Barbara Holloway: Desperate Measures Part 23

Barbara re-sorted papers, studied her time chart and the map of the Opal Creek area, and she walked. Then she nearly b.u.mped into Sh.e.l.ley, who was standing outside her own office.

"What I want," Barbara said, "is for you to go through all those statements you got from the Opal Creek teachers, and-" She looked at Sh.e.l.ley, then at her watch, and frowned. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you to tell me what you want," Sh.e.l.ley said.

"How long have you been here?"

"A little bit. I left my door open, but you didn't notice, so I came out. What do you want me to do with those statements?"

Barbara turned and motioned Sh.e.l.ley to come along, and they went to her office. "I think I've pulled all the teachers' statements, but there could be others. Do you still have them on your computer?"

"Sure, and I kept hard copies. I have them all."

"Good. We were concentrating on the teachers and Rachel, and on Hilde and Gus, not really paying much attention to what anyone had to say about Leona. A mistake. I'm afraid you'll have to go back and dig a little more. About Leona, the day of the graduation. How she was before she went back home to make dinner, how she was afterward, what she said, whatever you can dig out. I don't think anyone ever asked if there was anyone besides Gus at the house when she returned that day. Concentrate on her this time. Can do?"

"You bet. You think she might have known something that just hasn't come up before?"

"I don't know what I think right now. That's a possibility. Let's explore it."

On Sunday Barbara dropped in at Frank's an hour before dinner. He eyed the plastic bag she was carrying.

"You're into toys now?"

"Yep. Toy cars. Want to see?"

She opened the bag and brought out three model cars, all to scale, she had been a.s.sured at the store. She also had a newsprint drawing pad and a Magic Marker. At the dinette table she put two of the cars down side by side on a sheet of the paper. "I think that's about right. Old Opal Creek Road, barely wide enough for two cars to pa.s.s, wouldn't you say?"

"I would."

She drew parallel lines allowing not much s.p.a.ce between them. Then she drew a few circles outside one of the lines. "Boulders," she said. On the other side she drew a wavy line. "The shallow ditch, with the orchard on the other side of it."

Frank nodded.

"Okay. I come to a stop here to let Daniel out," she said, and placed the little red car at the spot. "I start the watch ticking, and begin to make my turn to head out the way I came in." She backed up the car, turning it. Then she moved it forward, back again, each time turning it as much as s.p.a.ce allowed. "I don't want to get into the ditch and the orchard," she murmured. "And I sure don't want to ding my car on the boulders. Whoops, here comes a car." She placed the blue car on the road. "It's quicker to go back to where I was than it is to finish making my turn, so back I go." She maneuvered the car back to its original position, then rolled the blue car along until it pa.s.sed the red car, removed it. "Leona," she said.

She repeated the sequence, this time placing the green car on the road before the red car could complete the turn. She returned it to the original position. "Hilde," she said, moving the green car past the red car.

"Now, finally the road is clear and I can finish turning around." With much backing and filling of the red car, she turned it around to head toward New Opal Creek Road. "And the whole thing took me four minutes," she said, leaning back.

"During the first minute and forty-five seconds, give or take a second or two, Daniel was running toward the house. If he met Leona there, and she left instantly and drove ten miles an hour, she would not have reached that point for another minute and a half, and that's not taking into account the driveway of two hundred feet, or stopping to make her turn onto the road. So Daniel's minute and forty-five seconds plus her minute and a half come to three minutes and fifteen seconds. And that means that they had only forty-five seconds to abort the maneuver when Hilde showed up, and then make a complete turn. According to Bakken, Hilde followed Leona by about a minute. The boys would have been turned already and into the countdown of the last sixty seconds. It won't work."

"Where do those numbers come from?" he asked.

She told him about the article in the newspaper. "I dug out the boys' statements, and they confirmed the sob-story account. That's the newspaper that was on Hilde's sofa the night she was killed. I think that's what she realized, that it couldn't have happened like that. There wasn't time for Daniel to see his mother at the house, and for Leona to get to that point when the boys said she did."

"Daniel lied," Frank said.

She nodded. "Daniel lied all right. Now the question is, Why?"

"Why the devil didn't the investigators spot that discrepancy?"

She shrugged. "For the same reason we didn't. We were all too intent on the other aspect of that time slot, proving that no one but Alex or Dr. Minick had time to get to the house that day. You see what you expect to see, and they expected to see evidence proving Alex guilty. Once you find what you're looking for, the search is over."

Frank put two cars side by side on the road again, then moved one back and forth with one finger. "She could have been driving faster than ten miles an hour."

"Bakken and the inspector said about ten, maybe fifteen, but they thought closer to ten. Even at fifteen miles an hour, it would have been a minute, again not counting time to get out of the house, down the driveway, and make her turn. And she would have slowed way down when she saw the boys' car on the road ahead. Tomorrow I'm sending Bailey and two other guys out to reenact the whole thing, with a stopwatch and a videographer. He'll have to find out what kind of car the boys were driving, and get something comparable."

Frank stopped playing with the car. "It still doesn't change the time slot or the fact that Daniel had less than a minute in the house."

"I know. It could be that he was simply afraid someone might accuse him of parricide, and he used her as an alibi. If she was there, he couldn't have done anything. But it's always interesting when a key witness is caught lying. It tends to open new avenues of thought. For instance, if that was what Hilde realized and called to tell you, how did she regard it? It would have signaled to her that she could not be considered a suspect. She must have felt relieved. Enough to call Wrigley and tell him she was off the hook, she would not be investigated, after all, and they had nothing to worry about?"

Frank was remembering the look on Hilde's face when she talked about her affair, how she had closed her eyes and talked in a monotone, and how he had misread her all the way. Protecting her lover, undoubtedly, but also protecting herself, hiding her shame at an affair with a young married man with a family. She would have been relieved to be off the hook, he knew, and happy, even overjoyed, at the prospect of salvaging that tryst in San Francisco.

"She would have called him," he said. "She had been living at such a high level of anxiety, it would have been her first thought. She was in love, Bobby, not entirely rational, I suspect. And if he was ready to end things, and for a time thought a possible investigation was his opportunity to walk away without blame, that call would have been the last thing he wanted to hear."

She nodded. "Whether a suspect, or just a witness for one side or the other, she would have come under investigation; their affair could have been revealed. If he hadn't been so stupid about getting that book," she said, "none of this would have come to light. Even if the prosecution thought of it, they wouldn't have brought it up and ruined their case. He must have worried about the book. Maybe they had talked about it, laughed about it, and then he started to worry that someone in her family would read it."

"I'm going to make dinner," Frank said, rising.

"Before I forget," she said, "there's something I'd love to have you and Patsy do for me. Leona's sister said Leona had a terrible time with pregnancies before she managed to bear two kids. I'd like to know more about all that. Did she have a condition that made s.e.x itself difficult? Could that have accounted for Gus's turning off the way he apparently did? I think I need to subpoena Leona's hospital records."

"What you mean," he said coolly, "is that you want me to get those records for you, knowing d.a.m.n well there's no legitimate reason for doing it."

She grinned. "Exactly."

He nodded, then went to the kitchen to start cooking. Barbara sat at the table, rolling the little blue car back and forth, thinking, Just one more week. She gave the little blue car a push that sent it across the table and off the side.

31.

Frank had said that Judge Lou MacDaniels had seen everything in his thirty years on the bench, that he did not suffer fools gladly or any other way, and that he was a stickler for details and facts and would tolerate no speculation. But he had not seen anyone like Alex Feldman, Barbara thought Monday morning when the trial started. She had attended four pretrial hearings with the judge, and she had shown him the pictures of Alex to prepare him, but no one could ever be really prepared. As soon as the defense team reached their table, Alex had removed his beret and his sungla.s.ses, and now when Judge Mac strode into the courtroom to take his seat at the bench, he gazed at Alex, breaking his stride, then shook himself and continued to his chair.

Frank called him Judge Mac, and Barbara found herself thinking of him that way. He was tall and slender, and in his street clothes he had appeared misshapen, with his head too large for his body and his neck. Today, he was dressed in his robes and his head seemed proportionate. His face was ruddy, his silver hair stylishly brushed back in waves. He wore gold-rimmed eyegla.s.ses. Very much a family man, he had been married to the same woman for forty-three years; they had four children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. In his chambers she had seen dozens of framed photographs of his family.

She turned her attention to the a.s.sistant district attorney, who was starting his opening statement. Jase Novak was forty-one, and five to ten pounds overweight. In ten years he would be a tub, she thought, if he couldn't control it now. His face was round and smooth, his eyes round and mildly protuberant. His hair was dark, not quite black, and straight; it looked stiff.

He outlined the case the state was prepared to make succinctly and without a single flourish, evidently in response to Judge Mac, who had warned that he would tolerate no histrionics, and since there would not be a jury to play to, they would be wasted in any event.

The state's case would rely on the time chart, she understood quickly, the impossibility of anyone's approaching the Marchand house except on foot; on the statement made by Isaac Wrigley; and on the two threats Gus Marchand had made, the charge of stalking and the proposed housing unit. Novak spent a good deal of time psychoa.n.a.lyzing Alex: a violent boy, a suicidal youth, and now a violent adult.

When Novak sat down, Judge Mac turned to Barbara. "Ms. Holloway, do you have your opening statement?"

"I would like to reserve my opening statement until after the prosecution has presented its case," she said.

Judge Mac nodded. "Very well. Mr. Novak, your first witness, if you will."

Barbara had told Alex and Dr. Minick how the beginning would go: the state would prove death by murder.... Interrupting her, Alex had said solemnly, "Yee-ep, he's dead all right." And to Barbara's surprise, Frank had burst out laughing.

Now she listened as Dr. Steiner detailed the facts of the death of Gus Marchand. The Marchand children were not in court for this grisly account, but Dolly and Arnold Feldman had flown in to attend their son's trial, and Barbara was very much afraid that if there were any histrionics, Dolly would provide them. When the autopsy pictures were put up on an easel for Dr. Steiner to refer to, she heard a gasp from behind her and gritted her teeth. There was another gasp when the hammer was exhibited.

Novak finished with Dr. Steiner in record time, and Barbara stood up. "Dr. Steiner, would such a blow require a very strong arm?"

"Not at all," he said. "That was a ten-pound hammer, swung with sufficient force to sever the brain stem, but it was the edge of the hammer that was the cutting agent and the immediate cause of death, not the force of the blow. It would not have required great strength."

"From your findings on doing the autopsy, when would you say Mr. Marchand had eaten his last meal?"

"At least five hours before death," he said promptly. "It's quite possible that it was closer to six hours."

"Would it be a fair a.s.sumption to say that he ate lunch around noon, and nothing more that day?"

"Exactly so."

She nodded. "Thank you, Doctor. No further questions."

The next witness was Michael Bakken. He was a s.h.a.ggy-haired man in his fifties; even his eyebrows were s.h.a.ggy, growing in every possible direction. No doubt, he had shaved that morning, but already his face was shadowed as if a heavy beard might erupt any second.

Novak asked him to relate in his own words the events of the evening of June ninth. Bakken told very simply how he had been inspecting his trees with Harvey Wilberson, how they heard the smoke alarm and discovered the body.

"Did you see any traffic on Old Opal Creek Road that evening?" Novak asked.

"Yes, two cars went by. Leona Marchand's car, and then Hilde Franz's."

"Your Honor," Novak said, going to his table, where his a.s.sistant was setting up an easel, "we have here an aerial map of the area, but since all that's really visible from above is the canopy of the trees, we have had an overlay transparency prepared with the significant details enhanced. Here is the road, Mr. Bakken's orchard, Opal Creek, the Marchand driveway and house, and part of the Marchand orchard."

Barbara inspected the exhibit, nodded, and resumed her seat. She made a note of the number; she would use that same transparency later, she decided; it was better than her map.

"Now, Mr. Bakken, if you would just step down and show us where you were at different times," Novak said.

Bakken went to the easel, where Novak handed him a short pointer. He traced the route they had taken, and it became clear that he and Wilberson had walked quite a few miles that day.

"About where were you when you saw Leona Marchand's car on the road?" Novak asked.

Bakken pointed. "I heard it first," he said, "and turned to see who was driving on the old road. She came out of the driveway and headed west."

"I have a marker here," Novak said. "Would you please place it at approximately where you were when you saw Mrs. Marchand's car."

His marker was a little green arrow; Bakken put it on the transparency, east of the Marchand driveway.

"Did you look back at the road when you turned to see Mrs. Marchand's car?"

"Yes, I did."

"Could you see this spot marked with a circle?"

"No, sir. It's around that curve, out of sight behind all those lilacs and laurels on the Marchand place."

"All right. Then what did you do?"

"We walked a little more, and then Hilde Franz drove out."

Novak had him place another arrow at the spot he thought they had reached when he saw Hilde's car, and asked him to continue.

"We went up to the end of the orchard, and turned back, down between the last two rows of trees. We'd come back to about here when Harvey heard the smoke alarm. We walked a few more steps and I heard it, too." The arrow was almost directly across from the Marchand driveway, pointing toward it.

"During that time did you see anyone other than Leona Marc- hand and Hilde Franz driving on that road?"

"No, sir, we didn't."

"Did you see anyone walking on the road?"

"No, sir."

"At any point along that route could you see the Minick house?"

"No, sir. It's way back with a lot of trees between it and the road."

"Could you see past the trees anywhere along that route?"

"No, sir. Not more than a couple of feet anyway."

"All right. After you waded across the creek, did you see anyone on the driveway to the Marchand house? Or anywhere else on the property?"

"No, sir."

After Novak had him give more details about what he had done at the house, he nodded to Barbara. Her witness.

When Barbara stood up to cross-examine, Bakken stiffened as if expecting an attack, preparing himself. She smiled at him. "That was a good report, direct and to the point. Thank you. I have only a few questions, Mr. Bakken." If he relaxed, it was not perceptible.

"When you ran to the house, why didn't you enter by the front door instead of continuing around to the back?"

He frowned, and his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows nearly met in the middle. "I don't know," he said after a moment. "I didn't stop to think about it. I was wet, you know, wet feet and pants legs. I just didn't think of it."

"Were you chilled from getting wet?"

"No, ma'am. It was a hot day, low eighties."

She nodded. "Is it the custom to go in through the back door unless it's a real visit for a meal or something like that?"

"That's how we usually do it in the country."

"Is there a screen at the back door?"

He looked as if he suspected she might be a little crazy. "Sure there is."