[Barbara Holloway 02] - The Best Defense

by Kate Wilhelm

  “Could be a new psychedelic,” Frank suggested.

  “Or an aphrodisiac from Thailand.”

  “An invisibility pill. One to turn you off, one to turn you back on.”

  She grinned. “I like that.”

  “He wouldn’t hire local help,” Frank said after a moment. “Too risky. I’m surprised he hires anyone. Seems like he could handle it alone over a week or two.”

  She looked up at him. “I wonder if the Dodgsons know he brings in outside talent?”

  Frank started to walk toward the hall and his bedroom. He stopped at the doorway and regarded her for a second, and then said, “Don’t answer right now, sleep on it, but I’m thinking we may be in over our heads. This could really be time to talk to the FBI.”

  She had thought about it already, before Miguel Torres left, in fact. “If they believed us and went out there and broke down doors, what do you suppose they’d find?”

  “I know,” he said. “I know. Gallead’s had time to clear out everything right down to virgin wood. But they’d start an investigation.”

  “Yes, and six months from now, or two years from now, or five, we might even hear echoes of it, and meanwhile, what about Paula Kennerman?”

  Alone later, she continued to worry the question: What was in the little pill bottles valuable enough to pay two thousand dollars for illegal workers to package? Some kind of phony treatment for something incurable? Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s, or even AIDS? People would pay anything for hope. Where did the tablets and capsules come from? Miguel had said emphatically they did not make them at Gallead’s place; they just packaged them.

  She knew she was wasting time, but she couldn’t leave it alone. So, she told herself, Craig picked up ten thousand doses of something somewhere. Where didn’t matter, she decided; he said he went up and down the coast from Mexico to Canada, even to Hawaii. He could hide ten thousand doses easily enough, even if he was stopped repeatedly and searched for marijuana, coke, anything. All that was bulky, and he was dealing with very small items. His father had a supply of paper for the information sheet, or instructions; he could print and deliver five thousand to Gallead without involving anyone else. Same for the various boxes. That must be Dodgson’s department, also. And Royce Gallead was the packager. Then, someone had to deliver them. Craig Dodgson, she decided. He had the perfect cover for numerous trips throughout the year—his involvement with the antiabortion groups.

  Her head was reeling when she gave it up at last to go to bed. Until they knew what the stuff was for, they were no better off than they had been yesterday, or last month, she thought tiredly as she went up the stairs.

  TWENTY-ONE

  She had been up for over an hour before Frank appeared, looking grumpy and rumpled, wanting a cup of coffee, and no talk.

  “I got hold of Carol Burnside,” she said. “I told her we’d pay expenses, a room at the Hilton for two nights, the works. She said okay.”

  “Who the hell is Carol Burnside?” he growled, and then shook his head. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me anything yet.”

  “She’s the photographer Dodgson bitched about. I need to spend a few hours at the office later on, reading to do.”

  “Don’t talk,” he mumbled, and carried his coffee back toward his room.

  She followed him through the hall. “Where’s there a pharmacy open on Sunday, with a working pharmacist?”

  “Christ almighty!” He entered his room and slammed the door.

  While her father shopped in a supermarket with a pharmacy, she browsed in the aisle of over-the-counter medications waiting for the pharmacist to finish up what he was doing. She held a container of baby aspirins which she had opened, and another of Dramamine, and was studying a pink capsule which the label said was a time-release decongestant, when the pharmacist approached her smiling. The smile vanished when he saw the open medications. He was a bald, middle-aged man with thick glasses.

  “Now, something I can help you with?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I hope so. Can you think of any medication that would require two different forms, one like this baby aspirin and one like this capsule?” She held out her hand for him to see.

  He looked at her suspiciously. “Baby medicine?”

  “No. For an adult.”

  “Maybe if you tell me what it’s for, I can tell you what it is,” he suggested.

  “I don’t know what it’s for,” she said. “Only that one is a pink capsule and one is a white tablet, and they go together.”

  He shook his head. He glanced at the open containers with a pained expression; then he noticed the Dramamine. “For motion sickness?”

  “I don’t think so. But, tell me, does Dramamine come in different strengths?”

  His suspicion increased. “No. Take one or two about half an hour before the problem is expected, and then again four to six hours later if it persists. Is that all, miss?”

  “I suppose it has to be,” she said, and started to walk away. “Oh, there is something. Can I buy the smallest pill container you have?”

  “Just the pill dispenser? No medications?”

  “Well, these,” she said, holding up the over-the-counter medications she had opened.

  He walked stiffly past her, back through a door into the pharmacy, and brought up a clear plastic container from under the counter. “Like this?”

  “Is that the smallest?”

  He slapped it down on the counter, looked again, and brought out a smaller one, about one and a half inches high. “They don’t come smaller,” he said.

  That morning she had divided ail her material into two stacks, one dealing with Paula and the Canby Ranch, and the other concerning the Dodgsons and Gallead. For several hours that afternoon in Frank’s office she reread Dodgson’s newspapers, consulting her notes frequently, making new notes more frequently. Her student researchers had done their work well. Under the various headings they had listed the papers by dates, the editorials and articles by page and paragraph. Frank had added his notes and cross references. It was easy to find everything. And the office library, down the hall from her father’s office, was up-to-date; in it she had found a medical reference volume on prescription drugs, which she consulted again and again.

  She began to pace the long wide corridor. She liked the offices when no one else was around, the subdued lighting, the silence, the many closed doors that suggested secrets. She had a flash of deja vu, a time when she had been eight or nine; her mother had brought her to the office one night, to deliver something to Frank, who was working late. Barbara had stayed in the corridor, walking back and forth, pretending she had an office here, that she was in charge, all this was hers, the library, the large stenographers’ room, the little secretaries’ rooms, all of it; everyone here worked for her. “You going to be a lawyer, honey?” her father had asked from his doorway, his arm around her mother’s waist. They were both smiling, the way parents smile at children and make them stiffen and deny everything. “No way,” she had said firmly. But she had known then that yes, she was going to be a lawyer. She couldn’t be her mother, who had been very pretty but hadn’t done anything. Now she knew how invaluable her mother’s help had been to her father, but she hadn’t seen it then. Frank had not tried a single murder case since the death of his wife. No more dealing with life and death, he had declared by his actions, never his words.

  Barbara reached the end of the corridor near the reception room; the offices occupied twice as much space as they had at the time of her memory; now the corridor made a right turn and continued with another bank of closed doors on each side. The firm had taken over the entire third floor of the building. She turned to retrace her steps one more time, banishing the past, bringing her mind once again to the medicines. Finally she went back to Frank’s desk, pulled the telephone closer, and punched in the numbers for Christina Lorenza in San Jose.

  “Ms. Lorenza,” she said when she reached the woman, “my name is Barbara Holloway; I’m rep
resenting a client in a murder trial in Eugene, Oregon. A few weeks ago, you very kindly talked to a detective about your experience with Craig Dodgson. May I ask you to clarify a point?”

  “No! Leave me alone! I shouldn’t have told her anything. She said no one would bother me again. Leave me alone!”

  “Ms. Lorenza, just one question, please. Were the pills Craig gave you white and pink? Were they different?”

  “Look, I’m calling Craig and telling him you people are after him. I’m not taking any more calls, no more questions, nothing. Go talk to him! Just leave me alone!” The phone banged down.

  “Oh, dear God,” Barbara breathed and redialed swiftly, to get a busy signal. Maybe she won’t call him, she prayed, and pushed the redial button again. A minute later she did it again. She called the operator and asked for a verification of the number, and was told the phone was off the receiver. Don’t call him, she said under her breath. Don’t call him!

  She was listening to the busy signal a few minutes later when she heard a tap on the door. It was after five. She should have called her father at five, she remembered, and said, “Come in.” As the door opened and he stuck his head around it, she hung up the phone and said, “I can’t believe I did anything so stu—”

  Frank put his finger to his lips and opened the door all the way. Bill Spassero was behind him. “He dropped in,” Frank said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “Thought you should hear what he has to say.”

  Was the man getting even blonder? Dyeing his hair lighter? She began to jam papers into her briefcase. “Well?” she said, not looking up. Suddenly she said, “What do you mean ‘dropped in’?”

  “I looked up Mr. Holloway in the records room and found the property transfer,” Bill Spassero said. “Anyone can do it.” He stood awkwardly at the door while Frank entered all the way and dropped into one of the visitors’ chairs. “Anyway,” Spassero went on, “I kept thinking about something and today I decided you should know. I’ve been watching you in court,” he said. “I know, you haven’t really noticed. I wouldn’t be looking over the audience much either the way the court is packed every day with those people, but I kept seeing this one man, Terry Bossert, and I saw that one of the police officers I know was keeping an eye on him too, so I asked about him.”

  Frank made a beckoning gesture. “Why don’t you sit down and tell it?” he said.

  Whatever it was, he already knew, Barbara realized. She nodded at Spassero, who was watching her for an invitation. “You might as well sit down,” she said. “Who is Terry Bossert?”

  Spassero took the chair next to Frank. He didn’t look relaxed. “His real name is Terence Bossini. Up until he came here to work with Royce Gallead in the gun shop, he was a small-time crook down in Las Vegas—bouncer, messenger, gofer, hustler, you name it. He served time for extortion, got out on parole, and a couple of years later came up here. As far as the police know, he’s been straight since then, but he lives in a pretty big house up on Spyglass Hill, not a cheap neighborhood. Everything’s in the name of the woman he lives with.”

  Barbara studied him through narrowed eyes; he appeared perfectly guileless. Finally she asked, “Why are you telling us this? What do you want?”

  “Remember when I asked you that?” he said with a hint of a grin. “Same answer you gave me. Nothing. I don’t want anything. I just thought you should know if you didn’t already.”

  “I already thanked him for the flowers,” Frank drawled. “And for the tip that the Dodgson crew was heading for parts unknown last week.”

  “You did that, too?”

  Spassero nodded. “I ran into Doneally and brought up the case, said I was really glad to be out of it since the way you were going after the Dodgsons made it appear they were involved. He said you wouldn’t hound them for long, they were taking off. I thought you might want to know that, too. He might suspect I tipped you. Ran into him again and he cut me cold,” he added with a shrug.

  Frank stood up and said, “If you’re done with those newspapers, I’ll start putting them back. Bessie will have a fit if they’re not where they belong.” He picked up the stack that Barbara had put aside.

  “I do want one thing,” Spassero said then as he also stood up. “After all this is over, can I talk to you? I’ve been watching, making notes of your courtroom style.”

  Frank left the room while he was talking.

  “I’d really appreciate it if you’d explain a few things later. Why you did this, not that. This question, this nuance, not that one. You’ve opened up this case in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. I’d like to learn how you saw it, how you knew where to go. You know: You mentor, me little brother. Would you do that?”

  She stood up and came around the desk. “Mr. Spassero, I am grateful for your tip about the Dodgsons, and even the roses, and today especially. You’ve been very helpful.” She held out her hand to him.

  He ignored it. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’ll have to think about it. I believe we’re more than even now, don’t you?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. You saved my life. All I’ve been able to do is maybe give a tiny nudge for your client. Not the same.” He smiled. “I’ll be in your debt forever, I’m afraid. Besides, as soon as you begin to think about being even, or if I might have the upper hand, your answer will be no. Won’t it?”

  She laughed. “Come on and shake hands and then get the hell out of here. I have work to do.”

  They shook hands very properly and he turned to leave. She followed. “Mr. Spassero—”

  “Bill,” he cut in.

  “Bill then, no more flowers. No perfume, no candy. Okay? Really, they don’t impress me.”

  He nodded. “As you say. I’ll think of something that will, though.”

  As soon as she saw him out through the reception room and relocked the entrance door, she marched off to find her father.

  “You can come back in now,” she said tartly. “I have to tell you what happened.”

  His smile was benign when he emerged from Bessie’s room and walked with her back to his office, but his expression became grim when she told him about the call to Christina Lorenza.

  “If she gets Craig and he knows we’re this far, she might be in danger,” Barbara finished.

  “She won’t get him yet,” he said, frowning. “He’s out getting the yacht ready for a trip. He might come back in tonight, though. Maybe she’ll cool off by then.”

  “And maybe she won’t.”

  “Right.” He was scowling at his desktop, drumming his fingers, back in his own chair. She went out to the reception desk, turned on the computer, and called up airline schedules. When she returned to Frank’s office a few minutes later, he was rifling through a card file.

  “There must be someone I know down there,” he grumbled.

  “Forget it. I have a flight at six-thirty. I’m going down myself.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Save it for the car ride, Dad,” she said, picking up her things. “Come on. I have to check in in twenty minutes or they won’t hold the seat. We just have time.”

  “Barbara,” he started, but she was already out the door.

  In the car she said, “You’ll have to put Lucille on in the morning and keep her talking. I’ll be back by afternoon.”

  “We can send Winnie,” he protested.

  “She wouldn’t have a chance. Christina knows her already.”

  “But look at you, how you’re dressed.”

  She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that had butterflies all over it. She shrugged; if it turned cool, she had a sweater. “And get on the phone to make sure they have a car waiting for me,” she said. “I’ll get there by nine, not too late for a drop-in visit . I’ll call you or leave a message on the machine. Oh, sic Bailey onto Bossert, and tie in Gallead and Kay Dodgson before she left Las Vegas.”

  “I called Bailey already,” he said. “Same idea. There’s a link th
ere, all right.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  He grunted and turned onto the airport road.

  Christina lived in north San Jose in half a duplex house with a neat little dead lawn in front and a screaming child next door. Barbara rang the bell and smiled at the young woman who opened the door. She smiled back.

  “Hi,” Barbara said. “I’m looking for Christina Lorenza.”

  “That’s me.” She was short, five feet two, and plump without being too fat. She had long blond hair, much of it down in her face. Her smile was very nice.

  “Ms. Lorenza,” Barbara said, “I have to talk to you. You’re in terrible danger.”

  She started to close the door; Barbara held it open. “I spoke with you on the phone a couple of hours ago,” she said, “and I flew down here from Eugene, Oregon, to tell you that you’re in danger.”

  “I’ll call the police if you don’t get out of here!”

  “After I talk to you, you might really want to call the police, but first let me tell you why you’re in danger.”

  “Who’s there?” a man yelled.

  “It’s that lawyer from Oregon, the one who called before.”

  He appeared behind Christina, a slender, bearded man with horn-rimmed glasses. He looked out past Barbara. “You alone?”

  “Yes.” From next door came a more piercing shriek.

  “Let her in,” he said with a shrug, “and then we can toss her out again together.” He grinned.

  Grudgingly Christina opened the door and moved aside. She looked both angry and frightened. “You flew down here from Oregon? Tonight?”

  “Yes,” Barbara said. “You want to see the airplane ticket?”

  Christina nodded and Barbara found it in her purse and handed it over. They both examined it.

  “I really need to talk to you alone,” Barbara said when she had the ticket back. “Five minutes is all it will take.”

  “You go ahead,” the man said. “I’ll finish up making the sauce.” The fragrance of tortillas and chilies was mouthwatering.

  “What do you want?” Christina demanded as soon as he vanished around a corner of the room. She had admitted Barbara to a living room without much furniture—one chair, a wooden sofa with a few pillows, and a lot of books everywhere.