“Lisa scraped her knuckle when she was getting the beer. She washed it off, then pressed her thumb against it to stop the bleeding. But she didn’t put a Band-Aid on it or anything. Later, when we were sitting on the back porch drinking, she must have brushed her hand against my leg.”
“Must have? You don’t remember getting blood on your pants?”
Wes’s eyes met mine, then slid away. “I remember her hand touching my leg.”
It all fit rather nicely. Too nicely? I wondered if Wes was telling the truth or if he’d concocted a story to fit the evidence.
“Why didn’t you tell the police all this at the beginning?”
He shrugged. “They asked if I knew her, and I didn’t, really. It just seemed easier than getting into the whole thing. If I’d had any idea they’d try to pin the murders on me, I’d have handled it differently, believe me.”
“What about after you were charged? Why not tell the truth then?”
Wes leaned his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms. “Think about it. First off, how many people are going to believe me? The newspapers made it sound like Lisa Cornell was as wholesome as fresh milk. Turns out she was engaged to some wealthy, well-respected guy. Why in the world would she have the hots for ol’ loser Wes? The story sounds like a crock of shit. If anything, it gives me a motive. I end up looking guiltier than before.”
Unfortunately, he was right.
“Besides,” Wes mumbled, “it’s humiliating. You think I want the whole town laughing at me behind my back?”
“I don’t see what there is to laugh at.”
“No? Well, you and I don’t travel in the same circles.”
“Why come forward now?”
Wes snorted. “I’m kind of short on options.”
I clicked my pen, thinking. “Did anyone see you and Lisa together that night in Coopertown?”
“Lots of people, I imagine. We weren’t hiding. But I didn’t sit down and gather up people’s names and addresses, if that’s what you mean. What difference does it make anyway?”
“Not a lot, I guess. But if people saw you together, it would add credibility to your story.” It might also provide fuel for Curt Willis to use against us.
Wes started pacing again. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making this whole thing up.”
“It’s not that I disbelieve you.”
“But you’ve got your doubts all the same. Christ, I don’t know why I bothered telling you this. You of all people.” He made a disgruntled gesture with his arm, then stopped his pacing to face me. “If I was going to make up a story, don’t you think I’d make up one that was a little more believable? One that made me look a little less a fool?”
I didn’t think Wes looked like such a fool. In fact, I found the episode oddly touching. But I’ve had enough experience with the masculine ego to know that male and female logic aren’t the same.
The “believing” part was more troublesome. Lisa certainly wouldn’t have been the first woman to have walked both sides of the line, good girl and bad girl at the same time. And whatever else Wes was, there was an undeniable magnetism about him. Besides, he was about as different from Philip Stockman as was possible.
So Wes’s explanation was believable enough in the general sense. The difficulty came from the fact that I wasn’t sure I believed it. And the last thing I wanted was to commit myself to some story that would leave us out on a limb in the middle of the trial.
I asked, “Do you have a regular girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Not since Kathy?”
He moved away from the wall. “Kathy’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Except that women you get involved with have a way of winding up dead.”
“You’re disgusting, you know that? You’re just like them.”
“Like them? Who?”
He ignored my question. “You learn this stuff in bitch- training school? You must have all had the same teacher.”
More than the words, it was his tone. I shoved back my chair and went to call the guard.
Wes crossed his arms, glaring at me. But what I saw in his eyes wasn’t anger so much as pain and confusion. And a trace of fear.
“Wait,” he said when I was halfway across the room. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
I hesitated. It wasn’t entirely his fault. I’d pushed him. Goaded him, in fact. The dynamics of the present were, I realized, heavily colored by the past. Wes Harding still had a way of getting under my skin.
“You feel like telling me about Kathy?” I asked after a moment. “I don’t want any surprises once we’re in trial.”
Wes returned to his chair. “It was about four years ago. She was a teacher. Her family lived on the East Coast. Very wealthy, very snooty. I never met them until we went back to tell them we were getting married. From the minute we walked off the plane it was clear we were from different worlds. Her parents loathed me. Kathy’s mother pretended I wasn’t there, wouldn’t even talk to me if we were in the same room. Her father was more direct. He took me aside and explained that Kathy was ‘slumming’ just to get back at her family. He offered me ten thousand dollars to get out of her life for good.”
Wes’s voice turned husky. “I laughed in his face. Told him there wasn’t any amount in the world that would tempt me. A month later Kathy called off the wedding and moved back home. I never did find out how much he offered her.”
I felt a strange turbulence inside. It was no wonder Wes had an attitude about women. “When did she die?”
“About eight months later. I only found out because our old landlady tried to forward some mail.” He looked down at his fingers. “Her family never even bothered to contact me.”
Chapter 21
My meeting with Wes left me feeling wound up and edgy. I took the long route back to Silver Creek, using the driving time to think through this latest twist in our case.
If Lisa had been in the habit of picking up strange men, there were any number of possible suspects out there. Unfortunately, Wes was as likely a candidate as any of them. And the story he’d just told me, while explaining the evidence, also drew a nice little picture for motive. I hated to think what the prosecution would do to it. A man given to bursts of temper. A woman toying with him, making him appear, in his eyes at any rate, a fool. The only point in the whole account that Willis would need to challenge was the ending — the part where Wes claimed to have left Lisa’s place while she was still alive.
And yet, as Wes had pointed out himself, it was hardly the tale he’d hit upon if he was going to make something up.
It fit, and yet it didn’t. If Lisa had come on to Wes in the bar, as he claimed, why did she suddenly get cold feet later in the evening? Had Wes turned rough once they were somewhere private? That might have been a point he glossed over in recounting the events to me. But then why did she call him less than a week later and invite him to drop by?
By the time I got back to the office my mind was a fog. And I still had more questions than answers. I called Sam anyway, knowing he would be waiting to hear from me.
“You think this is fact or fiction?” he asked when I’d finished explaining.
“I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward fact. Of course, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t embellished it a little here and there. And he refused to say anything more about those videos, so there may be more there than he’s admitted.”
Sam mulled this over. “Why would a woman like Lisa Cornell go around picking up strange men?”
“Because that’s the only kind there are.”
“Huh?” Sam was clearly in no mood for my attempts at humor.
“I’m not sure. It might have been the excitement, the thrill of the conquest. Philip Stockman is one extreme; maybe she needed to balance the scales. Or maybe she had a low sense of self-worth. I had a college roommate who did the same kind of thing. I
t was as if she needed constant reassurance that men found her attractive.”
“Sort of a Looking For Mr. Goodbar thing?”
“Right. Or maybe she simply found Wes attractive.”
“Still sounds odd. Lisa Cornell must have had plenty of men interested in her.”
“It doesn’t seem so odd to me. Dr. Markley talked about Lisa’s unresolved conflict. Maybe this is part of it. The behavior fits with what I know about childhood trauma and repressed memory.”
Sam humphed. “I’m too old for this psycho-babble.”
“I’m pretty sure Lisa talked to Dr. Markley about Wes. Remember I mentioned that fact after I saw her? At the time it didn’t make sense, but it does now. Maybe if I tell Dr. Markley I already know about Lisa’s going with Wes back to his place, she’ll be more willing to fill in the blanks.”
“People really talk about stuff like that in therapy? It’s like airing your dirty laundry.”
“That’s kind of the point, I think.”
Sam sighed. “Do you think Stockman suspected what she was up to?”
“That same thought crossed my mind. Lisa had just canceled out on their dinner, after all. And postponed their wedding not too long ago. Maybe he was getting suspicious.”
When I got off the phone with Sam I called Tom. “How would you like to take a drive to Coopertown with me tonight?”
“Sorry. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel out on dinner as well. I was just getting ready to phone you."
“How come?” I could feel the disappointment settle over me.
“Tonight’s Erin’s drama production. The class has been working up to it all summer and she’s pretty excited. I didn’t think I’d be back from the camping trip, but now that I am, I can’t skip it.”
“No, of course not.”
“You could come too, if you’d like.” It was a nice gesture, but clearly an afterthought.
“Thanks, but I think your daughter needs you to herself tonight. Maybe it will go toward making up for the week you spent camping with Nick.”
“I feel like a heel. First falling asleep on you last night, then standing you up tonight.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I told him. “You may have fallen asleep last night, but you put on a stellar performance beforehand.”
“Stellar, huh?” He laughed. “That’s good to hear.”
<><><>
The temperature had dropped some by the time I left for Coopertown later that evening, but it was still a warm night. A night better suited for sitting under the open sky and sharing a bottle of wine with a friend than holing oneself up in the dank, stale interior of a bar. But the friend I had in mind was unavailable and the bar in question demanded a visit.
The Last Chance was on the main road through town. By day it was probably drab and cheerless, so nondescript you wouldn’t notice it. But at night it was plastered with lights. Above the door, Last Chance flashed on and off in bright green letters. The window to the left was a collage of flickering beer ads, and the eaves along the front were draped with strings of colored bulbs that looked as though they’d been left over from Christmas.
What the owners spent on outside electricity they more than recouped by keeping the lighting inside to a minimum. The haze of smoke in the air didn’t help matters.
I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender, a gnarly man who bore a striking resemblance to Popeye, delivered my bottle indifferently, without saying a word and without once making eye contact. It was clear he wasn’t given to small talk. When he returned with my change I decided to go for the direct approach.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked.
“Couple of years. Why?”
I pulled a picture of Lisa Cornell out of my purse. “Does this woman look familiar to you?”
He barely glanced at the photo, then shook his head. “I don’t have much of a memory for faces.”
That’s because you never look at them, I thought. “She would have come here alone, maybe met someone.”
He shook his head again. “Can’t say as I’ve seen her.”
“Does anyone else work behind the bar?”
“Ricky. He ought to be here any minute. He’d probably remember. Recognizes every broad that was ever here.”
“Why’s that?”
“He plays this game, kind of like taking bets with himself. Tries to figure out which ones are going to score and which aren’t.”
“Does he do the same with the male customers?” I asked.
The bartender looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would he want to do that?”
I shrugged, and decided I didn’t have the energy for male consciousness-raising.
While I waited for Ricky, I sipped my beer and looked around. The place wasn’t exactly jumping with activity, but it was a weeknight. Most of the patrons were male, and most were alone. There were only two other women in the whole place. They sat together in the far corner with a dark-haired man who was leaning so far across the table in their direction he was practically horizontal.
I finished my beer, went to the ladies room and checked for peepholes before using the facilities. It was that kind of place.
I’d just ordered a second beer when Ricky arrived.
He was younger than the other bartender, probably in his forties, with a tight goatee and a sizable beer belly. “Hal says you want to talk to me.”
I nodded and again pulled out Lisa’s picture. “Did you ever see her here?” I asked.
He frowned. “I might have.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged and started to turn away.
“Wait,” I said, reaching for my wallet. I tried to be cool, but I felt like an absolute jerk. It wasn’t the money; it was the triteness of the situation.
Ricky didn’t appear to have the same aversion to clichés that I did. He took the money and shoved it in a pocket. “Yeah, I seen her. She was here a couple of times. Haven’t seen her for a while though.”
I decided not to tell him she was dead. That kind of stuff makes some people clam up fast. “Did you ever see her with anyone?”
He nodded.
“Broad-shouldered fellow, dark hair?” I’d intended to bring a picture of Wes too, but I’d realized just as I was leaving that I didn’t have one.
‘The guy she usually met had light-colored hair, long and kind of shaggy.”
It sounded like the man Wes had seen her with the first time. “Did they come here regularly?”
“Couple of times is all that I seen her. The guy used to come more often; then he disappeared for a while. He was back a few weeks ago, though.”
“Alone?”
“Was when he came in. I didn’t keep track after that.”
“Did you ever see her with anyone else?”
Ricky tugged at his whiskers. “One time, I think, she ended up having a drink with a different guy. But she didn’t make a habit of it.”
“Can you describe this other man?”
“I can’t remember much except that I’d seen him here before. Dark coloring, tattoo on one arm.”
It appeared the first part of Wes’s story checked out. “Did you happen to see if they left together?”
He gave me an oily smirk. “Yeah, they were together. Like they was stuck to each other with glue.”
“How about this other man, the one she usually met. Did they leave together?”
“Sometimes, not always.”
“And were they, uh, like glue as well?”
Another smirk. “They weren’t brother and sister, that’s for sure.”
I wrote my number on a slip of paper. “If this other man comes back again, would you give me a call? It doesn’t matter what time it is.”
Ricky fingered the paper, then shrugged and let his eyes drift away. “I might.”
I pulled out another bill and handed it over. “You call me when he comes in and I’ll make it worth your while, okay? Double what you got tonight.”
Dusk had turned to darkness by the time I started home. It was the kind of inky darkness you get when there’s no moon, and no city lights reflecting off the horizon. The road was narrow and unlit, twisting through the rolling foothills with only cattle for company. What had been a leisurely, scenic drive on the way over was going to require more concentration at night. I began to wish I hadn’t had the second beer. I began to wish, even more, that I’d made another trip to the restroom before leaving.
Traffic was almost nonexistent, which made the driving a little easier. I rolled down the window for fresh air, flicked on my brights for better vision and punched the tape player. It picked up in the middle of a Bach quartet.
Of its own accord, my mind began to run through what I’d learned from the evening.
Wes’s story jibed with what the bartender had told me. Whether or not Lisa made a habit of meeting men in bars, she’d done it at least twice: Wes and the fair-haired man. Was the other man someone she’d once picked up, the way she had Wes? Or was he someone she knew through a different avenue altogether? In either case I wanted to talk with him. And I wanted to know why Lisa was meeting him in a bar half an hour from home.
But the questions that occupied me most involved Wes. I found myself thinking about the story he had told me, thinking that it just might, actually, be true. The entire thing, word for word.
The realization hit me like the shock of a cold shower. If Lisa and Amy had been alive when Wes left them, then the man I was defending was innocent.
The revelation wasn’t as liberating as I’d have expected. In fact, it was downright scary.
About ten minutes from town I noticed the glare of headlights in my rearview mirror. I’d been vaguely aware of a car some distance behind me, but while my mind had been drifting the car had pulled closer and was now right on my tail. The harsh lights from behind made it difficult to concentrate. Made me feel like a trapped animal.
Evidence of Guilt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) Page 19