Cold Case (29 page)

David turned away. “You want too much,” he said.

“We want to save your life,” Frank said.

“I'll get some coffee,” Barbara said. Shelley hurried out after her when she left the office. Neither spoke until Barbara asked Patsy if coffee was made.

“Coming right up,” Patsy said. “I thought it was about time.” She looked closely at Barbara, then at Shelley, and a worried expression crossed her face.

When she brought in coffee, she had added a plate of cookies. And where she had them stashed away God alone knew, Frank thought, thanking her.

After the break Frank assumed his prosecutor's role. He asked the same kinds of questions he knew McNulty would ask, insinuating, insulting, disbelieving questions. “When you played with Jill Storey, did you play doctor? Did you play house? Did you skinny-dip?”

David's annoyance and impatience grew more and more evident. He looked at his watch often, shifted in his chair, snapped answers.

After an hour Frank stopped. “That's enough,” he said. “Just a taste of what to expect.”

“Am I excused?” David was dripping sarcasm with the words.

“Not yet,” Frank said. He stood, crossed the office and opened the bar concealed behind a book case, brought out a bottle and glasses, then resumed his chair. He took his time uncorking the bottle, pouring. To his surprise Shelley accepted a glass of wine, something he had never seen her do except with meals. David shook his head.

“Did you have questions about what we've just done?” Frank asked after he and Barbara both had a glass of wine.

“No. This whole thing is a crock. No point in questioning it. The verdict is already in.”

“Not yet,” Frank said equably. “If you take that attitude to the witness stand, however, it won't take long to reach that verdict. You have four weeks to think about it. Meanwhile, something else we have to bring up is a plea bargain.”

“Next page,” David said sharply. “You know I won't go that route.”

“Nevertheless, it's our duty to inform you of your rights,” Frank said. He held up his wineglass to the light. “This is very nice. Shiraz. Are you sure you don't want a little?”

Abruptly David laughed, this time with apparent amusement. “I've met my match, Mr. Holloway. You'd make a dandy prosecutor, and I suspect you're just as good a defense attorney.”

Frank nodded toward Barbara. “She's better. Anyway, about a plea bargain. It's on the table right up until the trial begins. If remorse is expressed with sufficient humility, the sentence is reduced. That takes care of that particular duty.” He eyed David shrewdly. “I wonder if you know the most important sentence in your book. Not that McNulty will ask that particular question. I'm just curious.”

“Tell me,” David said.

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. A good thought, good sentence. One I believe you subscribe to wholeheartedly.”

David nodded. “Yes. I do.” He motioned toward the bottle of wine. “Maybe I'll have just a little.”

“Help yourself,” Frank said. He turned to Shelley and asked about the forest fires in the Coast Range.

“Too close for comfort,” she said. “I don't want to be able to smell smoke from them, but we do. Alex ordered a pump for the swimming pool and what looks like an industrial hose to keep the house soaked down if the fires come over the top of the hill. If the weather forecast is reliable, there will be no rain for several more weeks. That's a long time for fires to rage.”

They talked for a few more minutes, and then Shelley and David left to drive back to her house.

As soon as they were out of the office, Barbara poured another glass of wine. “I don't know how you can do it,” she said. “Keep your patience with him the way you do. I was ready to send him packing a long time ago.”

Earlier, watching and listening as she went over the case details, Frank had come to a startling realization, one that he knew he could never share with her. The new insight explained why she and David clashed the way they did. David was behaving in exactly the same way she would, if she were the accused. She was as impatient with him as she was with herself so often, and David reacted predictably, exactly the way she would have, ready to leap up and storm out, scornful of the system, sarcastic, mocking. Neither one of them could see it, he had thought in wonder.

O
n Thursday Frank picked half-a-dozen ripe tomatoes, regretful that their season was coming to an end. He put four of them in a bag to take to Lucy, and he and Barbara returned to the McCrutchen house.

They wanted to test the acoustics on the deck, to be prepared if it became an issue, Frank had told Lucy on the phone. She dreaded it more than she could say, reliving that night, revisiting that ugly scene. It was a clear, cool day with a slight breeze, and Lucy shivered as the group went out to the deck. Amy positioned her and Barbara, and Lucy and Frank went to the end of the deck.

“This is about where they stood,” Amy said in a subdued voice. They were close to the end of the deck, several feet from the wall of the house. “There were plants out here then,” she said.

Frank nodded and handed her a printout. “Your part,” he said. “I'll begin.” Then in his lawyerly voice, he recited,

“‘The time has come,' the Walrus said,

‘to talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.'”

Across the deck both Barbara and Lucy were smiling. Lucy's dread had vanished.

“What a ham!” Barbara said.

Frank bowed to Amy and she, smiling, read her lines.

“‘Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail,

‘There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?'”

“And she's another one,” Lucy said.

“Enough?” Frank asked.

“Loud and clear,” Barbara said.

Frank and Amy rejoined them. “I don't think we were overly loud,” he said.

“Definitely not,” Amy agreed.

“If you'd like another chance, with our voices lower, or raised, we could oblige,” Frank said. “I'm ready for another go-around.” He cleared his throat.

All three audience members were laughing and groaning too much for him to be heard. He stopped, looking mildly hurt.

“Don't encourage him,” Barbara warned. “And for God's sake, don't let him start on Kipling!”

“I think we deserve a cup of coffee,” Lucy said.

Then Amy said in a low voice, “For heaven's sake! Here he comes.”

Dr. Elders appeared at the side of the house, carrying a few pink roses. “I thought I heard sounds of laughter,” he said. “A party? I brought a table decoration.”

“Barbara, do you want to see how we've redone the studio?” Amy asked. She tilted her head toward the kitchen door.

“Of course,” Barbara said. “Hello, Dr. Elders. Excuse us, please.” She followed Amy inside and to the study. It had been painted a creamy white, with light blue drapes and a russet-colored carpet. “Very handsome,” Barbara said. “You really dislike Elders, don't you?”

“He's a total creep. He spies on us, or on Mother, anyway. Creepy. I wish she'd just tell him to buzz off, but she won't. It would be unneighborly,” Amy said.

“Did he ever do or say anything to make you feel uncomfortable with him, besides that incident with the beer?” Barbara asked curiously. Amy's reaction to him seemed a little too strong for just disapproval of a nosy old man.

“Not really. I used to have to take stuff over for them, you know, when his wife was sick and he was teaching full-time. A cake or pie, sometimes a casserole. After that nonsense with the beer, I always felt that he was watching to catch me doing something else evil. I hated going over there. I'd stop at the end of the walk from the front, and peek around to see if he was out on the patio. It comes right up to the walk, and he'd often be at a table outside the kitchen, reading or grading papers or something, right there. I'd wait and wait for him to go inside so I could just put something down on the table and take off. But it hardly ever happened. I hated going inside his house, too. Like a refrigerator, and it smelled funny. Medicinal probably, but then it just smelled funny and I hated it.” She shrugged. “The kind of stuff kids hate and never really forget, I guess.”

“Did he have a walk put in just to be able to pop in over here easily?”

Amy shook her head. “No, of course not. The gas meter is outside the kitchen, at this end of the house, and I guess the builder added the walk so the meter reader could get to it.”

“I'd better go back and see how Dad's doing,” Barbara said.

“I'll get back to work,” Amy said. Her computer and books were on the desk. She hesitated, then said, “Barbara, how's David? Is anything wrong? He hasn't called, and I thought he would. I hate to be the one to make calls. In case he's busy or something.”

And that was the reason to inspect the study, Barbara understood. “He's got a lot on his mind,” she said. “Nothing's changed, as far as I know.”

Amy looked as if she wanted to ask questions, to talk, say something, but she remained silent, then took a step toward the desk. “I'd better get back to work.” She sounded woebegone.

Barbara found Frank, Lucy and Dr. Elders in the family room. Seeing her, Frank put down a coffee cup and got to his feet. “We'll be going,” he said. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“I should thank you for the tomatoes. Two gifts in one day. I feel as if it's a birthday,” Lucy said.

“Unbirthday gift,” Frank said.

A smile crossed Lucy's face. “The best kind,” she said. “Three hundred sixty-four times a year to give or receive gifts. Thank you. And you, Henry, for the flowers.”

Elders looked blank, then said hurriedly, “My pleasure. You're welcome.”

In the car, minutes later, Frank chuckled. Barbara looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Elders,” he said. “He doesn't know Alice at all, and I think he believed Lucy and I were talking in code.”

And he, Barbara knew, could probably recite every nonsense rhyme and song in
Alice in Wonderland.

Barbara worked through Saturday and into the night, going over the witness list McNulty had provided, practically memorizing the statements he would be using in court. Afterward, sitting in her downtown office, she thought about the meeting they'd had on Friday, how many statements or witnesses either she or McNulty had argued for or against admitting. Cool arguments, rarely reaching a point of high passion or even indignation. Businesslike, efficient, they could have been talking about playground rules. In the end both lawyers and the judge had agreed that it appeared that the trial would be over within a week.

She knew she should wrap things up and go home, sleep, but she continued to sit at her desk, sometimes blank, other times with furious thoughts racing through her mind, struggling against accepting that she could find nothing in any of the statements that offered hope.

She kept missing something, she knew, and began her search again, then again. It was very late when she finally gave it up and went home. Darren was asleep, and she assumed Todd was. She was glad since she didn't want to talk, or to listen to anything they might say. Glad, but also faintly resentful that Darren could sleep when she was so awake. After turning and twisting in bed for what seemed a very long time, she gave up and went to the living room where she sat in the dark and struggled anew, this time against what she had come to accept as true.

Sunday night at dinner with Frank, in answer to his question, Darren outlined his plan for the two interns forced upon him. “I'm giving them the standard test they use at the college in the nursing program,” he said. “Physiology, anatomy, nervous system, cardiovascular, and so on. And I've culled a dozen physicians' prescriptions for their patients for rehabilitation. Some are simple instructions, some are pretty complex and all of them are actual cases from my files—stroke victims, head injuries, other traumas, spinal problems, amputations, a mixed bag. The guys are to describe exactly how they would proceed with therapy. And they're both going to fail.”

Barbara listened as if from a great distance. She tried to concentrate on what Darren was saying, what her father was saying, but their words kept sliding away, out of focus as instantly as she heard them. She was failing him, she knew, as she had known she would. She had warned him, and herself, that it could come to this, and here it was happening, and she seemed powerless to put her own problems aside even temporarily to offer him the kind of support he deserved and needed.

Frank had asked something else, or commented, and Darren said, “We'll have a special board meeting after I have test results, and we'll discuss it. They know I won't certify them unless I'm satisfied. I think they'll be prepared for whatever course of action they decide is necessary.” In his soft, musical way, he said, as if it meant little to him, “I won't challenge or question whatever action they take, of course.”

She had come to realize what it was she had lost, she thought, as Darren's words, then Frank's, drifted past her. Whatever edge she had once had was gone, whether intuition, a gift for hunches that turned out to be right, some insight into those she interviewed, a knack for spotting the incongruity in testimony, whatever it was, it was gone. She was left with words on paper that revealed only their dictionary meaning. Nothing more than that. And that was not enough.

Short of a confession, the words alone were not enough and never had been. Without that special something that had not just guided her for years but had, at times, controlled her, dominated her, she had nothing. She felt empty, hollow.

She found herself studying her father and wondering, was that what happened to him? Had he lost that
something?
He had given up taking capital cases, no more life-and-death issues, except as her colleague at times, but never taking the lead, never litigating. She wished he would tell her why, but she could not ask any more than she could ever reveal her own self-discovery.

The one thing she knew with certainty was that she, too, would have to give up capital cases. She could never again risk another person's life knowing what she knew about herself.