Proof of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

  Use your brain, Frye.

  Her practiced scan locked on the name — Laurel Blankenship Tagner, daughter of Judge Kimble Blankenship — and said briefly, “Same judge.”

  She went back to the start of the article.

  Laurel had failed to show up for a gathering at her father’s home at noon Sunday. Friends and family realized no one had seen her since Saturday afternoon. Authorities were called. Someone thought to check the service road entrance to Bedhurst Falls — the same location. God, the same location — and Laurel Blankenship Tagner’s body was found just before sunset Sunday.

  The authorities acknowledged there were similarities to the murder nearly five years ago of Pandora Addington Wade. No one had been convicted of that murder.

  The location of the body was one similarity, authorities indicated there were more, but had not released details.

  Maggie breathed out, slow and deliberate. Similar didn’t have to mean the same murderer. Similar could mean someone who’d followed the Carson case, in other words, anyone in Bedhurst County.

  Or the sonuvabitch she’d failed to get convicted could have killed again.

  “Is it the same guy?” Vic demanded.

  “Hard to tell from this.” She sounded calm. Good. “Could be. Could be a copycat. Could be unrelated.”

  Vic stretched one leg kept passably lean by a daily sacrosanct hour in the gym. “In that backwoods county? With who the victim is — another woman from one of the county’s top families, like your victim — and where the body was found? And those other similarities the newspaper doesn’t have? — I got word the body was found in the same position. Face down, arms and legs spread out. No sexual assault. The area around the body brushed, like last time, no footprints, or any other marks.”

  Almost certainly related.

  She grunted, started reading at the top again. “Where was Carson?”

  “There, in Bedhurst. With his defense attorney. Alibied to the hilt.”

  Maggie’s stomach tightened.

  Under the headlines, a three-column studio photo of a young woman with dramatic makeup emphasizing come-hither eyes and mouth. Maggie squinted at the photo. Pulled up a memory. The judge’s daughters sitting in the courtroom, awaiting the verdict. This one with the sex-kitten mannerisms. Unlike her companion, a square-faced woman who dressed as if Talbots were racy.

  “I’m going up there,” she said abruptly.

  Vic straightened from his initial slouch, then slid down again. To the untrained eye it might appear to be the same sprawl.

  “The hell you are.”

  “Monroe is Commonwealth’s Attorney now and the sheriff was elected last fall and he’s an outsider, from Richmond. Monroe—”

  “How do you know?”

  She flipped her hand, dismissing his question. “Monroe will run rings around him.”

  “Even if it is Carson, Monroe can’t defend him. Not in Bedhurst County, not since he was elected Commonwealth’s Attorney.”

  “He won’t have to defend. He can make sure there’s no case. As CA, he can refuse to prosecute Carson.”

  “Jesus, Maggie, I know you don’t have much use for defense attorneys from that thing when you were a kid, but you make it sound like Monroe would throw a murder investigation to protect a former client. The citizens of Bedhurst must think better of him than you do or they wouldn’t have elected him. Besides, it’s not our case. I just thought you’d be interested.”

  Like hell.

  He’d thought he would bring her down a peg after Friday’s verdict. It was how he kept his staff from nipping too hard on those ambitious heels of his.

  “It’s still my case.” She took a breath, kept the words reasoned, but firm. “The rape trial wrapped up faster than we expected. My desk will never be clearer than it is now. And God knows I’ve got vacation time coming.”

  “Listen, Maggie, we all have a case or two like this. The ones that go bad, the blots on our record that haunt us. But trying to make it right can make it worse. Let it go.”

  He thought she wanted to make it right so it didn’t dim her record’s sparkle? Of course, he did.

  In the face of her silence, Vic heaved a breath. “Actually, the sheriff has requested you up there.”

  “To prosecute.” It would be one hell of a trick to get named special visiting prosecutor on the case, but for a second chance to put Carson away she’d call in every favor.

  “Not to prosecute. He wants you and Monroe to fill him in on the earlier murder.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1:38 p.m.

  Maggie braked as she entered Bedhurst County.

  Not from any desire to contemplate bright green rolls of country rising beyond picturesque fences. She’d abruptly remembered being ticketed twice in speed traps four and a half years ago.

  The town itself was announced by the usual outriders of chain stores and fast food places. Quickly, streets narrowed and trees crowded close to the curbs. After a spate of brick ramblers and cape cods, the houses grew larger and the lawns deeper. Finally, a band of one-time grand houses converted to business-use opened to the town square.

  None of it jogged any memories until she reached the courthouse. That she recognized.

  All red brick, white trim, and restrained columns, the hundred-plus-year-old Bedhurst County Courthouse was venerable and well-proportioned, in stark contrast to the graceless municipal buildings huddling down the hill behind it. That’s where she’d had a window-less closet passing for office space as special visiting prosecutor.

  She found a parking spot across from the courthouse steps, where the likeness of General Joseph Bedhurst still rode his bronze horse on a landing halfway up to the front entry.

  A blustery breeze snatched at the car door as she opened it. She reached back for her lined raincoat. Bedhurst hadn’t gotten the memo about spring.

  The entry to the sheriff’s department was at the back of the courthouse, in a basement revealed by falling-away ground. She should check in with the sheriff.

  But straight ahead, two doors down Main Street from where she stood, the wind swung an old-fashioned wooden sign on a metal arm: Dallas Herbert Monroe & Associate, Attorneys-at-Law.

  The man who had won J.D. Carson’s freedom. The man who provided him an alibi now. The man who, after forty years as a defense attorney, had run for — and won — the part-time job of Commonwealth’s Attorney for Bedhurst County.

  The sheriff could wait.

  Maggie opened the black door beneath the sign and crossed a worn threshold, her entrance announced by a small bell. A sliver of space to her left held the barest essentials of a waiting room — three chairs and a magazine rack. Straight ahead a wide hall clogged with teeming barrister cases disappeared into dimness. A yard down on the right she saw an open doorway. Farther back, a gap in the barrister cases on the left indicated another door.

  A creak came from deep down the hallway. She squinted but saw only shadow. Must have been an old-building settling noise. God knows the building was old, and it looked as if it might settle right into the ground.

  “Have a seat!” came Monroe’s muffled voice. “I’ll be right with you.”

  Maggie tracked the voice to the office on the right. Piles of folders, books, and notepads listed from nearly every surface. The top of a silver-haired head showed beyond a three-foot pile on the corner of a desk that could have doubled as a battleship if it wouldn’t have sunk under the load.

  “Monroe.”

  He came out of his chair. “My dear, my dear!” A broad smile rearranged folds and wrinkles. To reach her, he weaved around an island of books with practiced ease. “It is a delight to have you back among us. It’s been entirely too long. Four years and—”

  “It could have been another forty years for my taste.” She met his handshake with her abridged, professional edition.

  “Oh, my dear, I am crushed you would have preferred to stay away. We take such pride in our fair corner of Virginia — and do
call me Dallas.”

  She raised her brows. “I was referring to another murder.”

  His face fell instantly. Holding her captive right hand in both of his, he drew her to a settee on the wall opposite the front windows. “Horrible. Horrible.”

  She withdrew her hand, but sat. To her knowledge she had never encountered a horsehair sofa before, but this had to be the real thing. No one would make modern upholstery jab this way.

  “All of Bedhurst County is most grateful you have come to assist us in this horrible time. With the murderer of Pan Wade never found—”

  “Never convicted.”

  Sharp eyes under heavy lids flashed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “We must find this person, and Sheriff Gardner wisely recognizes he needs assistance.”

  “I understand you say you were with Carson?”

  “Indeed. J.D. and I were together all of Saturday afternoon and through the evenin’, well past midnight.”

  Alibis were meant to be broken. That’s what an old prosecutor had told her.

  “Can an independent party verify that?”

  He patted her hand, ignoring her question and its implications.

  “What we need to concern ourselves with is whether the murder of Pan Wade fits in with this—” The sound of the outer door opening, the bell, and the door closing reached them. Monroe never paused. “—horrible murder of the judge’s daughter, and if so, how. I was mappin’ a strategy when you arrived.”

  Monroe’s attention shifted past her right shoulder.

  “Ah, here you are, and bearin’ our catered luncheon.” The smell of burgers and fries brought Maggie’s head around, even before Monroe added, “You remember J.D., don’t you, my dear?”

  “Welcome back to Bedhurst, Ms. Frye.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  J.D. Carson stood at the office’s open doorway, holding a cutaway cardboard box with bags stamped Cheforie’s Burgers. His dark eyes watched her.

  Refusing to show shock, she studied him right back. He had those eyelids some people called sleepy. A scar slashed a diagonal across his chin, starting half an inch from the corner of his mouth and disappearing under his jaw. A single deep dent of concentration marked the spot between his brows. He stood military erect.

  Unlike court, where he’d worn a suit and tie, he had on a well-worn polo shirt tucked into jeans. But there was more different about him. What was it?

  “Better weather for you this time,” he said.

  The voice hadn’t changed. Unhurried. Calm. Steel beneath each word.

  “Quit discussin’ the weather and get that food in here, J.D. We took the liberty of orderin’ for you, Maggie,” Monroe said as Carson put the box on an open patch of the conference table.

  Both of them, acting as if this were a social call.

  She’d known he was still in the county, known Monroe provided his alibi, but what the hell was this? Had Carson left the Army to become a gofer?

  “Come sit and have your lunch,” Monroe continued. “We can start workin’ as soon as we’ve reacquainted body and soul. J.D. put together a preliminary report on this tragic murder and—”

  “Carson did?” she interrupted.

  Apparently unfazed by her lack of greeting or anything else, the man in question sat at the conference table with his back to her and bit into a burger.

  Monroe paused in peeling the final corner of shiny paper from his burger. “Of course. J.D. is my new associate, so—”

  “Associate?”

  “Yes, indeed, passed the bar last fall. First try. Then—”

  “He went to law school?” Maybe a law school couldn’t legally keep out a man found not guilty, but even if it hadn’t come up on any of her periodic database checks of Carson’s name, she surely would have heard about a former murder defendant applying to law school. And would have done her damnedest to stop him.

  “J.D. followed our fine Virginia custom and read for law. Other states have abandoned their heritage, but Virginia maintains the tradition. So, like Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe — Did I tell you I’m a descendant of that esteemed gentleman’s cousin? Although—”

  “You let him read law with you.” Maggie didn’t bother making it a question.

  Among the government and criminal databases she checked regularly, she’d never considered members of the bar association.

  “No, no. He needed wider experience than I could give, having remained in Bedhurst County nearly my entire career. Why, I’m not at all sure the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners would have approved me. Rules and regulations measure each step of a lawyer overseeing the reader’s legal education.”

  “I read with Chester Bondelle of Roanoke.” Carson didn’t turn. “His number’s 434-555-4305.”

  And she’d damn well check out Chester Bondelle the first chance she had.

  Had Carson commuted to Roanoke? Because according to the official record, he’d maintained residence in the shack near Bedhurst Falls he’d inherited.

  Damn, damn, damn. She should have dug deeper.

  “Since he’s my associate,” Monroe was saying, “of course J.D.’s workin’ with us in assistin’ Sheriff Gardner with his investigation.”

  She stared at the back of Carson’s head. That’s what was different — his hair. It had grown out from the military cut. Because he’d never gone back to the Army. Because he’d stayed here to study law and pass the bar.

  Why?

  Carson stood. “I’ll finish my lunch at my desk, leave you two to talk.”

  Without looking at her, he walked out.

  “You mustn’t—” Monroe started.

  At a distance a male voice rose. Irritation, though not the words, clear.

  Monroe’s gaze slid to the back wall of his office, as if he could see what was happening in the depths of the building.

  Monroe focused on her again, the break in his manner smoothly mended as he murmured solicitously. “You mustn’t let this bother you, and you should eat before it gets cold.”

  “Not let it bother me? The man I tried, the man charged with a similar murder—”

  “Found not guilty.”

  “—the only man ever charged, because nobody else has been charged with Pan Wade’s murder, not in four and a half years.” He muttered something. She overrode it. “The only man charged and brought to trial for one murder involved in the investigation of a similar murder? And I’m not supposed to let it bother me?”

  He swept a hand through the air. “When you’ve grown accustomed to the changes, you’ll—”

  “You can’t do this, Monroe.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Even with you giving him an alibi for now, he’s a suspect.”

  He didn’t allow himself to be drawn. “This is the way it is, so — Where are you going?”

  “To talk to the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff knows.”

  “He doesn’t know what I’m going to say about it.”

  Commonwealth v. J.D. Carson

  Witness J.D. Carson (defendant)

  Cross-Examination by Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Margaret Frye

  Q. Isn’t it true that you and Pandora Addington Wade were together at the restaurant and bar called Shenny’s on four consecutive nights before she was murdered?

  A. Yes.

  Q. You’ve heard witnesses testify that you sat close together — no space between them at all was the testimony — is that your testimony?

  A. Yes, we sat close.

  Q. You also hugged her on at least one occasion?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you talk about your relationship on those occasions?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you also talk about her marriage to Richard Wade at that time?

  A. Pan did.

  Q. Pan did? You were silent on the subject?

  A. Yes.

  Q. On the last occasion you were there together — the evening before Mrs. Wade’s murder — you wrote the name and addre
ss of a housing complex near the base where you were stationed and gave the paper to Mrs. Wade, isn’t that true?

  A. Yes, I wrote down the information for a housing complex near where I am stationed.

  Q. Had you talked about her moving there?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you argue about it that evening?

  A. No.

  Q. You were heard to argue—

  Mr. Monroe: Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

  Ms. Frye: Your Honor, Theodore Barrett testified that he heard the defendant and Mrs. Wade—

  Mr. Monroe: And admitted on cross-examination that he couldn’t hear anything clearly from where he was, Judge.

  Ms. Frye: Only after defense badgered and—

  THE COURT: Enough. Objection is overruled. Witness will answer the question.

  A. No, we didn’t argue.

  Q. You argued because she wouldn’t run away with you and—

  A. No.

  Q. And you shot her—

  A. No. I did not.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Phones rang in syncopation as Maggie entered the sheriff’s department.

  “The line at the high school should be operating, transfer the Tagner case calls to Abner. You keep things running here and — Yes?” The speaker, a tall, thin man with skin a richer version of his brown sheriff’s department uniform, had caught sight of Maggie.

  A gray-haired woman wearing a headset grunted and lowered herself into a battered leather chair. She punched a button, said, “Sheriff’s Department,” and one ring dropped out of the race.

  “I’m Maggie Frye, from the Fairlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. Are you Sheriff Gardner?”

  The man nodded and they shook hands. “Come on back to my office.”

  He sorted old-fashioned message slips on the way down the short hall and dumped half in the trash can in his office. The rest he slid into a folder. She took the chair he indicated. He sat on the edge of the desk.

  “I appreciate your agreeing to help us, Ms. Frye.” He blinked, dark lids covering blood-shot eyes for an extra beat. She recognized the signs. The man hadn’t slept the past two nights.