Death Qualified Part 31

"Where is that creep Bailey?" Barbara muttered over a lunch she did not want.

Her father was eating placidly.

"He'll show this afternoon.

I know him, he'll come through."

"Well, if he does, he has to get in touch with Roy Whitehorse. Tell him for me, will you? I want Whitehorse to call Brandywine tonight, if she hasn't called him back yet. He's sore. He's lost his job, or is on suspension, over showing the campsites, and it's costing him. Someone has to pay for that. He should be in an ugly mood, maybe sound a little drunk even. If she doesn't want what he has, maybe the defense lawyer will buy the disks before the defense has to rest its case tomorrow. He should say it like that, and then no more. But make it plain that tomorrow he wants to unload and get some spending money. And he won't turn them over to anyone but her or me. He knows the sheriff wouldn't give a cent for them. Think he can handle that?"

Frank was watching her with a slight frown.

"You said disks. You're gambling "high stakes."

"I know I am, but it's going to take some strong medicine to shake that lady. That could do it. How about Whitehorse? How good is he?"

"I don't know. Never met him. Bailey says he's a teacher, grade-school level, and Timothy LeMans says he's the best tracker in the west. What does that tell you?"

"I wish I knew," she said. She looked at her salad with distaste and drank a second cup of coffee.

"Well," her father said, "maybe he teaches drama, and he longs to do Shakespeare and is a h.e.l.l of an actor."

Lucky Rosner was not grinning today. He was wearing a suit and tie and looked very uncomfortable in his clothes.

And he looked even younger than Barbara remembered, no more than sixteen or seventeen. He verified Pete Malinski's story about the two men and said he had stayed in Salem with the second man, Joe, and they played pool that afternoon.

"What happened next, Mr. Rosner? Did you read or hear about the death of Lucas Kendricks?"

He shook his head, then swiftly said, "No, I mean. I never knew anything about it until a detective came around asking questions."

"And he questioned you?"

"Yes, Ma'am. The secretary didn't know anything about that day, so he hung around and asked some of the guys, and when he got to me, I told him about it."

"Was he with the police?"

"No, Ma'am. He was a private detective."

"All right. Just tell us what happened then."

At first hesitantly, then with more confidence, he de scribed going to the tree with Barbara, her father, and Bailey and told about climbing the tree and finding the gadget. Barbara picked it up from the exhibit table and showed him.

"Is this the device you found in the tree?"

He nodded, then with a nervous glance at the judge, he said, "I mean, yes."

She thanked him, nodded to Tony, and went back to the defense table. Her father was not in his seat. She breathed a small prayer that Bailey had arrived finally.

"Mr. Rosner, did either man say who hired them?"

This time Tony didn't bother to leave the prosecution table. He stood at his seat.

"No, sir. They said a guy wanted to play a joke on the lady."

"And that device was just lying up there on a limb?"

"No, sir. It was stuck to the tree with some gummy stuff."

"Could you tell how long it had been up there?"

"No, sir."

"You and your partner believed a man wanted to spy on his wife, isn't that why you went along with this scheme?"

"Yes, sir. That's one of the things we thought of."

Tony sat down.

"That's all."

Barbara's next witness was an electronics expert, Daryl Simpson, who told them more about listening devices than they wanted to know. He held the device lovingly as he talked. He was a thin man with sunken cheeks and a greenish complexion, as if he were ill or just recovering from an illness. When he began to describe the range of this particular device, she had him demonstrate on a map.

"So it would have picked up any conversation in either house on the Kendricks property," she said then.

"Not the beach, because the bank would interfere. What about the ledge here? It's higher than the device was."

"That doesn't matter," he said.

"Imagine a dome, half a mile diameter, half a mile up. That's the range of that one."

"Anything that was said on the ledge would have been recorded?"

"If it was working."

"What about the receiver? Where would that have been?"

He talked about receivers at great length. But the jury was being very attentive, and she did not try to hurry him.

She referred to the map again.

"So, in a straight line for up to two miles, and you said it was directional. Does that mean it would transmit in that one direction only?"

"Yes, it does. Not through rocks or cliffs, but trees wouldn't interfere."

"For example, the end cabins down here would be in line with it, but not the ones under the cliff?"

He said that was right. Whoever put it up probably had aimed it where he intended to set up his receiver. Usually there would be a van or something nearby, but the cabins would work just as well.

"How much would you say this kind of device would cost?" she asked then, taking it from his hand.

He looked saddened and kept his gaze on it, not her.

"Seven or eight hundred dollars."

After she thanked him and sat down. Tony got him to admit that the listeners could have been in a number of places in Nell's house, or the big house, on the ledge, in any of the houses along the ridge, even across the river.

"In fact, there's no way to know, is there?"

"Not really. Just within two miles in a straight line."

Tony went on quickly.

"Could you tell how long that device was in the tree?"

"It wasn't rained on, I'd say, but it was dirty, dusty."

He began to talk about the adhesive gum, but this time Tony cut him off.

"Thank you. You don't know how long it was up there, isn't that your answer?"

"Yes. I don't know."

a.s.shole, Barbara thought at Tony. Next he'd suggest that she had climbed the tree and planted the bug. She heard a rustling behind her and turned to see Frank. He nodded.

Bailey was back.

Her next witness was Louise Gilmore, who had rented one of the end cabins to two men on Wednesday, June seventh, the day before the two men had gone to Nell's place to cut the tree down.

"Is this the guest register?" Barbara asked, showing her the book.

"Yes. There are their names, Sam and Jerry Johnson."

Barbara let her continue.

"They wanted the end cabin, out of traffic they said, and they paid in cash, double our rate because they were anxious to finish some work they had to do. I thought they were writers with a deadline--one of them said something to that effect."

She had done some juggling with the cabins, she said, because they were booked up, but they had put a couple of people in their own house, and it had worked out. She described the men; her description was of the men who had hired Pete Malinski and Lucky Rosner. They had rented a boat, she said, but hadn't used it much, and not to fish. And they had been out all Wednesday and most of Thursday in their car. She had not seen them again after they checked in. They left Sat.u.r.day afternoon. All their stuff was gone, and the door had been left open, the key on the chest of drawers.

"How did you know they were gone? You said you didn't see them after they checked in."

"Well, up in the store we were talking about that girl's body and how everyone who had a boat was out on the river helping with the search, or letting someone borrow their boats to do it. And one of my customers said that boat number fourteen was on sh.o.r.e, funny that those people weren't out. I just thought I'd tell them that someone else might use it if they didn't want to join the searchers.

And I found the place empty. But the boat had been out that day, it was still muddy. Maybe they had looked earlier"

When Barbara asked her how much the men had paid for the cabin she said without hesitation, "One thousand fifty dollars in cash, one week in advance."

Tony challenged some of her statements; how did she know the men hadn't fished if she never saw them?

"You live on the river all of your life like I have, you know."

In the end her story was intact, and he sat down, shaking his head as if to say, so what?

But the jury was paying close attention. It was all that money, Barbara knew. One of them, a delicate-looking woman of seventy, tightened her mouth more every time another sum was mentioned. Her lips had vanished altogether Social Security, fixed income, Barbara remembered from the examination of the jurors. This was very big money to her. And a youngish, bookish man was looking pained as the numbers kept mounting. Barbara wished they could leave it right now, come back tomorrow, but Judge Lundgren was showing no signs of doing that. She called her next witness, Frederick Yost, the Forest Service ranger who had spotted the Honda on the dirt road. He had been sitting with a young woman and another man, both men in spotless Forest Service uniforms, so sharply pressed they looked like paper clothes. Yost was athletic, broad through the chest and shoulders, like Smokey the Bear with a people mask on.

After the opening questions about his age (twenty-six), education, and experience, she said, "Friday afternoon, June ninth, you were on your way to Bend, Oregon. Is that correct?"

"Your Honor, I object," Tony said sharply.

"This witness has nothing to add to this trial. He was not even in the area when the murder occurred. This testimony is irrelevant to this case."

"And perhaps the prosecuting attorney would like to take his place in the stand and answer other questions I have for this witness," Barbara said just as sharply.

The judge held up his hand.

"Ms. Holloway, Mr.

De Angelo please, no personalities."

"Your Honor, I must object if the prosecution is going to play both prosecutor and jury in this case," Barbara said hotly.

Judge Lundgren's face seemed to draw in on itself in a curious way, as if he were struggling to control a flash of anger.

"Ms. Holloway, I admonish you, no further re marks of that nature."

Tony started to say something, but the judge silenced him, also, and then sent the jury out with the bailiff and called Tony and Barbara to the bench.

"Ms. Holloway, are you going to establish relevance with this witness, and soon?" His voice was intense, but too low to carry past the two attorneys standing before him.

"Yes, Your Honor," she said, keeping her voice as low as his.

"How?" he asked bluntly. "This witness mis spoke in the statement he made to the investigating officer. Correcting his statement is vital to the defense of my client."

"You can't impeach the testimony of your own witness," Tony said furiously.

"If the police had done their job it wouldn't be necessary!" she shot back.

"Stop this instantly," Judge Lundgren said icily.

"This court will not tolerate incivility!"

Tony cleared his throat, and the judge nodded to him to speak.

"She intends to confuse the jury with so much irrelevant material they won't be able to think about the sole object of this trial, the death of Lucas Kendricks and the murder charge against Nell Kendricks."

Judge Lundgren looked again at Barbara and studied her for another moment, then said, "Ms. Holloway, be advised that the admonition I gave you last week is still pertinent. If I decide that you have been introducing material that is not relevant, I will instruct the jury most forcefully that they may not consider anything that happened before that Sat.u.r.day when Lucas Kendricks was murdered. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do."