House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  What was coming now, on August 3, was Shelby Randolph in her black BMW. The driveway was blocked with half a dozen trucks, so she parked down on the road and picked her way through the gravel in her lethal-looking heels. Kip’s spine snapped up like a rubber band when he saw her. He dropped his shovel and trudged up the hill in a parallel path to Shelby’s. “I’ll go wash up,” he said to Pete at the door and brushed past him into the house.

  The paint fumes were too strong for an indoor meeting. Pete showed Shelby to the makeshift table on the terrace—a plywood sheet over sawhorses—where the men ate lunch and took their coffee breaks. It was set up under the pergola, and the sun shone through the slats and laid diagonal stripes across the striated surface of the plywood. Shelby sat down and swung her legs under the table.

  “You met with the new prosecutor?” Until last week a middle-aged woman named Andrea Briggs was running the case. Now some kid named Seth Rodell was in charge. That was good news, Pete had thought, a downgrade, until Shelby quietly shook her head. Andrea had been bumped down to second chair. Rodell was the rising star.

  “Let’s wait for Kip, shall we?” she said now.

  Right. Kip was the client. Her adult client. This little fiction they maintained.

  She swept her gaze over the rear elevation of the house across the bluestone patio, past the pool, and up to the windowpanes winking in the sunlight. “Place looks good,” she said.

  “Have you seen Leigh?”

  She kept her eyes on the house. “I’m not going to talk to you about Leigh, Pete.”

  “I only want to know if she’s okay.”

  “Of course she’s not okay. Her daughter died and her husband left her.”

  His fists clenched under the table. “You know that’s not the whole—”

  “Of course I know. When she asks if you’re okay, I say No, his son got arrested and his wife kicked him out. Both statements are true, but it doesn’t solve a damn thing. So I have nothing more to say on the subject, okay?”

  “Okay,” Pete said, stung.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s an impossible situation. For both of you, but also for me. She’s my best friend. I should have been beside her, helping her get through these few last months. But Kip’s my client, and I had to be there for him, too, and it turned out I couldn’t do both. I should have withdrawn when he changed his story about who was driving, but I didn’t realize how bad things were going to get.”

  “Nobody did.”

  “In any case, it’s too late now. There’s nothing to do but get through it.”

  Get through it. She made it sound like crawling through a tunnel and coming out into sunshine on the other side, and maybe that would be true for her. When this case was over, her life would revert to normal. Back to her glamorous life and her billion-dollar cases in the city. But Kip’s tunnel might come out somewhere even darker.

  He came out of the house with his arms scrubbed up to his elbows. Droplets sprayed off his hair like a dog giving himself a shake. “Hey,” he panted as he sat down next to Pete on the bench seat. “ ’Sup?”

  “I had a meeting with the prosecutor today,” Shelby said. “He’s put an expiration date on their plea offer. We have until Thursday nine a.m. to say yea or nay.”

  “Why so soon?” Pete thought the offer would be good until the minute before the jury returned a verdict.

  She shrugged. “The usual. He doesn’t want to prepare for trial if he doesn’t have to.”

  Everything was usual for Shelby. She couldn’t appreciate how unusual this experience was for anyone else. To have to decide in three days—less—whether your kid goes away for a guaranteed two years or rolls the dice and risks five times as long. To have to decide if you were going to let him go away under any circumstances. Take off for Canada and both become felons.

  “We exchanged exhibits and witness statements today. There were no surprises. So let me preview exactly what their case will consist of.” She picked up her notes. “First they’ll put on the neighbor who called nine-one-one. We know what he’s going to say. Next up will be the arresting officer, Denise Mateo. Then your two friends from the party. Then the ER doctor to testify about Chrissy’s condition when she arrived and about Kip’s statement that she hit her head. Finally, the neurosurgeon to establish the nature of the injury and to offer his opinion as to the cause of death.” She looked up from her notes. “That’s a capsule of the prosecution case.”

  “What about Leigh?” Pete said. “Her name’s on their witness list.”

  “Yes, but apparently they’re not calling her.”

  “Really?” He wondered what that could mean.

  “I’ll cross the government’s witnesses, of course, and hammer away on reasonable doubt. Then for the defense case—Pete, you’ll testify first, paint a picture for the jury of Kip and his accomplishments and all his prospects. Then I’ll call Dr. Rabin to testify about all of the other possible causes of the aneurysm.” She paused. “Then we rest.”

  “Wait.” Kip’s eyes darted from Pete to Shelby. “What about me?”

  He had a streak of dirt behind his ear, Pete noticed. It was the spot he routinely missed as a little boy. They were always sending him back to the sink for another go before dinner.

  “We can’t put you on the stand, Kip. You saw what happened during our practice run. If you don’t testify, the only picture the jury gets of you is that nice-looking boy at the defense table with the proud parents sitting behind him. Evidence of your previous arrest and all those other incidents will be inadmissible. This will look like the first time you ever got into trouble. You cooperated with Officer Mateo, and you were helpful to the ER doc. That’s all the jury ever has to know about you.”

  “But—but then how will they know I wasn’t driving?”

  Shelby folded her hands on her notes. “I’m sorry, Kip. We have to abandon that line of defense. The neighbor will testify that you were behind the wheel when he looked out, and the cops will testify that neither you nor Chrissy ever said anything different. We never found a corroborating witness, which means we only have your word for it. Your inconsistent word. Putting you on the stand will do far more harm than good.”

  “It’s my decision, though.” Kip looked from Shelby to Pete. “I mean, I’m the client.”

  Pete’s eyes met hers. How long were they going to play out this pretense? Duke was emailing suggestions to parents on how to guide their children through homesickness, and somehow they were supposed to maintain this facade that Kip was an adult who could make these life-changing decisions all on his own?

  “You have the right to testify, certainly,” she said. “But I strongly advise against it.”

  Kip traced a finger along the stripes of light that lay across the plywood. “What if we found that witness? Would it be too late?”

  Pete shot him a look. “What are you talking about?”

  Kip didn’t answer. His eyes were on Shelby, who replied cautiously. “The judge could allow us to amend our witness list. Depending on the circumstances that caused the delay.”

  He nodded. “So what about the security footage from next door?”

  “What about it?” Pete said with a snap of impatience in his voice. They’d run this down and ruled it out weeks ago.

  “Oh, about that.” Shelby shuffled some papers. “Frank finally dug up the owner of that place. She lives in England. A woman named Deidre Cookson.”

  Pete remembered the woman in the Uber car. “I think I saw her. A ritzy-looking blonde in her fifties?”

  “Sounds right. We sent her a polite request, which she politely ignored.”

  “So subpoena her already,” Kip said.

  “Serving a subpoena overseas is expensive and takes forever. We’d never get it done before trial. Besides—” She looked to Pete. “The cameras don’t cover the road. Didn’t we already confirm that?”

  Kip jumped up from the table. “Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  He r
an for the house, and Shelby turned an irritated face on Pete. “What’s this about?”

  “You got me.”

  They watched the door Kip disappeared into until he appeared out of it again. He loped back to the table carrying his laptop.

  Pete sat up straight. “You picked out the priest? From the mug shots?”

  “No.” Kip wore an expression Pete had never seen on him before. One part shit-eating slyness, three parts hope. “But I got his car.” He flipped open the computer lid. “We can enhance it and get the license plate, then we got him.” He touched the trackpad and lit up the screen.

  “What do you mean, you got the car?”

  Kip held up a flash of silver. A thumb drive. “It’s the security video.” He nodded toward the Hermitage. “From next door.”

  “What?” Pete and Shelby spoke at the same time, but she had razors in her voice.

  “I got the video feed from that night and just before midnight there’s the car. I knew it as soon as I saw it.” He inserted the thumb drive into the slot and a grainy video began to play on the monitor. “You can send it to one of those labs, and we’ll be able to ID the driver. Then you can add the driver to the witness list and subpoena him or whatever, and it’ll be over.” He pulled his eyes from the screen and looked from Pete to Shelby. Now his expression was one part smug satisfaction and three parts hope. “Right?”

  Shelby reached across the table and slammed the laptop lid shut. “How’d you get this?”

  Pete stared at him. “Did you—that day I caught you—did you break in?”

  Kip shook his head. “I thought I might have to. I kept getting timed out on the server before the password generator finished running. But last night I finally cracked it.”

  “You mean, hacked it.” Shelby’s eyes shone like a laser freeze ray across the table.

  “What?” Pete pushed back from the table so violently the plywood sheet rocked on the sawhorses. “Jesus!”

  “You hacked into a private CCTV system.”

  Kip stuck out his chin. “It’s not like you were getting anywhere your way.”

  “My way was the only way it would be admissible,” she said. “I can’t put on evidence that was obtained through criminal activity, and even if I could, we don’t have a witness to authenticate it.”

  “You don’t need to play the video in court. Just use it to ID the driver of the car.”

  “You think it won’t come out how we found him? The evidence will be thrown out, you’ll be charged with cybercrimes on top of everything else, and I’ll be dragged up on disciplinary charges.”

  Kip squirmed. “At least watch it. Then decide.”

  “No. No.” Shelby stood to her full looming height. “Even watching it makes me complicit in your crime.” She looked down at Pete. “The same goes for you. Destroy the files and hope no one ever finds out. Agreed?”

  Pete gave a curt nod as Kip clenched his jaw and looked away.

  She closed her briefcase. “Think about the plea offer. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  They watched her pick her way down the driveway. When she passed out of sight, Kip turned pleading eyes on Pete. “Dad, I had to try. I couldn’t just do nothing.”

  Pete didn’t move.

  “Dad—”

  “Quiet.” He waited until he heard the growl of the BMW engine before he stood up. “Give me that thing,” he said and grabbed the laptop off the table.

  “Dad! No—come on!”

  Pete went inside and downstairs to the basement. Angelo and his crew were setting the tile along the coping of the lap pool. Pete turned the other way into the media room and shut the door. The reclining theater seats weren’t installed yet, but all the electronics were in. He set the laptop on the console and ran the connections, and the video lit up the jumbo-size screen on the end wall of the room.

  Kip was at his side by then. “Thanks, Dad,” he said in a voice full of feeling.

  “Shut up. You were stupid and reckless and I told you—”

  “I had to do it.” He reached for the keyboard. “Finding this guy’s my only chance.”

  “This better be worth it.”

  Pete dimmed the ceiling lights and Kip hit a button on the laptop and four different videos started to play in a quadrant of split images on the screen. It took Pete a minute to make out what he was seeing. The images were washed in an eerie greenish light—the cameras must have been equipped with infrared night vision—but all they showed were the bushes and trees outside the Hermitage walls.

  “The cameras don’t point at the road,” Kip said. “Frank was right about that.”

  “Then what am I even looking at?”

  “You know that dirt road that loops around from the Glue Factory?”

  Pete looked at him blankly until he remembered his stupid joke name for Golden Oldies Farm. “Yeah?”

  “It comes out on the far side of the Hermitage. Watch.”

  Kip hit another button. The split-screen disappeared and a single video played across the jumbo screen. He hit another button and the footage blipped and blurred. “Hold on,” he said, freezing it. Then, “There. You see it?”

  Pete walked closer to the screen. He couldn’t see anything but grass and trees and a date and time-stamp at the bottom. Then something moved at the top of the screen—a vehicle materialized in the pear-colored light of the night-vision filter. It was coming out of the conservancy woods up on the hill. A Jeep Wrangler, he pegged it. It could have been blue or green in that strange light but was probably black. It drove slowly down the dirt track until it disappeared out of the frame at the bottom of the screen.

  “Play it again.”

  Behind him Kip hit another button.

  It was a Wrangler, Pete confirmed on the second viewing, with the four-door upgrade, and it was driving with its headlights off. “Again,” he said.

  On the third viewing he saw that there was no license plate mounted on the front of the Jeep. Virginia required plates front and back. Maryland and the District, too. “You got it from any other angles?”

  “Yeah. Hold on.”

  One other camera picked up the Jeep that night, but it didn’t show the rear bumper either. “There’s no license plate,” Pete said. “There’s nothing to enhance.”

  “Wait. Watch this.” Kip froze on a single frame. “See the driver?”

  Pete squinted hard. He couldn’t make out anything but a black shadow behind the wheel. “Can you lighten it up?”

  “No, but look at that flash of white. Right where his throat would be. That’s the priest collar I saw.”

  “That could be anything.”

  “It’s him. I know it. He came out and turned left and drove down Hollow Road to where we went in the ditch.”

  “This tractor road. It doesn’t go anywhere but around to the Dietrichs’ place.”

  “Right.”

  “So why would he take the back way out of the Dietrichs’ only to turn left and drive right past their front gates? If he was going that way anyway, he would’ve gone out their front drive.”

  “It’s him. I know it is.”

  “A priest wouldn’t be driving a back road at midnight with his lights off. It’s probably just some kids going up to the woods to smoke dope.”

  “Dad, I swear it’s the priest’s car. I’d know it anywhere.”

  Pete let out a heavy breath as he turned from the screen. “Except in a photo array.”

  “Huh?”

  “That binder Frank put together? It had a photo of this same car, the same model, and you didn’t recognize it then.”

  “Was it the same? I don’t remember—”

  “I do. And I remember Frank already canvassed the Dietrichs, and they didn’t have any visitors that night.” He reached to switch off the video player and the screen went dark. The whole room went dark. “Why would they lie about that?”

  “Why would I?!”

  That was the question. Why would he make up a witness who would never b
e found? Why point out a car that couldn’t be traced? Maybe for that exact reason, Pete couldn’t help thinking. It was like running a long con. If you told a lie that made no sense to tell, nobody would think it was a lie. Pete felt for the thumb drive and pulled it out of the port and dropped it in his pocket. “You risked your neck for nothing. This is just another dead end.”

  He tramped upstairs. The paving contractor had arrived to pour the base for the driveway, and he had to round up everybody to move their trucks so they could get to work.

  Chapter Forty

  Dialing for Devra became dialing Devra in the days following her extraction from the embassy. Leigh’s first call every morning was to the new prepaid cell phone she gave her. In order to avoid eavesdropping or any other security breaches on the hotel switchboard, she’d removed all other phones from the suite. She was concerned, too, that Devra might reach out to some old friend in Qatar who turned out to be a better friend to the sheikh. The burner phone was insurance against any such call being traced.

  Devra’s dazed relief the night of her escape had already given way to bored restlessness and was sinking fast into loneliness. “I’m fine, everything’s fine,” she always said. “I simply don’t know what to do with myself all day.”

  “Well, what did you do when you were living at the embassy?”

  She sighed. “I never knew what to do with myself there either.”

  Leigh arranged for books and DVDs to be delivered to her suite, and the concierge took tea with her every day, but it wasn’t enough. Her friends were all in Qatar, the one place she could never return to. She knew no one in this country except her lawyer and her personal shopper. Speaking of which, there were some clothes she needed. Would it be all right if she called Ashley at Saks?

  “That’s too risky. Tell me what you need.”

  The list was lengthy—she’d obviously come to regret leaving the embassy with nothing.

  “Tell you what,” Leigh said. “I’ll get this order in and deliver it to you myself.”

  “And stay for a visit, I hope?”

  “I’d love to.”

  She missed a call while she was speaking with Devra, and a message was waiting in her voicemail box. It was Stephen. Regretfully he’d have to cancel their session this Saturday. Andy’s foundation had just released some important new data, and he was scheduled to appear on a radio program to discuss it.