardens and a nice pond that Ralph stocked with fish and lilies. It was so pretty, and we could even swim in it. Anyway, geese started coming in and messing up the pond something awful every fall and winter, and Ralph used to go out with a gun and shoot to scare them away. Not at them, but just shoot at the sky. Didn't do any good, and he gave it up after a while. You know the Canada geese winter over in the ponds and fields up that way? Messiest creatures on God's earth. But I got to know how a gunshot sounds when you're inside and it's not far away outside. And that's what I thought that morning—Dear God, Ralph is shooting to drive away the geese. You know about the little pond at the clinic garden? With koi? That was
my first thought, that the geese were after the koi and Ralph was trying to drive them away.”

That explained that, Barbara thought, but she didn't know if she should be relieved or not at the idea of Dorothy's dead husband out there shooting. “Well, let the show begin,” she said. “I want to watch.”

She and Shelley both moved to stand behind Alex and Dorothy, where they could see the monitor.

“One of the nurses said you saw a dwarf in a black shiny cape,” Barbara said.

“I never said that. I said it was a dwarf in a black shiny carapace. That's what I thought at first, because of the short legs and the long torso.”

“I thought that might be our starting place,” Alex said. “A dwarf in a black cape.” He loaded the image onto the screen.

“It wasn't anything like that,” Dorothy said. She sounded disappointed.

“Wait a second. We have to shift the viewpoint, over by about five feet and then up about fifteen or sixteen feet.” The figure began to change as the viewpoint changed. Dorothy leaned in closer.

“The head isn't right. All black and bigger than that. No face. I couldn't see a face. It was black all over—legs, head, feet, everything.”

He made changes, and she said, “The carapace shouldn't flare out. It sort of curves inward a little, like a turtle shell or something.”

Then: “The legs are too long. There. Stop there.”

The figure was becoming less and less human
with each change. It was becoming buglike, Barbara thought with a shudder, recalling what Shelley had said earlier: A giant cockroach shot him. A cockroach with stubby legs.

“Remember,” Dorothy said, “it was raining hard, and it was all wet and shiny, water running down it. It walked funny. I couldn't make out what it was doing, then I realized it was walking backward.”

It got worse and worse, Barbara thought. This was one witness who never would be asked to testify.

“Then I think it sensed that someone was looking at it, and it turned around and took a couple of steps and I couldn't see it any more. That's how they do. They don't like to be seen. The nurse brought in coffee and asked what I was looking at and I told her a dwarf in a shiny black carapace. She laughed.”

“Later you told someone else that it was a demon,” Barbara said. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I kept thinking about it, and I realized it had to be a demon when I remembered that it had a tail. Like a short rat tail.”

“Where?” Alex asked. He turned the figure around and waited.

“At the bottom of the carapace. Just a little black tail.”

He added a short tail and Dorothy leaned back in her chair studying the image on the monitor. “I guess that's as good as you can get it,” she said. “It's like drawing something you've never seen, going by someone else's description.”

“What would you change?” Alex asked.

“I don't know. It just isn't quite right, but I don't know why. Too neat maybe. No rain. I don't know.”

“I can make it rain,” Alex said. He did.

“Oh, my!” Dorothy said. “You and God. But that's better, I guess. I only saw it for a few seconds, and I didn't know what I was looking at, what to look for. I don't know what I would change. That's pretty close, I think.”

They all regarded the image on the monitor in silence. Then Dorothy said, “But who's going to believe me? I've seen the others all my life, you see, and no one ever believed me before. My father thought I was a nut, and my mother said just don't talk about it and it will be all right. I saw a doctor a few times, a psychiatrist, when I was thirteen or fourteen, and he decided I was a schizo, and my mother called him an ass and didn't take me back again. So I just didn't talk about it for the most part. I told Ralph before we got married, sort of as a warning, I guess, and he agreed with my mother. As long as I didn't talk about it, and I didn't feel threatened or have nightmares, anything like that, so what?”