The Disappearance (12 page)

He decides not to leave a message.

Luke sits across the table in an interview room in the county jail from the accused. Allison is wearing puke-green prison sweats and carpet slippers. His hair, which used to be immaculately blow-dried, is unwashed and matted, and his complexion is gray, like moldy bread. No one would mistake this specimen for a star newscaster, Luke thinks as he eyeballs Allison critically.

Allison is also sizing Luke up. This man used to be the district attorney? He looks like the white inmates here in the jail—the bad-asses. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Allison says. His voice is shaking. “Thanks for taking my case.”

This poor bastard isn’t going to handle prison well, Luke thinks. Not at all. “I don’t know if I’m taking your case, Mr. Allison,” he says. “I have to know more than I know now before I decide.”

The prisoner’s face collapses. “But Judge De La Guerra told me—”

“I don’t know what Freddie told you,” Luke interrupts, “but he doesn’t speak for me. I told him I’d review the material and meet with you and think about it. That’s all. I thought that was made clear to you.”

Allison nods slowly. “Yes, it was. But I thought—”

“You’re hoping, is what. Right?”

Another slow nod. “I guess so.”

“Let me say a couple things. One, don’t get your hopes up. About my involvement in this or not, about what the outcome is going to be regardless of whether I take it or not, about what I can do for you, or any lawyer can do for you. Two, don’t ever lie to me. I’m going to be asking you a bunch of questions today and over the next few days. Tell me the truth, even if it’s brutal and you think it could hurt your chances. Anything you tell me is confidential and can not be used against you, ever. That’s whether or not I stay on this as your lawyer. Okay?”

Allison looks like he’s about to start hyperventilating. “Yes.”

“You don’t look good,” Luke says. “Were you on any medication on the outside?”

“No.”

Having opened that door, Luke momentarily goes off on an important tangent. “Do you do any drugs, other than prescription? Recreationally?”

Allison starts to say no, catches himself. “I smoke a little pot.” He looks around involuntarily.

“We’re not bugged,” Luke assures him. “What else?”

Allison hesitates. “If there’s some coke at a party, I might do a line. I don’t buy it. That’s rare,” he adds hastily.

“Do people in the community know you do drugs?”

“Excuse me,” Allison answers, “I don’t ‘do’ drugs. I just told you that. Once in a while, that’s all. I’m not a user, okay?” he adds testily.

Luke disregards the man’s annoyance, real or feigned. “Anyone who might come forward and testify against you in that regard?”

Allison takes a deep breath, nods. “Glenna Lancaster knows. We’ve been around drugs together, at parties.”

“At their house?”

“A few times. A few of us would sneak off, out in the far end of the yard. Doug didn’t know about any of that,” he adds piously.

“Glenna Lancaster,” Luke muses. “I doubt she wishes you well.”

“The Lancasters want to see me dead,” Allison says flatly.

“Why shouldn’t they? Their daughter’s been murdered and you’re accused of doing it. I’d feel the same way if I were them, and so would you.”

Defiantly: “Except I didn’t do it.”

“Hold that thought.” Luke admires how the guy isn’t backing down—but it’s early in the game, and he doesn’t have an alternative. “That’s another thing, very important: don’t volunteer anything unless you’re asked. Especially not to anyone except me, or whoever your lawyer turns out to be.”

Another tortured nod. Allison’s head feels as heavy as a bowling ball, and this gonzo-looking lawyer isn’t helping his disposition. And the questioning about the drugs—what was that all about?

The prisoner paranoia kicks in hard. Luke Garrison used to be the district attorney for the county. An ass-kicking prosecutor, from what he’s heard. Maybe he’s a plant, sent in here to try and snake a confession under the guise of being a defense lawyer.

They wouldn’t have the balls to do that. And Judge De La Guerra has vouched for him. That’s good enough. It has to be.

Luke opens a folder in which he’s jotted some notes. “Let’s get some basic information. Where were you the night Emma was kidnapped? Do you remember?”

“Have you read the statement I gave the police?” Allison asks. “I told them the same thing a year ago that I told them a few weeks ago.”

“Yes, I read it, and that doesn’t matter now, because what you tell the police and what you tell your lawyer might be two different things. So, do you remember?” he repeats. He doesn’t bother to mask his irritation.

Almost as if reading off cue cards, Allison recites, “I was out to dinner with some friends. We were together until after eleven. I dropped my girlfriend off at her place and went home and went to bed.”

“You didn’t stay with your girlfriend?” Luke asks, almost prompting Allison to say yes. If they had been together all night, this case would have a very different complexion.

“We spend some nights together, but not all. That night, we didn’t.”

“How many nights a week were you spending together then?” Luke asks. “You and …” He leafs through some notes.

“Nicole Rogers.” Allison saves him the searching. “Four or five.”

“So this was only one of a couple nights in the week you didn’t spend the night together?”

“Yes.”

“Any reason you didn’t spend that particular night together?”

Allison shrugs. “There probably was. There were times when we wanted some space, other times when one of us had something to do later.”

That’s a losing remark—any prosecutor would tear that one in half. Especially since they spent most nights together. A believable inference would be that he had plans for later that night, and had to be alone. Plans that included Emma Lancaster.

Allison breaks into his thought process. “Now that I recall,” he suddenly remembers, “Nicole had a study group going with other students in her class at law school. Either she was going to get up early, or she needed time that night to prepare. One or the other. Maybe she would remember.”

Luke makes the note. That could help—at least give Alison a decent reason for not being with his woman on that night, when his normal pattern was the opposite.

He lays the folder aside. Fuck the details, he needs to get to what this case is about. “There are three pieces of damning evidence against you. The shoes, the condoms, and the key ring.”

A Sisyphean nod. “I know.”

“How are we going to account for those? Those are three smoking guns, Joe. Usually one is enough, and they have three.”

Allison bows his head, running his fingers through his greasy hair. “I don’t know.”

Luke looks at him sharply. “Are the shoes yours?”

“I don’t know. I had a pair of New Balance once, but they disappeared before the kidnapping.”

This is a disaster. “Disappeared? Jesus, man, can’t you do better than that?”

“No.” Allison’s tired, baffled. His head drops against his chest, his neck moving like it’s lost its muscularity. This is a man who has suffered a catastrophe of monumental proportions and doesn’t know why. Jail time has taken a tremendous toll on him. Luke has seen and heard other men like Joe Allison in this situation. They’re so unprepared for something like this, they almost shrivel up and die right before your eyes.

He hopes Allison can hang on to his defiance. Especially if he, Luke, decides
not
to take this case. “The shoes were found in your closet.”

Allison nods.

“So what you’re saying is, someone snuck your lost shoes into your closet and planted them?”

Another nod. “What else could it be?”

That you did it, asswipe.
A pair of shoes linked to the abduction, were just found in Allison’s closet, but a year ago had
disappeared
before the kidnapping? What am I doing here? he thinks. “How many people have keys to your guest house?”

“I don’t know. Half a dozen I gave keys to, like Nicole and my cleaning lady. And whoever had it before me. I didn’t change the locks.” He looks at Luke, smiling ruefully. “I don’t always lock it anyway. It’s back behind the house I rent from. They have good security.”

“Not good enough,” Luke notes, “to stop whoever went in there and planted them and left without being spotted.”

Allison looks up sharply.

“That skepticism you heard from me is what any reasonable man or woman would think,” Luke says. “Such as the kind you’re going to have on your jury.” He goes on. “What about the key ring in your glove compartment? That was a plant, too?”

“Any parking attendant could get in there,” Allison points out. “Hotel, bar, restaurant. Plus I park it at the station, people are coming and going all the time. Not a big deal to reach in.”

“You’re a trusting soul.”

“Not anymore,” Allison replies darkly. “You don’t believe what I’m saying about somebody planting all this on me, do you?”

Luke leans back, considering his answer. “It’s pretty far-fetched, okay? If you didn’t kill her, then you’re right, somebody could have planted that stuff on you, to frame you. It’s going to be hard to convince a jury of that, I have to be honest with you.”

Allison nods in understanding, but then says, “If I had done it, why would I have kept the shoes and the key ring? Why would I have held on to the only evidence that could connect me with the murders? It doesn’t make sense.”

It doesn’t make
logical
sense, that’s true, Luke thinks. But the abductor wouldn’t know the shoes were evidence. That information was never made public. As for the key ring, there are plenty of reasons a guilty man might keep it as a remembrance of a past relationship, or an arrogant nose-thumbing at the authorities: You’re never going to catch me.

He doesn’t say what he’s been thinking. He says, “There are always reasons. It could be nothing more than carelessness.”

“Or it could be a plant,” Allison retorts stubbornly.

“Yes. If you’re innocent, it likely was.”

“What about the bottle of bourbon the cop that stopped me found on the floor behind the seat of my car?” Allison asks, pressing his thought process.

“What about it?”

That opened bottle was the reason for the search in the first place. If it hadn’t been in Allison’s car, they wouldn’t be sitting here in this funky jail, one having traveled hundreds of miles against his better judgment, the other about to go to trial for his life with odds hovering between slim and none.

“I don’t drink bourbon. I haven’t drunk bourbon since college. Anybody who knows me knows that. So it couldn’t be mine. And if that wasn’t mine, what about the other stuff?”

Good question. “That may have been left there by someone else,” Luke concedes. “But it’s a big stretch from a bottle on the floor to a key ring hidden in the back of a glove compartment and a pair of shoes stuck way back in your closet.”

He stands up. “That’s enough for today, Joe. Unless you have anything else to tell me … that you haven’t yet told me, or anyone else.”

“Like what?”

“Like have you been completely straight with me?” Before Allison can form an answer he offers his hand. “I’ll try and drop by tomorrow. If you can remember who had keys to your pad, that’ll be helpful.”

Allison also rises. “So you’re taking my case?” he asks too eagerly.

“Slow down, Joe. I told you I wanted to check things out, meet with you. I still have work to do on my end before I can decide. This was one step, but there are others.”

Allison slumps. “When are you going to decide? I have a right to know that.”

“Yes, you do.” He thinks about the question. “Today’s Tuesday. By the end of the day Friday. One way or the other.”

He checks in with De La Guerra by phone, informs the old man of his misgivings, says he’ll discuss this further after he’s gone through the police reports again.

“It doesn’t look promising,” he warns the judge. “He has no alibi for the hours when the girl was snatched, and this whole attitude of his that everything was planted, it sounds like a stretch to me, Freddie. The shoes particularly. It would take some real adroit planning to get those shoes in his closet after having made sure there was a print left both at the kidnap scene and where the body was found. And for them to have been discovered a year later? Off a fluke arrest? What’re the odds on all that coming together? By denying ownership so lamely, he’s painting himself into a corner I don’t think I could get him out of. No lawyer could.” He pauses. “I’ll hand it to him, though—he’s got guts, the way he’s maintaining his stand on the shoes.”

De La Guerra, on the other end of the line, grunts noncommittally. He will not be an active participant in this; his tie is emotional. If Luke will do it, his job is finished. If not, he hits the road again, a prospect he isn’t looking forward to. “It’s been known to happen,” he says in gentle persuasion. “For all we know, the police had the shoes already, they had the key chain in his car, they decided to help things along a bit.”

“No,” Luke protests strongly. “I was in the power seat a long time here,” he reminds De La Guerra. “I never saw that kind of corruption, and neither did you. The cops here will push the envelope, all cops do, but breaking the law that way, I’d have to have definitive proof before I’d entertain that.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” De La Guerra agrees.

They talk a bit more, how Luke is doing back in Santa Barbara after his self-imposed exile, other things. Luke will do some homework tomorrow and keep De La Guerra abreast of his findings and where he thinks he’s heading.

Luke shaves, showers, lays out a clean change of clothes. He puts on a white soft-cotton collarless shirt, cord trousers, a tan linen sports coat.

He takes a taxi to Meritage, a restaurant whose owners he used to know. He can sit alone at the small counter in the back room, eat his solitary meal, have a couple of glasses of good wine. He won’t be disturbed: not many people know he’s in town, and a casual look wouldn’t reveal his identity. He’s a changed man, and not only in his visage. Buffing his snakeskin cowboy boots and pulling his hair back into a neat ponytail, he sets forth into the night.