Cold Case (23 page)

Lucy looked toward the other end of the deck. “It's time to move the plants indoors,” she said faintly.

Frank took a sip of wine, watching her. “Why are you so troubled, Lucy? Why are you convinced that David is not a murderer? You really don't know him very well, do you?”

She shook her head. “Hardly at all. Amy told me about the incident she witnessed. I had no idea she saw anything like that. Will she have to testify?”

“I don't know,” Frank said. “She was so young, and she obviously cares very much for him. It could be very difficult for her to testify.”

“You mean, they'll savage her, don't you?”

“It's possible.”

Lucy closed her eyes. “Please don't put her through that.”

Frank did not respond. There was no response to such a plea. “You haven't answered my question,” he said gently. “Why do you believe he's innocent?”

Lucy looked at him, picked up her wine and sipped it before answering. “I believe, the same as Amy does, that Jill was a lesbian, and he had no romantic interest in her, no reason to murder her.”

“But you thought he was innocent before you knew what Amy saw that night,” he said, still speaking softly.

“Just a feeling,” she said. She smiled a patently false smile. “The nights are getting so cool, aren't they? I should find a woolly bear, see what kind of winter to expect.”

“Cold, wet and dark,” Frank said. “As usual.”

Her smile at his words was genuine this time. “You already found your woolly bear.”

Frank laughed. But he regretted that the window had closed on any real conversation. She had told him nothing yet, and had no intention of telling him anything, but it was there, whatever it was, simmering in the background.

“I have some irises to divide,” Frank said. “A beautiful pink with a red fall, a faithful rebloomer. Would you like a start or two?”

“I'd love them. Rebloomers are scarce, mislabeled so at times.”

They chatted until Barbara and Amy rejoined them. Frank was satisfied. He would be back.

Driving toward Frank's house minutes later, Barbara asked, “Anything?”

“She doesn't want Amy to testify. She knows a little about how it will go.”

“And Amy would claw her way through Sleeping Beauty's thicket to get to the stand,” Barbara commented. “There are too many damn agendas playing out. Everyone's hiding something, every last one of them.”

Frank nodded. Every single one of them.

At five Barbara called Olga Maas.

“I'm sorry,” Olga said. “I really have nothing else to tell you.”

“It's been suggested,” Barbara said quickly, “that you have Jill Storey's school papers, notebooks and such. I'd like very much to have a look at them whenever it's convenient for you.”

“It would never be convenient,” Olga said shortly. “Goodbye, Ms. Holloway.”

“Either in your home or perhaps at Ms. Trilby's home,” Barbara said.

She heard a faint gasp, followed by a lengthy silence. She waited.

“How dare you threaten me? What gives you the right to intrude in my private life?” Olga's voice was little more than a whisper.

“Ms. Maas, please believe me. I intend no harm to either you or Ms. Trilby, but I have to have information. I have a client whose life is at risk, one you know as well as I do is innocent. I need more information, and you can provide some of it by letting me see those school papers. Wherever you say, but soon.”

There was another long pause. “Check into a motel in Richland on Saturday. I'll bring them Saturday afternoon. Call my cell to tell me which motel and where.”

Again, she spoke in a near whisper. Barbara could imagine a white-knuckled grip on a phone, a face drained of color, the pallor of fear. “Thank you,” she said. “I'll call you on Saturday.” She hung up, hating what she had just done, especially hating the need to do it.

B
arbara arrived at a Holiday Inn in Richland by two-thirty on Saturday. As Olga had said in Eugene, it was a long drive, and a bright hot one that day. She tossed her things down, sat at a round table and called Olga, who said she would be there by three.

While she waited, using the supply she had brought with her, she started a pot of coffee, then washed her face and hands, wishing she had plenty of time for a long shower.

Olga was prompt, and she was carrying a cardboard carton that appeared heavy. Barbara took it and placed it on the table.

“Please, sit down. I made coffee. Join me?”

“No. That's all,” she said pointing to the box. “I removed a few things and burned them. You're free to look through the rest.” The hostility in her glance at Barbara was chilling.

“Ms. Maas, I told you I intend no harm to you or your friend. I sincerely mean that. I won't ask you to testify, and if your name comes up in the trial, it will be only as Olga Trenval, Jill Storey's roommate who verified the details of the key to David's apartment. That's already on record, your statement from twenty-two years ago. No one is likely to connect you to that name after so many years. I'm sorry to cause you such distress, but I have to think of my client's best interests and do what I can to protect him. You know the situation between him and Jill in their troubled adolescence, but the facts have been twisted to make it appear that they were childhood sweethearts, inseparable as a couple from their earliest days, and that he was possessive and jealous, to the point of murder.”

Olga's eyes widened in disbelief. “That's crazy!”

“I know and you know, but they have statements from some people attesting to it,” Barbara explained.

Olga shook her head. “He was her best friend. He practically saved her life in those days.”

“Please sit down and talk to me,” Barbara said.

Although Olga sat down, she was rigid, remote and wary.

Barbara poured coffee for them both.

“First,” Olga said, “you tell me something. How did you find out? Who told you?”

“A good friend in Eugene. She knows everyone in the northwest, and she trusts me. She isn't hiding, but she protects those who are. You're still safe. Would it be a disaster if you were discovered?”

Olga said bitterly, “My ex would go to court to get custody of our daughter, and my parents would help him. Is that disaster enough? I'd lose my job and I have few resources to engage in a custody fight. I'd lose her.”

“Does she know, or suspect?”

“No. When she's eighteen, she'll go to the university, probably in Seattle, and I'll tell her then. She'll be beyond anyone's reach as far as custody is concerned. We'll move to Seattle in five years.”

“Does your ex suspect?”

“No. He decided I was frigid. He's remarried, three more children.” She smiled a bitter, crooked smile. “After Jill…afterward, I went home, as I told you. They thought I was just afraid, but I was devastated. I tried hard to find religion again. I really tried to be straight. I went to church and prayed. Got my degree, got a master's, met Duane. I thought maybe being married, having a child would cure me.” She laughed without humor. “There's no
cure,
Ms. Holloway. I'm what I am.”

“Ms. Maas,” Barbara said slowly when Olga became silent, “I'll have to make a case that David and Jill were not romantically involved, and the only way to do that may be to reveal her homosexuality. Was there anyone else who knew at the time?”

Olga's rigidity visibly increased. She shook her head. “I don't think anyone even suspected. Women can be seen as just friends as long as they behave in public, and we did. My name is going to come up after all, isn't it?”

“Not as Olga Maas. I doubt that this community pays any attention to what goes on in Eugene, and I feel certain that no one is going to care enough to put the two names together. One more question,” she said. “Did you mention David's key to anyone? Can anyone else testify about it?”

“No. I went to work. No one there was interested in our living arrangement. I didn't tell anyone.”

Barbara nodded and glanced at the box. “I'd better start looking through that material. It could take a while.”

Olga rose from the table. She had not touched her coffee. “I was going to take it all home and burn it in the grill. That's where I burned the few things I removed. It's time to put it behind me. Long past time. Keep it, Ms. Holloway.”

Barbara went to the door with her. Olga paused, looked directly at her and said, “I know I should do the noble thing and agree to come down and testify, save David if that's what it will take, but I can't. I won't. I'm not noble. I'm afraid. I may be ashamed of it for the rest of my life, but I'm afraid. I want to believe you won't bring harm to us, but I don't dare trust you. If you compel me to testify, I'll deny it all.”

“Ms. Maas, I can't compel your testimony. No one can force you to cross state lines to testify in Eugene. All anyone can do is seek your cooperation, and I'm grateful for that box of material, for your agreeing to see me again. Thank you.”

Olga studied her for a long moment, then turned and walked away without speaking again.

Barbara sat down and finished her coffee, thinking how it would have been to have lived in fear for years. Lou had it right, she thought—it was a hell of a life.

Shower, she told herself and went to do it. It was close to five before she checked her cell phone. She had had it turned off for Olga's visit. There was a message from Bailey, as brief as he was in person. “Belinda Hulse, married to Joseph Cernick, Eugene resident, died of cancer 1994.”

Dead end, she thought, frustrated, grimacing at the unintentional pun. She had brought a bottle of wine along, and got it out, uncorked it, and poured wine into a tumbler and sat at the table again, eyeing the box of papers. Not now, she decided irritably.

She took a sip of wine. Lucky Mr. Aaronson. How convenient for him to have no one to refute or confirm his altered story. She took another sip, longer. He would have known Belinda Hulse Cernick was dead; you don't lose track of classmates a dozen years from your graduation, not if you both live in the same town. He would have known.

Aaronson, mystery man, she thought. What was it that made Amy stiffen at the mention of his name? What did she know about him, and how could she be induced to tell what it was?

Belatedly she remembered she was supposed to call Darren, and had meant to call him as soon as she checked in. And she had to go out and eat before she got light-headed. She had not stopped for lunch along the way.

She made her call, resolutely denied herself another glass of wine and went out to find a restaurant. The papers could wait until she got home and had space to spread them out to sort and look through them. No hurry about them, she suspected, since Olga, no doubt, had burned every scrap that had anything personal on it, the kind of material Barbara had hoped to find.

Soon after dawn on Sunday Barbara was on the road again, and by early afternoon, she pulled into her own driveway, almost miraculously without a speeding ticket.

Darren met her, followed her to the bedroom, and stood by the door of the bathroom when she went in to wash her face and hands.

“I imagined you tangling it up with a semi, or in a ditch, kidnapped by headhunters, fighting off Sasquatch, running away with a pirate with a patch over one eye, trying to outrun state police.”

She laughed. “That last bit wouldn't be too far from the mark. I missed you, too.”

“Let's go to bed,” he said.

“I thought you'd never ask.”

That afternoon Bailey had picked up David and dropped him off at Frank's house, and now Frank and David were sitting on the back porch watching the cats watch birds splashing in the birdbath.

“Do they ever make a run for them?” David asked.

“Rarely. They're too lazy, and too smart. They tried early on, learned it was futile, and now, as you see, they pretend to have no interest. Casual observers, that's all.”

David took a drink from a can of beer, smiling as Thing One decided he had seen enough of the show, stretched out belly up and sunned his underside.

“David,” Frank asked, “how did you get started asking the hard questions? You must have been pretty young. You're still young to have found so many answers.”

“Vietnam,” David said after a moment, no longer smiling. “There were casualties from Gresham, of course. My folks took me to the funeral service for the son of one of their friends. The preacher went on and on about the sacrifice he had made for his country, in the service of God, now safe in the arms of Jesus. I had a lot of trouble digesting that, I guess. I asked my father later why we were fighting Vietnam, and he said he didn't know. My mother defended the war, fighting godless communists, and so on. She had bought into the whole argument and I couldn't understand why. I asked her if she believed that kid was in the arms of Jesus, and she waffled. Finally all she could tell me was to believe. Because it might be right. No one knew why. I was seven.”

Frank nodded. “Seven, and a lifetime of questioning arose from that question and answer. No one knew. Were you aware that you had started a journey of your own?”

“Not right away. It took a couple more years and several more questions with answers that seemed to miss the mark. I really had trouble with the idea that everyone in Vietnam was doomed to burn in hell because they didn't believe what they should. And why people thought it was good for them to burn in hell forever. I turned to books instead of asking people I knew.”

“Saved, or damned by reading. Depends on who's voicing that opinion, doesn't it?”

“Does it matter?” David asked after a moment. “Sometimes in a woods or out on the desert, somewhere alone, a place that hasn't been overrun by traffic or fast food joints, a place without cans on the ground, I've felt a peace that can't be described, only experienced. That's the god I believe in, transcendent, found in the creation of the universe itself, in the infinity of space and the mystery of time, the immediacy of sand and trees, the wonder of it, the miracle of it, the blessing to have the gift to experience it. That's god enough for me.”

“Amen,” Frank said softly.

“You know the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times? Those are our times, Mr. Holloway. We live in an interesting time when several different tipping points are converging. Political, climatic, dogmatic religiosity. The next dozen years will determine our future, I feel certain. Another dozen years.”

“I may miss the show,” Frank said drily. “I can't say I regret that.”

“And I may be in prison, and I confess I do regret that.”

David lifted his beer, and Frank drank his iced tea.

“You know what I like about Barbara, among other things,” David said. “She doesn't do a con job, but tells it like it is. A rare trait. I don't see it often, but I've been surrounded by too many academics, and kept my eye on too many politicians and their spinmeisters. I see where she got that trait. I appreciate it from both of you.”

“Speaking of her, I think they've arrived,” Frank said. He had heard the car, then the front door closing. They both stood to greet Barbara and Darren. Todd and Darren were carrying bags, Darren's clear plastic with what looked like colored balls, and Todd's day pack slung over his arm.

Barbara introduced Todd, and he held up his hand in a high-five greeting that David met with his own high five. Darren must have told Todd that David had little function in his right hand, and the gesture was exactly right, Frank thought.

“I read your book, Mr. Etheridge,” Todd said. “I brought it over, and if you feel like it, I hoped you'd be able to autograph it for me. Maybe with a big X or something. I thought it was super.”

David laughed. “I'll demonstrate my real talent,” he said. “I'll sign it with my left hand, a clear case of forgery, of course, but you'll know and you have witnesses to make your case.”

Todd put his pack on a chair and took out the book and a pen, then watched as David signed his name with his left hand. The signature looked childish, but both he and Todd were pleased.

“After your dad fixes me, I'll sign it again,” David said. “Make it a collector's item someday.” He nodded toward a CD that had come out with the book. “What's that?”

Todd looked embarrassed. “My video for a science project. I forgot it was in there.”

“Aren't we allowed to see it?” David asked. “I'd like to very much.”

Todd glanced at Darren, then at Frank. “Is that okay?”

“We all want to see it,” Frank assured him.

He grinned, and nodded to David. “Showtime after dinner.”

“And now it's time to play ball,” Darren said. “Let's go upstairs and see how things are going.” He and David walked into the house together.

“I'll go make sure this works with your DVD player,” Todd said, and followed them inside.