Expert Witness (14 page)

“Anything?” he asked.

“I would say so.” Archer tossed the bag into the back of the car and looked at the envelope in his hand. The return address was intriguing. It was already open so he pulled out the contents.

“That’s illegal,” Daniel Young advised.

“Call a cop.” Archer said absently as he read the letter. He read it again and handed it to Daniel Young.

“Parole department?”

“Yeah, a little letter of release notification signed by one Cuwin Martin.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

An Outbuilding in the California Mountains

Erika breathed hard. She heaved, but there was nothing in her system to throw up.  She was waking more often now. When she spoke her words were as thick as her tongue, but at least she was speaking.

“Time is it?”

Josie answered. “Eight. Nine. I don’t know. Could be midnight.”

“Days?”

“One at least. Probably two,” Josie answered. “What were you doing before?”

“Don’t know.” she paused, and searched for moisture in her mouth, looking for some way out of the fog.“You?”

“Can’t remember,” Josie pulled on the rope. “Been in court lately? Had any legal problems?”

Josie pulled on the rope again. The knot gave. Not an inch, not even a millimeter, but Josie felt it and smiled. She had worked enough volleyball net ropes on the beach to know when a knot was giving and the rope was stretching.

“No. You?”

Josie laughed, “I’m always in court. I’m a lawyer? You?”

“I write. . .” Everything she said was truncated, but the last bit of information was enough to spark something in Josie’s memory.

“Erika Gardener? You wrote for the Times. You wrote a book.
The Broken System
. I know you. You were-”

“My arms. . . .  Blood. . .”

She hiccupped and cried without tears and sobbed dryly. Hysteria had crept in and wanted to lie down beside her. Josie wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Take a minute. The blood might be from your wrists.” Josie counted off the seconds as she tried to be patient. “Anything major?”

“My face is bleeding.”

“Okay. That’s okay, right?”

“Not your face,” Erika mumbled.

“Got me there,” Josie chuckled. “Put your legs up against the wall and push. Be careful. Anything broken?”

“No.”

“Look, the knot on my rope is on the inside where my wrists are crossed. I can reach it with the fingers of one of my hands. Can you reach yours?”

“On the side. I touched -” She sighed. Josie knew Erika was fading.

“Erika, listen,” Josie called, not wanting to lose her again. “That’s good. You should be able to feel around the knot. Feel around and see if there’s a strand that isn’t pulled as tight as the others. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” She sighed again. “So tired.”

“I know, but it gets better. It wears off. We’re overdue for another dose, so we’ve got to work fast. We need to be ready when whoever took us comes back.”

“Or not.”

Those words hung in the air for a moment then swung like a pendulum over both of them. Josie shook her head. She’d be damned if she would think the worst.

“Either way, we’re going to have to get ourselves out of this mess. Are you with me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on, Erika. I sure as hell don’t want to die. Come on. Wake up. Wake up!”

“Trying. . .”

“Okay. Okay,” Josie calmed herself. “You wrote for the Times. You covered me. When. What case? Rayburn? Was that it?”

“Hernandez.”

“Hernandez?” Josie muttered. Her brow beetled. “ Xavier Hernandez? That’s ancient history. There has to be something else. Think, dammit.”

Erika drew a deep breath and when she spoke it was with a note of pity, a trill of despair.

“You don’t know, do you?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

Archer’s Apartment, Hermosa Beach

Archer took a sleeping pill and set the alarm for six. Daniel Young had gone back home, outraged by the news that Xavier Hernandez had been released and the fact that he hadn’t been notified. No surprise there.  A few pointed questions and Archer determined that Hernandez had never threatened Daniel Young or tried to contact him after his incarceration. Victims and/or their families were notified of bail hearings and prisoner release if the system worked right. That didn’t explain contacting Erika Gardener or Josie Bates unless Hernandez had said something in prison. Still, if he had threatened either one of them he wouldn’t have been released. Something wasn’t kosher but they weren’t going to find out what it was that night. And Archer didn’t have time to read the thousands of pages of transcripts in Josie’s boxes, so he did the next best thing and listened as Daniel filled him in.

“Xavier Hernandez killed Janey Wilson and Susie Atkins after picking them up on the highway that ran through the desert. Their car broke down. The young man with them - Rothskill? - he hitched a ride in order to get to help.”

“Yeah, I got that. Do you remember why the Atkins count was dismissed?”

They now knew Erika Gardener had not gone to the store, she was not being wined and dined at the latest club in Hollywood; she was not visiting friends. Archer sensed that they had just missed whatever happened, that they were ‘this’ close to understanding it, that whatever was going on was so simple it would torture Archer for the rest of his life if things didn’t work out well. Daniel talked on, so involved with his story that he didn’t realize Archer was lost in thought. For Daniel, this whole thing could have happened yesterday.

“Josie Bates argued that Susie Atkins died of complications of her chronic medical problems. At best, Hernandez could be charged with gross negligence. The judge threw out that count. I think the prosecutor was relieved. He knew he was outgunned on that one given what Ms. Bates brought to the prelim.”

“Do you remember what she argued specifically?”

“I’ll never forget. Susie had a heart problem and asthma. The prosecution could offer no definitive evidence that the poor girl had died of manual strangulation. Josie Bates showed – with medical experts backing her up, I might add – that Susie could have died of a severe asthma attack or cardiac arrest. There was no petechial hemorrhaging, so if Atkins had died before the strangulation, Hernandez couldn’t be convicted of murder.  Bates convinced the judge it was a long shot for the prosecution to try and convict Hernandez on that count, and that the state would save a bundle by just focusing on Janey. There weren’t any semen samples from Susie. Xavier told me he couldn’t complete the act because the girl was too fat.”

“And Janey?”

“Beaten horribly. Violated.”

“Then no way Hernandez is out in ten on a first degree conviction,” Archer scoffed.

“The judge allowed the jury to consider first and second degree, remember? Ms. Bates convinced the jury that Janey died during hard, consensual sex. Hernandez was convicted of second degree murder.” Daniel shook his head as he recalled the injustice of it all. “A sixteen year old girl. Daughter of a minister. What Josie Bates did to that girl’s memory was as brutal as what Hernandez did to her body.”

“The victim was a kid. What could Josie possibly have argued to convince a jury that she would consent to sex with a stranger, much less an encounter like that?”

“She introduced the girl’s diary,” Daniel answered. “Josie Bates read it aloud and used it to cross examine Isaiah. It was hard to watch. I doubt Ms. Bates was even aware of the revulsion we all felt. She seemed to relish the attack.”

“A preacher’s kid had other encounters?”

“No. She had written about her fantasies and questions about sexual interaction. She was nothing but a curious girl who wanted some excitement but lived in a throwback world of God and repression. Ms. Bates was cruel and cutthroat.  She took something innocent and turned it into something vile. Your friend was like a barbarian cutting a swath through a village. No one was safe.”

Archer shuddered, knowing Daniel spoke the truth. Josie had been that hard; she wasn’t now. Whoever wanted to punish her for what she did in that courtroom had chosen a hell of a weird time to do it. Sin had been committed, but she had gone on to make restitution. He didn’t want to hear about the woman Josie had been.

Archer was about to say that to Daniel Young, but the man was staring out the window, his head turned away. The rage that poured off him was palpable. Archer had no doubt it was real, he was just surprised that he carried such indignation for Janey Wilson, a young girl he had never met. Finally, Archer broke the silence.

“What about Erika Gardener?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Daniel turned back to Archer. Even in the dark he could see that Daniel was pale and shaking with his emotions.

“Gardener. What about her?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said.

“And you?”

“Me?”  They had hit the freeway and the oncoming lights undulated through the interior of the Hummer. Young looked as if he were underwater, his face recognizable but changing with each little wave of light.

“Yeah,” Archer said, “Why single you out for his little list?”

“I testified that he was sane, and that he acted with aforethought and malice.  I faced him down in that courtroom while Josie Bates tried to trip me up. Her cross-examination was unwarranted, unprofessional and her points had no bearing on the matter at hand.” Daniel’s voice rose and filled the car. “That girl, me, the boy who was supposed to supervise the volunteers-”

“Paul Rothskill?

“Yes, she vilified him. He was only nineteen, and Bates tore him to shreds on the stand. If she could have, she would have convicted him of the killings to save Hernandez. And, of course, Isaiah Wilson was in her sights. Josie Bates was a sorceress suggesting theories to the jury, conniving to trip up witnesses, creating stories out of thin air that were as potent as a magic spell, but what I said was the truth and nothing after that should have mattered.”

“Too bad nobody believed you,” Archer muttered.

Daniel pulled back as if he had been slapped. He thought for only a second, looked at Archer for only a second longer, and then turned back to gaze out the window.

“They’ll believe me now, won’t they?”

An Outbuilding in the California Mountains

“Hernandez can’t be out. Not possible.”

“Fifteen to life,” Erika said.

“Nobody who did what he did gets out in fifteen. The press would have been on it. I would have seen something. And it’s only been what? Nine, ten years?”

“A letter came.”

“Damn! Shit!” Josie strained at her binding. She pulled. She twisted. She yanked her wrists up and gritted her teeth and cried out in pain and frustration.

“Stop,” Erika pleaded.

Josie panted with her futile efforts, and then did as Erika asked. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the new information.

“There has to be something else. Hernandez might hate your guts, but he would have been executed if it wasn’t for me.”

“Maybe not him.” Erika’s voice rose but her words slurred.

“Who else then? Xavier’s mother? She couldn’t do this.” Josie talked over her.

“No.”

“The victim’s families? The preacher. . .” Josie challenged but Erika was thrashing and mumbling.

“It’s hot. It’s so hot.”

Exhausted, Josie put her head down, partly on her arm and partly on the ground. There was truth in that. It was hot and she had no water and –

Suddenly, Josie’s ears pricked. She heard something scraping, something rolling, the sound of plastic crumpling. Erika moved and struggled, and that’s when Josie realized the sound was inside the hut, not outside. She knew exactly what Erika was doing.

“Hey! Stop! Don’t drink that water. That’s how he’s doing it.”

Josie threw herself backward, threw her arms up as though she could turn and knock that water bottle out of Erika Gardener’s mouth, and then she forgot about Erika altogether. Suddenly, she felt like she was floating. When she looked up, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Oh my God,” Josie breathed.