Cold Case (27 page)

Frank shook his head. “Depends on the judge,” he said. “If McNulty claims it has the moral imperative of a deathbed statement, it could stand. You can argue the point, but it's a coin toss as to the outcome.”

“A deathbed statement is valid only if the person is aware of imminent death,” she said. “Presumably Robert had no idea that he would be dead in the next couple of hours.”

“Again, it depends on the judge,” Frank said soberly. “Keep in mind that judges can be as firm in their faith as anyone else, and can feel as threatened by anyone who challenges that faith.”

“If he comes down on the wrong side, that will be grounds for an appeal.”

“You don't want to go there,” Frank said. “That's anticipating a guilty verdict, and you can't accept that prematurely. It colors everything you think and do once you accept that. Give it more time. We may still come up with something to substantiate the possibility that Robert followed Jill home that night.”

“It isn't enough to suggest it, is it?” Barbara asked.

“It's loose. But as you said, all you have to do is establish a reasonable doubt.” He eyed her closely. “You didn't sleep much last night, did you? Put all this aside for now, get a good night's sleep and do something relaxing tomorrow. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, at least for a short time. On Monday I'd like to come over to your office and read through discovery and that police file, if you don't object.”

“God, no! Maybe you'll find things I missed and that would be a blessing.”

“I don't expect that,” he said. “But sometimes it's good to get a feel for the folks making statements through their words. Now, Aaronson and Chloe are little more than names, and I haven't decided what I think of Elders. Just the nosy neighbor Amy thinks is a creep, or the sorry object Lucy sees that makes her preface most of her comments about him by calling him ‘poor Henry.' Or a vindictive son of a bitch. I think he spies on Lucy a lot of the time. Courting her? Just nosy? What?”

“A pitiful, nosy, old vindictive creep,” Barbara said. “All of the above. You know the possibility that no one has really addressed is that someone could have been waiting for Jill to come home that night. Someone we know nothing about and, at this late date, won't be able to find in any event. Someone with gloves, prepared to do murder. And he, if he is out there, got a free pass for it. That could have been what the police were inclined to believe at the time, but it got them nowhere. They interviewed neighbors, other residents of the apartment building, and so on, and found nothing. After so many years, I'd get even less.”

T
o Barbara's surprise Darren had Sunday planned. He announced it while they were having breakfast.

“I told David we'd be there around one-thirty,” he said. “The boys will take off on a hike of their own, and after I have ten or fifteen minutes with David, we'll take a more leisurely stroll in the woods, or hike a mountain, whichever seems more appealing.”

She looked at her briefcase involuntarily, and he laughed in his low-key way, took her hand, and said, “That's why. If you stay home, within an hour you'll be at work, and you need a day off as much I do.”

She smiled ruefully. “I know. It's just—”

“Forget it,” he said. “Also, David asked Amy to come along today. Not much I could do about that. So she'll come over here at twelve-thirty. For today, you let your body take over, no thinking, no planning, no scheming, just physical activity. That's the therapist talking.”

She laughed this time, put her hand to her temple and made a key-turning motion. “Gotcha,” she said.

It was a perfect day, Barbara thought. The boys had orders to return by four-thirty, and the others had followed Alex up a steep new trail he had cleared just enough to be navigated to a high-level plateau where ferns and huckleberries competed for sun and space. The head-high ferns stirred sinuously in a breeze almost too faint to be felt. David and Amy had lagged behind the others going up and again descending, apparently talking constantly. Her cheeks were high pink, not altogether from the sun and heat, and her curly hair was clinging damply to her moist forehead. She looked happy and beautiful.

Barbara was content to let the conversation ebb and flow around her. She was turned off, she reminded herself lazily. She was not really aware of what had started the exchange concerning who was good at the job.

“We grant intelligence and training or education,” David said. “Persistence is high on the list of necessary qualities, but flexibility tops it. I knew a smithy back in Gresham who said every horse is different, every foot different. He had to be ready to change his approach each and every time. I remember how that surprised me. I'd thought a horse is a horse is a horse.”

“There are people with slightly different sized feet,” Darren said. “Poor souls sometimes go through life with one shoe too tight or too loose.”

Barbara felt a mild shock, as if coming awake from near sleep. Synchronicity, she thought, to have shoes that didn't fit come up again, in an altogether different context.

“They haven't found the right shoe salesman,” David said. “But it applies up and down the line. Every occupation and profession requires flexibility or the ability to adapt, however you phrase it. The best surgeons, the best engineers, politicians, bricklayers, name it, they share that quality.”

Amy laughed. “I had to prove my geometry problem solutions again and again on the blackboard because I used a different route, a different set of theorems to get there than the teacher expected. She pursed her lips a lot.”

“David,” Barbara asked, “how was Elders as a teacher?”

“Steel rod,” he said. “He didn't know how to bend or adapt to different students and their different approaches and needs.”

She suspected that Elders and David had clashed more than usually happened with students and teachers. One couldn't bend and the other was too independent to accept without proof any conventional wisdom.

“I heard a talk-show guest say that the perfect school system would mean that no matter where in the country you were, if you walked in on a fourth-grade math class at any given hour, they would all be on the same page, doing the same problems,” Alex said. “Idiot.”

The conversation drifted on to the new rules in place for schools, and Barbara turned off again until Shelley said, “I wish it would rain.” She was sniffing, looking toward the southwest. The wind had shifted, not bringing in the smell of marine air as it usually did, but the smell of woods aflame to the south and west. Sooner or later everyone who lived near woods learned to dread that smell.

“After two good rains,” Alex said to Amy, “we'll go collect chanterelles. I know where they are.”

Soon after that, the boys got back from their hike with pockets full of agates and it was time to leave. On the way back to town Barbara thought how good the day had been. Not a word about the coming trial, the trouble David was in. His brief session with Darren was left unremarked, and the coolness that had arisen the last time she had seen him was not in evidence. He had held the blue ball throughout the conversation on the patio, and although it had remained silent, it had not been thrown.

In the backseat the boys showed Amy their find, and she proved to be a good audience, and was properly impressed. They dropped off Todd's friend before going on to the house. There, Amy thanked Barbara profusely for allowing another visit. Almost shyly, she said, “We want to meet somewhere for lunch now and then. I said only if you agreed. After all this time I'm sure no one's paying any attention to me, where I go, or anything else, but if you think I'd put him in danger, that's that.”

Barbara glanced at Darren, who nodded. “I don't think you're being followed, either,” she said. “If you meet at a café or someplace, it probably is fine.”

“That's what we'd like to do,” Amy said. “Thanks. Just now and then, not every day.”

After she left, Darren said, “He was as tense and tight as a strung violin when we got there. He's too intelligent not to know the danger he faces, and he feels helpless. For a lot of people, that's the worst possible state to be in. Anyway, your domain, not mine. Mine is his physical recovery, and it will go much better if he can relax. After the hike, and having a friend show up, he was more relaxed.”

“The humanizing effect of having a woman around,” Barbara said drily. “Every guy needs a gal.”

“You better believe it,” Darren said, grinning. “Let's go to your dad's house. He probably has beer and cheese, and I'm starved and thirsty.”

On Monday after Frank settled down to start reading the thick files of discovery and the police reports, Barbara called the McCrutchen house. Amy answered the phone.

“I'd like to speak to your mother,” Barbara said.

Amy asked her to hold for a minute, and when she came back, she said, “Barbara, we were going to call you this morning. Mother has something to tell you.”

“We'll come over. When's a good time?”

“Now? As good a time as any.”

“Half an hour,” Barbara said. She disconnected and told Frank. “Whatever it is Lucy McCrutchen has been holding back might be ready to toss into the pot. Half an hour, at the house. I said
we.
Okay?”

More than okay, Frank thought, closing the file. About time was more like it.

Amy met them at the door and whatever happiness had colored her cheeks the day before was gone, replaced by a tightness, a look of worry and anxiety. She led them to the living room, where Lucy was already seated, with an equally strained expression.

“Please,” she said, “make yourselves comfortable. Would you like coffee?” Coffee service and cups were on the low table.

“Thanks, but no,” Barbara said, sitting in a damask-covered chair opposite Lucy. Frank sat down and leaned forward slightly, a listening attitude. “Amy said you have something to tell us,” Barbara said.

“Yes.” Lucy nodded. Then, in a calm, overly controlled manner, she told them about Henry's visit on Friday. She did not repeat his warning concerning defense attorneys. “It was a lie,” she said. “A fabrication. I know that Henry repeated that story to the police. Why wouldn't he? David's nothing to him and he was very fond of Robert and trusted him. I realized I had to tell what I knew was the truth about it. I had convinced myself that since no one but Amy, David and I knew about it, there was no reason to refer to it. None of us would have volunteered anything about it. I was wrong.

“That night, the night of the party, after Henry left, I decided that since the dance music had stopped, the party should have been over. I wanted the few who lingered to leave, I have to admit. I left the living room, turned off the dining-room lights and put the kitchen lights on dim, and went out to the deck to sit and wait for the rest of them to leave. I couldn't go to bed until they left, of course. The house was hot and stuffy, and the air felt good.” Her voice was even, almost without inflection. She kept gazing at a point in the corner of the room as she spoke.

“I saw what happened on the deck that night. I heard what Robert said, what Jill said. David didn't attack Robert. He warded off a punch and Robert lost his balance and fell. That was the extent of an attack. Jill ran back inside and after Robert got back on the deck, David went in. I didn't see Amy and had no idea she was out there. I waited for a time and went in, and by then everyone had left except for one boy sleeping on the sofa.”

Finally she looked at Barbara, then at Frank, and her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “I'm sorry I never said anything about it until now. I should have told, but—I should have told. Then the news accounts seemed to indicate that a transient had done it and I thought it was over.” She looked away, back at the corner of the room. “I thought that no one would ever mention that incident. I couldn't believe Robert would bring up anything that reflected so poorly on him, and David was too decent to talk about it. I convinced myself that it had nothing to do with Jill's death.”

Barbara regarded her, trying to control her anger. “How far away from the group were you? Why didn't any of them see you?”

“It would be easier to show you than try to tell you,” Amy said. She got to her feet, and the others also stood, then followed her out to the deck.

“That night the grill was here,” Amy said, pointing to a spot near the kitchen door. “We had a picnic table here, within easy reach, for the condiments, buns, things like that. Over here—” she moved past the places she was indicating, stopped “—one of the outdoor tables and chairs, pretty close to the house. And several more feet, and closer to the lawn, the other table and chairs. Mother was there, at the table farthest from the door. With the lights so dim, and the rest of the house dark, the dining room, bedroom, then the apartment all dark, she was deep in shadows. The disco lights in the family room were off and just one lamp at the far end, near the piano, was still on.”

Barbara eyed the distance. “From that far away you could hear them clearly?”

Lucy nodded. “Yes. It was very quiet out here, and Robert was loud, then Jill raised her voice, too. I could hear them.”

Her voice was losing that calm control, as if being out on the deck, remembering that scene, was cracking the protective shell she had been hiding behind.

“Maybe we could have some of that coffee you offered,” Frank said. “It's getting cooler day by day, isn't it? Sweater weather already.”

The sun was quite warm, but Lucy looked chilled and walked ahead back into the house and to the living room. She busied herself with the coffee, and by the time she passed cups around, she was under complete control again.

“Will you require a signed statement?” she asked Barbara.

“Yes. It can wait. I have a question, one that I called about, in fact. Do you know where various people parked that night? You, your husband, Robert, Jill, anyone else you can think of.”

“Some,” Lucy said. “Mac parked out on the street. In case of an emergency and he had to leave during the night, he had to have access to his car, of course. I parked in the garage and Robert did, too.” She stopped, and her hands were shaking as she said, in a hushed voice, “Robert parked in the garage!” She looked at Amy and color flushed her face. “He couldn't have gotten his car out! Not from in the garage.”

With that tremulous voice, and her transparent relief, she signaled exactly what she had been going through, Frank realized. She had believed, or feared, that her son had gone after Jill, that he had killed her.

Lucy shook herself and in a more lively voice than she had yet used, she said, “Cars lined the driveway from the street all the way around, and people had to park out at the curb, of course. I imagine that Jill had to park down the street by the curb, since so many had already arrived before she got here.”

Barbara asked her to repeat what she had heard that night, and either she was parroting what Amy had said, or she had heard the same words.

“How did you interpret what Jill was saying?” Barbara asked.

“I thought it meant she was a lesbian, that men disgusted her. Barbara, I have to say that I don't believe that girl was really a prostitute. Not in the sense people generally mean. She was ill and desperate, facing a possible eviction, and she did what she had to do to save herself. I think the disgust she expressed was directed inwardly as much as toward men.”

“Had you met her earlier, before she became ill?”

“Yes. She was here several times early in the school term, a lively, vivacious young woman who appeared happy. She was absent for a number of weeks, and when she came back, she was almost skeletal, pale, desperate. She was slender to begin with, and probably had lost ten or fifteen pounds and had become ethereal looking. The night of the party, as I told you, she seemed almost manic, no doubt with relief that the school year was over, she had her grades and was recovering her health.”