Death Qualified (34 page)

    "And let me tell you, it's a bitch getting the boat up my road, but worth it. Take it down in the spring, bring it home in the fall, cursing both ways." He said to Nell, "Sometime I'd like to take you on a white-water trip down the Owyhee." Now that he had relaxed, he talked with animation about the places in Oregon that were little known, places so far off the trails that for days and days you could wander and never see a sign of human destruction, human trash, not even a candy wrapper. Hard to get to in many cases, he admitted, and worth every second of misery to reach.

    Although the evening had gone better than she had dared hope, by nine Nell was back in her own house with her children and her in-laws, just as she had planned to be.

    They ate the cinnamon rolls from "fawna and talked about the farm and the trip, and she watched her children, touched Carol, touched Travis; she listened to their words, and their silences, and she began to relax. The earlier part of the evening faded from memory so fast it might never have been.

    In Frank's house, Barbara said to Mike, "I think you should go on home tonight. I have work to do, and you have classes in the morning. As you can see, I'm perfectly fine."

    He regarded her for a moment, then nodded.

    "If that's what you want."

    She wanted to yell at him to ask what was wrong, what had happened, so they could sit down and talk it out, let her explain her position as a lawyer for a defendant in a murder trial. At the same time, she was afraid for him to ask that, because she feared that she would sound like her father defending the indefensible. So be it, she thought bitterly, as he waited for some response. He had seen this side of her; let him go away and think about it. It was his move. She nodded, and neither spoke again as he started to gather his belongings and then went to tell Frank goodbye.

    She stood at the door, where he hesitated; after a moment his face tightened and he said, "So long. See you around."

    When she turned away from the door again, Frank was in the hall scowling fiercely.

    "You're both two damn fools!" He wheeled, went back inside his study, and slammed the door.

    TWENTY-THREE

    on tuesday, when the trial resumed. Tony was as angelic as his name suggested; he didn't challenge a single character witness; he looked supremely bored.

    "Doesn't mean a damn thing," her father had grumbled once about character witnesses.

    "Even the devil has pals who swear by him. But you've got to do it." Tony would agree and would not prolong anything he didn't have to, Barbara knew, not now. Time was running out for catching Ruth Brandywine, and Tony had a very good sense of timing.

    She had no doubt that he had timed her defense almost as carefully as she had.

    Tony's first objections came when she called Pete Malinski. She argued that the prosecution had introduced the subject of Nell's shooting at people and the issue had to be clarified. Pete Malinski took the stand after ten minutes of a near shouting match. He was twenty-eight with a smooth, rather babyish face, and brown eyes as pale as butterscotch. His hair was lush and curly, reddish brown.

    He worked full time for Clovis in the summer, he said, and part time during the school year, when he was studying engineering. He looked like the son every mother yearned for, earnest, honest, good-humored, and now very nervous.

    He told how he and his partner had been hired by two men to play a joke on a lady, how he had gone to Nell Kendricks's place with one of them, who said his name was Sam. When he got to the gun part, he looked at Nell with some admiration.

    "What a shot!" he said.

    "That beer can sailed off to heaven just like that."

    "And then what?"

    "We got back in the truck and got out of there. I was feeling that it wasn't such a hot joke by then. I stopped at the store in town and got a Coke and told the woman there that she"--he nodded toward Nell--"said she'd shoot anyone who put a foot on her property. Thought I should warn someone." "What about the man who called himself Sam? Did he go inside with you?"

    "No, Ma'am. As soon as we got in the truck he kind of slouched down with his hat over his face and went to sleep. Didn't say another word all the way back to Salem."

    Barbara had him describe the two men, and then she was finished.

    Tony looked lazy and not very interested as he got to his feet.

    "Mr. Malinski, did either man say who hired them?"

    "No. Just a guy."

    "No more questions." He sat down.

    "You said he paid you in cash," Barbara said then.

    "Two hundred each, isn't that right?" He agreed that it was, and she went on, "And another hundred for the use of the truck. Five hundred dollars in cash. Did you see him take the money from his wallet?"

    "Yes, Ma'am, and he had a stash you wouldn't believe in it."

    "He paid you in fifty-dollar bills?"

    "Yes, Ma'am."

    She thanked him and let him go. Judge Lundgren decided that it was lunchtime, and the courtroom began emptying as soon as he left the bench and the jury was led out by the bailiff. At Barbara's side Nell said softly, "He'll just claim that Lucas hired them."

    "And I'll prove otherwise. It's going okay, believe me."

    It was what one said, she told herself as Nell left with John and Amy Kendricks, and besides, what else could she have said?

    "Where is that creep Bailey?" Barbara muttered over a lunch she did not want.

    Her father was eating placidly.

    "He'll show this afternoon.

    I know him, he'll come through."

    "Well, if he does, he has to get in touch with Roy Whitehorse. Tell him for me, will you? I want Whitehorse to call Brandywine tonight, if she hasn't called him back yet. He's sore. He's lost his job, or is on suspension, over showing the campsites, and it's costing him. Someone has to pay for that. He should be in an ugly mood, maybe sound a little drunk even. If she doesn't want what he has, maybe the defense lawyer will buy the disks before the defense has to rest its case tomorrow. He should say it like that, and then no more. But make it plain that tomorrow he wants to unload and get some spending money. And he won't turn them over to anyone but her or me. He knows the sheriff wouldn't give a cent for them. Think he can handle that?"

    Frank was watching her with a slight frown.

    "You said disks. You're gambling "high stakes."

    "I know I am, but it's going to take some strong medicine to shake that lady. That could do it. How about Whitehorse? How good is he?"

    "I don't know. Never met him. Bailey says he's a teacher, grade-school level, and Timothy LeMans says he's the best tracker in the west. What does that tell you?"

    "I wish I knew," she said. She looked at her salad with distaste and drank a second cup of coffee.

    "Well," her father said, "maybe he teaches drama, and he longs to do Shakespeare and is a hell of an actor."

    Lucky Rosner was not grinning today. He was wearing a suit and tie and looked very uncomfortable in his clothes.

    And he looked even younger than Barbara remembered, no more than sixteen or seventeen. He verified Pete Malinski's story about the two men and said he had stayed in Salem with the second man, Joe, and they played pool that afternoon.

    "What happened next, Mr. Rosner? Did you read or hear about the death of Lucas Kendricks?"

    He shook his head, then swiftly said, "No, I mean. I never knew anything about it until a detective came around asking questions."

    "And he questioned you?"

    "Yes, Ma'am. The secretary didn't know anything about that day, so he hung around and asked some of the guys, and when he got to me, I told him about it."

    "Was he with the police?"

    "No, Ma'am. He was a private detective."

    "All right. Just tell us what happened then."

    At first hesitantly, then with more confidence, he de scribed going to the tree with Barbara, her father, and Bailey and told about climbing the tree and finding the gadget. Barbara picked it up from the exhibit table and showed him.

    "Is this the device you found in the tree?"

    He nodded, then with a nervous glance at the judge, he said, "I mean, yes."

    She thanked him, nodded to Tony, and went back to the defense table. Her father was not in his seat. She breathed a small prayer that Bailey had arrived finally.

    "Mr. Rosner, did either man say who hired them?"

    This time Tony didn't bother to leave the prosecution table. He stood at his seat.

    "No, sir. They said a guy wanted to play a joke on the lady."

    "And that device was just lying up there on a limb?"

    "No, sir. It was stuck to the tree with some gummy stuff."

    "Could you tell how long it had been up there?"

    "No, sir."

    "You and your partner believed a man wanted to spy on his wife, isn't that why you went along with this scheme?"

    "Yes, sir. That's one of the things we thought of."

    Tony sat down.

    "That's all."

    Barbara's next witness was an electronics expert, Daryl Simpson, who told them more about listening devices than they wanted to know. He held the device lovingly as he talked. He was a thin man with sunken cheeks and a greenish complexion, as if he were ill or just recovering from an illness. When he began to describe the range of this particular device, she had him demonstrate on a map.

    "So it would have picked up any conversation in either house on the Kendricks property," she said then.

    "Not the beach, because the bank would interfere. What about the ledge here? It's higher than the device was."

    "That doesn't matter," he said.

    "Imagine a dome, half a mile diameter, half a mile up. That's the range of that one."

    "Anything that was said on the ledge would have been recorded?"

    "If it was working."

    "What about the receiver? Where would that have been?"

    He talked about receivers at great length. But the jury was being very attentive, and she did not try to hurry him.

    She referred to the map again.

    "So, in a straight line for up to two miles, and you said it was directional. Does that mean it would transmit in that one direction only?"

    "Yes, it does. Not through rocks or cliffs, but trees wouldn't interfere."

    "For example, the end cabins down here would be in line with it, but not the ones under the cliff?"

    He said that was right. Whoever put it up probably had aimed it where he intended to set up his receiver. Usually there would be a van or something nearby, but the cabins would work just as well.

    "How much would you say this kind of device would cost?" she asked then, taking it from his hand.

    He looked saddened and kept his gaze on it, not her.

    "Seven or eight hundred dollars."

    After she thanked him and sat down. Tony got him to admit that the listeners could have been in a number of places in Nell's house, or the big house, on the ledge, in any of the houses along the ridge, even across the river.

    "In fact, there's no way to know, is there?"

    "Not really. Just within two miles in a straight line."

    Tony went on quickly.

    "Could you tell how long that device was in the tree?"

    "It wasn't rained on, I'd say, but it was dirty, dusty."

    He began to talk about the adhesive gum, but this time Tony cut him off.

    "Thank you. You don't know how long it was up there, isn't that your answer?"

    "Yes. I don't know."

    Asshole, Barbara thought at Tony. Next he'd suggest that she had climbed the tree and planted the bug. She heard a rustling behind her and turned to see Frank. He nodded.

    Bailey was back.

    Her next witness was Louise Gilmore, who had rented one of the end cabins to two men on Wednesday, June seventh, the day before the two men had gone to Nell's place to cut the tree down.

    "Is this the guest register?" Barbara asked, showing her the book.

    "Yes. There are their names, Sam and Jerry Johnson."

    Barbara let her continue.

    "They wanted the end cabin, out of traffic they said, and they paid in cash, double our rate because they were anxious to finish some work they had to do. I thought they were writers with a deadline--one of them said something to that effect."

    She had done some juggling with the cabins, she said, because they were booked up, but they had put a couple of people in their own house, and it had worked out. She described the men; her description was of the men who had hired Pete Malinski and Lucky Rosner. They had rented a boat, she said, but hadn't used it much, and not to fish. And they had been out all Wednesday and most of Thursday in their car. She had not seen them again after they checked in. They left Saturday afternoon. All their stuff was gone, and the door had been left open, the key on the chest of drawers.