The Disappearance

by J. F. Freedman

  He shakes his head emphatically. “They won’t have proved it at all. Maybe, if we’re all lucky, something will emerge from this that will point us in the direction of the real killer, Emma Lancaster’s true murderer. That would be wonderful. But that’s not the purpose of this trial, ladies and gentlemen of this jury. The purpose of this trial, the only purpose, is to decide whether the state has proven Joe Allison guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That means very, very clearly.” His voice drops theatrically low. “I know, friends. Because I used to have to do it. And I also know that in this case my former assistants … and colleagues … in the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office cannot do that. Because they have no compelling evidence. All they have is the desire to find someone, anyone, guilty.”

  His final pause. He feels the perspiration forming under his crisp new shirt. He’s glad he changed at lunch.

  “Desire isn’t enough. Wanting to do the right thing isn’t enough. Exorcising a demon from the community isn’t enough. You have to have the facts, and you have to have the truth. And the prosecution has neither.”

  He paces back and forth in front of the twelve jurors.

  “No one has ever come forward and said he or she saw Joe Allison at the Lancasters’ house on the night Emma Lancaster was taken from her room. No one could have—he wasn’t there. And no murder weapon has ever been found. Those are key elements in this trial. No eyewitnesses, no murder weapon.”

  He walks back to the defense table, goes behind it, places a safeguarding hand on Joe Allison’s shoulder. “This man did not murder Emma Lancaster, ladies and gentlemen. Her true killer, possibly the person who tried to kill me, is still at large, somewhere out there”—he points through the windows towards the distant mountains as, involuntarily, all eyes follow his arm, even Ray Logan’s, Doug and Glenna Lancaster’s, even Judge Ewing’s—“hiding, waiting. But he is out there. Because Joe Allison did not murder Emma Lancaster, and you are going to know that, in your guts, in your hearts, in your souls. And when all this is over, when all the testimony has been given, and the talking is done, you will come to the only conclusion you can: that Joe Allison is innocent of the crime with which he has been charged.”

  The shooter stands on a ridge across the canyon from the house, sighting it through a high-powered telescopic lens attached to a rifle like the one that shot at Luke at Hollister. It is night, but the lens has infrared, it can see as clearly when it’s dark out as when it’s light. Through the living room windows, Luke Garrison and the woman are in clear view, moving about.

  The lens pans off the house to the street next to it. The sheriff’s car is parked there, a deputy inside.

  Garrison can’t be taken out here. It’s too risky. Sometimes, when he comes out on the deck, he’s an easy target. But the chances of being caught are too great.

  When it happens, it will have to be someplace else. When the police aren’t around. Last time it could have been done. If the shooter had wanted Garrison dead, he’d be dead.

  He should have quit the case, the damn fool. Anyone else would have. That’s what the shooter had counted on. Now it has to happen. He’s begun clouding the issues, raising doubt in some stupid juror’s mind.

  The shooter puts the rifle back in its case and locks it in the trunk of the car. One last look at the house, then the car starts up and drives away. There will be a time when Luke finds himself alone. That’s when it will happen.

  FIVE

  “CALL LISA JAFFE.” SHE’S let in a side door from a private room where she’s been waiting with her mother. She knows where to go. She crosses the well and takes her place in the witness chair, standing with her right hand raised high, left hand on the Bible, swearing to tell the truth.

  Lisa is a different person from the young girl who awoke groggy and confused that night. That was a year and a half ago. She’s changed, too, from when Luke interviewed her a few months ago. She was fourteen on the night Emma was taken away. Now she’s a month from turning sixteen, and suddenly, overnight it seems, she’s a woman. A young woman, less timid. Grown into her body, an attractive young woman’s body—high breasts, rounded behind, hips jutting from her waist.

  The prosecutors have done what they can to turn back the hands of time and young her down. She’s dressed more appropriately for a preadolescent than a girl her age; she has no makeup on, not even lip gloss. The attempt is to get her to look close to what she looked like then, when she hadn’t even started menstruating.

  Ray Logan walks her through the events of that night, and of the following morning. Her narrative is clear and straight: She saw a figure carrying Emma out of the bedroom. She believed it was a man. It wasn’t a dream, a hallucination, an imagining. It happened. She saw it. Emma not being in the house the next morning, when she woke up, confirmed that.

  She’s a good witness. She doesn’t try to impress, or embellish. She doesn’t cry, either, but looking at her, you know she’s holding on bravely, that the tears, even after a year and a half, are just below the surface.

  Logan concludes his examination. Luke takes the podium.

  “Hello, Lisa,” he says. He smiles at her. He doesn’t want her to be scared of him—he doesn’t want the jury, or the people in the courtroom, to think that he’s a bully, right out of the box.

  She blinks. “Hello,” she says back, her voice low, but audible. She has been coached—as all the witnesses are coached—to present a certain picture, a persona that works. So far, she’s done fine. But that was with the people who are on her side. She’s afraid of Luke, intimidated by him. He knows that. Logan’s people have cautioned her to be careful about what she says when responding to Luke’s questions. Don’t say anything more than necessary, they’ve impressed upon her. Don’t volunteer anything. Still, she’s scared she will. She can’t help it. All this is new to her.

  “This won’t take long, Lisa,” Luke tells her. “I only have a few questions.”

  She nods, but her body retains its rigid wariness.

  “On the night of Emma Lancaster’s alleged kidnapping, when you first woke up—”

  Logan is on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  Ewing looks at him. “Yes, Counselor?”

  Logan is already beet red, and they’re only on the first cross-examination. He’s in for a sweaty time, even when he’s doing well, Luke thinks. “The use of the word ‘alleged’ is prejudicial, Your Honor,” Logan says. “That Emma Lancaster—”

  “A kidnapping is a forcible taking of a person against his or her will,” Luke butts in. “There’s been no proof offered that Emma Lancaster was forcibly abducted,” he claims. “The witness’s own testimony would indicate the contrary.”

  Ewing thinks but a moment. “Overruled.”

  One witness, one victory. It’s on the record now that Emma Lancaster may not have been kidnapped. If he can push that through, the death-penalty part of the indictment against Joe Allison will be substantially weakened.

  Luke continues, keeping his voice low, even, as calm and reassuring as he can. “It was dark in the bedroom, wasn’t it? Almost pitch black?”

  “There was some moonlight,” Lisa says.

  “But no lights were on, inside or outside.”

  “No.”

  “You saw a man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Holding something?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it didn’t look like a body. You didn’t immediately think ‘there’s a man in here who is holding a body,’ did you?”

  She hesitates, glances at her mother, who is sitting directly behind Ray Logan. Luke glances in that direction—Susan Jaffe is fighting her own body, trying to help her daughter without being apparent about it. “No,” Lisa answers. “I didn’t think that.”

  “And at the time, you didn’t look over at the beds Emma and the other girl were sleeping in, to see if either was out of her bed, did you?”

  “No,” Lisa answers quietly.

  The court report
er signals to the judge. “You’ll have to speak up a little bit,” Judge Ewing tells Lisa, leaning over from his perch. “So that the court reporter can hear your answers.”

  She nods, her tongue nervously licking her dry lips. “No,” she says again.

  From the podium, Luke nods. “You didn’t see this person’s face?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t see him come in, either, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Had you been outside that evening?” he asks her. “After you came back to Emma’s house. You and Emma and Hillary?”

  “Yes,” she answers.

  “What were you doing out there?”

  She looks at her mother with a frightened expression. After a moment, when she’s still silent, Ewing leans towards her again. “Answer the question, please,” he instructs her.

  “We were … smoking.”

  “You were smoking cigarettes?” Luke asks, clarifying the situation.

  “Yes.” She steals a look at her mother, whose lips are tight, straight-lined.

  “Did you smoke anything else?” Luke goes on.

  She stares at him.

  “Did you smoke any marijuana?” he asks.

  She reddens, feeling a surge of shame. “I didn’t,” she says in barely a whisper.

  Ewing leans down yet again. “You will have to talk louder,” he tells her. “The court reporter and the members of the jury can’t hear you. I’m sitting right next to you and I can barely hear you.”

  “I didn’t smoke any marijuana,” she says, more loudly. “I don’t do any drugs. I took a vow, at school.”

  “That’s good,” Luke praises her. “What about Emma? Did she smoke marijuana that night?”

  The miserable girl looks down at her shoes, a style she hasn’t worn in two years. She wishes the district attorney had let her dress the way she wanted, like a grown-up instead of like a little seventh-grader. She’s always been behind the other girls in development; now that she’s finally growing into womanhood, pretending to be that young again feels lame. But they told her she had to, to help out Emma the most.

  “Yes,” she admits.

  “Emma Lancaster smoked marijuana that night,” he repeats. “Were there other occasions when you saw or knew about Emma doing drugs?”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Logan’s on his feet again. “Irrelevant to the questions at hand, and calls for hearsay on the witness’s part.”

  Ewing is ready with his answer. “The witness may answer as to whether she has any firsthand knowledge of drug use by Emma Lancaster,” he says. “But not secondhand.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Luke says. To Lisa, he asks again, “Did you personally ever see Emma Lancaster doing drugs? Marijuana or anything else?”

  The girl nods.

  “You have to say your answer,” Luke reminds her gently.

  “Yes,” she says clearly.

  “Did she ever tell you where she got drugs?”

  Before Logan can object, she answers: “Her mother.”

  Logan is livid. More because he’s too late to stop her answer than to the question itself. He still cries out, “Objection!”

  “Sustained.” Ewing pounds his gavel. He turns to the jury. “You will disregard the last question and answer,” he instructs them.

  Fat chance of that, Luke thinks. Another little victory for him. He turns and looks towards the rear of the courtroom, where Glenna Lancaster is sitting in the middle of a row. She is dressed in her usual black, and is staring straight ahead, her face devoid of expression.

  He continues with his cross-examination. “Okay. You came home … what time did you get to Emma’s house?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” She’s losing the veneer of composure she had struggled so hard to learn. “Around eleven.”

  “Well before midnight?”

  She thinks. “Yes.”

  He nods, as if the two of them are working in tandem here. “You got to Emma’s house around eleven, and you talked and watched TV for a while, then you went outside and smoked. Right?”

  She nods. “Yes,” she remembers to say.

  “When you went out to smoke, where did you go?”

  “To the back of the lawn.”

  “To the gazebo?”

  Another nod. “Yes.”

  “Did you go into the gazebo? Up the stairs and in?”

  “Yes,” again.

  “Did Emma say anything about why she wanted to go all the way across the lawn and up into the gazebo?” he asks.

  Lisa nods. “She said it was the party room. Where you came when you wanted to do things you didn’t want people to know about, or see you doing.”

  “And then you came back to the house, to her bedroom, and went to sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what time that was?”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “Well after midnight, though.”

  “Yes. It was really late. I was really tired.”

  “And then the three of you went to bed. To sleep.”

  She answers, “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t wake up until you saw this other presence in the room.”

  “Yes,” she says. She’s less nervous now. He isn’t trying to scare her, like the district attorney warned her he would. He’s pretty cool, she thinks, the ponytail and the beard. Too bad her mother doesn’t have him as a boyfriend. He’d be neat to hang around with.

  “We’re in Emma’s bedroom now, and you’ve just wakened up, and you see what looks like a man standing there with a bundle in his hands. With me so far?” he asks her.

  “Yes.” She’s almost eager to answer now.

  “His back was to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you only saw the back of his head, not his face.”

  “No. I mean yes, that’s what I saw,” she stammers.

  “It’s okay. We understand what you’re saying. You’re doing fine,” he says soothingly. “We’re almost finished.”

  “Thank you.” She hopes she isn’t blushing too much, but she can feel the heat rising up her neck into her cheeks.

  “Okay. You didn’t see him come in, and you didn’t see his face. Was the door leading outside unlocked?” he asks her. “Do you remember if Emma locked it back up when you and the others came back inside?”

  She thinks for a minute, her forehead scrunching up. “I think she did,” she finally says.

  “But you’re not certain.”

  “No.” She wishes she were certain. She thinks that’s what he’d like to hear.

  “Well,” Luke says, “we all know the door wasn’t forced. So either it was left unlocked, or someone let him in. Like Emma.”

  Again, Logan’s standing and objecting. “Absolutely without foundation,” he rails.

  Ewing nods in agreement. “Stick to verifiable facts, Counselor,” he admonishes Luke. “The objection is sustained.”

  Luke continues. “This person in the room, whose face you didn’t see. I want us to be completely clear on that,” he says, turning to the jury. “You never saw this person’s face. You definitely never saw the face of the defendant.”

  “No,” she says. “I never saw his face.”

  “Or any face. You didn’t see a face.”

  “Yes, sir.” She’s starting to get scared of him again. “That’s right.”

  “Okay, good.” He pauses, sips some water. On the witness stand, Lisa does the same. “You didn’t actually see what was wrapped up in that blanket, did you?”

  “No.”

  “It might not have been Emma at all.”

  At the prosecution table, Logan starts to stand and make an objection, then thinks better of it and sits back down.

  “I guess.” Lisa shrugs.

  “You saw this person walk out with a bundle, a blanket in his arms, it could have been a person, it could have been Emma, but it could have been something else, right, Lisa?”

  The questio
ns are coming faster now. She feels like a strong wind is pushing her back in her chair. “Yes.”

  “Emma could still have been in her bed, couldn’t she?”

  Another shrug. “I guess.”

  “And you didn’t think, at the time, that this person, this man who you saw for a few seconds, leaving a completely dark room with something that looked like a bundle in his arms, you did not think that he had Emma in his arms until almost noon of the next day. Even when you and Hillary woke up, and Emma wasn’t there, and you went into the kitchen, even then you didn’t think someone had taken Emma out of the room. Is that right?”

  She feels that wind, blowing at her like a sundowner. “Yes,” she says. She’s just drunk some water, but her throat feels completely dry, like she’s eaten a handful of sand.

  “It was only when everyone realized Emma was missing that it occurred to you that what you had seen earlier—which at the time felt like a dream—might have been someone in the room taking Emma out. Without a struggle,” he adds. “Whatever was in the blanket, Emma or anything or anyone, wasn’t trying to get away.”

  “Yes,” she answers to the whole thing.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.” He smiles at Lisa. “Thank you,” he tells her, remaining at the podium.

  Ewing looks to the prosecution table. “Redirect?” he asks.

  Logan rises. “No, Your Honor. The People are finished with this witness.”

  The judge turns to Lisa. “You may step down,” he says with a smile. Sitting in the witness chair is tough on anyone; for kids, it’s especially traumatic. “You’re finished,” he adds, making sure she knows her ordeal, after a year and a half, is behind her.

  It’s finally over! she thinks. She feels light-headed from that knowledge. Hurriedly she stumbles from the stand and rushes out of the courtroom, her beleaguered mother hot on her heels.

  Ewing turns to Logan. “Call your next witness, Counselor.”

  As Logan starts to instruct the clerk, Luke interrupts the proceedings. Rising in place: “I have a motion, Your Honor.”

  Ewing, surprised, turns to him. Regaining his composure, he barks, “In my chambers.”

  He strides from the bench, exiting the door behind him. Luke, a copy of the California Penal Code in hand, follows. Ray Logan, caught unawares, hustles to catch up.