Missing Justice (35 page)

Two cars hopefully meant two drivers.

I wanted to talk to Caffrey alone, but I was willing to do it the hard way if necessary. I parked my Jetta around the corner on Woodstock Boulevard, confident that it blended in among the students’ cars across from the library.

I looked at my watch. I’d give it an hour before I knocked on the front door.

Fifty-five minutes later, the front yard was empty, my stomach was in knots, and my self-imposed boldness deadline was preparing to bend. Chuck had been paging me, and I hadn’t called him back out of fear that he’d convince me to take the night off and abandon my stakeout. Then I got lucky.

The gardener walked out the front door holding a toddler and a Meier & Frank shopping bag, yelling back to someone inside. A little boy probably four years old followed her. She strapped them both into the minivan, threw the bags in front, and drove off.

I didn’t know how many kids Caffrey had, but most folks stop at two nowadays. Then it dawned on me he might not even be there. What woman in her right mind takes her children on a mall run when she could leave them at home with their dad?

There was only one way to find out. I mustered my courage, got out of the car, marched to the front door, and panicked.

Just when I was about to bail, Caffrey opened the door. “I thought I saw someone. Can I help? Oh, Ms. Kincaid. It’s you.”

He looked down the street, no doubt to make sure the missus had left.

“I’m not trying to cause you any problems.”

“As I know you’re aware, my lawyer quashed that subpoena.”

“Well, that’s just it. The subpoena was served by the defense to require you to testify under oath at the preliminary hearing. I just want to talk to you, but I need to know if you’re still represented.”

“Ronald Fish is my lawyer. I’m sure you remember the very uncomfortable meeting we had Friday morning.”

Of course I did, but that wasn’t what I was getting at.

“I guess what I’m asking you, Mr. Caffrey, is whether you hired an attorney specifically because of the subpoena, or are you telling me that you’ve retained counsel to defend you in all matters involving Clarissa Easterbrook?”

Caffrey was savvy enough to know that, as I had worded it, the latter sounded bad. It sounded well, guilty. By now, he may even have heard the news about witnesses taking the Fifth at the prelim. In the news, they always make that sound like a confession.

I was taking advantage of a loophole in the rule against contacting a represented party, but I was squarely on legal ground. And I had no respect for a guy who was more worried about his own political future than the murder of a woman he’d been sleeping with.

“No,” he said, without hesitation. “I thought I should have a lawyer for the courtroom proceedings, but I’ve got no problem speaking to you informally. Within limits, that is. I’ve only got about ten minutes.”

He was giving me a warning signal. I needed to be gone before the wife came home. Press too far, and I’d be out of here. With the rules of the game defined, he asked me in.

“Since time is short, I’m not going to waste it pushing you to answer a question I think we both know is pointless.” As I spoke, he folded his hands in his lap and looked down at them. At least he seemed to have some shame about his cowardice. “I think Clarissa got herself in trouble on one of her cases at work, something to do with Gunderson Development. And I also think she talked to the City Attorney about it.”

“Gunderson Development had a case in front of Clarissa?”

I told him about the file, including the note about Clarissa’s conversation with DC. The skin on his hands creased as he tightened the resistance in his fingers. I was on to something, and he was surprised by it.

I went for broke. “Clarissa also had a videotape of the two of you leaving the Village Motor Inn, and it was in an envelope addressed to this house. She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she?

Was it so you’d leave your wife, or was she trying to pressure your vote for Gunderson?”

He was no longer surprised. He was downright flabbergasted. He was looking at me like I had just invited him to a fund-raiser for Satan.

“No?” I sounded pitiful.

He shook his head, then said what his expression had already made obvious. “Clarissa was not blackmailing me.”

“But you do know something that might be related to her death.” I could state the obvious too.

When a few moments passed and he realized that I wasn’t going to interrupt the silence, he finally spoke up. “Clarissa wasn’t perfect. No one is.”

“Is that why you haven’t said anything? With all due respect, making sure we get the guy who killed Clarissa is a hell of a lot more important than preserving her reputation.”

“I’ve been tearing myself apart. When she first disappeared, I didn’t know what to do. But then it sounded like the evidence against Jackson was so strong, I felt I’d be dragging Clarissa through the dirt for no reason.”

The fact that he got to keep his own name clean may have factored in as well.

“Look, the case against Jackson is strong, but the defense is arguing that someone set him up. I started to believe it myself, but it looks like whatever Clarissa had going with Gunderson wasn’t involved in her death. But I think it did have something to do with your upcoming vote on the urban growth boundary.”

“If it’s not related to her death, why does it even matter at this point?”

“I hope I don’t need to explain to you, of all people, that if Gunderson was blackmailing or bribing a public official, he should be punished.” The argument seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“And if we don’t find out for ourselves what was going on between Clarissa and Gunderson, then the defense attorney can use innuendo and speculation to confuse the jury at trial. I don’t want Jackson to walk.”

The possibility of Clarissa’s murderer going unpunished seemed to be more persuasive. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my vote.” He was clearly insulted at what he perceived as the insinuation. “Clarissa never talked to me about that. Just like I never tried to tell her what to do on her cases. But I think she did have a connection to this Gunderson you’re talking about.”

He stopped, but I did nothing to disturb the silence.

“A few weeks ago, she told me she rigged an appeal for someone. I don’t know the details of the case, but I know she ruled in his favor when she shouldn’t have. I was shocked when she told me. It was totally unlike her.”

“Did she tell you why she did it?”

“No. I think she only told me because she was worried about something else, some newer problem. She said the arrangement was supposed to be the one case, but it hadn’t ended at that. They wanted something else, but she wouldn’t say what. I begged her to talk to me about what was going on, but she wouldn’t. She said she was going to handle it herself.”

“How was she handling it?”

“I’m not sure. I know she went to Dennis Coakley so she could clear herself from any other cases where she might be pressured, but I don’t know if she told him the full extent of what she did. The next thing I knew, she said she had figured out a way to get out of the position she was in, but that there was a risk that people would learn about well, about our friendship.”

“Did she talk to anyone else about it?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. I doubt it. She was incredibly embarrassed. Ashamed. She was trying to find a way to get herself back on the right track without losing everything. God, in retrospect, it explained why she’d been so damn… good those last couple of weeks. You know she actually felt sorry for that monster?”

“For Gunderson?”

“No, for Melvin Jackson. Well, she never told me his name, but she did tell me his whole sad story. She called HAP to see if zero tolerance really meant zero tolerance. She called SCF to see if he was really going to lose his kids. Hell, she was even talking about finding the man a job to make sure he’d be on his feet when he was evicted. At the time, I asked her why she didn’t just rule in his favor. But that was before I knew she’d already gone down that road before. I guess she wasn’t willing to bend the law again, even for what she thought was a good cause.”

Despite what Clarissa had done for Gunderson, I respected her even more now that I knew what she’d gone through. She died doing everything she could to turn her life around, looking for redemption by helping a man like Melvin Jackson, a man who showed his gratitude by bashing her head in with a hammer.

“How long had you been… close?” I asked.

“Almost seven months.” It was clearly painful for him to talk about this, and I had allowed the conversation to get off track. Just then, my pager vibrated. Chuck again. I turned the thing off.

“When she said people might find out about your friendship, I imagine that must have alarmed you a great deal.”

“Perhaps not as much as you might think. I had very real feelings for Clarissa. Think what you want about me, but she was truly a decent person. She was under so much stress the guilt over what we were doing, combined with whatever she was involved in I could tell it was tearing her apart. Obviously,

I pressed her to tell me what our relationship had to do with her problem, but she refused. In the end, I told her to do what she had to do.”

“When was that?”

“The Friday night before she disappeared.”

I tried to think of any other information I needed from him while he was being so cooperative. I had a newfound respect for cops. This off-the-cuff stuff was much harder than the questioning I was used to with a legal pad and the artificial setting of a courthouse on my side.

“I know I gave you my assurances that I wasn’t going to push on certain topics, but there’s one other thing I need to know.” I explained the ME’s report of nonoxynol-9 in Clarissa’s vaginal canal. “It’s very intrusive, I know, but is it possible that was due to her relationship with you?”

He bumbled around awkwardly trying to find the right words, but he finally got the point across. He and Clarissa had used a condom on Friday night.

“We met well, let’s be frank we met at the hotel you mentioned on the videotape you found. Her husband was at the hospital late.” I noticed he didn’t use Townsend’s name. “She was in good spirits, although a little nervous. She said that on Saturday she was finally going to clear herself from this problem she was having. I braced myself all weekend for some news, wondering if I needed to sit down with my own family. But then I woke up Monday to the news she was missing. I still can’t believe I’ll never see her again.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t come forward.” The words must have leaped from the most spiteful part of my brain, straight out the mouth, no filter. I regretted saying them aloud immediately, but I didn’t want to feel sorry for this man. Whatever he said, he had betrayed not only his wife and children but also Clarissa.

Instead of throwing me out of his house, Caffrey made me feel even worse. “I suppose it’s understandable that you judge me. Certainly it’s nothing I haven’t done myself.”

I got into the car trying to find some satisfaction in the facts I’d confirmed: Clarissa was on the take, the nonoxynol was Caffrey s, and it looked like Clarissa had gotten Melvin the job with Gunderson.

But then I realized that Caffrey had raised as many questions as he’d answered. If the spermicide was from Friday, why was Clarissa’s sweater off when she was attacked? And if Clarissa was tired of being tangled up with Gunderson, what was she planning to do on Saturday to sever the ties?

Clarissa had gotten home from shopping around seven, but we’d been so focused on Clarissa’s whereabouts on Sunday, we’d never pressed Townsend about whether anything had happened Saturday night. And I couldn’t talk to Townsend without going through Roger.

But I wasn’t totally out of the game yet. Roger may have told me to stay away from his client, but there might still be a way to find out what he had to say.

Raymond Johnson picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, Raymond. Samantha Kincaid.”

“Your ears burning?”

“No. What’s up?”

“You’ve been quite the topic of conversation around here today. The lieutenant’s at City Hall now for the big powwow. I assume you know about it.”

Johnson must not have heard I was off the case yet. There was no point telling him now, since it would only put him in a difficult situation. “I think everything’s under control.”

“News to me,” he said. “Last I heard, you were floating conspiracy theories about Jackson being innocent.”

“No, the defense did that. I helped convince Prescott to hold Jackson over for trial. We need to make sure we can counter everything the defense is saying, that’s all. Duncan will work it out with your lieutenant.”

“I hope that’s it, Kincaid, because we believe in this case, you know.”

“I realize that. We’re on the same side here, Johnson. It’s just a matter of cleaning up some details.”

“Just making sure. Now, you were actually calling me about something, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. The defense attorney was making noise this morning about Townsend, but while everything’s up in the air, his lawyer’s not letting us talk to him. Do you have a copy of his polygraph examination?”

“Sure. We always get those if they’re willing to turn it over. The guy he used is top-notch. Retired FBI.”

“I want to see what he asked. See if there’s anything there about what Clarissa did on Saturday, maybe in the background questions.”

“Not that I remember,” he said. “She went to Nordstrom with her girlfriend.”

“I know that. I just want to see the questions and answers, OK? I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

The polygrapher had included eleven items: eight dummies and the three money questions. Just as Roger said, the three critical questions put Townsend in the clear: Were you at OHSU on Sunday? Did you kill your wife, Clarissa Easterbrook? Did you hire, solicit, order, or ask anyone to kill your wife, Clarissa Easterbrook? Yes, no, no. Truthful on all three.

For current purposes, I was interested in the dummies, hoping to find something about whether Clarissa had left the house Saturday night or whether they’d had visitors. Unfortunately, the questions weren’t helpful: name, birthday, address, the basics. Nothing detailed a timeline.