Death Qualified (28 page)

    He sounded proud of Nell. Someone on the jury chuckled, and someone else echoed it.

    Barbara smiled also but became sober once more as she asked, "Did she ever threaten you again, after that day?"

    "No. I never set foot on her land again, neither."

    "Were you told that she had threatened you indirectly?"

    "Objection," Tony said.

    "Counsel knows better than to introduce hearsay and rumors."

    "Your Honor," Barbara said swiftly, "if this witness received a message that included a threat, that is not hearsay, but direct testimony."

    Judge Lundgren nodded to Chuck Gilmore.

    "Overruled.

    You may answer the question."

    "No," he said after a slight pause.

    "There were rumors, like he said." He looked at Tony.

    "But no one told me anything to my face."

    "You heard such rumors when, Mr. Gilmore?"

    Tony objected and was sustained.

    Suddenly Barbara realized that she was doing exactly what Tony expected. She walked to the defense table thinking, remembering what Nell had said about that afternoon at Tamer's Point. Chuck had not been in the store, and now she believed he had not been in Tamer's Point at all. No matter how sheA approached the matter of the two men who had claimed to be tree cutters. Tony would object and be sustained, because this witness knew nothing about it except what he had been told after the fact.

    Abruptly she turned and said, "No more questions, Mr.

    Gilmore. Thank you."

    And that surprised Tony enough that he was not instantly prepared to have his witness repeat his most damning statements. Barbara took little satisfaction in knowing she had judged correctly this time. She felt like a quarry being run in tighter and tighter circles; no matter how clever her maneuvers, they were delaying tactics only.

    "I'll have to testify!" Nell cried that evening.

    "I have to tell my side."

    They were in a dim restaurant; it was not yet dinner time, and they were the only customers. They had agreed on meeting here at the Swiss Chalet for a drink, for a conference, for relaxation before Nell and John and Amy Kendricks returned to her place, and Frank to his. Barbara was staying in town, she had announced, things she had to look up.

    Now she regarded Nell soberly. She shook her head and nudged her father with an elbow.

    "You do it." He looked as tired as she was feeling, as discouraged.

    "Right," he said, and cleared his throat.

    "Why did you get the rifle out of the gun cabinet a second time? Why did you leave it on the couch that day? Why did you send your children packing the day before their father was due?

    Did you ever let them go away without you before? In fact, didn't your father-in-law warn you that Lucas was coming by noon Saturday? Why did you call the doctor who lived a few minutes away instead of James Gresham, who was already at hand? Did you need a few minutes in order to try to wipe the gun clean? Didn't you take the gun up to the ledge and, when your husband appeared, shoot him?

    Weren't you afraid that you would not be able to resist him if he said he was moving in again? Why didn't you divorce your husband after he abandoned you and your children?

    Did he tell you that this time he fully intended to harvest the trees, claim his share?"

    He had done this so rapidly that no one had reacted, but abruptly John Kendricks reached out and put his arm around Nell's shoulders.

    "My God," he said.

    "My God!"

    Amy Kendricks picked up her glass and drank most of the bourbon and water in it. Nell was wooden.

    "That's for openers," Barbara murmured.

    "It would get worse. Are you prepared to say exactly what happened on the ledge?"

    "I told you," Nell said faintly.

    "You told us something, but there's something else, isn't there?"

    "I don't know," Nell said.

    "I've tried and tried to make myself remember every second, but.... I don't know."

    "Exactly," Barbara said.

    "Tomorrow, Mr. Kendricks, it will be your turn, and then, if Tony thinks he's made enough of a case, if he blocks my every move to get that girl's murder included, he'll probably rest."

    "But you can bring up things like that when you do the defense, can't you?" Amy asked.

    "They can't keep the whole story out like that, can they?"

    Barbara glanced at her father. He had been brusque, his questions so fast they had been staccato, but now he said very gently, "Mrs. Kendricks, the problem is that the prosecutor may convince the judge, and the jury, that it doesn't matter where your son was all those years, what he was involved in, where he was that last week of his life even. They may take the position that since Nell didn't know any of those things, they are immaterial to the state's case. All they need do is prove to the satisfaction of the jury that she was the only one who could have shot him."

    "There has to be a way to get at the truth!" Amy Kendricks cried.

    "They can't just pretend nothing else happened to Lucas. Nell didn't shoot him, but someone did!

    They have to let you find whoever was chasing him, who it was who wrecked his car, and our house! They can't pretend it didn't happen."

    Nell glanced at her watch and said they had to go; the kids would be anxious }f she was late.

    "All this is pretty upsetting for them," she added. She sounded defeated, her voice was dull, and her eyes were filled with tears that she kept blinking back. What will happen to them, if ... if.. . ? she had asked early on. She had not brought it up again, but the question hung around her like an aura.

    They all stood up.

    "Mr. Kendricks, tomorrow will be an ordeal for you," Barbara said.

    "Tony will try to keep you on a very short leash, and I'll try to stretch it out.

    Try to get some sleep tonight. You, too, Nell," she added, and she put her arms around Nell, and then kissed her cheek.

    "It's not over yet," she said.

    "I have every intention of blowing this whole damn thing right out of the water."

    At eleven-thirty she stirred in Mike Dinesen's arms. His breathing had changed; he was falling asleep, and she was afraid if she did not get up this minute, she would fall asleep also. A hard rain beat against the windows; she was warm and content--dangerously warm and content, she realized as she caught herself drifting. This time she eased Mike's arm off her and tried to roll away without waking him up.

    "You really meant it?" he asked sleepily.

    " 'fraid so," she said.

    "Go back to sleep. Don't wait up. I'll be late."

    He pulled her to him and kissed her, and then rolled over onto his stomach. She swatted his bare bottom and got up.

    Earlier, she had made coffee and put it in a thermos, and now she dressed quickly, collected her various things," the briefcase, purse, umbrella, and the thermos, and opened the door. The rain was businesslike, purposeful, a hard November Oregon rain that had gone on for hours and had not even started to show its stuff yet. Taking a deep breath, she went out into it, heading for Frank's law office, the law library. Two hours, she muttered to herself, but it was four in the morning when she returned to Mike's bed; he did not wake up.

    The fragrance of coffee brought her struggling up from a very deep pit. By the time she reached the kitchen the coffee was done; Mike was at the table gathering sheets of computer paper. Often when she stayed overnight she found the table covered with pages of arcane symbols that she could not decipher any more than if they had been Martian recipes. Those times she realized that not only did she not know what he actually did, she did not even know the language he used for his work. Those times she regarded him with a touch of awe, mixed with a touch of skepticism in about equal proportions.

    He finished clearing a corner of the table and jumped up to take her by the shoulders and guide her to a chair.

    He brought her coffee.

    "You look like hell," he said cheerfully.

    "Thank you."

    "Did you sleep at all?"

    "Sure."

    He sat down opposite her and waited until she had sipped the hot coffee.

    "It all comes down today, doesn't it?"

    "I don't know."

    "I'll be there. I'm giving my graduate class a problem I can't solve. That's how they used me as a graduate student.

    Now I can see the point. I'll be there."

    She finished the first cup of coffee and thought vaguely that after three or four more she might start feeling human again.

    "Barbara," Mike said then, "what if she did it?"

    She got up and walked past him to the counter and the coffeepot.

    "She didn't."

    "You can't really know that. No one can except her. But what if she did? Won't it be worse for her to keep denying it and then be found guilty than to admit it and express remorse? I read somewhere that the expression of remorse is worth five years."

    "With tears, more like seven," she said darkly.

    "I was in court yesterday," Mike went on.

    "She's taking a real beating, isn^f she? I began thinking, though, that no matter what Lucas was involved in, what that group was up to, what he took that they want back, it could still come down to the simplest motive in the world. Man, woman, fear, revenge, betrayal, all those understandable, natural forces that drive people. And none of that other stuff makes any difference at all."

    "Dear God," she breathed. She returned to the table, shaken more than she wanted to admit. That was exactly the line Tony would take in his summation for the jury, exactly the line her father had expressed from the start.

    She knew very well that ninety-nine out of a hundred murders were committed for one of those basic, human reasons:

    jealousy, hatred, money, revenge.... A deep shudder passed through her. And we call them understandable, natural forces; Mike's words echoed in her head.

    She looked at the messy papers with their scribbles and said, "It must be comforting, being a mathematician. You work with your problems and find a solution--I know, an elegant solution--and send it off to your peers, all seventeen of them, who follow your steps and say right or wrong. And you know. That must be comforting. How do you know the truth about people, Mike? How? She says she didn't do it and I believe her. She could be punished more for denying it, for telling the truth, than for lying and confessing. And we call it playing the game. The law game. The game of justice. The only game in town. What we need is a reliable truth sniffer, a grace sniffer. Everything that's been invented so far has proven indecisive, unreliable. Invent me a truth sniffer that can't be denied, Mike. That day the whole game ends, no more courts, no more trials, no more guessing did she or didn't she, or making book on which lawyer is more persuasive, which knows better how to manipulate a jury of twelve good and honest citizens."

    "Hey," Mike said softly.

    "Hey."

    "Oh, God, I can't cry now. On top of not enough sleep I really will look like hell warmed over." She got up and ran from the room.

    TWENTY

    frank gave barbara's cheek a quick peck and then looked over her shoulder at the three or four law books his clerk was depositing on the defense table.

    "And I thought you were out carousing all night. Sorry."

    "That, too," she said. It was hard to tell which pleased him more, her carousing or her doing her homework. Then the judge entered and the real day began.

    John Kendricks was a good witness, calm and attentive, and determined to tell what he knew and what he suspected.

    Tony did not allow him much leeway, just as Barbara had predicted. Twice he had to ask John Kendricks to answer simply yes or no, and very quickly John Ken dricks became a hostile witness, more reluctant than any of the others so far.

    "You hadn't seen your son for nearly seven years and you didn't ask him his plans?"

    "No. There wasn't enough " "You've answered the question, Mr. Kendricks. Did you ask him when he planned to visit his wife?"

    "No. I'm trying to tell y " "Mr. Kendricks, did you call his wife to alert her that her husband was coming?"

    "I called her."

    "To warn her that he was coming?"

    "To tell her he might come."

    "Mr. Kendricks, when you picked up the children, your grandchildren, did you warn Mrs. Nell Kendricks that her husband would arrive the next day?"

    "I didn't kn-" "Why did you agree, to take the children away?"

    "I didn't agree. I sug " "Did Mrs. Nell Kendricks-" "Your Honor, I object," Barbara said then.