Evidence of Guilt

by Jonnie Jacobs

  Despite its age, the Cornell place looked to be in good repair. It was clear no one had tended to it since Lisa’s death, however. Throwaway papers had collected on the front steps, the roses and petunias along the walk were brown from lack of water and the front screen door was sprung so that it flapped open with the passing breeze.

  I made a mental note to ask Sam who would inherit the house now that Lisa was dead. It was a long shot, but people have been known to kill for less.

  I pulled into the driveway and parked, then made my way through the orchard to the barn at the back of the property. The building was a weathered gray, and listed slightly to the left. The roof was bare in spots, the siding warped. I suspected that the wide double door at the end hadn’t budged since the last horse trotted out many years earlier. I walked the perimeter once, then stopped at a side door, which was slightly ajar.

  Never a fan of dark spaces and the creatures that inhabit them, I hesitated, then took a deep breath, scrunched my face up tight and opened the door wider. I entered sideways, leading with an extended hand.

  The interior had a musty, sickly-sweet smell that caught in my throat, but it wasn’t as gloomy as I’d expected. Sunlight filtered through cracks in the siding and several larger gaps in the roof, revealing nothing more ominous than neglect and grime. Floating in the hot, dry air, particles of dust caught the light like microscopic June bugs, infusing the stillness with an otherworldly quality. From outside I heard the far-off, hollow tapping of a woodpecker. I stepped away from the doorway and inspected the area more closely.

  A sagging hayloft stood at one end of the barn, wooden storage shelves at the other. The shelves looked to be hand-made, by someone as inexperienced with hammer and saw as I am. They were filled with old paint cans, rolls of wire mesh, plastic irrigation pipe and the like—scraps from a long line of maintenance projects. A lawn mower, a rusty wheelbarrow, a stenciled headboard and a couple of old kitchen chairs stood in the far corner opposite me. Other than that, the place was empty — a large open space of hard-packed dirt strewn with bits of straw.

  To my left, the dirt was darker in stretches, as though discolored by traces of oil. Only I was fairly certain it wasn’t oil, but blood. I shifted my eyes and swallowed hard to keep my throat from closing.

  How had it happened? I wondered. Had the assailant accosted Lisa and Amy elsewhere and forced them into the barn? Or had mother and daughter come out on some simple, domestic errand and found him waiting, perhaps secreted in the loft or hidden by the clutter at the other side? Or maybe they’d come upon someone in the barn by accident. A thief perhaps — although it didn’t look as though there would have been much worth stealing.

  They were very different scenarios, pointing to very different sorts of crime. The problem was, of course, I had no way of knowing what had actually happened. Or why. No way of knowing whether the killer was someone other than Wes Harding.

  Although it was impossible to tell from looking at the stains exactly where and how the bodies had lain, I forced myself to move closer. The police had searched the area for clues, raking and sifting the debris and bagging everything that might eventually prove useful. No doubt they’d measured and sketched and carefully noted — and in the process distilled a moment of stark terror to cold, flat data.

  The data was important. I knew at some time in the future I’d spend hours studying it, but right then, crouching on the bloodstained ground, what I found myself dwelling on was the moment itself. Lisa and her child lying there in the dirt, helpless and alone, while the life drained from them like water into sand.

  I was so caught up with imagining what they might have been thinking and feeling, I wasn’t at first aware of rustling sounds behind me. As they slowly surfaced in my consciousness, I stopped to listen. Nothing but silence, drifting in and settling like the dust. Then, suddenly, the afternoon quiet was broken by a quick sound near the doorway. I pulled myself to my feet and turned.

  Again nothing.

  That’s when I recalled mention of the rats that inhabited the barn. I cleared my throat loudly and shuffled my feet in the soil to send them scurrying. There was a moment’s silence, followed by another rustling sound; then the side door squeaked open and a shaft of light blinded me.

  Rats didn’t open doors.

  Heart racing, I moved back into the shadow and waited for my eyes to adjust. Finally I saw a boy of eight or nine standing in the doorway. A scrawny little guy with hair the color of hay and a mouth like a jack-o-lantern. We both let out a yelp at the same time.

  “Jesus, you scared me,” I said, before I remembered it was considered poor form to swear in front of children.

  “You didn’t scare me,” he responded with clearly feigned bravado.

  “Then why’d you scream?”

  “It wasn’t a scream.” The boy snapped his chewing gum. “And I was startled, not scared.”

  Seemed like pretty much the same thing to me, but I wasn’t about to argue.

  He dug his hands into his pockets and scowled at me over a freckled nose, then blew a bubble until it popped. “There was a lady and a little girl died here a couple of weeks ago,” he announced. “Murdered.”

  I nodded. “Did you know them?”

  He ignored my question. “My brother’s the one who found them.”

  “Really?” I’d remembered reading that the bodies had been discovered by a boy who lived in the neighborhood. I knew I’d want to talk to him eventually. “Does your brother have a name?”

  The boy gave me a disgusted look. “Of course he does.” The gum-chewing accelerated.

  “What is it?” I asked when it became clear he wasn’t about to volunteer the information.

  “Emmett. But everyone calls him Bongo. He’s thirteen. I’m eight and three-quarters. My name’s Kevin.”

  “Hi. I’m Kali. You live around here?”

  Kevin gestured with his head. “Over on Ferndale, but it’s close if you come by way of the creek. My brother and his friends like to hang out over here, even though they’re not supposed to. My mom gets real mad about things like that.”

  Good for her, I thought.

  “They do it so they can smoke and stuff. You know, and not get caught. My mom would really get mad about that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘and stuff?” I asked, remembering certain less-than-sterling moments of my own youth. “Drinking? Drugs?”

  “Magazines mostly,” Kevin said.

  “Magazines?”

  He drew his shoulders up to his ears, blew a bubble of pink gum, and looked at the ground. “You know, with pictures.”

  I shook my head.

  “Naked women.”

  “Ah, those. What about you — do you hang out here, too?”

  “Nah, not usually. It’s kinda boring.”

  “But you’re here today.”

  He twisted his shoulders in a sort of elliptical shrug. “Bongo says the place is haunted, but I don’t believe it. I came to see for myself. Bongo swore to it on Mom’s Bible. Says he’s heard that woman and her little girl crying and shrieking like they was being torn apart.”

  “Sounds like Bongo’s got an active imagination.”

  “He says the ghosts will come after you, even if you didn’t do anything wrong.” Kevin lifted his chin. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, sounding as though he meant just the opposite.

  “I don’t either,” I told him.

  He looked relieved.

  “Was there anyone else who hung out around here, besides your brother and his friends?”

  Kevin shook his head. “No one except Granger.”

  “Who’s Granger?”

  “You know, Granger. He plays the harmonica.”

  I did not know Granger, or anyone in Silver Creek for that matter, who played the harmonica.

  Kevin must have figured that much from my expression because he crossed his arms and explained further. “Granger lives in the woods. At least during the summer. Some nights he sl
ept in the barn, but that was okay by Mrs. Cornell. She hired him to do work sometimes, and she didn’t mind about the barn. She hardly ever used it herself. I think she was afraid of the spiders.”

  “Sounds like you knew Mrs. Cornell pretty well.”

  Kevin shrugged. “It’s just some days she was out working in the yard or something when I’d ride by on my bike. She usually had some cookies for her little girl and she’d give me some.”

  “And this Granger would help her?”

  ‘Just sometimes, like when he dug those holes for the rose bushes. She gave him cookies too.”

  “Any idea where I can find him?”

  Kevin raised his shoulders in a small shrug. “He just kind of shows up on his own.” Another pink bubble, then a pop. “If I see him, you want me to tell him you’re looking for him?”

  “No, that’s okay.” I didn’t know Granger, but I thought I knew the type. Nothing would make him disappear faster than finding out someone wanted to talk to him.

  “Are you a cop?” Kevin asked after a moment.

  I shook my head.

  “Another real estate lady?”

  “Another?”

  “There was one up here the other day.”

  “How’d you know she was in real estate?”

  He shrugged again. “She drove a fancy car. A Cadillac. There was a real estate man, too; he had a black Mercedes.” Kevin looked toward the driveway at my battered and dirt- streaked Subaru. He turned back to me with an apologetic face. “Guess you’re not one of them after all.”

  Cars were a sore spot with me. My brand-new, silver BMW had not fared well with my return to Silver Creek. I’d driven home for my father’s funeral. In the weeks that followed, while I was trying to help a friend accused of murder, the car’s windows had been smashed, the tires slashed, the finish defaced and, finally, the entire vehicle wrecked beyond repair. The Subaru was second-hand, and a very poor substitute. Unfortunately, it was all I could afford.

  “I’m a lawyer,” I told him, with my own variant of bravado. “And I’m going to want to talk to your brother about the time he found Mrs. Cornell and Amy.”

  Kevin’s mouth worked the gum for a moment. Then he blew a large bubble and removed the wad from his mouth to admire it. “My mom doesn’t like him to talk about it,” Kevin said, returning the gum to his mouth. “He gets upset, acts real crazy. He even wet his bed once. He paid me five dollars not to tell.”

  I gave him a sympathetic nod. I knew what kind of shape I’d be in after stumbling across a couple of dead, decaying bodies. And I was well past thirteen. “I won’t ask him to go into detail.”

  “You want my opinion, I think he’s just trying to get attention. He got to be famous for finding them, and now nobody cares about that anymore. All they want to talk about is that guy who killed them.” Abruptly, and in one smooth motion, Kevin slid past me and darted for the door. “I gotta go. My mom gets mad if I’m late.”

  With Kevin gone, the enfolding silence was like an echo.

  I spent another couple of minutes taking in the barn’s layout, fixing a mental picture in my head. Then I left as well, heading through the yard this time instead of the orchard. Near the house I passed a tire swing hanging from the branch of an old oak. A purple pail and shovel and a collection of plastic ponies lay in the dirt below. I felt a knot form in my stomach.

  The taking of any human life was hard enough to comprehend; I couldn’t begin to imagine the sort of sicko it took to kill a child.

  Chapter 4

  I drove home with the windows down, the hot air whipping through my hair and pounding in my ears. White noise, drowning out my thoughts.

  Loretta and Barney met me at the door, barking their greeting even before I’d slipped the key into the lock. Once I was inside the racket quieted to whines and whimpers, but they made up for it with lively body language. Loretta rubbed her torso hard against my legs, while Barney leaped at me from all directions like a coiled spring gone berserk. Dropping my purse and Wes Harding’s file onto the Parsons table by the door, I reached down and gave them each a vigorous scratching behind the ears.

  This was further evidence of how much my life had changed. Until a year ago I wouldn’t have attempted to raise an African violet without a secretary to water and care for it. Now I found myself responsible for a dog and a half.

  Loretta had been my father’s dog. I inherited her by default when he died. I also inherited Barney, and Barney’s four brothers and sisters, although I hadn’t known about them at the time. I'd thought Loretta as fat, not pregnant.

  Officially, Barney is Tom’s dog, or rather Tom’s children’s dog, at least on the days they stay at his place. Hence the name Barney, which they had chosen over a sizable list of suggestions from Tom and myself. Chosen for some reason known only to them, despite the fact that they’d long since outgrown childhood TV shows. Barney is half springer spaniel, half something that I guarantee isn’t dinosaur. And his fur is a cocoa brown, not purple.

  When Tom was out of town I took care of Barney. Even when Tom wasn’t, Barney wound up at my place as often as not. But then, so did Tom. Or he had until recently. In the last few months our relationship had seemed to stall. It was nothing you could put your finger on, and although I was sure we both felt it, we’d done our best to pretend we didn’t.

  Freeing myself from the canine welcoming committee, I kicked off my clothes and took a long, hot shower, scrubbing away the fine layer of dust and cobwebs from my visit to the barn. The mental picture of Lisa and Amy was not so easily washed away.

  I slipped into old jeans and a T-shirt, then made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the dining room table with Wes Harding’s case file.

  What it was, actually, was a thick accordion envelope containing several folders, all a bit dog-eared, and a sizable number of loose papers in an equally poor state. Only one of the folders was labeled, and it was empty.

  The first thing Sam and I were going to have to settle on was a filing system that made sense. I’m no neatness freak, believe me. My underpants and bras get tossed together in the drawer with my running shorts; my makeup bin looks like it ought to go out with the trash; and the stack of clean laundry in the corner doesn’t look much different from the stack of dirty stuff. But I like my paperwork organized. My brain requires all the assistance it can get.

  I started with the police report, which was not labeled as such, but appeared to be largely intact. The basic story wasn’t much different than what I’d gleaned from news accounts at the time of the crime. Lisa’s and Amy’s bodies had been discovered on a Sunday afternoon by thirteen-year-old Emmett Langley. What with the rats and the natural process of decomposition, it had been difficult to gauge the time of death with precision. Based on extrinsic evidence, however, the police were able to estimate that the deaths occurred somewhere between seven o’clock and midnight Friday evening.

  Apparently a neighbor had seen Lisa watering her yard at about six. The condition of the kitchen indicated that Lisa and Amy had eaten dinner, although Lisa had not yet done the dishes. Her answering machine logged two calls during the evening, one at eight-thirty, the other around ten. Both were apparently hang-ups since the machine had recorded static but no message. In the background of the first call there’d been muffled music and conversation reminiscent of a social gathering.

  Lisa never retrieved Saturday morning’s newspaper or mail, and she hadn’t shown up for her Saturday afternoon shift at the restaurant. Velma had assumed Lisa was suffering from one of her headaches and had decided not to bother her by calling.

  Lisa and Amy had both died of wounds to the throat, although in Lisa’s case there were multiple stab wounds in the chest area as well. There was a full paragraph describing the length and depth of the cuts, and the muscles and tendons severed, but I skipped over it, knowing that if those details became important to the case, I’d go back and wade through it. There was also a gash on Lisa’s left hand that was relatively fresh
but appeared to have been sustained sometime before her attack.

  Both bodies were found face up, and both were partially disrobed. Lisa’s blouse had been ripped open, her denim skirt pushed up around her middle. Amy’s shorts were lying in the dirt near her head. There was no sign that either of them had been raped, but both were naked from the waist down. Neither pair of undergarments had been found in the barn or on the surrounding property.

  I put the report aside for a moment and took a couple of deep breaths. The images were vivid and unsettling, as was the picture taking shape in my mind. This was an assailant who not only killed in cold blood but seemed to take a certain perverse pleasure in demeaning his victims.

  After a moment I shoved emotion aside and thought about the implications for our case. If the attack was an act of deviant behavior rather than clear-cut motive, did that help or hurt our position? It was hard to say at that point, but I thought it probably cut against us. Wes was, after all, a man with a less than upstanding reputation. Whether or not the reputation was deserved, it would be there in the minds of the jurors. I made some notes for myself, then went back to the file.

  I read about the rabbit’s foot that had been found near Amy’s body, the motorcycle tire tracks in the drive, the dirt samples from Wes’s cycle that were consistent with the soil on Lisa’s property. Again, I skipped the technical analysis. There’d be time for that later.

  Wes had been arrested on Tuesday, pursuant to a warrant that allowed the police to search his house. They hadn’t found the murder weapon, but they had found an extensive collection of knives. They’d also found a long, blond hair on one of Wes’s shirts, and a pair of blood- spotted jeans in the clothes hamper.