The drawing on the easel was a map. What had appeared from the back of the room to be a road was the riverbed which marked the east and southeast boundaries of the ranch. The little triangles were trees, indicating the lemon orchard on the west, on the northeast the avocado grove, and on the north the rows of date palms with grapefruit growing in the shade between. The circle showed the location of the reservoir; and the rectangles, each of them lettered, were buildings: the ranch house itself, the mess hall, the bunkhouse and storage sheds, the garage for all the mechanized equipment and, on the other side of the garage, the house where Jaime lived with his family.
“Are you looking for something, fellow?” the cop said.
“No. I mean, no, sir. I was just studying the map. It shows where I live. The square marked C, that’s my house.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m a witness in the case.”
“Is that a fact.”
“I was driving the tractor when suddenly I looked down on the ground and there was this knife lying there.”
“Well, well, well. You’d better go back to your seat. The judge is coming in and he likes things tidy.”
“Don’t you want to know what kind of knife it was?”
“I can wait. I have to sit through the whole thing anyway, I’m the bailiff.”
The clerk of the court, a young man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue serge suit, got up and made the first of his four daily announcements: “Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of San Diego is now in session, Judge Porter Gallagher presiding. Please be seated.”
The clerk took his place at the table he shared with the bailiff. The hearing of probate petitions was usually the dullest of all judicial procedures, but this one promised to be different. Before putting it aside to file, he read part of the petition again.
In the Matter of the Estate of Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne, Deceased, the petition of Devon Suellen Osborne respectfully shows:
That she is the surviving wife of Robert Osborne.
That Petitioner is informed and believes and upon such information and belief alleges that Robert Osborne is dead. The precise time of his death is not known, but Petitioner believes and therefore alleges that Robert Osborne died on the thirteenth day of October, 1967. The facts upon which the death of Robert Osborne is presumed are as follows:
The Petitioner and her husband, Robert Osborne, lived together as husband and wife for approximately half a year. On the night of October 13, Robert Osborne, after dining with his wife, left the ranch house to look for his dog, which had wandered off in the course of the evening. When Robert Osborne failed to return by half past nine, Mrs. Robert Osborne roused the foreman of the ranch and a search was organized. It was the first of many searches covering a period of many months and an area of hundreds of square miles. Evidence has been collected which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that between 8:30 and 9:30 o’clock on the night of October 13,1967, Robert Osborne met his death at the hands of two or more persons...
Chapter Three
Judge Gallagher tugged impatiently at the collar of his black judicial robe. Even after fifteen years on the bench he still dreaded this moment when he walked into the courtroom and people stared up at him as if they expected the robe to endow him with magic qualities like Batman’s cape. Occasionally, when he caught a particularly anxious eye, he wanted to take time out to explain that the robe was merely a piece of cloth covering a business suit, a drip-dry shirt and an ordinary man who couldn’t perform miracles no matter how badly they were needed.
Gallagher looked around the room, noting with surprise that the only empty seats were those in the jury box. To his knowledge there’d been no publicity about the hearing except the legal notices in the newspapers. Perhaps the legal notices had a larger public than he imagined. More likely, though, some of the people were drop-ins who had no real interest in the case: the lady shopper resting her feet between sales; the young marine who seemed to be suffering from a hangover; a small group of high school students with notebooks and clipboards; a teen-aged girl, thin as a reed, carrying a sleeping baby and wearing a blond wig and sunglasses as big as saucers.
Some of the spectators were courtroom regulars who came for the excitement and because they had nowhere else to go. A middle-aged German woman knitted with speed and equanimity through embezzlement trials, divorces, armed robberies and rapes. A pair of elderly pensioners, one man on crutches, the other carrying a white cane, appeared even in the worst weather to sit through the dullest cases. They carried sandwiches in their pockets and at noon they would eat outside on the steps, feeding the crusts to the pigeons. To Gallagher, looking down on them from the windows of his chambers, it seemed a very good way to spend the noon hour.
Even without years of practice it would have been easy for Gallagher to pick out the people closely connected with the case: Osborne’s wife and mother pretending to be cool in the heat of the morning; some leather-faced ranchers looking out of place and uneasy in their city clothes; the ex-policeman, Valenzuela, almost unrecognizable in a natty striped suit and orange tie; and sitting at the counsels’ table, Mrs. Osborne’s lawyer, Ford, a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered man with a ferocious temper that had cost him hundreds of dollars in contempt fines.
“Are you ready, Mr. Ford?”
“Yes, your Honor.”
“Then go ahead.”
“This is a proceeding to establish the death of Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne. In support of the allegations contained in the petition of Devon Suellen Osborne, I intend to submit a considerable amount of evidence. I beg the indulgence of the court in the manner of submitting this evidence.
“Your Honor, the body of Robert Osborne has not been found. Under California law, death is a rebuttable presumption after an absence of seven years. The presumption of death before this seven-year period has passed requires circumstantial evidence to show first, the fact of death, i.e., there must be enough evidence from which a reasonable conclusion can be reached that death has occurred; and second, that absence from any cause other than death is inconsistent with the nature of the person absent.
“The following quote is from the People versus L. Ewing Scott: Any evidence, facts or circumstances concerning the alleged deceased, relating to the character, long absence without communicating with friends or relatives, habits, condition, affections, attachments, prosperity and objects in life which usually control the conduct of a person and are the motive of such person’s actions, and the absence of any evidence to show the motive or cause for the abandonment of home, family or friends or wealth by the alleged deceased, are competent evidence from which may be inferred the death of one absent or unheard from, whatever has been the duration or shortness of such absence. Unquote.
“We intend to show, your Honor, that Robert Osborne was a young man of twenty-four, mentally and physically well-endowed, happily married and the owner of a prospering ranch; that his relationship with his family, friends and neighbors was pleasant, that he was enjoying life and looking forward to the future.
“If we could follow any man around on any particular day of his life, we would find out a great deal about him, his character, the state of his health, his mind, his finances, his interests, hobbies, plans, ambitions. I can think of no better way of presenting a true picture of Robert Osborne than to reconstruct, as completely as I am able, his final day. Bear with me, your Honor, if I elicit from witnesses details that are seemingly irrelevant, and opinions, suppositions and conclusions that would not be admissible evidence in an adversary proceeding.