by Paul Moomaw
“You’re still a butt-head, Larry. Same as in law school. I had a Saint Bernard like you once. If he didn’t want to move, he just sat their and looked amiable. His name was Ulysses, but we called him Useless.”
“None of what you heard from Munsey will make a lot of difference. The County Attorney has physical evidence, and an eyewitness that places Marks at the scene.”
“Places his truck at the scene,” Arceneaux said.
“So what. If the truck was there, Marks was there.”
Arceneaux shook his head. “You sound like the prosecutor,” he said. “And even if Marks was with his truck, it was not the right time, if Wallace and Samantha died three hours apart.”
“Says an alcoholic ex-radiologist. If Munsey was some hot-shot forensic expert, I might get my hopes up, but Barb would tear him apart on the stand. I might not even be able to qualify him as an expert witness.”
“Hire a good second opinion,” Arceneaux said.
“Fine. I know just the man. He’s over in Spokane, and I ought to be able to get him for about thirty grand. You paying? Ravalli County sure as hell won’t.”
Arceneaux slapped his right fist into his left palm three or four times.
For Christ’s sake, look at it, Larry,” he said. “There’s a pattern in it. The differences in time of death, whatever you think of Munsey. The different ways the two were killed. It doesn’t add up.”
“Juries don’t pay attention to patterns, Sam. They want facts. The state has the facts. Hell, I could make the case myself. Marks crunches the guy with those big fists of his, then tortures the woman and beats her to death with a piece of stove wood, because she’s the one he really hates.” His shoulders slumped. “Look, Sam, if I have to I’ll try the case. Hell, I could use the extra billable hours to pay the rent. I may even come up with a few brilliant moves to entertain the judge.”
“What have you got to lose?”
“My future. I want to be the most successful damn defense attorney in Montana, if not the country. That doesn’t mean being brilliant. It means winning cases, or at least not losing cases, especially cases that get a lot of press, and this one would. So I want to plead Marks down and put it to rest.”
“And if he just won’t buy?”
“Then I go to court and get my ass kicked.” French settled deeper into the chair and shook his head, his eyes focused on something invisible. “Sometimes I think I ought to go somewhere else,” he said. “Somewhere they never heard of my dad.” He offered Arceneaux a mournful look. “You got any idea what it’s like to be the son of a small town institution? Every move I make, people are watching to see if I do it as well as the old man.” He lifted his hands and then let them drop into his lap. “Mostly, I think I don’t.”
“Believe it or not, I can relate to that,” Arceneaux said. “Everybody thought my dad was the greatest.” Except for my mother, he added silently. “And he was a great guy. Sometimes I worry that I can’t be the man that he was.” He shrugged and raised his hands. “Meantimes, you got this case, and I can’t help wanting my old classmates to take the high road, fight the good fight, all that stuff.”
“You did that. I can’t see it did you much good.”
Arceneaux rose and stepped to the door. “I’m not so sure. Maybe it did me more good than I knew at the time.” He paused. “Munsey did say that if you needed him, he could testify that Samantha’s fetus was not viable.”
“Great,” French said. “If I have to grab at straws, I’ll give him a call.”
“Whatever,” Arceneaux said. He was not going to slam the door as he left, but somehow it happened.
The traffic north to Missoula was less impossible than the stream of home bound commuters headed south, but still bad enough to make Arceneaux wonder when it had happened, if there had been an identifiable point in time when Montana shifted from a place where nobody lived, because it was too cold, to a dumping ground for excess Californians, most of whom seemed to want to bring their overheated, overpriced lifestyles with them. It showed in the traffic that added half an hour, sometimes more, to the forty-plus mile drive between Hamilton and Missoula, and in the fences and “No Trespassing” signs that blocked access to parts of the Bitterroot, and the Clark Fork, and the Blackfoot, where a few years before it was still possible to pull off the road, grab your rod, and wade right into the river. The epitome of the new immigres to Arceneaux was the woman who drove a Mercedes station wagon around town with a vanity license plate that said CALIF GAL. She was probably the same woman who complained in a letter to the Missoulian that local drivers flipped her the bird; or she might have been the one who could not understand what was wrong with building a house perched on a ridge in the middle of prime elk habitat, because “That’s the way we do it in San Francisco, and nobody complains.”
Arceneaux had worked himself into a fairly black mood by the time he got into town. He knew walking would help calm him down, so he drove to his house, and then went on foot back to his office. It worked, as usual. A lot of Missoula was still Missoula, especially if you stayed away from the tract houses and strip malls on the south end of the city. And the Clark Fork River would always be there. The blue heron was at its station again today, standing on one leg at the water’s edge, waiting patiently for a meal. Arceneaux had caught a big brown trout right there three autumns back, and a heron, possibly the same one, had tried to dispute ownership of the fish.
He climbed the tower stairs to his office and tried to feel like working. He threw himself into a chair and took inventory. There was no shortage of tasks. A report had needed to get done for a week and a half. His files were a mess. A stack of unopened mail lay in the other chair. He got up and poured himself a stiff shot of brandy, then returned to the chair, spun it to face the window, and stretched out to watch the sun drop behind Lolo Peak. As the sky began to darken, he drained the brandy, stood up, and headed for the door. “One more day won’t matter,” he said, not even sounding convincing to himself; but he had a dinner date with Anne, dinner was at eight, and he was the cook.
After the meal—baked fresh egg pasta with pine nuts, and asparagus baked in parmesan, finished off with Bilo Market’s very finest frozen strawberry cheesecake—Anne stretched languorously, reached under the table with her foot, and ran her toes up and down Arceneaux’s calf.
“If I marry you, do I get a meal like this every night?” she said.
Arceneaux shook his head. “I just do this sort of thing to get into your pants,” he said. “The rest of the time it’ll be TV dinners and the occasional fried fish, when I can catch one.”
“Right now I’ll settle for watching you wash the dishes, while I pour us a couple of brandies.”
Arceneaux scraped plates and put everything into the dishwasher, then settled down on the living room couch with Anne. He took a large swallow of brandy and sighed contentedly.
“Much as I hate not to live up to my macho reputation, what I need more than hot sex tonight is moral support and maybe some creative advice.” He outlined his meeting with Larry French, and the attorney’s frustrating refusal to budge from his conviction that a guilty plea and a deal were the only way to go.
“He says he’s prepared to try the case, but in his own mind he’s already lost it. At the very least, seems he could be taking some of these discrepancies to the prosecutor’s attention,” he said. “Barbara may be a jerk, but she isn’t incompetent, and as far as I know she doesn’t enjoy railroading innocent people.”
“Why don’t you talk to her?”
Arceneaux shook his head. “That won’t do any good. She couldn’t stand me when I was interning for her in the City Attorney’s office.”
“Says who? She must have liked you. She gave you all the German Shepherd and Pit Bull cases. The rest of us got stuck with little yappy dog complaints.”
“I was just her affirmative action badge of honor. Token Red Man.”
Anne stiffened. “And who the hell am I?” she said. “You toke
n white woman?”
Arceneaux flinched. An instant impulse to deny that he might feel that way banged up against the reality that he was not sure she was wrong.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “Call it my neurosis.”
“I don’t want to have to call it anything. I don’t want it to be there, Sam.”
“You’re right. I know I need to get past that kind of shit.”
Anne relaxed, but her eyes were still wary, and Arceneaux knew he had come close to crossing a line from where there might be no returning.
“Will you talk to Barbara?”
“It’s Larry’s job to talk to her,” Arceneaux said, feeling like a stubborn kid, and grateful at the same time that Anne had changed the subject.
“But if he’s not doing his job?” Anne said.
“He ought to.”
“You said yourself he isn’t going to.” She tapped him playfully on the back of his head. “Stop acting like a two-year-old.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. He knew she was right, and that by morning he would be ready to take her advice. But tonight he had to be obstinate. He didn’t understand why. Probably some survival trait he had learned from childhood. He took another swallow of brandy, put the snifter down, and managed a weak smile in spite of himself.
“Want to mess around?” he asked.
“Actually, I could use a little moral support myself right now,” Anne said.
“Problems?”
“Just one. His Honor Max Gruening.”
“Mister Not Admissible?”
“Yup. He’s sitting on a case that ought to be open and shut.”
“Drug case?”
“Yeah. The police spotted a BMW at a park on the west edge of town, way after nobody should have been there. The officer found the driver sleeping one off, and busted him on DUI per se. They impounded the car and checked the registration, and it didn’t belong to the guy driving it. He said a friend had lent him the wheels to go to a party because he had wrecked his own the day before. Admitted he had been drinking a little that time, too. The owner was notified and then the car sat in the impoundment yard. The owner never did show up, but as it happened, another car got pulled in as part of a drug investigation, and they brought sniffer dogs in to check it out. They didn’t find any stuff in that vehicle, but when one of the dogs walked past the BMW it alerted at the trunk. So they broke in and found a great stash of marijuana under a false bottom.”
“Business is good, if a weedhead can afford such a classy car.”
“Turns out he was pretty big time,” Suzanne said. “Anyway, the defense attorney has moved to exclude the dope. He insists the cops didn’t have reasonable cause to search the car, and that the search violated the perp’s expectation of privacy under the Montana constitution. I’m arguing that the search itself was a harmless error because the dog had sniffed it out when it was in the pursuit of a legitimate search of another car. And I argued that there was no expectation or privacy because the owner had lent his car to someone else. But you know Gruening.” Anne shook her head and snorted in disgust. “I can’t understand how they ever elected such a knee-jerk liberal in Montana.”
“This ain’t just any old Montana, honey,” Arceneaux said. “This here is Missoula, the blue pimple in a red state. You forget this was Wobbly headquarters once upon a time. They even let Quakers have a place to meet.”
“Whatever,” Anne said. She drained her glass, then grabbed the bottle and poured another inch of brandy. “We’ll meet in chambers tomorrow, but I’m not real hopeful.”
They sat in silence for a moment, then Arceneaux asked, “How long was the car in the police lot?”
“Four weeks,” Anne said. “No, almost five.”
“Abandonment,” Arceneaux said.
“How’s that?”
“If the owner knew the car was in the lot and let it stay that long, you can argue he abandoned it. There’s no expectation of privacy when you abandon your property.”
Anne gazed at Arceneaux admiringly and then kissed him on the cheek. “Why didn’t I think of that? Basic Rules of Evidence 101, for crying out loud.”
“Am I great or what?” Arceneaux said.
“You’ve always been great,” Anne said, and kissed him again. Arceneaux returned the kiss, letting it linger for a moment, then pulled away.
“So, now do you want to mess around?” he said.
Chapter 8
Otis Glazeburke, who claimed to have seen Arden Marks at the Double Pine the night of the murder, lived at Brookside, a clump of townhouses on Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, jammed into a meadow that once held an apple orchard. People in the neighborhood hated it from the beginning, and now, fifteen years later, still made a point of calling it “those triplexes,” because they knew it irritated the people who lived there.
Glazeburke’s two-bedroom townhouse faced the creek. He had a strong New York accent and a large, black standard poodle that lunged and snapped at Arceneaux as he stepped through the front door.
“Back off, Harold,” Glazeburke yelled, and grabbed the dog by the collar. “What can I tell you? It’s his house,” he said, and led the dog to the kitchen. He pulled a gate, the kind they use to fence kids off from danger spots, across the opening into the kitchen, and returned to the living room. “Sit,” he said to Arceneaux. “Want a drink?”
Arceneaux shook his head. “Too early in the day for me.” He moved toward a stuffed chair. The dog growled at him from the kitchen.
“Harold is protective,” Glazeburke said. He stepped to a side table laden with bottles and glassware, and picked up a bottle of Justerini and Brooks scotch. “It’s already cocktail time in Lake Placid,” he said. “That’s where I moved here from.” He splashed scotch into a tumbler, and added a squirt of carbonated water from a heavy glass siphon. He gulped down a large swallow, examined the glass critically, and added more scotch. Then he settled onto a green brocade love seat across from Arceneaux. “I should have stayed there,” he said. “In Lake Placid, I mean. I’m a designer and contractor, a damned good one. I may not have an architect’s license, but I know more than most of the second-raters around here. Not that it does any good. These people aren’t willing to pay for quality. But Lorena convinced me Montana was a gold mine, and I was in love.” He took another drink. “Lorena’s my ex wife. She’s from around here, somewhere. Montana native and all that. Very romantic. I should never have gone to that fucking movie, that River Runs Through It thing. What propaganda.” He shrugged. “Sure you don’t want something to drink?”
“Maybe a little of that fizzy water,” Arceneaux said.
Glazeburke waved his hand toward the side table. “Help yourself.”
Arceneaux stood up, and stepped toward the side table. Harold growled again.
“Don’t worry,” Glazeburke said. “He only bites when I tell him to.”
Arceneaux filled a glass from the soda siphon, returned to his seat, and pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket.
“Going to take notes?” Glazeburke asked.
“Yep,” Arceneaux said. “You can’t always tell what’s going to be important, so I just write it all down and sort through it later.” He scribbled the date and Glazeburke’s name at the top of a page and leaned back. “You were at the Double Pine a while back.”
Glazeburke nodded. “Right. Desperation trip, to try to put our marriage back together. Trouble is, the place is second rate. Lots of big, grandiose log buildings, but lousy design and architecture. I suppose I should have kept my mouth shut, but I’m no good at pretending. So I was honest, and Lorena got pissed off. So much for romantic interludes.”
“There was a murder while you were there,” Arceneaux said.
“Two murders,” Glazeburke said, holding up two fingers. “If you are going to be a detective, you should be more precise, even in Montana.”
“Two murders,” Arceneaux said, beginning to understand why Glazeburke’s wife had left him. “You and your wife
saw a man there.”
“Nearly the last thing I ever saw,” Glazeburke said. “The son of a bitch tried to kill my dog. Came roaring down the road in the middle of the night, no headlights, and deliberately swerved, trying to hit us. Actually, I suppose he was trying to hit Harold. You Montana yokels seem to have a thing about good dogs. If it isn’t a mongrel, kill it.”
“You don’t like Montana much,” Arceneaux said.
“Goddam straight I don’t. Nobody with any culture could. They should give the damn place back to the Indians.”
“We’d like that,” Arceneaux said.
Glazeburke stiffened slightly and managed to look sheepish. “You’re Indian?” he said.
Arceneaux nodded.
“You don’t . . .”
“Look Indian,” Arceneaux finished for him. “I’m a stealth redskin. We’re developing a fifth column. Going to push you Europeans right back into the ocean.”
Glazeburke laughed. “And we’d deserve it.”
“But in the meantime, you’re still here.”
“I have very little choice. Divorces are expensive, and to make things worse, I tied up most of my cash in this place. Now I can’t sell it for enough to free myself.” Glazeburke got up and refilled his glass. “So I’m stuck here, trying to make a living among people who don’t know quality when it stares them in the face.”
“Tell me about the man you say you saw that night,” Arceneaux said.
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” Glazeburke said. “I was too busy trying to get myself and Harold out of the way.”
“Did he leave any kind of impression?” Arceneaux asked. “Big guy, little guy, anything at all?”
“Nothing special,” Glazeburke said. “Just a guy. But a little later on, I saw the truck parked near the edge of the cabin complex. Big, green thing, half rusted out, which doesn’t surprise me. Nobody around here seems to take care of anything. It was an old Dodge, not like anything I had seen before. The name on the side of the hood was Power Wagon.”
“Was the driver in it?” Arceneaux said.