I Is for Innocent

by Sue Grafton

  I grabbed the jacket and my shoulder bag. I left the office and dogtrotted the two blocks to the side street where I’d finally managed to squeeze my car into a bare stretch of curb. I took Capilla Boulevard across town, through the heart of the commercial district, and headed up the big hill on the far side of the freeway.

  KEST-TV was located just this side of the summit. From the bluff where the station sat, there was a 180-degree living mural of the city of Santa Teresa: mountains on one side, the Pacific Ocean on the other. There was parking for about fifty cars and I pulled into a spot designated for visitors. I got out of the car and paused for a moment to take in the view. The wind was buffeting the dry grasses along the hill. In the distance, the pale ocean stretched to the horizon, looking flat and oddly shallow.

  I remembered the story I’d once heard from a marine archaeologist. He told me there was evidence of primitive offshore villages, underwater now, located at the mouths of ancient sloughs or arroyos. Over the years, the sea had offered up broken vessels, mortars, abalone spangles, and other artifacts, probably eroding from former cemeteries and middens along the now-submerged beach. In legend, the Chumash Indians recount a time when the sea subsided and remained that way for hours. A house was exposed at the far reaches of the low tide . . . a mile out, or two miles . . . this miraculous shanty. People gathered on the beaches, murmuring with amazement. The waters receded further and a second house appeared, but the witnesses were too frightened to approach. Gradually the waters returned and the two structures vanished, covered by the slow swell of the incoming tide.

  There was something eerie about the tale, Holocene ghosts offering up this momentary vision of a tribal site lost from view. Sometimes I wondered if I’d have dared venture out across that stretch of exposed channel. Perhaps half a mile out, it plunged downward like the sides of a mountain, underwater cliffs tumbling ever deeper to the canyon below. I pictured the sediment on the ocean bottom, glistening, dead gray from the lack of light, cobbled and pockmarked with all its blunt and stony treasures. Time covers the truth, leaving scarcely a ripple on the surface to suggest all the plains and valleys that lie below. Even now, dealing with a six-year-old murder, much was hidden, much submerged. I was left to gather artifacts washed up like rubble on the shores of the present, uneasy about the treasures, undiscovered, lying just out of reach.

  I turned and went into the station. The building itself was a one-story stucco structure, painted a plain sand color, bristling with assorted antennae. I went into the lobby with its pale blue carpeting, furnished with the kind of “Danish Modern” furniture an affluent college student might rent for a semester. Christmas decorations were just going up: an artificial tree in one corner, boxes of ornaments stacked in a chair. On the wall to my right, numerous broadcast awards were mounted like bowling trophies. A color television was tuned to a morning game show, the gist of which seemed to be identifying a series of celebrities whose first names were Andy.

  The receptionist was a pretty girl with long dark hair and vivid makeup. The name on the placard read Tanya Alvarez. “Rooney!” she called, her eyes pinned to the set. I turned and looked at the picture. “Andy Rooney” was correct and the audience was applauding. The next clue came up and she said, “Oh, shoot, who is that? What’s-his-face? Andy Warhol!” Right again, and she flushed with pleasure. She looked over at me. “I could make a fortune on that show, except probably the day I got on it’d be some category I never heard of. Blowfish, or exotic plants. Can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like to look at some five-year-old news footage, if you have it.”

  “Something we taped?”

  “That’s what I’m assuming. This was the verdict on a local murder trial and I’m pretty sure you’d have covered it.”

  “Hang on a minute and I’ll see if somebody back there can help you.” She rang through to “somebody” in the bowels of the building, briefly describing the nature of my quest. “Leland’ll be out in five minutes,” she said.

  I thanked her and spent the mandatory waiting period wandering from the front entrance, which looked out onto the parking lot, to the sliding glass doors on the far side of the reception area, which looked out onto a wide concrete patio furnished with molded white plastic chairs. A three-dimensional view of the city wrapped around the patio like a screen. I could imagine the station employees having lunch out in the hot sun—women with cotton skirts discreetly pulled up, men without shirts. A big dish antenna dominated the view. The air looked hazy from up here. . . .

  “I’m Leland. What can I do for you?”

  The fellow who’d appeared through the doorway behind me was in his late twenties and had to be a hundred pounds overweight. He had a mop of curly brown hair surrounding a baby face, with wire-rimmed glasses, clear blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and no facial hair. With a name like Leland, he was doomed. He looked like the kind of kid who’d been tormented by his schoolmates since the first day of school, too bright and too big to avoid the involuntary cruelties of other middle-class children.

  I introduced myself and we shook hands. I explained the situation as succinctly as possible. “What occurred to me was that with local reporters present on the day Barney was acquitted, there were probably Minicams rolling as he emerged from the courtroom.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “ ‘Okay’ wasn’t really the response I was looking for, Leland. I was hoping you had a way to go back and check the old news tapes.”

  Leland gave me a blank look. I wish a P.I.’s job were half as easy as they make it look on television. I’ve never opened a dead bolt with a pass of my credit card. I can’t even force mine into a doorjamb without breaking it off. And what’s it supposed to do once you slide it in there? Most of the latch bolts I’ve seen, the slanted angle is on the inside so it’s not as though you could slip a credit card along the face of it and force the latch to move back. And where the angle faces the outside, the strike plate resists the insertion of even the most flexible object. Leland seemed to be taking the same implacable position.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you keep that stuff?”

  “It’s not that. I’m sure there’s a copy of the footage you’re looking for. The master tapes are cata logued by subject matter and date, cross-referenced and cross-filed on three-by-five index cards.”

  “You don’t have it on computer?”

  He shook his head, with just a hint of satisfaction. “The logistics of the system don’t really matter much because I can’t let you see the master tape without a properly executed subpoena.”

  “I’m working for an attorney. I can get a subpoena. This is no big deal.”

  “Go ahead then. I can wait.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t. I need the information as soon as possible.”

  “In that case, you got a problem. I can’t let you see the master tape unless you have a subpoena.”

  “But if I could get it eventually, what difference does it make? I’m entitled to the information. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?”

  “No tickee, no washee. That’s the bottom line,” he said.

  I was beginning to see why his imaginary classmates liked to torture him. “Could we try this?” I pulled out a mug shot of Curtis McIntyre. “Why don’t you look at the tape and tell me if he’s on it. That’s all I want to know.”

  He stared at me with that blank look all petty bureaucrats assume while they calculate the probabilities of getting fired if they say yes. “Why do you want to know? I really wasn’t listening before.”

  “This fellow claims he had a conversation with the defendant in a murder trial shortly after he was acquitted. He says the cameras were rolling as the guy left the courtroom, so if what he says is true, he ought to be clearly visible on the tape, right?”

  “Yeeess,” he said slowly. I could tell he thought there was some kind of trick to it.

  “This isn’t a violation of anybody’s civil rights,” I said reasonably. “Could you just
look?”

  He held his hand out. I gave him Curtis’s mug shot. He continued to hold his hand out.

  I stared for a moment. “Oh,” I said. I opened my handbag and took out my wallet. I peeled off a twenty and put it in his palm. His expression didn’t actually change, but I knew he was insulted. I’m sure it’s the same look you’d get from a New York taxi driver if you tipped him a dime.

  I peeled off another twenty. No reaction. I said, “I really hate corruption in someone so young.”

  “It’s disgusting, isn’t it?” he replied.

  I added a third.

  His hand closed. “Come with me.”

  He turned and headed back through the doorway and into a narrow corridor. I followed without a word. Offices opened up on either side of us. Occasionally, we passed other station employees wearing jeans and Reeboks, but no one was doing much. The spaces seemed cramped and irregular, with too much knotty pine veneer paneling and too many cheaply framed photographs and certificates. The whole interior of the building had been done up with the sort of do-it-yourself home improvements that later make a house impossible to sell.

  At the rear, we passed into a tiny concrete cul-de-sac with a wood-and-metal stairway leading up to an attic. Just to the right was an old-fashioned wooden file cabinet, with a smaller wooden file sitting on top. He opened the drawer for the year we wanted and began to sort through the index cards, starting with the name Barney. “We won’t have the actual field tapes,” he remarked while he looked.

  “What’s a field tape?”

  “That would be like the whole twenty minutes of tape the guy shot. We keep the ninety seconds to two minutes of edited footage that actually goes on the air.”

  “Oh. Well, even that would help.”

  “Unless the guy you’re looking for stepped up and spoke to your suspect after the cameras finished rolling.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  “Nope. Nothing,” he said. “Well, let’s see here. What else could it be under?” He tried “Murder,” “Trials,” and “Courtroom Cases,” but there was no reference to Isabelle Barney.

  “Try ‘Homicides,’ ” I suggested.

  “Oh, good one.” He shifted to the H’s. There it was, with a numerical designation that apparently referred to the number of the tape on file. We went up the narrow stairs and through a door so low we were forced to duck our heads. Inside, there was a warren of tiny rooms with six-foot ceilings, lined with videocassette containers, neatly labeled and filed upright. Leland located and retrieved the cassette we were looking for and then led me downstairs again and around to the right where there were four stations set up with monitoring equipment. He flipped on the first machine and inserted the tape. The first segment appeared on the screen in front of us. He pressed Fast Forward. I watched the news for that year whiz by like the history of civilization in two minutes flat, everybody very animated and jerky. I spotted a still of Isabelle Barney. “There she is,” I yelped.

  Leland backed the tape up and began to run it at normal speed. An anchorperson I hadn’t seen for years was suddenly doing the voice-over commentary as snippets of the case, neatly spliced together, spelled out the highlights of Isabelle’s death, David Barney’s arrest, and the subsequent trial. The acquittal, in condensed form, had the speedy air of instant justice, well edited, swiftly rendered, with liberty for all. David Barney emerged from the courtroom looking slightly dazed.

  “Hold it. Let me look at him.”

  Leland stopped the tape and let me study the image. He was in his forties with light brown wavy hair combed away from his face. His forehead was lined and there were lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. He had a straight nose and a tense grin over artificially even teeth. His chin was strong and I could see that he had strong hands with blunt-cut nails. He was slightly taller than medium height. His attorney looked very tall and gray and somber by comparison.

  “Thanks,” I said. I realized belatedly that I’d been holding my breath. Leland pushed Play and the coverage quickly switched to another subject altogether. He handed me Curtis McIntyre’s mug shot. “No sign of him.”

  For the money I’d given him, he could have feigned disappointment. “Could it be the camera angle?” I asked.

  “We got a wide and a close. You saw ’em come through the door alone. Nobody approached in the footage we caught. Like I said, the guy might have stepped up and spoken once the press conference was over.”

  “Well. Thanks,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to rely on my other source.”

  I went back to my car, not sure what to do next. If I got verification of Curtis McIntyre’s incarceration, I intended to confront him, but I couldn’t do that yet. In theory, I had numerous interviews to conduct, but David Barney’s phone call had thrown me. I didn’t want to spend time shoring up David Barney’s alibi, but if what he said was true, we’d end up looking like a bunch of idiots.

  I took the winding road down the backside of the hill and turned right on Promontory Drive, following the road along the ocean and through the back entrance to Horton Ravine. I used the next hour and a half canvassing the old neighborhood to see if anybody had been out and about on the night Isabelle was murdered. It didn’t thrill me to be in range of David Barney, but I couldn’t see a way around it and still get the information I wanted. A canvass by telephone is the same as not doing it. It’s too easy for people to hang up, tell fibs, or shine you on.

  One neighbor had moved and another had died. A woman on the adjacent property thought she’d heard a shot, but she hadn’t paid much attention to the time and she’d later wondered if it hadn’t been something else. Like what, I thought. I wasn’t sure if it was my paranoia or not, but any time I heard what sounded like a gunshot, I checked the clock to see what time it was.

  Of the eight remaining homeowners variously peppered along that stretch of road, none had been out that night and none had seen a thing. I got the impression that it had all happened far too long ago to bear worrying about at this point. A six-year-old murder doesn’t engage the imagination. They’d already told their versions of the story one too many times.

  I went home for lunch, stopping off at my apartment just long enough to check for messages. My machine was clear. I went next door to Henry’s. I was looking forward to meeting William.

  I found Henry standing in his kitchen, this time up to his elbows in whole wheat flour, kneading bread. Pellets of dough clung to his fingers like wood putty. Usually, Henry’s kneading has a meditative quality, methodical, practiced, soothing to the observer. Today, his manner seemed faintly manic and the look in his eyes was haunted. Beside him, at the counter, stood a man who looked enough like him to be a twin; tall and slim, with the same snowy white hair and blue eyes, the same aristocratic face. I took in the similarities in that first glance. The differences were profound and took longer to assimilate.

  Henry wore a Hawaiian shirt, white shorts, and thongs, his long limbs sinewy and tanned as a runner’s. William wore a three-piece pin-striped suit, a starched white shirt, and a tie. His bearing was erect, nearly stiff, as if to compensate for the underlying feebleness I’d never known Henry to exhibit. William held a pamphlet in a slightly shaking hand and he pointed with a fork to a drawing of the heart. He paused for introductions and we went through the proper litany of inaugural sentiments. “Now where was I?” he asked.

  Henry gave me a bland look. “William’s been detailing some of the medical procedures associated with his heart attack.”

  “Quite right. You’ll be interested in this,” William said to me. “I’m assuming your knowledge of anatomy is as rudimentary as his.”

  “I couldn’t pass a test,” I said.

  “Nor could I,” William replied, “until this episode. Now Henry, you’ll want to pay attention to this.”

  “I doubt that,” Henry said.

  “You see, the right side of the heart receives blood from the body and pumps it through the lungs, where carbon dioxide and
other waste products are exchanged for oxygen. The left side receives the blood full of oxygen from the lungs and pumps it out into the body through the aorta. . . .” The diagram he was using looked like the road map of a park with lots of one-way roads marked with black-and-white arrows. “Block these arteries and that’s where you have a problem.” William tapped on the diagram emphatically with the fork. “It’s just like a rockslide coming down across a road. All the traffic begins to pile up in a nasty snarl.” He turned a page in the pamphlet, which he held open against his chest like a kindergarten teacher reading aloud to a class. The next diagram showed a cross section of a coronary artery that looked like a vacuum cleaner hose filled with fluffies.

  Henry interrupted. “Have you had lunch?”

  “That’s why I came home.”

  “There’s some tuna in the refrigerator. You can make us some sandwiches. Do you eat tuna, William?”

  “I’ve had to give it up. It’s a very fatty fish to begin with and when you add mayonnaise . . .” He shook his head. “Not for me, thanks. I’ll open one of the cans of low-sodium soup I brought with me. You two go ahead.”

  “Turns out William can’t eat lasagna,” Henry said to me.

  “Much to my regret. Fortunately, Henry had some fresh vegetables I was able to steam. I don’t want to be a bother and I said as much to him. There’s nothing worse than being a burden to your loved ones. A heart condition doesn’t have to be a death sentence. Moderation is the key. Light exercise, proper nutrition, sufficient rest . . . there’s no reason to believe I couldn’t go on into my nineties.”

  “Everyone in our family lives into their nineties,” Henry said tartly. He was slapping loaves into shape, plunking one after another into a row of greased pans.

  I heard a dainty ping.

  William removed his pocket watch and flipped the case open. “Time for my pills,” he said. “I believe I’ll take my medication and then have a brief rest in my room to offset the stress of jet lag. I hope you’ll excuse me, Miss Millhone. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”