Immoral (25 page)

Stride shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If she was faking her death, she would have made the evidence obvious. As it was, we did look for her all over the country. We did conduct an exhaustive search. Rachel had no way of knowing we ever would have stumbled on the evidence in the van—and certainly not at the barn.”

“And yet here we are.” Gale straightened, studying Stride, then the jury. “Let’s talk about the barn, Lieutenant. This is a place where high school kids go to do all the things their parents don’t want them to do at home, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you have any idea how many teenagers go there in any given week?” Gale asked.

“No.”

“All right. Well, do you know how often the police were called about the barn in the last year?”

Stride shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Would you be surprised if I told you it was thirty-seven times?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“And would you be surprised if I told you there were eight accusations of rape involving the barn in the past five years?” Gale asked. His smooth voice took on a hard edge. His eyes became hard azure points.

“That’s possible.”

“More than possible. It’s true, Lieutenant. This is a dangerous place, isn’t it?”

“It can be,” Stride acknowledged.

“You’ve got teenagers raping teenagers, and the police don’t seem to do anything about it.”

“The barn is periodically raided,” Stride said. “The kids keep coming back.”

“That’s right, Lieutenant. Kids. This is a place where kids do bad things. Doesn’t the fact that evidence of Rachel was found at the barn suggest that another teenager may have been involved?”

“We investigated that possibility and discarded it,” Stride said.

“In fact, it was your first thought, wasn’t it? You sent people out to the high school to question teenage boys immediately after the bracelet was found. Didn’t you, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, we did,” Stride said.

Gale nodded. He chewed on his glasses again and then took a long swallow from a paper cup. He dabbed at his lips with the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

“What size shoe do you wear, Lieutenant?” Gale asked.

The man was good, Stride thought to himself. He wondered how Gale had found out. “Twelve.”

“I see. So it could have been you who left those footprints at the barn, right?”

“Objection,” Dan Erickson snapped.

Judge Kassel shook her head. “Overruled.”

“I don’t own a pair of shoes that match the pattern of the tread found at the barn. Whereas Graeme Stoner bought such a pair only four months prior to Rachel’s disappearance. And those shoes are now missing.”

“But do you know how many of that brand of shoe, in size twelve, were sold in Minnesota in the past year?”

“I don’t,” Stride admitted.

“It’s more than two hundred. Couldn’t any of those people have left the footprints?”

“Yes. But none of them is Rachel’s stepfather. And they don’t own a van in which we found Rachel’s blood.”

“But apart from those footprints that could be from you or several hundred other men, you don’t have any evidence to place my client at the barn on Friday night, do you?”

“No.”

“In fact, you don’t know
when
those footprints were made, do you?”

“No.”

Gale paused to let the jury focus on this exchange.

“How about the van, Lieutenant? You make a big point of finding my client’s fingerprints on the knife you found in the toolbox.”

“That’s right.”

Gale shrugged. “But it’s his van and his knife. Wouldn’t you expect to find his fingerprints on it?”

“If someone else had handled the knife and wiped it clean, there would have been no fingerprints on it at all,” Stride pointed out.

“Unless whoever handled it wore gloves,” Gale said. “Isn’t that true?”

“That’s possible,” Stride acknowledged. “But doing so very likely would have smeared other fingerprints, which didn’t happen.”

“But couldn’t Rachel have deliberately left the evidence on the knife herself, knowing that Graeme’s fingerprints would be there, too?”

Stride shook his head. “There’s no evidence at all that she did that.”

“There’s also no evidence that she didn’t, is there? But let’s stay on the van for a while longer. No witnesses saw Graeme Stoner driving the van that Friday night, did they?”

“No.”

“So we don’t know that the van went anywhere that night, do we?” Gale asked.

“I disagree. The fibers found in the van match the fibers found near the barn. Rachel’s bracelet was also found at the barn. Rachel was wearing the bracelet and the white turtleneck on Friday night. Connect the dots, Mr. Gale.”

Gale smiled. Stride saw a brief twinkle in the lawyer’s eyes, like a nod of appreciation. Score one for the good guys.

But Gale wasn’t finished.

“If someone did take Rachel in the van, Lieutenant, how do you know it was Graeme Stoner?”

“It was his van. It was locked.”

“Oh, it was locked. I see. No one else could have taken it.”

Stride nodded. “Not without hotwiring the engine. Plus, if you suggest someone else took the van, that person would have had to use his own car to get to Rachel’s house. It’s ridiculous to think a murderer would park his own car on the street, kidnap a girl, steal a
different
car, drive to the barn, then come back to collect his own car again.”

“Unless the killer walked,” Gale said.

“Maybe he flew,” Stride retorted. The jury laughed. Judge Kassel frowned and looked sharply at Stride.

Gale waited for the amusement to subside. “You took photographs at the Stoner house when Rachel disappeared, am I right?” he asked quietly.

“That’s standard procedure,” Stride said. He wondered where Gale was going.

Gale returned to the defense table and retrieved a photograph of his own. He put it on an easel near Stride, in full view of the jury.

“Is this an enlarged detail from one of those photographs?”

Stride studied the photo briefly. “Yes, it is.”

“The enlargement shows a table in the hallway in the Stoner house, directly beside the front door, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

Gale reached inside his suit coat pocket. He extracted a gold Arrow pen and pointed to an object on the table. “Can you tell us what this is, Lieutenant?”

Stride recognized it. “It’s a crystal ashtray.”

He knew where Gale was going.

“And what’s inside the ashtray, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a set of keys.”

“In fact, they are Mr. Stoner’s car and house keys, isn’t that right?”

“I believe so.”

“The keys to the van. In an ashtray on a table right next to the front door.”

“Yes,” Stride said.

“So anyone who came to the door could have simply reached in and taken them. And taken the van. And taken Rachel.”

Stride shook his head. “No, that’s not a reasonable conclusion from the evidence. According to your scenario, the killer would have to be someone who knew Rachel was home, walked to the house, wore gloves, knew the keys would be there, and wore the same size and brand of shoes as Graeme Stoner. This sounds like part of your magic act, Mr. Gale.”

“None of that, Lieutenant,” Judge Kassel snapped.

Stride nodded and apologized. Still, he had temporarily derailed Gale’s theories. He just hoped the jury wasn’t getting confused in the web of outlandish possibilities the lawyer kept throwing in front of them.

Gale offered Judge Kassel a warm smile. Then, carefully patting his gray hair down on the top of his head, he turned back to Stride. “All right, Lieutenant, let’s talk about this so-called affair Mr. Stoner was having with his stepdaughter. You don’t have any physical evidence to support this wild notion, do you? No semen anywhere? No vaginal fluids?”

“I’m sure they did their laundry,” Stride said.

“No witnesses?”

“It’s not the kind of thing they were likely to do in public,” Stride said with a slight smile.

Gale didn’t smile back. “I’ll take your answer for a no, Lieutenant. You also spend a lot of time worrying about Mr. Stoner’s fantasy life. He indulges in some rather tasteless pornography.” Gale sighed. “In other words, he’s a man. But none of the material you found was illegal, was it?”

“No,” Stride said.

“You can get those magazines on the main street in Duluth, can’t you?”

“I believe so.”

Gale grabbed the phone records that Dan had introduced as evidence and flapped them in the air. “And as for these phone sex calls—well, no offense, Lieutenant, but if a man were really having sex with teenagers, would he need to pay five dollars a minute to simulate it on the phone?”

“It shows his taste for sex with minors,” Stride said.

“These numbers Mr. Stoner called from time to time, do you know how many other men in Duluth have called the same numbers in the last six months?” Gale asked.

“No.”

“I do. It’s nearly two hundred. Including a few men who I believe are on the police force, Lieutenant. Did you investigate all of them as suspects?”

“No, we didn’t.”

Gale nodded. “Of course not. Because you and I know that these calls are fantasies and have nothing to do with the reality of how a person behaves. Right?”

“That depends on the context. And the person.”

“And yet you don’t know the contexts of these people, do you?” Gale asked.

“No.”

“No, you don’t. In fact, when you get right down to it, the only physical evidence you have that suggests any kind of sexual relationship between Rachel Deese and my client is this amazing photograph you found on a computer in his home. Correct?”

“The photograph is extremely suggestive,” Stride said.

“In more ways than one,” Gale retorted. “But you don’t have any evidence that Mr. Stoner ever saw this photograph, do you?”

“It was on his computer.”

“Yes indeed, but Rachel herself had access to that computer, didn’t she? She could have put the photograph on Mr. Stoner’s hard drive at any time, couldn’t she?”

“Again, we have no evidence to suggest she did that.”

Gale waved his big hand dismissively. “But you don’t have any evidence that she didn’t, isn’t that right? Who knows what possesses teenage girls? She could have been playing a joke. She could have been trying to embarrass him. She could have been trying to cause a fight between her mother and her stepfather. You don’t really know, do you?”

“No,” Stride said.

“Tell me, Lieutenant, when was that photo loaded on Mr. Stoner’s computer?”

“The file statistics indicate it was loaded two days before Rachel disappeared.”

“And when was the photograph last accessed on that computer?” Gale demanded.

“That same time.”

Gale reared back in disbelief. He stared at Stride, stunned. He knew perfectly well what date was on the file, since he had seen all the evidence in discovery. But for the jury, it was as if Gale learned this shocking news for the first time.

He retrieved the enlarged photo and displayed it for the jury again, letting it linger there so every one of them could drink in Rachel’s erotic power. “The same time? You say this man was obsessed with his stepdaughter, Lieutenant. In the midst of a torrid illicit affair. And he loads this incredible photograph on his computer—and then
never looks at it
?”

Gale flapped his hand in front of his face as if he were trying to cool down.

“My God, Lieutenant, if this photo were on my computer, I don’t think I’d get any work done.”

Dan Erickson jumped to his feet. “Objection.”

Gale raised his hands in surrender. “Withdrawn, withdrawn.”

Then he smiled wickedly at Stride.

“Now, Lieutenant, let’s be realistic. This breathtaking photo is loaded on Mr. Stoner’s computer, and for weeks afterward, he never even bothers to open it up. Maybe he put it there. Maybe he had incredible willpower. But isn’t the most logical explanation that he didn’t know the photo was on his computer at all?”

Dan called Emily Stoner as the first witness on the second day of the trial.

Her dark hair was neatly styled in a short bob. Her skin, under heavy makeup, looked smooth and pink. She wore a pale shade of lipstick, a pearl necklace, and matching earrings. Her navy blue dress, with white trim on the collar, was obviously new and hugged her body. Watching her, Stride saw a glimmer of what Emily had been like a few years earlier. The only telltale sign of Emily’s age today, like yesterday, was in her eyes, which couldn’t hide her exhaustion and despair.

Emily squeezed into the aisle. Her heels tapped on the marble floor as she approached the witness stand and was sworn in. She didn’t look at Graeme, and Stride noticed that Graeme ignored her. Gale noticed, too, and Stride saw him discreetly jab his client with an elbow. Graeme had lost his wife over these false charges, and he had to display grief.

Emily settled into the chair. She took a quick glance at the jury, then looked away nervously. Her hands were folded in her lap. She was an attractive, sympathetic figure, but to Stride’s eyes, she looked unstable. The events of the past few months had deepened the cracks in her soul. Stride began to wonder if the only reason she hadn’t made another suicide attempt was to have this chance to testify against Graeme and see him put away. He hoped she got the chance.

“Mrs. Stoner, I know this is difficult for you,” Dan began.

Emily swelled her chest with a deep breath and briefly closed her eyes. She straightened her back, steeling herself to tell her story. Her face was intense and determined. “I’m all right,” she said.

“How did you meet Graeme Stoner?” Dan asked.

“I was a teller at the Range Bank. He joined the bank as an executive from New York. He was single, attractive, and wealthy, and all the women in the office were crazy about him. Me included.”

“Did he show any interest in you?”

“No. Not at first. He would pass me without looking at me, like I didn’t exist. It was the same with all the women. He ignored them.”

“And then?” Dan asked.