Evidence of Guilt (33 page)

'The Bay Area. How about you?"

"Oh, a little bit of everywhere."

"My name's Kali," I said, with a smile twice as wide as usual. I've never felt comfortable with bar-scene maneuvers, but I reminded myself that I was here on business.

"I'm Jerry." He nodded, but seemed unable to come up with anything close to a smile.

"So, Jerry, how'd you get from everywhere to here?"

"It's a long story." He drained his glass. "Looks like I may be moving on again soon. I got fired today."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was a shitty job."

"What sort of job?"

"Road construction. Spent the whole day out there on the hot, dusty pavement breathing exhaust fumes, worrying that some half-assed driver was going to plow through the cones and run me over."

I sipped my beer. "Why'd you get fired?"

"Smoking dope on the job." He flashed a grin. "How about you? What do you do?"

"I'm a waitress," I said.

'That's a shitty job too."

I shrugged. "It pays the rent."

"Life of Riley, ain't it? You bust your butt all day so you have a place to rest it at night." He pulled out a pack of Camels and lit up. "You want one?"

I declined with a shake of my head. Then I took a deep, silent breath and mentally crossed my fingers. "It was a woman at work who introduced me to this place."

Jerry offered a polite grunt and tucked the pack of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket. "She come with you tonight?"

"She was killed a couple of weeks ago. You might have seen her here, though. She used to come here pretty often." I had no idea whether that was true or not, but it made a good story. "She had long hair that came halfway down her back. She wore it in a single braid most of the time."

His face remained impassive.

"You might have read about it in the papers too. Lisa Cornell. She and her little girl were murdered."

Jerry blew a long plume of smoke. He cupped the cigarette in his hand and studied the glowing tip. "Yeah, I read about it," he said after a moment.

"Did you ever see her here?"

He stubbed out his cigarette and looked at me. "You worked with Lisa?"

I nodded, hoping I hadn't just painted myself into a corner.

"I was married to her," he said after a moment's pause.

I leaned back and let out a breath. Of all the possible connections between Lisa and the shaggy-haired stranger, I hadn't expected that. "How terrible for you to lose a wife and daughter in such a horrible way."

Jerry nodded, folded his hands and stared at them silently for a moment. "At least they caught the bastard who did it."

I murmured something indecipherable, which he probably took as agreement.

Tou work with Lisa long?" he asked after another stretch of silence.

I gave a shrug. "Ever since she started at the Lazy Q."

He cocked his head. "So you probably know all about me, right?"

"We didn't talk much about personal stuff."

"Well, whatever she told you about us, don't believe it."

"The only thing I knew was that she'd been married once."

"Figures." He wrapped his hands around his beer. "She never talked about us getting back together?"

I shook my head.

"Never mentioned seeing me?"

"Like I said, we didn't get into personal stuff."

His expression grew sullen. He folded the matchbook between his fingers, struck a match and blew it out.

"Were you really going to get back together?"

"Who knows? Lisa wasn't exactly sold on the idea." He struck another match and watched it burn down to his fin-

gertips. "We were both young when we met, both of us kind of screwed up. And then the baby came along--"

"Your daughter Amy?"

"Wish to hell I knew." He gave a small, hard laugh. "Lisa never told you that part, did she? I bet it was always what a deadbeat I was, and nothing bad about herself at all. She had this image of herself as a goddamn debutante or something. Honest-to-God truth was, she went after anything in pants." He glanced at my blue jeans over the top of his beer glass, then grinned. "Guess that saying doesn't apply anymore. I think she did draw the line at women."

"Is that why you got divorced?"

"It's why we split up. Lisa didn't hand me the divorce papers until a couple of months ago. Wanted to wrap up all the legalities so she could get remarried." He paused. 'You ever meet that guy she was going to head down the aisle with?"

"Philip Stockman?"

"Yeah. What a pitiful specimen. An old fart too, and living with his sister. The whole setup was weird. I tried to convince her it was a mistake, but she said she was doing it for Amy's sake."

"Stability?"

"And money." He spat out the words as though they were distasteful. "I got to take a piss. I'll just be a sec."

I ordered us both another beer. Jerry was gone quite a bit longer than a second, and I began to worry that he'd slipped out a back door, or maybe passed out under a urinal. When he returned the unsteadiness of his gait was more pronounced. When he sat down I realized why. The pungent odor of marijuana hung about him like cheap perfume. He slid back onto the stool and gave me a glassy-eyed grin.

I nodded toward the bottle of beer. "My treat."

"Thanks." He took a sip and picked up where we'd left off. "She wouldn't have been happy with him. No way. I knew that even if she didn't."

"Stockman?"

Jerry nodded.

"Is that why you moved here, to be near Lisa and Amy?"

"Who the fuck knows why I came. It was one of those harebrained ideas that seemed to make sense at the time." He lit another cigarette. "I ran across this picture of Amy she'd sent me not long ago. Kid looked like me, you know? Then when Lisa sent the divorce papers I started thinking about her and us, and about what we'd had going. There was a lot of good mixed in with the bad. And times change. Lisa wants to do the picket fence routine, I figure I could give it a try. Maybe I don't have the money this other guy has, but I know I gotta be better in the sack than him."

"So you tried to convince her to give it another shot?"

"Basically."

"And she wasn't interested?"

"I don't know what she wanted. I don't think she did either. But she was getting cold feet about going through with the wedding."

Remembering my friend-of-Lisa persona, I nodded. "I remember they had set a date and then she postponed it"

"And then she called it off altogether, "Jerry said.

"She broke off with Stockman?"

"She was gonna break off with him, anyway. I don't know whether she actually got around to it or not. She was kind of distracted because of those headaches she was getting."

Jerry's eyes had grown more glazed. He rested so un-

steadily on one elbow, I was afraid he might keel over. "She ever tell you about that shrink she was seeing?"

"She mentioned her in passing."

"Sounded like a real trip--hypnosis, guided imagery, tapping the unconscious and all that crap."

"What kinds of things were they looking for?" I asked.

"Who knows?" Jerry guzzled what was left of his beer. A thin stream missed his mouth and ran down his chin. He wiped at it with the back of his hand.

"I don't think Lisa bought into most of it, anyway," he continued. "She was supposed to be keeping some sort of journal where she recorded her dreams and fears, that sort of shit. But she hated to write, so she didn't."

"She didn't keep a journal at all?" No wonder I was having trouble tracking it down.

"Not the kind her shrink wanted. Lisa liked to draw. She had notebooks full of sketches. She used to draw some when we were together too, but that was different." He picked up his empty glass and looked at it. "You want another?"

"I think I've had enough."

He hailed the bartender and got himself a fresh beer. "She toid me she was waking up in the middle of the night, sweating and confused. She'd try to sketch what she was feeling. I can't see that they'd be much help. They were pretty weird."

"Weird how?"

"Kind of... what's that word--abstract. Like that guy who paints people with three eyes and no neck."

"She drew people?"

"People, trees, spooky old barns. All the stuff was kind of dark and grim. And weird. But she drew other things

too, when she wasn't half-asleep." He paused. "Seems ironic, her dying in that barn. It was in a lot of her drawings, like maybe she had a premonition or something." He listed in my direction, his elbow sliding across the bartop "You sure she never talked about me?"

"Not to me."

His expression was gloomy. "You'd think she might have said something. That she'd have cared just a bit."

"Look on the good side," I said sympathetically. "She didn't say anything bad about you either."

Jerry burped. "I got some good grass back at my place. What's say we head over there? We'll pick up a six-pack and some munchies on the way."

"Some other time maybe." I plastered on a big smile, but I think he was too drunk to notice.

"I got to hit the head again. Why don't you order another round, on me. I'll just be a jiffy."

When he had gone I found Ricky and gave him a twenty for cab fare. "If you let your friend drive home tonight,"! warned him, "you're leaving yourself open for a lawsuit."

He laughed. "What are you, my guardian angel or something?"

"Pretty close. I'm an attorney. And now that you've been warned, you can't claim you never knew he was drunk. So don't be stupid and pocket the money for yourself."

I pushed open the door and stepped outside, sucking in the fresh air as though I'd been too long underwater.

I was still in bed when Daryl Benson called at eight the next morning.

"Did I wake you?" he asked.

"Not really," I lied.

"I checked on Dr. Markley's accident like you asked me to."

I pulled myself to a sitting position. "And?"

"There were no skid marks, you were right about that." Benson's voice spiraled a little at the end, as though he hadn't finished his thought.

"Anything else?"

"Not about the accident per se. There's some question about what the doctor was doing on that stretch of road in the first place. She'd called a friend before leaving her office and was supposedly headed straight home."

"Will the sheriffs department investigate further?" I asked, removing my leg from the vicinity of Loretta's wet nose. She'd padded over to the bed when the telephone

rang and was now giving me a doleful look, the canine equivalent
of poor me, I'm so hungry.

"They don't really have much to go on, Kali. The ab sence of skid marks doesn't necessarily spell foul play."

"It's suspicious, though."

"Maybe, but not unheard of."

"It seems as if her death has got to be connected in some way to Lisa Cornell's." Loretta had maneuvered her front paws onto the mattress and was trying to ease the rest of her body on as well. "Does the sheriff know she was Dr, Markley's patient?"

"Yeah. For what it's worth, I passed on your concerns," Again there was an odd, unfinished quality to his words.

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

Benson drew in a breath. "There's something else you should know. It's about the Harding case. We've just turned up some female undergarments in the compost bin belonging to Wes's neighbor. One pair was a woman's, the other a child's."

My throat closed down so that I had trouble speaking. "Were they Lisa's and Amy's?"

'That hasn't been determined. The sizes are right."

For a moment I couldn't move. It was as though the wind had been knocked out of me. Finally I swung my legs over the side of the bed, causing Loretta's feet to slip to the floor. "Are you at the station?"