Desperate Measures (30 page)

All three were due to graduate the next day; all three had younger brothers or sisters who would graduate from middle school that evening…. Daniel was very happy; he had received a coveted OSU scholarship for track. But he had missed the bus home because of the party, and he knew it would upset his father if he came home in another boy's car. He had to go home before going out for hamburgers; he had no money with him. He accepted a ride, and they stopped short of the Marchand house, where his friends bet him he couldn't get to the house and back in under five minutes. While they waited, the driver had to back and fill repeatedly to turn the car around to head back toward the highway, and they had to stop twice to let other cars pass on the narrow winding road, and each time they started over. Laughing, in high spirits, they nevertheless did not want to drive onto the orchard proper.

“I don't know what time it was exactly,” Ben Hennessey, the driver, said. “We had a stopwatch, and when he took off, we set the watch. Then, after we got turned around, we started counting down the last sixty seconds. But he made it in four minutes and thirty-two seconds. He was really huffing. He put his head down until he could catch his breath, and we took off for The Station.”

And in the next half hour someone entered the Marchand house and murdered Gus Marchand. When his wife was told about the murder, in her panicked haste to return home to be with him, she drove too fast for that narrow, treacherous road with its steep hills. She lost control of her car and ran off the road, and a few hours later she died. What started as a perfect day ended in tragedy. The two Marchand children were orphans.

Barbara frowned at the newspaper; there was nothing in that article that she had not learned from other sources, nothing new, nothing startling. She went through the newspaper page by page; that was the only story concerning the murder. In exasperation she put the newspaper aside, and thought about dinner. Resigned, she went to the refrigerator and found cheese and a tomato, and she saw, to her relief, that she still had some bread.

Tomorrow she would take all those newspapers out, and she would go shopping, stock up. If a videographer came to her place, she thought in disgust, she would be ashamed to let anyone see it. Then she was thinking of Hilde: obsessively neat? Maybe. Loved children. Good administrator. Used romance novels and mysteries for light reading, bathtub reading. Aware that she might have had a shortened life expectancy, and making plans to retire early, save her money, travel… And then falling in love. What a surprise that must have been.

Barbara could well believe a woman like Hilde could fall in love with a man like Wrigley, with his hunger written so plainly on his face. She was drawn to the young, the helpless, children in need. It must have been exciting for her to think of herself as desirable still. Barbara was very much afraid the picture she was drawing of Hilde Franz was one that her father would not even recognize.

27

In some ways
dinner at Frank's house on Saturday was a success. After gaping at Shelley's hair, he praised her extravagantly. He told funny stories, they played with the cats, and his food was fine. He thought both Barbara and Shelley relaxed a little, but he had to admit that they had all been on guard in a way that was unfamiliar and unpleasant. If he had hoped to mend fences, the evening had been a failure, he reflected that night when he was alone again. Those fences would not be mended until after Alex Feldman's trial became history, and possibly not then.

And if the prosecution won, if Alex Feldman was found guilty, then what? Frank sat very still in his study and tried to picture a future in which he and Barbara were polite strangers, a dutiful daughter and an aging father who had nothing much to say to each other. He knew she would appeal a verdict of guilty; she was convinced that her client was innocent, that his guilt or innocence would be determined more by his appearance than by evidence. And he had no reason to doubt that Hilde had seen Alex Feldman on his way to the Marchand place that Friday in June. Or if not that, something else damning, like Minick going there.

For a long time he pondered the difference between knowing brought about by hard evidence and belief sustained by faith alone. Barbara believed in her client as fervently as he believed in Hilde. Gus Marchand had believed in his daughter's innocence, had believed that Alex Feldman was a stalker. What if he had learned about the real boyfriend she spent time with? What if he had come to know that she was sexually active? What would Frank have done if he had known that Barbara had been seduced at that age, corrupted at thirteen?

Kill the son of a bitch, was his automatic response, but he knew he would not have done that. He would have separated them, put her in counseling, moved heaven and earth to get the guy sent up for a long stretch. But what would Gus Marchand have done if he had known? From what Frank had learned about him, it was hard to imagine that he would have lodged a complaint and waited for justice to work. He had been a man who lived by certain standards, biblical standards, which often held the victim of seduction as guilty as the seducer. In the eyes of some, rapist and victim were equally guilty.

Belief could come with as much certainty as knowing, or even more, he well understood. Knowledge based on facts could shift as new facts came to light; scientific experiments could reduce old theories to dust; new paradigms rose with regularity; what one knew on Monday might not be valid on Friday, whereas belief based on faith was immutable. Gus Marchand had made a threat but had not acted on his belief that Alex had stalked Rachel. Had his belief been tainted by doubt?

Or had he been killed to prevent any action? How far would Minick go to protect his young friend? As far as Frank would go to protect Barbara? Maybe, he thought. Maybe.

He realized that both cats had gone into their hunting mode, watching a moth circle the lamp on his desk. Any second one or both might pounce, and there would go the lamp. He turned off the light, then went to stand at his window to gaze at the garden, which turned into a fairyland at night, bathed as it was by ambient city lights. Black and silver, dark and light, deep shadows, glowing whites. And he wished, as he had done as a child addressing unseen fairies, that he and Barbara could end their differences. He wanted her to come home again.

On Sunday morning Barbara and Shelley arrived at the Marchand property at ten. Their runner, Kirby Halleck, was in the driveway when they pulled in. He was a lanky young man dressed in shorts, a tank top, and running shoes, twenty years old, the color of mocha, with big black eyes and very short hair. Barbara and Shelley got out of the car to greet him.

“We have over an hour,” Barbara said, “but I'd like to finish well before that, just in case they come home early. What I'd like to do is have you go with us to the place where the boys stopped to let Daniel out. We'll use a stopwatch. You run up to the front door, turn around and run back, and then run in place until four minutes and thirty-two seconds have elapsed. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said. He smiled. His teeth were very white and regular. “I already looked over the orchard and the front yard. I'm ready.”

With all three of them in her car, Barbara drove to the bridge, turned and drove back to the spot where the boys had stopped. Kirby got out and flexed one leg, then the other. Shelley held a stopwatch, and Barbara said, “Go.” As soon as he started to run, she began to back up to turn the car around, the way the boys had done the day of the murder. “Here comes a car,” she said, and pulled over again, then started the same maneuver once more. “Another car,” she said, and pulled back where she had been. The next time, backing and filling, she got the car turned around, heading toward the bridge over Opal Creek. She picked up a second stopwatch, and they waited for Kirby to appear. It was only a few seconds before he was back at the car and Barbara started her watch. Kirby ran in place until Shelley said, “Time.” He stopped, grinning at them; he was sweating profusely, only slightly out of breath.

“Okay?” Barbara asked him.

“Piece of cake,” he said.

She showed him the watches, made a note of the times, and asked him to sign it. He had run in place for forty-five seconds. That was about how much time Daniel had had in the house that day, she thought glumly. Not even a minute.

Two weeks later when Frank entered his office and Patsy brought in the mail, she said, “A Dr. Wrigley called to see if you have time to talk to him today or tomorrow. I said I would call back.” She placed the mail on his desk.

Frank glanced at his watch: ten o'clock. “See if he can make it at eleven,” he said. “Or two this afternoon.” As soon as she left, he opened his desk drawer and removed a small tape recorder, checked the batteries, and put it in the top desk drawer, which he left open a crack. The recorder was voice-activated. Then he leaned back to think about Wrigley, and brought to mind what Barbara had said about him: a young and hungry Frank Sinatra. He was forty-one, Frank reminded himself, with a wife and three children now. He began to look through his mail.

Wrigley looked even younger than Frank had anticipated, like a graduate student, dressed in a sweater, blue jeans, and Birkenstocks. His students probably appeared more mature than he did. They shook hands, then Frank motioned toward one of the clients' chairs and seated himself behind his desk.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Wrigley fidgeted as if the chair were uncomfortable; Frank knew it wasn't and waited. “I guess I need some advice,” Wrigley said. “I thought I had this all figured out, what to say, I mean, and now, I just don't know where to start.”

“Advice about what?” Frank said. “That might be a starting point.”

“How to change a statement I made to the police, or even if I should change it, I guess.” He looked at Frank with a helpless expression, like a child waiting to be patted on the head.

“Go on.”

“Right. See, they asked me about my relationship with Hilde Franz, and I didn't tell them the whole story. I know you represented Hilde, so I thought you could tell me what to do.”

“Before you continue, I have to remind you that there's no attorney-client bond of confidentiality between us.”

Wrigley ran both hands through his hair, then leaned forward and said, “I understand. But I have to talk about this with someone. It's driving me crazy.”

Frank nodded. “All right. What was your relationship with Hilde?”

“Let me start farther back. To when we came to Eugene, Rhondi and I, with our son. Three years ago. We decided New York was not a good place to bring up a family. I looked around and put out feelers, and landed a tenured professorship at the university here. We were both happy about that. Exactly the kind of town we were looking for.”

He was leaning forward, speaking fast, his gaze on Frank intent, unwavering, yearning for something. “We got busy, civic affairs, a social life; everything was just what we had wanted. I joined the hospital committee and met Hilde there. I liked her; she was intelligent, funny, knowledgeable…. That's all it was, a friendship forming. Then I went to Philadelphia to give a paper, and to my amazement she turned up in the audience. It seemed that she had a teachers' association conference or something at the same time. I had mentioned that I'd be giving the paper, and she had finished with her business and decided to attend my talk, which was open to the public. We had dinner. That's all. I attended the rest of the conference, and I assumed she just came on back home, and never gave it another thought.”

He was squirming, crossing his legs, uncrossing them, running his hands through his hair, and always regarding Frank with that same expectant look, as if waiting for approval, acceptance.

“That was nearly two years ago. A few weeks later I got a note from her, sort of a love letter, I guess. Not signed, just her initial, no return address. I threw it away. When I saw her at the committee meeting, she didn't mention it or Philadelphia. She seemed just the same as she had been before, friendly, no more than that, and I decided a student must have sent the note. I gave her a ride a few times, and it was okay, friendly, nothing more. But she turned up again, in Los Angeles, where I was on a panel at UCLA. I confronted her this time, and she admitted that it was on purpose, she had followed me. I told her to knock it off.”

He stood up and began to walk about the room jerkily, now and then turning to look at Frank, as he continued.

“She was stalking me. I couldn't believe it, but she was. She wrote me notes. She sent me a tie, and a book. She would turn up places where she had no business, and never a sign of any of it at the committee meetings. I told Rhondi, of course, and she thought it was funny, this old woman stalking me.”

“But you kept giving her rides?”

“Yes. She would bring it up at the meeting, that she was without wheels, and ask if I could drop her off. I didn't know what to say or do. It would have looked funny if I'd said no, and each time she asked if I could pick her up or drop her at her place, it got more awkward. But I didn't know how to get out of it, so I gave her a ride sometimes.”

“Is that what you told the police?”

Wrigley shook his head and slumped down in the chair again. “This is what frightens me,” he said. “I told them she and Rhondi exchanged books, that I took some books back for my wife, but that isn't true. The last time I gave Hilde a ride home, she had a lot of things to carry, and I helped carry books inside for her. She was upset that night, and asked me to stay and talk a few minutes. She was talking about the murder out at Opal Creek. She said Feldman did it, that she saw him going toward Marchand's house, but she didn't want to be the one to nail him for it. I told her to go to the police.

“I was getting up to leave and she asked me to take the books to the shelves in the bedroom, so I took them in there, and she lunged at me. She begged me to love her just a little, and promised she would leave me alone after that, if I would just love her a little. It… it sickened me. I went into her bathroom and washed my hands, and got out of there. That was the last time I ever saw her.”