Desperate Measures (34 page)

“Come in and sit down. I'll tell you,” she said.

She sat down opposite her father; her legs were aching and her back hurt. “I can't find anyone else to finger,” she said slowly. “There were enemies, but I can't find one who had the free time that evening. Hilde is out. I think that's what she came to realize when she read their story in the newspaper, that the boys had seen her, and since they were there for under five minutes, she was home free. Maybe that's what she wanted to tell you. Maybe she called Wrigley and told him that. Anyway, she's out. And she couldn't have seen Alex or Dr. Minick go that way. Anyone leaving that house on foot would have been out of sight from someone on the driveway.”

She stood up again and walked to her desk, back. Frank wanted to catch her and force her into a chair, but he knew better. He watched her and waited.

“I keep coming back to Daniel or Leona,” she said, “and I can't make it work. Daniel was in the house less than a minute. Even if Gus was the tyrannical father he appeared to be, Daniel was on his way out with a scholarship. He would get a driver's license in a few weeks. What possibly could have happened in less than a minute that could result in murder? The condoms? I can imagine a scene over them, but a scene takes a little time to develop, and there wasn't even a little. Less than a minute. And if they had come up as an issue, why didn't Daniel take them with him?” She shifted a paper or two on her desk, not looking at them.

“Leona,” she said. “All morning she was the dutiful housewife, then school for hours. Back home to heat the meal, make a salad, set the table, pour his milk. At least half an hour, maybe longer. Then a bath, dress, back down. Even if he had brought up the birth-control pills, that doesn't seem to be enough to start a fight that resulted almost instantly in murder. Wouldn't she have said, We'll talk about it later, or something like that? From all accounts his abuse was emotional, not physical; she had no reason to fear him physically. I keep thinking that if she had enough courage to protect herself with birth-control pills, she must have had enough courage to defend that decision.”

She sank down onto the sofa and drew in a breath.

“Leave it alone for now,” Frank said. “You're tired, and it's after ten. You haven't eaten, your brain is starved for food. Let's go to my place. I'll feed you and you can go to bed. Let it simmer until morning.”

She nodded, stood up once more and began to gather up the stacks of papers on the table, then other stacks on her desk, everything in piles according to the subject.

She was putting things away in her safe when Frank said, “Sometimes no one ever finds out who did it, and all you can hope for is to keep the innocent from taking the blame.”

She closed and locked the safe, thinking, And what if the prosecution proves that no one except the innocent defendant could have done it?

30

After dinner Saturday,
Frank began telling lawyer jokes; he had an endless supply of them, Barbara well knew. “So Michelangelo is at the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter says, ‘What did you ever do that lets you in?' ‘I painted pictures, sir.' ‘A lot of people paint pictures. Not good enough.' ‘I did some sculpting.' ‘You didn't even finish the Pieta. What else?' Michelangelo is getting desperate now, and he says, ‘I studied law but I never practiced.' Saint Peter swings the gate open and says, ‘Welcome, son.'”

Alex laughed, then said, “That was a wonderful dinner, Mr. Holloway. Thanks. I'll do the cleanup.”

“See,” Frank said to Minick. “Can't call me Frank. I think you know you're becoming a fossil when everyone under fifty calls you ‘mister.'”

“I remember when he called me Graham for the first time,” Dr. Minick said. “I was sitting on a rock over by John Day. We'd been hiking, looking at petroglyphs, and I was worn out. He said, ‘Graham, don't move a muscle.' I thought he wanted to take a picture or something, but I didn't move, and then we both watched a rattlesnake slither within inches of my hand on the rock.”

Shelley finished her coffee and stood up. “I'll help Alex.” They both picked up dishes and carried them out. Frank and Dr. Minick watched them, and Barbara watched Frank. He knew, too, she thought. Frank glanced at her, and she nodded slightly; he drew in a long breath and shook his head.

“I wonder if Gus got past those Pearly Gates,” she said.

“No way,” Dr. Minick said. “Or at least not in any heaven I'd run. He was a misogynist, and that alone would disqualify him.”

She hadn't thought of that, but it fitted in with what she had learned about him. First his wife, then his daughter, who had ceased being a sexless child and had turned into a woman. It explained a lot, she thought. Suddenly she felt as if somewhere within her head a different gate had swung open, and jumbles of images and thoughts, snippets of statements came pouring out in a chaotic mass.

She was aware that her father and Dr. Minick continued a conversation, but she had no idea of what they had been discussing, when Frank's voice grounded her again. “Bobby, have you heard a word?”

She blinked, then looked in surprise at the table, completely cleared; Alex and Shelley had returned to the dining room, and Dr. Minick was standing by his chair regarding her with interest.

“I wanted to say good night,” Dr. Minick said. “We'll be leaving now.”

Hastily she stood up. “Me, too,” she said. “Thanks for your help today. It really was a tremendous help to me. And, Dad, dinner was super, as always. I have to run.”

Frank nodded. He knew that she would walk miles that night while she sorted through whatever idea had occurred to her. This time, at least, she was fortified with a good meal.

As soon as she left, Dr. Minick said to Frank, “I've seen that same kind of absence come over Alex, that same kind of going away, sometimes in the middle of one of my stories, in fact. The creative process, I believe.”

Alex nodded. “I don't know how it is with her,” he said. “But with me, it's as if the ghost of an idea casts a shadow over other thoughts, over whatever else is happening around me, and if I don't catch it immediately, it will vanish and probably never come back. At least, that's the fear that comes with it. Catch it when it comes, or lose it forever.” Then he said quite candidly, “Will Thaxton's the only lawyer I've known until now. I never suspected an attorney would go through the same kind of mental gymnastics that I do.”

Barbara re-sorted papers, studied her time chart and the map of the Opal Creek area, and she walked. Then she nearly bumped into Shelley, who was standing outside her own office.

“What I want,” Barbara said, “is for you to go through all those statements you got from the Opal Creek teachers, and-” She looked at Shelley, then at her watch, and frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to tell me what you want,” Shelley said.

“How long have you been here?”

“A little bit. I left my door open, but you didn't notice, so I came out. What do you want me to do with those statements?”

Barbara turned and motioned Shelley to come along, and they went to her office. “I think I've pulled all the teachers' statements, but there could be others. Do you still have them on your computer?”

“Sure, and I kept hard copies. I have them all.”

“Good. We were concentrating on the teachers and Rachel, and on Hilde and Gus, not really paying much attention to what anyone had to say about Leona. A mistake. I'm afraid you'll have to go back and dig a little more. About Leona, the day of the graduation. How she was before she went back home to make dinner, how she was afterward, what she said, whatever you can dig out. I don't think anyone ever asked if there was anyone besides Gus at the house when she returned that day. Concentrate on her this time. Can do?”

“You bet. You think she might have known something that just hasn't come up before?”

“I don't know what I think right now. That's a possibility. Let's explore it.”

On Sunday Barbara dropped in at Frank's an hour before dinner. He eyed the plastic bag she was carrying.

“You're into toys now?”

“Yep. Toy cars. Want to see?”

She opened the bag and brought out three model cars, all to scale, she had been assured at the store. She also had a newsprint drawing pad and a Magic Marker. At the dinette table she put two of the cars down side by side on a sheet of the paper. “I think that's about right. Old Opal Creek Road, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, wouldn't you say?”

“I would.”

She drew parallel lines allowing not much space between them. Then she drew a few circles outside one of the lines. “Boulders,” she said. On the other side she drew a wavy line. “The shallow ditch, with the orchard on the other side of it.”

Frank nodded.

“Okay. I come to a stop here to let Daniel out,” she said, and placed the little red car at the spot. “I start the watch ticking, and begin to make my turn to head out the way I came in.” She backed up the car, turning it. Then she moved it forward, back again, each time turning it as much as space allowed. “I don't want to get into the ditch and the orchard,” she murmured. “And I sure don't want to ding my car on the boulders. Whoops, here comes a car.” She placed the blue car on the road. “It's quicker to go back to where I was than it is to finish making my turn, so back I go.” She maneuvered the car back to its original position, then rolled the blue car along until it passed the red car, removed it. “Leona,” she said.

She repeated the sequence, this time placing the green car on the road before the red car could complete the turn. She returned it to the original position. “Hilde,” she said, moving the green car past the red car.

“Now, finally the road is clear and I can finish turning around.” With much backing and filling of the red car, she turned it around to head toward New Opal Creek Road. “And the whole thing took me four minutes,” she said, leaning back.

“During the first minute and forty-five seconds, give or take a second or two, Daniel was running toward the house. If he met Leona there, and she left instantly and drove ten miles an hour, she would not have reached that point for another minute and a half, and that's not taking into account the driveway of two hundred feet, or stopping to make her turn onto the road. So Daniel's minute and forty-five seconds plus her minute and a half come to three minutes and fifteen seconds. And that means that they had only forty-five seconds to abort the maneuver when Hilde showed up, and then make a complete turn. According to Bakken, Hilde followed Leona by about a minute. The boys would have been turned already and into the countdown of the last sixty seconds. It won't work.”

“Where do those numbers come from?” he asked.

She told him about the article in the newspaper. “I dug out the boys' statements, and they confirmed the sob-story account. That's the newspaper that was on Hilde's sofa the night she was killed. I think that's what she realized, that it couldn't have happened like that. There wasn't time for Daniel to see his mother at the house, and for Leona to get to that point when the boys said she did.”

“Daniel lied,” Frank said.

She nodded. “Daniel lied all right. Now the question is, Why?”

“Why the devil didn't the investigators spot that discrepancy?”

She shrugged. “For the same reason we didn't. We were all too intent on the other aspect of that time slot, proving that no one but Alex or Dr. Minick had time to get to the house that day. You see what you expect to see, and they expected to see evidence proving Alex guilty. Once you find what you're looking for, the search is over.”

Frank put two cars side by side on the road again, then moved one back and forth with one finger. “She could have been driving faster than ten miles an hour.”

“Bakken and the inspector said about ten, maybe fifteen, but they thought closer to ten. Even at fifteen miles an hour, it would have been a minute, again not counting time to get out of the house, down the driveway, and make her turn. And she would have slowed way down when she saw the boys' car on the road ahead. Tomorrow I'm sending Bailey and two other guys out to reenact the whole thing, with a stopwatch and a videographer. He'll have to find out what kind of car the boys were driving, and get something comparable.”

Frank stopped playing with the car. “It still doesn't change the time slot or the fact that Daniel had less than a minute in the house.”

“I know. It could be that he was simply afraid someone might accuse him of parricide, and he used her as an alibi. If she was there, he couldn't have done anything. But it's always interesting when a key witness is caught lying. It tends to open new avenues of thought. For instance, if that was what Hilde realized and called to tell you, how did she regard it? It would have signaled to her that she could not be considered a suspect. She must have felt relieved. Enough to call Wrigley and tell him she was off the hook, she would not be investigated, after all, and they had nothing to worry about?”

Frank was remembering the look on Hilde's face when she talked about her affair, how she had closed her eyes and talked in a monotone, and how he had misread her all the way. Protecting her lover, undoubtedly, but also protecting herself, hiding her shame at an affair with a young married man with a family. She would have been relieved to be off the hook, he knew, and happy, even overjoyed, at the prospect of salvaging that tryst in San Francisco.

“She would have called him,” he said. “She had been living at such a high level of anxiety, it would have been her first thought. She was in love, Bobby, not entirely rational, I suspect. And if he was ready to end things, and for a time thought a possible investigation was his opportunity to walk away without blame, that call would have been the last thing he wanted to hear.”