The Disappearance (41 page)

She feels that wind, blowing at her like a sundowner. “Yes,” she says. She’s just drunk some water, but her throat feels completely dry, like she’s eaten a handful of sand.

“It was only when everyone realized Emma was missing that it occurred to you that what you had seen earlier—which at the time felt like a dream—might have been someone in the room taking Emma out. Without a struggle,” he adds. “Whatever was in the blanket, Emma or anything or anyone, wasn’t trying to get away.”

“Yes,” she answers to the whole thing.

“No further questions, Your Honor.” He smiles at Lisa. “Thank you,” he tells her, remaining at the podium.

Ewing looks to the prosecution table. “Redirect?” he asks.

Logan rises. “No, Your Honor. The People are finished with this witness.”

The judge turns to Lisa. “You may step down,” he says with a smile. Sitting in the witness chair is tough on anyone; for kids, it’s especially traumatic. “You’re finished,” he adds, making sure she knows her ordeal, after a year and a half, is behind her.

It’s finally over!
she thinks. She feels light-headed from that knowledge. Hurriedly she stumbles from the stand and rushes out of the courtroom, her beleaguered mother hot on her heels.

Ewing turns to Logan. “Call your next witness, Counselor.”

As Logan starts to instruct the clerk, Luke interrupts the proceedings. Rising in place: “I have a motion, Your Honor.”

Ewing, surprised, turns to him. Regaining his composure, he barks, “In my chambers.”

He strides from the bench, exiting the door behind him. Luke, a copy of the California Penal Code in hand, follows. Ray Logan, caught unawares, hustles to catch up.

Ewing closes the door to his small office. “What is it?” he asks Luke, clearly irritated.

“I move to dismiss the kidnapping section of the indictment against my client under sections 207 and 278 of the California penal code, Your Honor,” Luke says matter-of-factly. “The testimony of the prosecution’s own witness clearly shows that Emma Lancaster was
not
taken from her bedroom by force. If she was taken by the unknown man in the room, as described by Miss Jaffe—and that has not been proven, I wish to point out—it was in no way forcible. If Emma Lancaster did indeed leave her bedroom with anyone, and again I want to be very clear that that allegation hasn’t been proven at all, she did so freely. There was no struggle. The state’s witness was very clear on that point.” He hands the book to the judge, who reluctantly takes it.

Ray Logan weighs in, his voice conveying his clear, heartfelt anger and irritation. “One witness’s testimony doesn’t prove or disprove anything. We have other witnesses who will add to this, and anyway, proof or the absence of it is up to the jury to decide.”

Ewing nods. “I have to agree with you,” he concurs. He knows, though, that when it’s all finished, he’s going to have to revisit this—Luke Garrison will force him to, and properly so, even if the prospect of it ticks him off royally. He turns to Luke. “Motion denied. The charges as brought will stand.”

Luke didn’t think he’d win with this first thrust, but he’s set the lance. Down the road, it’ll come up again. And again.

This trial’s going to go longer than expected, Ewing realizes. Luke Garrison isn’t going to give a rote defense, no way. He’s going to give it everything he’s got, and he’s going to show colors and tactics he never showed when he was running the show. Guerrilla lawyering, if that’s what it takes.

He admires Luke Garrison, always has. But the guy has changed, and not a little, a lot. Any courtroom is always theater, real or potential. Ewing is a decorous man, prudent, cautious. He believes in the tried and true way of doing things, in his life and in his courtroom. If this trial turns into theater of the absurd, will there still be a place for justice, as he knows and has always defined it? Or will “let the best man win” be all that counts?

The lead detective who followed the three sets of footprints made by Emma, Lisa, and Hillary, and found the marijuana, used condoms, and other evidence in the gazebo, takes the stand and gives his spiel.

Luke cross-examines. The man is unflappable. Luke knows him from back then—this witness isn’t going to give anything away.

“You didn’t arrive on the scene until late in the afternoon of Emma Lancaster’s disappearance, did you?” he starts out. “Several hours after she was reported missing, is that true?”

“Yes,” comes the laconic reply.

“Several people had been on the scene by then? The investigating officer, other policemen, family members, and so forth? Particularly by the time you and your partner tracked these footprints you’ve alluded to, from the bedroom to the gazebo and back to the bedroom.”

“That’s correct,” the detective admits.

“You can’t tell with any certainty when they were made, or who made them, can you, Detective?” Luke quizzes him.

“No, we can’t. And about the time, it was within twenty-four hours. More precisely than that, we can’t tell.”

“So they could have been much earlier,” Luke goes on. “They could have been made the afternoon before, or the early evening, say around four or five o’clock.”

“They could have. It’s unlikely, though. They would’ve started fading.”

Luke ignores the latter part of the answer. “So instead of being made around midnight, as the testimony of the previous witness has suggested, they could have been made six or seven hours earlier?”

“It’s possible,” the detective gives him. “But given the depth of the prints, the later time is much more likely.”

“In fact,” Luke says, “they could have been made a few hours before you arrived on the scene. Isn’t that also true?”

The detective frowns. “I guess it is. I hadn’t given that any thought.”

“Hadn’t given it any thought, Detective? By the time you found these footprints you had already heard about the conversation that Lisa Jaffe had with Detective Garcia, right? You knew what she had told him.”

The detective shifts in the chair. He’s a tall man, angular, thin, the large Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing up and down every time he speaks. “I knew what the girl had told Detective Garcia,” he acknowledges.

“So you had a certain preconceived attitude as far as the time frame went, didn’t you? About when those footprints were made, and by whom.”

The detective cops halfheartedly to Luke’s assessment. “I might have.”

“So you can’t be positive when the footprints were made, except you think they were made sometime in the twenty-four-hour period preceding your discovery of them,” Luke summarizes. “And so many people had been there, walking around on that wet grass, that anyone could have made them, not necessarily the three girls in question. Emma’s mother and a couple of her friends, for example, sneaking out to smoke a joint.”

“Objection!” Logan screams.

Ewing has already pounded his gavel. “Sustained! Refrain from making such outrageous, unsubstantiated statements,” he warns Luke.

“Yes, sir. Sorry.” He doesn’t even feign contriteness. “I’m merely reiterating the claim made by the previous witness about Mrs. Lancaster’s conduct, which went unchallenged.”

“That’s nonsense,” Ewing tells him sharply. “Knock off that kind of wild reaching in my courtroom.”

Luke nods. “Yes, sir.” He turns back to the witness. “Any three people could have made those footprints, isn’t that true? At any time within your twenty-four-hour window.”

The detective nods tightly. “Yes,” he admits. “What you’ve said is possible. Not true,” he adds bitingly, “but possible.” He can’t help going against his taciturn grain and putting a button on his remarks: “In theory only.”

That’s it for day one of the witness parade. Luke, with Riva at his side, pushes by the mass of reporters congregating outside the courthouse doors and in the grassy area in front of the imposing stone building. In response to the questions thrown at him, the microphones thrust in his face, the print reporters trying to block his path, he gives an impromptu interview as he keeps walking. “I didn’t see any particular surprises in any of today’s testimony. …Both of the state’s witnesses reversed themselves, I think everyone saw that. …I could comment further on whether there was a kidnapping at all, but I have a motion pending that speaks to that. …” And so on. Then they’re at the old truck, parked in a no-parking zone. Luke swipes the parking ticket from his windshield and stuffs it in his pocket—an acceptable price to pay to get in and out of the maelstrom as quickly as possible. Later, after dinner, when it’s quiet, he’ll fall by the jail and see Allison, let him know how he thinks they’re doing, keep the man’s spirits up.

Today was easy, nothing much happened. Tomorrow is going to be another story.

Sheriff Williams is a fine, strong witness. Juries love to believe guys like him. He sits straight and tall in the witness chair, and his answers to the prosecution’s questions are firm and authoritative, giving no grounds for doubting him.

“Did you question the accused during your initial investigation?” Logan asks.

“We questioned everyone who had ever known the victim,” Williams replies firmly. “Hundreds of people, thousands. Intensive interrogations. Including the accused, who we questioned within two days after the victim’s body was found. At the time we didn’t have reason to suspect him, although there were factors, such as acquaintanceship with the deceased, and access to the property and the layout, that we noted in our report. But the truth is, the accused wasn’t a suspect at that time, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”

Logan is quiet. Gathering steam, Williams continues, “Our department, by itself, put in twenty-five thousand man-hours investigating this crime, more than three times any other crime investigation in the history of Santa Barbara County. To give you one example of how exhaustive our effort was, someone from our department or the city police force personally questioned every single student from her school, every one of their parents. It was the most thorough investigation I’ve ever worked on, or even heard of.”

PR, Luke thinks. To make the department look good, since it was by sheer luck they stumbled onto Joe as a suspect. He likes the way they constantly refer to Allison as “the accused.” Not “Allison” or even “the defendant” but—twice in fifteen seconds—“the accused,” a word that implies “guilty.”
J’accuse.

“Go on,” Logan says, continuing his minuet with the sheriff.

“We enlisted the help of the highway patrol, the state’s sexual predator computer bank, several neighboring sheriff’s and police departments. We even consulted with the FBI, despite the crime not being an interstate situation.

“But we had run out of the normal range of possibilities,” he admits. “The case was still alive, of course—we had a detective on it full-time right up until the night the accused was arrested—but we had run into a stone wall. The killer had managed to cover his tracks, for the time being. But we never quit trying.” He turns to the jury. “We would have caught Joe Allison, sooner or later. It happened to be on that particular night, but we were never going to let go of this until we had Emma Lancaster’s murderer in custody.”

Williams is forced to overstate the situation, given the circumstances. The importance of this case, not only legally but politically and socially, has damaged everyone involved in it, dulled their normal caution and professionalism. The case was dormant. Doug and Glenna Lancaster had been told—warned, really—not to keep their hopes alive. Luke also knows that Williams, since Allison’s arrest, has developed suspicions about this case on his own. Doug Lancaster’s lying about where he was on the night of the disappearance, and his intransigence about coming forth with any kind of credible alibi, has eroded the sheriff’s confidence in Emma’s father. Doug’s arrogant stonewalling has drawn suspicion to him. The distrust is deep in Ray Logan’s gut too, Luke knows, although Ray will never admit it publicly. But he must be gobbling Tums by the handful.

The real root of Williams’s skepticism, even more than Doug’s nonalibi and lying about it, is the attempt by someone to kill Luke at Hollister Ranch.

Logan walks Williams through the night of Allison’s arrest, from the time he was brought into the jail. Williams accounts for his role in the gathering of evidence against—yes, once again—“the accused.” Luke feels like jumping up and screaming, “He’s got a name! He’s innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt!” But he stays calm.

Ray Logan’s direct questioning of Sheriff Williams takes three-quarters of the day. By the time Luke gets up to start his cross, it’s after three. He looks over at the jury. They believe Williams, whatever he says. And they’ve been listening to him for hours in the name of law, order, and justice. They want to be done for the day.

Luke takes his time anyway. Screw the jurors and their impatience. Juries get antsy about the second day, that’s been his experience. Thinking they might be stuck in here for months, listening to a ton of boring testimony.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff.” He stands at the podium. Relaxed, smiling. One old friend quizzing another. On opposite sides now, yes, but still old friends, the reservoir of experience, shared investigations, and convictions too deep not to acknowledge, if only tacitly.

“Afternoon, Counselor.”

“Joe Allison was never a real suspect, was he?” Luke asks, plunging right in. “He didn’t fit any profile at all. You never thought twice about him, all the time you and your men were spending those twenty-five thousand hours hunting down whoever killed Emma Lancaster. This man sitting here—Joe—was as clean as a hound dog’s chewing bone, isn’t that right, Sheriff?”

“We didn’t have him under suspicion,” Williams acknowledges.

“You never had him under any kind of surveillance, did you?”

“No.”

“If his car hadn’t been stopped that night, six months ago, on a fluke, you have to admit it was a random, lucky coincidence, you wouldn’t be thinking of him as a suspect, would you? Even though you told the jury here”—he turns and looks at the jurors before readdressing the witness—“that sooner or later you knew you were going to find out who killed Emma. You were going to find and arrest her killer, even if he didn’t live around here anymore and there wouldn’t be any evidence against him for you to get your hands on. Isn’t that right, Sheriff Williams?”