Cold Case (26 page)

Barbara rose and stretched, walked to the outer office, back, did it again, and made herself stop. She was too tired to keep walking. She eyed the sofa, shook her head. She would be too stiff to move on Saturday if she fell asleep there. Earlier she had tried to work at home, but had given up. Todd had a friend over, and the two boys were in and out of the den again and again, making sandwiches, tiptoing around, just there. Darren had been in the living room. He was simply reading, but just being there, she had decided, was too much, and she had packed up everything and returned to the office. She needed space to spread out papers, and space to walk without bumping into anyone or hearing anyone whispering, talking, breathing.

She was missing something. She could feel it all through her bones, her skin, her hair. She was missing something.

Wearily, she returned to the table to put away everything. Tomorrow, she told herself. There was still a tomorrow.

Six weeks of tomorrows. The thought filled her with alarm and despair. Only six more weeks.

D
arren always woke early, six or six-thirty, and that Saturday was no different. Although he was quiet, no door slamming or singing in the shower, Barbara woke up also. She rolled over and pulled the lightweight blanket over her face, but for the next two hours her sleep was broken again and again by what she had come to recognize as anxiety dreams. Lost in a strange city where she could not read the street signs and no one would speak to her. Lost in a hotel with endless corridors lined with closed doors without numbers. Lost keys, several variations of lost keys, the key to her house, key to the office, to the car. She came wide-awake and gave up trying to return to sleep.

When Todd and his friend emerged from the den to get their breakfasts, she escaped to her office over the garage, but she felt confined, caged in the small space, and remained there only a few minutes. She needed to walk.

She drove to the foot of Skinner's Butte, parked and went to the bike trail by the river and started what was to be a very long walk, trying to sort out what she knew about her case. So little, she thought, sorting would not take long. The dreams had been disturbing, and she hated it when her anxiety about a case haunted her sleep, as well as her waking hours. Lost. Wandering endlessly and not getting anywhere. Lost car keys, office keys, lost house keys. Locked out. That summed it up. She was locked out and could not find the wedge to force a single door to open and let her in. Lost car keys. Going nowhere, getting nowhere.

When her thighs began to throb and burn, she sat down to rest, then walked some more. The morning had been pleasantly cool, but the sun was bright and minute by minute the day became warmer, then hot. Everything was parched, brittle and dulled by summer dust. Dried-up blackberries clung to stems, so desiccated that not even the wasps were tempted by them.

If only they had found a bitter enemy, she thought morosely, but to all appearances Robert McCrutchen had not made enemies. And that was part of her problem, she realized. She could not keep the two deaths separated in her mind; they kept merging, one getting in the way of the other one. She started to walk again, but the trail was getting more crowded. Earlier there had been few others, a jogger or cyclist now and then, but now it seemed to be a thoroughfare, a public highway, with half the Eugene population intent on using the one trail. And the park was getting filled with family picnics, kids tossing Frisbees, babies in strollers and playpens. It seemed to her that everyone in the park was making noise.

She returned to her car, sat for a minute or two, then headed for her downtown office. She was as parched as the grass and the bushes, and she knew she was as ready to flare up as the dry trees with the least provocation.

In a week, after hours of insufferable questions, David would either prove himself capable of facing a hostile prosecutor and keeping his cool, or she would have to decide if his only chance was a plea bargain. Life without parole, possibly a death sentence, or a plea bargain. But it wouldn't stop there. If a jury found him guilty, or if he took a plea bargain, there would be another trial, with the same forlorn prospects. He would be found guilty a second time, or take another plea bargain, with one sentence to follow the other, and he would spend the rest of his life in prison. She saw no way out of that.

She did not have enough to put forward an effective defense and had no real hope for an acquittal.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she remembered Shelley's expressed alarm, her fear that David might pack his things and take off. If he saw no hope in the outcome of a trial, it was almost a certainty that he would do just that, Barbara thought. She also believed that David would die before facing a lifetime in prison.

In her office she drank a glass of water, put on coffee and took a second glass of water to her desk. She was missing something, and she had dreamed of lost keys. The key. Something she kept overlooking. She began to sift through the burgeoning file, and finally pulled out the page of
x
's with the word
Key
scrawled on it. Something about the key had made Robert McCrutchen draw the
x
's, write that word. Who had tipped off the police? And when had the newspapers printed that tip? Why had the police informed the media and then left it unexplained after they knew how it had come about?

She found the folder of news clippings that Shelley had assembled and started rereading them. On Monday following Jill Storey's murder there was an account of it, including the item about the key to David's apartment. She read it carefully. No attribution, just the bare account and the sentence, “It has been learned that in Jill Storey's possession was the key to an apartment rented by David Etheridge, another senior from the Gresham community.”

She leaned back in her chair, thinking. The investigators asked David about it on Tuesday. They must not have known on Sunday when they got his first statement about the party, but by Tuesday they had been tipped. The newspaper had it first? She reread the police report. An anonymous tip on Monday, followed up on Tuesday. The explanation of the circumstances followed along with verification by both roommates and the shop where David had the key made. There was no mention of sharing the tip with the media. They hadn't shared it. There was no mention of it in any of the statements the police issued concerning the murder. The newspaper had it first.

She smelled coffee and went to pour herself a cup, thinking. Had the killer been disappointed that no arrest had followed the newspaper account? Had he then made certain the police knew about the key by calling and leaving them the same tip? The police never explained it, since they had not issued a statement concerning it in the first place, but whoever had tipped them off might not have known the circumstances, might have been bitterly disappointed that no arrest had been made.

She looked again at Robert McCrutchen's page of
x
's. He must not have known why Jill had that key until he read the police file. He had believed Jill was moving in with David, that they were lovers, that she had used him for twenty-five dollars. He had been taken. From his words and his actions, as described by Amy, he had not interpreted what Jill said to mean she was a lesbian.

Chloe's revised story about the bloody nose was a lie. Her original statement was that she had gone upstairs with Robert, helped him off with his shoes and stayed with him for a while. No one had questioned that. Two contradictory stories made both of them suspect.

Aaronson's statement about a bloody hand and face was another lie. He wasn't even there at the right time. Why lie about it now? To forestall an investigation into the possibility that Robert had killed Jill Storey? Fear that such an investigation would uncover illegalities concerning Robert's questionable deals with Nick Aaronson? Some other reason she couldn't even guess at? It didn't matter, she decided, why they lied. She just had to demonstrate that they had.

She had blindsided herself by connecting Robert's murder with Jill Storey's, she thought then. Thinking the same person had killed them both had kept her in a cage without a door. So much for intuition and hunches. Her father had it right, trust intuition only if it could be verified by facts and evidence. She had to start over, rethink everything, starting with the confrontation on the deck that night.

Jill had gone back in the house first, David had followed, and then Robert, and no one had seen him again that night. He had been furious with Jill and David and knew Jill had used him, had prostituted herself for twenty-five dollars, and that she despised him. Frat boy, fun loving, flirting with all the women, impregnating one while sleeping with another one, or possibly more than one other. He might well have followed Jill, followed her home, taken out his rage, his humiliation by strangling her and trying to frame David for the death.

Why hadn't Robert followed through, accused David at the time? She was gazing again at his page of
x
's. And why do that, place an
x
where he knew or believed the other party attendees had been? She couldn't even be certain that was what the
x
's represented. She found Amy's representation of the deck, the placement of the attendees, and laid the two side by side. The only real difference was in the spacing, and the outline of the house that Amy had included. She had started higher on the paper, providing space for the dogwood tree and her position under it. Her view was from that spot, with space on the left for the rest of the house that she had not drawn. Robert had started farther down, with little space for anything past the deck, and positioned on the sheet of paper in such a way that the right side was blank. Had he been interrupted before he completed it, or had that been enough to satisfy his own purposes?

Perhaps it was as simple as wanting to make sure that no one could contradict the lie he told about the incident on the deck, at least no one except David and, as the accused, his version could be dismissed as self-serving. Elders, another lifelong resident who was well respected, had dutifully reported the lie to the police, as a good citizen should.

It would do, she told herself irritably. She didn't have to know why Robert hadn't made the accusation at the time, or why he had not completed his schematic. She didn't have to prove anything, just make it as plausible as possible in order to bring a reasonable doubt to bear on the jury's verdict. It was nearly impossible to accuse a dead person of a crime unless there was overwhelming evidence to back up the accusation. She would be unable to accuse Robert, she well knew, but she might be able to instill a doubt. Just instill a doubt. That was the first glimmer of hope she had found to date.

It was five o'clock and she knew she should go home. She hadn't left a note, and had not called during the day. Of course, Darren knew she was working on a difficult case but, even so, she owed him some explanation. Still, she hesitated. Todd and his pal were probably still there. Chatter, music, something would be going on, something that demanded at the very least politeness, and she was in no mood to be polite. She called the house and left a message on the answering machine, not giving anyone time to pick up the phone before she hung up. Her message was brief, and no doubt rude, she thought, but to the point. “I've been delayed, so don't wait for me. I'll have something to eat before I come home.”

She sat without moving for a minute, then called Frank's number. He would be home or not. If not, she would get a sandwich or something.

Fifteen minutes later, in his kitchen she told him that she had opted out of going home for dinner, then outlined the only case she could make.

“All right,” Frank said. “What's wrong with it, besides not having a shred of proof?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I just feel as if the shoes don't quite fit.” She had asked him what was wrong with a case he had been struggling with and that had been his answer, years earlier. She was surprised to hear the same words now, this time coming from her. “I'll have to find out where Robert was parked. I guess Lucy McCrutchen might know.” She drank a little wine, bit into a piece of cheese, then said, “If it's shot down, I don't have anything else to offer.”

Frank nodded. He knew that. “But the shoes don't quite fit,” he said. He knew the feeling, a deep gut feeling that something was wrong. “Let's order in something to eat and go over it all step by step, find the weak spots and see if we can plug them.”

“I have a list,” she said. “A problems list.”

“Dinner order first. What kind of food do you want?”

“I couldn't care less. Whatever is put down in front of me.”

He called Martin and ordered whatever the special was, and they sat in his study and began to consider her list of problems.

“We can't demonstrate that Jill Storey was a lesbian. Olga Maas absolutely will not cooperate, and I haven't found anyone else who suspected much less knew except David.” She went on down her list. Amy was too young then to make a credible witness today. Robert had not followed through with an accusation, if he had been the tipster. No one had talked about the incident on the deck then, and now it was just David's word, backed by Amy. Both easily dismissed. Elders's statement about Robert's version of it on the last day of his life, plus his statements about how possessive and jealous David had appeared on the night of the party.

“I know how it will appear,” she said. “I'll be more or less accusing a dead man who was highly regarded and very well liked, solid family man, church member in good standing, not even a hint of scandal attached to him. Who's going to believe he'd proposition a prostitute and want to take her to his room with his fiancé in the house, on the same night he announced his engagement? Damn few. The most I'll be able to do is bring in some testimony that shows he played around with women in Salem. And even that could backfire, be seen as besmirching the reputation of a fine man who can no longer defend himself. And David is going to be depicted as evil incarnate—antireligion, anti-American, anti-everything decent people hold dear. Depending on his attitude on the stand, he could reinforce that image.”

Frank could not find a single problem on her list that he would have omitted or altered.

The dinners of veal marsala with linguine were delivered. After a mostly silent meal, Barbara outlined in some detail the only case she could see to make. Use a snapshot or two of David as an underdeveloped adolescent, one the prettiest girl in school would not have chosen with romance on her mind. Shoot down Aaronson's testimony and Chloe's, as well, or at the very least make them suspect. The housekeeper at that time would testify that she had found no blood on Robert's clothes, a towel or washcloth following the party, but she was shaky, easily confused. There was little she could do about Elders's testimony as to what he said about David's possessiveness, but she could raise objections to anything Robert had told him as hearsay.