Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller (16 page)

“I don’t know,” Hank said. But the vigor had fled from his voice.

“Why were they taken up to Pearl Pass to be buried?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said.

“My God, do you know
anything
? Did they die here in Springhill, or up there in Pitkin County? Did Scott and Bibsy go up there with them? To help them die?”

“What do they say?”

“They don’t. They’re sitting on it. You’re
all
sitting on it. And under the circumstances, that’s a terrible mistake.” Dennis felt he was about to lose control.

“You’d better talk to Sophie,” Hank said. “That would be the proper thing to do.”

“Yes. Proper. Fuck you, and fuck this ‘proper’ business. But yes, I will.” Dennis stood. He said, “There’s one thing more. I asked Grace who the casket bearers were at the funerals here. I had to practically arm-wrestle her, but she gave me the names of the men. You were one of them, and the others work here in the quarry. They were the same men for both funerals.” He glanced at his handwriting on a slip of paper. “Mark Hapgood, Oliver Cone, John Frazee. Cone is your foreman, right? I need to talk to them for a few minutes. To all four of you together, unless it means the marble business comes to a crashing halt and the town’s whole economy is threatened.”

Ten minutes later the four men stood waiting in the glare of a halogen lamp near one of the ten-foot-long diamond-particle chain saws used to cut the larger blocks of marble. None of the men smoked. All chewed gum. Hapgood was a sandy-haired, hard-looking, bucktoothed man in his middle twenties. Frazee seemed a few years older, swarthy as were all the numerous Frazee clan, with a dark mustache and a close-cropped bullet head. Oliver Cone, muscular arms and shoulders straining his parka, was their immediate boss.

All wore dark blue or khaki-colored parkas and frayed jeans. They were the town’s younger element that Dennis hardly knew. They roared through the back range on their snowmobiles, and in season— and sometimes out of it—chugged deep into the Maroon Bells wilderness on the quarry-owned Sno-Cat to hunt elk with either rifle or metal bow. In the evenings they worked out at the gym on Main Street. Driving home from work in Aspen, if his car window was open, Dennis often heard their husky laughter over the clank of iron disks and the crash of barbells dropped to concrete. He had always found the young men a little menacing, strangely defensive and wary, as if his presence threatened them. He would have been friendlier if they gave him the opportunity, but they offered little more than a nod of the head when he ran into them at the general store or the local bank.

Sophie said, “They need time, that’s all. They’re not bad people. They don’t know you. And I suppose Oliver had his eye on my bones for a while. He may have thought I encouraged him, but that wasn’t so. It probably bothered him when you came along and swept me away. City slicker! Give them time, Dennis. …”

Whatever Hank Lovell had told them now had erased all cheer from their faces. They stood, jaws working, rocking on the heavy heels and steel toes of their boots, looking at Dennis even more suspiciously than usual. They looked at him as though he were a stranger in their world, not one of them. That was exactly how Dennis felt. He wondered if now he could ever be at home in Springhill. His life was hazed with layers of doubt like fog shutting off light from the land.

“You were the four men who carried the caskets of Susan and Henry Lovell. That was on two separate occasions, at the two funerals.”

He waited for a response. Slack-jawed, they listened, like large mountain cats backed against a wall by a fiercer brute. But the cats had claws for slashing and teeth for mangling, and there were four of them.

“I’m not going to ask you any questions about those funerals and the work you did,” Dennis said. “Not today.”

He felt them relax slightly. Frazee scuffed his boots. Mark Hapgood shifted his wad of gum, his facial muscles working against his skin. Oliver Cone looked straight at Dennis—almost through him. His eyes conveyed no expression except indifference. Dennis had seen eyes like that in the faces of Mafia killers. He was a little shocked to see them here on the face of a Springhill man. But this man, he knew, disliked him for personal reasons.

“I want you, all of you,” Dennis said, “now, in front of each other and in front of Hank Lovell, to ask me to represent you as your lawyer. I won’t charge you a fee, but if any Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies or investigators come round to ask you questions about those funerals, you can say to them—and it will be God’s truth— ‘Dennis Conway is my lawyer. He told me not to discuss anything with anybody. You better talk to him first.’ And don’t say another word—just send them round to me. Clear?”

They all nodded sluggishly. One by one, in gruff tones, each asked Dennis to represent him as his lawyer. Each time Dennis said, “All right. I will.” Like a marriage ceremony.

That evening Dennis confronted Sophie in the greenhouse, where she was pruning her bougainvillea. Brian and Lucy had finally made friends with one of the neighbor’s children and had been driven down to Carbondale for a Christmas party.

“Sophie, when you were a kid, did you ever work on one of those connecting-the-dots puzzles?”

Sophie looked up and nodded, while Dennis, in ragg sweater and baggy corduroys, a vodka tonic in hand, paced the carpet bordering the soil.

“That’s exactly what a criminal case is like,” he said. “A puzzle where you connect the dots. The district attorney connects them to make it look like a predatory animal. The defense attorney connects them to make it look like a cow chewing its cud. The reality for the DA and the defense attorney is like two overlapping circles. There’s an area of fact where they more or less agree, and an area of interpretation where they don’t agree at all. Unless the defendant pleads out, the jury paints the final picture. And aside from that”—he laughed a little harshly— “well, let me put it this way. I used to know a homicide cop in Manhattan who said, ‘Murder is so exacting. Only two people in the world know what really went down. One ain’t talkin’ and the other can’t.’ “

“Murder … ?” Sophie murmured.

“Yes. An ugly word. But the proper one for what happened at Pearl Pass.”

“I thought there was a probability that it was euthanasia,” she said.

“There is that possibility. Unfortunately, in Colorado, euthanasia is considered a form of murder.”

“That’s a foolish law.”

“In most circumstances I’d agree with you. But that’s not the point. It’s still the law. You can’t wish it away.”

“My mother didn’t do it,” Sophie said. “She couldn’t have.”

“I believe that. And your father?”

“Not my father either.”

“All right, let’s assume that’s true—”

“Assume?” Snapping shut her pruning shears, Sophie straightened up. “Is that the best you can do, Dennis?
Assume?”

“It’s the most important thing I can do,” he said. “If I assume innocence I can build a case based on a solid theory of defense. If I have blind faith in innocence I wouldn’t bother to do that, I’d simply let events take their course. And that might be dangerous—particularly because there are so many things in this case I don’t understand.”

“Such as?”

“The empty graves. The victims
were
Hank’s parents. Edward admitted that to me. He changed the dental records.”

Sophie’s face seemed to crumple a little. “Did he say why?”

“He felt that if the Pitkin County authorities knew those were the Lovells’ bodies at Pearl Pass, it would make a stronger case against Scott and Bibsy. Somehow the DA’s office would tie the two together. Whereas if they were unknown people, there was no connection.”

“It makes sense,” Sophie said.

“To Edward, yes. But to the law, Sophie, it’s conspiracy. Do you understand? Obstruction of justice. A crime, a felony. If Ray Bond found out, he’d certainly prosecute Edward.”

“But he won’t find out, will he? Edward’s not going to tell him. And you’re not either.” It was part statement, part question, part plea.

“No, I’m not.” He had already wrestled with the dilemma. Just as he had done with the men at the quarry, he had said to Edward, “Consider me your attorney. What you tell me—what you
told
me—falls under attorney-client privilege. I can’t reveal it without your permission.”

He walked with Sophie into the living room, where he tried to speak calmly. “That solves the problem for Edward, but not for me. If your parents are truly innocent, Sophie, why would Edward believe he had to cover for them like that? And why would Grace Pendergast refuse to help me by discussing the Lovells’ medical history? It’s as if this whole damned town is involved in some sort of conspiracy”

“To do what?”

“Sophie, are you being deliberately naive? To cover up the truth about a double murder!”

“Why would they do such a thing?”

“To protect their own. That’s the only reason I can think of.”

Sophie stood close and laid her cheek against his neck. She was warm, almost flushed. She spoke quietly but with passion.

“They didn’t do it, Dennis. I swear to you. Help them. All these other things that are happening—these inconsistencies—don’t matter. They’re innocent. I know it. Please help them. Do whatever it takes.”

“You know I will,” Dennis said uncomfortably.

“Swear it to me.”

He frowned. “Do I have to do that? Don’t you believe me?”

“Where are my parents now?” Sophie asked. “I called them. There was no answer.”

“I called too.” Troubled, Dennis turned away. “I had to see Edward and Grace and the people up at the quarry, including your cousin Oliver—I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, so I let your parents go down to Aspen with that woman deputy, for fingerprinting. I asked Mickey Karp to meet them at the courthouse. I figured until then your father knew what to say and what not to say.” He shook his head. “But I shouldn’t have let Bibsy go without me. She’s my client. I should have gone with her. And I don’t know where they are now.”

Chapter 14
Confession

SHERIFF JOSH GAMBLE jammed his bulk into the leather client’s chair in front of Dennis’s desk at Karp & Ballard. Behind him stood Deputy District Attorney Ray Bond, one thumb hooked into his carved Mexican belt and the other tightly holding his cowhide briefcase. His eyes were hard and unfriendly.

The sheriff looked displeased. “What the hell’s going on, Dennis?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Couple of my deputies been up to see a few of your clients at the Springhill Marble Company. Went there to ask some questions about a pair of empty caskets.”

“And my clients told you to come talk to me. Nothing wrong with that.”

From behind the sheriff, Ray Bond said, “We’re here to find out what that’s all about.”

“Let me do this, Ray,” the sheriff said, without turning his head. “Mind telling me, Dennis, what you know about those empty caskets?”

“I don’t know a damn thing.”

“Those four guys who work at the quarry put those caskets into the graves, didn’t they?”

“So I’m told.”

“Then they knew goddam well they were empty.”

“Hard to say.”

“You’re telling me they hefted those caskets and didn’t realize there was something missing from each one of them?”

“I’m not telling you that,” Dennis said carefully. “I’m not telling you anything at all.”

The sheriff leaned forward. “Don’t fuck with me.”

“I’m not,” Dennis said. “I’m protecting my clients. They haven’t committed any crime and they haven’t told you any lies. All they’ve done is ask you to talk to their lawyer, which you know is their legal right, and you’re doing it. And I have no answer to your question because your question doesn’t deal with the possible commission of a crime—it deals with a matter of judgment that’s more proper to a weight guesser at a county fair. You want to charge those men with something, Josh? “

“I’ve been good to you on this case,” the sheriff said. “I’ve shared discovery right down the line.”

“And I appreciate that,” Dennis said. “You also shared with me your opinion that I might be a damned fool to reciprocate.”

“Shit,” Josh said. He nodded to Ray Bond, who drew a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and handed them to Dennis.

“Two copies,” Bond said. “Read either one of them.”

“Now?” Dennis asked.

“You might want to be alone,” the sheriff said. “Come to think of it, I don’t know if I want to be around to watch you bleed. Let’s mount up and ride, Ray.”

The sheriff and the deputy district attorney left. Dennis picked up the stapled sheets of papers and settled back into his chair to read.

SUPPLEMENTARY INVESTIGATION REPORT

This report is predicated upon the continuing investigation into the homicide on or about August 15, 1994, of Jane Doe and John Doe, whose remains were discovered on November 10, 1994, approximately three miles southwest of Pearl Pass at an altitude of 12,500 feet, in Pitkin County, Colorado.

Queenie Anne O’Hare, deputy sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, states:

At or about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, November 30, 1994, in Pitkin County vehicle #7,1 left from the town of Springhill in Gunnison County to the city of Aspen in Pitkin County, with Mr. Scott G. Henderson and Mrs. Beatrice R. Henderson as passengers in said vehicle. My purpose was to conduct Mr. and Mrs. Henderson to be fingerprinted in the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office.

I had been informed by Beatrice Henderson that she had retained the legal counsel of Dennis Conway, Esq., a member of the Colorado bar, but Mr. Conway had not chosen to accompany us in the county vehicle. I had also been informed by Scott Henderson that he was a member of the Colorado bar and did not require legal counsel other than his own.

Neither Mr. or Mrs. Henderson was under arrest, or in custody, or had been told that they were under suspicion of having committed a felony crime. The ensuing conversation, which took place in county vehicle #7, was therefore not in the form of a custodial interrogation.

The conversation was not mechanically recorded. I made handwritten notes of the conversation as soon as we reached the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, at or about 11:30 a.m. My memory was therefore fresh.