“Yes.”
As the sheriff and his deputies led Heath out of his family’s house, Gabe dissolved into huge, gasping sobs, and Emma swallowed her up in a mama-bear hug, so he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Logan and their father followed them all the way to the sheriff’s SUV. As Murphy loaded him into the back, pushing his head down, Heath heard his father call out, “I’m calling Scott now. We’re right behind you, son, and Scott’ll be there before any of us. Keep your damn mouth shut. You hear?”
Scott Smithson was the family attorney. He was not a defense attorney, and Heath knew he would need a good one. He had motive, means and opportunity. He’d seen enough cop and law shows to know that was the trifecta.
And they hadn’t even searched his house yet. There, they’d find a shirt and jeans covered in Black’s blood.
Not to mention what was on the boots on his feet right now.
He’d been framed—his hat proved that without question. This was no mistake. Somebody wanted him to go down for this murder. But he didn’t know how in hell they’d prove that, and he’d made it plenty easy to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had done it. That was likely as much truth as anybody would need. He’d be lucky not to get the death penalty.
Worst of all, Gabe thought he was guilty.
And maybe she was pregnant with his child.
Heath shifted on the seat, trying to find a way to be comfortable with his hands cuffed behind his back. He felt a familiar stillness, more deadness than calm, which he’d lived with for years, which had only lifted a couple of months before. When Gabe had come to Jasper Ridge and into his life.
His sense of despair and loss was too vast, too deep for expression. It overwhelmed him and shut him down.
His world had turned dark and desolate again.
Chapter Sixteen
Heath sat alone in the small room and studied the trails of black ink that filled the grooves of his fingertips, left behind after the wet wipe Pete had handed him gave out. He remembered a lesson in some class he’d taken in college, maybe freshman bio, about fingerprints: the whorl, loop, or arch. Though each person’s fingerprints were unique, their type was genetic. Heath’s fingerprints were arched, like his father and siblings. It was the rarest of the three types. His mother’s had been looped.
He’d fingerprinted his whole family for a class project about genetic traits. When he’d shared the results with them, his father had puffed up and laughed proudly. That’s Cahill blood. Strong and independent, he’d said.
Heath had never been inside the County Sheriff’s office before, but what had happened to him since Norb Murphy had pulled through the gate of the Twisted C Ranch and driven him away from his home was a lot like what television and movies said it was like. The ride had been silent but for the occasional blast of Murphy’s radio. He’d called something in, but most of what he’d said had been in code, and then he hadn’t spoken again.
At the station, Murphy had helped him out of the back and led him inside, his hand again clutching Heath’s upper arm, just above the elbow. Heath had looked around the lobby area as they entered the building, but he hadn’t seen Scott Smithson, so, for the first time since he’d been at his home, he’d spoken. He’d asked for his attorney.
Murphy had met his eyes steadily and then nodded. Then he’d led him back into the work area of the office.
He’d been uncuffed and told to empty his pockets. Since he’d been at home having breakfast, all he’d had in his pockets was his phone, which they’d logged and bagged as evidence.
Then he’d sat at a desk while a young female deputy asked him his address, date of birth, height, weight, employment, and other details of his existence.
Fingerprints. Mug shots. Cheek swab. Pictures of his battered hands. They took his boots and gave him a pair of cheap slip-on sneakers.
Finally, he’d been ushered into this room and left.
It wasn’t an interrogation room like he’d expected. It wasn’t bleak, wasn’t empty of everything but a bare table and a couple of uncomfortable chairs. The walls were painted a pale sage green, and the paint was in good shape. There was a black metal file cabinet in the corner with a plant in a plastic pot sitting on top. Three walls had windows, the transparent variety, covered in old Venetian blinds on the other sides of the glass. A clock, like the old round school clocks, its second-hand ticking, was fixed high to the fourth wall and told Heath that it was just past eleven a.m. A lifetime seemed to have passed since he’d been feeding Gabe a plump strawberry, but it had barely been more than an hour.
Beyond the locked door, he could hear the normal sounds of work—ringing phones, conversation, even laughter. Beyond that door, other people’s lives were going on in the normal fashion.
Heath stared up at the round, white face of the clock and watch the seconds tick by into the eternity of the end of his life.
*****
The clock told him he’d been alone in that room for another hour when the door finally opened. He’d been alone and numb long enough by then that he struggled hard to pull his attention back into the room, to care who’d come in.
He’d expected that Murphy would be the first one to talk to him, but instead it was Scott Smithson. Following him in was a young woman, blonde and blue-eyed. Both were dressed as if this Sunday were a business day: Scott in a grey suit and a white shirt—but without a tie—and his companion in a trim black skirt, heels, and a silky blue blouse. Her hair was done up in some kind of twist. Heath noticed small pearls in her earlobes. They matched the strand around her throat.
In the manner in which he’d been trained all his life, he stood for the lady.
Scott reached his hand out, and Heath shook it. “I’m sorry to hear about this trouble, Heath. And I’m sorry we couldn’t get here quicker, but I’ve been on this since your dad called, I promise.”
Heath nodded and then shifted his regard to the woman. She held out her hand as well, and he shook. Her grip was firm, her hand small and smooth. “Honor Babinot,” she said.
“How do. Excuse my manners, but why are you here?”
Scott answered, pulling out a chair for Miss Babinot and waving Heath to sit down as well. “Honor is one of the best defense attorneys in the state of Idaho. Prosecutors are terrified of her. I’m an agricultural attorney, Heath. I would be lost in a criminal court. The best service I can offer you now is to find you the best lawyer to help, which I have.”
Heath considered the woman sitting at Scott’s side. She was about his own age, maybe a bit younger. Pretty and slim. Call him a chauvinist, but he had some trouble imaging anyone fearing her.
She cocked her head at his study of her. “Before you make some piggish comment you can’t take back, Mr. Cahill, let me say that I have not agreed to take your case. I’ve only agreed to this meeting because I owed Scott a favor. When I understand the full dimension of the situation, we can make a decision about whether we’ll proceed together.
“No one’s asked me anything since I was at home.”
Scott sat back, taking on the role of spectator. Miss Babinot addressed Heath’s statement. “No, I don’t expect they have. You asked for your attorney upon your arrival, right?”
Heath couldn’t remember if he had. He tried to think back.
“No matter. They noted that you had, and they had no cause to press the point. It’s not like the movies, Mr. Cahill. When you ask for a lawyer, good officers shut up. In this case, from what I understand so far, they probably weren’t even tempted to do otherwise. They have a strong case already. They don’t need any more from you than you’ve already eagerly provided. Honestly, nearly any good attorney would tell you to take a deal and negotiate for generous visitation privileges and the possibility of parole.”
Heath stared at the surface of the table. The grain of the wood was sharply detailed and camouflaged many of the chips and dings. “But I didn’t do it.” He looked up and met Miss Babinot’s eyes. “I will take a l
ie detector, I’ll swear on anything. I know how bad it looks, but I was home last night.” A dry laugh burst from his mouth, like a cough. “Christ, just last night, I made a promise to leave Black alone from now on. He was safe from me.”
The young lawyer studied him for a moment, then turned to Scott Smithson. “Will you leave us alone, Scott?”
“Of course.” He stood and held out his hand again, and Heath shook it. “Your father and Logan are in the lobby, and they’re not goin’ anywhere. I’ll go out and talk to ‘em.”
“Okay, thanks.”
When they were alone, Honor Babinot pulled a black leather folio from her black leather bag. She opened it, slid a silver pen from a loop inside it, and looked up at him. “You have a long history with the victim.”
“Yes. Known each other all our lives. I guess you’ve heard what’s between us.”
“What I’ve heard isn’t as important as what you’ll tell me if I take your case. But for now, you can tell me if this summary is accurate: You blame him for the deaths of your wife and child. You have attacked him several times since, beating him badly each time. You have threatened to kill him on several occasions. You’ve done these things in full view and hearing of a multitude of witnesses.”
“Yes. All of that is true.”
She jotted down a short note. Heath didn’t bother to try to read it. “And yesterday afternoon, outside the town bar—”
“The Apple Jack Saloon. Everybody calls it the Jack.”
With a curt nod, she continued past his interruption. “Outside the Jack, you beat the victim again, threatening to kill him again.”
“Yes.” He didn’t remember threatening to kill him, but Gabe had said he had, and he certainly knew he’d wanted to.
“There are several hours during the night for which you can’t account.”
Wes had lobbied hard to put the ranch on closed-circuit security, but their father had refused. It says we’re scared and don’t trust our own people. That’s not the Cahill way, he’d insisted. If Wes had won that war, there would have been cameras documenting Heath’s comings and goings last night, and he would have been at home with Gabe right now, talking about getting married, making a baby. Making a life.
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, his Grandma Cahill used to say.
“I can account for them. I can’t prove my account.”
Another nod, another note. “Those hours are within the range of the victim’s time of death.”
“That’s what I’ve been told, yes.”
“The body was found at the creek, on the border of your family’s property and your neighbor’s.”
“Charlie Granville. C Bar G Ranch. That’s what I was told.”
“And your hat was found at the scene.”
“I lost it yesterday, probably at the Jack.”
She set her pen on the pad. Half the top page was covered in bold, elegant handwriting, inked in blue. Folding her hands over it, she looked up and held Heath’s eyes. “It looks very bad, Mr. Cahill.”
“Heath.”
“Heath. This evidence is all circumstantial, but it is significant and compelling. It tells a grand story. Juries love stories. They get hold of a narrative that makes sense, and even if they think the victim deserved what he got, they atone for their own bloodlust by bringing a guilty verdict. My strong instinct here is to tell you to plead. I can get you the best possible deal, keep you in medium security, maybe even minimum, keep you close to home, let you see your family every week, get you parole. You are well-liked in this community, and your family is influential. Your story is known. But if this goes to trial, I lose a lot of those bargaining chips. The victim is a member of the Shoshone tribe, on the Sawtooth Jasper Reservation?”
“Yes. So am I.”
Her blonde eyebrows went up a bit and then settled back into place. “But he self-identified as Shoshone. You do not.”
“I don’t deny my heritage. If you’re asking if I’m considered white, yes.”
“And he was not legally responsible for the deaths of your wife and child?”
Heath couldn’t stop his hands from curling into fists, but he kept his voice calm. “He ran away and left them to burn.”
“But he was not driving the vehicle at the time of the crash.”
“No. She was.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like this narrative, Heath. I understand that Brandon Black is the villain of your story, and I understand your reason and your anger. But there is also a story here about a sad man who made a terrible mistake and was tortured for it the rest of his life. About a rich and physically powerful man with a vendetta who persecuted a poor, weak man for years. The DA will look for a way to bring race into it as well, and if he succeeds…”
He would never, ever take a plea. With complete certainty that he would be convicted of this murder and spend the rest of his life behind bars, Heath knew he would never, ever plead guilty. The one strand of life he could keep his fingers around was the hope that Gabe might believe him, might trust that he had not broken his promise to her, the solemn vow he’d made on his daughter’s memory.
So he would never, under any circumstances, in any situation, ever say that he had.
“Miss Babinot, I know how bad it is. I see clearly, and I know how stories don’t need facts to become truth. I offered up all their evidence on a china plate. Maybe I did persecute him. Maybe he didn’t deserve it. But I did not kill him, and I won’t say that I did. If that means prison for the rest of my life, so be it. If it means the death penalty, so be it. I will accept responsibility for the things I’ve done, but not for things I haven’t.”
She closed her pen and slid it back into its loop, then folded the cover of her leather folio over the pad. As she slid it into her bag, Heath understood that he was still searching for an attorney.
“At every angle, this is an unwinnable case, Heath.”
“I understand.”
“But here’s the thing: I believe you.”
Surprise made him flinch. “Why?”
“Call it intuition. I am as successful as I am because I’m a good judge of character and a good reader of people. I read you as a man with a traumatic past and a big temper. I believe you were capable of killing Brandon Black, but I believe if you had done it, you would have done it before a town’s worth of witnesses, and you wouldn’t have dumped the body in a creek. I judge you to be honest and stalwart. None of that is proof for a jury, but it’s proof enough for me. I’m interested, so I’ll take your case.”
“Thank you.” An ounce of weight lifted off his heart.
“We’ll likely lose, and if we go all the way to a verdict, then there will be little I can do to affect your sentence.”
“I understand.”
“We have a single strategy, then: we have to find the truth, or make one. We need another suspect, another narrative, one with evidence just as compelling.”
“How do we do that?”
His new lawyer smiled. “I work hard, and you spend money. I have an investigative team on staff. When we’re done here, I’ll put them to work immediately. Right now, we need to get you arraigned so we can get bail set. I’ll tell you now: I can get a quick arraignment, maybe as early as tomorrow morning, but be ready for a high bail, maybe a million dollars, and possibly cash only.”
“Jesus.”
“Your family is wealthy, yes?”
He never really thought about it, but maybe that itself was an excellent indicator of wealth: the ability not to think much about money. “Yeah, but we don’t keep bundles of bills behind the Remington in my dad’s study. We don’t keep millions just sitting in the bank, either. It’s a business. The money is in the ranch.”
“Would you like me to speak to your father, have him start the process of getting some money out of the ranch, then?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She stood up, and Heath stood, too. “Okay. I’ll tell the sheriff that you’re ready to
finish processing. They’ll hold you here at the station until your arraignment. If you get bail—and you will, don’t worry—and it’s posted then, you’ll be able to go home from there. Otherwise, you’ll be transported to a facility in Kuna and held until bail is posted or until the trial, whichever comes first. I’m going to do what I can to push the trial back and give ourselves time to find our alternative story.”
Heath held out his hand. “Thank you, Miss Babinot.”
Her grip was as strong as before. “Ms. And you can call me Honor.”
“Honor. Thank you. It feels better just having somebody believe me.”
It did. As soon as she’d told him that she believed him, he got his whole hand around that thread of life and hope. He could imagine getting Gabe to believe him, too. If he had that, then whatever happened in the future would be bearable.
*****
“Your Honor, the state’s case against Mr. Cahill is very strong, and the murder of which he is accused is especially violent. He is a man of great means and connections. We consider him a flight risk. The state asks that Mr. Cahill be remanded into custody, and we seek a trial date as soon as possible.”
On Monday afternoon, sitting in the same clothes he’d put on before Sunday breakfast, with his cuffed hands resting helplessly in his lap, Heath sat beside Honor in the small, humid arraignment courtroom and stared blankly at the state’s attorney. Jackson Hayes was short and pudgy, with filmy blond hair styled in what would someday become a comb-over. He wore a plain navy suit with a light blue shirt and a red tie. Except for the black stacked-heel cowboy boots on his feet, he was the picture of a successful conservative.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 21