Blood Orange (5 page)

Gracie disliked Filmore as much as he did, but she hid her feelings behind a cool authority. She listened to him, her gaze locked on
his, her expression impassive and clinical. In all things legal she was
implacably self-contained. And just as ambitious as me, David
thought. He liked that about her.

The mystery of Gracie tantalized him. She was his best friend,
the person apart from Dana whom he trusted most. But friendship
and respect didn’t stop him from wondering about her body and
what she would be like in bed. Last year she had worn a backless
dress to Cabot and Klinger’s Christmas party, and for a couple of weeks
afterward David could not look at her without thinking of her gorgeous honey brown back, the shapely and muscular swale of her
spine. He wanted to put his hand on the small of it to know if it felt
as warm as it looked. He had caught a glimpse of a tattoo and fantasized about it, imagining something African, winged and tribal extending down the curve of her hip.

Gracie asked Filmore, “Why didn’t you go to work that day?”

“I told you, my wife didn’t feel well.”

“Do you always stay home if your wife’s sick?”

“When I can.” Circles of sweat ringed the sleeves of Filmore’s
cotton shirt, but he flashed the smile and beaming teeth. “Wouldn’t
you?”

“The problem is,” Gracie said to Filmore, “your wife didn’t tell
anyone at work she was sick.”

“She’s not a complainer; and, besides, we made a deal we wouldn’t
tell anyone about the baby until after the first trimester. We were
sort of superstitious-you can understand. If we said anything too soon and it didn’t work out …” He massaged his thick knuckles.
“We’d been trying a long time. Years. We’d begun to lose hope, and
then Marsha came up pregnant.” He looked at Gracie and flashed
the smile again. “It just seemed too good to be true.”

None of this was new, though Filmore’s answers were getting
more detailed and emotionally nuanced. For now that was okay.

Gracie said, “According to her coworkers she seemed perfectly
well.”

“And she was. She ate a few crackers. That’s all it took to settle
her stomach. Sandra had a harder time.” A flicker of confusion
jerked across Filmore’s face. “I suppose poor Sandra Calhoun’s still
pregnant. Is she?”

Gracie didn’t miss a beat. “Go on with your story, Frank.”

“Oh. Well, in the morning-we were all early risers-Marsha and
Sandra Calhoun liked to hang over the fence, drink a cup of coffee.”
Again he grinned disarmingly. “They were never too sick for coffee.”

“You said it was a secret, this pregnancy.”

“Under the circumstances, two women, neighbors and both
pregnant, Marsha had to tell Sandra. They’d compare how crummy
they felt, and then they went on with their lives. At least Marsha did.
I worked at home that day, I have that kind of job.”

“Did anybody see you at home that afternoon?”

Filmore pursed his lips. “I’ve told you, I don’t like outside help
in the home.”

A privacy nut with a twitchy eyebrow.

“What about the mail or UPS?” Gracie asked.

“I talked to my wife during the day. On the phone. I made some
business calls. Does that help?”

David hoped phone company records would back this up, but
even if they did, it would not prove much. Frank Filmore had
plenty of time between calls to dart into the backyard of the house next door, snatch Lolly, and deposit her in the trunk of his 2002
Lexus sedan. Les Peluso would be sure to mention this. The good
news for the defense was the police had found no evidence of her
body anywhere in either the Lexus or the BMW Marsha Filmore
had driven to work that day. But they hadn’t stopped looking. They
expected a flake of skin or drop of blood to turn up eventually. They
would dismantle the cars down to the atomic level if they had to.

Gracie said, “According to the police report Sandra Calhoun
called 911 a bit after nine, but before that she knocked on your
front door to see if Lolly was with you. Why did she do that?”

“How should I know? We were neighbors. And Lolly was a
sweet kid. I liked her when she wasn’t whining.”

“You didn’t answer the door.”

“Well, no, I didn’t.”

“Why was that?”

He lifted his hands, showing his smooth pale palms. “My office
is on the other side of the house, Ms. Perez. I had the door closed,
and I listen to music with a headset when I’m working. Helps me
focus.”

“Cops knocked on the door, too.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. If I had heard them … “

“Do you love your wife?” Gracie asked.

“Of course I love her. And I’d never do anything to hurt her, to
spoil what we have. She knows that.” Filmore’s large dark eyes filled
with tears. “She knows I never-“

“Then in the late afternoon you went out,” David said.
“Where’d you go?”

“Well, again, I’ve said this before, I try to run several times a
week. My time was good in the San Diego Marathon last year.”

Big fucking deal.

“Where did you run that day?”

“Catalina Avenue, down the grade to the place where they train
the dolphins, and then back up.”

“You live in University City and you drove all the way to Point
Loma?”

“Obviously you’re not a runner or you’d know that variety keeps
the training fresh.”

Filmore loved the sound of his own voice. He definitely could
not be trusted on the stand.

“Anyone see you?”

“If you mean that I talked to, no. No one.”

Outside, a siren wailed up First Street headed for Harbor View
Hospital. In the wake of its passing, David heard the clang of the
trolley one block up. Four people in the tiny interview room, four
sets of lungs inhaling the air-conditioned oxygen, exhaling
lunchtime garlic and coffee: no wonder David had a headache.
Filmore appeared not to mind the crowd. He probably thought he
deserved Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles at his table after
writing a check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to Cabot
and Klinger. Their biggest retainer to date.

Not for the first time, it occurred to David that for a man who
loved to be out of doors and who enjoyed the camaraderie of sport,
he’d chosen a strange, confined, and confining profession. Maybe
he should have been a coach. That’s what his uncle wanted for him.
Instead he was going to spend the next thirty years in jails and
courtrooms defending the Constitution. Which nobody seemed to
care about anymore.

Gracie might hate Filmore or feel nothing at all; you’d never
know from her cool velvet voice, almost a monotone but with a hint
of challenge, like she dared Filmore to give her a hard time. She
asked, “What happened after your run?”

“I’ve said this before.” He looked over at Allison. “Don’t you
read her notes?”

“Tell us again,” David said.

“I knew it was the night my wife was going to her book club …”

But that night Marsha Filmore had stayed home, had gone next
door to give moral support and comfort to Lolly Calhoun’s mother
and father.

“So I just pulled on my sweats and drove up to Carlsbad to see
Lord of the Rings. It was so good, I stayed to see it twice.”

It was a lame alibi. Without proof no jury would buy it.

“Why’d you go to Carlsbad?”

“I wanted to stop at the outlet stores, but when I got there I didn’t
have my credit card so I just went to the movie.”

The alibi wasn’t lame, it was paraplegic.

At the theater no one remembered his good-looking face, and he
hadn’t kept the ticket stub. David wrote a note to send Allison out
to the theater with photos. A pretty blonde with blue eyes and
plenty on top, she might be able to coax something out of one of the
guys there.

Three-year-old Lolly had been chloroformed and strangled. The
evidence against Filmore was flimsy. A few fingerprints that could
have been left at any time over the last few months and a crummy
alibi. Surprising, really, that the government thought it had enough
to convict.

Lolly had been tied in a plastic bag and tossed down the side of
a hill near Lakeside. By the time a rider found her body, coyotes had
torn the bag open.

David drank from his water bottle, hoping to wash away the bile
burning his throat. He thought of Bailey, of the life bursting out of
her. He could not think of her as retarded or emotionally disturbed; he never used these terms to describe her. She was Bailey, and he
loved her, and if anyone ever laid a hand on her he would commit
murder.

He had to figure out a way to keep Bailey out of his thoughts or
he’d lose the objectivity he needed to defend his client.

Frank Filmore was saying something, declaring something. Gracie
looked at David and raised her perfect eyebrows. His attention
snapped back.

“I did not do this … this awful, this horrendous thing. You
must believe-You believe me, don’t you, David? I’m innocent.”

David heard his father’s voice saying only an idiot lawyer believed his client.

“It really doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, Frank, and it’s
not my job to prove your innocence.”

“I have a lovely wife; we’re expecting a baby. Why would I do
such a thing? And Lolly, I loved Lolly, I used to watch her swimming in her little pool-“

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“But how can you prove I’m innocent if you don’t-“

David rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not my job to prove
you’re innocent. What Gracie and I do is, we make the prosecutor
prove you’re guilty. We see that justice is done. That’s all we do.”

Frank Filmore looked offended. “You’re saying you don’t believe me?”

“I’m saying what I believe is irrelevant. You can be telling the
truth or lying like crazy, what we have to do is make the prosecutor
prove his case one hundred percent. It’s like in football.”

Allison laughed, then quickly covered her mouth.

“The ref’s job is to make sure the teams play fair, win fair. That’s
all a defense attorney’s supposed to do, make sure the prosecutor
follows the rules.”

Gracie said, “David used to play ball, Frank.”

“I hope you won. I hope you won all the time.”

A guard knocked on the door of the interview room and told
David he had a phone call. “She says it’s urgent.”

On the other end of the phone Dana was almost hysterical.
David could barely make sense of what she said.

Iwo white cars with Union-Tribune logos on their doors were
parked against the curb, and television vans blocked Miranda
Street in front of the Cabot house. On the edge of the park neighbors and busybodies stood and stared and gossiped.

Between phone calls to the police and David and the appearance
of the first reporter, Dana had hung a sheet over the broken window
in the living room. Now there were police in the house and
strangers under the olive tree, some of them flicking cigarette butts
into the beds of white impatiens. Bailey loved every minute of it.
While Dana sat on the stairs in the entry, the little girl kept up a
vivid commentary from the dining room, where she stood on a chair
watching the street through a pinched-back corner of the blinds.

The eleven o’clock news would show her elfin face peering out at
the world as if the daughter of the man defending Frank Filmore
were herself a prisoner.

“Daddy’s home,” Bailey cried as she jumped off her chair and
ran across the tiled entry to the front door, ponytail flying. Dana
grabbed for her arm. Screaming, Bailey twisted away. She was agile,
too fast for Dana and twisty as a morning-glory vine climbing a fencepost. David opened the door and Bailey leapt for him. On cue,
the flashbulbs flared, shutters clicked, and the video cams pressed
forward.

David kicked the door shut behind him. His color was high, and
his eyes flashed when he grinned at Dana and brushed back the
thick hank of black and silver hair that had fallen across his forehead.

He loved being in the middle of things.

He lifted Bailey into his arms and held her. “What a scene,
huh?”