“But why?” Her voice was plaintive.
“Well, it may open up reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind. They may be sufficiently concerned about Sally’s testimony that they feel they can no longer be absolutely certain that Graeme is guilty.”
“He is guilty,” Emily said passionately. “He did this. I know it.”
“Many of the jurors may think so, too. The question is, are they sufficiently convinced to convict him?”
The reality seemed to dawn on her. “Are you telling me the son of a bitch could be acquitted? He could walk out of here?”
“I’m afraid that’s possible,” Dan said. His voice was hoarse and angry, as if that reality were only now dawning on him, too.
Stride looked up, hearing the thud of the courtroom door. Maggie was inside again, hurrying down the aisle, beckoning to him. He saw urgency written in her face. Without a word, Stride left Dan and Emily, pushed through the swinging gate, and met Maggie in the middle of the aisle.
“We found a body,” Maggie said breathlessly. “Guppo’s on the scene.”
“Rachel?”
“No way to tell. It’s just skeletal remains. The son of a bitch tried to burn her. Could be Rachel. Could be Kerry. Could be someone else.”
Stride closed his eyes. A month ago, this would have been tremendous news. Three months ago, even better. One of Gale’s best theories, that Rachel was really still alive, might have been stripped away.
“Where was she found?” Stride asked.
“Just a few miles north of the barn. If our search radius had gone another mile, we might have found her.”
“Does Guppo have the scene sealed off?”
“Yeah. The medical examiner is up there, too.”
“What’s he say about it?” Stride asked.
“For now, not much. All he’ll say is that the skeletal structure is consistent with that of a teenage girl. Otherwise, we’ll either have to wait for the DNA or dental records or hope something turns up in a search of the surrounding area.”
“Not a word to the press yet,” Stride said. “Play it cool. I’ll tell Dan, and then you and I can go up there.”
Stride looked back at Dan and Emily and wondered how you break news like this in front of the girl’s mother. He took a deep breath and told Maggie to wait for him. Returning to the front of the courtroom, he saw Dan and Emily watching him. There was no gentle way to say it.
“We’ve located a body in the woods north of the city,” he told them.
Emily’s eyes widened, and her hand flew to her open mouth. “Oh, no!”
Dan said, “Shit.” He repeated it several times.
Emily crumpled into a seat. She sat there silently, like a piece of broken eggshell, then finally looked at Stride with bloodshot eyes. “Is it—is it her? Rachel?”
“We don’t know yet,” Stride said. “I’m very sorry. We only have skeletal remains, so it’s going to take time to identify them.”
“How long?” Dan asked.
“We’ll probably have to wait for DNA tests, unless we can do something with dental records. Either way, it’s likely to be a few weeks.”
Dan shook his head. “We don’t have a few weeks. We don’t even have a few days.”
Stride nodded. “I know.”
“What do you mean?” Emily asked.
“The trial is almost over,” Dan told her. “Without positive identification, we can’t raise the issue in front of the jury. Our suspicions aren’t evidence.”
“But we have her body now,” Emily pleaded. “You can’t let that man continue to pretend to the jury that she may be alive.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t know yet that it is her body,” Stride reminded her gently.
“This is insane,” Emily said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this. My God, they can’t just let him walk away now. They have to postpone the rest of the trial. They have to give you time to prove it’s Rachel.”
Dan sighed, and Stride knew what he was thinking. It was too little, too late.
“That’s up to the judge,” Dan said.
31
“A continuance?” Judge Kassel’s eyebrows twitched, and her voice climbed an octave. “Mr. Erickson, please tell me this is an example of your charming sense of humor.”
Dan spread his hands plaintively. “I realize this is unusual, Your Honor.”
“Unusual?” Gale snorted. “Try outrageous.”
The two men leaned closer to the judge’s bench. Behind them, the courtroom was packed again, with hushed conversation buzzing through the crowd. Judge Kassel banged her gavel, but it did little to quiet them. Graeme Stoner sat alone at the defense table, his face stoic. Today, Emily sat immediately behind him, as if she wanted Graeme to feel her presence. Her eyes burned into her husband’s neck. Graeme, after noticing her there when he first sat down, hadn’t looked back once, but it was obvious that he could feel her there, close enough for her scent to reach him.
The jury was absent, secluded in the jury room while Dan pleaded for more time. They were the only people in the state of Minnesota who had not awakened to the headline splashed across the newspaper:
RACHEL’S BODY?
“No one could have anticipated something like this,” Dan said. “But in the interests of justice, we simply must take the time to analyze the remains.”
“He wasn’t concerned about a body before, Your Honor,” Gale said.
Judge Kassel stared down her nose at Dan. “That’s true.”
“He felt confident enough to make his case without any proof that the girl was dead,” Gale continued. “He’s had his chance.”
“I haven’t rested my case,” Dan pointed out.
“Yes, but he has nothing more to add, Your Honor. I don’t see any evidence. I don’t see any witnesses.”
Dan shook his head. “Much of Mr. Gale’s defense was predicated on leaving the jury with the impression that Rachel might still be alive. He used that implication to try to establish reasonable doubt. If we can prove conclusively that Mr. Gale’s insinuations were false, the jury deserves to know that.”
The judge crossed her arms and leaned back. “Mr. Gale?”
“The whole situation is prejudicial,” Gale argued. “The jury has heard all the evidence. It’s fresh in their minds. Giving the prosecutor time to let the jury’s memory fade is both unfair and unreasonable. The body could well turn out to be unrelated to this case, and it will be too late to repair the damage. Besides, we have no idea how long it will take them to make a conclusive identification, assuming they can do so at all.”
“Archie, you should want the delay,” Dan said. “Your Honor, even sequestered, the jury may very well know about the body. It’s too easy for news to seep through one way or another. They’ll conclude it’s Rachel. It will influence their decision. We should allow them to decide on facts, not innuendo.”
Judge Kassel offered a faint smile. “That’s very charitable of you, Mr. Erickson. But the fact is, the jurors will not hear anything about any body if there’s no delay. As soon as you called me last night, I shut down all phone calls in and out. That was before Mr. Finch’s little broadcast, thank God. There are no televisions and radios in the rooms. Their transport this morning was closely monitored. They don’t know now, and they won’t know when they start deliberating in a day or so if we take appropriate precautions. I’ll clear the courtroom if I have to.”
“You could declare a mistrial,” Dan suggested. “We could start over.”
Gale opened his mouth, but Kassel waved him to silence. “I’m way ahead of you, Mr. Gale. No mistrial, Mr. Erickson. There’s nothing wrong with this one.”
“Your Honor, the people shouldn’t be penalized because the defendant did such a good job of hiding his crime that we didn’t find the body until now.”
Gale corrected him. “They found a body, not necessarily the body. And even if it is Rachel, they have no additional evidence to tie Mr. Stoner to the body or the scene. It adds
nothing of value to the record.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Dan said heatedly. “We haven’t fully analyzed the crime scene.”
“Yes, let’s not get carried away, Mr. Gale,” Judge Kassel said. “Mr. Erickson is right. You got a lot of mileage out of the people’s failure to produce a body. You can’t argue that it’s meaningless now that they’ve got one.”
“They chose to proceed without a body,” Gale repeated. “If this discovery had been made a week from now, Mr. Stoner would already have been acquitted.”
“That’s irrelevant, Your Honor,” Dan said.
“Perhaps, but you did seem pretty anxious to get Mr. Stoner in front of a jury. Now you seem less anxious to have them decide his fate.” Judge Kassel pursed her lips and again held up her hand before the lawyers could continue. “I’d like to find out more about this discovery and how long it might take to get some answers.”
Her eyes found Jonathan Stride in the third row of the courtroom, and she crooked her finger, beckoning him to the bench.
Standing up, Stride felt all the eyes of the courtroom on him. He wasn’t prepared. He hadn’t slept, and his clothes were stained with mud. From early evening until two hours ago, when he sped back to the city, he had tramped through the mushy ground, under the glare of searchlights, hunting along with twenty other officers for additional clues. He knew it was a doomed effort, although they would sift through the dirt for days to come. After six months of rain, snow, and ice, there was nothing left to tie Graeme Stoner to the scene, no footprints, no fibers, no blood, nothing except a body that was no more than a jumble of bones.
But they had a body. The question was, whose?
Stride pushed through the swinging door at the bar and joined Dan and Gale in front of Judge Kassel. She eyed his clothes and the bags under his eyes.
“You’ve had a long night, I gather, Lieutenant.”
“Very long, Your Honor,” Stride said.
“I assume you can keep your eyes open long enough to answer a few questions.”
Stride smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you. Now, first of all, who told Mr. Finch and the rest of his friends in the media about this body?” Judge Kassel demanded. “It’s bad enough to have this in the middle of trial, but worse to have it blared all over the state. We’re lucky the jurors didn’t hear about any of this.”
“I’m very sorry about that, Your Honor,” Stride said. “I wish I could tell you how Bird gets his information. I have no idea.”
“All right, well, I guess that’s his job. Now tell me exactly what you found. These are definitely human remains?” Judge Kassel asked.
“Yes. We confirmed it with the medical examiner.”
“Sex?”
“The ME says female,” Stride said.
The judge nodded. “And no ready means of identification? It could be Rachel or Kerry or some other girl?”
“There was nothing left to identify. No clothes, no personal effects. The body was partially burned. We’ll be running DNA tests on the surviving bone.”
“How long will all of this take?”
Stride shook his head. “I wish I could give you a clear answer, Your Honor. It could be a couple days, and it could be a few weeks.”
“And you found no other evidence of note near the body?”
“No. We’ll continue searching, but I’m not optimistic, given the amount of time that has passed.”
Dan interrupted. “But the real key is the identity of the body, Your Honor. If this turns out to be Rachel, it has an enormous bearing on the trial.”
“If, if, if,” Gale said. “If this, maybe that. No evidence, but we’ll continue searching. Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe never. Mr. Stoner should not have to sit around while the police and the prosecution stall us with vague promises of evidence yet to come. Neither should the jury. There is really nothing here, Your Honor, except smoke.”
Judge Kassel sighed. “I’m inclined to agree.”
Dan grabbed the bench with both hands. “Your Honor, just a few days. Give us until the end of the week to confirm the identification. If we don’t have anything by then, we’ll wrap up the trial.”
“And meanwhile the witnesses will be a distant memory,” Gale said scathingly. “It’s now or never.”
“They can have any testimony they like read back to them,” Dan said.
“Oh, please,” Gale said.
Kassel cut them both off. “That’s enough, gentlemen. Mr. Erickson, I’m sympathetic to your situation. I’m loath to proceed with the tantalizing possibility of new and crucial evidence so close. But right now, you have nothing but hopes and theories. You went into this case without a body, convinced you could get a conviction. You’re going to have to abide by that decision.”
The judge reached down, clicking on her microphone, and banged her gavel again to quiet the courtroom. She directed her announcement to the court.
“The motion for continuance is denied. We will proceed with the trial.”
“Your Honor, I renew my motion that hearsay evidence of a sexual relationship between the defendant and Rachel Deese, as cited in deposition by Dr. Nancy Carver, be admitted, on the grounds that the declarant is unavailable as a witness.”
“Denied. Anything more, Mr. Erickson?”
Dan clenched his fists in frustration. “No, Your Honor.”
“Fine. Bailiff, please bring in the jury.”
Stride turned away from the bench. He saw fury in Dan’s eyes, a coldness, directed at him, he had never felt in his life. It was as if Dan’s future had been buried in the shallow hole where they had dug up the body, and he could find only one person to blame.
Dan whispered, “You fucked this whole case up for me from day one.”
Stride didn’t reply. He didn’t have time.
Something was wrong.
The buzz in the crowd had changed. The noise and whispering that followed the judge’s decision turned into something else. People were confused, pointing, standing. Someone was shouting. It was Maggie, in the third row, calling Stride’s name and scrambling across people to get to the aisle.
Close by, others began screaming.
Stride saw Graeme Stoner jerk up out of his chair at the defense table, as if an electric current were bolting through his skin. Graeme steadied himself with his hands flat on the table. His eyes were wide, filled with puzzlement.
Graeme’s mouth fell open, as if he were about to laugh. Then his chest heaved, and instead, a trickle of blood dribbled from his lips. Graeme blinked. He looked down at the drips splashing on his white shirt like cherries in the snow.
He smiled.
Then his chest heaved again, and the trickle became a river.
Bright red blood streamed from Graeme’s mouth, then his nose. The river poured over his suit, bathing his shoulders and chest, then spilled onto the table, soaking the raft of papers scattered there. It cascaded like crimson fountains into puddles on the floor.
Graeme’s eyes turned gray and glassy and rolled up into his head. For another few seconds, he remained standing at attention. Then his body seemed to shrivel. His shoulders caved inward, and he collapsed in a pile on the table, his face dangling over the edge, still spouting a geyser of blood that now squirted over the courtroom floor in a growing lake. There was no way to turn off the spigot, and even Dan Erickson and Archibald Gale shouted and reared back as the red flood pooled around their shoes.
All the while, Graeme lay face down, draining the last few beats of his heart.
Stride tried to run, but he slipped in the blood. He regained his balance and dove forward. Maggie arrived first. She battled past the last few people who stood in her way, transfixed by the horror in front of them. She leaped over those who had thrown themselves to the floor, screaming, in an effort to escape.
Emily Stoner stood in the front row, as frozen as those around her, staring at the blood-soaked body of her husband immediately in front of her. Her
right arm was held high. Maggie’s tiny hands clenched Emily’s outstretched arm in an iron grip, holding it in the air, but it was as if Emily didn’t notice. She didn’t move. She didn’t let go.
Then Stride arrived, leaning past Graeme Stoner’s dilapidated corpse to strip the red-stained butcher knife from Emily’s hand.
Bedlam.
32
The chambered windows in the upper-floor library of the Kitch were closed, buffeted by a morning thunderstorm. Gale sipped coffee from a china cup as he leaned against the window frame. He glanced over at Dan Erickson, who sat on the sofa with a plate of eggs and sausage and a tall orange juice in front of him.
“You know, they would have acquitted him,” Gale told Dan. His lips curled upward in a smile, and his eyes twinkled.
Dan’s fork and knife clinked on the plate as he cut up his eggs, yolks oozing out. “Don’t be so sure. You heard the interviews Bird did with the jurors. They didn’t believe Sally was involved. They thought Graeme did it.”
“I believe they said ‘probably,’ and that would be reasonable doubt if we were in a courtroom. Besides, they all had the opportunity to watch your press conference last week. Angry prosecutor denouncing the unfounded allegations against an innocent girl. No evidence except what points to Mr. Stoner.” Gale’s face was illuminated by a flash of lightning. “Forget the fact that you couldn’t prove it in court.”
“Says you,” Dan replied pleasantly.
Gale shook his head. “I can’t believe Emily got in there with the knife.”
“We had metal detectors, but the media was hounding her. She asked to be brought in through the rear door. Who knew she was going to go off the deep end?”
“You’re saying it was a surprise? Please. I half think you wanted something like this to happen, Daniel.” Gale sipped more coffee. “Did you work out a deal with her?”
“Manslaughter two. Three years, minimum security.”
“A slap on the wrist,” Gale said.
“Oh, come on. The man killed her daughter. Archie, we’re not in court anymore. You don’t really believe Graeme was innocent, do you?”
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