A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  “Here’s why these things could be important. You don’t remember anyone, but someone might remember you. The more you can be specific, the more there’s a chance we can find whoever that might be. Because if we can locate someone who clearly remembers you from that afternoon, you have an alibi, and we could all go home happy campers. Now do you understand?” he asked again.

  Steven nodded slowly. “So you want me to go over this again?” he asked, looking at the form.

  “Yes, and fast. I’ll send somebody for it tomorrow morning, first thing. Put in everything you can think of, no matter how irrelevant you might think it is. Don’t filter.” He stood up. They had done enough for one day. “One more thing. Take care of your personal hygiene. If they don’t let you shower every day, give yourself a sponge bath in your sink. Shave. Use deodorant. Brush your teeth.” He grabbed Steven’s forearm in a tight clasp. “This is going to be a long journey, Steven. You have to stay strong.”

  Steven looked at him forlornly. “That’s easy for you to say, Mr. Garrison. You’re not the one who’s in here.”

  “Bail is denied. The preliminary hearing is scheduled one week from today. At that time you can bring up your request again,” Judge Stanley Allison told Luke.

  “Thank you, your honor,” Luke answered dutifully. He looked across the aisle to the prosecution table. Alex Gordon looked back at him for a moment, then turned away. Elise Hobson maintained her rigid composure—she didn’t so much as steal a glance at him. “We will definitely do that,” Luke told the judge, as much to plant a burr under Alex’s hide as for the record.

  He sat down next to Steven. He could feel Steven shivering under his jail jumpsuit. “Don’t get too upset about this,” he whispered into Steven’s ear. “I expected it to happen this go-around. We’ll do better next week.”

  Steven nodded; then he slumped back in his chair.

  “Stay strong,” Luke urged him. “We’ll get you out.” He gave Steven a reassuring squeeze on the forearm. He wished he felt as confident as he said he was.

  A courtroom deputy touched Steven on the shoulder. Steven shuffled to his feet. The deputy cuffed Steven and led him out of the courtroom.

  Luke stood and walked to the back of the courtroom, where Kate sat with Juanita McCoy. Steven’s parents weren’t present—they had called last night and told Luke they couldn’t handle the tension. They would come for the following session. Luke had been surprised, but not shocked. They were fighting their own emotional battles over this, particularly their guilt about what they might have done to prevent it, like every parent does when their child becomes involved in a tragedy.

  He didn’t want to think about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room—that Steven’s parents might really believe their son murdered Maria Estrada, and were beginning to emotionally distance themselves from him. Luke had seen that in a few other situations similar to this one. It was heartbreaking for everyone.

  Given the grim circumstances, Juanita McCoy looked relatively composed. Luke sat down next to her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCoy,” he said. “It was a gutless call, but we were anticipating it, as I told you. We should have better luck at the next hearing.”

  “In a week?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That poor boy,” she said. “How he must be suffering.” She squeezed Kate’s hand. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Luke told her the same thing he’d said to her grandson: “Stay strong.”

  Kate swung into Kris & Jerry’s Bar, which was tucked into an alley a block off State Street, the city’s main drag. The bar was frequented more by locals than tourists, which was how the owners wanted it. The decor was a jumbled mixture of Trader Vic-style Tiki bar and Greenwich Village bistro, circa 1968. Kris, one of the owners, was a prominent land-use lawyer who spent most of his vacations in Hawaii, where he consumed copious quantities of mai tais and other tropical drinks; thus the Tiki-bar angle. Everyone in town was his friend, which made for a solid, steady clientele. The other owner, Jerry, a television and commercial director, had been a jazz and folk buff in the Village in the mid-’60s, where he grooved on the sounds of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins; so the faux-homage to the White Horse was his contribution.

  Over the decade that the two friends had owned the place the disparate styles had softened and blended into each other, so that now it was a comfortable, laid-back drinking spot for the over-thirty crowd. Most of the regulars were professionals—lawyers, architects, businessmen of both sexes. Layabouts and goofballs were strongly encouraged to skedaddle.

  It was early, a few minutes after four. A couple of middle-aged men, who looked like real-estate agents, had established a beachhead in a booth near the back, drinking the first martinis of the afternoon. Other than that, the bar was empty, except for the female bartender and a waitress, both of whom looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. They were California beach-style attractive, the kind of women men will order the extra drink from and then leave a big tip. They wore identical Tommy Bahama shirts in a tropical pattern, fitted black slacks, and open-toed black slides. They had good pedicures, Kate noticed, which reminded her to get one herself before her daughter ragged on her about that again.

  Not the place where you’d think a twenty-one-year-old would choose to knock back a few, Kate thought, as she dropped onto a barstool. There were a slew of college bars on lower State for people his age. And this one, being off the beaten track, wasn’t that easy to find. So if Steven had been in here the chance that someone might remember him was better than zero, which were the results she had gotten at the other places on Steven’s list.

  It had been a frustrating beginning. She had talked with employees from the Coral Casino, the private swimming club at the beach where Steven had laid out in the sun and then swam. Nobody had a clue about him, which was what she expected. Ditto the Biltmore, the posh hotel across the street. This was her last stop of the day before she went back to her office and dove into the rest of her work.

  “Vodka tonic, double lime,” she told the bartender, as a cocktail napkin was placed in front of her.

  “Coming at you.”

  She watched the woman make her drink. Crisp, no wasted motion. When the libation was placed in front of her she took a nourishing sip. Perfect. And it was billable.

  “Ask you a question?” She reached into her soft attaché case and pulled out the file with Steven’s picture in it. It was a good likeness. He looked like a unique human being, not a generic composite.

  The bartender came over. “What’s up?” she asked.

  Kate slid the picture across the bar. “Any chance you’ve ever seen him in here?” she asked. “Take your time.”

  The bartender looked at the picture for a moment. She nodded. “I remember him. He goes to college.”

  If Kate had wings, she would have flown up to the ceiling. “That’s right, he does,” she said. “Do you remember anything else about him?”

  The bartender smiled. “He was a cutie. I remember that.”

  My God, did we strike gold, Kate thought? She took out a notepad and pen. “What else do you recall?”

  “He was casually on the make. Not offensively or anything,” the woman added quickly. “I was throwing off a welcoming vibe, too. I have ten years on him, but if it works for Demi Moore, why not?”

  Why hadn’t Steven mentioned this, Kate thought? This was an attractive woman, he had to have remembered flirting with her.

  And then it hit her. The woman had been doing the flirting. Steven had been polite, but not in touch. He was in his own space, he wasn’t picking up on the signs. The woman had been reading the tea leaves wrong. How easily single women deceive ourselves. She could relate to that.

  “Can we get specific about a few things?” she asked the woman.

  “Like what?” Not cagey, exactly, but protective.

  “You and he didn’t get together outside of here, did you?”

  The bartender sho
ok her head. “No. He claimed he had a prior commitment. I thought he’d be back the next day and we’d pick up where we’d left off, but I never saw him again. Men,” she sighed.

  “He had school the next day,” Kate explained. “So—can we lock down when he was in here? Around four or five o’clock, right?”

  The bartender frowned. “Four or five? No. It was eleven or twelve.”

  Kate almost fell off her barstool. She grabbed the edge to keep her balance. “Twelve at night?” she sputtered.

  The bartender nodded. “We aren’t open in the morning. Four at night till one in the morning, those are our middle of the week hours. Two on the weekends. Anyway, what’s this about going back to school? He was on winter break, he wasn’t due back for two weeks.” With some rancor: “So he claimed.”

  “So it wasn’t September 14 that you saw him in here?”

  “This September? A few weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  The bartender shook her head with certainty. “If he had been in here then, I would have remembered it.”

  “He hosed us.”

  Kate was thoroughly pissed off. Two days of shit-detail work and it had come to a blatant lie.

  “Maybe not. She might not have been on that day. Or she came on after he left. Or maybe he got the bars confused. I’ll ask him about it.”

  It was after seven o’clock. They were in Luke’s office, a few blocks from hers. She had walked over after she had finished the pile of work she’d been neglecting.

  Kate stood up. “I promised my daughter we’d eat dinner together, unless I had an emergency. Which this is not,” she stated emphatically.

  Luke got up, too. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  The low sun was casting long shadows across the asphalt as they walked to their cars, which were parked next to each other in his lot. Luke was looking forward to a cold beer, a dip in the pool with his wife and children, steaks on the barbeque. A shot of single-malt scotch to go with the beer.

  He thought about the barmaid’s story. Regardless of Steven’s actual innocence or guilt, he would represent him as best he could. But if Steven was deliberately lying to him, that turned the equation upside down. He could live with a client holding back damaging information; they all did that. But to outright lie, that was unacceptable. They would get straight on that issue, first thing in the morning.

  Kate’s thoughts, as she opened her car door and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat, weren’t about whether or not Steven McCoy had lied. She was thinking about herself, and her involvement in the case. She had committed to it, and she always honored a commitment. But there were boundaries. She could live with helping to defend a guilty man. The system didn’t work otherwise. But she didn’t want to be part of a grand deception—that they would come to believe that Steven was innocent, or at least that he wasn’t guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, work their tails off to get him acquitted, only to learn, too late, that he was really guilty and that he’d been lying to them all along. Those were the kinds of cases that drove lawyers and investigators to drink, to ulcers, to dropping out.

  She had been on the fence about this case. She had finally decided to take it because Sophia had given her blessing, and because she felt guilty about not standing with Luke. But the combination of her gut-feeling that Steven had killed that girl, combined with the emotional proximity of the situation to her own child, was a rock in her stomach.

  She should have jumped off the train when she had the chance. Now it was too late. She was on for the ride.

  15

  JUANITA TOOK A VALIUM before she went to bed, but it didn’t help. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Steven was arrested. Her mind was racing. What must it be like to be in jail? Terrifying for someone like Steven, who had never been in serious trouble in his life.

  The weight of her complicity in that girl’s murder, and Steven’s being accused of it, lay on her heart like a crushing stone. The old revolver. It all came back to that. Why in the world had she taken it out of the gun cabinet? So what if somebody had come onto her property? What was she going to do, actually shoot them? She hadn’t even thought it was loaded. That was one of the miseries of getting old—fearfulness. Her grandson might spend the rest of his life in prison because she had allowed her irrational fear to overwhelm her common sense.

  She was going to fix that. How she would do it, she didn’t know. But somehow, she was going to atone for her mistake.

  Once again, Luke met with Steven in the holding room at the jail. Steven looked about the same as the last time Luke had seen him. At least he isn’t looking any worse, Luke thought. He had to remind himself to cut Steven some slack. The kid—he was a man, but he was still young, and in here he looked younger than he did in the free world—was up against a situation he had no preparation for, and he hadn’t figured out how to cope with it yet. But that didn’t mean he was going to lighten up on getting at the truth, whatever that was in the moment. That wouldn’t help either of them.

  He tossed the latest questionnaire on the table. “This isn’t much better than the last one,” he said.

  Steven stared at the pages. “I did the best I could. I’m blanking on a lot of it. It’s like…” He threw up his hands.

  “That’s a damn shame,” Luke told him, “because your amnesia is hurting you, man. And another thing.” He rapped his knuckles on the pages. “Your so-called sojourn in Kris & Jerry’s, before the movie? We have a gold-plated witness who said you weren’t there. What’s your answer to that, pal?”

  Steven looked at him with bewilderment. “What witness are you talking about? Someone who didn’t see me there? That’s like saying I was a ghost.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Steven,” Luke said harshly. “Kate Blanchard checked your story out with the bartender who was on duty that afternoon. She remembered you, from a year ago, and she flatly denied that you were in there that day.” He sat back. “What gives?”

  Steven slowly shook his head in denial. “I don’t remember who served me, I’ve already told you that. And what’s this about a year ago?”

  “The bartender said you were in there over your Christmas break, and that you chatted her up. She remembered it enough to remember that you weren’t there on September 14,” Luke told him.

  This time Steven’s head-shake was emphatic. “No way, man,” he protested strongly. “Look. I don’t remember who served me. I don’t remember who served me last Christmas, either.” He tried to smile, but his face wouldn’t hold the effort. “I flirt with lots of women. Everybody does in bars. But I don’t remember who that was, or even if it happened.” He tilted back in his chair. “If some woman is carrying a misguided flame for me, that’s her problem.”

  Luke regarded him carefully. “So you’re sticking to your story. You were in Kris & Jerry’s on the fourteenth.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Luke exhaled heavily. “Okay. I have to go with your word,” Luke told his client. I hope it doesn’t blow us up, he thought.

  He sat back. “Let’s get down to the important business. Your preliminary hearing is set for the day after tomorrow. The prosecution is going to lay out the minimum they need to get an indictment. Your fingerprints on the gun are going to be enough to bind you over for trial.” He shuffled Steven’s papers back into his briefcase. “I want to waive our rights to a preliminary hearing and request that we go directly to trial. It’ll speed up the bail hearing, and frankly, Steven, the prosecution’s going to get that indictment. A monkey could get you charged on the evidence they have, and these people aren’t monkeys, they’re sharp.” He smiled tightly. “They should be. I trained most of them. But I need you to agree to waive that hearing.”

  Steven felt his throat tightening. “You mean admit I did it?” he managed to croak out.

  Luke shook his head. “You’re not admitting guilt. But you are agreeing that there’s enough evidence to go to trial.” He fixed his look at Steven. “The press is going to be
all over this. Larry King, Geraldo, all the talk-show ghouls. I want to give them as little as possible.” He leaned forward. “You need to trust me on this, Steven. On everything.”

  Steven nodded slowly. “If that’s what you think, then you should do it.” He stood up. “I hope it’s the right thing.”

  Luke spent an hour on the phone twisting Alex Gordon’s arm, until Alex reluctantly agreed to waive the preliminary hearing. “But we are going to be fighting bail, in any amount. I want you to know that,” Alex told him.

  “I wouldn’t expect any less,” Luke rejoined. Before Alex could renege on their agreement, he added, “I would do the same, if I was in your shoes.”

  “See you at the hearing,” Alex told him curtly.

  “See you,” Luke began to answer, until he realized that Alex had already hung up and he was talking to himself.

  Kate drove through the gate, which had been left open for her, and started up the narrow, bumpy road. She had never been to Rancho San Gennaro before. She knew that Mrs. McCoy opened up this section of the old ranch a few times a year for various charitable functions, but as she didn’t move in those circles, she had never had occasion to come here. Until now.

  She was here because she needed to see where the killing happened. Judging by Steven’s testimony (regardless of whether or not he was the one who fired the gun), it was almost certain that it had taken place inside the old house. She would also check out where the body had been found; how far it was from the house, how difficult it would have been to move the body there, how it would have been hidden, and so forth.

  Once she was actually at the location, a picture would start to form. After years of doing this work, that was almost always how it happened. The location would talk to her. The trick was knowing how to listen.

  A three-decades-old Mercedes was parked near the house. As Kate approached, the front door of the house opened, and Juanita came out. Kate parked her car next to the Mercedes. “Hello, Mrs. McCoy,” she called.