Key Witness
Authors: J. F. Freedman
J. F. Freedman
ContentsPART ONEThere were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
—Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
E
ARLY DARK, TIME SUSPENDED
between sunset and true night, the barest sliver of dying sunlight fading on the western horizon, flickering dull yellow-vermilion patches visible through the thick clusters of trees that bracket the narrow two-lane road.
Wyatt Matthews was running. Five strides to a breath, deep inhale, then out, resisting the urge, late in the run, to breathe more quickly. T-shirt soaked across the chest and under the armpits, feeling a slickness on his forearms, forehead, neck. Driving himself, sweating out all the crap.
He had been running almost forty minutes, just under five miles. He was forty-eight years old, a tick under six feet tall, and his weight—173 pounds—was the same it had been the day he’d graduated law school. No matter how far he ran—three miles or ten or any distance in between—he ran the last mile with the same cadence, the same timing as the first. His daily run was almost as fast as it had been ten, even twenty years earlier.
Wyatt ran for exercise; more important he ran for the high it gave him. Running, sweating, feeling his heart beating faster, was commonsense good health; on a deeper, more important level, running helped clear his head.
Tonight, though, the fatigue, the sweating, the physical depletion, couldn’t blow the shit out. The more he tried not to think, the more a crazy-quilt jumble of ideas, images, and scenarios flashed across his mind. Stuff from the firm, especially residual stuff from his last case, which he had worked on for over three years and had finally concluded a month ago in triumph.
More than anything, what Wyatt was thinking about, what he had been agonizing over almost from when the trial was over, was why he didn’t feel better about it. Part of it was the normal letdown after such a long, arduous struggle. That always happened, he knew that, he knew the size and shape of it and how to deal with it.
This was something different. Something deeper, heavier. This was ambivalence and life-crisis chaos on a major scale. In runner’s terms, he had hit the wall. The problem was, he didn’t know what the wall was. How big, what it was made of. Anything.
His run was almost over. Another third of a mile to go and he’d be at the entrance to his driveway, and then it was the last hundred yards to the front of his house.
Wyatt’s home was like all the houses in this section of the township—large, expensive, exclusive. The lots were an acre or more, each secluded from view by thick stands of old-growth maple, ash, and hickory. Rich people’s houses—people who had made it. Privacy and security were valued—if you didn’t live here, or weren’t visiting someone who did, you had no reason to be in the area. Gardeners, maids, day workers, they came and went, but they didn’t leave lasting footprints.
Except for the sounds of his footsteps and breathing, the only noise Wyatt had been conscious of was the wind in the trees; but now, suddenly, rising out of the darkness, he heard the shrill scream of a siren, and then it was two sirens he was hearing, and as he turned, startled, and looked back over his shoulder, he saw flashing lights, the vehicles coming up loud and fast behind him.
The road was dark. There were no streetlights. He moved far enough off the asphalt onto the shoulder to make sure he was well clear of the approaching vehicles, because wherever they were going, they weren’t watching for runners.
A police car sped past him. Right behind it was an ambulance.
There weren’t many houses up ahead—just his and a couple others.
He panicked—what were cops and ambulances doing here? Had something happened at his house while he’d been running? When he’d gone out the front door, his wife had been starting to dress for dinner, and his daughter had been doing homework. Had something turned wrong in that short a space of time?
Instant adrenaline rush kicked in, he was sprinting for home.
It wasn’t his house. It was his neighbor’s, the closest house to his own, the two properties separated by a large shared lawn bisected by a natural fence line of elms.
Wyatt stopped, catching his breath in deep gulps, grateful that it wasn’t his house, it wasn’t his family. He could see the police car and the ambulance parked in front, the lights still flashing. Outside floodlights had been turned on—the front of the house was as bright as daytime.
The cops and paramedics were out of their vehicles, talking to the Spragues, his neighbors. They were in their mid-sixties—Ted Sprague had been president of Radmill, one of the largest auto-parts companies in the country. He’d retired last year. The Spragues were supposed to be out of the country until this weekend, vacationing in Paris.
Wyatt jogged up the driveway. “Ted,” he called out as he approached, “are you all right? What’s going on?”
“We’ve been robbed, that’s what’s been going on. Enid was shot.”
Wyatt rushed over. He put a comforting hand on the other’s forearm. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Is she …”
“I’m all right.” He heard a woman’s shaky voice.
Enid Sprague was lying awkwardly on the front steps. A female paramedic was cutting off part of her dress around her waist. The dress was soaked with blood.
“What are you …?” Wyatt turned to the paramedic who was tending to Mrs. Sprague’s wound. “Is she all right? What happened?”
The paramedic, wearing latex gloves, finished cutting away the bloody dress, revealing the wound underneath. A red, ugly blotch along the rib line, blood oozing out. She wiped away the blood so she could see the wound.
“Didn’t hit any arteries or vital organs,” the paramedic told Enid Sprague in a practiced, reassuring voice. She swiveled around to look at the husband. “I’m sure she’s going to be all right.”
The man staggered next to his wife.
Wyatt hovered over him. “Ted. What happened?”
Sprague shook his head. “We walked into the house,” he said, his voice full of astonishment, “the lights were all out, which was logical since we weren’t home, and all the curtains were drawn—we’d sealed the house up before we’d left. It was black as a tomb in there, believe me. We’re about to turn the front lights on, and we see a beam of light coming from under the study door, at the rear of the house. Like a flashlight.” He took his wife’s hand in his. “How do you feel? Are you all right?”
“It feels like somebody took a tooth out without Novocain,” she told him, “all of them at the same time. Try not to worry,” she said, her voice coming in a gasp.
“How can I not worry?”
Enid Sprague looked up at Wyatt. “We walked right in on the bastards,” she told him, her voice indignant even through the pain, “surprised the hell out of them. We could see they were robbing us—silverware, my jewelry, they must have known we weren’t in town. They had everything they were going to take in neat piles on the floor, we could see it from their flashlights.”
“We got back a day earlier than we were supposed to,” Ted interjected.
“I asked them what the hell they were doing,” Enid said.
Wyatt smiled. Enid was a tough cookie; nobody screwed her around.
“So they shot her,” Ted said, shuddering.
“They shot you,” one of the policemen echoed. “Did they both have guns? Or just the one who shot you?”
Ted Sprague looked away.
“Did you notice if the other one had a gun as well?” the young officer asked again. He was being polite. These people were old enough to be his parents, almost old enough to be his grandparents.
Ted Sprague shook his head. “The other one didn’t have a gun.” He hesitated. “Neither one of them had a gun. That we could see,” he added.
Enid flinched as the paramedic applied antiseptic to her side, placed a gauze pad over the injured area, and began bandaging it. “We’re going to the hospital now,” she said. “Do you feel steady enough to stand up and walk over to the ambulance? We can put you on the gurney if you’d rather.”
“I think I’m okay,” Enid stated. “Help me up.”
Each paramedic took an arm and helped Enid to her feet. Ted hovered at her side.
“I’ll ride in with you,” he said. “Can I do that?” he asked.
“Certainly,” the paramedic told him.
“The gun,” the policeman said a third time. “I misunderstood you. You said neither one … or which …”
“It was my gun.” Enid turned to the policeman. “He used my gun to shoot me.”
“He was stealing your gun as well?” the officer asked. “Where in the house did you keep it?”
She shook her head. Her husband put a protective arm around her shoulder, the side that hadn’t been shot. “He took it away from her,” Ted said flatly, avoiding the officer’s question.
