Death Qualified (59 page)

    First assemble everything you'll need, then proceed. That was his method apparently, and never hers, at least not with cooking. But that was exactly how she preferred to practice law, and why Nell's case had been such a bitch, she thought. She had not been able to line up things at any time; too much had been out of control, out of her control.

    Unpredictable, even unknowable events had intruded too often. She realized with a start that not once since his return had she thought of Mike's experience with the Frobisher program; not a single time had she considered it, much less asked about it.

    He was whistling tunelessly, and now stopped and began to chuckle. He became serious again quickly and finished turning sausages, finished the eggs and toast, and brought everything to the table.

    "Excuse me a sec," he said and left, to return with one of the legal pads. He jotted something and passed it over to her, and began to eat.

    She read his scrawl with difficulty:

    There was a young lady of law, Who, they said, was unlikely to thaw.

    When love made things muddle, And she turned into a puddle, He laughed, because he held a straw.

    "Oh," she cried.

    "Of all the arrogant, self-satisfied, egotistical...." She ripped the page off the pad; he reached across the table and tried to grab it. When she pulled away, he came around the table to retrieve it, and then Frank walked in.

    Hurriedly Barbara folded the sheet of paper and thrust it down into her pocket. Mike took his place at the table with a guilty expression. Primly Barbara sat down again and picked up her fork.

    "And good morning to you, too," Frank said.

    When Barbara glanced at Mike, he was grinning, and she began to laugh, and then said good morning to her father.

    Ignoring them both, he got coffee and brought it to the table.

    "Got some interesting calls this morning," he said.

    "You in the mood for business, or is it still children's hour?"

    "Tell us," she said, pleased at how natural the us sounded.

    "Right. First, I made a couple of calls and got an answer. What you were speculating about last night, about our mutual friend, is true."

    She shook her head impatiently.

    "Anything you have to say to me, you might as well just go on and say. You mean Clive?"

    "Yep. Not generally known, but there it is. He's discreet. One long-time relationship with one very respect able person who happens to be married, all very quiet, orderly."

    "Ah," Barbara said, but she still didn't know what she could do with the information.

    "What else?"

    "Sheriff LeMans called. Said he'll be passing by this way and would like to drop in around three. No doubt he wants to know what you have, how good it is." Then Frank looked at Mike and said very deliberately, "Now, how about you? I trust my daughter's judgment more than that of most people I know, but I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone in love where the loved one is involved"

    Barbara put her fork down hard, but Mike nodded.

    "Fair enough," he said.

    "I believe I'm normal, as normal as I ever was, anyway. No lasting effects that I can discern. But I wanted it!" He stared off past Frank for a second or two, then brought his gaze back.

    "I wanted it," he said quietly. "I tried to will myself to accept the program the way a kid might will himself to grow another inch or two, or to sprout wings. You will it and will it, and when you check the mirror you almost convince your self that nubbins are forming, that it's working, but you know it isn't and can't. That's how I was. I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. I would have given my soul for it to succeed. I thought it was taking, willed it to take, and then.. He shrugged.

    "The door closed with me on this side."

    "Are you able to leave it alone?" Frank asked bluntly.

    "That was Frobisher's problem," Mike said after a pause.

    "He couldn't have it. Was he willing to let anyone else? He said no at the end. I don't blame him. It would be inhuman to give all that to someone else knowing you were forever banned yourself. I can even sympathize with Frobisher for killing the boy who made it work. In the end they all turned their backs on it, Frobisher killed himself over it. I'll leave it alone." His voice had turned ragged and harsh. He sounded grief-stricken. Abruptly he stood up and walked across the kitchen with his coffee cup, filled it at the counter, and stood with his back to them for another minute. No one spoke until he lifted his shoulders, let them sag, and faced them again.

    "So, quiz over?

    What is this about Clive and the sheriff? What have I been missing?"

    Frank began to fill him in, but Barbara was thinking what it would be like to hear music in the land of the deaf, to see in the land of the blind, to fly in the land where people crawled. Although she wanted to weep for Mike, she was glad that it had not worked for him. If it had worked, he would not be here, not be hers. For a moment, she too had sympathy for Frobisher, who had seen how ever briefly the glorious handiwork of a demigod, who had known the power of creation for a brief moment, who had been a god denied the Eden of his own creation.

    "For crying out loud!" Mike exclaimed while they waited for the sheriff.

    "Just tell Nell what you suspect and get her away from him."

    Frank shook his head.

    "Bad move to show your hand before you have all the cards. He could become dangerous to Nell. He could just take off for Alaska. He could come after Barbara."

    "Most likely he would simply get a lawyer and bluff it out," Barbara said.

    "Any kid fresh out of law school could get him off with no more than we have at this point."

    "He can just get away with it," Mike said in disgust.

    "That's what you're saying. But when do you warn Nell?

    After the wedding?"

    "Now, Mike," Frank said.

    "We wouldn't let it go that far. But now's too soon. We need just a smidgeon of hard evidence, which we ain't got."

    "And if you can't find that hard evidence, he gets away with it." Mike's disgust and disbelief were both undisguised.

    "That's how the system works," Barbara said.

    "And how it has to work, damn it! The state has to prove guilt and assume innocence, every time."

    He threw up his hands.

    "That sucks!"

    "We need a crystal ball, infallible, indisputable, ever-ready to show what really happened. We need people who are genetically incapable of lying. We need people who would die before they would hurt anyone else, who would die to prevent any harm to anyone else. And until we get that world, the system stinks and always has and always will. We tinker here and we tinker there, but it stinks.

    And we don't know how to fix it." Barbara's anger was as deep as Mike's, her helplessness more frustrating because she knew better than he that Clive could walk away from it unscathed and that Nell might have to face yet another trial. Also, she knew the torment Nell was suffering trying to weigh the certainty of a plea bargain against the uncertainty of another trial.

    "I'm going back to Doc's and make sure I didn't leave anything," Mike said, still angry, helpless.

    "I know there's an unmade bed, and probably a mess in the bath room. Let me know when the sheriff's gone again." He left with an angry expression.

    "Way it goes," Frank said.

    "System stinks, but it's the only system we have."

    "Right. Let's not preach to the choir, all right?" In her head she was crying, Out! I want out!

    Sheriff LeMans was late. At twenty after three Barbara stood at the glass door, looking at the river, which was hiding today under a thick white cover of fog. The fog would creep up the banks later, hide the fishing camp, the store, insinuate its way up to the house, test the windows, the doors without a sound. Under it the river was invisible, secretive, silent. The fog's touch was icy, she knew, like death. She shivered and returned to the living room.

    "Who is dive's lover?" she asked.

    "Anyone I know?"

    Frank raised his eyebrows.

    "I told my informant it would not be bandied about," he said. Then he added, "Bill Meyerson. Explains why Clive moved out here.

    Meyerson has a ranch a couple of miles up the highway."

    "Good heavens! Our golden boy in the state legislature?

    Are you sure?"

    "Who can be sure of anything? It's what I was told."

    The doorbell rang then, and she went to admit the sheriff. He was in his full cowboy outfit. She almost looked past him for his sidekick, Tonto, or at least a white horse.

    She took his sheepskin coat and his wide-brimmed hat, which she handled gently. Two hundred dollars, she decided, at the very least. They exchanged pleasantries as she put his things in the closet and then led him to the living room.

    "Sorry I'm late," he said, shaking hands with Frank.

    "Found myself overshooting your place and ended up down at Mrs. Kendricks's instead." His eyes twinkled just a bit as he added, "

    "Course, I was curious about her setup, how easy it would be to get up from the river with out being seen. Had a little look around while I chanced to be in the neighborhood."

    "What can I get for you, Sheriff? Bourbon, scotch, coffee?"

    "No, no. Nothing." He glanced over the array of bottles that Frank had put out, and then said, "Well, maybe just a touch of that Jack Daniels. To take the chill off.

    Pretty part of the country around here, but God, it's too wet. Too damn wet."

    Barbara understood the rules very well, but she was growing impatient with the good-old-boy act; she sat down in her chair and made herself wait until the dancing ended and the business began. It was not long, after all. As soon as the sheriff had his drink and was in his chair, he turned his full attention to her.

    "Your man. Bailey Novell, and my man, Roy Whitehorse, seem to have struck up quite a friendship. Real pals, from the looks of it."

    "What have they found?" she asked, surprised to hear the bluntness of her father in her own voice.

    "Well, Roy took him to a bar or two, up around Redmond, his stamping grounds, places where the rangers and loggers like to hang out when they're off duty. They can put Belloc in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong kind of mud on his truck, pretty much like your man, Novell, suggested they might. It's not enough, though. What else is there?"

    She told him what little there was, and he shook his head in disappointment.

    "I know," she said.

    "Not enough."

    "Well, we can get on it, go up and down every back road out there, try to find someone who saw him that day, but it's been a long time. Lots of dust has got blown around since then."

    "Sheriff," she asked slowly, looking at the fire, "is there any chance that that girl was not penetrated by a man at all, that he used an object of some sort altogether?

    Was there even a trace of semen?"

    It was a while before he answered.

    "Could be, I guess.

    No semen. The pathologist said the river could have washed it away."

    "Maybe. Maybe there never was any to start with. I don't think he would have touched her; he was too afraid of contact. If he was afraid of making contact with her blood, or any fluids, that would explain dragging her that way, too. Would the laboratory have made an AIDS test?"

    "Yes, they did; nothing there." He was watching her very closely, his eyes narrowed, his drink disregarded.

    "But no mention has come out about the test, has it?"

    "Nope. No reason to report the negative." He glanced at Frank, who was sitting motionless, watching Barbara.

    "Why don't you just come out and say what you're thinking the sheriff asked then, and finally sampled his drink.

    "Thinking out loud," Barbara said.

    "Everyone made note of the fact that Lucas had not marked his hands in any way. But if someone hit that girl hard enough to break her jaw and break teeth out, chances are good that his hand was marked, the skin broken. And he's terrified of AIDS. Just a thought."

    "You're grasping at straws," Sheriff LeMans said sadly.

    "Even if you show os an injured hand, that's still not enough. He works in the forest; lots of injuries in the forests. I wouldn't want to go up with a case like the one I can make, not with you defending." He drained his glass, set it down, and shook his head at Frank, who made a motion toward it.

    "Best be getting on," he said.

    "That fog's not going to get any better."

    They all had stood up and started to move toward the doorway when the bell sounded again.