The Disappearance (38 page)

The show starts on Monday. In the morning Ray Logan will give his opening statement. Then, barring any unforeseen complications, it’ll be his turn on stage, for the first time in this county in more than three years. And wearing a different hat.

Luke always gets to the courthouse before anyone else. He prides himself on that. It’s been a ritual since he started litigating as an assistant D.A. Today, though, as he walks down the long tile hallway towards the courtroom, he sees, from a distance, that others have beaten him to the draw.

The inside of the building is dim—the lights have not yet been turned on, only slivers of predawn sunlight filter through the high windows. Three people are huddled in a corner, faces furtively turned inward towards the wall, as if by not looking out they won’t be seen. Although they are in darkness, he immediately recognizes them: Ray Logan and Doug and Glenna Lancaster.

They are unaware that someone else has intruded on their private rendezvous. He stops and watches for a moment; then silently, carefully, he moves against the wall, melding into the dark, cool bulk as much as he can, straining to hear them. Even from far away, at least forty yards—the hallway is as long as a football field—it’s clear to Luke that they are having a strenuous argument.

The voices drift down towards him, inchoately echoing off the walls of the cavernous corridor, a natural echo chamber. The words are muffled, but the intent is clear—the Lancasters don’t want Logan to introduce Emma’s sexual history. Logan keeps shaking his head, shifting back and forth from foot to foot, Doug Lancaster leaning in towards him, haranguing him, Glenna standing back from both of them, her body rigid.

This must be mighty important, Luke thinks, if Doug and Glenna are in each other’s proximity. They avoid each other at all costs.

She knows, Luke realizes. He should have figured she would—it was naive of him to believe otherwise. She was Emma’s mother.

Now that he thinks about it, they would have been the main proponents for sealing the coroner’s report in the first place. And now, two hours before the coroner is to take the stand, they’re still trying to protect their daughter’s image. And their own. A cynical attitude to take, but a truthful one.

One last harangue from Doug and then Logan turns to him, says something that Luke can’t make out, and walks away. Doug starts to go after him, almost lunging at him, but Glenna grabs him by the biceps and restrains him.

Luke watches the divorced couple staring at each other. Not a word is spoken. Then Doug spins on his heel and strides off in the opposite direction from Ray Logan.

Glenna Lancaster is alone. A lonely figure in a large, barren space. She starts to weep, her shoulders shaking from the sobbing. Luke watches, a fly on the wall, mortifyingly embarrassed at being an intruder on her excruciating sadness, but locked in place with no means of escape. The sounds of her sobs drift down to him, the lamentation of a mother in perpetual grieving for her lost child.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury …”

Ray Logan is standing in front of the jury, beginning his opening statement. All eyes are on him, and he knows it. Especially the eyes of Luke Garrison, the man he used to report to.

He’s nervous, going up against Luke. He would be nervous anyway, it comes with the territory. It’s like standing on the first tee of the U.S. Open in front of a gallery of a thousand spectators and starting your backswing for the first drive of the day. All you want to do is make contact and not kill anybody or, worse, whiff it. Once you’ve taken that first swing, the butterflies start to go away.

“My name is Ray Logan. I am the district attorney for Santa Barbara County.”

And right on cue, the calmness begins to come over him. He’s feeling better already—saying the words “district attorney” make him feel good, give him a sense of achievement.

Courtroom Number 1 is the legendary mural courtroom, where the history of California, from the Spanish conquistadors to the Depression migrants, is depicted on the walls and ceiling, like an antinativist Sistine Chapel. This courtroom is rarely used anymore, reserved for special cases. And now it’s packed, every seat taken. You have to have a pass to get in. Much of the space is taken up by reporters from newspapers and television stations. The rest is family members, friends, public people like politicians, and others with juice.

Doug and Glenna Lancaster are present. They’re both sitting on the prosecutor’s side of the aisle, but apart from each other. Doug is in the second row directly behind Ray Logan’s chair, while Glenna is in the back, looking like a wraith. She’s all in black, including a scarf tied over her head, like a woman in mourning, which she still is, more so now that this trial is beginning and her life and her daughter’s life are going to be exposed. She is wearing no makeup, no jewelry.

Lancaster is dressed conservatively, in a dark business suit. For the briefest of moments, when he first entered the courtroom and walked down the aisle to his seat, his eyes locked with Luke’s. There was pure hatred in them. This man, Luke thought, wants me dead.

Under normal circumstances, neither Doug nor Glenna would be allowed in the courtroom: they’re potential witnesses. Logan has both on his witness list, and Doug is on Luke’s as well. Tearing up Lancaster’s non-alibi is going to be a cornerstone of his defense. Logan, however, had beseeched the court that they be granted exceptions to the rule, in the interest of compassion.

“It’s their daughter who was murdered, they’ve already suffered terribly,” he passionately argued in the judge’s chambers. “Not allowing them to observe the trial would be cruel and inhumane.”

It was Luke’s call; and to both Ewing’s and Logan’s surprise, he acquiesced. Having Doug Lancaster in the courtroom will mean that Lancaster will learn, from Luke’s opening statement, what Luke is planning to do; but Lancaster is going to find out anyway—Logan will be briefing him daily. To exclude the grieving parents will be bad public relations. He and his client already have enough negative publicity.

He also has a more practical motive. He hopes that as the trial progresses Doug Lancaster will become increasingly agitated, to the point where he might do something stupid, something that will play into the defense’s hands. Knowing Doug Lancaster as Luke does, this isn’t a far-fetched notion.

One person isn’t here: Nicole Rogers. She may be a witness later on—both he and Logan have her on their witness lists—but that isn’t why she’s absent. Luke talked to her days ago about coming, to offer moral support, and she turned him down flat. She and Joe weren’t going on anyway, and she wants no part of this. “I thought I knew him,” she told Luke over the phone. “It’s terrible to think you know someone intimately, and suddenly you don’t know a damn thing about them.” Luke knew then that, despite her former assertion, she thinks his client is guilty.

Logan’s voice rings strong in the vaulted-ceilinged room. “You have been chosen to make a momentous decision. To decide whether or not Joe Allison, the accused in this case, kidnapped and murdered Emma Lancaster, a fourteen-year-old girl.” He turns and points. “That dark-haired man seated at the defense table, next to his lawyer, is Joe Allison.”

Luke has anticipated this, and worked with Allison in the jail. About returning looks, not being vague or ambiguous in demeanor, staring straight ahead. And keeping his cool.

Allison is doing that. He’s doing okay. He holds eye contact with the jury members who are looking at him. Not with aggression or evasiveness. A firm, clear look. A man who has nothing to hide.

Riva, sitting in the row behind Luke and Allison, also stares at the jury, and at Logan. She is going to be here much of the time, and she is going to stare daggers at Logan’s back.

In a deliberately dismissive manner, Logan drops his hand, turns back to the jury. “You are going to be given a lot of information that is not directly related to this case. It’s peripheral information—information about people’s personalities, their foibles, their imperfections. My associates and I will share some of this with you, not to confuse you, but to set the background, and to show you the difference between the
truth
, as it applies to
this case and this case only
, and innuendos the defense is going to allude to, to try and confuse you from the issue at hand, the only issue you are here to consider—did Joe Allison kidnap and murder Emma Lancaster?”

He pauses to let that settle in. Then he continues. “We are going to show you proof that Mr. Allison
did
kidnap and murder Emma Lancaster. Real, tangible proof. Not theories. Not conjecture. Not ‘what-if’s.’ We’re not going to try to dazzle you with smoke and mirrors. We are going to show you
motive
, we are going to show you
opportunity
, we are going to show you
physical evidence
that connects Joe Allison and Emma Lancaster on the night of her abduction, and before then.”

He’s doing good, Luke thinks—short, sweet, concise, hardhitting. He learned good lessons from me.

“Joe Allison was found with certain pieces of evidence in his possession that only Emma’s murderer could have possessed. Certain things that belonged to Emma Lancaster, certain pieces of evidence that place him at the crime scene on the night in question, certain pieces of evidence that will show the extraordinarily strong link between Joe Allison, an adult man, an employee of Emma Lancaster’s father, and the victim, Emma, a fourteen-year-old girl who was in the eighth grade.” Another pause. “A fourteen-year-old girl, ladies and gentlemen. Barely a teenager. Still wearing braces.”

He stops for a moment and walks to his table. One of the other lawyers hands him a large manila envelope. He walks back to the jury box and opens it, taking out the sixteen-by-twenty-inch picture inside and holding it up so the jurors can get a good look at it. “This is Emma Lancaster, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. A few weeks before she was abducted from her bedroom in the dead of night, and subsequently murdered. And then hidden away in a terrible, lonely place, while her frantic parents and thousands of volunteer citizens searched for her in vain until, more than a week later, her body was accidentally discovered.”

An easel has been set up at the corner of the jury box. He places the color photograph, a typical school yearbook picture, on the easel. She looks even younger than she was, about the age of her First Communion.

The jurors all turn and look at it. A few then turn and look over at Joe Allison. Doug Lancaster does, too. Venomously.

It’s a moment to catch, Luke thinks. He swivels in his chair, a glance at Glenna Lancaster sitting ten rows behind him on the other side. She is dry-eyed, but her skin is flushed, and he can see, even from this distance, that her breathing is ragged. She is scrupulously avoiding looking in Joe Allison’s direction.

“That was Emma Lancaster before she died,” Logan says. His aides hand him a second envelope. He pulls the black and white enlargement out, looks at it, grimaces. From where Luke’s sitting, it’s an honest grimace.

“And this was Emma Lancaster the week
after
she died.” Logan turns the photograph around, so the jury can see it for themselves.

There is a collective gasp. One of the woman jurors cries out audibly, her hand flying to her mouth. Logan holds up the picture a moment longer.

It’s one of the first police photographs that was taken of Emma when her body was found buried on the trail. It’s a grisly sight. Her body is swollen, her clothes have been ripped.

Luke glances at Emma’s father. The man is looking down at his feet, not acknowledging the picture of his dead child that’s being displayed. He’s shaking.
If he was involved, Luke thinks, he’s paying a heavy price for it now.

Logan mercifully puts the picture in its envelope. “I’m sorry to have subjected you to that, ladies and gentlemen,” he says to the twelve jurors, most of whom look like they want to throw up, “but you had to see it. You had to know. How this beautiful girl”—he points to the cherubic photo on the easel—“became the victim of a heinous crime.

“We don’t know why, exactly, Joe Allison took Emma Lancaster from her bed, where she was fast asleep, took her outside, and killed her in cold blood,” Logan says. “But we have a good idea. I’ll explain that to you in a moment. Before I do, let me caution you: you will not like everything you hear—in this tempestuous age, none of us lives in a vacuum, including the Lancaster family—but you will understand it, how it relates to your own lives, and the lives of your children and grandchildren.”

He pauses to let the jury catch up with him; they have to be wondering,
what is he talking about?

“The reason might have been anger, mixed with fear. Or it might have been passion gone haywire,” Logan goes on. “Yes, there was passion in this. Passion between a young girl with a crush on a handsome male celebrity, and the male celebrity who used that advantage for his own narcissistic ends. And that will connect with the anger and the fear, also. Especially the fear.”

Now the jurors are really paying attention. Logan’s going to tease them a bit more before he brings out the hard evidence—Emma’s pregnancy, the condoms found in the gazebo, the same condoms found in Allison’s house. Luke’s ready for the other shoe to drop.

“Or it could have been an accident,” Logan says. “Not the killing—that was premeditated, without question. That is why we are going to ask for the death penalty in this case—because Emma Lancaster’s murder was clearly premeditated. But before that, who knows?” He pauses, grasps the railing of the jury box in both hands, leans forward, the bar bracing him. “Not Emma Lancaster—she isn’t here anymore to tell us. But ladies and gentlemen, in a way she
is
telling us. By the evidence she left behind, and the style in which she left it. And ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that, by the time this trial is over, Emma Lancaster will have spoken to you loudly and clearly. She will have spoken to you from her grave. And she will tell you, and you will believe beyond a reasonable doubt, that Joe Allison murdered her. And here is the clearest, most compelling thing she is going to tell you.” He pauses; even for him, presenting this is difficult. Then he says it: “She was pregnant.”