The Disappearance (45 page)

“One day,” she answers. “She found out she was pregnant the day before the night of her disappearance.”

Logan somberly walks away from the lectern. “No further questions of this witness at this time, Your Honor,” he says in a heavy, battle-weary voice.

“You stated that Emma Lancaster found out she was pregnant the day before she disappeared from her bedroom, is that correct?” Luke asks.

“Yes,” the doctor says. “That’s right.”

“But before that,” he says, “did she think she might be pregnant? Did
you
think she might be pregnant?”

“When she walked into my office, I thought she was pregnant,” Dr. Lopez responds.

“Why did you think that?”

“From how she looked. I’ve seen thousands of pregnant women, that’s what I do.” A moment’s pause. “I think Emma knew she was pregnant. She wouldn’t have come to see me otherwise. If she thought she was merely sick, she would have gone to her own doctor. Her family doctor.”

“Right,” he agrees. “You say she alluded to an older man. She didn’t say she was pregnant by an older man, did she?”

“Not directly, no.”

“Did she say she was having an affair with an older man?”

“Not directly,” she says again.

“Then what brought you to the conclusion that it was an older man who was the father?” he asks questioningly.

“I can’t put my finger on anything precise,” she admits. “It was the tone of how she talked about him.”

“So she never said, directly or indirectly, that she was having an affair with an older man, and—make that or—that the father of her child was an older man.”

“No.”

The assistant housemaid’s command of English is okay, but her Salvadoran accent is thick, and she’s scared. She is wearing what is obviously her best dress, an elaborate lavender-tinted chiffon concoction with puffed sleeves that she’d originally worn to her cousin’s wedding. Her shoes are black suede, with ankle-busting heels, and she bought a new pair of stockings for this appearance. She knows she’s overdressed, but she can’t afford another fancy outfit. A short woman, her flat facial features suggesting indigenous Central American Indian stock, she sits cowering in the witness chair, her legs too short to reach the ground.

Logan has a court interpreter standing by, in case she freezes up on her English. “Good day, Ms. Rodriguez,” he says solicitously. Her name is Lupe Rodriguez.

“Hello, mister,” she answers back nervously. Not yet twenty-five, she’s been a long time in the U.S., long enough to have gotten her green card, found a husband, and given birth to two children. But even though she’s legal through and through, she still has the wetback’s intense fear of gringo authority.

“Is it all right for us to talk in English, or would you prefer Spanish?” he asks. When he interviewed her, he’d had a woman interpreter along, but she was only needed a few times, fortunately. He hopes the witness can handle this in English. If every question has to be translated for her, then translated back into English, it won’t go as well as straight English. Jurors bore easily, and some will be distrustful or resentful of a “foreigner,” even though women like her have been an integral part of the California fabric for several generations. Still, there is a caste system in place in the community, and she’s close to the bottom.

“English,” she answers stoutly. She looks like a little bird on a wire, a sparrow perched on a roadside telephone pole. “I speak English okay, mister.”

Good—so far. “Were you employed at the Lancaster household last year, including during the time when Emma Lancaster was taken from her bedroom?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Luke shouts. “We don’t know if she was taken or left voluntarily.”

“Sustained.”

Logan starts over. “Did you work for the Lancasters at the time Emma disappeared from her bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“What was your job?”

“I cleaned the house. I did laundry. I did dishes. Whatever the head housekeeper told me to do.” Her attitude towards her work is bright, expressed in her tone of voice—this wasn’t drudge work for her, it was a chance to make money for her family and live in a beautiful household. A chance to see what is possible in America.

“Would you describe for the court, please, what happened during the day and evening of the night that Emma Lancaster—disappeared—from her bedroom? Anything that might be important to this case that you know about firsthand?”

Luke looks through the notes of the prosecution’s interview with this witness. There are no formal notes—all that’s indicated is that she was interviewed. It was one of the last interviews done, he notes, only a couple of weeks ago. He had been too busy tying up other elements to seek her out and interview her himself. He hopes that wasn’t a mistake.

“Mr. Allison called the house.”

“By Mr. Allison, you mean the man who is sitting at the defense table.” He points to Joe.

“Yes, sir, mister.”

“How did you know it was Mr. Allison who called?”

“Because he said it was him. I know his voice. And also, he was on television every day. We would watch him on the news.”

“So there is no doubt in your mind that Joe Allison, the defendant in this case, was the man who made the phone call.”

“Yes, mister. It was him.”

What the fuck is this? Luke thinks. He turns and looks at Allison. Allison catches the look, turns away.

“What’s this about?” Luke whispers.

Allison shrugs.

“Did you call her?” Luke asks.

His client nods.

He turns away in disgust from Allison, staring across the chamber to the witness stand.

“What time was that call?” Logan asks.

“Four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Do you normally answer the telephone?”

“If there is no one else around. Of if I am close to it. Mrs. Lancaster didn’t care who answered, as long as someone did.”

“So you answered the telephone and Mr. Allison identified himself.”

“Yes.” Her head bobs up and down like a carousel horse. “He said his name, and he asked to speak to Emma.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That she was not there.”

“And what did he say?”

“He was upset. I could hear his voice was upset.”

“Objection,” Luke says. “Conjecture on the witness’s part.”

Ewing shakes his head. “I think the average person knows when someone’s upset by the tone of their voice. Overruled.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Logan smiles. “What did Mr. Allison say, Ms. Rodriguez?”

“That he needed to talk to her.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That she wasn’t there.”

“Then what did he say?”

“When would she be there?”

“And you answered?”

“That I didn’t know. I said, do you want me to tell her that you called if I see her?”

“And he said?”

“No. He said no, don’t tell her. Don’t tell anybody.”

“He told you not to tell anybody that he had called?”

“Yes, mister. He told me not to tell anybody.”

“Okay.” He pauses a moment, picks up another sheet of paper, looks at it briefly “Now, did Mr. Allison make another telephone call to the house that day?”

“Yes, mister.”

Luke looks to Allison again. You moron, he thinks, what were you doing to yourself? What are you doing to me?

“What time was that?”

“About nine o’clock at night.”

“Nine o’clock on the night she was—she disappeared from her room.”

“Yes.”

“What did he sound like this time?”

Luke starts to make another objection, but he stops himself. The judge has set the pattern for this witness. All he’ll do is draw further attention to an already bad situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.

“He sound real concerned. Real worried. Nervous.”

“What did he ask this time?”

“Where was Emma.”

“And what did you tell him, the second time he called the house that day within five hours.”

“She ain’t home, mister. She’s out with frien’s. She won’t be home till later.”

“Did he say anything then?”

“It sounded like he say a curse word … but I’m not sure.”

Logan nods. “Did he say anything else? Ask anything else?”

“What time later.”

“Did you tell him? Did you even know?”

“I tell him midnight, ’cause that’s her curfew, she got to be back by then, or her mama would be unhappy lady. She always was home by her curfew,” she adds.

“Then what did he say?”

“He don’t say nothing. He just hang up.”

Logan smiles broadly at her. “Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez, for coming down here and helping out today.” Turning to Luke, with a sweeping arm extended towards her, and a beatific smile on his happy face: “Your witness.”

Luke and Allison powwow in the small attorney-client room adjacent to the courtroom. Before cross-examining the maid, Luke has requested a fifteen-minute recess.

He is beside himself with rage. “What’s your goddamn excuse this time, ace?”

Allison is trembling from Luke’s wrath. “I don’t have one. I didn’t think it was important.”

“Wrong! Everything is important. Everything. I told you that a million times. I decide what’s important.” He slumps into the other battered metal chair. “What were these phone calls about, Joe?” Some of the rage he feels is self-imposed: he should have interviewed the woman. She was one of dozens of family employees on the prosecution’s potential witness list. He didn’t have the time to get to all of them, and he didn’t think one of them would come up with a bombshell like this.

Allison stammers as he tries to answer Luke’s scathing question. “She … she had left several messages on my machine, earlier in the day. That she needed to talk to someone, and I was the only one she could trust. That’s why I called.”

Suspiciously: “Did she say why?”

“No. She just—needed to talk to someone, an adult. The message—messages—on the machine sounded like she was scared and needed some comfort.”

“So good old Joe was going to comfort sweet little Emma. Who he was picking up after school and cruising around with. A very pretty picture, my friend.”

Allison shakes his head. “That’s not it, Luke. Her parents knew I was picking her up. They asked me to, some of the time. I’d drop her at home or take her up to the station. There was nothing more to that. You know that.”

“I don’t know what I know,” Luke tells him, “because you still haven’t told me everything, and that leaves me up shit creek. I have to know
everything
, even if you think it’s inconsequential.” He takes a deep, calming breath. “All right—go on about the telephone calls.”

“I didn’t leave a message because I was afraid her mother might find out she was trying to call me and not like it. Emma didn’t talk about certain things to Glenna, and that ticked Glenna off.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, the sarcasm dripping onto the floor, “especially if her daughter’s confiding in the guy who’s fucking her.”

“That’s not why,” Allison protests. “They were totally separate issues. Emma was outgrowing her parents, and they were having a hard time dealing with it, especially Glenna. It wasn’t about Glenna and me.”

“All right,” Luke says. “Now what about the second call, the one at night? You knew her mother might be there. Why take a chance on calling then?”

“Because between the time I called in the afternoon and that one, Emma called me again and left another message. It sounded desperate. She was practically begging me to get in touch with her.” He exhales heavily, a man carrying too much of the world’s burdens. “I was trying to help, that’s all.”

“Did the two of you ever connect?” Luke asks.

Allison shakes his head. “No. I never got to speak with her. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

Whether this is true or not, Luke thinks pessimistically, who in his right mind would ever believe this? And even if they didn’t talk, why was she calling him? Because she had found out she was pregnant, and he was the father, and she needed to tell him? That’s what Logan’s going to tell the jury to think. At this point in the trial, they’d be crazy not to.

The deputy monitoring them sticks his head in the door. “Time.”

Luke accompanies Allison back into the courtroom. Ray Logan’s already there, dancing about on his toes, he’s so pumped. He ought to be, Luke thinks, he’s doing great. His client can’t lie to him, or withhold information. His client, speaking from the grave, is telling a compelling story. Far more believable than theirs.

Again, another short cross-examination. Luke can’t impugn the woman’s testimony regarding who had called. The best he can do is soften the impact. “Do you know if Mr. Allison called the Lancaster house on a regular basis?” he asks her.

She nods her head vigorously, her shiny, wavy hair floating off her shoulders like a zephyr-blown handkerchief. “Yes, sir, mister. He call all the time.”

“Who did he call? Did he call Mr. Lancaster?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“And Mrs. Lancaster?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Emma Lancaster?”

“Yes, sir. He call all of them.”

“So Mr. Allison’s calling the house and speaking to Mr. Lancaster, or Mrs. Lancaster, or Emma Lancaster, was a common occurrence?”

“Common …” She stumbles over “occurrence.”

“The calls happened all the time,” he simplifies. “For all of them.”

“All the time.” She smiles with relief, now that she understands. “Mr. Lancaster, Mrs. Lancaster, Emma. He call them, they call him. All the time.”

Evening. The sunset, as they watch it from the deck of their rented aerie, is blossoming with hibiscuslike brilliance across the ocean to the far end of the horizon: the sun dying as they watch it, liquefying into tentacles.

“Look at this sky and count your blessings.”

He does as she tells him. Her, their unborn child. Those are blessings. Tonight, the sheer beauty of it, certainly a blessing.

Despite his surroundings, though, he can’t shake his funk. This trial is not a blessing. Today wasn’t good. The maid nailed them. On the very same day of her disappearance, Allison had been frantically trying to connect with Emma.

“You can’t win them all, baby,” Riva says softly, putting her cheek next to his. “Not every witness.”