“The evidence points to it.”
“But what do you think?” she persists.
He puts the dried plates in the cabinet. “He’s my client. The least I can do for him at this point is be open-minded.”
“It sounds to me like you do,” she counters, trying to get him to commit. “Think he’s guilty.”
They go out onto the porch with their glasses of wine. It’s a balmy night, they’re comfortable sitting outside. In the low distance the lights of the city and the harbor sparkle and flicker.
“From up here it feels like we’re home,” she says. “Especially when it’s dark out.”
“This is my home,” he reminds her.
“Used to be,” she reminds him.
“Used to be,” he agrees. Reverting to the other train of thought she raised, he says, “If it was a kidnapping, why wasn’t there a struggle? I keep coming back to that.”
“Maybe she was still asleep.”
“Yeah. It’s logical, but it doesn’t feel right. I’ve got to pin that down more.”
Riva says what she’s thinking, what he’s been thinking. “Or she knew him.”
“That feels more right.”
“She knew Joe Allison, didn’t she?”
“Oh, yeah.” That is what’s most upsetting to him. “But if it was him, what in the world would that say about them? What kind of relationship does that say they had?” He runs a finger around the rim of his wine glass. “God forbid, if there was something going on between them, was it even a kidnapping at all?” Continuing that train of thought, he adds, “But if there was something going on between them, why would he kill her?”
Lisa Jaffe, dressed in the outfit she wore to school—holed-at-the-knees baggy overalls over a Wet Seal T-shirt and sockless black Converse All-Stars—sits cheek by jowl with Susan, her mother, on the canvas-slipcovered couch in their small living room, tightly gripping her mother’s hand for support. Luke and Riva sit across from them, a small Mexican-tiled coffee table from Pier One separating the two groups. Luke can sense her nervousness. He knows she’s been seeing a psychologist since the murder, but wonders if it’s done much good.
The house is not impressive, nor is the street on which they live. A small clapboard house in need of paint in a neighborhood of like houses. The people in this neighborhood are working-class, a lot different from the rich folks in Montecito like the Lancasters.
Luke has brought Riva with him to soften the impact. Observing the witness’s mother sitting next to her anxious daughter, the woman’s mouth set in a tight line, he knows that having her accompany him was a smart move.
He takes the file containing Lisa’s statement from his briefcase and opens it, laying it on the coffee table in front of him. “This won’t take long,” he assures mother and daughter. “We appreciate your seeing us.”
Susan gives him a tight nod. Lisa stares down at the open file as if the flat papers inside it might come alive and attack her.
“We have a few details to clarify,” Riva says by way of opening the questioning. Luke has introduced her as his “colleague,” leaving any specific designation deliberately vague. He’s already prepped her on what he is hoping to find out. Her asking the questions will make it easier for Lisa to speak freely.
“Lisa has to leave for ballet rehearsal in half an hour,” Susan says. Meaning: don’t drag this out.
“That’s fine,” Riva says in a soft, calming voice. She picks up Lisa’s statement. “Initially you weren’t sure if this had happened or if you were dreaming it? Is that correct?”
Lisa looks at her mother, who nods. “Yes,” the petite girl says in a small voice. “But it wasn’t. I said that because I had been very tired. We’d been up late and I got woke up, so for a minute I didn’t realize where I was, since I wasn’t in my own house,” she goes on, rambling from nervousness.
She looks closer to twelve or thirteen than fifteen, Luke thinks, observing her. He wonders if she’s even started menstruating yet. Certainly anything having to do with sex would be foreign and scary to her, even more so a year ago.
“You’re positive, then, that what you saw was real, and not a dream,” Riva says.
“Yes. It was real.”
“The man—it was a man?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Had her in his arms.”
“Yes.”
“Actually, what you told the police was, someone who must have been a man had something in his arms that must have been Emma, is that right?”
The girl, twitching like a nervous rabbit, glances at her mother.
“Go ahead,” Susan Jaffe tells her daughter, her irritation at this uninvited intrusion into their lives clear and unambiguous. Luke, watching the interaction, knows she won’t consent to having her daughter interviewed again; they won’t have another chance to question her until she’s actually on the stand at the trial.
He’s okay with that. There’s only one important detail he wants to nail down.
“Yes,” Lisa says timorously, answering Riva’s question about what she had told the police.
“But at the time you actually witnessed this—at about three or four o’clock in the morning, after having been abruptly awakened from a deep sleep—you didn’t know it was Emma wrapped up in that blanket, is that right?” Riva asks, keeping her voice low and soothing.
“Yes,” the girl admits.
“You never actually saw Emma’s face?”
“No.”
“Or the man who took her.”
Lisa draws breath. “No,” she admits. “I didn’t see him.”
“He had a hat on that covered most of his face,” Riva reads from the file. “Do you remember telling the police that, Lisa?”
“Yes,” the girl answers quietly.
“Let me see if there’s anything else,” Riva says, looking to Luke for prompting. He makes a twisting motion with his hand. “Oh, yes,” Riva says. “You went to Emma’s house from downtown in a taxicab, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who let you into the house?” Riva asks. “Was it Mrs. Lancaster, or was it someone else? Or was the door unlocked?”
The girl blinks. Thinking about that, she scrunches her eyebrows in a frown, then says slowly, “I don’t … Emma unlocked the door, I think. Nobody let us in,” she says with more certainty.
“So either the door was unlocked, or she used her house key,” Riva continues the thought.
“I guess.”
Riva glances at Luke. He nods. “I think that’s all we need for now,” she says, closing the folder and handing it to Luke. Bending closer to Lisa, she says, “That wasn’t too bad, I hope.”
“No, it wasn’t too bad,” Lisa admits. She’s relaxing her vigilance, now that the questioning’s over.
“May I ask one question?” Luke says. He’s on his feet, stuffing the file into his thickly filled briefcase.
“What?” the girl says, freezing up immediately.
“This man who was carrying this figure in the blanket. Did he have anything else in his hands, like some clothes, shoes, a purse. Anything like that?”
Lisa thinks for a moment, closing her eyes and scrunching up her forehead again. “No,” she says, opening her eyes and looking at him. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
Sitting outside the Jaffe house in the old truck, Luke ponders what Lisa Jaffe has just told him. “If Emma Lancaster unlocked the door that night, that means she had her keys with her. And then she’s carried away. So how does the key ring get out of the house and into Joe Allison’s car a year later?”
“Unless the door was unlocked and she didn’t use her keys,” Riva responds.
“Okay, that’s one possibility, although in her statement to the cops, Glenna Lancaster went to pains to talk about how they were security-conscious.” Thinking, he goes on, “Or another possibility, Emma had a duplicate set of keys. Not far-fetched. And she did know Allison, so she could have lost her keys in his car some
earlier time, told her mother she lost them and didn’t remember where, and got a new set.”
“Except her mother made a big point of telling the police that those keys were missing,” Riva reminds him. “Specifically. They were the only items she could definitely remember as missing, because of the sentimental value.”
“So unless Emma was asleep when her abductor snatched her, she went without a struggle,” he recaps. “And her missing keys might not have been missing when they were supposed to be missing.”
“Which takes us back to her knowing who did it,” Riva reiterates. “And going with him willingly.”
“Man, I hope to God there’s no evidence that points to Joe Allison having some kind of secret relationship with that girl,” Luke says apprehensively. His finely tuned lawyer’s antennae are quivering, feeling something percolating out in the corner of the ether where justice is sometimes served, sometimes subverted, but always jacked around. Why the fuck did you take this dumb case? You come back for a sure thing, not a thousand-to-one shot. “Because that would be the coffin nail from hell.”
Riva turns to him. “You’re the pro at this, not me. But if I were you, and that was bothering me half as much as it’s bothering you, I’d ask him.”
It’s a sealed envelope, with a warning on the cover: The opening, reading, examination, or any other use of this document by unauthorized persons will result in criminal penalties.
He’s authorized, Riva isn’t, he’ll share it with her anyway, and with anyone else he needs to share it with, if there’s information in it that has a bearing on his case. Sitting at his desk, he slashes the envelope open. By the time he’s finished reading the first paragraph, he’s starting to shake.
Riva notices. “What’s the matter?”
“Emma Lancaster was pregnant.”
“Oh, no!” She’s as shocked by this information as he is.
This is incredible, he thinks, reading the report. This revelation is going to throw his investigations and his entire defense posture—not that he has one yet—into chaos. A fourteen-year-old girl is carried away willingly (in his mind, he’s almost positive of that now) from her bedroom. It almost certainly had to be by the man she’s been having sex with, who got her pregnant.
This case is going to take a broader path now. He’s going to have to explore Emma Lancaster’s life in much greater depth and detail than he’d planned. Who she was seeing, where she was seeing them, who could have known she was pregnant—did her parents know, for instance? Did her abductor know she was pregnant? Was he the father of her unborn child, who upon hearing of this disaster panicked and killed her?
Fundamentally, this case is no longer merely about defending Joe Allison; its now about Emma Lancaster’s short life, how she lived, and why she died.
So here’s another problem for you, Luke my boy, he thinks to himself. If Joe Allison, your client, was fucking Emma Lancaster, a fourteen-year-old girl, then very likely he’s the one who killed her. What does that mean to you, defending a man who was screwing a girl that young? Where is your moral compass? Do you even have one? And if you do, and he is, what can you do about it, since you’re now his lawyer, until death or the end of this trial do you part?
It’s a warm night, with a southwestern offshore flow bringing unusually high humidity. Riva, cooking the first dinner in their new digs, has thrown all the windows open, and the high, wispy breeze filters through the small house, keeping it cool and comfortable.
Judge De La Guerra has been invited to be the guest of honor. A widower who eats most of his meals at Birnam Wood, his golf club, the judge was happy to accept. He sits in the lone good rental chair and sips one of Riva’s killer margaritas.
Luke, sprawled on the couch, his own large tequila libation in hand, drops the latest bombshell in his mentor’s lap. “Do you think Ray Logan is stupid enough to think this autopsy report would be kept sealed permanently?” he asks.
Without hesitation: “No. Of course not.”
“Then he has to figure Allison’s who knocked her up,” Luke thinks out loud. “Logan could’ve handed the goddamn file over, or at least alerted me to its contents. There is such a thing as professional courtesy.” He thinks further. “We’re going to have to find out if the lab did any DNA testing on her, and if they did, are they going to request that the court have Allison tested. Hair, skin, particles, anything.”
“That would simplify things,” De La Guerra observes.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going to let him get tested,” Luke says. “I’d fight that all the way to the Supreme Court.” Thinking through that, he goes on, “Actually, if they were going to, they would’ve done it by now, I suspect, or at least raised the issue. If whoever screwed her that last day used a rubber, like what they found up there in the gazebo, there wouldn’t be any sperm to provide DNA proof.”
Riva brings dishes of food into the small dining room, which is tucked into a bay window. Outside, the city and ocean glow with the lights of the stars and the moon and a thousand houses. They dig in, piling their plates high with rellenos, rice, beans, tortillas, salad.
The judge beams at Riva. “This is delicious,” he tells her.
“Thank you, kind sir.” A wide smile lights up her face.
“So now my defense strategy is about looking for who shtupped Emma Lancaster,” Luke says, not joining in their bantering. “Assuming it wasn’t Allison.”
“You have to clear up that assumption with your client,” Riva chimes in. “And that it was only one man.”
“That’s true,” Luke says. “Christ, if it were to turn out she was a round-heeled little tramp, that would be brutal.” He pauses. “But good for us,” he has to admit.
“Yes, it would certainly help your defense,” De La Guerra agrees. “An eighth-grade girl from a good family with that kind of background? Damn good cause to raise reasonable doubt.”
“Yep, it would help,” Luke agrees, “and you know what? I would hate to get an acquittal with that kind of defense.”
“Your job is to get your client off, not to judge him or the methods that might be used,” De La Guerra counters.
Luke shakes his head. “No.” He puts his napkin down; he doesn’t want to eat any more now, his stomach can’t handle the conversation. “That’s how the establishment works, how they teach you in law school. But I didn’t come back here after all this time and expose myself to ridicule and snide charges of obliquity to win a case at any cost.” He drinks some of the zinfandel he’s poured with dinner. “I came back here to do the right thing, or nothing at all.”
De La Guerra raises his wine glass in toast. “Hear, hear.”
“Are you mocking me?” He turns and looks at Riva, who’s smothering a smile with the back of her hand. “You too? Are you both mocking me?”
“We love you, Luke. Even when you are chasing crazy dreams.”
“So now I’m Don Quixote? Jousting at windmills?”
“No,” De La Guerra says. “Just a man who’s got religion and doesn’t know how to act on it. But you’re doing a good job of learning,” he adds. He reaches over for the wine bottle. “May I?” he asks Luke.
“Of course.”
He pours a few ounces. Swilling the dark liquid, looking at it up against the overhead ceiling light, he says, “I think you should act on Riva’s suggestion. Confront Allison directly. Ask him if he and Emma were having sex.”
Luke nods. “I can put the question to him, but I know he’ll flat-out deny it, whether it’s the truth or not. He’d be crazy to admit to that.”
“At first glance, maybe, but not necessarily. If he really was her lover, why kill her?”
“Because she found out she was with child and she was going to turn him in as the father,” Luke answers. “Bye-bye career, hello the rest of your life in Soledad.”
“Yes,” De La Guerra responds. “That’s a good, plausible reason. But if he says he wasn’t, if he swears it, wouldn’t you give him the benefit of the d
oubt, unless you found out otherwise? Everyone else in this county has already tried and convicted Joe Allison of murder,” he reminds Luke. “The least you can do is not convict him of something he hasn’t been accused of.”
Joe Allison, three days unshaven, wearing his prison sweats while sitting in the attorney-client holding room, looks at his lawyer like he’s insane. “Sleeping with a fourteen-year-old girl?” he asks incredulously. “Do you really think I’m that sick?”
“It happens thousands of times every day,” Luke says calmly. He’s sitting back, trying to ascertain the truthfulness of Allison’s reaction as it plays out before him. “You hear it all the time. Teachers with students, fathers with daughters. Young girls these days’re much more sexually sophisticated than they’ve ever been.”
He expected his client to deny it, but is there a twinge of guilt there, a millisecond of caught-off-guard-ness before Allison can recover and pull the shade of deceit down over the truth?
He doesn’t think so. This reaction seems genuine and spontaneous.
“I wasn’t sleeping with Emma,” Allison says straight. Then the ramifications of the question sink in. “Are you telling me someone was? Emma had a sex life?”
“Not only did she have a sex life, she was three months pregnant,” Luke says.
Allison rocks back on the molded plastic chair. “That’s … unbelievable!”
“Yep,” Luke agrees.
“So I guess that means you’re going to try and find out who was sleeping with her.”
“Yes.”
“That could be who killed her, right?”
“It’s a strong possibility. The only one I can think of.”
Allison rocks in his chair. “I’ll level with you. She came on to me. Hard. Christ Almighty, she looked like she was sixteen, and acted older.”
“So what exactly did you do with her, Joe?”
“I …” Allison is squirming in his seat. “I gave her a few kisses and hugs. You know, like an uncle would.”
Luke shakes his head. “Like an uncle? C’mon, man, what did I warn you? About telling me the truth?”
Allison looks away. “Okay. We made out a couple of times.” Forcefully, he adds, “But that’s all. I did not sleep with her. I did not get her pregnant. And I wasn’t anywhere near her house that night.” He whines: “She initiated it.”
The Disappearance Page 14