Immoral (32 page)

“And meanwhile the witnesses will be a distant memory,” Gale said scathingly. “It’s now or never.”

“They can have any testimony they like read back to them,” Dan said.

“Oh, please,” Gale said.

Kassel cut them both off. “That’s enough, gentlemen. Mr. Erickson, I’m sympathetic to your situation. I’m loath to proceed with the tantalizing possibility of new and crucial evidence so close. But right now, you have nothing but hopes and theories. You went into this case without a body, convinced you could get a conviction. You’re going to have to abide by that decision.”

The judge reached down, clicking on her microphone, and banged her gavel again to quiet the courtroom. She directed her announcement to the court.

“The motion for continuance is denied. We will proceed with the trial.”

“Your Honor, I renew my motion that hearsay evidence of a sexual relationship between the defendant and Rachel Deese, as cited in deposition by Dr. Nancy Carver, be admitted, on the grounds that the declarant is unavailable as a witness.”

“Denied. Anything more, Mr. Erickson?”

Dan clenched his fists in frustration. “No, Your Honor.”

“Fine. Bailiff, please bring in the jury.”

Stride turned away from the bench. He saw fury in Dan’s eyes, a coldness, directed at him, he had never felt in his life. It was as if Dan’s future had been buried in the shallow hole where they had dug up the body, and he could find only one person to blame.

Dan whispered, “You fucked this whole case up for me from day one.”

Stride didn’t reply. He didn’t have time.

Something was wrong.

The buzz in the crowd had changed. The noise and whispering that followed the judge’s decision turned into something else. People were confused, pointing, standing. Someone was shouting. It was Maggie, in the third row, calling Stride’s name and scrambling across people to get to the aisle.

Close by, others began screaming.

Stride saw Graeme Stoner jerk up out of his chair at the defense table, as if an electric current were bolting through his skin. Graeme steadied himself with his hands flat on the table. His eyes were wide, filled with puzzlement.

Graeme’s mouth fell open, as if he were about to laugh. Then his chest heaved, and instead, a trickle of blood dribbled from his lips. Graeme blinked. He looked down at the drips splashing on his white shirt like cherries in the snow.

He smiled.

Then his chest heaved again, and the trickle became a river.

Bright red blood streamed from Graeme’s mouth, then his nose. The river poured over his suit, bathing his shoutders and chest, then spilled onto the table, soaking the raft of papers scattered there. It cascaded like crimson fountains into puddles on the floor.

Graeme’s eyes turned gray and glassy and rolled up into his head. For another few seconds, he remained standing at attention. Then his body seemed to shrivel. His shoulders caved inward, and he collapsed in a pile on the table, his face dangling over the edge, still spouting a geyser of blood that now squirted over the courtroom floor in a growing lake. There was no way to turn off the spigot, and even Dan Erickson and Archibald Gale shouted and reared back as the red flood pooled around their shoes.

All the while, Graeme lay face down, draining the last few beats of his heart.

Stride tried to run, but he slipped in the blood. He regained his balance and dove forward. Maggie arrived first. She battled past the last few people who stood in her way, transfixed by the horror in front of them. She leaped over those who had thrown themselves to the floor, screaming, in an effort to escape.

Emily Stoner stood in the front row, as frozen as those around her, staring at the blood-soaked body of her husband immediately in front of her. Her right arm was held high. Maggie’s tiny hands clenched Emily’s outstretched arm in an iron grip, holding it in the air, but it was as if Emily didn’t notice. She didn’t move. She didn’t let go.

Then Stride arrived, leaning past Graeme Stoner’s dilapidated corpse to strip the red-stained butcher knife from Emily’s hand.

Bedlam.

The chambered windows in the upper-floor library of the Kitch were closed, buffeted by a morning thunderstorm. Gale sipped coffee from a china cup as he leaned against the window frame. He glanced over at Dan Erickson, who sat on the sofa with a plate of eggs and sausage and a tall orange juice in front of him.

“You know, they would have acquitted him,” Gale told Dan. His lips curled upward in a smile, and his eyes twinkled.

Dan’s fork and knife clinked on the plate as he cut up his eggs, yolks oozing out “Don’t be so sure. You heard the interviews Bird did with the jurors. They didn’t believe Sally was involved. They thought Graeme did it.”

“I believe they said ‘probably,’ and that would be reasonable doubt if we were in a courtroom. Besides, they all had the opportunity to watch your press conference last week. Angry prosecutor denouncing the unfounded allegations against an innocent girl. No evidence except what points to Mr. Stoner.” Gale’s face was illuminated by a flash of lightning. “Forget the fact that you couldn’t prove it in court”

“Says you,” Dan replied pleasantly.

Gale shook his head. “I can’t believe Emily got in there with the knife.”

“We had metal detectors, but the media was hounding her. She asked to be brought in through the rear door. Who knew she was going to go off the deep end?”

“You’re saying it was a surprise? Please. I half think you wanted something like this to happen, Daniel.” Gale sipped more coffee. “Did you work out a deal with her?”

“Manslaughter two. Three years, minimum security.”

“A slap on the wrist,” Gale said.

“Oh, come on. The man killed her daughter. Archie, we’re not in court anymore. You don’t really believe Graeme was innocent, do you?”

“I don’t know if he was innocent. I don’t know if he was guilty. Neither do you.”

Dan dabbed at his lips with a napkin and stood up, smoothing his suit He took the pot of coffee and poured himself a cup. “Well, it was brilliant putting Sally at Rachel’s house. What tipped you off?”

“It’s obvious you’ve never raised teenagers,” Gale said, laughing. “She watches another girl come on to her boyfriend, and she just goes home to bed? Not a chance. That was a catfight in the making.”

“And the Kerry McGrath thing?”

“I went looking for connections once I knew Sally had gone to see Rachel that night. When Kevin admitted Kerry had asked him out, it was almost too good to be true.”

Dan shrugged. “Sally’s father went back and checked his calendar. The whole family was in the Cities that weekend for a play.
Les Miz
. We confirmed the purchase.”

“That’s the kind of evidence a father can produce when his daughter’s in trouble,” Gale said.

“She didn’t do it, Archie.”

“Have it your way. But there’s more to this story than came out in court”

The room rattled as a thunderclap shook the club. Gale studied the dark sky thoughtfully.

“With Graeme dead, we may never know,” Dan said.

Gale stroked his goatee. “Oh, I wonder. Perhaps Rachel will come back and tell us the secrets herself. Like a ghost.”

Stride listened to the violent rapping of the downpour on the windows and saw a glow behind his eyelids with each stroke of lightning. The oak timbers of the porch groaned under the gusts of wind. He could smell the sweet fresh air, soured by a hint of mildew in the wood.

When the thunder awakened him at four in the morning, he had taken his blankets to the porch, clicked on the space heater, and drifted in and out of a light sleep as the storm rolled overhead in waves from the west. In his bedroom, his alarm had gone off two hours ago. He didn’t care. The sky outside was dark enough that it still looked like night.

The investigation and trial lingered in his mind. Stride felt no closure. He refused to believe that Stoner was innocent. That hadn’t changed. But maybe he was lying to himself, trying to convince his brain that he hadn’t been wrong from the beginning. He would swat his doubts away, but a few minutes later they’d be back, like mosquitoes, buzzing at his ear. Each time louder than before.

He thought about the postcard. It had been waiting in his mailbox when he came home last night. He kept looking at it every few minutes. And hearing the mosquitoes.

The floor groaned under the weight of footsteps. Stride’s eyes snapped open. He craned his neck and saw Maggie standing in the doorway of the porch. Her black hair was soaked. Water dripped from her face and sleeves. She looked tiny and vulnerable.

“I see you’re selling your house,” she said.

The sign had gone up a few days ago. He closed his eyes again and shook his head, angry at himself. “I was going to tell you. Really, Mags.”

“You’re getting married, aren’t you? You and the teacher?”

Stride nodded.

It had happened a week ago over dinner. He wasn’t even sure, looking back on it, who had asked whom. They had started out sober and depressed and ended up, several hours later, drunk and engaged. Andrea clung to him, not wanting to let go. It was a good feeling.

“I’m sorry, Mags,” he said.

She took one hand out of her pocket and pointed her index finger at him like a gun. “Are you out of your mind, boss? You’re making a terrible mistake.”

“I know you’re upset,” he said.

“Damn right I’m upset! I’m watching a friend fuck up his life. I told you not to get too serious, didn’t I? Both of you rebounding from disasters. Cindy always told me you were the densest person on the planet emotionally, and I guess she was right.”

“Leave Cindy out of this,” Stride snapped.

“What? Like she’s not in this up to your eyeballs? I’m going to say it again, boss. You’re making a mistake. Don’t do it.”

Stride shook his head. “You and I, that would have been impossible. It would never have worked. You told me that yourself.”

“You think this is about me?” Maggie asked. She stared at the ceiling, as if pleading for divine guidance. “Unbelievable.”

There was an awkward silence between them. The only sounds were the roar of the storm outside and the dripping of Maggie’s coat on the floor of the porch.

“Is it so wrong for two people who need each other to get together?” Stride asked.

“Yes,” Maggie said. “That’s wrong. It should be two people who love each other.”

“Oh, come on, you’re just playing word games with me.”

“No, I’m not You’re in love, or you’re not You belong together forever, or you have no business getting married.”

“I thought maybe you’d be happy for me,” Stride said.

“You want me to smile and pat you on the back and tell you how great it is?” Maggie’s voice grew shrill with anger. “Fuck you. I’m not going to do that I can’t believe you’d ask.”

Stride didn’t say anything. He listened to her harsh breathing.

Maggie shook her head and sighed, gathering up her emotions like marbles spilled on the floor. “Look, if this is what you have to do, then you go and do it. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say my piece.”

He nodded. “Okay, Mags. You’ve said it.”

They stared at each other for a long while, which was like saying good-bye without words. Not good-bye forever, just to their relationship as it was.

“I came to tell you, it wasn’t Rachel’s body,” Maggie said, slipping back into her cop voice, all business again. “We got the DNA tests back. It was Kerry.”

Stride cursed under his breath. He thought about that sweet, innocent girl—about losing her, about losing Cindy. He was angry all over again. Angry that a killer had gotten away with murder.

And then he thought,
It wasn’t Rachel
. He heard the mosquitoes at his ear again. Buzzing.

“I got something in the mail last night,” Stride said quietly.

He inclined his head toward the picture postcard lying on the coffee table. Maggie glanced down at the photograph on the card, which showed a strangely proportioned, long-eared gray animal in the desert.

“What the hell is that?”

“A jackalope,” Stride said. “Part jackrabbit, part antelope.”

Maggie screwed up her face. “Huh?”

“It’s a joke,” Stride said. “A myth. It doesn’t exist. People send postcards of jackalopes to see how gullible you are.”

Maggie reached down to pick up the card.

“Edges only, please,” Stride told her.

Maggie stopped, her hand frozen in the air, and gave Stride a curious look, as if she had sensed something horrible. Then she carefully picked up the postcard by the edges and turned it over. She read the message, which was scrawled in red ink, its letters dripping into streaks where rain had spattered the postcard:

He deserved to die.

“Son of a bitch,” Maggie blurted out. She stared at Stride and shook her head fiercely. “This can’t be from her. This can’t be from Rachel. The girl is dead.”

“I don’t know, Mags. Just how gullible are we?”

Maggie eyed the postmark. “Las Vegas.”

Stride nodded. “The city of lost souls,” he said.

Jerky Bob lived in a trailer moored off a minor road a few miles south of Las Vegas. He had arrived, as so many vagabonds in the Las Vegas valley do, out of nowhere. About a year ago, the trailer appeared, dragged perilously by a truck that waited barely long enough to unhitch it before disappearing back into the city. A day after the trailer took up permanent residence off the dusty road, a hand-scrawled sign on a wooden stake appeared near the California highway. It read:

Jerky Bob

And then below it:

New Age Gifts
Psychic Poetry
BeefJerky

Bob curtained off one end of the trailer, where the rear entrance was, put up a rickety table and cash box, and opened for business. He hung dozens of stained glass wind chimes, stuck pyramid magnets to a metal plate nailed to the wall, filled shelves with incense burners and sandalwood candles, and handwrote epic poetry that he copied on an ancient duplicating machine and tied up in scrolls with purple ribbons.