The Sign of the Book (27 page)

“All right, yes…yes, okay…okay.”

“Get that apology out of your voice. You aren't maybe not guilty, you will not plead guilty if suspicion falls on someone else, you are flat-out not guilty. That's what we go with, wherever it leads.”

“You don't understand. You can't understand.”

“Here we go again. Please listen carefully. I don't
care
why you think you've got to lie. I can't care about stuff like that. The only thing I need to understand or care about is what this case is, not why you want to cloud it up with other issues. You're going to kill yourself with that argument.” Erin pulled her chair closer. “Do you want me to help you or not?”

“You know I do.”

“Then stop worrying about Jerry and get your own story straight. Let's go over it again…what you'll say if we go to trial and how you'll say it.”

Because much of the doubt we would cast over the state's case had to come from Laura herself, she would have to testify at the trial. Parley was clearly nervous about this. He still considered her too unpredictable, too easily shaken when the inevitable questions about Jerry arose, but Jerry was in it now and nothing could be done about that. The ashes from the back-room fireplace were part of the evidence. The sheriff had bagged and taken the entire grate, and he had noted a charred smear of blood on it, and traces of blood scattered throughout the ashes. The shirt fragment looked identical to Jerry's shirt, just as Laura had said. “I think we have a reasonable doubt,” Erin said. “But Laura can't escape it, it's coming in, what she did with Jerry's clothes is not going away. Now we've got to make them understand why.”

I knew Erin considered Jerry one of our strong suits. She liked our chances but she retreated from optimism if we tried too hard to agree with her. “They're pushing a weak case, and that's always a reason to worry. Like they've got something we don't know about.” She considered Gill easily capable of pushing it for political reasons. This was the county's first murder case in forty years, and he didn't want to back away and he sure didn't want to lose it.

It was late when we left the jail. The town was dark and the café about to close, but Parley turned on the charm and coaxed three simple hamburger steaks out of them. We sat at a table in the far corner of the room and went over tactics and where Lennie's lies would take him next. “This guy is a worm,” Erin said. “I have no sympathy for creeps like him.”

She ticked off his offenses on her fingers.

“First he messes up the crime scene. Then he panics and he's got to manufacture a cover-up, so he destroys evidence. He's not guilty of perjury yet, but he will be if I give him a little bit of rope. What else can he do now but keep up the lie?”

She stared into the dark place under the table. “I'm gonna destroy that bastard.”

“They'll never sit still for that,” Parley said. “Not in a hearing to suppress.”

“You can bet me. Whatever else he is, Gill's a political animal and he doesn't want to go to trial on Lennie's flimsy shoulders. I've got a hunch we can win this thing right there in the hearing.”

She looked up at me. “I'd like you to go in with us. You don't need to say a word, just sit behind me in the courtroom and give Lennie the evil eye. I think you've got his number.”

I was uneasy even in that role, but she lifted her wineglass. “Here's to tomorrow. And the beginning of the end for deputy whatever.”

Lennie was sitting sullenly in the courtroom when we arrived that morning. The judge's court reporter was leaning over his box looking bored. We were all early; no one else was yet in the room, but Lennie squared his shoulders, filling out his police jacket, and looked back at us. “What's he doing here?” he said gruffly, and the court reporter smiled playfully and took down his words.

“Mr. Janeway is my investigator,” Erin said. I faced them all and smiled.

“I didn't ask you that, I know who he is. What's he need to
investigate
in here?”

“You never know.” Erin smiled pleasantly.

“You never know
what
?”

“When some great lie that needs investigating will surface.”

“Are you trying to fuck with me, sister?”

“No way. I wouldn't do that for a hundred million dollars.”

Two doors opened suddenly. The bailiff came in from chambers, and from the hall I heard Ann Bailey's voice. She and Gill came down, nodded crisply, and sat on the bench across from us. Our witness, Hugh Gilstrap, was right behind them, and he took a seat in the row behind us.

Lennie stared back at the photographer and he looked pale. He jerked his thumb my way. “I don't want him here.”

“I'm sure you don't want any of us here, including yourself,” Erin said. “Too bad you don't get to pick and choose.”

Lennie pointed a trembling finger. “Listen, sister, don't you screw around with me. You hear what I'm saying?”

“My goodness, Deputy, that sounds like a threat.”

“Lennie, please,” Miss Bailey said, wincing.

“I don't know what the hell these people think they're gonna prove. Everything I did was by the book.
Ev-ry
thing.”

“Then you won't mind telling us about it,” Erin said.

“It's all in my report. This hearing is bullshit.”

“That may be, but it's one of the trials of life, you'll just have to put up with it.”

“Lennie,” Miss Bailey said softly. “Remember what we discussed.”

“Some people you just can't coach,” Erin said. “They are the great uncoachables. No matter what you tell them, they're always going to be a wild hair.”

“Listen to that shit,” Lennie said. “That's exactly what I'm talking about.”

Now Gill leaned forward and looked Lennie in the eyes. He spoke so softly that only Lennie could hear him, but he was intense, and when he was finished, Lennie sat glumly and silently. Erin was right, I thought: he's a loose cannon, ready to blow up.

I heard another shuffle and the sheriff arrived with Laura. She sat with us and he joined the prosecutors. The bailiff said, “All rise,” and the judge came in.

The judge sat, then we sat, and he looked over at the prosecution's side of the bench. “Where are your witnesses, Mr. Gill?”

“Mr. McNamara is only interested in Deputy Walsh, Your Honor. If we brought them all in, this hearing could run half a day. We could have done that, but the testimony from the preliminary hearing won't change. We're trying to save the court's time.”

“Mr. McNamara?”

“That's fine with us, Your Honor.”

“All right then. Let's get going.”

Miss Bailey rose and called Lennie, who raised his hand over the Bible and was sworn.

What followed was ten minutes of routine, almost pedantic questioning:
Where were you when you first got the call? Where was the
sheriff and why wasn't he in the office?
Lennie lied about that, covering the sheriff's ass by saying he wasn't sure.

What did you do right after the call came in? How long did it take you to get up the hill to Mrs. Marshall's house? Did you knock on the door? When did you decide it would be proper for you to enter the premises?

“I looked in through the open door,” Lennie said. “I could see that something bad had happened. Mrs. Marshall was sitting at the table with blood on her dress. There was a gun on the floor.”

Gill leaned over and whispered something to Miss Bailey. She furrowed her brow, obviously annoyed. “One minute, please, Your Honor.”

The judge looked away and drummed his fingers on the bench. Miss Bailey and Gill were locked in some kind of disagreement for most of a minute. In the end, Gill made his point more forcefully and Miss Bailey, frustrated, said, “Okay, tell us what you did next.”

The remainder of Lennie's testimony was almost to the letter what I remembered from the preliminary hearing. Everything sounded proper to hear him tell it. He had gone step by step, discovering things in their correct order. Miss Bailey gave Gill another look and said, “That's all.”

Erin rose slowly and came forward. “You say you looked in through the open door and saw Mrs. Marshall at the table with blood on her dress. You say there was a gun on the floor. And you could see all that from the front doorstep?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“How much of it?”

“Enough of it.”

“What specifically does that
mean,
Deputy? Keep in mind, please, that we have all been up there, we have all looked in through that front door. If you'd rather do this the hard way, we can all go up there right now and see just what's visible from the front door.”

Lennie seethed in his hotbox.

“Isn't it true that you went inside without seeing anything?”

“I sure didn't go up there on a blind. I knew something bad had happened.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because of the
phone
call, isn't that obvious? She didn't call the sheriff's office to find out the time of day or directions down the mountain. What would you think?”

“What I'd think isn't the point here, I didn't enter the Marshalls' house.” Erin moved around the room, looked out the window, and came back to her spot. “What did she say when she called?”

“Her husband had been murdered.”

“Is that what she said?”

I saw Miss Bailey give a slight headshake across the table. Lennie turned and we stared at each other for a few seconds. “Make him stop that, Judge,” Lennie said,

The judge gave me a stern look. But he said, “Just answer the questions, Deputy.”

“The question was,” Erin said, “did she say her husband had been murdered?”

“Maybe that wasn't it exactly.”

“It doesn't have to be exact, here and now. Just the true gist of it. There's a tape, as you know. We can get the exact wording later if you can't remember it now.”

“I'm trying to recollect.”

“Take your time.”

“She said there'd been a shooting. Her husband had been shot.”

“Yes, that's what the tape will show. There had been a shooting. For all you knew at that moment, it had been an accident. Isn't that right, Deputy?”

“I knew it hadn't been any accident.”

“From what, just the sound of her voice?”

“That's right.”

“From your vast experience and the sound of her voice.”

“Don't you belittle me,” Lennie said, and Miss Bailey closed her eyes.

Erin smiled. “I certainly don't mean to, Deputy.”

Miss Bailey came up from her chair. “Your Honor, these personal attacks—”

“Just ask the questions, Ms. D'Angelo.”

“How many shootings have you investigated in your career, Deputy?”

“I know what guilty people sound like.”

“That must be a great talent in your line of work. So the answer to my question is what? Fifty?…Ten?…Two?”

“You know we haven't had many shootings here.”

“The answer then is none. Is that right?”

“The woman was hysterical.”

“I'm sure she was. Her husband had just been killed.” Erin looked at her notes. “All right, you got up there, the door was open, you went inside and found Mrs. Marshall at the table. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, if it wasn't
exactly
like that, Deputy, would you please tell us what was different about it?”

“I'll have to refer to my report.”

“I have a copy of it here. Do you want to look at it?”

“No, I remember now.”

“Then tell us, please.”

“I called in through the open door. Nobody answered, so I went in. Hell, for all I knew Marshall might still be alive, bleeding to death in there.”

“So you went on in. Were you armed? Did you take out your weapon?”

“You better believe it. It's easy for you to ask sarcastic questions here in this nice warm courthouse. You try going out alone to a scene like that and see how you like it.”

“So you walked in on Mrs. Marshall with your gun drawn.”

“And I was right, wasn't I? Her husband was dead at her feet and there wasn't any ifs or maybes about it.”

“No, there weren't. And you immediately assumed that she had done it.”

“Well, he had two lethal wounds, so I knew right off he didn't do it to himself. Nobody else was there.”

“Nobody you saw. Tell us what happened then.”

“I spoke to her. She looked up and said, ‘I shot Bobby.'”

He said this smugly, with a smirk of victory, as if he had just put the biggity-ass, hotshot lawyer in her place. Erin nodded and said, “I understand you spent some time down at the station trying to get her to confess. Now you're telling us she'd already confessed, is that correct?”

I glanced at the prosecution table, expecting an objection that never came.

“She gave me a verbal confession, first words out of her mouth.”

“And at the station you were trying to…”

“Get her to sign it, what do you think?”

“Without a lawyer present to protect her interests.”

“I had already read her her rights—twice, in fact. Once up at the house, once in the jail.”

“Which no one but yourself saw or heard.”

“Freeman was there when I gave her her rights the second time.”

“Freeman being the old jailer.”

“That's right.”

“So she gave you this spontaneous confession at the house. Did she repeat that at the jail?”

“Yeah. Not to me, but—”

“Why do you suppose not?”

“Someone had arrived and told her not to.”

“Ah. Who might that have been?”

“You know who it was.”

“You mean the photographer, Mr. Gilstrap, is that correct?”

“Yeah,” Lennie said with obvious reluctance.

“Good thing he was there, wasn't it?”

“Good for you maybe; it gives you something to chew on. But lemme tell you something, lady, what he did was totally off-base. He was interfering with an officer of the law in an official duty. Whatever he says, I'd take with a grain of salt if I were you.”

“Thank you, officer. He'll give us his version shortly.”

“He'll say I'm lying. Are you calling me a liar?”

Miss Bailey leaned forward. “Lennie —”

“God
dam
mit, I don't have to sit still for that shit.”

“Let's assume somebody was lying,” Erin said. “You're saying it was Gilstrap, is that correct?”

“I'm saying what I just said. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I think you're saying a good deal more than that, Deputy. In fact you know exactly what Mr. Gilstrap observed that day.”

“I know what he
thinks.
”

“He's here to testify to what he saw. Under oath, sir, as you are.”

“Don't talk to me that way. I don't lie.”

“He thinks you sealed up the house and left—”

“Now
that
is bullshit.”

The judge picked up his gavel. “Sir, you will not use gutter language in my courtroom.”

Lennie stared ahead as if he had heard none of this. Erin leaned over into his line of vision, and in that moment there were just the two of them locked in a battle as old as time. “Are you going to tell us you did not seal up the crime scene and leave Mrs. Marshall's children inside?”

“That's a fuckin' lie.”

The gavel rapped; the judge roared something about contempt. Lennie said, “It's a lie, it's a lie, it's a goddamned lie. Read my lips and go to hell.” Erin said, “Your Honor, may the record reflect that the witness appears to be enraged by this line of questioning and that his attitude toward me is one of extreme hostility.”