The Disappearance (50 page)

He parks in the city lot catty-corner from the courthouse, leaning up against his car, reading the front page of the
News-Press
. He’s on it, they’re the main story. There are two pictures, both in color. One is of District Attorney Ray Logan holding his impromptu press conference, the other of Maria Gonzalez standing in the lobby directly outside the courtroom, looking dazed.

The lights go on inside the coffee shop at the corner of Anacapa and Anapamu. He’s the first customer, he has to wait a few minutes for the coffee to brew. Then, double latte and bagel with cream cheese in hand, he crosses the street, goes into the courthouse, and enters the arena. His office. That’s how he used to refer to the courthouse and all the courtrooms. They were his office, where he conducted his business. He sits in the last row, eating his bagel and cream cheese, sipping his coffee, looking around. A rich room, leather benches, high vaulted ceiling. The county spared no expense building it after the ’25 earthquake.

He thinks about Joe Allison, his client, and all the jerking around Allison’s done to him. The bitch is that he has to keep on defending the guy, he has no choice, the lawyer doesn’t make moral judgments, he’s bound by the rules and codes of his profession regardless of who the client is or what he did.

All the avenues that had managed, miraculously, in some divine fool’s luck, not to intersect, have now come together in a massive snarl: Emma Lancaster and her secret pubescent sexual life; Doug Lancaster and his mistress who can’t alibi him (or won’t) and his bribe attempt and God knows what else, including attempted murder, still one of the unfathomable, unsolvable biggies; Glenna Lancaster with her affair with Allison, mostly unreciprocated by him, if you read between the lines.

No winners, not one victory in any of this. Only losers. Especially him.

Sheriff Williams is now his witness. An unusual way to start a defense, with one of the other side’s own, but Williams is going to set the table for his theme—that someone other than Joe Allison had more reason, motive, and opportunity to kill Emma Lancaster.

“Your Honor, I would like to examine this witness as an adverse witness,” he requests of the court before starting his direct examination. “Since he was the prosecution’s witness already.”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Logan is on his feet immediately. This is going to be the pattern, Luke knows; trench warfare all the way down the line, witness by witness, question by question. “Sheriff Williams is appearing voluntarily for the defense.”

Judge Ewing nods at that remark, but then says, “Since the sheriff was a member of the prosecution team that arrested the defendant and is bringing charges in this case, it must be assumed that he is biased in their favor. The objection is overruled.”

Okay, Luke thinks. At least I’m going to be able to get to the meat of things—whatever meat is left on these bones. “Good morning, Sheriff,” he begins. Without waiting for the perfunctory reply, he continues, “How long have you been the sheriff of Santa Barbara County?”

“Eighteen years,” Williams answers. “I’m in my fifth term.”

“You’re popular with the voters.”

“I guess I am.”

“They know you’re strong on law enforcement, fair, honest, decent.” Rattling off his opening remarks like BB’s from a pellet gun.

“I hope they do. I think I am.”

“They know when you investigate a crime, particularly a major crime like a murder, you do so thoroughly, forcefully, and objectively. You don’t pull punches, and you don’t play favorites.”

“Those are my objectives,” Williams answers, his voice bland, flat, but sincere. “That and to solve it.”

“Is that how you investigated the abduction and murder of Emma Lancaster, Sheriff?” Luke asks.

Without missing a beat, Williams answers, “To the best of my ability.”

“Which is considerable—your ability,” Luke replies. “I’ll attest to that personally,” he says, yet again reminding the jury that he used to be the district attorney, that he has a long-established working relationship with the sheriff.

“Thank you,” Williams says dryly.

Luke hesitates a moment, pivoting around to look at the gallery behind him. Doug Lancaster is again in his usual seat, one row behind the prosecution table. Turning back to Williams, he fires his first volley. “But how come you didn’t investigate Doug Lancaster thoroughly?” he asks. “Emma’s father.”

“Objection!” Logan calls out, jumping to his feet. “We’ve covered this,
ad infinitum
.”

“On the contrary, Your Honor—” Luke begins to rebut Logan. But before he can explain further why the question is valid, Ewing has pulled his microphone to him and is handling the matter for him.

“The objection is overruled,” the judge says decisively. “This is a relevant area to be discussing, and I’m going to give defense counsel broad latitude to explore it.”

Logan sits down, his face set in a grim mask. Behind him, Doug Lancaster, his own face looking as if cast in stone, stares hard at Luke, who returns the stare for a moment before turning back to the sheriff. Ewing’s playing catch-up, Luke knows, big time. He’s making amends for not excluding the evidence Luke wanted thrown out on Allison’s search-and-seizure and DUI-testing situations.

Ewing leans down towards Williams. “Would you like the question reread to you, Sheriff?”

“No, thank you, that won’t be necessary,” Williams tells him. Turning to face Luke, he answers, “I investigated him to my satisfaction. To what I knew at the time, and to what degree I felt was proper and necessary.”

Luke presses. “Did you investigate him as a person under suspicion? As someone who might be under suspicion, or should be? At the time of the abduction and the discovery of Emma Lancaster’s body, did you counsel Doug Lancaster to be a suspect in the murder of his daughter?”

Williams exhales a hard breath, shifts his posture to a more up-right position. “I did not consider Doug Lancaster to be a suspect in the murder of his daughter.”

There’s a buzzing in the room again. The jurors, Luke notes with satisfaction, are paying keen attention; some are taking notes. “Why didn’t you consider him to be a suspect?” he asks.

“The circumstances didn’t warrant it. Didn’t seem to.”

“Didn’t
seem
to warrant considering the girl’s father a suspect. Even though it’s a given in law enforcement that frequently an immediate family member is, in fact, the perpetrator of such a crime. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”

The sheriff concedes the point: “Yes, that’s true.”

“Was the reason you didn’t investigate deeper into Doug Lancaster as a suspect because of the terrible loss he had suffered? He and his wife had suffered?”

Williams nods. “That was a factor, I have to admit it. I’m human, like anyone else. The man was in pain. I wasn’t going to push him deeper into more pain.”

“From a human point of view, that’s admirable,” Luke says. “I’m sincere when I say that,” he adds, “I don’t want anyone thinking I’m being sarcastic. Losing a child—the grief can be unfathomable.” He hesitates. “At the time of your initial investigation, did Mr. Lancaster have an alibi for the night of the abduction?”

“Yes.”

“You checked it out.”

“Yes.”

Luke paces around a little bit. Then he comes back to the lectern again, takes a fast swallow of water, and continues. “Did there come a time when you began to have doubts about the truthfulness of Mr. Lancaster’s story of where he had been that night?”

Williams coughs, clearing some phlegm. “Yes.”

Behind him, Luke senses a commotion. He turns to see Doug Lancaster, his face florid with impotent anger, getting up from his place behind the prosecution table, which is also behind the lectern at which he’s standing, rudely push his way along the crowded aisle—his seat is in the middle of the row—walk down the side aisle, and leave, the large leather-padded door swinging open and shut loudly.

Everyone has watched this. Judge, jury, press, the rest of the spectators. Not the best way to impress a jury with your innocence, your lack of involvement, Luke thinks. Watching Doug’s exit, he sees Glenna Lancaster, wearing her usual stark black wardrobe sans makeup, sitting in her usual seat in the last row, last seat closest to the door. A good seat to be in, he thinks, if you decide to beat a hasty retreat. He also notices that she did not look at her ex-husband at all as he was leaving. Their eyes never made contact.

He presses ahead. He has momentum going for him, he wants to maintain it. “Would you explain for the jury, Sheriff Williams, when it was that you first started to think Mr. Lancaster had not told you the truth about where he had been on the night his daughter was taken from her room, and what he was doing at that time.”

“A few months ago, I found out that on the night Emma Lancaster was taken from her bedroom, Mr. Lancaster—”

“Her father,” Luke interrupts.

Williams ignores the sally. “I found out that he had left his hotel in Santa Monica at approximately one o’clock in the morning and apparently had not returned until approximately nine o’clock in the morning. That same morning.”

Luke nods. Yes! he thinks, glancing over at the jury. They’re with this. Continuing: “Is that what he told you, when you initially questioned him, later on the day of Emma’s disappearance?”

“No.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he had been in his hotel all night long.”

“So he lied to you.”

A slow, ponderous, unhappy nod. “Yes.”

“Have you … have you tried to find out where he was?” Luke asks.

“Yes.”

“Were you able to?”

“No, I haven’t,” the sheriff answers.

“From your pursuit of all this,” Luke goes on, “did you have any idea of where he might have been? Any theories based on material you’ve uncovered, information you’ve found out subsequently?”

“Yes, I had a theory.” He glances over at Logan. Logan conspicuously looks away.

“What was it?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Logan says, snapping to. He has to stop this hemorrhaging.

“Sustained.”

“Did you interview a woman you thought Mr. Lancaster might have gone to see during that time he wasn’t at his hotel?” Luke asks.

“Yes.” The answer is as curt and tight as Williams can make it.

Ray Logan, sitting at the prosecution table, thinks, here it comes, all that damn stonewalling of Doug’s. One witness into the defense’s presentation, and their Achilles heel is exposed to the world.

“I’m not going to ask you for her name,” Luke says to Williams. “It’s irrelevant to this discussion. What I am going to ask you is, did she provide Mr. Lancaster with an alibi for the missing hours?”

The sheriff shakes his head. “No, she did not.”

Luke nods. He’s killed three birds with one stone. The chief law enforcement officer in the county has stated, for the record, that Doug Lancaster was not where he said he was during the time his daughter was taken from her room by a man who they’re claiming is Joe Allison (and who he knows, but they don’t with total certainty, is in fact Joe). He’s established that Lancaster lied about it to the police. And the strong implication is that either he was engaged in an adulterous relationship on the night his daughter was abducted, or he was there, on the scene, when Emma was taken—and, by inference, was the taker.

He finishes with a flourish. “So to this very day you do not know where Doug Lancaster, the father of Emma Lancaster, was, on the night that his daughter was taken from her room only to be found days later murdered.”

The sheriff gives his weary answer. “No. I don’t know where he was.”

Riva was not in court today. She was out on her own. She tells Luke about her day when they get together that night at the office. He’s been there for a while, prepping for tomorrow’s witnesses.

First, she listens to him recount his day She’s heard about it secondhand, but she wants his take on it.

Luke grudgingly admits that he made some points. “See?” she yodels triumphantly. “It isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

“Tomorrow’s another day,” he grouses, refusing to accept the glory of the present. He knows what his opposition doesn’t about Joe Allison and Emma Lancaster, and he’s sure, in his doom and gloom about it, that somewhere down the line it’s going to jump up and bite him on the ass and pull them down, all the way down.

“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, dude,” she chides him. She pats her growing belly. “And I’m not singing. Not for public consumption, anyway.”

“So,” he says. “You.” She’s been champing at the bit to lay her news on him. “What did you do today, anyway? I missed you in court. I like having you there. I need all the moral support I can get.”

“One day won’t hurt, I hope. Especially when you hear my news.”

The way she says it, the inflection and timing, bring him up short. “Okay.” He sits down. “Go.”

“For the sake of argument,” she begins, sitting down too, “let’s say that Joe Allison told the truth about what happened that night. That he was with Emma, but when he left she was still alive. All right?”

“All right.” It’s a mighty stretch, one he can’t make, but she has the floor.

“Who besides Doug has reason to kill Emma?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Nobody has
reason
to. Doug didn’t have reason; that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it in a moment of passion, though.”

“But what if it
wasn’t
in a moment of passion?” She’s excited, bouncing in her chair. “What if there was premeditation behind it?”

“Who in the world …?”

“Who has a life with him, but then discovers he’s cheating on her? With a fourteen-year-old, no less.”

He’s slow on the uptake, but it’s starting to register. Then it hits him, and the name is coming out of his mouth, but she’s too impatient, she can’t wait, she’s way too antsy.

“Nicole Rogers suspected Joe was screwing around on her, didn’t she?”

Slowly, he answers: “Yes.”

“And Allison did admit that he and Glenna Lancaster had slept together a few times. A mercy fuck on his part, it sounds like to me, pardon my French,” she adds with a touch of woman-to-woman bitchiness. “So there you are. Nicole is jealous of Glenna, who helps Joe decorate his house, plays tennis with him or whatever jockstrap shit they did, goes to him when she’s depressed about where her marriage is going.”