I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5)

by Michael Wallace

  They ordered dinner and non-alcoholic beverages, and Len, edgy as a small boy on Christmas Eve, turned to Gloria.

  “You did a fine job,” he said, and she beamed. “The idea of checking other newspapers paid off. Show them what you’ve got.”

  Gloria opened a manila folder in front of her, removed a single piece of paper from it and slid it across the table to Gordon.”

  “Read it out loud,” Len said. “I want to actually hear the words spoken.”

  The paper in front of Gordon was a fax of a blurry image captured from a microfilm machine. Above the reproduction, Gloria had written “Green Valley Gazette, June 3, 1852.” Gordon began to read.

  Word has been received from Dutchtown of the second hanging of the year, Wednesday last. This time the miscreant sent to a just reward was one Maria Valdez, a woman, reported to be of ill repute.

  Gordon stopped. “How did they know she was a woman of ill repute?”

  “That probably applied to any unmarried woman,” Peter said.

  “The doctor’s right,” Len said. “Keep reading.”

  As told by our correspondent, the accused stabbed one Barney McManus, miner, on the morning of Saturday May 22nd. The motive, as far as could be determined, was a disputed payment.

  The Valdez woman tried to place the blame for the killing of McManus on a prominent local businessman, but the townspeople were having none of it. She was removed to the local hoosegow and incarcerated under the watch of the town constable.

  No judge was due in the area until July, and over the next few days, the townspeople became restless at the idea of delaying justice for any length of time in so obvious a case. At sunset on Wednesday May 26, a group of forty to fifty good citizens gathered in the town center, advanced on the local jail, and removed the Valdez woman from the constable’s custody.

  From there, she was taken to the bridge over Dutch Joe Creek, where a noose was affixed around her neck and the other end of the rope tied to the stout bridge railing. Asked if she had any final words before being dropped to Jesus, she is supposed to have said, “I am innocent of this crime, and one among you knows it.”

  She was then pushed off the bridge and died instantaneously upon reaching the end of the rope. The conclusion of this matter puts Dutchtown roughly on pace to match its total of five hangings last year.

  Gordon set the paper down on the table. “That’s it,” he said.

  “This is really exciting,” Len said. “It shows that she maintained her innocence and said someone else did it.”

  “Still,” Peter said, “It’s pretty sparse. There are a lot of gaps in that story, first and foremost the name of the local businessman she accused.”

  “Sure, sure,” Len said. “But at least there’s a starting point for investigation now. If anyone contacts me after the paper comes out tomorrow, I have a direction to look in.”

  “And it’s a major addition to the story,” Gloria added. “In the time I’ve been here, even working at the museum, I’ve never heard that Maria denied the crime and accused someone else.”

  Dinner arrived, and after it was before them on the table, Len raised his glass of iced tea.

  “A toast,” he said. “To justice for Maria.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “I’d like to propose a second toast,” Gordon said, lifting his 7-Up. The others looked at him expectantly. “To justice for Connie Baxter.”

  They clinked glasses again.

  GORDON’S OTHER CALL from Nugget Lake had been to attorney Pope, advising him that he had come across something important and needed to meet first thing in the morning. Pope was curious, and they agreed to meet at the law office at 8:30.

  Burroughs’ revelation about the autopsy findings had convinced Gordon that the key to the case most likely was outside what was brought out in court. Even so, his sense of duty compelled him to try to finish the trial transcript before meeting with Pope in the morning. When they got back to the house a little after seven o’clock, he told Peter that he planned to stay up as long as it took to get through the trial transcript.

  “That’s fine by me,” Peter said. “I can read The Philadelphia Story and let you know if anything jumps out at me. We’ll be sitting in separate chairs, reading our separate documents, and communicating in grunts. Just like a married couple.”

  “Is that what married couples do?” Gordon asked.

  “After six months, they’re lucky if they do that much together.”

  Gordon picked up the transcript, determined to speed-read it. Following the medical examiner’s cross-examination by Pope, the prosecution moved toward trying to prove the degree of Gary Baxter’s culpability. The first witness was John Smythe, bartender at Jay’s Fireside Lounge, the bar in Pass City, where Gary had been drinking that night.

  Under questioning by Williams, Smythe testified that Gary had arrived at the bar between 7 and 7:30 p.m. the night in question, had “a few beers,” and left around 10:15 to 10:30 p.m. The drive back to Dutchtown would ordinarily have taken 20 to 25 minutes. Williams asked a series of questions aimed at establishing that the defendant, while perhaps impaired, had been at least somewhat aware of his circumstances, and hence could have acted deliberately in killing Connie — a prerequisite for second-degree murder.

  Pope, on the other hand, pursued a line of questioning that attempted to show Gary may have been substantially impaired, which could qualify him for a manslaughter verdict. He was making some headway, getting Smythe to concede that Gary had been drinking for a solid three hours, that he’d had “two or three” shots in addition to the beer he drank, and that he was not a customer who tended to linger over his drinks. Then came this exchange:

  Q. Mr. Smythe, you have testified that the defendant had been drinking continuously for three hours, a combination of beer and spirits. Is that right?

  A. I suppose so.

  Q. And you’ve been a bartender for more than 20 years …

  A. Almost 30.

  Q. So you have a pretty good sense of when someone is out of control?

  A. I have to.

  Q. And yet you contend that after three hours of heavy drinking, the defendant was more or less under control when he left your establishment?

  A. Well, he made it home all right, didn’t he?

  At that point, Pope dropped his cross-examination, and after a few more questions from the prosecution, the judge adjourned the trial until Wednesday morning.

  Gordon’s phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Am I speaking to Quill Gordon?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Lee Harrison, Harrison Lumber.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I got a call from Basil Dill this afternoon saying you were doing some sort of story about the play I underwrote a couple of years ago.”

  “Mmm,” Gordon murmured, avoiding a direct lie.

  “Said you wanted to talk to some of the people involved.”

  “I’d like to do that, yes.”

  “How long are you around?”

  “Until Saturday.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I’m pretty flexible after about 9:30.”

  “Well, I always like to help people if I can. Would you be able to come over to the lumber yard at one o’clock? I can get my daughter, Amy, and my son-in-law, Kevin to a meeting then.”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “I could get Dick Holmes, too, if you’d like. He had one of the big parts.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “He handles the insurance policies for the lumber yard, my house and my cars. It won’t be too much trouble.”

  “Terrific. This is more than I hoped for.”

  “At Harrison’s, we aim to please. That’s my motto in business and life. See you at one, then.”

  Gordon shut off his phone and turned to Peter.

  “Basil Dill came through. I have a meeting with the underwriter
of The Philadelphia Story and three cast members at one o’clock tomorrow. Care to join me?”

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  WHEN COURT RESUMED WEDNESDAY MORNING, the prosecution called a psychiatrist, Heinrich Gottlieb. Gordon wondered if the Teutonic name impressed the jury. Gottlieb testified that he had examined Gary Baxter as the prosecution’s psychiatrist and deemed him fit to stand trial. He said Gary had pronounced alcoholic tendencies and that his fallback position was to blame others for his own problems.

  Williams led Gottlieb through a painfully detailed set of questions that seemed to be aimed at establishing that, even if drunk, Gary could have known what he was doing and willfully taken Connie’s life. By the end of the questioning, the sheer amount of exhaustive detail must have left the jury with the impression that it was quite possible.

  Pope, for his part, attempted to whittle away at the argument that Gary was fully under control. Gordon’s impression was that he had scored a few points but failed to break the witness. Pope particularly attacked the idea that Gary could have fallen asleep after committing such a murder and tried to contend that, if he had been as conscious and in control as the psychiatrist was claiming, he would have called the sheriff’s department earlier.

  Gordon set down the transcript.

  “Can I ask you something, Peter?” Peter looked up from the play. “If Gary Baxter didn’t kill his wife, one of two things had to have happened. Either she was dead when he got home and crashed on the couch or someone came in and killed her while he was sleeping. In your experience, does either one of those seem plausible?”

  “The first one does,” Peter said. “Alcoholics in a blackout can rely on unconscious memory. For example, a guy leaving the bar at closing and driving home on deserted streets may be lost to the world, but at some level, he knows where the stop signs are. It’s the unexpected thing, like someone stopped in the middle of the block to make a left turn, that trips him up.”

  “So you think it’s possible Gary could have come into the house, staggered to the couch, and not noticed his wife lying dead on the other side of it?”

  “Entirely possible. Now if she was in front of the couch and he tripped over her, that would be another matter.”

  “How about sleeping through it if she was killed after he came home?”

  “People who are cold sober can sleep through amazing things. Someone out cold drunk could, too, though the more noise there was the less chance I’d give on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  After the shrink, the prosecution called two forensic witnesses to testify that they had combed the house and surrounding grounds completely and found no evidence of anyone else being at the house that night. Pope was able to get them to concede that certain hairs in the house, not belonging to Connie or Gary, could have been left that night and that absence of evidence was not evidence of absence, though the witnesses said the chances were slim.

  At this point, the prosecution called Preston A. Prescott, who testified he was an expert on crime scenes. Prescott, a consultant from Stockton, described how a person striking the blow that killed Connie Baxter might not have been hit with blood spatters. He did so in such minute, arcane and long-winded detail that Gordon’s eyes were glazing over as he read the testimony. In the end, the only thing that probably mattered to the jury was Prescott’s answer to the DA’s final question:

  Q. So, in your expert opinion, the person who delivered the fatal blow to Connie Baxter would not, for the reasons you described, necessarily have been hit with a significant volume of blood spatter?

  A. That is correct, sir.

  At this point, Gordon’s phone rang again. He looked at his watch and realized it was just after ten, then at the phone and saw Elizabeth was calling. He remembered he’d forgotten to call her the night before and winced.

  “I guess you forgot,” she said when he answered.

  “I’m really sorry. I was reading the trial transcript and lost track of the time. How was Tony’s?”

  “A once-in-a-lifetime experience. At least I hope so. And you owe me for a car wash.”

  “Take it out of the bowl on the kitchen shelf. Did you pick up anything?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. It looked as if I was going to come up empty, but at the end of the conversation, Roger said he’d talked to Gary a week before Connie was killed. Gary thought she might be seeing someone else.”

  “Really?” Gordon said. He told her about his meeting with Burroughs that afternoon. “I don’t suppose Roger gave you a name, address and phone number of the guy Connie was supposed to have been seeing?”

  “Afraid not. The best he could do is say he thought the guy’s name was Mike. There must be a dozen Mikes in Dutchtown.”

  “And not one of them has turned up anywhere in the case so far.”

  “Well, I’d be looking for Mike if I were you.”

  “Noted. And nothing else interesting in the interview?”

  “Not that I could tell. However, while I was in Tony’s, somebody egged my car. And when I stepped out after talking to Roger, I was almost run over by a bicycle thief, and also by the bike’s rightful owner, who was running after him with a butcher knife in his hand.”

  “Just another day on the job for a private investigator.”

  “I’m touched that you don’t worry about me.”

  “It means I think you can take care of yourself.”

  “And I think you can toss the blarney. It’s getting late. I’ll let you get back to your precious transcript, and maybe by tomorrow, something else Roger said will seem important.”

  After exchanging endearments, they rang off. Gordon told Peter about Gary’s suspicion there was another man.

  “I’ve finished the play,” Peter said. “My bet would be on the actor who carried Connie onstage in the robe, and that would be Kevin Hawkins.”

  “Harrison’s son-in-law.”

  “Uh-huh. If he married money and was fooling around on it, he could possibly have a motive for wanting the problem out of the way.”

  “Indeed he could. But the name Roger remembered, or thought he did, wasn’t Kevin. How did you like the play?”

  “It had a certain old-time sparkle to it. But I don’t know that it gets us any further forward. I’m not ready to turn in yet. Anything else I can do to help?”

  “You could rummage through the trial docs and see if anything looks interesting.”

  “That’s kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But so’s everything else we’re doing.”

  POPE TRIED TO TRIP UP Preston A. Prescott, but got mired in detail as the prosecutor had, with the difference that the defense didn’t get the answer it wanted to the basic question of why Gary’s clothing had no blood spatters. The cross-examination wrapped up both Wednesday’s testimony and the prosecution’s case.

  From that point on, Gordon raced through the rest of the transcript. In the brief case for the defense, Pope called the next-door neighbor Clara Schumer, who testified that she had frequently heard Gary and Connie arguing, but had heard nothing on the night in question, despite the fact that it was a warm evening and her windows were open.

  Pope also called three character witnesses, including Joey Vargas, who testified to Gary’s gentle and non-violent nature in an attempt to show that the attack on Connie was out of character. The district attorney barely deigned to cross-examine. Pope also called a defense psychiatrist who said Gary would have been too impaired for rational judgment that night, but who didn’t come across as authoritative as the prosecution’s psychiatric witness. Final arguments wrapped up Friday morning, with Pope contending the prosecution hadn’t proved its case and DA Williams pointing to Gary’s presence on the scene, his history of domestic disturbances, and his overall low character. The judge instructed the jury, which returned with a guilty verdict in short order.

  Gordon had to admit he wasn’t surprised by the verdict after readin
g the transcript. Pope had done a reasonably good job of pointing out the holes in a less-than-airtight prosecution case. Still, a man who comes to from an alcoholic blackout with his wife dead nearby has some explaining to do. There was no other theory of the crime, and, of course, the jury never heard about Connie’s encounter with another man shortly before she was killed. Under those conditions, it seemed a justified verdict.

  It was after midnight, and Gordon’s reverie was interrupted by Peter.

  “I found something that may be interesting,” Peter said. “Let’s see if you have the same idea I did.” He handed Gordon a sheet of paper. “This is a catalogue of what was in Connie’s purse when it was checked in as evidence.”

  Gordon looked through it and whistled.

  “Nine hundred dollars in twenties, rolled up in a rubber band. Where did that come from?”

  “Yeah. Well, as I’ve said before, married couples are always hiding money from each other.”

  “Come on, Peter. With an alcoholic, underemployed husband, where would she be able to save nine hundred bucks? I’m guessing they barely had two nickels to rub together.”

  “You think she was doing a little pay-for-play?”

  Gordon looked at the paper again. “That doesn’t seem right. Maybe it was hush money or maybe she had some other sort of scheme going on the side. Something Gary didn’t know about. Worth looking into, though I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Did that come out at the trial?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then there’s one other interesting thing here.” He pointed to an item on the list that read:

  Piece of four-by-six note paper, with penciled note, ‘66: 34,079.14’

  “Also news to me,” Gordon said.

  “She worked for the county treasurer, didn’t she? Could 66 be a check number?”

  Gordon shook his head. “Even in a county this size, the warrants would have five or more digits. But it could be an amount of money.”

  “Could it be related to the nine hundred in her purse?”

  “Hard to say. More to look into, for sure.”

  “This is starting to get interesting, don’t you think?”