The Sign of the Book

by John Dunning

  Erin took lengthy notes. She couldn’t imagine Bobby that way, she said: he had always been so outgoing when they were young. “He was like a different person then,” Laura agreed. “You can’t imagine how he’d changed. I lived with him for years, and there were times at the end when I barely knew him.”

  She had thought seriously of divorce, especially in the last three years. “But then I considered the children and I couldn’t do it. The little ones loved Bobby.”

  “He was good to his own children?” Erin asked.

  “Oh, yeah. He loved them and they loved him. I have no doubt of that. And he tried with Jerry too, I’m not saying he didn’t try. In his own way Bobby was a good man and he sure didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

  “How did he try? What did he do?”

  “Oh, he’d take Jerry for walks…not real often, but sometimes they’d walk down the road and Bobby would try to talk to him. Then when they came back, he’d take Jerry into his room and they’d…”

  “What? What did they do?”

  “Talk. I don’t know, they’d be in there for maybe an hour. I couldn’t make out his words but I could hear Bobby talking through the door.”

  “Not angry, though.”

  “No, I’d have gone in and stopped that. Bobby’s voice was always very soft.”

  “Did he sound like he might be trying to teach Jerry something?”

  She almost laughed at that. “God, no! Bobby was no teacher, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t mean teach like in schooling.”

  “Then I guess I don’t understand you.”

  “Persuasion,” Erin said. “Like maybe he was trying to persuade Jerry to do something.”

  “If he was, he never got anywhere. Jerry just didn’t like Bobby, I told you that.”

  Laura watched Erin writing in the long silence that followed.

  “Did you ever suspect that Bobby had any improper relations with Jerry?”

  Laura’s eyes opened wide. “My God, what are you suggesting?”

  “I’m just asking questions. What are you thinking?”

  “But you can’t mean anything like that. Jesus, Erin, you knew Bobby, you know he’d never do anything like that to a child.”

  “As it turned out, I didn’t know Bobby at all, did I?”

  Laura stared at the wall. “I’ve told you before, you’ve got a right to be angry with both of us. But you can’t believe that.”

  “Look,” Erin said, “let me put it in very straight terms, okay? Did Bobby ever abuse Jerry, any of your kids, sexually?”

  “That’s offensive.”

  “That’s what I get paid for,” Erin said. She smiled slightly, perhaps at the fact that she wasn’t getting paid yet for anything. “I get paid to ask offensive questions.”

  Laura took a long time to answer; too long, I thought. At last she gave us a slight headshake.

  “Did Bobby ever molest Jerry?” Erin asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Pardon me for lingering on this, but you don’t deny it with any real conviction.”

  “What do you want me to do, scream?”

  “Damn it, I want you to tell the truth.”

  “No,” Laura said. “No, no, no.”

  “No what? No, he didn’t, or no, you won’t tell me the truth?”

  “He didn’t. Of course he didn’t.” But then, into the silence, Laura said, “What are you going to do? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m asking you a question. Which you are doing your best to avoid.”

  “What if I said…”

  Erin arched her eyebrow.

  “I never actually saw anything, but once or twice I wondered. That’s all.” Her face was flushed as she stared at Erin. “That’s all! There’s nothing else to say! It’s just something you think in an odd moment. Surely this won’t come out.”

  “Not tomorrow. But if it goes to trial, we’ll have to see what’s there.”

  “It would give me a great motive for shooting Bobby.”

  Erin said nothing, but I saw awareness light up Laura’s face. It was also a sudden new motive for Jerry.

  “You have any questions, Cliff?” Erin said.

  “Yeah, I do. I want to ask a few more things about Jerry.”

  “Oh, Christ, will this never end?”

  “It’s just that he seems to have an amazing talent.”

  The silence stretched and became awkward.

  “Laura?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  I shrugged. “Just a reaction would be a start. Some kind of acknowledgment that we’re on the same page.”

  “He’s an artist,” Laura said at last. “Jerry is a great natural artist.”

  Clearly annoyed now, Erin said, “You never told us about that before.”

  “You never asked me. Is it important?”

  Parley gave a little laugh and looked away.

  “Is this important?” Laura asked again. “What’s it got to do with what happened?”

  “You’ve got to stop making those judgments,” Parley said. “If I can only do one thing on this earth, I would like to get you to stop playing lawyer. Do you think you could possibly do that?”

  “What don’t you understand about what I did? I didn’t want him to be involved in any of this, is that so hard to understand? I didn’t want everybody probing him like he’s some kind of guinea pig, like you’re doing right now…upsetting him with all this terrible stuff. Anyway, how is it important?”

  “Jerry’s been drawing almost nonstop all week,” I said. “Scenes of the crime. Pictures of that day—”

  “Jesus Christ, this is exactly what I was afraid of! It’s not enough that he had to go through it, now you’re all going to drive him crazy worrying about it.”

  “Nobody’s asked him to draw anything. From what I understand it was a spontaneous thing.”

  “What difference does it make how it started? Now they’ve got him started, it doesn’t matter how, and they’re going to keep after him till they break him down. Jesus, hasn’t he had enough trouble in his life?”

  She looked at Erin. “I knew I shouldn’t have tried to fight this, I knew Jerry would be dragged into it, and now here he is; he should be drawing pictures of the mountains and the streams, and instead they’ve got him reliving all this terrible stuff.”

  The room went suddenly quiet. Then Erin said in her hard voice, “Get used to it. Jerry’s a material witness in a murder case. The questions are just getting started.”

  Laura shook her head. “I should never have agreed to this.”

  “Agreed to what?”

  “Any of this. You knew from the start I didn’t want to do this.”

  “Then tell me, please, what do you want to do?”

  “What I should’ve done all along.”

  “You’ll have to say it.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Well?”

  “I’ve got to change what I…”

  Erin gave a dry little laugh. “Change what? Your plea?”

  “If I have to, yes.”

  “Then you can do it without me.” Erin began gathering her papers.

  Laura, with a sudden look of alarm, said, “Where are you going?”

  “Where do you think I’m going? I do have one or two other things to do in my life.”

  “You’re angry. I could always tell when you were angry. Still can.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I am. I told you before, I haven’t got time for this.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “What for? So I can watch you throw yourself to the wolves? I don’t think so.”

  Laura looked at Parley. “Can she do this? Can she just walk out on me?”

  “I can do whatever I want,” Erin said. “I’m not your attorney of record. He is.”

  “Wait a minute. Please, Erin, please! You’ve got to understand something.”

  “No, you understand. What is your case?
Did you kill your husband or not?”

  They looked at each other.

  “Did you?”

  Laura shook her head.

  “Then that’s how you’ll plead. Not guilty. Not maybe not guilty with footnotes for unanticipated contingencies. You will not even think of offering yourself as a sacrifice for Jerry or anybody else. No extenuating circumstances, no waffling. You are not guilty. Once and for all, can we at least be clear on that?”

  “All right, yes…yes, okay…okay.”

  “Get that apology out of your voice. You aren’t maybe not guilty, you will not plead guilty if suspicion falls on someone else, you are flat-out not guilty. That’s what we go with, wherever it leads.”

  “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

  “Here we go again. Please listen carefully. I don’t care why you think you’ve got to lie. I can’t care about stuff like that. The only thing I need to understand or care about is what this case is, not why you want to cloud it up with other issues. You’re going to kill yourself with that argument.” Erin pulled her chair closer. “Do you want me to help you or not?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then stop worrying about Jerry and get your own story straight. Let’s go over it again…what you’ll say if we go to trial and how you’ll say it.”

  Because much of the doubt we would cast over the state’s case had to come from Laura herself, she would have to testify at the trial. Parley was clearly nervous about this. He still considered her too unpredictable, too easily shaken when the inevitable questions about Jerry arose, but Jerry was in it now and nothing could be done about that. The ashes from the back-room fireplace were part of the evidence. The sheriff had bagged and taken the entire grate, and he had noted a charred smear of blood on it, and traces of blood scattered throughout the ashes. The shirt fragment looked identical to Jerry’s shirt, just as Laura had said. “I think we have a reasonable doubt,” Erin said. “But Laura can’t escape it, it’s coming in, what she did with Jerry’s clothes is not going away. Now we’ve got to make them understand why.”

  I knew Erin considered Jerry one of our strong suits. She liked our chances but she retreated from optimism if we tried too hard to agree with her. “They’re pushing a weak case, and that’s always a reason to worry. Like they’ve got something we don’t know about.” She considered Gill easily capable of pushing it for political reasons. This was the county’s first murder case in forty years, and he didn’t want to back away and he sure didn’t want to lose it.

  It was late when we left the jail. The town was dark and the café about to close, but Parley turned on the charm and coaxed three simple hamburger steaks out of them. We sat at a table in the far corner of the room and went over tactics and where Lennie’s lies would take him next. “This guy is a worm,” Erin said. “I have no sympathy for creeps like him.”

  She ticked off his offenses on her fingers.

  “First he messes up the crime scene. Then he panics and he’s got to manufacture a cover-up, so he destroys evidence. He’s not guilty of perjury yet, but he will be if I give him a little bit of rope. What else can he do now but keep up the lie?”

  She stared into the dark place under the table. “I’m gonna destroy that bastard.”

  “They’ll never sit still for that,” Parley said. “Not in a hearing to suppress.”

  “You can bet me. Whatever else he is, Gill’s a political animal and he doesn’t want to go to trial on Lennie’s flimsy shoulders. I’ve got a hunch we can win this thing right there in the hearing.”

  She looked up at me. “I’d like you to go in with us. You don’t need to say a word, just sit behind me in the courtroom and give Lennie the evil eye. I think you’ve got his number.”

  I was uneasy even in that role, but she lifted her wineglass. “Here’s to tomorrow. And the beginning of the end for deputy whatever.”

  39

  Lennie was sitting sullenly in the courtroom when we arrived that morning. The judge’s court reporter was leaning over his box looking bored. We were all early; no one else was yet in the room, but Lennie squared his shoulders, filling out his police jacket, and looked back at us. “What’s he doing here?” he said gruffly, and the court reporter smiled playfully and took down his words.

  “Mr. Janeway is my investigator,” Erin said. I faced them all and smiled.

  “I didn’t ask you that, I know who he is. What’s he need to investigate in here?”

  “You never know.” Erin smiled pleasantly.

  “You never know what?”

  “When some great lie that needs investigating will surface.”

  “Are you trying to fuck with me, sister?”

  “No way. I wouldn’t do that for a hundred million dollars.”

  Two doors opened suddenly. The bailiff came in from chambers, and from the hall I heard Ann Bailey’s voice. She and Gill came down, nodded crisply, and sat on the bench across from us. Our witness, Hugh Gilstrap, was right behind them, and he took a seat in the row behind us.

  Lennie stared back at the photographer and he looked pale. He jerked his thumb my way. “I don’t want him here.”

  “I’m sure you don’t want any of us here, including yourself,” Erin said. “Too bad you don’t get to pick and choose.”

  Lennie pointed a trembling finger. “Listen, sister, don’t you screw around with me. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “My goodness, Deputy, that sounds like a threat.”

  “Lennie, please,” Miss Bailey said, wincing.

  “I don’t know what the hell these people think they’re gonna prove. Everything I did was by the book. Ev-rything.”

  “Then you won’t mind telling us about it,” Erin said.

  “It’s all in my report. This hearing is bullshit.”

  “That may be, but it’s one of the trials of life, you’ll just have to put up with it.”

  “Lennie,” Miss Bailey said softly. “Remember what we discussed.”

  “Some people you just can’t coach,” Erin said. “They are the great uncoachables. No matter what you tell them, they’re always going to be a wild hair.”

  “Listen to that shit,” Lennie said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Now Gill leaned forward and looked Lennie in the eyes. He spoke so softly that only Lennie could hear him, but he was intense, and when he was finished, Lennie sat glumly and silently. Erin was right, I thought: he’s a loose cannon, ready to blow up.

  I heard another shuffle and the sheriff arrived with Laura. She sat with us and he joined the prosecutors. The bailiff said, “All rise,” and the judge came in.

  The judge sat, then we sat, and he looked over at the prosecution’s side of the bench. “Where are your witnesses, Mr. Gill?”

  “Mr. McNamara is only interested in Deputy Walsh, Your Honor. If we brought them all in, this hearing could run half a day. We could have done that, but the testimony from the preliminary hearing won’t change. We’re trying to save the court’s time.”

  “Mr. McNamara?”

  “That’s fine with us, Your Honor.”

  “All right then. Let’s get going.”

  Miss Bailey rose and called Lennie, who raised his hand over the Bible and was sworn.

  What followed was ten minutes of routine, almost pedantic questioning: Where were you when you first got the call? Where was the sheriff and why wasn’t he in the office? Lennie lied about that, covering the sheriff’s ass by saying he wasn’t sure.

  What did you do right after the call came in? How long did it take you to get up the hill to Mrs. Marshall’s house? Did you knock on the door? When did you decide it would be proper for you to enter the premises?

  “I looked in through the open door,” Lennie said. “I could see that something bad had happened. Mrs. Marshall was sitting at the table with blood on her dress. There was a gun on the floor.”

  Gill leaned over and whispered something to Miss Bailey. She furrowed her brow,
obviously annoyed. “One minute, please, Your Honor.”

  The judge looked away and drummed his fingers on the bench. Miss Bailey and Gill were locked in some kind of disagreement for most of a minute. In the end, Gill made his point more forcefully and Miss Bailey, frustrated, said, “Okay, tell us what you did next.”

  The remainder of Lennie’s testimony was almost to the letter what I remembered from the preliminary hearing. Everything sounded proper to hear him tell it. He had gone step by step, discovering things in their correct order. Miss Bailey gave Gill another look and said, “That’s all.”

  Erin rose slowly and came forward. “You say you looked in through the open door and saw Mrs. Marshall at the table with blood on her dress. You say there was a gun on the floor. And you could see all that from the front doorstep?”

  “Most of it, yes.”

  “How much of it?”

  “Enough of it.”

  “What specifically does that mean, Deputy? Keep in mind, please, that we have all been up there, we have all looked in through that front door. If you’d rather do this the hard way, we can all go up there right now and see just what’s visible from the front door.”

  Lennie seethed in his hotbox.

  “Isn’t it true that you went inside without seeing anything?”

  “I sure didn’t go up there on a blind. I knew something bad had happened.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because of the phone call, isn’t that obvious? She didn’t call the sheriff’s office to find out the time of day or directions down the mountain. What would you think?”

  “What I’d think isn’t the point here, I didn’t enter the Marshalls’ house.” Erin moved around the room, looked out the window, and came back to her spot. “What did she say when she called?”

  “Her husband had been murdered.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  I saw Miss Bailey give a slight headshake across the table. Lennie turned and we stared at each other for a few seconds. “Make him stop that, Judge,” Lennie said,

  The judge gave me a stern look. But he said, “Just answer the questions, Deputy.”

  “The question was,” Erin said, “did she say her husband had been murdered?”

  “Maybe that wasn’t it exactly.”