Evidence of Guilt

by Jonnie Jacobs

  Because the road was too narrow and winding for the other car to pass I sped up a bit, hoping to put more distance between us. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the other driver. He stayed close to my bumper, even when I accelerated further.

  About a mile on, the road straightened for a stretch. When the car behind me made no effort to pass I slowed to let him by. He slowed also, like a pilot flying in precision formation. Annoyed, I pulled as far to the right as I could without straying onto soft shoulder. But the car still wouldn’t pass. Finally I picked up speed again. He did the same.

  Suddenly fear rose in my throat. I was alone on an empty road. The nearest house was miles ahead. I hit the button for the window and cranked it up. Then I reached around and hit the door lock. Not that either would deter a serious pursuer. I checked the speedometer, wishing I’d bought the new rear tire Tom had been urging. This was not the time for a flat.

  The car’s interior held nothing I could use as a weapon. No tire iron, pocket knife or heavy flashlight. And the canister of pepper spray I’d carried so religiously in the city was at home in my bedroom drawer, where I’d stashed it upon my return to Silver Creek.

  Again I glanced in the rear-view mirror, trying to make out faces in the car behind me. The glare was too bright. I couldn’t even tell the type of car, except that it appeared to be a large American model, riding maybe a little lower to the ground than was standard.

  Had I chanced onto some maniac rapist? Or was it something I’d stirred up with my questions about Lisa and Wes? Or was I, maybe, reacting with unwarranted paranoia?

  I tried to convince myself of the last option but failed miserably. My heart was racing and my hands had begun to tremble.

  Stay calm, said the voice of reason. Drive carefully. Eventually you’ll come to a more populated area where you can get help.

  Unless he runs you off the road first, I thought.

  I gripped the wheel, pulled myself up straight, checked the gas gauge. Almost half full. At least I didn’t have to worry about that.

  Just then the lights of an oncoming car reflected in the darkened sky. As it approached, I slowed to a crawl and flashed my high beams like crazy to get his attention. When he was almost beside me I tooted the horn.

  Call the cops. Turn and follow me. I did everything but open the car door and fling myself in his direction.

  The car sped past, not even bothering to flash his lights in return.

  The car tailing me had pulled back a little, but once the oncoming car was past he inched forward again. Then started flashing his lights in a mockery of my own feeble efforts. From where I was sitting the effect was something like that of a strobe light, and I had to concentrate to keep my eyes focused on the road.

  When we finally approached the outer limits of Hadley I began to relax. I planned to pull up in front of the police department and lean on the horn. I thought it unlikely the car behind me would stick around for the finale, but I wasn’t taking a chance.

  I slowed at the first stop sign but didn’t come to a complete stop. The car behind me did the same. At the second sign I was forced to stop by a truck coming from my right. Before I could start up again, the car from behind swung alongside of me. I cringed, hit the horn and peeked to my left, into the passenger-side window of the other car.

  It took my eyes a moment to focus. The car had pulled ahead and through the intersection by the time it dawned on me that I’d just been mooned by a carload of rowdy guys.

  Chapter 22

  Kenny Rogers was crooning about love gone bad as I pulled out of the driveway the next morning on my way to work. I’d returned home the previous night still giddy with relief at learning I’d been tailed by immature males rather than maniac killers. But this morning I’d woken in a cold sweat, racked with lingering doubts.

  If we hadn’t reached town when we did, would things have turned out differently? What if I’d panicked and driven into a ditch or the path of an oncoming car? More to the point, what if it hadn’t been just a couple of rowdies out having a good time? Was it possible that someone had singled me out for the sole purpose of spooking me?

  I tried to remember whether anyone had left the Last Chance when I had, or been nearby when I got into my car. But my mind had been on other things and I hadn’t noticed.

  It was the top of the hour as I pulled onto the main road. Music gave way to news. The president was spending the week at Camp David. A hot spot of world strife had been doused, temporarily anyway, by renewed peacekeeping efforts. The price of gold was up, silver down. The stock market was even. I listened with half an ear.

  “Closer to home,” the newscaster continued, “an automobile accident has claimed another life.”

  My ears pricked up. Could it have been the car following me last night? I didn’t want to think about what might have happened if our bumpers had connected.

  “The wreckage was discovered late yesterday afternoon by a hiker in the Cottonwood Canyon area. The blue Mazda apparently plunged off an area along Route 12 that is known for its hazardous turns. Authorities estimate that the car had been in the canyon for several days.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. Different part of the county, different time frames. Nothing linking the two incidents but my own skittishness.

  “The driver of the vehicle, Dr. Donna Markley of Sierra Vista, appears to have been the only occupant. It is not known how she went off the road or when the accident occurred.”

  My whole body tensed. I reached over and turned up the volume. What I really wanted was to hit rewind. The newscaster had already moved on to other matters.

  That was the problem with radio news: You miss it and it’s gone. With the newspaper you can go back and reread a story as many times as you like, dissecting it word by word.

  I’d let my attention wander, but I was sure I’d heard the name correctly. And there couldn’t be two Dr. Markleys in Sierra Vista. I turned left at the next intersection and headed to the police station to see Daryl Benson.

  Most days I have to wheedle my way past Helga, who watches over the inner sanctum of the police department like an armed sentry. But when I got there today she wasn’t at her desk. I mentally thumbed my nose as I passed.

  Benson was hunched over his desk, phone pressed to his ear. When I rapped softly on his open door, he grinned and motioned for me to sit.

  A moment later he hung up and said, “What a wonderful surprise. You had breakfast?”

  I nodded.

  “How about a cup of coffee then?”

  “I’ll pass, but thanks.”

  Benson frowned, rocked back in his chair, eyed me warily. “This is shaping up to look an awful lot like a business call. You’ve got that look about you.”

  “Well, I—”

  “And here I was hoping you had stopped by just to say hello.”

  I offered an apologetic smile. “Not this morning, I’m afraid.”

  “So what is it? Something to do with Wes Harding, I bet.”

  It was my turn to frown. “That’s what I’m not sure about. I heard a report on the radio about an auto accident near Cottonwood Canyon. A woman was killed. Dr. Donna Markley. She’s a local psychiatrist. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Not much. The sheriff s department got that one.”

  “But you must know something,” I said.

  He shrugged. “There’s not a lot to know. A man was out walking with his dog when he discovered the wreckage. He peered inside, saw a hand, vomited, then hiked out and called the sheriff. The woman was dead. She appears to have been the only occupant of the vehicle. Looks like she missed the turn, swerved right when she should have gone left and wound up on the canyon floor. It’s nearly the same spot where those two high school kids were killed a couple of years ago.”

  “Any idea when it happened?”

  ‘The clock in the car stopped at eight o’clock. That’s either a.m. or p.m., but from what they’ve pieced together, it looks like the accident was We
dnesday evening. Apparently she saw her last patient Wednesday around four o’clock. Neighbor doesn’t recall seeing the doctor’s car in the driveway that evening. She didn’t think much of it at the time since the doctor travels quite a bit.”

  “Nobody reported her missing?”

  “Sad, isn’t it? She lives alone. Her patients assumed there’d been a change of schedule they’d forgotten. Couple of them called and left a message on her machine, but that was it.”

  My own messages would have been among them. Three or four calls. And even though it had struck me as odd that Dr. Markley hadn’t called back, I’d never thought to check further. I didn’t want to think that she might have been alive, desperate for help, while I was growing impatient waiting for her call.

  “What’s your interest in this?” Benson asked.

  I explained Dr. Markley’s connection with Lisa Cornell, then hit the highlights of my visit earlier in the week. “When she called me the other day and left a message I assumed it was because she had something more to tell me.”

  “About Lisa Cornell?”

  “It was the only thing that made sense.”

  He screwed up his face in a look of disapproval. “You’re casting around for another killer, aren’t you? Some major lead the police overlooked.”

  “It happens,” I said.

  “Not very often.”

  “Your guys were so sure it was Wes, they didn’t look for other possibilities.”

  “It walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, you’re going to assume it is a duck. Sure, maybe it’s an alligator in disguise, but that’s highly unlikely. Shit, Kali, there’re always other possibilities. You’d never close a case if you exhausted every avenue of ‘might have beens.’ It would take years.”

  I flashed him a smug smile.”That’s why we have courts and quaint, curious notions like burden of proof.”

  He laughed. We’d covered this ground before, innumerable times. “You making any headway?”

  “It’s slow. But this is one time that duck of yours just might turn out to be an alligator.”

  “I’m sorry, then, that you didn’t get to hear what the doctor lady had to say.”

  “So am I. Were any other cars involved in the accident?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any witnesses?”

  “None that have come forward.”

  “How about skid marks?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Like I said, this one’s the sheriffs.” He paused. “Are you getting at what I think you are?”

  “It seems suspicious to me that she died when she did, the way she did. It wouldn’t even have been fully dark at eight o’clock.”

  “Those high school kids I was telling you about — they drove off there in broad daylight.”

  “But they were probably horsing around, maybe drinking beer or popping pills, right?”

  “Smoking marijuana.” He conceded the point with a glum nod. “But take a look through the department’s traffic reports. What you’ll find is that accidents happen day or night. Some of the time drugs or alcohol are involved, but sometimes they’re not. You turn your attention elsewhere for a moment, overcompensate when you realize you’re in trouble. Maybe you’re going faster than you should be. It’s usually just simple carelessness.”

  “Or maybe your brakes don’t work,” I added, “or someone nudges you from the rear at just the wrong moment. Will you do me a favor and talk to someone in the sheriff s department? Find out if there was anything suspicious about the accident. Also find out what you can about Dr. Markley’s activities that evening. Where she was going, where she’d been.” I could do it myself, but not without jumping through a lot of hoops. And that kind of jumping took time.

  “You and your favors,” Benson grumbled. “What do you ever do for me in return?”

  “I feed you on occasion.”

  “Not often enough.”

  “As soon as you’ve got something for me, give a call. Then pick your night and your menu.”

  A sly smile. “This is a whole lot of information you want.”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, I’ll throw in an apple pie too.”

  “A la mode,” he said.

  <><><>

  As soon as I got to my office, I called Sam. “Did you listen to the news this morning?” I asked.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Keep up with what’s going on in the world.”

  “That’s what newspapers are for.”

  “I share your bias, but print media is under a real handicap when it conies to late-breaking news.” I told him about Dr. Markley’s death. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t help wondering if she knew something that had a bearing on the case.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have told you when you went to see her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’d forgotten about it, or maybe she needed to think about how much of a patient’s confidence she could reveal.”

  “Any ideas what it was?”

  That required a different level of wondering. “It could have been about men,” I said, and then told him about my trip to the Last Chance the night before. “For an engaged woman, Lisa showed a surprising interest in other men.”

  Sam snorted. “That certainly ought to qualify as ‘unresolved conflict.’ ”

  “Or maybe it was a specific name. Somebody who’d threatened her or roughed her up a bit. It might have been something Lisa mentioned in passing, something that didn’t pertain directly to her therapy.”

  Sam was silent a moment. “Didn’t you tell me that Dr. Markley specialized in childhood abuse?”

  “She was heading up the good-touch, bad-touch program at the elementary school. And she was seeing a friend of Myra’s who was abused as a child. But I don’t know that she necessarily specialized in it.”

  “That stepfather, what’s his name?”

  “Ron Swanson.”

  “Right. You said Lisa’s behavior took a turn south soon after he came into the picture?” Sam didn’t wait for a reply. “And he admitted to you, as I recall, that he tried to be chummy with her.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “I hope that’s not it.”

  “Why? You got a soft spot for the guy?”

  I did, albeit a small one. But that wasn’t it. “Do you know how hard it would be to lay that theory out as the main line of our defense? Lisa can’t talk. Neither can the therapist she confided in.”

  “There might be others who knew what went on.”

  “We’d never find them, not with what little time we’ve got.”

  “Too bad Dr. Markley didn’t leave you a more detailed message.”

  “With Myra taking it down,” I said, “a message of more than a handful of words wouldn’t have been much help.” I rolled a pencil between my thumb and forefinger. “I’m thinking that Dr. Markley’s death might not have been an accident. Lisa Cornell was her patient, and Lisa was murdered. Now the doctor is dead, too.”

  “Could be coincidence.”

  “Could be. But if it’s not, then Dr. Markley must have known something important.”

  Sam was quiet for a moment. “If there’s a silver lining to all this,” he said finally, “it’s that Wes couldn’t have killed her. Not sitting behind bars the way he is. If the doctor’s death is somehow tied in with Lisa’s and Amy’s, it points away from Wes.”

  Except that Wes and his buddies were experienced hands when it came to automobile repair — and disrepair. If you were going to mess with a car’s brake line or steering mechanism, it helped to know what you were doing.

  A conspiracy seemed far-fetched, but I couldn’t entirely discount it.

  Chapter 23

  I don’t often get hunches, but when I do I’m usually right. This time the weight of reason was with me, as well. If Lisa’s and Dr. Markley’s deaths were related, then the therapy sessions had to be the key. That didn’t narrow things down much in terms of suspects, but it did give me a next step.

 
; I checked my notes to see if there was any mention of Lisa Cornell’s primary physician. I didn’t think there had been, and I was right. Somewhat reluctantly, I called Philip Stockman at work. When the receptionist answered, I asked for him by name, as though we were old buddies. The ploy might have worked except that he was out of town on business and wasn’t expected back for several days. I asked for Helene next. The receptionist put me through and Helene herself answered on the second ring.

  I gave her my name, stumbling a bit in the process of reconfiguring my spiel. “Sorry if I sound surprised,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to answer directly. I thought there’d be a secretary, maybe a whole string of them.”

  “We’re a family operation,” she explained. “Even though we’ve grown considerably, Philip insists we answer our own phones whenever possible. If you allow your top executives to insulate themselves from everyday people and problems, there’s no way they can know the business.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  Her tone had softened a bit as she went through the recital of company policy. It was obvious she’d covered that territory before. Now, as she remembered who she was talking with, her voice grew distant. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to find the name of Lisa’s physician.”

  “Her physician?”

  “The one she saw about her headaches. I tried to reach your brother, but he’s out of town.”

  “Why are you interested in Lisa’s doctor?”

  In light of the half-truths Lisa had told Stockman I crafted my answer carefully. “The doctor who ran Lisa’s chronic pain group was killed in an auto accident. I had a few questions I wanted to follow up and I thought her medical doctor might be able to help.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “Sorry I can’t be more specific. I’m not sure what I’m looking to find myself.”

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with Lisa’s death.”

  I thought quickly. “The Friday afternoon call from someone in her group. I think it might be important.” I paused, waiting for Helene to jump in. When she didn’t, I continued. “Lisa’s regular doctor might be able to tell me more about this group and the kind of help they offered one another. Maybe he’s even referred other patients there.”