Identical (22 page)

“We could ask for costs.”

“What are costs?”

“About two, three hundred dollars,” said Mel. “Filing fees. Witness fees on the subpoenas.”

“I don’t want two hundred dollars,” Hal said. “I want his DNA. He’s hiding something.”

“You can certainly say that. Scream it out loud. I’m sure Cia over at the agency can design some great ads that make that point.”

“I’m not letting him get away with it.”

“With what?” asked Tooley.

“Hiding whatever he’s hiding.”

“Hal, what could he be hiding if the test is 99 percent likely to be inconclusive? Don’t smoke your own dope.”

Hal’s bulging eyes ran back and forth behind his glasses as he considered his friend’s advice.

“I want the DNA.”

Mel dropped his glance to his hands, then tried another approach.

“Hal, you won. Don’t you see this? You won this motion. You made a convincing case that this guy knows more than he’s telling. And Paul said uncle. Accept victory, Hal. Celebrate for a second.”

“This isn’t a victory,” Hal insisted. “I want to know what Paul Gianis had to do with my sister’s murder. I want the DNA. You should do something. I’m the client. Those are my orders. Do something.”

“Maybe I can think of something after the YourHouse closing.”

“No, now,” said Hal. “This is even more important than YourHouse. The corporate lawyers can fill in for you.”

Tooley and Tim left Hal’s office together. Evon stayed behind to brief Hal on her progress with her to-do list for the YourHouse closing.

“Jesus Christ,” said Mel, as soon as the door was closed. “Hal’s been my friend since we were six years old, but he’s never known when enough was enough. I swear to God, in high school, he’d ask the same girl out six times and be surprised every single time she said no.”

“The only part I don’t get,” said Tim, “is that dropping the suit seems sure to do Paul more damage than the test probably will. It’s just strange thinking.”

“Maybe Paul’s like me,” Tooley said. “And Hal’s made him crazy.”

Mel shook his head again and advanced to the elevator.

Du Bois Lands’s gray eyes rose from the paper he was holding on the bench. The rest of his body did not move. The judge read aloud:

“Defendant Kronon’s Emergency Objection to Plaintiff’s Motion for Voluntary Nonsuit.”

It was the morning following Lands’s ruling, February 21.

“Yes,” replied Tooley from the podium. Ray Horgan was beside him, elbow to elbow with Mel. From behind, both men seemed to have the solid, indifferent mass of cattle. In the rows to the rear of Tim, the courtroom was full, although not with the same swarm of spectators that the lawsuit had been drawing. Everybody here today was in a gray or blue suit. They had to be lawyers.

“Explain,” said the judge to Tooley.

“Your Honor, Mr. Kronon is objecting to Senator Gianis’s efforts to avoid taking this critical DNA test. We think the Court should hold his motion to dismiss in abeyance, until he has provided DNA and the test has been performed as the Court ordered. He’s trying to thwart your ruling.”

Horgan started to bluster, but the judge calmed him by raising a hand.

“Mr. Tooley, Senator Gianis is doing what the law allows, isn’t he?”

“He’s hiding something,” said Tooley. Tim saw Hal pump his fist beneath the counsel table from which he was watching eagerly.

“That’s your interpretation. There are other interpretations as well. I don’t care about interpretations. I’m just the umpire. I’m calling balls and strikes. The law is the law, Mr. Tooley. If you have a problem with the senator’s motion to nonsuit this case, take it up with the legislature. Your objection is going to be denied.”

“Well, Your Honor, before you rule, we’re also seeking alternative relief.”

“Which is?”

“We would like enforcement of the subpoenas which were stayed pending your ruling on the DNA motion. Once you ruled, those subpoenas became enforceable and we’d like the evidence produced.”

This time Horgan succeeded in butting in.

“Judge, that’s ridiculous. If there’s no lawsuit, there are no subpoenas.”

The judge took a second.

“No,” he said in reply to Horgan. “I get what he’s arguing. It’s timing. The subpoenas were enforceable before your motion for dismissal. What evidence are we talking about?”

Tooley had a list. First, there was the subpoena to Paul to produce a DNA specimen; second, to Cass to produce fingerprints; third, to the state police to produce all physical evidence in their possession, most of which had been collected at the crime scene, including the blood spatters by the French door and the blood standards taken from various people. There was a similar subpoena to Greenwood County, in case anything had been missed in the production they’d already made.

Ray interjected. “Judge, they’re just trying to do the same test on their own.”

Du Bois cracked the slightest smile at the caginess of the ploy.

“Again, Mr. Horgan. It’s just balls and strikes to me. What does the law require? All I want to do is answer that question. That’s why I get the big bucks.” In a world where some of the lawyers who appeared before the bench made multiple millions, judges frequently offered ironic remarks about their salaries, which seemed picayune by comparison.

Du Bois sat a second longer as he pondered.

“OK, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to finish up this lawsuit. But not today. If you gentlemen look behind you, you will see that there’s a courtroom full of lawyers here for my Thursday motion call. And many of those attorneys have clients who are paying them to sit here. So we’re not wasting any more of other people’s time or money. We’re going to set this over for a week. I want all of the addressees of those subpoenas, or their representatives, in court, with the evidence Mr. Kronon is seeking. And I want simultaneous briefs from plaintiff and defendant on the issue of whether those subpoenas can be enforced as a matter of law. And we’ll thrash all of that out next Thursday. If the subpoenas, any of them, remain valid, the evidence will be handed over right here. And then, Mr. Tooley and Mr. Horgan, much as I have enjoyed visiting with both of you, we are all going to be done with this lawsuit, and I will look forward to seeing you both on other occasions.”

The judge banged his gavel and told his clerk to call the next case.

Shirley Wilhite,” said the voice on Tim’s cell phone, the next morning. “Bet you thought I forgot about you.” It was about 11 a.m., and Tim was settled in the sun-room, reading more of his book on the Greek myths, while Kai Winding tooted along from the phonograph. His first thought was that Shirley had to be another widow-they phoned all the time with every imaginable angle, anything from a casserole too delicious not to share or women who claimed they were returning
his
call. “They took forever getting those records from storage. Everybody thinks they have too much to do. That’s what’s wrong with this country, if you ask me.”

He talked to her another second, feeling, as he often did, that he was playing from behind. Then it came to him: She was from the ring company in Utah.

“Lucky we were still using paper back then,” said Shirley Wilhite. “Five years later, we had everything on floppy disks. Remember them? Try finding somebody who can make sense of those things. Easton College, right? What was your nephew’s name?”

“Gianis.” He spelled it. In Utah, Paul’s name meant nothing. “Not really my nephew, by the way. I just call him that.”

“Oh sure. I’m Auntie Shirley to half my neighbors’ kids.”

“Exactly.”

“OK.” She took a second. “We got two of them.”

“Twin boys. I’m looking for Paul.”

“OK. All right, well, he bought two rings.”

“Two?”

“Let me look here. Yeah. One a man’s, one a woman’s. Same model. The J46 with emblem. Now I need the catalog.” He heard her clattering around. “No, we don’t make it any more. I think the K106 might look the most like it. I’m going to send you pictures. You use a computer?”

“Some.”

“Well, the current catalog is online. But I’ll send you copies of the old catalog, so you know what he had. Got a fax number?”

“Can you give me pictures of the woman’s ring, also? Maybe he’ll want to replace both. And if it’s not too much trouble, send the order form, too. Maybe he’ll want to make a claim for insurance.”

“Not a problem. Happy to help.”

Two rings? He considered that. Late in the afternoon, he was on his way into Center City to pick up the faxes, which he’d directed to ZP. He passed Georgia Lazopoulos’s house and on impulse parked and rang the bell.

She stared at him through the storm door. Her dark raccoony eyes and the rest of her heavy face instantly took on a glum reproachful weight.

“You said you wouldn’t bother me again.” Her voice was muffled by the glass, but clear. She was dressed as she had been when they’d been here last time, in pink stretch pants and a dowdy ruffled top.

“I just need to ask you one question about that class ring Paul wore.”

“Paul didn’t wear a class ring,” she answered, and closed the door.

She had been a sweet-natured young woman, at least as much as Tim had seen of her. It was a wonder sometimes what life did to people. He started down the stoop, then reconsidered, and climbed back up and rang again. Nothing to lose.

“You told us he wore a class ring,” he said, as soon as the door opened.

“No, I didn’t. And frankly I wish I hadn’t told you anything. You made a fool out of me, you and that woman who was with you. There isn’t a person around here that doesn’t think I was crazy to let you make that tape. I sound like a vengeful old witch.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” said Tim, “not to us. Or to you for that matter.”

“Everybody’s mad at me. They think I went out of my way to do Paul dirty. Even Cass showed up here to give me a piece of his mind.”

“Cass did?” It was the first Tim had heard of anybody seeing Cass since the day he’d left prison. “When did that happen?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A few days after the ad went on television. He wanted me to talk to their lawyers, and I said I wasn’t making that mistake twice. He just stood where you’re standing and said, ‘There’s nothing for him to say, Georgia, except that he’s sorry you’re still so hurt.’ He made me feel this small.” Her hand came up for a second.

“But he didn’t say anything on that commercial was untrue, did he?”

She didn’t answer, but brooded. Her fingers had never left the knob to her front door and now she started to close it again.

“Wait,” said Tim. “I don’t understand about the ring.” He was afraid the confrontation with Cass had turned her around. She would disavow everything she’d told them before. “I know he bought one.”

“That’s what you asked me-did Paul buy a ring like Cass? And I said he did.”

“Seems he bought two, actually. I thought he must have given you the other one, because the second was for a woman.”

“No, that was Lidia’s. She’d always sworn her sons were going to be educated, even though there wasn’t anybody in her family or Mickey’s who’d been to college. She never made any secret that she wished she’d gone. So the twins thought it would be sweet to get her a class ring. They knew their mom. I think Lidia showed the damn thing to every person she met for the next ten years.”

Georgia, of course, hadn’t gone to college either. Tim couldn’t guess if it was Lidia, always a strong personality, or the ring that spurred her bitterness.

“And Paul wore the other one, right?”

She looked through the door with a purely hateful expression for one moment and then turned away without a word, leaving Tim on the cold concrete. He more or less thought he was expected to go, but she’d left the front door open, and so he waited in the freezing air, hoping she might return-which she finally did. When she arrived, she snatched the storm door open and reached out to drop something in his palm. It was the ring. There was a large red stone in the center, with the numbers 19 and 79 raised from the embossed design on either side.

“See? You can have that for all I care. Paul gave it to me when he graduated. I wore it around my neck on a chain. Remember when girls used to do that? It wasn’t the ring I wanted, but it was a step in the right direction, I thought. Stupid me.”

“So he didn’t have the ring when Dita was killed?”

“Jesus, Tim. Are you listening? I had the ring. I was wearing it. I wore it most places and I sure as hell was going to wear it to the church picnic with all those other girls sniffing around Paul. As far as I know, Paul has never had that ring on his hand in his entire life. He didn’t like rings or jewelry. He thought that kind of stuff wasn’t for guys. I could barely get him to wear a watch.”

Tim looked down at the ring, then back at Georgia, whose face had darkened again. She heaved a great sigh and opened the storm door once more, but only briefly enough to snatch the ring back. With that, she wheeled and slammed the door behind her.

“No ring,” said Evon. They sat in her office. She had one shoe on a trash can as a footrest. “Didn’t she tell us Paul wore a ring?”

He told her Georgia’s version and she nodded. “She’s right. She said Paul bought a ring like Cass. But you’d have thought she would have told us what became of it.”

Tim looked askance at her. No woman he knew was going to volunteer that a fella had kept her on the string three more years with a class ring instead of a diamond. Evon got his point.

“Besides,” Tim said, “she probably didn’t understand the significance. As loose as that investigation was, I don’t think there was much in the papers about Dita’s bruise pattern or what it meant.”

“So Paul didn’t wear a ring, and Cass did,” Evon said by way of recapitulation.