Next of Kin

by L. F. Robertson

  Natasha asked the next question. “Do you think she had anything to do with Greg’s murder?”

  Sunny shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t imagine it. She was only sixteen. All the stuff between her and Greg—I know she said she hated him, but that was all teenage stuff. You get over it. I don’t even know who killed him, really. I mean, everyone kept saying it was Todd, but they don’t know.” She faltered, a tiny fall of her voice, at the last few words, and shook her head again.

  This was a subject I’d brought up before, when I was working on her appeal. She had jumped to Brittany’s defense then, too, and pressing the point had only made her worried and defensive. I decided to change the subject for now, and asked a question of my own.

  “What happened the day Greg was killed?”

  This was old ground also, covered in Sunny’s statements to the police and her trial testimony, but Sunny told the story again without complaint. “It was just a regular Saturday. Greg had a project going; he was planning to waterblast the deck out by the pool. He left in the morning for the hardware store. Brittany and I had plans to go visit Nana out in Sparksville, take her out for lunch and then to the mall.”

  “Did Brittany want to go with you?” Natasha asked.

  “I said she should, and she didn’t object. She loved Nana; even when I was having all the problems with her, she still went with me to see her once or twice a month. I went more often, a couple of times a week.”

  “So you left when?”

  “About eleven. We picked Nana up and drove back to Harrison, to the mall. Ate lunch at a hamburger place there, then shopped for a while. When Nana started to get tired, we drove back to her place, after stopping for ice cream at Mitchell’s—that was her favorite—and then at a supermarket to buy her some groceries.”

  “You didn’t stop at your house that afternoon.”

  “No, no reason why we should. It was at the other end of town anyway.”

  “And after you dropped Nana off, what did you do?”

  “We stayed at her house for a while and talked, and I put the groceries away. So we didn’t leave right away.”

  “Did you go straight home from there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened when you got there?”

  Sunny gave a small shiver. “Everything looked normal.” She leaned an arm on the table and rested her forehead on her hand for a few seconds. In that interval I felt with her those last few minutes of ordinary life which you pass with no idea how precious they are or that everything is about to come crashing down, that somewhere miles away the car has veered off the road, the gun has fired, the airplane has struck the building. I remembered again the ringing of the phone. The receptionist’s voice followed by Dave Rothstein’s, telling me Terry had died. And how that fact tumbled me into a new reality where nothing would ever again be what it had been ten seconds before.

  “I didn’t see Greg or hear the water blaster; I assumed he’d gone out somewhere. Brittany went upstairs to her room; I figured she was calling Todd. I had a few things from the supermarket, so I took them to the kitchen and put them away, and then went upstairs. I’d bought a blouse and some sandals at the mall, and I wanted to take them to the bedroom.

  “While I was upstairs I heard Brittany go back down. I came down a minute or so later and went into the kitchen to start dinner. And I heard her scream, in the back yard. And then she ran in from the deck and said, ‘Mama, Mama, Greg’s out back. I think he’s dead.’

  “My first thought was that he’d had a heart attack. I went out with Britt, and she showed me where he was. He was lying on his back on the pool deck, and there was some blood under his head. I remember thinking, Oh, God, he’s cracked his skull. I kneeled down beside him and checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one, and his hand was cold. I felt his arm, and it was cool, too, and it felt stiff; and I knew then he was dead. His face, too—” She gave a small shake of her head and sighed. “His face was—it was kind of like a wax mask, like my grandpa’s face in the hospital after he passed away. So I was almost sure. Britt was looking sick, and I said, ‘Let’s go inside and call 911,’ and we did.”

  “You didn’t see any sign he’d been shot.”

  “Except for the blood, no. I didn’t know that until the police told me. Someone told me there was one bullet, and it hit his brain stem or something; anyway, they said he would have lost consciousness immediately and been dead in a few minutes. They said he didn’t suffer; that made me feel a little better.”

  “The police suspected you straight away, right?”

  “Yes. They took Brittany and me to the police station and separated us and asked us a lot of questions about where we’d been that day and what we’d been doing. One of them was really rude and kept acting like I was guilty. I was just in shock; he made me cry. After they took us home I called Carol and told her about it, and she said I needed to get a lawyer right away. She recommended Craig Newhouse. He was wonderful.”

  “You weren’t arrested until—what, four months after Greg died?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What was happening during that time?”

  “I tried to go on living my life, but it got kind of crazy. Greg had life insurance, but the company didn’t want to pay it to me because the police said I was suspected of killing him. Craig recommended a civil lawyer—he only did criminal then—and he straightened things out with the insurance.”

  “How much was the policy?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Not that much for someone with as much money as Greg had.”

  She shrugged. “It was enough for us. I thought it would last longer, but it turned out Greg had a lot of business debts and expenses that had to be paid. And Greg’s family was contesting his will. We moved out of the house so the probate court could sell it, and rented a condo across town. Britt was kind of shaken up by Greg’s death and having to move, and I guess I was, too. She asked me if I could loan Todd some money to buy a new truck. He was driving this horrible old pickup, with bad brakes and God knows what else wrong with it—just the thought of Brittany riding in it scared me to death. So I said, sure, and gave her a check made out to Todd for five thousand dollars.” She grimaced. “They said later that was a payment for killing Greg. And then Todd overdosed on heroin or something, and his mother kept the money, or what was left of it. I guess I was naive. I didn’t even know Todd was doing drugs, or—I wouldn’t have loaned him that kind of money. I felt sorry for him; he didn’t seem like a bad kid, actually. He worked at the Ferrantes’ ranch. He wasn’t right for Brittany, but I felt if I didn’t make an issue about him, she’d figure that out on her own eventually.

  “After Todd died, Brittany was in terrible shape. She barely left the house, didn’t want to see any of her friends. She kept saying she wanted to go away somewhere. We took a cruise up to Alaska together, and brought Nana along. I was hoping a change of scene would help her. Before we left I enrolled her in Sacred Heart, the girls’ Catholic school in Harrison, because she didn’t want to go back to Harrison High. After we got back, I signed her up for counseling.”

  “Sounds like you were doing a lot.”

  She shrugged. “I tried to; it helped keep the worry away. I looked for work, too, but wasn’t having any luck; my skills were too rusty. I was thinking of applying for temp work, to get my foot back in the door, so to speak, when they arrested me.”

  Sunny’s tone had been so matter-of-fact, we’d been lulled by her story. Even though we knew well enough it had happened, we all said, “Oh,” almost involuntarily.

  “Yeah,” Sunny said. “It was kind of a shock. They didn’t even tell Craig first, just came to the door around dinnertime, two detectives and a couple of women from Child Protective Services, who took Brittany. She ended up staying in a group home for almost a week, until the social workers allowed her to go live with Nana.”

  “Jesus,” Natasha said.

  “Yea
h,” Sunny said again. “It was as bad as it could be. God knows, Britt didn’t need that on top of everything else.”

  The guard knocked on our door for the five-minute warning. Sunny seemed to shake herself back to the present. “I guess you know the rest.”

  “I’m going to be going out and interviewing people close to you and Brittany,” Natasha said. “Can you give me some names of people you knew back then, and any friends of Brittany’s you knew? Oh, and do you remember any of your teachers in school?”

  Sunny thought for a moment and began slowly listing names and what she knew about where each of them might be now. Some I remembered as witnesses who had testified on her behalf at the penalty phase of her trial, but others, including the people she recalled as friends of Brittany’s, were new. We took notes quickly. The guard came back.

  “Thanks,” Natasha said to Sunny. “If you remember any more, let us know.”

  We said our goodbyes and stood for a moment watching Sunny’s retreating back before going to retrieve our forms from the desk.

  “Glad you got those names,” Carey said to Natasha. “Do you think you’ll be able to locate any of those people in time to interview them while we’re in Harrison?”

  “Hopefully. I can do some locates online tonight.”

  I realized that after our exchange in the lobby I had been watching for Natasha to make a wrong step. But she hadn’t; she had done well, I thought, at helping us touch all the needed bases in the interview. She might be a bit up herself, as they say in Australia, but she seemed to know what she was doing. So I decided it was best to counter the arrogance of the young toward the old with the tolerance of the old toward the young. “That went well,” I said. “She seems comfortable with you.”

  “The way she talked about Todd Betts, I just don’t believe she hired him to kill Greg,” Natasha said.

  “You’re not the only one,” I answered, “but the police, the prosecutor, and twelve good citizens of Harrison apparently did.” And now, I thought, we had less than a year to convince a judge they were all wrong.

  5

  Harrison, where Greg Ferrante had been murdered and Sunny had been tried for it, is about a three-hour drive from the women’s prison. Even fueled with more coffee, I was struggling against sleep before I reached the exit for our motel. As I got out of the car and walked to the building to check in, a cool breeze carried faint smells of dust, diesel fuel, and frying food. The sky over the flat plain of the valley was huge and clear, the afterglow from sunset silhouetting the distant hills on the horizon; and a planet or two shone like bright stars in an endless depth of deepening violet-blue.

  Carey and Natasha arrived at the motel fifteen minutes or so after I did. Over dinner in a ranch-themed family restaurant nearby, with green and white gingham curtains on the windows and cowboy paintings on the walls, we discussed our plans for the next day—the discovery motion, the exhibits review. Natasha said she’d do some research at the library while we were in court. By the time we walked back, the sky was almost in full night, and many more stars had winked into view. A warm breeze came up, carrying other smells—orange blossoms, Chinese food, the tang of cow manure. In my neat, impersonal bedroom, I unpacked my suitcase, checked my email, watched a news program on the TV, and fell into a dreamless sleep until the alarm on my phone woke me.

  We met in the motel’s breakfast room. Carey, in her gray suit and cream silk blouse, a little rumpled from their time in her car, was the picture of a working lawyer. My navy blue skirt and jacket, from the small wardrobe of suits I’d been forced to buy for a hearing the previous year, were presentable enough for the discovery motion that Carey and I would be arguing that morning. Natasha had exchanged yesterday’s flowing skirt and shirt for a neat gray-green dress and a short cardigan. Carey was bright and alert, Natasha and I both limp and largely silent.

  We ate according to our fashion from the breakfast bar: steam table scrambled eggs and a waffle for Natasha, yogurt and a banana for Carey. I decided it would probably be a long, foodless morning, and fortified myself with the scrambled eggs, toast, canned peaches, and a couple of cups of bitter coffee with a lot of milk. I could feel the clouds clear from my brain as the caffeine worked its magic.

  As we were gathering our paper plates and cups to toss them, Natasha said to Carey, “I had planned to go to the library this morning, but I think I’ll stay here for a while and read through some more of Craig Newhouse’s files on the thumb drive you sent me, and then join the two of you later to view the exhibits, if you don’t mind. I don’t know why you had to be the one to have them scanned. The state defender should have done it; it would have saved us a couple of weeks.”

  “Actually,” Carey told her, “the state defender did have them scanned. I’ve just been too busy to find any flash drives with enough memory to hold them all. Why don’t I call you when the hearing ends, and you can meet us in the exhibits room?”

  We made the short drive to the courthouse in Carey’s car. “What do you think of Natasha?” she asked.

  I chose my words carefully. “Well, she’s very sharp, and I liked the questions she asked Sunny yesterday.”

  “And yet—?”

  “Oh, nothing much, just a generational thing. She seems like a bit of a know-it-all, a little too judgmental.”

  Carey nodded. “Yeah. Smart, but maybe lacking in life experience.”

  “What’s her background in capital cases?” I asked.

  “Well, she worked with Marianne Southern for a couple of years until she went out on her own.”

  “That would explain the attitude.”

  Carey nodded, with a laugh. “So you know Marianne.”

  “A little.”

  “I worked with her on a case, once. She’s one of the best investigators out here, but—”

  “Insufferable,” I filled in.

  Carey nodded in agreement. “Marianne’s used to working for trial lawyers with a lot more money to spend than we have. Anyway, though, Natasha was taught well, and she did good work on my other case. I’m trying to tone her down a bit, acquaint her with the realities of work on a much smaller budget.”

  The County Government Center at Harrison, which held the county courtrooms, the clerk’s office, the district attorney’s offices, and the headquarters of several other functionaries, was a standard-issue government building: a light gray postwar block, durably built and minimally ornamented. It had three floors and a wide green lawn with shade trees. It occupied a street between the old town and the new that also held the public library and a parking garage.

  Inside, past the squatters’ village of metal detectors and uniformed guards at the entrance, the lobby, all wood-paneled walls and polished floors, announced itself as an institution of quiet dignity, an outpost of a large and prosperous state. High ceilings hushed the conversation of the small morning crowd of lawyers, litigants, jurors, and witnesses seeking out their courtrooms for that day’s calendar. As many times as I had been in courthouses over the years, their psychological effect always impressed me: in the presence of whatever unmoving authority their architecture communicated, people grew quieter and better-behaved.

  The courtroom itself, on the second floor, was windowless and even more hushed. The clerk and bailiff were working at their stations in monastic domesticity; and the elevated bench, with the judge’s desk and the witness box beside and below it, resembled an altar of polished oak. The church-like tone of it struck me, and I remembered a hearing in a different courtroom, in another case, where my co-counsel, as the court adjourned on the final day of a long hearing, had been moved to say under his breath, “Ite, missa est.”

  Two men in suits were standing at the prosecution side of the counsel table, talking quietly. They looked over at us as we set our briefcases on our side of the counsel table, and we traded introductions.

  “Ken Cranston, Attorney General’s office.”

  “Julian Maldonado, deputy district attorney.”

  Cr
anston was the older of the two, probably in his mid-forties, with a forgettable face and short, wavy brown hair starting to gray at the temples. Julian was surely hardly old enough to be out of law school. He gave his name its Spanish pronunciation, the “J” pronounced as an “H” and pronounced “deputy district attorney” with the consonants a little soft and slurred, the familiar accent of the Mexican-American children of immigrants.

  “I saw your name in the case file,” Ken said to me. “You were involved in this case in the past?”

  “Back at the beginning of the appeal. I was Sunny’s attorney for a while before I left the state defender’s office.”

  “Ah. That was before I got the case. Dan Morgenthal had it then, right?”

  It took me a second to remember the name. “That’s right,” I answered.

  “I got the case from him a couple of years ago, when he retired. He’s living on Bainbridge Island now, lucky guy.”

  “Lucky is right,” I agreed, sincerely.

  “Anyhow,” Ken went on, “all the briefs in the appeal were filed when Dan had the case, and I thought I’d just be babysitting it until the court sets oral argument. I just started reading the file. You saw our response to the discovery motion, right? We’re not going to contest anything but the two items I don’t think the statute entitles you to.”

  Julian Maldonado, who had been listening, spoke up. “I’m new to the case, too,” he said. “Sandy Michaud, the trial DA, is a judge now; she’s in the juvenile court across town.”

  “Nice for her,” Carey said.

  “Yeah. I’m just here to hear the judge’s rulings and supervise compliance with the orders. I’ll be in charge of preparing DVDs of our files for you.” He handed us each a business card. “Here’s my contact information if you need to reach me.”

  The bailiff called for order, and we moved to our respective corners at the counsel table and stood as the judge came from the door behind the bench and took his seat. Even the judge was new; I remembered reading some years ago that the judge who had tried Sunny’s case had been elevated to a seat on the Court of Appeal. The judge assigned to hear our motion was, as the bailiff intoned, the Honorable Armando Garcia. He was a small, middle-aged man who said almost nothing during our arguments on the motion but to extend a polite invitation to the other party to respond. His rulings, given from the bench in a quiet, level voice, were reasonable; he gave us what we knew the law entitled us to, and one or two minor things besides. He asked Julian Maldonado how quickly he could provide the court-ordered discovery, “given the filing deadline under the new law,” and when Julian said he thought he could finish in three weeks, gave a date three weeks away for compliance with the orders.