Death Qualified (35 page)

    "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 shore, 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 Saturday when Lucas Kendricks was murdered. Do you understand?"

    "Yes, I do."

    "Very well, you may proceed." His expression, his eyes, his tone were all of a piece, frigid and remote, and very angry.

    The jury was brought back and she resumed exactly where she had left off.

    "Mr. Yost, please tell us what you were doing and what you saw that afternoon." The self-assurance that had en wrapped him earlier was gone; now he looked nervous and wary. She smiled reassuringly, as if to say that none of that business at the bench had anything to do with him. He swallowed hard and nodded slightly.

    He had stopped at the pass to eat a sandwich and drink coffee. When he looked over the forest with his binoculars, he had seen the Honda. He said it quickly with no detail, no elaboration.

    Barbara glanced at a paper on her table, as if to check his statement with his written statement. She looked up at him from the defense table.

    "You received a commendation the next week, didn't you? For being alert and playing a significant role in an ongoing investigation."

    He looked down at his hands and shrugged, then said yes.

    "How long had you served in the Sisters Ranger District, Mr. Yost?"

    "I was just assigned it. I was on my way to my new job."

    "Oh. Where had you been stationed before?"

    "The Willamette District."

    She picked up a paper and scanned it, then said, "When you called in about the car, exactly what did you tell them?"

    "I said I spotted the Honda the bulletin was out about."

    "Yes, but do you recall your words?"

    He shook his head.

    "I don't think so. It's been a long time."

    "Of course. Let me refresh your memory. You said, didn't you, that you caught a glint of sun on the chrome of the grill?"

    He nodded, then said ruefully, "But I was wrong. It turned out that the car was pointed the other way. I must have seen the rear end of it."

    "Oh, I see." She put the paper down as if relieved, then picked up a photograph of the Honda. She handed it to him.

    "Can you point out what you saw of the car?"

    He looked at the picture in confusion. No chrome was visible from the rear.

    "It must have been the chrome strip down the side. It goes all the way to the rear, but it doesn't show in this picture."

    "I have another shot," she said, and found a different photograph, handed it to him.

    He nodded vigorously.

    "See, that strip is chrome. The sun must have hit it just right. I only saw a small section, less than a foot probably."

    She took back the photographs and walked to the jury with them.

    "From that little section you knew it was the gray Honda?"

    "Well, you know, guys are pretty up on cars from the time they're little kids."

    "Of course. In your report you told the sheriff's office that it was on Forest Service road 4219, didn't you?"

    "Yes. I had a good map. It had to be that road."

    "A map like this one, I understand, since this is the official Forest Service map." She indicated the map they had already used several times. He nodded.

    "So you were up here on the highway, and ten miles away was the Honda on Forest Service road 4219. Can you point out that road for us, Mr. Yost?"

    Reluctantly he left the stand and approached the map.

    He peered at it closely and twice started to put his finger down, then drew back. At last he pointed to the road.

    Barbara thanked him and studied the map as he returned to the witness chair.

    "There are seven Forest Service roads between that one and the highway where you were. No wonder it took you so long to find the right one."

    "It's different when you're out there," he blurted.

    "But you had to identify the road by using the map, didn't you? You couldn't be expected to look out over the forest and pick out an individual road and know it instantly Especially as a newcomer to the district."

    "Objection," Tony snapped.

    "Let counsel ask her questions without making speeches."

    "Sustained."

    "Do you wear glasses, Mr. Yost? Or contacts?"

    "No." He was watching her with a sullen expression now, sitting so stiffly that he must have been concentrating on not betraying any nervous mannerisms. His stiffness was more revealing than fidgeting would have been.

    "What power binoculars did you have?"

    "Seven by fifty. But you can see a flash of light farther away than that with almost any binoculars."

    "But you also saw enough gray to identify the Honda, didn't you?"

    "I thought it was the car they were looking for. I saw enough to reach that conclusion. Maybe I shouldn't have, but that's what I thought I saw." He had gone the route from an abject desire to please, the perfect witness, to wariness; he had become sullen, saying with his body language that he was being picked on and didn't deserve it, and now he had reached this new phase, defiance. One more, Barbara thought. One more stage.

    Barbara returned to the exhibit table and sorted through papers until she had the sheriff's report. She scanned it briefly.

    "What time did you see the Honda, Mr. Yost?"

    "About three-thirty."

    "But you didn't call in the report until six?"

    "I had to go to Sisters to call. The line was busy the first time or two, so I had a cup of coffee and tried again."

    Barbara looked at him in surprise and walked to the map.

    "But here's a government camp, less than a mile from the observatory on McKenzie Pass, less than a mile from where you were. It's clearly marked. Why didn't you go there to phone?"

    "I didn't know it was there, or that it was open."

    "You didn't know it was there," she murmured.

    "I

    see."

    "I didn't mean that. I meant I didn't know it was open."

    "Mr. Yost," she said slowly, moving back to the exhibit table, where she started to look for something, "have you ever driven on that service road, 4219?"

    "No. But I've been on plenty of other service roads in the forests."

    "So you understand how they are, muddy in places, bone dry in others?"

    "Yes, that's how most of them are."

    "Yes. I have a few more pictures for you to look at, Mr. Yost. These are pictures Sheriff LeMans's deputies took of the car they found on Forest Service road 4219.

    Will you examine them, please."

    She handed him three pictures and watched the defiance fade from his face. He paled slightly and moistened his lips as he put the first photograph under the others to examine the second one. When he finished looking at them all, he did not raise his head but kept staring at the last picture. The pictures showed a car so spattered with mud and red lava dust that it was impossible to say more than that it was an automobile. A small area of the rear window had been wiped for visibility; no paint was discernible, not even the license plates could be seen, nor any chrome at all. If anyone had tried to guess at the color of the car under the heavy coating of mud, the first choice would have been red.

    Very quietly Barbara said, "You never saw the car, did you, Mr. Yost?"

    He swallowed but did not speak, did not raise his head.

    "You were used very cruelly, Mr. Yost, and once you had made the statement you found it impossible to take it back, didn't you?"

    The courtroom had gone so quiet that it was uncanny.

    Judge Kendall Lundgren drew in a breath and said, "Mr.

    Yost, you must answer the question."

    "Yes, sir," he mumbled.

    "Did you see the car?" Barbara asked.

    "No."

    "How did you know it was there?"

    "A man called me and said he had seen it and he knew everyone was looking for it, but he didn't want to get involved."

    The words were choked; finally he looked up, out past Barbara, out to where the young woman he had entered with was seated, by another young man in another spanking-fresh uniform. There were tears in his eyes.

    He had reached the final phase.

    Barbara led him through the story quickly now. He had no more resistance. A. man had called him Friday morning; he said he had read a little article about Yost in the local paper, giving his name, address, mentioning that he was being assigned to the Sisters District. The man said he had seen the car Thursday afternoon. If Yost would drive on McKenzie Highway he could see it clearly from the pass. The man told him exactly where to look, what road the car was on. Yost had looked but had seen nothing, and for the next hour or two he had wavered, then finally made the call, thinking there could have been an accident.