Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (16 page)

I sat, and he took a chair on the other side of the table, in front
of the window. Dawn had broken over the East Bay hills; a thin line of
opalescent light showed between their tops and the clouds that lowered
over them. Emmons's face was in shadow,
but I could see that his clown's mouth pulled down at its corners;
though he stared at the table in grim concentration, I sensed he wasn't
really seeing it. Was he thinking of Tracy? Or had he other things on
his mind—things he wanted to hide?

When Amy brought the coffee, her hand trembled so badly that the
cups rattled in their saucers. She scurried around the table and moved
the chair beside Emmons's several inches closer, so that when she sat,
their shoulders touched.

I said, "How did Tracy come to be at your family's cottage?"

She glanced at Emmons before she spoke. "She took the keys. She used
to go there a lot, whenever she wanted a quiet place where she could be
alone for a few days and think things over. Nobody else ever went
there. My father—the old bastard—is living in Mexico with his fourth
wife. My mother's back in New York with her third husband. And my
sister's too busy with her big-deal career in Silicon Valley to bother.
I haven't even been there in years."

"What were the things Tracy wanted to think over?"

"How should I know? Trace never told me anything."

"You said the two of you confided in one another. That you were best
of friends."

"I made things sound better than they were. I confided, she
listened. She was that way with everybody—and then she used them. You
think I haven't read what she wrote about me in her character
sketchbook? I'm not so stupid that I didn't recognize myself." Her lips
twisted bitterly.

"You say she went to the cottage often?"

"Yeah. Whenever she wanted to."

"How did she get there?"

"Get… ?" Amy looked puzzled.

"She didn't have a car. She didn't like to drive."

"Trace didn't like to drive in the city or deal with the parking
hassles, but she didn't mind it so much on the freeway or in
the country. She'd rent a car, or borrow one." Amy glanced at Emmons
again. "Sometimes she'd take someone with her."

"All right—when did she take the keys that time, and from where?"

"I don't know when. I keep a set on my key ring, and there was
always a duplicate set on the pegboard in the kitchen." She motioned to
it, next to the stove.

"Can you approximate when?"

"Not too long before she disappeared, or I'd have noticed they were
gone. She might even have come back here that night and taken them. I'd
gone to bed early—she was supposed to wake me for champagne for my
birthday when she got home—and I'm a pretty sound sleeper."

"When did you notice they weren't there?"

Her gaze slid away from mine. "Oh, not until after all the stuff
about the kidnapping."

"When you finally noticed, did you try to call her there?"

"There isn't any phone."

"Didn't it occur to you to tell the police to check the cottage?"

"Why? There'd been a ransom note, for Christ's sake! The kidnapper
wouldn't have taken her to the cottage."

"But after that, when no more notes came and the kidnapper never
recontacted her parents, why didn't you tell someone about the missing
keys then?"

"I… oh, shit." She looked at Emmons for help, but he was staring at
the table again, a distracted expression on his face. "All right! I
went up there, about a week later. I borrowed a car from this girl I
work with. Trace wasn't there. But there was this blue Volvo in the
garage, and there was dried stuff all over the upholstery in the front
seat that looked like blood."

That startled me; for some reason I'd assumed the car had been in
the ravine in the mountains since shortly after Tracy had
been killed. It also angered me that Amy had been sitting on an
important piece of information all this time.

I said, "Why in God's name didn't you call the sheriff?"

"I was afraid. I mean, Trace wasn't there, but there was the car and
all that blood. And it was my family's cottage. And Marc—"

Emmons looked at her and frowned.

I said, "Marc told you not to."

She was silent.

"Why, Marc?"

His expression was still distracted, as if he was listening to the
conversation and thinking about something else at the same time, but
now it betrayed more than a touch of fear. He said, "I felt the same
way Amy did. They'd think she'd done something to Tracy. And if not
that… well, Tracy and I had some serious problems, and a lot of people
knew about them. I was also afraid they might suspect me."

"What sort of problems?"

"Well, basically we'd broken up. She still came around when she
needed something, but we weren't a couple anymore. She was seeing
others."

"Who?"

"… That wasn't something she'd discuss with me."

"All right, you were both afraid of being accused of something, so
you decided to forget about the car with the bloodstains. But why
didn't you come forward later when it turned up in the mountains and
Bobby Foster made a confession you knew had to be false?"

Now both of them were silent.

I added, "You'd have let Bobby go to the gas chamber to protect
yourselves, wouldn't you?"

Emmons moved a hand as if to deny the possibility. "By the time we
found out the details of the confession, it was too late. If we'd said
anything, they'd try to pin it on us."

"Were the two of you involved before Tracy disappeared?"

Amy looked genuinely shocked at the suggestion. Emmons said, "No. We
just sort of came together afterwards. Even though we'd broken up, I
missed Tracy. Amy missed her. It just happened."

"You both missed Tracy, but you said nothing about what Amy had
found at the cottage. What if she'd still been alive at that point? You
might have saved her."

"But she wasn't," Amy said. "I could feel it, when I saw the blood
in that car."

"Great. Yet for nearly two years you've watched Marc going around
acting lovelorn and pretending he believed she was still alive. For all
that time, you let her body lie there—"

Amy turned her face against Emmons's upper arm and started to cry.
Through her sobs she said, "We didn't know she was there. And we did
miss her. Ask anybody. We did!"

Emmons smoothed the tufts of her ragged hair. "Haven't you upset her
enough?" he said. "Neither of us needs a lecture. We know what we did
was wrong."

"Maybe you do, but both of you have certainly capitalized on her
death. Amy has this entire apartment for half the rent, plus use of all
Tracy's things. And you built your career on her disappearance."

He stood up so fast that Amy was thrown off balance. She clawed at
the edge of the table, looking up at him in teary panic.

"I've had enough of this," he said. "Just get out of here and leave
us alone."

"I'll do that, but I think you should be prepared to hear from the
authorities. If you think I've been rough on you, wait until they start
talking to you about a charge of obstructing justice." I stood, picking
up the book on creating a new identity. "Did you plant this in Tracy's
room," I said to Emmons, "or is Amy lying about where she found it?"

His face became mottled with rage. I retreated into the living room.
He took a step toward me, but Amy's sobs became louder,
her breath rasping and fast, as if she were having an anxiety attack.
Emmons glared at me, then turned and put his arms around her.

I left the apartment, struggling to contain my own anger. It was a
relief to be out of there and not have to hear any more self-serving
explanations of what was simply cold-blooded behavior.

Early that afternoon Jack Stuart and I sat together on a bench in
the visiting area at San Quentin. We'd been waiting to see Bobby Foster
for over two hours. The delay annoyed me, but Jack took it stoically;
attorneys were used to long waits until one of the segregated visiting
rooms became available, he told me: At first we'd discussed the case
but after a while had run out of things to say and lapsed into silence.
Jack seemed remote today; I wondered if it had to do with my avoidance
of him at the New Year's Eve party.

At about one forty-five, a slender black woman wearing jeans and a
thick turquoise sweater entered the area. Her head, crowned by a short
afro, turned from side to side as if she was looking for someone; plain
gold hoop earrings danced with the motion. Jack roused himself and
waved to her. "That's Leora Whitsun, Bobby's mother," he said. "I spoke
with her earlier, and she mentioned she would be coming up here."

I watched Leora Whitsun make her way toward us, realizing with some
shock that she was no older than I—several years shy of forty. The
woman had had seven children and three
husbands; I knew from the files I'd read that she'd put herself through
two years of college in night sessions while organizing community watch
programs and working days at the clinic. I'd expected a much older,
wearier-looking person, rather than this attractive, vigorous woman in
the prime of her life. And I certainly would not have expected her to
be smiling.

Jack made the introductions, and Leora Whitsun sat down beside me,
taking my hands in hers. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done
for my boy," she said.

I shrugged, embarrassed by what I considered undue gratitude. "I was
just doing my job. I'm only happy that things may work out after all."

"Will work out, I know it." She flashed us an even more brilliant
smile. "I'm into the power of positive thinking today. Yesterday, when
I found out about that girl's body turning up, I was just in heaven.
Been there ever since."

"Yesterday?" I said. "Jack didn't even know until this morning."

"Leora found out at the clinic," Jack said. "She was working intake
yesterday, and Larkey's partner's wife came in, looking for Larkey, so
she could break the news about Tracy personally."

Maybe Kathy Soriano had a heart after all, I thought. "Was he there?"

"No," Leora said. "None of our dentists work on holidays, although
we always have one of the regulars on call. Anyway, somebody must of
got hold of Jay, because he took the records up to Napa himself first
thing this morning, so he could help with the identification."

I knew that forensic dentists appreciated the assistance of the
subject's own dentist whenever possible; the records, especially X
rays, were open to wide interpretation, so it helped to have a person
who was familiar with them on hand. I said, "How did Larkey seem to be
taking the news?"

"Poor man was upset, even though he was glad that my boy'll go free."

Jack said, "Leora, I have to caution you: we've got a long pull
ahead of us yet. What this evidence does is pave the way for a new
trial. But Bobby could be convicted again."

She frowned. "But the body being up there in Napa proves his
confession was no good. And from what you"—she looked at Jack—"told me
on the phone this morning about that girl getting a traffic ticket,
there wouldn't have been time for Bobby to go up there and be back at
the club before closing."

I said, "There's no proof of exactly when she died. Given the state
of the remains, there's no way the medical examiner can pin it down.
And even if it were possible, a jury might not believe the testimony of
the parking attendants who claim Bobby came back to the club at
closing."

Jack added, "We have no way of knowing how the prosecution might
structure a new case against him."

Leora shook her head, earrings swinging violently. "But he didn't
kill her."

"We know that," I said, "and what we're going to do is work to find
out who did."

For a moment she continued to look downcast but then rallied. "I
just know you can do it, because you've already done one miracle."

Jack touched her shoulder reassuringly and got up to confer with the
visiting desk officer. When he came back he said, "We're on. Do you
want to come with us, Leora?"

"I better see my boy alone," she said. "Gives him more visiting
time. I don't mind the wait."

Jack and I said good-bye to her and went to the segregated room
assigned to us. After the door had closed and locked, he set his
briefcase on the table and began taking files and a legal pad from it.
He said, "How do you want to handle this?"

"You explain to him about me finding Tracy's body, and I'll take it
from there."

"Just what is it you're looking to get out of him?"

"Bobby's hiding something. It has to do with his quarrel with Tracy
when she was leaving the club that night. I've an inkling of what that
was all about, and I want to get him to confirm it."

Jack looked curious but merely nodded.

After about ten minutes Bobby was let into the room on the opposite
side of the grille. He seemed wary as he greeted Jack and me, and he
held himself stiffly as he sat down. I supposed that each of Jack's
sessions with him required a certain amount of time for rebuilding
their rapport. Jack explained quickly about the break in the case,
cautioning him first about becoming overly optimistic. Bobby listened
intently, wetting his lips and then compressing them, as if to keep his
emotions contained.

He was silent for a bit after Jack finished. Then he looked at me.
"You say you'd try, and you did. Thanks. For that, and for believing
me." Quickly he glanced at Jack. "You, too."

Jack nodded.

I said, "As Jack explained, we're by no means in the clear yet. I've
got a lot of work to do. We need to establish the facts—all of them."

"The facts, Bobby," I repeated. "Such as what you quarreled with
Tracy about the night she disappeared. It was something that you felt
would make you look even worse, wasn't it? Something you're so ashamed
of that you've kept it to yourself all this time."