Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (15 page)

Ken, it turned out, had flown to D.C. for a last minute settlement conference.

“He tried to reach you yesterday,” his secretary said, turning the announcement into something of a reprimand.

“I was away most of the day.”

“I know,” she snipped. “He left a message though, in case you called in. He said he hoped you’d ‘reconsider about the weekend.’” She said this last part rather stiffly. “I presume you know what that means.”

I felt a smile beginning. He wanted me home for the weekend. Apparently I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable about the tone of our last conversation.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What,” she said airily, “shall I tell Mr. Levitt?”

“Why don’t you give me his number in D.C., and I’ll tell him myself.”

“You won’t be able to reach him. He’s going to be in meetings from early morning till late at night.”

I couldn’t tell if this was Ken’s line or merely another example of his secretary’s resourcefulness, and I didn’t have the time to find out. “When’s he coming back?” I asked.

“Friday night.” She paused. “Shall I tell him you’ve reconsidered?”

“Tell him,” I replied, “that I’ll talk with him when he returns.” It sounded good, but I don’t play hardball very well. I dialed again, his home this time, and left a message on his machine. I wouldn’t be able to get back by the weekend, but I’d take a rain check. I considered adding something a bit more personal, but when I tried to think what, I came up blank. It was probably just as well, since there was a good chance I’d end up unintentionally offending him. Ken is funny like that.

To my surprise, Daryl Benson was available and waiting for me when I made it upstairs. Helga ushered me into his office with a thin-lipped scowl, then left abruptly, leaving the door slightly ajar. Benson rose from behind his desk to greet me.

“Goodness, how time flies,” he said, giving my hand a hearty shake. I’d seen him hesitate for just a fraction, not knowing whether to offer a hug or a hand. I was glad he’d chosen the latter. Still, seeing him brought back a flood of memories. Benson had been a part of the happy period of my childhood. Those years before my mother’s death, when the house was filled with conversation and laughter and my father’s whistling; with comforting kitchen smells and the bustle of lives being lived.

“Just look at you,” he bellowed, “all grown up. And so lovely, too. You’re the image of your mother.”

He offered me a seat, then perched on the edge of his desk facing me. He’d put on weight over the years, and his head was almost completely bald. He looked more like a jowly Kojak than the lighthearted, loose-limbed man I remembered.

“I can see why your dad was so proud of you,” he said after a moment.

“He never acted like he was. In fact, most of the time he acted as though I were invisible.”

Benson raised an eyebrow at my tone, then dropped his gaze to study his hands. They were thick and gnarled, but neatly manicured like the rest of him.

“He loved you, Kali.”

“He had a funny way of showing it.” The words came automatically. But when I thought of the shoe box filled with letters, I felt a tug inside my chest. Maybe, in his own way, he had cared. For a moment the cloud of bitterness parted, and I was able to recall the pleasant roughness of his cheek against my own, the strong, solid arms that had so often swung me off my feet and high enough to touch the ceiling.

“Yeah, probably so,” Benson said. The hint of a shadow darkened his face. “Your mother used to say the same thing.”

I looked up.

“Your dad was never very demonstrative, even before he started drinking.”

“That’s pretty much all he did these last few years, isn’t it? Drink and brood.”

“I didn’t see him very often. Couple of times a year we’d get together and shoot the breeze, but that’s about it. Your mother’s death hit him hard. He never got over it.”

My mother’s death hit a number of us hard, but my father had overlooked that part. And in so doing, had compounded it.

“But that’s not why you’re here.” Benson stood and reached for his jacket. “Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee while we talk about the Marrero case.”

We climbed into his car, an unmarked black Buick, and drove to the Denny’s near the edge of town.

“So, what about Marrero?” Benson asked, pouring half a pitcher of cream into his coffee.

“Is it true that his wife is a suspect?”

“She is indeed.” He added two packets of sugar. “You her attorney?”

“Does she need one?”

He stirred the milky brown liquid with his finger. “She might.”

“She didn’t do it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I know Jannine. I’ve known her practically my whole life. She’s the warmest, most gentle person I know.”

Benson stirred his coffee, took a long swallow, then looked me in the eyes. “I’ll tell you something, Kali. I’ve been a cop practically
my
whole life, and every person I’ve arrested has at least one friend or relative who says he couldn’t have done it.” Benson paused, offering a good- natured smile. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but you have to look at this objectively. Everything we’ve got points to the wife.”

“You mean the gun? It was in her dresser drawer, for God’s sakes. Almost anyone could have taken it.”

“She never reported it missing though.”

I was ready to argue that one, but Benson didn’t let me. “Anyway, there’s more. Hers are the only prints we found on the gun. She has no verifiable alibi for Saturday afternoon. She and her hubby had a big fight that morning.”

“Jannine told you that?”

“The neighbor did. She heard them yelling at each other from all the way inside her house. Your friend apparently threw a vase or something at the coach and called him some pretty vile names. Said he was going to get what he had coming.”

“That’s hardly a threat. Besides, every couple fights at some point.”

“Maybe, but one of them doesn’t usually wind up dead a few hours later.”

Their quarrel was clearly more than the “little spat” Jannine had led me to believe it was, but that didn’t make her a killer. Not necessarily anyway. Nonetheless, her half-truth to me chafed uncomfortably. “It’s your theory she killed him because of a fight?”

“We leave the motive stuff up to the D.A.’s office. I’ll tell you though, we’ve got a source that says their marriage was headed south.”

I interrupted. “You mean the neighbor?”

“Someone else. You got a situation like that with a dead body, and nine times out of ten you’ve got yourself a pretty solid motive.”

I knew the statistics, but I also knew Jannine. Or I’d thought I did. “What you’ve got is circumstantial, and tenuous at best. You can’t arrest her on that.”

Benson set his cup down in front of him, then pressed his fingertips together and looked me straight in the eye. “We could and you know it, but we haven’t.” He paused. “We may be small time, but we’re careful.”

Arguing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. What I really wanted was information anyhow, so I tried a different tack. “What about physical evidence? Did you find anything besides the gun?”

Benson leaned back in his chair. “Not really. An outdoor, wooded area like that makes it hard. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and find a footprint or loose button, but usually not.”

I nodded and let him talk.

“He was shot in the chest,” Benson continued, “from a distance of about twenty feet. No sign of a struggle, no attempt to flee. That makes it likely he knew his killer. From the trajectory of the bullet I’d say the assailant was standing, Marrero sitting. We found blood on a nearby log, so that’s probably where he was shot. Looks like the assailant then dragged his body about ten yards and hid it under some leaves and brush. Coroner puts the time of death at three o’clock Saturday afternoon, or thereabouts.”

“Did you check for fingerprints on the body?” I knew this was possible because our firm had once defended a client who’d left his bloodied fingerprint on the shirtsleeve of his victim. It took know-how, though, and some pretty sophisticated equipment.

Benson smiled. “We’re not as backward as you city types like to think. Yes, we looked for fingerprints, even on the body; no, didn’t find any. We checked for hairs and fibers, too. Only thing we found was a strand of dark hair, like the wife’s. ’Course it could have been there for days.”

“You have any idea what he was doing out by the South Fork?”

“Nope. We checked his credit cards, ATM withdrawals, that kind of thing, to see if there’d been any activity that morning, but nothing showed up.”

“He went by the high school after he left home,” I said, “Did you know that?”

Benson shook his head. “I don’t see that it makes a lot of difference, but if you want to give me your source, I’ll send someone out to check on it.”

I told him about the night watchman, omitting the circumstances surrounding our meeting. Then I thought of something else. “What about tire marks? Unless the killer rode with Eddie, wouldn’t there be a second set of marks?”

“There’s about a hundred sets, all jumbled together and superimposed. That road’s so dusty you can’t tell a thing.”

“If Jannine had been out there, her car would show traces of the same kind of dirt, wouldn’t it? Did you check?”

“She took it to the car wash Saturday afternoon.” He paused, watching for my reaction. “The Prestige Special, with Wheel Bright and everything.” The sick feeling must have shown on my face, because Benson leaned forward. “Look,” he said, “we don’t really know who whacked Marrero. Maybe it was your friend, maybe it wasn’t. But fact is, there’s a lot says she did it and at the moment she’s all we’ve got.”

“So you’re going to pin it on her just because it’s convenient?”

Benson straightened, cricked his neck to the left and rubbed his shoulder. “We’re not pinning it on anyone just yet. And when we do, it won’t be for convenience. I know you lawyers don’t like to admit it, but when it comes to murder, the obvious answer is also most often the right one.” He paused, swallowed a mouthful of coffee, then leaned across the table and continued. “You want to help your friend, you talk to her about cooperating with us. Maybe she just meant to scare the guy. Or maybe it was self-defense. Hell, maybe they were taking target practice, and it was all an accident. There’s reasons and there’s ways, but it’ll be a whole lot better for her if she meets us halfway.”

“She can’t, though, if she didn’t do it.”

Our eyes met, and held.

“No,” Benson said, after a moment. “She can’t.”

Still, I had a few questions to put to Jannine. I had the sinking feeling she’d been less than totally straight with me.

Chapter 12

Stone Mountain Mall is a large discount complex located about forty miles west of Silver Creek in what had been, only three years earlier, open grassland. Now, in addition to the mall, there’s a Best Western Hotel and half a dozen fast food franchises. I guess that’s so you can make a weekend of it and literally shop ’til you drop.

The stretch of highway between there and Silver Creek is on the main route to the Sierras, and it can be a real bottleneck. But mid-day, mid-week, in a season somewhere between winter skiing and summer escapes, the road was practically empty. I slipped a tape of Beethoven’s Third into the player and turned up the volume. With an eye on the lookout for the California Highway Patrol, I breezed along through the afternoon sunshine, hoping the Zen of driving would help me unwind.