The Disappearance (35 page)

De La Guerra taps Luke on the forearm. “In light of which,” he says, “I think Emma’s being pregnant makes your job harder, not easier. If she hadn’t been, that whole side of the story wouldn’t exist. No one would have ever known she was having sex, and it wouldn’t have added this bad element.”

Luke nods. “He knocked her up, she was going to bust him one way or the other, he had to kill her. I know Logan’s going to hammer that.” Darkly: “He should. I would.”

One week to go. Luke and Allison confab in the jail. Luke has been stopping in every day for the past two weeks, more to touch base with his client and bolster his spirits than to glean any new information—there is none, that he can figure out. He discusses his strategy with Allison, not for input, but so that his client will know where they’re heading and feel like he’s part of his own defense.

It’s evening, around nine o’clock. Luke prefers seeing Allison late, after he’s finished his work for the day, when the jail is quiet. Riva’s back at the house, patiently waiting dinner on him. They haven’t seen much of each other these past few weeks. He’s up early, poring over his material. A little time in the morning before taking off (the sheriff’s deputy dutifully following his truck down the hill), passing each other in the office, late-night dinner, always in the house. They haven’t been out for weeks.

He’s started to compose his opening statement; he’ll finish it the day after jury selection is completed. He wants to give himself some flexibility, not so much in the content of his remarks as in how he delivers them. It will depend partially on what the prosecution says, since they’ll go first, and more important on the makeup of the jury, and how well he succeeds in seating people he thinks he can reach. He’s realistic about his prospects for an outright acquittal, given the sentiment against Allison. But a hung jury, one or two hardy souls who have the
cojones
to withstand the pressure from the majority, is not a totally unreasonable expectation.

He and Allison sit across the table from each other in the putrid room. “How’re you holding up?” he asks his client, who doesn’t look bad, just dulled, institutionally anesthetized.

The prisoner shrugs. “I’m coping—one long day at a time. But I hate it,” he says in a surge of anger. Then he slumps back, emotionally exhausted. “I’ll sure be glad when the trial starts. At least I’ll have someplace to go to, instead of sitting in that shitty little cell.” He cracks his knuckles, another nervous gesture he’s developed since his arrest. “How’re we doing?”

“Okay,” Luke says. He voices an idea he’s been kicking around in his mind for the past few weeks. “When you and Emma got together, did she ever talk about
one
man in particular. Or a boy? Someone she might have been romantically involved with?”

Allison shakes his head. “No. She never talked about that.” He smiles. “She wanted to hear about my love life, though.”

Luke nods. “Do you think she might have had any suspicion that you and her mother were getting it on?”

Allison starts to answer no, then stops and thinks. “I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure.” Continuing, he says, “I don’t think she thought of Glenna with any man, except Doug. To Emma, Glenna was like any other mother, a pain in the butt who got on her case too much, even though Glenna gave Emma a lot of liberty for a kid her age. Her mother having sex appeal? Emma wouldn’t have thought that way.”

“Why not?” Luke counters. “Kids will talk to outsiders about problems before they talk to their mothers or fathers. Especially when the parent is part of the problem.”

When he was a young assistant D.A., way back when, he worked juvenile cases for a few years. It was a sobering experience. Kids he had never met, who had been in his presence for five minutes, would say things to him they would never tell their parents.

He remembers back to one situation that he handled as a deputy D.A. A seventeen-year-old girl confessed to her mother that she’d been sexually abused by the mother’s boyfriend for four years. The mother hadn’t known, hadn’t had a clue. She tried to kill the boyfriend. He’d had to prosecute her. He had lost that case, one of the few he had lost. It had been a happy loss.

Allison ponders that stark notion. “I guess I can’t say
no
for sure,” he admits. “I do know she had strong suspicions about her father. That he was fooling around behind Glenna’s back.” What he’s said registers in the silence that follows. “I should talk,” he says ruefully.

“She talked about that? Doug stepping out on his marriage?”

Allison nods. “Not straight out, but by strong innuendo. She would say things like ‘He’s gone to L.A. again, and Mom’s here alone.’ Stuff like that. She’d have an edge in her voice.”

“Do you have any idea whether or not she ever confronted him?”

The prisoner snorts. “Are you serious? A daughter confronting a father as formidable as Doug Lancaster? He was a great guy to work for, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t fuck with the alpha dog. I can’t imagine anyone throwing something like that in his face, especially his own daughter, who idolized him even when she was angry with him.” He pauses. “Is my affair with Glenna going to come out into the open?”

Luke raises an eyebrow—how did we jump to this? The subject is obviously on Allison’s mind. “I don’t know yet. It makes her look bad, but it makes you look bad too. I’ll have to see how that one unfolds.”

“I still care about her,” Allison says. “She’s been hurt a lot already. I’d hate to see her get hurt anymore, if she doesn’t have to.”

“That’s not your concern, Joe. You take care of you. And I take care of you. Glenna Lancaster has to take care of herself.”

“I hope it doesn’t have to come out. It’s not about who killed Emma.”

“You don’t know that,” Luke admonished him sharply. “I’m a professional at this, so let me do my job, okay?” Fucking civilians. “Everything and anything that involves that family is fair game, and I’ll use any of it if it helps me help you. So again—forget about her. Your only concern is you. Tattoo that on your forehead, so you see it every morning when you look in the mirror.” He rises. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Stay calm. We’re getting somewhere. It isn’t hopeless.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Good afternoon.” He pauses. “My name is Luke Garrison. I am the attorney for the defendant, Joe Allison.” He hesitates. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Luke Garrison, and I am Joe Allison’s lawyer. Joe Allison being the defendant in this case.” Another hesitation. “Shit.”

Riva, watching him from the kitchen while preparing a seafood salad for dinner, breaks out laughing. “What are you doing?”

“Royally fucking up my opening statement.” He’s standing in the middle of the living room, a fistful of four-by-six cards in hand.

“You’re rehearsing it?” she asks, astonished. “You’ve done hundreds of these. You ought to know how by now.”

“I
do
know how,” he says, feeling defensive. “But this is different. It’s here, and it’s huge, and I’m sitting on the other side of the aisle from where I always used to sit. Talk about life in a fishbowl. I feel like I’m going to be standing naked in front of the courthouse at high noon.”

“In that case, pull in your gut,” she chides him. “You’re sagging, lover.”

He pinches his waist. “What’re you talking about? I’m in great shape. For a seventy-year-old man.”

She laughs again. “You’re in great shape, period. Great enough for me.”

He tosses the note cards onto the coffee table. “I know how to do this. The more I rehearse, the worse it’s going to get. Wooden and predictable. I know what I’m going to say.” He comes into the kitchen. “You’re cooking,” he comments. He’s so wrapped up in his own cocoon he’s unconscious of everything going on around him.

“Making a salad hardly qualifies as cooking. I’m giving takeout the night off.” She turns to him. “We used to have a real life. Drinks on the porch, dinner with candles, back rubs. And sex. We don’t have much sex these days.”

“I’m too busy for sex,” he grouses. It’s true; it’s been longer than a week. “Besides, I was too sore from my wound.”

She puts down the salad utensils, wipes her hands on a dish towel. “Your wound has healed. And you can’t be that busy, not twenty-four hours a day. You left that rat-race life. Or have you forgotten?”

He takes her face in his hands, stares at her. God, how he’s come to love this face. “No. I haven’t forgotten.”

Their lovemaking is almost dreamlike in its near quiescence. She takes the lead, making sure she avoids touching hard the place on his side where he was shot. There is a small scar-hole in his side, a battle wound that will be a reminder for the rest of his life.

Lying together, she lightly traces her finger around the scar tissue, which is redder than the rest of him and protruding, a ridgeline etched in hair. “What does it feel like now?” she asks.

“It doesn’t. There is no feeling.” All the nerves were desensitized. “Like rubber, would be the closest description.” He can imagine, in a small way, what it would feel like to be paralyzed and have that nonfeeling all over. The loss of connection to yourself. It almost happened.

They eat their dinner on the balcony. In the down-below distance are the lights of the city, the harbor, the offshore oil rigs: an earthly firmament. “Are you nervous?” she asks. She’s never seen him nervous, not about work. But he’s never cared about it before like this, either.

He nods. “I’ve got to be great.”

“You will be.”

“We’re both on trial. Allison and me.”

“You’ll be great,” she reiterates.

He puts down his fork. “I can’t lose this.” His throat is starting to tighten, he almost feels like he’s going to have a panic attack. Like he felt months ago, when he saw Polly with her pregnant belly and her husband and child down by the harbor.

She stares at him. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I can’t lose this. It’s hit me.
I cannot lose this case
. Shit!”

“Luke.” Her appetite’s gone. She might as well throw her plate over the edge for the coyotes. “That’s not what this is about. Winning or losing.”

He shakes his head in disagreement. “No. It is.”

“It isn’t, goddamn it!” She’s practically shouting. “You knew coming into this that the odds were against you. Overwhelmingly. You did it as a favor, you did it for the money, you did it to show them you weren’t afraid to be here, you did it to get over your ex-wife, you did it for a gazillion reasons,
but you did not do it because you thought you could win
! So knock off the bullshitting yourself! This is about you coming back to your world, not this case. No one expects you to win this.”

He stares at her across the table. “That’s why I have to.”

Her nerves are fraying, too. She’s been feeling weird for the past few weeks, her appetite’s been irregular, sometimes she’s starving, other times the idea of food is repellent. And she isn’t sleeping soundly. From his shooting, she’s sure that’s what it is. “Luke, you don’t have to win,” she says, finding calmness within herself. Forcing it. “You’ve already won.”

“I shouldn’t have done this. I knew I shouldn’t have. I let goddamn Freddie De La Guerra shame me into it.” The anxiety’s flowing from him like spring runoff.

“Then you should’ve quit when whoever it was tried to kill you. That was the time. Everybody in the world wanted you to, then. Now it’s too late,” she says in resignation. “The pity of it.”

“That’s not it.” He won’t take off the hair shirt. “It’s the case itself. I should have stayed away, like I wanted to.”

“Uh-uh.” She shakes her head. “You didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t want to come back with a loser,” he answers back.

She comes over, takes his hand, leads him to the balcony railing. “Look down there. What do you see?”

“A bunch of lights. What I see every night.”

“You are so freaking stubborn,” she rails at him. “People travel here from all over the world to see this and all you see is a bunch of lights?”

He turns to her. “Okay. What do I see?” He starts to smile, despite himself.

“
Your
city, Luke. The city you used to own. And will own again. Which has nothing to do with winning or losing. You’ve already done that, just by being here.” She puts her arm around his waist, leans her head on his shoulder.

He puts his free arm around her, drawing her closer. Man, does she know how to make it work for him. His corporeal body, his entire essence, suddenly and wonderfully feels lighter. Almost giddy with relief, he sings: “‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’” He always wanted to be able to sing like Joe Cocker. He doesn’t come close.

“No. You haven’t.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Below them, the lights of the city. Above them, the stars.

“Are you done feeling sorry for yourself now?” she asks. “Can we put that bullshit to bed?”

He smiles. “Yeah,” he promises her. “Over and done with.”

“Let’s go to bed.” She takes his hand as she leads him inside, back to the bedroom.

Joe Allison’s job in L.A. was scheduled to begin two weeks after he left KNSB. He was going to take the time off between jobs to move and settle into his new apartment down south, in Santa Monica. Those plans were scuttled when he was arrested, charged, and delivered to the Santa Barbara jail’s maximum security section. So the guest house he rented from the Wilsons sits unoccupied, in the same condition as it was on the day he was taken into custody.

Now, a couple of days before the trial is to begin, Luke’s there. He hasn’t set foot here since his meeting with the Wilsons. They were going to put Allison’s belongings in storage and rent the place out to someone new—guest houses are at a premium in the city, they would have found a new tenant in a day—but one of Luke’s first acts when he came on board was to quash that. He doesn’t want the place disturbed, in case there is anything there he might need later, for information or background. He’s been sending in the monthly rent check, fifteen hundred dollars, from the legal retainer. It assures him unlimited access.

Who had motive to kill Emma? Whoever knocked her up, surely, that’s a hell of a motive. But that can’t be the focus of his attention. He was hired to defend a man accused of murder, not to be a detective looking for everyone who had sex with a fourteen-year-old nymphet. She could have been banging the high school fullback, or had a one-time episode with anyone, man or youth. And the prosecution’s case is contradictory on that issue: they’re saying condoms found in Allison’s place are the same brand and type as those found in the gazebo, ergo he’s the man, but if he was using rubbers, how did he knock her up? Back to the theory that he got careless, etcetera. A dog chasing its tail and never quite catching it.