[Barbara Holloway 02] - The Best Defense

by Kate Wilhelm

  She stared at him. “That’s pretty heavy-duty stuff.”

  “Yep.” He had helped himself to a drink from the little bar hidden behind a section of bookshelves. He swirled the bourbon around and watched it. “You won’t like Winnie’s report, either,” he commented. “It’s there, and a tape recording.” He pointed to a manila envelope he had put down on the desk.

  “Just tell me,” Barbara said wearily.

  “Right. Christina Lorenza, the woman Craig Dodgson took out on his boat a few years back. Winnie had a time getting her to talk, and she’ll deny everything. But for what it’s worth, she was pregnant, all right, and she went after him for support, and he took her out again and they talked it over. He signed a paper accepting responsibility, agreed to pay two hundred a month for support, the whole bit, and then she miscarried. So he’s off the hook, but out of the goodness of his heart, he forked over five grand so she could go to computer school down in San Francisco, which she did. She’s a programmer now, good job, and she says he isn’t all that bad a guy. He was young, she was young, let bygones be bygones.”

  “Miscarried? Five thousand dollars because he’s a good guy? It stinks, Bailey.”

  “I thought so, but Winnie says she’s leveling. For what it’s worth.”

  He believed in Winnie the way she, Barbara, believed in him.

  “Listen to the tape when you have half an hour,” he suggested. “Cheer up. I got a lead to a guy who worked in the publishing plant a couple of years, up to last fall. I’ll see him tomorrow. Up in Corvallis. Maybe the pendulum will start the other way.”

  “It had better, or I’ll find me a new Sam Spade,” she muttered.

  Bailey grinned and finished his drink.

  By late July her father had finished the move into his house. He invited her to his first dinner party. He was a superb cook and liked to show off, she thought, grateful for the invitation. First he had to show off his garden—tomatoes, beans, a hill of zucchini, green onions… Then his office was open for inspection; he had arranged all the books he was using for research to write his own two books on the art of cross-examination, which he had been at for years, and she doubted would ever finish, because he kept finding new material that could not be omitted.

  He had been right about the house; it was perfect for him. All through the evening she kept expecting him to bring up his invitation for her to move in, but he didn’t. Instead, over iced asparagus soup he told her he had had lunch with Ted Fairchild the previous day.

  “You know,” he said with a shrug, “we old-timers like to get together and chat.”

  “Gossip like magpies,” she commented.

  “Now, Barbara. Anyway, Ted confessed that he was not happy with the arrangement to let a youngster like Bill Spassero supervise a case Ted was handling. Not that he complained; he wouldn’t. But still, pride’s got to be involved in something like that. He’s fretted about it. What he said was that it seemed to him the telescope was pointed in the wrong direction with the wrong eye at the working end. I thought that was pretty good.”

  Barbara could well imagine the luncheon, with her father being ever so sympathetic and understanding, asking about the sick wife, retirement plans, and Ted Fairchild opening like a book.

  “It seems,” Frank continued, “that Bill’s working under a two-year contract that runs out the end of October, and he hasn’t signed the renewal contract yet. But he’s being close about his plans. Real close.”

  He cleared away the soup plates and brought a platter of beautiful vegetables—tiny carrots, snap peas, green onions, strips of red and green peppers, all brilliant, glistening from a marinade of lemon juice and olive oil. The casserole he brought out next was of small beef cubes with a lot of red onions, and marble-sized red potatoes.

  “This is why I never make dinner for you,” Barbara said a few minutes later. “I know when to compete and when to drop out. This is all wonderful.”

  “I’ve given you recipes for everything on the table,” he said, pleased with her pleasure. “Back to Bill Spassero. Ted thinks he’s got an offer from Doneally and Jensen.”

  “Well, that’s not unusual for an up-and-coming trial lawyer,” she said after a moment, trying to place the names. She did not know either of them.

  “Nope. Interesting thing is that Doneally is Dodgson’s lawyer. Handled a big libel case for him five or six years ago. Won it, too.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “What makes Ted think there’s an offer?”

  “Take it easy,” Frank said. “Even if we know it for a fact, it doesn’t prove anything. Ted saw them together a few times back before Bill went on vacation. That’s not much.”

  She thought about it. They would know for sure when Bill Spassero walked out of the public defender’s office, crossed the street, and sat down in a different chair. November? Too long to wait.

  “Eat your vegetables,” Frank said, “and stop plotting. This is information-gathering time, that’s all.”

  She resumed eating. “Ted hasn’t seen them together more recently?”

  “Nope. Lying low, or the affair cooled down. Who knows? The only other thing I got out of him was that Bill was due to take his vacation the last two weeks of September, and he asked to have it changed.”

  She considered this for a moment and then said, “I wonder when the offer was made. If it was. After he was appointed to Paula Kennerman, or before?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Frank said snappishly. “You aren’t tasting a thing you’re putting in your mouth.”

  After dinner she rinsed the dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher, and scrubbed a pot or two while they talked. Frank was following up on the students’ work with the newspapers, culling out those that would be revealing, he said. He couldn’t do too much at a time; the taste they left in his mouth made him go do something else pretty fast. “What I’m doing is reading for fifteen or twenty minutes every night, and then I take a bath.”

  “You brought them home?” she asked incredulously. “Does Bessie know?”

  “Of course he knows.” He laughed. “I promised I wouldn’t put them in the birdcage.”

  When she was ready to leave, he said, “Bobby, things look pretty bad, but hell, I’ve had cases that looked worse than this one does, and you will too before you’re done with the law.”

  “Did you win them when they looked this bad?”

  He decided his glasses needed cleaning and got busy with that. “Sometimes. But you know as well as I do that that isn’t the point. I said in the beginning you’re on two tracks, one you’ve got to go with and the other one you want to go with. What you have to do is see to it that Paula Kennerman gets a fair trial, and not get so wrapped up in what you want to do that you lose sight of that.”

  The next day Bailey called, and sounded happy, such a rare occurrence with him that Barbara drew in her breath. “We found your missing photographer,” Bailey said. “Winnie just got back from talking to her. In Sonoma, for God’s sake. Sonoma! And your boy Craig is off on another jaunt; Winnie saw him in the airport and got curious. He’s off to Denver this time.”

  Another demonstration? How many times a year did he do that? “Do you know someone in Denver?” she asked, as much out of irritation as with purpose. “Let’s find out what he does on these trips. Talk about frequent flyers!”

  “Denver … Yeah, there’s a guy there. You serious?”

  “Yes, Bailey. Just find out where he goes, who he sees. Is he organizing or just showing up? What about the photographer? Did she have anything to say?”

  “Better than that, Barbara. We have her film. I’ll drop it of f to a guy I know to get it developed and printed, and then we’ll see what made old man Dodgson blow his stack. Okay?”

  “You bet. And call that guy you know in Denver before the plane lands and Craig gets lost in the crowd.”

  That night she, Frank, and Bailey examined the photographs under a strong light in Barbara’s kitchen, they were arranged in seque
nce; the first few were dark and murky, with little detail. “My guy said she was probably doing a few random shots to get her light-meter reading right. Maybe set the stage before the animals arrived. See here, he said there’s something between her and the building in this one and a couple that follow it.”

  There was the Gallead fence, with a faintly paler sky behind it. The elk probably came from behind that fence to get to the orchard, Barbara thought, peering at the prints. A later print showed an animal, a black silhouette against the lighter sky, emerging from the far side of the fence. Then a print with several elk bunched so that they looked like one large animal with too many heads. Then, apparently, the elk had turned and run away.

  “She was pretty disgusted, never developed them, since the elk never got to the orchard where she could get a better shot,” Bailey said. “But what my guy said is interesting is the thing between her and the fence. He can do things with the negatives, enhance the image, bring it out, he says, if we want him to.”

  Barbara nodded absently. She could almost make it out. A truck? And several figures. Not even at Dodgson’s place, but in front of Gallead’s fence. She looked closer. The edge of the gate was there, visible, light against dark. The gate was open. She straightened and rubbed her back. Frank was rubbing his, too.

  “Let’s see what he can do with them,” she said. “Just these.” She sorted them, choosing the ones that showed the fence, the gate, and the thing that looked like a truck.

  “Is the damn fool running guns?” Frank muttered. “Illegal aliens? When can he get them done so we can see something?” he asked Bailey; he was scowling fiercely.

  “I’ll get back to him first thing in the morning,” Bailey said as he gathered up the prints. “Take him a day or two. And, Barbara, I know where Craig Dodgson went in Denver, but what it means is about as clear as this mess. Four doctors. All obstetricians, gynecologists, you know, women’s doctors. All in private practice, spread out over the city. He went in, stayed fifteen minutes, came out, and went to the next one, and then he came home. You figure it out.”

  “Are they pro-lifers? Do they do abortions?”

  Bailey shrugged. “One pro-lifer, three do whatever comes along. Maybe he’s trying to convert them.”

  “You put a tail on Craig Dodgson?” Frank asked. “Good God! What for? I’m going home.”

  “Just for today, Dad. And I don’t know what for.” And, she realized when they were both gone, she didn’t know what for about any of this affair.

  ELEVEN

  Day by day the temperature edged upward; the sun shone without mercy. Nice people began to snarl and snap at other nice people. Those without enough energy to snarl bared their teeth silently. For most of July the nights were cool, alleviating the danger of mass insanity, but then the night temperatures began to climb also, and now people were saying, If I wanted to live in a desert, I'd go down to Southern California. Those who chose to live in the valley liked rain and mist and cool weather; they did not like snow, and they especially did not like it when the thermometer flirted with the one-hundred-degree red mark day after day.

  Barbara’s house was hot day and night. It did her temper no good at all to think of Frank’s house with a heat pump that provided heat in winter and cool air in the summer. She read reports; she wrote out her own notes and reports; she interviewed people in the office, where the air-conditioning made her want to curl up and sleep; she raced around the countryside in her un-air-conditioned car to interview other people.

  The tiger was still straining; she was still holding on, and neither of them had moved an inch.

  The first week in August Janey Lipscomb called. “I have a present for you,” she said in her cheerful way. “Mrs. Everts is pretty grateful that you steered me onto Annie, and she said you could have a copy of the tape, if you think it will be useful.” Her tone hinted that Barbara would find it useful.

  “I’d like to see it very much,” Barbara said, trying to resist the buoying effect of too much hope.

  Janey said she could drop it off on her lunch hour, and Barbara arranged to meet her at the office at noon. When the young psychologist arrived, Barbara thought again how improbable it seemed for her to be a doctor of anything; she looked more like a cheerleader.

  “Thanks,” Barbara said, taking the tape. “Will Annie be okay?”

  “She’ll be fine. I told her mother not to let her testify in court,” she said with charming candor. “That would be too traumatic for her right now.”

  “All right. Dr. Lipscomb—may I call you Janey?”

  “You might as well. Everyone else does, little kids with two teeth, great-grandparents with two teeth, it’s just Janey to them all. Why should you be different?”

  Barbara laughed. “I wonder why that is.” Then, serious again, she said, “There’s one more thing I’d like to engage you to do. Go see Paula Kennerman.”

  Janey’s dimply smile vanished as she shook her head. “I’m not a forensic psychologist, no match for the guy the state always uses—what’s his name?—Ricky Palma. I don’t want to butt heads with him.”

  “I don’t want you to,” Barbara said. “Just go spend an hour with Paula. Talk about the weather, knitting, whatever. I just want people to know you’ve been there.”

  Janey looked at her appraisingly. “Why?”

  They were standing near the large round table in Frank’s office; it was piled high with newspapers, notebooks, folders; Barbara added the tape to a heap of stuff. The accumulation of weeks of investigation appeared to be nothing more than a jumble, which was how she thought of it all. A jumble. Barbara waved at the mess.

  “Out of all that stuff I’m beginning to unravel threads, one here, one there. I’m not sure yet where they lead, or if they connect. I don’t know yet where that tape will fit in, or even if it will. But if it does, I may have to call you to testify. Your name will be on the list of witnesses for the defense. I’d rather have everyone think you might testify about Paula and not that child. I can’t tell you more than that, because at this moment I don’t know more than that.”

  Janey grinned again and shrugged. “Okay. I’m sort of curious about her, anyway. Thursday,” she added.

  “Your day off,” Barbara said.

  “Days off are really theoretical, aren’t they? They sound good on a job description and vanish in reality. Gotta run. See you.”

  Barbara went back to sorting her materials. The Jack Kennerman material made up one stack. Then the Dodgsons and Royce Gallead, who obviously was smuggling something. All that space in his building, not necessary to his business, she felt certain, but for what? And the truck with the five men around it, on the way in. To do what? Dodgson probably knew about Gallcad’s operation, maybe had a piece of it. She could form a tenuous link between them, but she could not link that side to the murder of Lori Kennerman and the arson fire at the Canby house. It seemed that Dodgson had taken steps to make certain no one at the Canby place would ferret out his secrets, but once the steps were taken, boundaries established, he had left the Canby guests alone. And he and his wife and even their son were all accounted for the morning of the murder and fire. Gallead had been at the firing range all that morning, accounted for; his employee, Terry Bossert, had been in the gun shop all day that Saturday.

  No matter how she tried to work the information she had, there remained a missing piece, and without it she had a foot on two different tracks, exactly as her father had claimed from the start.

  He simply hadn’t realized that one hand was clutching a third track as if life depended on not letting go. She had taken seriously his admonition that she might be a hindrance rather than a help to Paula as long as Judge Paltz believed her to be dishonorable. She could not start a trial in his court until that was settled, she understood, but every time she had tried to find a way to clear the air of that business, she hit a wall.

  She frowned at the paper she was holding, undecided where to place the report on William Spassero. She sat
down to consider him yet again. Everything in his life had been exemplary right up to the time he acquired Paula Kennerman as a client. Good family, money in the background, good education, good prospects. Absolutely unblemished, not a sour note anywhere. She bit her lip in exasperation. He had come to Eugene two years ago, with faultless recommendations, to take the job in the public defender’s office. Not associated with right- or left-wing groups. Presbyterian. Probably would go with Doneally and Jensen in November. And Doneally, evidently, was in Dodgson’s pocket.

  Suddenly she stood up. “What if he didn’t know?" she said softly, and after a moment she said to herself, “That's it. He didn’t know.”

  She sat down again to think about it, but she felt certain that Bill Spassero had walked into a bear trap without awareness until it closed on him.

  She examined this idea for a few more minutes, and then she called Spassero’s office. She listened as someone at the other end yelled for him to pick up the phone.

  “Barbara Holloway,” she said when he barked hello. “I'd like to meet with you to discuss something.”

  There was a pause, then he said, “Ms. Holloway, what a coincidence. I was going to call you about that file. I can't tell you how sorry I am about that. We searched and searched, and just last night I found it at home, under a bunch of stuff. Why don’t I drop it off?"

  “Fine.” she said. “I’m at my father’s office. You know where it is?”

  He said he did and would be by in half an hour.

  She hung up thoughtfully. She had given up on obtaining the original file; the district attorney's office had sent over what they said was everything, and she believed them.

  It seemed complete. And now Spassero had found his file.

  Interesting, she thought, just interesting.

  She had seen him being coolly professional in court; had seen him grinning with boyish enthusiasm and friendliness; he had been stiff and indignant and very righteous; and then furious. All the roles had been very well performed. The most important lesson he could learn at the public defender’s office was self-control; he would be given A plus if that were a graded subject. Today when the receptionist, Pam, led him to the office, he was reserved and careful, open, willing to be friends but not pushing anything.