'Is that what we're here about? This dummied-up tape. What kinda scam are you trying to pull, Martin?'
'I'll tell you right now, Paul, I have an unimpeachable witness who'll testify that the tape is accurate,' said Vail.
'So what,' Rainey said, obviously getting annoyed.
'So your guy's been lying to you, which is understandable, considering he killed his wife in cold blood. Point is, he hasn't been level with you. You're flying blind at this point and he's navigating you right into a mountain.'
'Where are you going with this, Marty?'
'I'm offering you a deal, Paul. We'll let him plead to second-degree murder. He gets twenty years without parole. I'm offering you twenty years and he's out. He'll be fifty-something and broke, but he'll be out. I think society will be happy with that arrangement.'
'You're crazier than a Christmas mouse, you know that?'
'I know you, Paul. I know you believe that Darby's innocent and it happened the way he said it happened. But I hate to see you get conned by your own client. Listen to the tape again.'
'I don't have to listen to the tape again. I heard the tape. It doesn't mean a damn thing.'
'It means Darby came into his house, walked over to his wife, who was watching TV, and shot her in the head. Then he put the .38 in her hand, fired four shots - one into the ceiling - and then backed off and shot her in the side with the shotgun. And it also means it was premeditated. Malice aforethought. The whole magilla.'
'If you're so damn sure you got him, you wouldn't be offering me a deal. I know you. You'd take me to the limit.'
'Look, I don't have the staff or the time for depositions and tracking down witnesses and pretrial and trial and then your appeal and on and on. I've got a desk full of cases and now I have to handle Jack's business, too. We settle this, I save the taxpayers a couple hundred thousand bucks, I save myself a lot of aggravation, you save face, and your client stays alive.'
Vail took out the warrant, laid it on the table and slid it in front of Paul Rainey.
'I'll serve this on you if you'll accept it. You can bring him in by, say, eight tonight?' he said.
Rainey opened the warrant for first-degree murder on Darby. He looked up at Vail with surprise, then looked back down at the warrant. His jaw began to spasm as his anger rose.
'I can't believe you're pulling this stunt,' he said finally.
'There's another thing,' Vail said. 'He's dead broke, I talked to Tom Smoot at New York Life last night. They're freezing the insurance funds pending the resolution of this case.'
'Never miss a trick, do you?' Rainey said, and there was ire in every word. 'Know what I think? I think you're giving up an awful lot of information, that's what I think.'
'There's a lot more,' Parver said softly.
'Oh?'
'Well, there's the slip with the phone number on it. We think the phone number beside the phone was written by Darby to make it appear as though his wife called Palmer. I don't think Poppy Palmer ever talked to Ramona Darby.'
'You've had more than one shot at the Palmer woman,' said Rainey. 'You can't prove any of this. It's all conjecture. You want to talk to her again? Go ahead, be my guest.'
'We'd like to, Paul, if we could find her,' Shana Parver said in a matter-of-fact tone.
'What the hell're you talking about?'
'Poppy Palmer flew the coop,' Vail said.
Rainey's gaze jumped back and forth between Vail and Parver.
'She called her boss yesterday, about two hours after Shana questioned Darby about the slip with her phone number on it. She told him her sister was dying down in Texarkana and she had to go immediately. Her sister lives in California and is in perfect health. She hasn't heard from Poppy Palmer in five years.'
Rainey, a very shrewd lawyer, leaned back in his chair and studied Vail's face, then he looked at Parver. His eyes narrowed, but he kept quiet. At this point, he knew he would learn more by keeping his mouth shut.
'We are going to issue a subpoena on Palmer and I'm seriously considering taking out a warrant against her for perjury,' Vail said. 'She made the statement about her phone call from Ramona Darby under oath. We contend she's lying - there never was a phone call. Then I intend to go to the FBI and swear out a warrant against her for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.'
Rainey fell deep into thought. He drummed his fingertips on the table but still maintained his silence.
'You're already in, Paul. You want to go pro bono from here on, representing a killer in a case you can't win? You owe it to yourself, your peace of mind, to get the truth out of him. Explain the options. Either he takes twenty years, no parole, or he goes to death row and gets fried - or spends the rest of his life staring down the hall at the chair, waiting to.'
'You want me to sell out my client because he can't pay,' Rainey said with an edge.
'Not at all. What I'm saying, Paul, is you need to satisfy yourself about this. Then consider all the angles and do the best thing for you and your client. Either he pleads to second-degree and takes his medicine or he goes down for murder one. It's up to you. In your hands. Just one thing - if he turns rabbit, he'll never make the county line.'
Rainey slumped back in the chair. He stared at Vail, at the warrant, then back at Vail.
'He'll say he was confused,' Rainey said. 'He walked in, she was aiming the gun at him, he cut loose with the shotgun -'
Parver cut him off. 'It's the head shot,' he said. 'That's what's going to get him in the end. Do you really think any jury's going to believe she kept blazing away at him with a hole the size of Rhode Island in her side? The head shot had to be the first shot. Listen to the tape.'
'The hell with the goddamn tape. The tape doesn't mean shit and you know it!'
'You're an old hand at getting to the truth, Paul,' said Vail. 'If he sticks to his story' - he tapped the tape recorder - 'he's lying to you.'
Rainey took a sip of water, tapped his lips with his napkin, and dropped it on the table. He toyed with the warrant, sliding it around on the tabletop with his fingertips.
'We're playing straight up with you, Paul,' said Vail. 'I could've had the sheriff pick him up last night and he'd be sitting in the cooler right now.'
Rainey pocketed the warrant and got up.
'I'll be in touch,' he said. Then he leaned over the table and, with a smile, said very softly in Vail's ear, 'I've been in this game ten years longer than you and this is the first time a DA ever offered me a deal before he even arrested my client.'
'It's the times,' Vail said, smiling back. 'Everybody's in a hurry these days.'
'There's something not right about this,' Rainey said with a scowl.
'Yeah, your client, that's what's not right about it,' Parver said.
'I was having a pretty good day until now. You two're a real item. Buy a guy lunch, then do your best to make him lose it.'
Rainey left the table. Parver didn't say anything. She looked down at the tablecloth, moved her water glass around on it.
'Okay, what's bothering you?' Vail asked.
'Nothing.'
'Uh-huh. C'mon, spit it out.'
'Why let Darby off the hook? I mean, why even offer a plea bargain? We can take this guy, Martin. We can take him all the way, I know we can.'
'All you have is an elderly woman who heard the shots. Paul Rainey'll chew her up and spit her out. We have no backup on Mrs Shunderson and Poppy Palmer powdered on us and we haven't a clue where she is. Suppose you get a soft jury? Darby could walk. Or maybe get voluntary manslaughter, in which case he'd be back on the street in three, four years. This way, if Rainey bites, we take Darby out for twenty years.'
'I still think I can win this case.'
'You did win, Shana. Putting Darby away for twenty years without parole, that's as sweet a deal as we can ask for. Look, you just came off a case, you've got the Stoddard thing to deal with, and by tomorrow you'll probably have two more on your desk. Forget Darby, we've got him. Let's hope Rainey see
s through him.'
'We just gave Rainey our whole case!' she said. 'And why didn't we let the sheriff arrest that punk?'
'We didn't give him a damn thing he wouldn't get the first day of discovery. And giving him the option to bring his man in shows good faith on our part.'
'Think the money'll have an effect on him?'
'It's a wild card. He took Darby at his word, which is natural, any lawyer will give his client the benefit of the doubt. Now he's faced with the possibility his client conned him from the front end. Paul Rainey doesn't want to feel he's been suckered by a client he doesn't even like. If he's convinced Darby lied to him, then he's faced with either defending a man he knows is guilty and not getting paid for it or getting him the best deal he can.'
'I don't think he'll buy it,' she said.
'Maybe. What really got to him, what got his attention, was Poppy Palmer running. That and the warrant. My guess is, he'll come back with a counter-offer.'
'And…?'
'We made him the best offer we're going to. If Rainey doesn't take it, Darby's all yours.'
'Good!' Parver said staunchly. 'I hope Rainey thumbs his nose at us. It will serve him right.'
'If he does, we better find Poppy Palmer,' Vail said. 'She'll put the nail in his coffin.'
Nineteen
Trial transcripts, autopsy reports, photographs, old police reports, and copies of book pages were all spread out on Martin Vail's large table. Naomi, Flaherty, and Harvey St Claire stood in front of the big desk, studying what St Claire called his 'exhibits.' Naomi and Dermott Flaherty stared mutely at the display, occasionally picking up a report or a photo and studying it, then slowly replacing it, obviously stunned by what St Claire had laid out on the table.
'You make a good case, Harve. You ought to be a lawyer,' Flaherty said.
'I don't make a very good impression in a courtroom. 'Cept in the witness stand. Hold m'own pretty good under oath.'
'What's Abel say?' Naomi asked.
'He's concerned,' said St Claire.
'For Abel, that's verging on panic,' Flaherty said with a chuckle.
'Am I wrong about this?' St Claire asked. 'Am I just being paranoid?'
'Paranoid! I hardly think so,' said Naomi. 'Why the hell didn't we know about this sooner?'
' 'Cause Gideon don't want the world't'know about it,' said St Claire. 'From what I gather, the town is run by old Fundamentalist farts. I imagine they all look like Abraham or Moses or John Brown. They don't want the world't'think Satanists are loose in their holy little village.'
'Don't they care who did it?'
'Doesn't seem so. Been about six months, ain't happened again. Guess maybe they decided to shut it outta their minds. Pray it away on Sunday mornings.'
'And they just wrote off Linda Balfour?'
'One way a puttin' it,' said St Claire.
'The first question that pops into my mind is, Who? And the second is, Why?' said Flaherty.
'Well, I can tell you who it ain't. Ain't Aaron Stampler.' St Claire dropped a wad of chewing tobacco in his silver cup. 'He's still locked up in max security at Daisyville.'
'That's Daisyland,' Naomi corrected him.
'Just as stupid,' St Claire said.
Naomi looked up as Vail, Parver, and Stenner got off the lift. 'Here comes the one person who can answer these questions if anybody can,' Naomi said, nodding towards Vail.
'What've we got here?' Vail asked as he entered the office.
They all looked at one another and then focused their attention on Harvey St Claire. He smoothed out his moustache and got rid of the wad of tobacco in his cheek.
'Tell ya how it started out,' he said. 'I was runnin' the HITS network, thinkin' maybe we could turn up something outta town on them bodies in the city dump. Missin' persons, maybe a bank heist, drug gang. Playin' a hunch, okay? And Ben Meyer runs across this brutal murder down near the Kentucky border. Town called Gideon. Ever hear of it?'
'Not that I recall,' Vail said.
'Anyway, uh, this town's run by some old religious jokers and they hushed it up. Wrote it off as Satanists. We got interested outta curiosity much as anything. The victim was a housewife. Happily married, nice solid husband. Year-old son. I thought what I'd do, I'd read the autopsy report. The police chief brushed me off, but the town doctor, he's also the coroner, was a nice old guy, most cooperative.' St Claire searched around the table and found Doc Fields's autopsy, which Ben had entered into the computer and printed out, and read it out loud.
'The victim, Linda Balfour, is a white female, age 26. The body is 53.5 inches in length and weighs 134 pounds and has blue eyes and light brown hair. She was dead upon my arrival at her home on Poplar Street, this city. The victim was stabbed, cut, and incised 56 times. There was evidence of cadaver spasm, trauma, and aero-embolism. There was significant exsanguination from stab wounds. The throat wound, which nearly decapitated Balfour, caused aero-embolism, which usually results in instantaneous death. Wounds in her hands and arms indicate a struggle before she was killed.'
St Claire looked up for a moment. 'Beginning to sound a little familiar, Marty?'
'Where are you taking this, Harve?'
'Okay, now listen to this. It's from the ME's testimony in Stampler's trial.'
He read excerpts from William Danielson's description of the wounds that had killed Archbishop Richard Rushman ten years before:
'DANIELSON: Body trauma, aeroembolism, cadaveric spasm, exsanguination, that's loss of blood. All could have caused death… The primary cause, I believe was the throat wound… It caused aeroembolism, which is the sudden exit of air from the lungs. This kind of wound is always fatal, in fact, death is usually instantaneous… And the wounds indicated a knowledge of surgical techniques.'
Vail was beginning to react. He leaned forward in his chair, his cigarette smouldering, forgotten, between his fingers.
'Now listen't' the rest of Dr Fields's report,' St Claire said, and finished reading the autopsy:
'There was also evidence of mutilation. Both the victim's nipples and the clitoris were amputated and placed in the victim's mouth. It appears that the wounds were accomplished by a person or persons with some surgical knowledge. Also the inscription C13.489 was printed with the victim's blood on the rear of the skull, 4.6 centimetres above the base of the skull and under the hairline. The weapon was determined to be a common carving knife with an eight-inch blade found on the premises and belonging to the victim…'
'She was also nine weeks pregnant,' St Claire added, almost as an afterthought.
Vail was staring into space. He did not say anything for almost a minute.
'Where's Stampler?' he finally asked.
'Up in Daisyland, still in maximum security,' said Stenner. 'Never had a visitor, never had a letter, never made a phone call.'
'In ten years?'
'In ten years,' Stenner said. 'I talked to the head of security, Bascott and the other executives were in conferences. He wouldn't tell me much, but he volunteered that.'
'There's somethin' else,' said St Claire. 'When I was finishing up the transcripts my eye caught somethin' I missed the first time 'round. Damn near jolted me outta m'chair when I saw it. It was when you was questionin' Stampler on the witness stand. Stampler says, "My girlfriend, Linda, and I decided to live together…" I thought, Maybe it's just a coincidence - two women named Linda, so…' St Claire selected one of the photos of Linda Balfour, a close-up of her head and shoulders, and handed it to Vail. 'She look familiar?'
Vail studied the photograph for several seconds. 'That's a horrible picture. I can't really—'
'I checked the records in Carbondale, where she and her husband got married. Maiden name's Linda Gellerman, from Akron, Ohio.'
Vail looked up at St Claire and his memory suddenly was jolted back ten years.
A tiny waiflike creature, huddled in a yellow rain slicker, her fearful eyes peering up at him as she stood in the rain.
'Mr Vail?' her tiny voice a
sked.
He took her inside, gave her a Coke, and asked her about her boyfriend, Aaron Stampler.
'You think Aaron killed the bishop?'
'Doesn't everybody?'
'Were you there, Linda?'
'Where?'
'At the bishop's the night he was killed?'
'Of course not!'
'Then how do you know Aaron did it?'
'Well, because he was hiding in the church with the knife and all…'
'How do you know it wasn't Peter or Billy Jordan?'
'You know about that?'
'About what?'
'Nothing.'
'Linda, why did you come here?'
' 'Cause I can't help Aaron and I want you to stop looking for me.'
'Maybe you can help him.'
'How?'
'I need you to testify.'
'About what?'
'The Altar Boys.'
She panicked, backing away from him like a cornered animal, then running for the door. Vail caught her arm as she reached for the doorknob.
'I won't do that! I'll never admit that! I'll lie. I'll tell them it isn't true.'
'Linda, it may help for the jury to know what really went on. What the bishop made you do.'
'Don't you understand? He didn't make us do anything! After a while it was fun. We liked it.'
She had turned and run out the door and vanished into the dark, rainswept night. He never saw her again until a moment before when he looked at the picture of the dowdy housewife, sprawled in her living room, covered with blood.
'Linda Gellerman,' said Vail. 'Aaron Stampler's girlfriend.'
'I'm thinkin' maybe we got us a copycat on our hands here,' St Claire said.
'Except for one thing,' Stenner added.
Vail finished the thought for him. 'The Altar Boys.'
Stenner nodded.
'Who the hell're the Altar Boys?' St Claire asked. 'They were never mentioned in the trial.'
'That's right, they weren't,' said Vail.
'But whoever killed Linda Gellerman knew about them. Had to,' said Stenner.
'Who were they? What did they have to do with this?' St Claire asked.