The chief medical examiner took the picture, spent several seconds looking at it. “A very attractive woman. Who is she?”
“Her name is Connie DeVuono. She’s been missing over two weeks.”
“This is the woman you called me about last week?” Hilary Waugh asked.
Jess nodded sheepishly. “I’m sorry to be such a pest. It’s just that I keep thinking of her little boy. …”
“Looks just like his mother,” Hilary remarked, as Jess reclaimed the photograph, carefully returning it to her purse.
“Yes. And it’s very hard on him … not knowing exactly what happened to her.” Jess swallowed the catch in her throat.
“I’m sure it is. And I wish I could help.”
“No bodies matching Connie DeVuono’s description have turned up?”
“At the moment we have three unidentified white females in Boot Hill. Two are teenagers, probably runaways. One died of a drug overdose; the other was raped and strangled.”
“And the third?”
“Just came in this morning. We haven’t run any tests yet. But the state of decomposition indicates she’s only been dead a few days.”
“It’s possible,” Jess stated quickly, although she found it highly unlikely. Rick Ferguson would hardly have been
foolhardy enough to kidnap Connie, then wait several weeks before killing her. “About how old is she?
Was
she?” Jess corrected, hearing the word
decomposition
ricochet inside her brain.
“Impossible to say at the moment. She was beaten beyond all recognition.”
Jess felt her stomach turn over. She fought to stay steady. “But you don’t think it’s Connie DeVuono.”
“The woman on the table downstairs has blond hair and is approximately five feet nine inches tall. I’d say that eliminates her as the woman you’re looking for. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down?”
“No, I really should get going,” Jess said, taking several tentative steps to the office door. Hilary Waugh pushed back her chair, rose to her feet. “No, you don’t have to get up,” Jess told her, not sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that the unidentified woman wasn’t Connie DeVuono. “Will you call me if anything …” She stopped, unable to complete the sentence.
“I’ll call you if anyone even remotely resembling Connie DeVuono turns up.”
Jess stepped into the hall, hesitated, then turned back to Hilary Waugh. “I’m going to get hold of Connie’s dental records, have them sent over here,” she said, thinking of the woman lying downstairs,
beaten beyond all recognition
. “Just so you’ll have them on hand if …” She stopped, cleared her throat, started again. “It might speed things up a bit.”
“That would be very helpful,” Hilary Waugh agreed. “Assuming we find her body.”
Assuming we find her body
. The words followed Jess down the corridor and into the lobby.
Assuming we find her body
.
She pushed open the door to the outside and ran down the steps to the street. Jess threw her head back and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, feeling the cold sun warm on her face.
Assuming we find her body, she thought.
“F
our hundred and eleven dollars?” Jess yelled. “Are you crazy?”
The young black man behind the high white counter remained calm, his face impassive. He was obviously used to such outbursts. “The bill is carefully itemized. If you’d care to take another look. …”
“I’ve looked. I still don’t understand what could possibly have cost over four hundred dollars!” Jess realized that her voice was becoming dangerously shrill, that the other patrons of the auto body shop where she had taken her car to be serviced almost three weeks ago were staring at her.
“There was a lot that had to be done,” the young man reminded her.
“There was a windshield wiper!”
“Both wipers, actually,” the man, whose name tag identified him as Robert, stated. “You recall we phoned you, told you that both would have to be replaced, along
with the catalytic converter and the alternator,” Robert expanded patiently. “Your car hadn’t been serviced in some time.”
“There was never any need.”
“Yes, well, you were very lucky. The problem with these old cars is that they require a lot of maintenance. …”
“Three weeks’ worth?”
“We had to order the parts. There was some delay in getting them in.”
“And what’s all this?” Jess said, desperately pointing to a host of other items at the bottom of the list.
“Winterizing, tune-up, valve changes. Actually, you got off pretty cheaply, considering.”
“That’s it!” Jess exploded. “I want to talk to the manager.”
Jess looked helplessly from side to side. A middle-aged man waiting at the next counter turned quickly away; a young woman giggled; an elderly woman waiting beside her husband raised her fist to her breast in a covert salute.
“He’s not in yet,” Robert explained as Jess checked the large clock on the wall: 7:55 it read.
Normally, she’d have been in her office ten minutes ago. She’d be going over her calendar, making her notes, deciding on what more had to be done in preparation for her day in court. Now, instead of rehearsing her opening statement for the most high-profile murder case of her career, she was arguing with somebody named Robert about her car.
“Look, I really don’t have time for this. What if I simply refuse to pay?”
“Then you don’t get your car back,” Robert said, equally simply.
Jess stared into the small black-and-white-tile mosaic of
the floor. “You know, of course, that you won’t be seeing my business again.”
Robert barely suppressed a smile.
“Can I give you a check?”
“Cash or charge only.”
“Naturally.” Jess pulled out her wallet and handed over a charge card, thinking that what was probably even more remarkable than the number of murders that occurred every year in Chicago was the fact that there weren’t more.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” Jess began, her eyes making brief contact with each of the eight women and six men who made up the jury and their alternates in what the press was calling the Crossbow Murder Trial, “on June the second of this year, Terry Wales, the defendant, shot his wife through the heart with a steel-tipped arrow from a crossbow, in the middle of the intersection at Grand Avenue and State Street. No one here disputes that. It is a fact, pure and simple.
“The defense will try to convince you that nothing about this case is simple, that there is little that is pure,” she said, borrowing Greg Oliver’s clever phrase. “But facts are facts, Ladies and Gentlemen, and the fact is that Nina Wales, a lovely and intelligent woman of thirty-eight, was mercilessly shot down, in a most cruel and horrible way, by the brutal husband she had recently worked up the courage to leave.”
Jess backed away slightly from the jury box, drawing the jurors’ eyes toward the defendant, Terry Wales, a relatively innocuous, even mousy-looking man of forty. His frame was slender and wiry, his complexion pale, his thinning hair a colorless blond. It was his lawyer, Hal Bristol, a dark-haired beefy man of maybe sixty, to whom all eyes were
naturally drawn. Terry Wales sat beside him looking meek and overwhelmed, his face a mask of bewilderment, as if he couldn’t believe the words he was hearing, or the predicament he found himself in.
Perhaps he couldn’t, Jess thought, her eyes drawn to the Bible Terry Wales twisted nervously in his hands. Criminals, like teenagers, thought they were invincible. No matter how great their crime, no matter how obvious their motives, no matter how clear the crumbs of the trail they left behind, they never actually thought they’d be caught. They always believed they would get away with it. And sometimes they did. Sometimes all it took was the help of a well-trained lawyer and a well-thumbed copy of the New Testament. Would the jury fall for such a cheap bit of theatrics? Jess wondered, cynically.
“Don’t be fooled by the carefully coached picture of pious innocence and regret you see before you, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Jess admonished, momentarily veering away from her planned speech, watching as Hal Bristol shook his head. “Don’t be tricked into thinking that just because a man clutches a Bible, he understands what’s inside it. Or even cares.
“Where was his Bible when Terry Wales regularly battered his wife over the course of their eleven-year marriage? Where was it when he threatened to kill her if she tried to leave? Where was it when he bought a crossbow the day before the killing? Where was the Bible Terry Wales is clutching in his hand when he took that crossbow and used it to shoot down his wife as she emerged from a taxi on her way to see her lawyer? That Bible was nowhere in sight, Ladies and Gentlemen. Terry Wales had no use for Bibles then. Only now. And only because you’re watching him.”
Jess returned to her prepared script. “The defense will try to tell you that the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of Nina Wales was, in fact, a crime of passion. Yes, they will concede, Terry Wales did purchase the crossbow and arrow; yes, he did shoot his wife. But don’t you understand? He didn’t really mean to hurt her. He only wanted to scare her. He loved her, they’ll try to convince you. He loved her, and she was leaving him. He’d tried reasoning with her; he’d cajoled; he’d begged; he’d pleaded. He’d even threatened. He was a man in pain, a man in turmoil. He was beside himself with grief over the thought of losing his wife.
“They will also try to convince you that Nina Wales was not entirely without blame in her own demise. She was cheating on her husband, they’ll assert, although, for that, we have only the word of the man who killed her.
“They will tell you that Nina Wales taunted her husband about his failings as a lover, that she ridiculed his manhood, baited him relentlessly for his failure to satisfy her voracious needs.
“Finally, the defense will tell you that Nina Wales not only threatened to leave her husband, she threatened to take him for everything he owned, that she threatened to take his children away, turn them against him forever, leave him with nothing, not even his self-respect.
“And still he loved her, they will tell you. Still he pleaded with her to stay. And still she refused.
“I ask you,” Jess said simply, her eyes traveling across the double rows of jurors, “what’s a man supposed to do? What other choice did Terry Wales have but to kill her?”
Jess paused, giving her words time to sink in, turning in a small circle, taking in the room at a single glance. She saw
Judge Harris, whose face registered the same interested yet impassive look it always did during a trial; she saw the prosecutor’s table where Neil Strayhorn sat hunched forward in his seat, his head nodding silent encouragement; she saw the crowded rows of spectators, the reporters scribbling notes, the television news artists sketching hurried portraits of the accused.
She saw Rick Ferguson.
He was sitting in the second row from the back of the courtroom, in the third seat in from the center aisle, his hair hanging long behind his ears, his eyes staring straight ahead, his odious Cheshire cat grin firmly in place. Quickly, Jess looked away, her heart pounding.
What was he doing here? What was he trying to prove? That he could intimidate her? That he could harass her at will? That he wouldn’t be controlled, couldn’t be stopped?
Don’t lose it, Jess told herself. Concentrate. Concentrate on the speech you’re giving to the jury. Don’t let one killer prevent you from bringing another killer to justice. Deal with Terry Wales now, and with Rick Ferguson later.
Jess turned back toward the jury, saw that they were anxiously waiting for her to continue. “Take a good look at the defendant, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Jess instructed, again veering from her prepared text. “He doesn’t look like a coldblooded killer, does he? Actually, he looks pretty harmless. Mild, maybe even a little meek. Pretty skinny for a guy who regularly beat his wife, you’re probably thinking. But once again, Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t be fooled by appearances.
“The fact is, and the prosecution will always be bringing you back to the facts of this case, the fact is that Terry Wales has a black belt in karate; the fact is that we have hospital
records that show a history of broken bones and bruises inflicted on Nina Wales by her husband over the years. The fact is that Terry Wales was a wife beater.
“Let me ask you something, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” Jess continued, resolutely confining her gaze to the jury box. “Is it reasonable to expect us to believe that Terry Wales shot his wife in a fit of passion when they hadn’t seen each other in several days? Is it reasonable to expect us to believe that there was no premeditation involved even though Terry Wales purchased the murder weapon the day before he shot his wife down? That there was no preconceived plan? That there was no expectation that when he fired the steel-tipped arrow into his wife’s chest that she might die?
“Because that’s exactly what defines an act of first degree murder,” Jess explained, feeling Rick Ferguson’s eyes burrowing into the back of her head. She spoke with deliberate slowness, making sure the jury heard and appreciated every word, reciting the statute from memory. “ ‘If the murder was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner pursuant to a preconceived plan, scheme, or design to take a human life by unlawful means, and the conduct of the defendant created a reasonable expectation that the death of a human being would result therefrom.’ That is the definition of murder in the first degree.
“The defense would have you believe that Terry Wales, thoroughly emasculated by his wife, yet distraught at the thought of losing her, was only trying to frighten her when he aimed that crossbow at her heart. They want you to believe that he was actually aiming for her leg. They would have you believe that Terry Wales, an already broken man,
‘snapped’ after his wife taunted him once too often, that he was only trying to shake her up a little when he fired that crossbow into the middle of a busy intersection, that Terry Wales is as much a victim in this case as his wife.
“Don’t be fooled, Ladies and Gentlemen. Nina Wales is the victim here. Nina Wales is dead. Terry Wales is very much alive.”
Jess pushed herself away from the jury box, forced her eyes back to the spectators’ benches. Rick Ferguson smiled back from his seat in the second to last row.