Cold Rain

by Craig Smith

  ‘I’m going to tell you one thing, and then I’m going to shut up. Get an attorney.’

  ‘You’re my lawyer.’

  ‘If I’m still your lawyer, why didn’t you call me when they asked for a second interview?’

  ‘I probably should have.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘All right. I screwed up. So shoot me.’

  ‘How about I just sit in the audience while a penitentiary doctor sticks a needle in your arm?’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘I expect it was a lot worse than you think. Look, David, I’ll represent you, if that’s what you want, but you’re going to have to think about hiring a trial lawyer at some point, and I’d say the sooner the better. This thing could get out of hand on us real fast.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You’re acting like they’re going to arrest me!’

  Gail sounded tired. ‘Probably not until they find a body, but I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘They don’t have anything, Gail!’

  ‘You mean besides motive, means, and no alibi?’

  ‘I didn’t even see her!’

  ‘The cops aren’t going to believe Buddy Elder called you on Johnna’s cell phone, David.’

  ‘Why not?’ I looked at Molly who had sat close through the entire conversation. She looked more worried than Gail sounded.

  ‘They like their cases straightforward.’

  ‘How’s this for straightforward? Buddy kidnaps Johnna Masterson and forces her to call me on her cell phone. At midnight Buddy calls on the same phone and tells me the rumour is I’m about to get a letter of censure, and he sure as hell hopes nothing happens at the university to change their mind!’

  ‘This guy kidnaps a young woman and quite possibly murders her, and he calls you up so you’ll know he did it? That’s insane!’

  ‘Why not tell me? Nobody believes me!’ I looked at Molly. ‘Ever since that diary surfaced,’ I said, my voice rising, ‘no one has even considered I might be telling the truth!’

  Gail answered with cool irony, ‘I wonder why that is, David.’

  ‘Dalton wants me to take a lie detector test on Monday. Maybe then—’

  ‘Whoa! You didn’t agree to take one? Tell me you didn’t.’

  ‘I said I needed to talk to my lawyer, but I think maybe I should!’

  ‘Quit thinking, David. It’s bad for your health! That thing about talking to your lawyer, that’s the perfect answer. Believe me, you don’t want to take a polygraph.’

  ‘It looks to me like the only way.’

  ‘You’re representing yourself again, Dr Albo.’

  ‘Okay. Point made. I’ll cancel it.’

  ‘Cancel what?’

  I explained to Gail that Dalton wanted to schedule the exam, but I was free to call and cancel if she thought it was a bad idea.

  ‘David, why don’t you just confess?’

  ‘Because I didn’t do it!’

  ‘So why are you trying to get yourself convicted?’

  ‘We cancel the son of a bitch! What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Suspect refuses to take a lie detector.’

  ‘That’s what you want!’

  ‘I’m not going to refuse a polygraph, David. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for you to demonstrate your innocence, assuming our conditions are met.’

  ‘That’s lawyer talk for refusing to take a polygraph.’

  ‘Damn straight it is,’ Gail snapped. ‘Those exams don’t measure truth or falsehood. They’re machines!

  They measure how nervous you are. You’ve been framed for murder, if you’re telling the truth. That’s one hell of a scary situation. I mean, you could be going to death row if you don’t convince the police you’re telling the truth. Or look at it the other way.

  Say you’re lying about something, some detail. Could be anything, something too embarrassing to admit – like a little sex in the office with your little stripper friend. You take the test and you’re going to try to beat the machine on that one lie. The results come back and you end up looking like you’re lying about a whole lot of things. Believe me, too much is riding on this for you to be calm!’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, you’re starting to scare me.’

  ‘That’s good. That means I’m finally getting through to you.’

  MOLLY WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT Tuesday evening the minute I got off the phone.

  I ran through the thing in detail. When I had finished, I told her it was not as bad as Gail was making it out to be. ‘Gail defends scumbags. The scumbags are guilty.

  The last thing you want to do with a guilty client is take a polygraph.’

  Molly seemed hardly to hear me. ‘You’re going to listen to Gail?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘David – ?’

  ‘I’ll listen to her!’

  That evening we had dinner in the kitchen with the TV on. As we weren’t enthusiasts of the local broadcasts in the best of times, we didn’t know where to go or whom to trust now that the stakes mattered. By chance, though, I found Patty Storm on Channel 3.

  Patty had been a student of mine during my first year at the university. Cute, ambitious, and possessing a remarkable degree of talent (in every sense of the word), Patty had quickly left English with an emphasis in creative writing and gravitated to journalism where, as she told me almost shamefully, she could make a living. I had seen her a couple times doing reports as I was surfing for something to watch, but I hadn’t realized she had worked her way up to a co-anchor position.

  ‘A former student of mine!’ I told Lucy and Molly cheerfully. ‘Let’s watch this. Patty’s all right!’

  Johnna Masterson was still a second page story, but my name had come up as an individual sheriff’s detectives were interviewing. Patty Storm did not use the word suspect. Mostly the report was about the search for Masterson continuing. There was a touching plea from her parents.

  Lucy looked at me suspiciously when the report was over.

  ‘Innocent,’ I said.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ Lucy rejoined.

  ‘Johnna? She sure is. Smart, funny, totally likable.

  Personally, when I commit murder I like to do it to someone who deserves it!’

  ‘Don’t make jokes, David,’ Molly answered.

  ‘How well did you know her?’ Lucy asked.

  I grimaced but I wouldn’t back away. ‘She was one of the women who filed charges against me at school.’

  ‘So what happened? Or is this not my business either?’

  ‘As long as we’re all living in the same house it’s our business,’ I said. I glanced at Molly.

  ‘Tell her,’ Molly said. ‘Tell her what you told me this afternoon.’

  I went to the pantry and cracked open a bottle of bourbon. As I was pouring a couple of healthy shots over ice for Molly and me Lucy asked for one as well.

  I got Molly’s nod of approval. Special occasion: her stepfather was coming clean.

  ‘We got a call on Tuesday night,’ I said. From there I went through the whole evening. I finished by explaining that I had something of a history with Buddy Elder because of some trouble at school, and I was fairly sure he was involved in this for no other reason than to hurt me.’

  ‘How could he do that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I think he might be trying to frame me for this.’

  Lucy seemed uneasy. Molly was scared.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘It will blow over.’

  THERE WERE SOME CALLS after dinner. A number of people from the university who had avoided all contact with me for the past two months suddenly wanted to know how I was doing. As per Gail’s instructions that afternoon before we got off the phone, I neither answered nor returned the calls.

  At nine o’clock, Patty Storm, among others, left a message. She called me Dr Albo and reminded me of the class she had taken ‘a couple of years ago.’

  She was working on a story and wondered if I could
help her. Ten minutes later, she left another message. She had received information about Johnna Masterson’s disappearance. For the sake of fairness, she wanted my response before she went on again.

  I was curious about her information, so much so that I thought about calling her, but I resisted the temptation.

  Twenty minutes later we found out what she had.

  Johnna Masterson’s disappearance now led all stories.

  The intro music was different, urgent, not the typical stuff. This was breaking news. I checked the other two local stations. The story was upgraded there as well.

  I went back to Patty Storm. She had the look of a reporter who knows she is on to something good, and I quickly realized I was the something.

  ‘Sources inside the sheriff’s department are investigating allegations of an affair between Professor David Albo and an unidentified freshman co-ed, who, along with Johnna Masterson, filed charges of sexual harassment against Dr Albo earlier this fall...’

  ‘This is not good,’ Molly offered quietly.

  ‘…suspended from his teaching duties as the investigation continues…’

  ‘Where did this woman get all this, David?’

  ‘…the last person to talk to Johnna Masterson on the night she disappeared…’

  ‘Gail told Dalton we aren’t going to play ball. This is the payback.’

  ‘…refusal to take a polygraph…’

  They posted the university’s public relations photo of me. I had always liked the shot. It was about four years out of date, a portrait of a thirty-three-year-old man projecting confidence, training, scholarship, and just a touch of sex appeal. On television, I came off looking like an overbearing English prof with a hard-on.

  ‘…what some witnesses are calling a brawl at a local funeral home…’

  Molly stared open mouthed at the screen. ‘Nice picture, huh?’ I asked.

  ‘…following Professor Albo’s arrest on felony assault charges stemming from an incident at The Glass Slipper, a local establishment featuring topless dancing…’

  I snapped Patty Storm off mid-sentence.

  ‘I wanted to watch the rest of it.’

  ‘This stuff is important if you make it important,’ I said.

  ‘This stuff pushes prosecutors to try cases, David.

  You can’t just ignore it!’

  ‘Watch me.’

  Lucy came down the stairs, her face red, her eyes wet. Shaking her head, Lucy looked at me as if I had just violated her.

  ‘You saw it?’ I asked.

  ‘You liar!’

  Molly and I both called out to her, but she headed for the back door and kept going.

  As soon as she had driven off I looked at Molly.

  ‘How about another bourbon on the rocks?’

  ‘How about we forget the rocks?’

  I got the good stuff out and our best crystal and poured us both three fingers’ worth. ‘To catastrophe!’

  I said cheerfully. It was how we used to celebrate the purchase of broken down houses we thought we could resurrect.

  Molly smiled at me suddenly as if we hadn’t a worry in the world. ‘To catastrophe!’

  Chapter 25

  SATURDAY MORNING THE PHONE rang incessantly.

  At midday, a TV van pulled up into our driveway. Molly took her shotgun out and sent them off in a hurry.

  In the evening Lucy, having not spoken to me all day, drove off again. Molly asked where she was going but didn’t really get an answer. Alone for the evening, we talked about what happened after an arrest. That came down to money, I said. Like everything else, there were different prices for different people. A trial defence could be purchased at anything from bargain basement rates to a multimillion dollar media show. A public defender would get me the needle. Twenty thousand could probably keep me off death row. Fifty thousand would probably buy a retrial. A couple hundred thousand might get an acquittal on the second trial. Of course, if Buddy Elder decided to plant some evidence, which I thought he would do, there were only a handful of lawyers in the country who could get me off.

  We could find the money, Molly said.

  Of course we could, I answered, but that would stop all of our income. With my suspension continuing into the next semester, almost certainly now without pay, everything we had would go to the lawyers.

  Doc and Olga could help.

  I said it wasn’t their problem. It wasn’t Molly’s either.

  Molly swore at this. This was our problem, and we were going to fight the bastards every step of the way!

  ‘Move to Florida,’ I said. ‘Take everything. I’ll get a public defender to advise me and defend myself.’

  ‘We fight this together, David.’

  With a coy smile I asked her, ‘How do you know I’m innocent, Molly?’

  ‘Because this isn’t about your dick.’

  ‘If Buddy Elder set this up,’ I countered, ‘wasn’t it possible he had Denise keep a bogus diary?’

  ‘Denise isn’t on Buddy’s team anymore, David.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  THE SUNDAY MORNING PAPER featured Johnna Masterson with her beauty pageant smile on the front page, the headlines proclaiming, ‘Search Continues for Missing Grad Student.’

  My crimes and misdemeanours were listed mid-column. Unlike the article about Walt Beery, they didn’t say a thing about my book.

  The sheriff’s spokesperson, Lt. Gibbons of sex crimes, insisted there were no suspects. In fact, investigators were still trying to determine if a crime had been committed. Certain discrepancies in my statement to them, however, were troubling.

  I hadn’t even finished the story before the phone began to ring. The first two were death threats. One involved certain choice parts of my anatomy being fed to me. The other promised a handgun of a certain calibre rammed into a certain orifice before being discharged. The sincerity of cold rage from perfect strangers astonished me almost as much as their sexually deviant bloodlust.

  It seemed to me only a matter of time before the sheriff came with a warrant for my arrest. When I heard Gail Etheridge on the answering machine I didn’t bother picking up. Gail’s message was supportive. This was what they did when they couldn’t make an arrest.

  I just had to hang tough.

  I decided to take Ahab around the property, though it was a cold, miserable day. I half-expected to find a grave out there somewhere, something easy to notice if you just went back and looked. What would I have done if I found a corpse? I thought about it without deciding. The right thing would be to call the sheriff.

  The smart thing would be to dig it up and drop it on Buddy’s doorstep.

  In fact, there was no grave. Nothing at all. I rode for nearly two hours before I took Ahab back to the barn.

  Lucy was waiting for me. ‘We have to talk,’ she said.

  I got the currycomb and brush from a shelf and began working over Ahab’s flanks. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You have to change your story, Dave.’

  I laughed at this. ‘Why is that?’ I walked to the other side of the horse, glancing over Ahab’s back.

  ‘Buddy wasn’t with Johnna Masterson Tuesday night.’ I looked up, frowning at her. ‘He was with me,’ she said.

  I studied my stepdaughter’s face. She was struggling with her confession. ‘You were home Tuesday night, Lucy.’

  ‘He called me.’ She blinked as she tried to meet my gaze. ‘He wanted to see me.’

  ‘Is Buddy the guy you’re interested in?’

  Lucy rolled her eyes, an expression designed to convey adolescent opinion of adult intelligence. ‘It’s a little more than interest, Dave.’

  I probably should have been angry. Giving the matter any thought at all, I should have realized the kind of trouble I was in, but at that moment all I felt was fear for Lucy.

  I put the brush and currycomb away and got the shovel. I walked into Ahab’s stall. ‘Does your mother know about this?’

  ‘I
just told her. She’s pissed.’

  ‘You know how old this guy is?’

  ‘Please, Dave.’

  ‘Let me ask you something.’

  ‘The answer is yes.’

  I found myself holding a shovel full of dirty sawdust and unable to move. ‘That wasn’t the question,’ I said finally, and dumped the load into the wheelbarrow.

  Back inside the stall I said, ‘My question was if you actually saw him Tuesday night or just talked to him.’

  ‘He was out here at midnight. We’d been on the phone for a couple of hours. He wanted me to come outside and, you know, drive around. I went out through my bedroom window.’

  ‘What time did you get home?’

  ‘A little before three.’

  ‘You drove around with this guy for almost three hours?’

  ‘We didn’t drive the whole time.’

  This came off too smart, too cute. ‘This isn’t a joke, Lucy!’

  ‘I talked to Buddy last night. He says the two of you aren’t getting along because of Denise.’

  ‘How did you meet Buddy?’

  Lucy gave me a look of exasperation. I was missing the point.

  ‘Humour me,’ I said.

  ‘Kathy and I went to a college party. Her brother is in a fraternity. Buddy was there.’

  ‘Buddy Elder was at a fraternity party?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing this guy?’

  ‘He’s only like ten years older!’

  ‘That’s the least of his problems!’

  ‘He doesn’t think you hurt Johnna.’

  ‘He doesn’t?’

  ‘He told me last night you couldn’t do something like that.’

  I smiled. ‘But you think I could?‘

  Lucy considered this for moment. I wasn’t sure if she had made up her mind or not. ‘I thought... when I saw the news…’

  ‘That’s not my style, Lucy. You know that.’

  ‘They made it sound like—’

  ‘It’s what they’re paid to do.’

  I took Ahab into his stall and gave him a scoop of oats. Jezebel protested and Lucy took her a treat.