Proof of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

“They’ve arrested someone in Bedhurst.”

  “But then why…?”

  Was Jamie asking why was she headed back there or why was she telling Jamie about it? Couldn’t blame her for either question. Neither answer made much sense based on Maggie’s history.

  “I don’t think she’s the one — well, she is the one who pushed my car down a ravine, but—”

  “Pushed your car—? With you in it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “My God, Maggie — Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. A little sore, but fine. J.D. got me out in time.”

  “In time,” Jamie echoed faintly. Maggie regretted the phrase. Jamie had already moved on. “J.D.? J.D. Carson? The guy you prosecuted up there?”

  Now she regretted saying anything. “Yes. It’s complicated. But maybe it’s one of those omens you like so much, because it turns out I forgot to give the key back when I left. Anyway, the point is, I’m not going to make lunch. There’s more to do up here. You and Ally—”

  “What more is there to do up there? What do you know, Maggie?”

  “Know? Not much. It’s not a matter of knowing.” She gave a harsh laugh. “You’ll love this, Jamie. It doesn’t feel right.

  * * * *

  6:45 p.m.

  Maggie hadn’t seen Bedhurst anywhere close to busy this week, but Sunday evening, sliding into twilight, it was beyond slow.

  No visiting cars remained around Monroe House. Nothing stirred.

  If Dallas and Evelyn were smart they were tucked up for a long nap or early-to-bed. He’d looked wan at brunch. Relieved, but wan. The man definitely needed rest. She felt the effects of a sleep deficit herself.

  She sent Dallas a text that she’d returned, was in the guesthouse, and they needed to talk as soon as he was rested.

  In the guesthouse bedroom she unpacked only the files. The rest could wait.

  She spread them out on the bed, organizing them one way, then another. Jotting notes on a legal pad.

  Then she picked up the transcript and began reading again.

  Commonwealth v. J.D. Carson

  Closing Statement Excerpts

  Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Margaret Frye

  Reason, not emotions.

  Mr. Monroe has focused your attention on emotions during this trial. The story of a man from a difficult background who seemed to make good in his adult life. He has focused on emotions because that is all he has.

  What you have are facts. Reason and facts that the testimony of all these witnesses have given you.

  Even J.D. Carson acknowledges that his relationship with Pan Addington Wade had taken a turn from the friendship they had enjoyed since she befriended him in childhood. Even J.D. Carson acknowledges that they had spent a great deal of time together and that they were seen in public places in intense and intimate conversations. Even J.D. Carson acknowledges that he had given her the address and phone number for an apartment complex near where he was posted at the time. And here is where your reason is put to use — why would he give that to her if he didn’t want her to leave her husband and run away with him?

  And, finally, even J.D. Carson acknowledges that Pandora Wade had been last seen by him at the spot where she was found dead — also by him. The defense asks you to believe that she drove him there, they had an ordinary conversation, then he left, walking down the path to his cabin in the woods. What? No breadcrumbs to follow later? Because it sounds just like a fairy tale doesn’t it?

  The defendant also says that he heard no gunshot.

  For that to be true, there would have to be a gap between the time he says he left her and the time she was murdered.

  Apply your reason here, too. Why would Pandora Wade remain by her car after J.D. Carson left after this friendly, ordinary conversation? Waiting for some stranger to happen along and kill her? Pure coincidence?

  And what about the other facts we have given you? Pandora Wade was shot with her own gun. There was no sign of struggle, no signs she was trying to get away or escape. Reason says that rules out the stranger-happening-past theory. Reason says she was killed by someone she knew, someone she trusted. Someone she never believed would hurt her.

  And here are more facts for your reason to consider. J.D. Carson found Pandora Wade’s body. He would have plenty of opportunity to remove or alter evidence at the crime scene. Ah, but there was no evidence at the crime scene, was there — because someone had time to wipe it away, thinking he had erased every bit of it.

  But he didn’t. Not every bit of it. Not Pandora Wade’s hair wrapped around the cuff button of the shirt you’ve heard witnesses testify he was wearing that last day of Pandora Wade’s life.

  And here’s another fact for you to consider. J.D. Carson is a trained killer. An expert marksman. A man who could shoot Pandora Wade through the heart in a blink.

  The last to see her alive, the first to find her dead body. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the murderer of Pandora Addington Wade. That is J.D. Carson.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  She woke to darkness.

  She’d barely gotten past her opening statement before sleep had hit her.

  Now, someone was here.

  Making no sound. But breathing the same air. She was sure of it.

  She also wasn’t surprised.

  So much for believing in Charlotte’s guilt, thought one segment of her mind. The rest of it was on hyper-alert.

  A shadow moved.

  J.D.

  Relief swept across her, sank into her tensed muscles.

  Followed immediately by realization that with her defenses down, mind shut off, with no evidence except her gut, she not only sensed his presence, she trusted him.

  “J.D.? What—?”

  He turned on the small bedside lamp. “I saw movement, but I knew you were asleep. I came in.”

  “How did you know I was here at all?”

  “Followed you. Out of town, then back in. Damn it — why the hell didn’t you keep going? Just keep going back to where you belong?”

  “Wh—?”

  “Go ahead, call the sheriff. I ignored a feeling of someone being around before Pan was murdered. Not again. No matter how much you say you’re able to take care of yourself. No matter how much you don’t trust me. Here, dial 9-1-1, get Gardner. Get the whole department. I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not convinced Charlotte’s the murderer, and even if she is there’s something else going on.”

  “What I’ve been trying to say is I agree, Charlotte isn’t the murderer.” For once, she thought his silence was from surprise rather than control. She sat up, piled pillows behind her. “That’s why I came back.”

  She drew her legs to one side. She looked from the space on the bed created by her movement, to him.

  A flicker of the heat she’d seen in his eyes the other night flashed. Then was gone.

  He took her sweater off the suitcase where she’d dropped it and handed it to her. “Chilly in here.”

  Looking down, she saw her blouse had unbuttoned halfway down. Awareness of her nipples, hardened and straining against the silk of her bra, swept heat through her. She buttoned hurriedly and pulled the sweater on. Hoping he would mistake her flush for embarrassment.

  She couldn’t have him again. Not unless she did a lot more sorting out.

  Was that for herself? For him? Did it matter?

  “There’s a pattern, J.D. I can’t see it, but there are glimpses.”

  “What pattern?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  Renee’s words… Affairs of the heart. But with Rick Wade dead, who could that be? Except J.D.

  Unless it was Wade who killed Pan and Laurel, attacked the woman Bel had found named Darcie Johnson, then someone else killed him?

  Eugene? But would he kill to avenge Laurel?

  Ed—

  J.D. sat on the edge of the bed, one leg drawn up, his knee touch
ing her calf. “Where’d you go just now.”

  “I was remembering what Renee said about patterns and affairs of the heart. I can’t grab hold of it. And there’s something else. Almost from the start, I’ve had this nagging sense of the transcript trying to tell me something. Trying to tell me something was wrong.” She grimaced. “At least not quite right. I know it sounds crazy, but—”

  “Trust your gut, Maggie.”

  “I wish people would stop telling me that.”

  He persisted. “What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? No thinking, say it.”

  “The opening statement. I keep going back to the opening statement.” Before she finished the words, he’d reached into the carton from Nancy, which was on the floor near him, and pulled out the rough transcript, handing it to her.

  She took it, but shook her head. “I’ve been over and over and over it. Nothing.”

  “Go over it again. Now. Read it aloud.”

  She hesitated, reluctant to speak her words declaring his guilt.

  “Maggie.”

  She tipped the transcript to catch light from the small lamp and began.

  * * * *

  “…Pandora Wade was found with the note the defendant, J.D. Carson, wrote representing his plans to run away together stuffed in her mouth. She’d said no and he couldn’t take that…”

  “Keep going.”

  “Something… There’s something…”

  She re-read the words from the transcript.

  Pandora Wade was found with the note the defendant, J.D. Carson, wrote representing his plans to run away together stuffed in her mouth. She’d said no and he couldn’t take that.

  She stared at the paper she held until the words disappeared, she slipped under the surface of the trial, into the depths of it again. Surrounded by it. In it. Completely.

  Standing in front of the jury. Seeing each face. Hearing the slight movement of Judge Blankenship to her side.

  And she spoke.

  Each word sounded in her memory, echoed in her head.

  Each word she had spoken.

  And the words she had not spoken.

  “In her mouth.”

  Her voice sounded strange to her. Muffled. The liquid volume of the trial buffering it.

  She shook it off, pushing up from the memory. Returning to now. Looking at J.D.

  “I didn’t say that. Not in the opening statement. I left the detail of where the note was found out of the opening to have more impact during testimony. Maximum effect. It was the end of the second day.” She flipped through pages. “With the medical examiner on the stand.”

  “I remember that testimony.”

  She did, too. She also remembered him in that moment.

  She’d turned away from the medical examiner, made eye contact with several jurors to be sure they understood the import, then she’d seen his face.

  Rigid. Taut. Controlled. … Yet, under the control, shock.

  “You hadn’t known.” She didn’t ask it as a question, because she knew. She’d known then, as hard as she’d tried not to. It was the seed that grew into What if he’s innocent?

  “Not until that testimony.”

  The paper hadn’t been visible when he found Pan’s body. Still wasn’t visible for sheriff’s department personnel to spot — and blab about.

  Only the murderer who had shoved the note into Pan’s mouth, then posed her face down had known about it.

  J.D. said, “Are you sure about this? You’ve been reading this transcript over and over.”

  “Sure. I must have read that opening a dozen times since I came up here but I never — Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  “What? Maggie—”

  She scrambled off the far side of the bed, pawed through the papers on the table, frustrated by the lack of light.

  “Maggie?”

  “Wait. Just wait!” She had it.

  Too impatient to walk around the bed, she crawled back across it to the pool of light. Her hands shook as she flipped the pages. J.D. tried to read from beside her, but clearly didn’t have the right angle.

  She read it. Then read it again, slowly. To be sure.

  Her hands stopped shaking.

  “What I just read from, what had me including the note being in Pan’s mouth in my opening, which we agree I didn’t say—” She sucked in a breath. “—and what you’re holding now, J.D., is a copy of the transcript my assistant made from dailies she’d pulled out of storage and sent to me. My boss wouldn’t pay for the post-trial version because it wasn’t our jurisdiction. I kept the dailies and put them in the file.”

  She tapped the page of the transcript from the table — the copy she’d been reading and rereading, unable to find the flaw.

  “This is the copy I was given here in Bedhurst after Laurel’s murder. This one reads: Pandora Wade was found with the note the defendant, J.D. Carson, wrote representing his plans to run away together. She’d said no and he couldn’t take that.

  He got it.

  Still, he held his hand out for the copy she held. He touched his fingertip beside the passage. Then he put both copies under the brightest light from the lamp and looked from one to the other.

  “Could Dallas have told him?” she asked. “Did he work on your case or—”

  “No. Dallas kept him out of my case, so he could work as reporter. Plus, Dallas had stopped using him for depositions a while before and wasn’t confiding in him. But he has contacts at the sheriff’s department. Buddies who—”

  “None of them knew. No one knew except me, Dallas, and the professionals at the regional medical examiner’s office in Roanoke.”

  His big hands spread on the pages, he stared straight ahead. “Scott.”

  “Yes. Only Scott could have put it in the dailies and only he could have left it out of the complete.”

  “Fuck,” he said low. “He removed it because he realized he shouldn’t have known that fact during your opening statement.”

  “Exactly. He must have anticipated I’d say it, and typed what he expected to hear rather than what he actually heard. After hearing testimony that only the medical examiner saw the note, he realized he couldn’t have known before the testimony unless he was the one who shoved the note in Pan’s mouth … after murdering her. When he put together the complete, he fixed his mistake and took it out.”

  “Scott murdered Pan? Why? Why? She never did a thing to him. She was only kind to him, was his friend.”

  “His friend. Maybe that’s it. Maybe — Oh, my God, he said she’d changed her mind about going back to Wade. He covered it, but he said it the night Wade came to Monroe House. How could Scott have known that unless she told him? That day, in the clearing. At the same time she told him she was going away with you. He must have thought… The pattern. The pattern Renee talked about.” Starts with their mamas like those old Greek plays say. “He follows a pattern.”

  “Laurel, too?”

  “Laurel, Pan, the girl in Lynchburg — all of them. Befriends them when they’re vulnerable. Offers support. But when they don’t need that anymore. Oh — oh! But with Laurel it was different. She didn’t cry on his shoulder. She wanted information. And he gave it to her. The papers Eugene had her sign. What do you want to bet Scott was aware of that, too — the work he does for Renee Tagner. I bet he found out then.”

  “And you. He was trying to be your shoulder to cry on about Isaacson. What—? Shit.” From shit, J.D. went into a stream of low, but heartfelt and colorful curses.

  “What?”

  “The key. On Scott’s key ring, he has a shiny new key.”

  She got it immediately. “A key to here, but — How?”

  J.D. stood. “Soap, clay, hot glue and silicone — a minute to make a mold, then make the copy at leisure.”

  “But he’d have to have the key. Only Dallas and I had one.”

  “When he brought your car around to the office. While we were talking to Charlott
e on the—”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Noise assaulted Maggie’s senses.

  A door crashed open. Shouts. A head-snapping jolt. A crushing weight. A roar like a train. Then weight sliding off her.

  Acrid burning.

  Shouting, shouting.

  “Maggie! Maggie!”

  “J.D.?” But it wasn’t his voice.

  She raised herself up, reason sorting through the fragments.

  Someone had burst in — from the storage closet, where something was burning — and fired a shot.

  J.D. had pushed her to the bed, covering her with his body, then slid to the floor, carrying the bedspread with him. He wasn’t moving. Cold fear shuddered her heart.

  Scott stepped into the room, holding a gun with both hands. Still aimed at J.D.

  “It’s him, it’s him! He’s the murderer,” Scott shouted.

  She started to drop to her knees beside J.D. Scott grabbed her arm, dragging her up, holding the gun away with the other.

  “No! Carson’s the murderer. He shot Pan, strangled Laurel. Now he’s after you. Get away from him!”

  Maggie backed away from J.D. to get Scott and the gun farther from him.

  J.D.’s head spilled red streams onto the bedspread, where it wicked across the threads as if trying to run away. He lay still. She couldn’t see his eyes from this angle. Conscious? In shock? Worse? He was breathing. She held on to that.

  “That’s right.” Scott talked fast and high. Behind him fire cackled at the closet’s treasure of paper fuel. Heaps of notebooks and paper. He was destroying his original notes from the trial, made while he’d lived here, sitting in that closet the whole time. “This time will be different.”

  He stepped forward, aiming the gun at J.D. with both hands.

  “Scott. Tell me, tell me the truth.” She reached for his arm. He flinched and backed up, the gun pointed up. Would playing along gain necessary time or use up time J.D. couldn’t afford? “You’re the only one who can tell me, Scott. The only one.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m the only one who knows everything. That’s what none of them understood. But you do, Maggie, don’t you?”