Dante's Dilemma (23 page)

The wind was gusting sideways when I exited. I put my Bluetooth in my ear and tested ground conditions. The snow was too thick for pushing my cane back and forth, so I adopted a hiker's motion, stabbing the surface in front of me every few feet and counting on my phone's GPS app to keep me from veering too far afield. As long as I made it from one corner to the next, I could afford to do a little thinking.

I still wanted to believe that Michelle was imagining things. Di Marco was a snake—as sleazy and underhanded as the worst political attack ad—but he'd always impressed me as shrewd. Too shrewd to open himself up to a murder charge? Evidence could be hidden away with no one the wiser except the cops, who had as big a stake in getting a conviction as he did. Engineering a traffic accident involved a much higher level of risk. And as much as we didn't get along, I thought he had an honorable streak. A few months back, he'd expressed disdain for someone who attacked me knowing full well that I couldn't identify them. It didn't seem like the sentiments of a man who would easily mow down a cripple on a street.

But if Michelle was right and Brad's report was altered, the only other explanation for my friend's death was coincidence, and I didn't put much faith in coincidences either. And if it wasn't Di Marco who had rewritten Brad's report, who else would have gone to such lengths to secure Rachel's conviction? Not Michelle, who seemed as much in Rachel's corner as I was, as well as genuinely distressed by the verdict. And not Linda O'Malley, who had gone out of her way to hire not one, but two independent psychiatrists when there were plenty of experts who would have called Rachel the Demon Barber of Fleet Street if that's what O'Malley wanted.

The more likely scenario was that Brad's report hadn't been monkeyed with, that he believed in good conscience that Lazarus was lying. If I knew Brad, he had entered into the assignment as I did, filled with concern for this depressed, isolated, and broken woman, only to doubt her story over time. Michelle was young and horribly naive. She might have taken something Brad said out of context or mistaken empathy for a belief in Rachel's innocence.

The missing police notes sounded much more likely. Similar rumors about Di Marco had floated around for years. But I wasn't sure how it helped. Rachel never denied she'd killed her husband, and the forensic evidence confirmed it. According to the ME, her fingerprints were on the poker that killed Westlake, along with the knife used to sever his genitals. At most, the notes would show that other people had visited Westlake's house on the night he was killed. It seemed a slim reed on which to proclaim her innocence even if—by some miracle—it could be proved that Di Marco had hidden the notes from the defense.

On the other hand, proving that Brad had reached a different conclusion could conceivably help Rachel. The jury had found my testimony fatally flawed, but they might have been won over by an expert with less skin in the game. At the very least, tampering with the report was a serious business, one that was bound to get the attention of Judge Sandy. The first order of business, then, was to find out if Brad had left any other indication of what he was thinking. And his widow seemed the only way to find out.

My phone broke in then, announcing that the address Brad's assistant had given me was on the right. I made a ninety-degree turn from the sidewalk and was surprised to find a wooden fence. Since I was looking for an artist's studio, I'd expected something like a warehouse entrance. This appeared to be a residence, older and set back from the street. With some banging of my cane along the posts, I located a gate and then the latch. A short walk brought me to a flight of steps, slippery in the snow but flanked by a handrail. I ascended the staircase, unwound my muffler from my face, and was on the verge of knocking when I was stopped by a low noise inside.

It was the sound of a woman weeping.

I almost reconsidered what I was doing. What right did I have to come barging in on a bereaved woman, bearing the news that her husband's death might not have been an accident? Was I doing it to right a wrong, or to take the sting out of my pathetic performance at Rachel's trial? But I had come this far. And I thought that Brad, if he were still alive, would want me to pursue the truth.

I put a mittened knuckle to the door and was just about to knock when it swung inward of its own accord.

“What are you doing?” a woman demanded shrilly in a voice still thick with tears. “Didn't you see the ‘No Solicitation' sign on the gate?”

“I, uh—”

“Are you another one of the Jehovah's Witnesses? I told the group that came by yesterday to please leave me alone.”

“No, I—”

She must have noticed then. “Oh bother, I'm sorry. I didn't see . . . But
of course
you're not one of them.” I detected a hint of the South in her accent, though I wasn't familiar enough with the region to place it.

I hoisted my cane smiled. “This isn't a Bible, if that's what you mean.”

“But what are you doing out all alone in the snow?”

I had a business card in my pocket, but it took some seconds to get it out with my mittens still on. I handed it to her and asked, “Are you Inga Stephens?”

She perused the card and said, “No. My name is Duckworth. I kept my maiden name so as not to be confused with
The Farmer's Daughter
. But Bradley was my husband. Your name is familiar. Did you know him?”

“We were professional colleagues. And friends of sorts. I seem to have found you at a bad time, but would you mind if I came in for a few minutes? There's something I'd like to ask you about.”

“Something important enough that you came all this way on foot in a blizzard. Please excuse my manners. I'm not really myself today. Do you need . . . ?”

“If I might just take your arm.”

She led me through a chilly vestibule and into a parlor of some sort, where the air was only slightly warmer.

“These old houses,” she apologized. “When the wind is whipping around like this, they're almost impossible to keep warm.

“Victorian?”

“Queen Anne,” she said. “Eighteen eighty-five. One of the oldest houses on the block.”

“I was expecting something different. Brad's assistant—that's how I got your address—said it was your studio.”

“Back of the house. In fact, why don't we go there to talk? I have a space heater going and it will be far more comfortable. Please, let me take your coat. Cup of tea?”

I removed my outerwear, and she led me back through a series of wood-floored rooms to a kitchen, where she stopped to put a kettle on the stove and apologized once more for the welcome. “I've been working on something, a bust of my husband to remember him by. I thought it would help—to recall his features with something more concrete than a photograph. With each passing day, it's harder and harder to remember exactly what he looked like. Did you ever . . . ?” She stopped embarrassedly. “But I'm being rude again.”

“No. I understand. I have a similar problem. I remember faces, but in a slightly skewed way, like pieces of a mosaic that don't quite come together. I can still see your husband that way.”

She seemed surprised. “Then you haven't been . . . ?”

I shook my head. “Just a few years. I knew Brad before.”

“Then perhaps you'll appreciate what I've done.”

When the tea was ready, she put cups and saucers on a tray, and I followed her to the back of the house and down a short flight of steps into what I guessed was a glassed-in sun porch.

“It's an old solarium,” she explained. “Tacked onto the house in the teens. I work very small pieces, mostly in ceramic or soapstone, so it's all the space I need. Though now I'm thinking of selling the house and buying a condo. I'm lonely without Bradley, and there are just too many memories here—”

Her voice caught, and I wondered whether I should offer my handkerchief.

“Do you have family nearby?”

“No. I'm a transplant. From Memphis originally. And Bradley and I have only one child, a daughter who lives on the West Coast. But my friends have been wonderful. In fact, it's been hard shooing them away. I'm only now finding the private time to mourn. But enough of my self-pity. Come, you're welcome to touch it.”

She guided my hand to a smooth, oval-shaped object around the size of an egg sitting atop a nearby workbench. I examined it, turning it this way and that, just making out the eyes, nose, and mouth carved from the stone.

“What do you think?” she asked eagerly after a few minutes.

“It's . . . it's a very good likeness.” I didn't have the heart to tell her how little my fingers could tell me about a full-sized face, let alone a miniature like this. “You mind if I hold it while we talk?” It seemed to give her comfort that I could appreciate and admire her work.

She settled us in canvas director's chairs near the space heater, which emitted a strong, scorched-smell warmth. I hadn't felt cold walking over, but I felt the chill now. Or perhaps it was the nature of my mission.

“So,” Inga said with forced cheer, “you're a psychiatrist. Like my late husband.”

“We worked in the same field.”

“Maybe that's where I heard your name. Cream and sugar?”

I said yes and tried to find a tactful way to broach the subject I was there for.

She did it for me. “You said you had something to ask me.”

“I don't know if you heard that I was hired to replace Brad . . . uh, Bradley in the Lazarus trial.”

“No. I haven't paid attention to the news in weeks. Not since the funeral. That poor woman. Bradley said often how sorry he felt for her.”

“So you and he discussed the case.”

“We always talked about the things he was working on. Oh, not specifics, especially where patients were concerned, but in general. What happened to her—was she let go?”

“Er, no,” I said. “The jury found her guilty. Of first-degree murder.”

“Why that's just terrible!” She sounded entirely shocked.

My antennae immediately went up. “That's a surprise to you?”

“Not a surprise, necessarily. I mean, the police can do whatever they want, can't they? But Bradley was so excited. You're saying the case was tried after all?”

“Yes, it was tried. I testified on Ms. Lazarus's behalf. Not very successfully, I'm sad to admit. But you're saying Brad thought it wouldn't get that far?”

“That's right. You have to understand. Bradley was a big fan of mystery novels, TV shows, anything involving detective work. He thought he noticed something no one else had.”

“What thing, if you remember?”

“I don't know. He wouldn't say, in case he turned out to be wrong. ‘I'm not a pathologist, after all,' he said to me. And he always had this fear . . . this fear that he was starting to slip. Because of the Parkinson's, you understand. He didn't want me to worry. ‘We'll see if I'm right and then I'll tell you about it,' he said. But I know he told that lawyer, the one handling the case.”

“Di Marco?”

“That sounds familiar.”

“And that's all you can remember?”

“I'm afraid so. Except that it had something to do with the body being moved.”

“Westlake's body?” I asked eagerly, leaning toward her and nearly spilling my tea.

“Yes, if that's the man—the professor, I mean—who was killed.”

“Do you know when Brad had this conversation with the lawyer?”

“Not exactly. Though it must have been before he finished his report. I know he was hoping he wouldn't have to complete it.”

“Because of what he intended to say about Ms. Lazarus?”

“Because he hoped she'd be freed long before then.” She stopped, as though a thought had just crept into her mind. “Why are you asking me all these things?”

It was only fair that I explain. So I did, trying my best not to raise the possibility that Brad's death was other than a hit-and-run.

I failed miserably. When I was only halfway through, she interrupted me angrily. “Stop.”

She stood up and went over to stand by the window. A few minutes went by before she spoke again in a low, angry voice. “It was snowing like this that night, too. I thought he was insane to go out. I offered to drive him to wherever he was going. He said driving would be too dangerous, that the exercise would be good for him. I should have put my foot down. I didn't like to make him feel that he was growing dependent. He was entitled to his pride. Then, when the police came, it didn't even occur to me . . . I just accepted what they told me. What you're saying is I shouldn't.”

I hastened to backtrack. “Mrs. Stephens, I mean Ms. Duckworth, I—”

“No,” she commanded. Steel had replaced the pain in her voice. “Don't play games with me. What else do you know that you haven't told me?”

I shook my head. “Right now, I don't know anything, except that the report given to me may not have been the one your husband wrote. Or that parts of it were changed. And I'm not even sure of those things. Either way, it could still have been an accident.”

“No,” she said firmly. “No, it couldn't have been.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I looked. God help me, I looked!”

I was having trouble following her. “Looked at what?”

“What I told you just now about catering to his pride, that was a lie. I thought . . . when he wouldn't tell me why he was going out in such awful weather, I thought he was having an affair. I was so hurt that I . . .”

I was beginning to get the picture. “You let him leave.”

“Yes, and then, after he was killed, I didn't want to know. Where he went. He was already lost to me. But after the funeral, I couldn't help myself. So I checked his phone. He received only one call that night, shortly before he left the house. When I called the number myself, I was so relieved.”