A Death In Beverly Hills (39 page)

A gasp swept through the courtroom.

Hiding his face, McGee bent over and huddled in the chair and feared that he would cry.

"You didn't mean to kill Marian, did you?" Markham suggested. "You're not a monster. You're not a cold blooded killer. How did it happen? It was an accident, wasn't it?" Markham insisted. "Wasn't it?" He turned to face the jury, afraid that he would not be able to hide the fear and desperation welling up inside him.

A second passed, two, three. Greg held his breath and prayed. Finally, just as he was about to turn and try again, in the softest of whispers he heard McGee say, "I didn't mean to do it," then, louder, "It was an accident."

Tom Travis gasped aloud then laid his head on the defense table to hide his tears. Slowly, Greg turned back to the witness stand.

"You just went there to get what Tom owed you, didn't you?"

"Yes. I didn't mean to hurt anybody," McGee sobbed.

"Tom had told you he would be out riding his dune buggy and that Marian was going out on a boat with her boyfriend."

"Yes."

"You thought the house would be empty. How could you know that Marian and her boyfriend had had a fight and that she and Sarah stayed home?"

"No one was supposed to be there!"

"Did Marian shout at you? Threaten you?"

"She said she was going to call the cops. I begged her but she starting fighting and kicking and I tried to quiet her down and . . . things got out of hand and the next thing I knew she was dead. I didn't mean to do it. You have to believe me!"

"Then you found Sarah, but you couldn't hurt her."

"She was just a little kid. I'm not a monster."

"So you took her to Jorge in Mexico. What's Jorge's last name?"

"Padillo," McGee said without thinking. "He finds good homes in the States for kids. Rich people who want to adopt. I wouldn't hurt a kid."

In the audience Katz grabbed his pad and started writing.

"I know. What did you do with Marian's body after you left the house?"

"I rent a freezer for venison, for when I go hunting. I put her in there after I left Tom's house. Nobody saw me. Then, when the news came out about where he was out with his dune buggy, I took her out there. I figured it would look like Tom did it if they ever found her."

"What did you do with the lamp the cord came from?"

"I gave it to the Goodwill over on Reseda."

"What about the remote for the gate and the maid's keys?"

"I buried them in the bushes behind the carport at my apartment house."

"If only Marian hadn't attacked you."

"I just lost it. I'm sorry."

"What's the name of Jorge's town again?"

"Pillarcitos."

"Calle . . . ?"

"Esquella."

Katz stumbled to his feet and in spite of his bad knee sprinted from the room. McGee never even noticed him leave. Head bowed, tears running down his cheeks, he twisted his calloused hands.

Markham looked at the sobbing wreck and a hundred questions raced through his mind, then he shook his head and turned to the judge.

"No more questions, Your Honor," he said quietly.

Burris stared at Greg then turned to the DA.

"Mr. Hamilton?"

"Yes, Your Honor?"

"You have a motion?"

Hamilton looked at the papers strewn across his desk, at McGee, at a red-eyed Tom Travis, and sighed.

"The People move for the dismissal of all charges against Mr. Travis."

"The case against Thomas Travis is dismissed. Detective Furley!" Burris shouted, catching Jack's eye among the spectators.

Furley hurried to the bench.

"Yes, Your Honor?"

"I order you to arrest this man on a charge of first degree murder," Burris ordered in a ringing voice.

Furley pulled McGee to his feet and spun him around.

"Hook him up!" Burris shouted, his voice beginning to break as he remembered his own murdered daughter. Furley's cuffs made a CLACK-CLACK sound as they slipped over McGee's wrist.

"Get him out of her!" Burris ordered in a shrill voice. "Get him the Hell out of my courtroom!"

Markham's most vivid memory of that day was of Jack Furley leading a sobbing Barry McGee away in chains.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Three days later Elaine Barrington took a copy of
Cosmo
from the coffee table and idly leafed through the pages. From the little closet next to the kitchen she heard a muffled thump. She ignored it and turned the page. A moment later another thump. Elaine frowned then stopped herself. Frowning caused wrinkles. Thump. That horrible child! Ever since Ralph had left she did nothing but make a pest of herself. Elaine hated to admit that Ralph was right about anything but it was now clear that they should have gotten rid of the little monster.

She had tried to be a good mother. She had hired a perfectly nice nanny, what a fortune she had cost, but the girl was just plain willful. Another thump. Clearly she had not learned her lesson. Elaine put down the magazine. There was no help for it but to let Ralph have his way and send her back to wherever she came from. Thump.

Elaine frowned in spite of herself and walked deliberately to the breakfront across the room. She removed the belt in the bottom drawer.
I'll teach you to kick my door you little monster
. Turning she slapped the leather against the palm of her hand. Children must be taught to obey. As she passed the picture window three men in black Kevlar suits raced across the front lawn, the letters FBI in white printed across their chests. Still favoring his bad knee, Simon Katz limped along behind.

Elaine slapped the belt a second time and reached for the lock on the closet door. Let the little monster be somebody else's problem, Elaine decided. She had just begun to turn the knob when suddenly her front door exploded and four men with assault rifles and bulletproof vests ran screaming into the room.

"FBI! Search Warrant! FBI! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!"

What in heaven's name . . . ?
Elaine turned and approached the shattered front door. "What is this--"

A two hundred pound man came flying out of nowhere and smashed into her, crushing her to the floor. Elaine's arms were yanked behind her and cold steel bit into her wrists. Around her echoed the sounds of running feet and splintering doors.

"I've got her!" a man's voice shouted from the back of the house. "She's tied up. Get the medic!"

Elaine was yanked painfully to her feet. Through blurry eyes she saw a woman, dressed in black Kevlar just like the men, carrying the brat away, crying, as usual.

"What do you think--" Elaine demanded when a huge man with some kind of a machine gun marched up to her and began to shout at her, reading from a wrinkled piece of paper: "Elaine Barrington, you are under arrest for kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and transportation of a human being across state lines for illegal purposes. You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to give up that right. . . ." The rest of the man's words disappeared in a whirling blur of noise.

This is impossible,
Elaine thought even as they dragged her away.
This can't be happening to me. That dreadful child!

"Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?" he demanded.

"Whaaaaa?"

Chapter Fifty-Nine

So much had changed in just a week. Steve had become accustomed to the riot of boxes cluttering his home and now the apartment seemed almost empty without them. Instead of files and crime scene reports scattered all over his carpet there was only a single document on the end table, untouched since Steve had finished reading it half an hour before.

The first page began with the usual medical jargon, "The subject is a well nourished Caucasian female, approximately thirty one years of age . . . ." and continued to relate greater and greater horrors blandly phrased. Somehow he made it to the end. Lynn had not been pregnant. There had been no baby.

Such a short document, Steve thought, to have taken him two years to read. Had there ever been a bigger coward or a bigger fool? Carefully, he replaced the report in its manila envelope and re-sealed the flap.

Next to it Lynn's card still lay unopened on the table. With hands that seemed to belong to another man he tore open the seal.

Dear Steve,

In case you get home before me, I just want to say that I'm sorry about the fight and how things ended between us this morning. I know you love me and I love you and I know that we will work this all out.

I'll be home soon.

All my love,

Lynn

The thought
I'm the stupidest man on earth
, raced through his head and numbly he stared down at the card that had terrified him all this time. Finally, he collapsed on the couch and closed his eyes. Now what? He had no idea. Tomorrow, he decided, would answer its own questions.

Blinking against the light he idly grabbed the remote and the TV sprang to life. As if he were the object of some cosmic joke, Cynthia Allard's face coalesced on the screen.

" . . . been quite a week, Cynthia."

"It certainly has, Bob. Today, LA County District Attorney, Mark Halliday, announced that his office would seek the death penalty for confessed killer, Barry McGee. And in a related story, Tom Travis and Gerard Fontaine, the father of Travis's murdered wife, Marian Fontaine Travis, issued a joint press release in which they stated that Tom would adopt Marian's orphaned daughter, Sarah, and that he and Mr. Fontaine would share custody. 'Sarah will have both a grandfather and a father,' Travis announced, 'and I will raise her and love as my own child.'"

"A happy ending to a terrible tragedy, Cynthia. Any word about a new love interest in Tom's life now that the trial is behind him?"

"Nothing definite, Bob, but there have been rumors that Tom and his former girlfriend, Kaitlen Berdue, may get back together."

"Even after she helped the police try to convict him?"

Cynthia cocked her head and smiled. "Well, this is Hollywood, Bob. Everybody here likes a happy ending."

Steve studied Cynthia's vapid face and wondered how he ever could have thought she was even close to the same league as Lynn. With a click her image flickered and faded to gray. For a moment longer Steve stared at the empty screen. Had he only seen Cynthia's broadcast he would have been willing to bet anything that Travis was adopting Sarah only as a cynical ploy to rejuvenate his tarnished image, that Tom Travis loved no one and nothing except himself. And, Steve knew, he would have been completely and thoroughly wrong.

Greg Markham had been there when the FBI brought Sarah back to Travis's mansion on Rexford Drive. He told Steve that when the police had let Sarah out of their car that she took one look at Travis and shouted "Daddy!" and ran into his arms and that Travis had grabbed her and broken into shrieking tears and had cried like baby. Sometimes people will surprise you, Steve decided.

Was there any food in the house? Not that he was hungry. Not that he felt much of anything right now, other than relief and the absence of pain. Take out? His musing was interrupted by a knock on the door. If some reporter had tracked him down . . . . But it was a uniformed deliveryman.

"Steven Janson?"

"Yes?"

"I have a package for you." He pointed to a cardboard box about two feet by three feet and four inches thick. "Please sign here."

Steve stared at the box, then, distracted, signed the form. In an instant the man was gone. What the hell. . . ?

Steve found a knife in the kitchen and carefully cut the cardboard away. An oil painting slid out, upside down. Steve righted it, set it on the couch and stood back.

It showed a laborer, tired, sweating, leaning on a short-handled hoe. In his left hand he held a cheap straw hat. His face and bare arms were scorched from countless days in the fields. In the background was an expanse of lush plants with tiny red and yellow flowers while off to one side the farm boss frowned as he leaned against the door of a sixties-era white Cadillac. But it was the foreground that clutched at Steve's soul.

To the left of the laborer was a four or five year-old little girl, clothed in a tattered red dress and worn-down shoes. Her two hands were raised in front of her, clutching a frosted glass of lemonade which she held out to her father. But unlike him she was not tired or sad. Her lips were split in a beatific smile and her face bore the unmistakable likeness of Sarah Fontaine Travis.

A small yellow note was taped to the top of the frame: "Steve, Thanks for everything- Tom." and in the picture's lower right corner, very faint in dull maroon paint, was the scrawled legend: 'T. Travis.'

Steve stared at the painting for several minutes then found a hammer and at the back of the kitchen drawer. There was only one other painting in the room, Lynn's picture from their honeymoon trip to the South of France. Steve tapped the nail in just below it and hung Travis's picture, then stepped back.

The new painting was magnificent, but nevertheless Steve found his eyes wandering upward, back to the last really beautiful physical link he had to Lynn. For the longest time Steve stood there, lost in thought, staring at his wife's favorite painting, and remembering her and how much she had loved him.