Dread Champion (7 page)

“Okay. Now let's turn to our other items, and then we can get down to business.”

Stan flopped his papers back onto the table, a forefinger riffling one corner of the stack. His heels picked up speed.

“…
WHAT
D
ARREN WELK
did not know,” Stan Breckshire declared, “was that in the corner of that little interrogation room and hidden from view, a video camera was running.”

Chelsea maintained a passive expression as she sat in the prosecutor's line of fire. Stan Breckshire paced in staccato steps before the jury box, abruptly turning, his arms jerking now left, now right.His dark suit hung a little large on his shoulders, and his red-flecked tie was slightly askew. His forehead collapsed in lines of fitful concentration, his hand raking his coarse dark hair until it stuck out like stiff feathers.

“Understand,” the prosecutor continued,“a hidden video camera is common procedure.”He pulled up to the rail separating him from the jury box, his right palm bouncing off the wood.“You will see this tape. You will see firsthand how Darren Welk”—he half-turned his body to indicate the defendant—“looks and acts as he tells the detectives what he ‘remembers' about that night.How he hit his wife.How she fell in the sand and cut her head.You will see”—Breckshire's face screwed into a cynical expression—“how he happened to remember everything that could be verified by his friends, Lonnie and Todd Broward.And then, amazingly, how his memory stops just about the time these friends leave. How it doesn't resume again until his stepdaughter, Tracey Wilagher, arrives at the beach, panic-stricken because her mother is missing.” Stan Breckshire paused to allow his insinuations to sink in.“And you'll hear Darren Welk confess that he buried his wife's bloody blouse.”

Chelsea felt her own face pulling at the mental picture of a man burying a bloodied blouse in the middle of the night.Her eyes wandered to Darren Welk, who sat unmoving except for his hands. One large fist knotted into his other palm, then slid away, the fingers opening to cover the other hand, now fisted. Then slid again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Chelsea watched those fingers, feeling their force. Could this man be capable of killing his wife? Chelsea gazed at his face. Darren Welk was fairly handsome in a weary and rugged sort of way,with a wide, square jaw and gray brown hair.His skin seemed to hold a permanent tan, even after almost six months in jail. Chelsea guessed he would be even more brown if he still worked the fields. His face was deeply lined. Something about the man looked implacable, hard.

“ … you will hear Lonnie Broward's testimony,” the prosecutor continued. “You will hear that the last time she saw the deceased, Shawna Welk and the defendant were fighting. … ”

Chelsea's gaze drifted to Kerra, then to a man sitting in the center of the second row. She froze.
Milt Waking.
That awful reporter from Channel Seven who'd broken the story about her last year, who'd spread her name across television screens. How could she have failed to spot him until now? He was staring at her, watching her every move.

Her heart tripped over itself. She tore her eyes away, forcing herself to keep calm. First the vision last night, now this.
God, I need your strength and guidance!

In her peripheral vision she saw Milt Waking slip out of his seat and hurry from the courtroom.

“I
DON'T CARE
WHAT
you have planned, Ron; you have to make room for me on the noon news!”Milt snapped into his cell phone. “We'll scoop the other stations. Both the other television reporters here are new; they don't know who she is yet.”

“Are you sure she's the same woman?” The news director's voice grated in his ear.

“Of course I'm sure! I've been watching her all morning, and then when she got a look at me, you should have seen her face! She recognized me, all right.”

“I just can't believe it's her.How on earth would she end up as an alternate on the jury?”

“Who knows? But I certainly aim to find out.”

Silence. Then,“I couldn't let you say her name,Milt. That would be going too far.”

“I don't need to say her name; it's not even important. Every viewer in the Bay Area will know exactly who I'm talking about.And they'll be as surprised as you. Remember your own line, Ron: ‘Curiosity means viewers.' Come on, for heaven's sake; you know I need this!”

Milt had enjoyed a real coup last year with his exclusive on the Trent Park events. But in television you were only as popular as the last minute.His luck had seemed to run out since then, fate placing him again and again in one Bay Area town while some unexpected story broke miles away. Milt's ratings had slipped. He'd even been called in for a “serious word” with Ron.

“Yeah, but,Milt, you can't be wrong. Heads would roll, starting with mine.”

“I'm not wrong!”He exhaled loudly. “Put me on the noon news, Ron. And write a head-spinning trailer for the evening edition. I'll know more by then.”

Milt snapped off the phone and snatched up his briefcase, which carried his state-of-the-art computer with wireless Internet hookup. Then he paused,working to catch his breath. Only when he'd recovered his cool and collected image did he return to the courtroom.

SIX

“Where's the body?”

Brett Welk swallowed and his dry throat clicked. The sandwich he'd eaten for lunch sat heavily in his stomach. Terrance Clyde, his father's defense attorney, stood before the jury box, hands spread in a shrug of elegant puzzlement. The question seemed to swirl through the courtroom's claustrophobic air, funneling into Brett's ears to storm through his head. His lungs felt thick, clouded.

How would he ever survive this trial?

The stepmother he'd never managed to accept, referred to as a body. His father, sitting woodenly in the defendant's chair. Brett closed his smarting eyes, then self-consciously blinked them open. He glanced left, right. Who was watching him? Which reporter's story would speak tomorrow of the grief-stricken son hearing the sordid details of his father's crime? Brett's face heated at the thought. He flexed his jaw, forced himself to stare at the attorney.

Terrance Clyde glided his hand toward the prosecution table. “You have heard the prosecution's opening remarks. Quite a dramatic, forceful beginning, I must admit. I imagine that the scenes Mr. Breckshire has painted in your heads are quite vivid. Shocking, even. And of course it is Mr. Breckshire's job to continue painting those scenes in your heads throughout this trial.What
I
will ask is that you be suspicious and cautious of the picture he is presenting. You see, when it comes right down to it, the prosecution has very little proof. Much of his story hinges on a blouse. And a supposed confession of burying it.”

The attorney said the word
confession
as if it held not the slightest weight. Brett cringed.
He
knew the weight of the word and it was heavier than lead. His shoulders nearly crushed beneath it.

“Dad,
why?”
he'd whispered that February afternoon as he faced his father in the tiny visiting room of the Salinas County jail. Brett had hulked toward the glass that separated them, his arms as stiff as his heart. He remembered how he'd heard the pulse beating in his head as he pressed the telephone into his ear. His father's explanation about the blouse echoed through his mind like an avalanche through a canyon. His father, a man he'd barely recognized, had sunk into his battered wooden chair on the other side of the glass, a hand over his forehead. A long moment passed before he spoke into his receiver, his words distant and frail.

“I didn't mean to hit her.”

So many words went through Brett's head at once. He couldn't speak.

His father's forehead wrinkled, the grooves down the sides of his mouth deepening. He looked exhausted, old. “I was drunk and she got me mad. …”

The words cut through Brett like a knife. His muscles turned watery.Words fell from his lips in a guttural fury.“Dad,why did you tell them you buried the blouse? That's just going to give them more ammunition against you!”He threw out his hands in despair, head tilting back as he breathed hard at the ceiling. Shock and anger and guilt raged through him in a confusing, nauseating flood.He opened his mouth and a low moan slipped out, resonating through his stretched vocal cords. Like a wounded puppet's, his head dropped back down.

“It'll be all right, Brett. It'll be all right.” His dad leaned toward the glass.
“Listen
to me. They can't keep me in here; that's what Ter-rance says. They don't have enough evidence.We'll get through this. We
have
to.We're all we've got right now.”

Brett's head shook back and forth, back and forth, his breaths coming in ragged puffs. The pain of the last four years welled within him. “You shouldn't have married her in the first place, Dad; I
told
you that. She was selfish and greedy.” His lips pulled back as he locked eyes with his father.“And why did you have to drink so much? Why did you have to run around with all your girlfriends in front of Shawna like you were spitting in her face? Now all that's going to come back and haunt you. They'll use it as an excuse for you wanting your wife out of the way! Why didn't you listen to me when I told you not to marry her?”

How could you try to replace my real mother after her death, the mother Iloved so much?
The unspoken words hung in his throat. Brett glared at his father and watched the man's head draw back, hurt sinking his eyes into his head.

“Brett, don't,” his dad rasped. “You have to help me now. I need you.”

Brett's anger vaporized. He sucked in a breath, chest heaving. He'd waited all his life to hear those words from his father—always capable, in control. Now here they were, on this day, in this godforsaken room. The irony nearly squeezed his heart shut.

Brett held up a palm against any further words.He couldn't take any more. His father was in trouble, his father needed him, and all he was doing was blubbering about his own pain. Suddenly the walls closed in. Brett raked a hand across his chest, pulling his shirt away from his skin. “This place is awful; we have to get out of here. I'm going to get Terrance, tell him to get you out right now!”

“Brett!” His father pressed a hand to the glass. “Terrance is already doing all he can. I'll be home before you know it.”

Before you know it…

“Let me say that again.”Terrance Clyde's resonant voice boomed through Brett's memories. Brett blinked, forced himself to focus. “Because it's the most important thing you'll hear during this trial.” The attorney leaned on the railing of the jury box, eyeing the jurors with fatherly wisdom.“The ‘evidence' the prosecution will present to you cannot surmount the high standard of reasonable doubt.”

A reporter on Brett's left cleared her throat as she wrote. Brett stared at her hands for a moment, then let his eyes wander. So many people filled the row in front of him. He'd come in late enough to know that the rows behind him were just as filled. Many of the people he could see were obviously not reporters.Who were these people? Was this their idea of entertainment, watching his family laid bare? Somewhere behind Brett sat Shawna's older sister, Lynn, who'd traveled from her home in Michigan for the trial. The first sight of her had disgusted Brett. So heavily made up. Such lewd clothes and rough manner. She even made Shawna look good. Lynn had come to watch his father “fry for the death of my sister,” as she'd put it, eyes narrowed in hatred. Brett could practically feel her vengeance at his back.

“And so you will see, ladies and gentlemen,”Terrance Clyde concluded, “that this case is built upon nothing but circumstantial evidence. Evidence that can't possibly add up to the high standard that must be met in order for you to consider a guilty verdict.”

With all his heart Brett hoped that was true.His dad couldn't be convicted; he simply
couldn't.
Brett couldn't imagine how his father, who so loved the outdoors, would ever survive years in jail. The last six months had been bad enough. Or how he himself would survive without his father. Fortunately, they had their foreman, Rudy, to take over main duties for the ranch. But nobody could run it like his dad. There was only one Salad King.

Terrance Clyde thanked the jury and sat down. The judge rapped her gavel, recessing court for a fifteen-minute afternoon break. All around Brett people rose, gathering notebooks, purses,murmuring to one another. On the row in front of him, a young figure stood slowly, glancing behind her at the milling bodies. Brett caught a glimpse of a beautiful, high-cheeked face framed by blond hair. The cut of her jaw was both chiseled and dainty, her lips full.

Her eyes caught his and hung there before sliding away. Something about her looked healthy and frail at the same time. Brett watched the hesitation of her movements, felt a lostness wafting from her to him.

From the corner of his eye Brett caught sight of his father being escorted toward a back courtroom door by a bailiff. Thoughts of the young woman fell away as he watched, hoping his father would give him a glance. Just before disappearing through the door, his father looked back and nodded at him. Brett forced a grim smile. He turned toward the courtroom exit,wondering what to do with himself for the next quarter hour.

SEVEN

In the hall, Stan Breckshire broke up his tête -à - tête with Lynn Trudy. Nutty woman. She was constantly cornering him with questions and suggestions. Darren Welk wasn't going to get away with the murder of her sister, no sir. They'd discussed his opening remarks, the various jurors. Stan tried to convince her he
did
know what he was doing. He'd already begun watching the jurors, taking in their reactions, he told her.Who took notes and who didn't? Who seemed more emotional? Lynn agreed that the Japanese college student, Tak Nagakura, was a stoic one.His face never seemed to move.He looked like a spindly spider next to B. B., the overweight, brown-haired bartender, a woman who practically oohed and aahed with every statement. And that English teacher, Hesta Naples. Lynn rolled her eyes. Hesta sat straight-backed, her lips in a prim line, dark hair slicked into a severe bun. Stan told Lynn how he pictured Hesta's house, a game he played in reading jurors. It would be immaculate, with silverware and underwear perfectly stacked. The latter was probably chain mail.