Missing Justice (13 page)

I brought her up to speed on the Easterbrook case, then told her about my unproductive morning reviewing files. She wanted to know how the police could begin to tackle a case with no weapon, no witnesses, and no physical evidence. I explained MCT’s strategy of following up on facts that make the case unique.

She was bothered. “I understand what you’re saying about the statistical odds that the murder has something to do with whatever the victim might have been involved in, but there’s still something about it that rubs me the wrong way. It’s like you’re investigating the victim, blaming her for getting killed.”

“Right, but would you feel that way if it wasn’t someone like Clarissa Easterbrook? Someone who looks like us and has a good job and does the kinds of things we do? When the victim’s a doped-out street person, wouldn’t you automatically assume that the lifestyle had something to do with the fact that she happened to show up dead?”

“But then you’re talking about someone who you know was involved in activities that can be dangerous. There’s no reason to believe that this woman was a drug addict or a prostitute or sleeping with someone else’s husband.”

“So the police snoop around to find out whether she was. Despite what people think, the odds of getting swiped off the street by a total stranger are so slim it would be irresponsible for the police to assume that scenario without at least looking into the possibility that something about the victim got her killed.”

“Well, do me a favor. If I show up dead, don’t let anyone snoop through my life.”

“How about you do me a favor and don’t show up dead?”

“OK, but if I do, I’ll try to make it somewhere interesting. Then you could bypass the personal stuff and follow up on the location as the angle. Maybe some abandoned castle in the Swiss Alps.”

“A little outside my jurisdiction,” I said. “And stop being so morbid.”

“Said the proverbial kettle.”

“We can’t both be dark. I need my Grace to balance me out a little.”

“Fine, but I want to go back to your case. What’s so interesting about the location?”

I did my best to describe the place where Clarissa had been found and told her Johnson’s theory that it may have been someone familiar with the construction site. She was conspicuously quiet. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m just trying to catch up with you. Your food’s nearly gone and I still have my entire lunch to eat.”

“Thanks for pointing that out, skinny girl.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Seriously, what were you thinking about?”

“I think there are probably a lot more people who know about that location than you might assume.”

“Grace, it’s all the way out on the edge of Glenville.”

“Right, where lots and lots of people live and work. Sam, you’ve only lived in northeast Portland and never ventured beyond the city center. Where do your cops live?”

“Johnson lives up by the University of Portland. I think Walker lives in Gresham.” That put Ray in north Portland, not far from my own Alameda neighborhood, and Jack out in the county’s east suburbs.

“And Glenville’s all the way on the southwest edge of the county, which is why the three of you think the fastest growing city in the State of Oregon is the boonies. You guys might see it as Timbuktu, but a hundred thousand people know the land out there as well as you know Alameda.”

“When did you become such a Glenvillean? Grace Hannigan, are you shopping at Burlington Coat Factory without telling me? Or maybe a new man one with a minivan and a cul-de-sac?”

“Perish the thought,” she said. “If you must know, I was looking into opening another Lockworks out there. There’s a boom right now, and most of it from people with money who need haircuts.”

“So are you doing it?”

“Nah. Too big a risk. When I bought the warehouse, I knew in my gut that the Pearl was going up. I didn’t know just how far up I hit the lottery in that sense but I knew I was ahead of the market. With Glenville, the market’s already full of people gambling that the growth’s going to continue. It didn’t make sense to get in this late in the game.”

“So no Lockworks for Glenville.”

“Right. Anyway, getting a second shop off the ground would have been a major pain in the ass. Who needs it?”

“All that work might get in the way of hanging out with me,” I said.

“Couldn’t let that happen.”

The waitress stopped to clear our plates. I left a token morsel on the plate, so I could tell myself I didn’t eat the whole platter. Grace took great pleasure in telling the waitress she was still working on it.

“And how’s the rest of the new job? Are you going to share your toys with the other kids this time around?”

“My problems, Grace, are never with the other kids. They’re with the supposed grown-ups watching over us.”

Grace knew about some of the run-ins I’d had with coworkers in the office, all of whom happened to be my superiors. She says I have a problem with authority. I say my only problem is that the assholes are the ones who get promoted.

“And what lucky soul gets to put up with you now?” she asked.

“It’s hard to believe, but he seems pretty decent so far. Supposedly he makes people cry, but I’ve never actually heard that from anyone firsthand.”

“Does the new boss have a name?” she asked.

“That would be one Senior Deputy District Attorney Russell Frist,” I said, deepening my voice into the best Frist boom I could muster. “Resident weight-lifting crew-cut-wearing stud muffin.”

Grace was smirking.

“What?”

“I can’t decide whether to tell you,” she said.

“Well, you have to now. You can’t announce that there’s something to be said and then hold out on me.”

After the requisite symbolic pause, she said, “Fine,” as if I’d dragged it out of her. “I don’t repeat the things clients tell me, but I suppose there’s no harm in telling you that someone’s a client. I know Russell Frist from the salon.”

“Big bad butch Russ Frist goes to Lockworks? For a crew-cut?”

“Nope, not the hair. No point paying sixty bucks for that.”

“Oh, please tell me that you wax his back,” I pleaded.

“Not that good. But he does get a monthly no-polish manicure and pays extra for the paraffin wrap.”

When I got back to the office, I was still in a good mood from my big food and small secret. The rest of the office might think of Frist as a mister scary, but I knew he had soft hands. I like people who are hard to sum up. They make life interesting.

My first stop was to see Jessica Walters.

She was leaning back in her chair with her stocking feet on the desk, one hand holding the phone to her ear, the other tapping her trademark pencil on her armrest. The person on the other end of the line was having a bad day that was getting worse as the conversation continued.

“You’re smoking crack if you think I’ll agree to probation…. I don’t care if your guy’s in denial, Conaughton. As far as I’m concerned, the most important part of your job is to smack him out of it. I’m not the one who needs a talking to, but you’d rather waste my time from the comfort of your office than haul yourself to county for a much-needed sit-down…. I’m hanging up now, because it’s not going to happen. Either take the forty months or confirm the trial date. Call me back with anything else and I’ll stop talking to you.”

She set the handpiece in its cradle as gently as if she’d been checking the weather.

“Close case?” I asked.

“Typical plea-bargaining bullshit. They’re never as close as the defense wants you to think.”

“I got your message earlier. What’s up?”

“You believe in coincidences, Kincaid?”

One of my favorite crime writers says there’s no such thing, but I’d never thought much about it. “Sure,” I said, “when I need to.”

“Honest answer. Well, I do too. They happen all the time, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself on this one. Your vie called me Friday.”

“On what case?”

“The city judge, Clarissa Easterbrook. She called me Friday and left a message.”

“About what?”

“I have no idea. I was in trial all last week. I took the message down with the rest of them and have been working my way through the list. The name meant nothing at the time I wrote it down, but when I got to it this morning it gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

“What exactly did she say?”

“All I wrote in my call book was her name and number. If she had said what she was calling about, I would have noted it.”

“You didn’t realize this until today?”

“Watch it, Kincaid. That sanctimony’s better spent on the rest of the fuckups around here. All I had was a name and number. I don’t think she even said she was calling from the city hearings department.”

I could see how that could happen. “Can you think of any reason she might have been calling? Are you in any groups together? The Women’s Bar Association, maybe?”

“Sure, along with forty-three percent of all the other attorneys in this town. Did she call you?”

“Good point. Whatever it means, thanks for telling me. I’ll pass it on to MCT and see if it connects up with anything else. Do you have the number she left?”

On the way back to my office, Alice Gerstein stopped me in the hall and announced that Clarissa Easterbrook s sister was waiting for me in the corner we call the reception area.

“When did she get here?”

“Right before noon.”

I had checked my voice mail around then, but no one had left a message about the pop-in.

“Did she say what she wanted?” I whispered.

“Just to talk to you about the case. I offered to have you call her to set an appointment, but she insisted on waiting.”

Tara Carney had finished the crossword during her wait and moved on to the jumble. I apologized for making her wait and explained that I was out of the office and didn’t know she was planning to come in.

“I really didn’t mind. I’ve been running out of things that make me feel useful, so waiting here to talk to you… well, at least it was something.”

Apparently Susan Kerr wasn’t the only one who was trying to stay busy. I offered Tara the best we had around here, a Dixie cup of water. Don’t knock it. Until a few of us pooled our own funds for a cooler, the only water we had was brown.

Once we were in my office with the door closed, I asked her why she’d come in.

“There’s something I haven’t told the police yet, and it’s been weighing on me. If I tell you, can it remain confidential?”

People hear about the sacred attorney-client privilege on TV and assume it’s going to apply to me. It doesn’t. I did my best to explain to Tara that I represented the State, not her. I’d do my best to be discreet, but if she told me something that related to the case, I’d almost certainly tell the police, and I might have to disclose it eventually to a defendant.

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t know if it relates to the case.”

“If you have any reason to think it might, you really do need to tell me, Tara. I can’t promise to keep it confidential, but I will treat the information with respect. We’ll use it for the investigation, but it’s not like I’m going to issue a press release or gossip about your sister.”

She looked into my face and must have decided to trust me. “I think Clarissa was cheating on Townsend.”

I couldn’t hide my frustration. How could she not have mentioned this before? I’d let Grace make me feel bad about the police poking around in Clarissa’s life, and it turns out there was something to discover after all.

“I didn’t know what to say earlier. That first night, he was standing right there and was so upset; I couldn’t mention it. Then when the police told us they found Clarissa’s body, I was with my parents. I know the police were asking about her marriage, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of them.”

“So whom was she seeing?” I asked.

“That’s the thing. I don’t even know. She never told me. But she told me a few weeks ago and she made me swear up and down I would never tell anyone that she had fallen in love with someone else. She said she wanted to leave Townsend. I was shocked.”

“Do you know if she actually started the process of leaving him? Did she tell Townsend or go to a lawyer?”

“I don’t know. I think I made her angry. She wanted me to support her and be happy for her, and I was crummy.”

“How so?” I asked.

““What about your marriage? How could you cheat on Townsend? Why don’t you try counseling?” That kind of stuff. I felt really bad when she said she only told me because she thought she could depend on me. I tried to stop being judgmental after that, but I think the damage was already done.”

“She didn’t tell you anything more?”

“No. I tried to get her to tell me who he was, but she refused. She wouldn’t even tell me where she met him. We mostly talked about how she was afraid to be alone. She wanted to leave Townsend to be with this other person, but she wasn’t sure he was prepared to be with her. I got the impression he might have been married too, like he wasn’t necessarily in a position to live happily ever after with her. But she didn’t want to keep living with Townsend when she was in love with someone else, so we talked about how she felt about being on her own.”

“And did she come to any decision?”

“I think her mind was already made up; it was just a matter of when. We talked about how I adjusted after my husband left me. That was different, though. I have two kids, so my hands were too full to permit a meltdown. She was picturing herself alone at night with nothing to do and wondering how she’d get through it. Clarissas one of those women who’s always been with someone.”

I knew that feeling. I had been one of those people before my divorce. Now I don’t know what ever made me feel like I could live with anyone but Vinnie.

I poked and prodded with more questions, but Tara didn’t know anything else about Clarissa’s extramarital activities.

“Do you think she told Susan? I got the impression they were like this,” I said, crossing my fingers, “but Susan hasn’t mentioned this either.”

“They are I mean, they were.” She was still getting used to the past tense. “In some ways they were more like real sisters than Clarissa and I were. If anything, they were almost too close, if that makes any sense. I think Clarissa came to me because I was less likely to challenge her. Clarissa always felt she owed it to Susan to live up to her expectations. Family’s supposed to love you unconditionally, right?”