“Who’d you go with?”
“Go with? I only hunt alone if I can help it. Hunting’s something I take very seriously. I hate to spoil it by turning it into a social event. A bunch of middle-aged drunks wandering around in the boonies, that’s not my style.”
“So you don’t have an alibi.”
“I don’t like the tone of that. If I tell you I was hunting, I was hunting. My secretary knows.”
“She knows what you told her.”
“You know what? I think this pretty nurse standing at the end of my bed has a real good idea. I’m not going to talk to you any more.”
He slammed the phone.
Peter Carlson took my call. “I should tell you, I have a lawyer now.” He spoke as if from a great height, the way he did to all humanity.
“You tell your lawyer that you fell in love with Karen Hastings?”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, McCain.”
“Don’t I? And if I’m not mistaken, you roughed her up some, too. I guess that’s one way of expressing your love.”
“This is all bullshit and if you start spreading it around, I’ll sue you for libel.”
“Slander. Common mistake. Libel is the written word.”
“What is it you want, anyway?”
“Where were you the afternoon before Karen Hastings’s body was found?”
“Right here in my office.”
“You have witnesses?”
“Several, in fact. We had a staff meeting that afternoon.”
“All afternoon?”
“Most of it. We didn’t get started till one-thirty. I think I’ve said all I’m going to now, McCain.”
He hung up, too.
He had what seemed to be an alibi but it was one of those that could be taken apart and found wanting, I was sure. If the meeting at the Murdoch mansion was prearranged, the killer could have met her there—or picked her up and driven her there himself—killed her and left, all within an hour or so.
When you study trials in law school, you see how many juries are swayed by small lies, particularly alibis. While it sounds reasonable for a man to forget what he’d been doing for two or three hours a month or two previous, it presents a great opportunity for the prosecutor. If the DA can prove that the man did a couple of things he’d almost certainly remember—made a substantial purchase, spent a substantial amount of time with somebody, was involved in a substantial traffic accident—the prosecutor can then say that he finds it odd that the man on trial would forget that. He can also say that the traffic accident incident took no more than forty-five minutes according to the other driver and the cops on the scene—leaving the man on trial with two hours he still can’t account for. Where were you the other two hours? You’re not going to get a conviction on the basis of these questions but you are going to make the jury wonder if the man is honest and forthright. And he has left the two unaccounted-for hours dangling out there. Trials are mosaics. They rarely have the kind of aha! moments you see on TV.
My final call was to Gavin Wheeler. He was a mite drunk, especially considering that it was barely eleven a.m. “I walk down the street and they stare at me like I’m some kind of monster. Or they snicker. People who always used to speak to me, say hello to me, smile at me. It’s like they’re embarrassed to see me. All my life I’ve tried to build up my reputation. I’m not some nobody from the Hills any more. I’ve got a name, I’ve got money, I’ve got some power. Or I had ’em, anyway, McCain. I don’t know why the hell I ever got into this thing. My poor wife won’t leave the house. She went to the grocery store nine o’clock last night when it was just about closing time. There weren’t any customers but everybody who worked in the store stood there whispering about her. A couple of them even made a couple of smart remarks. I did that. Me. All the years she’s stayed married with me—and I ain’t no prince to live with, believe me—and look what I do to her. We should be thinking of retiring now. But we’re gonna have to get clear the hell away from here.”
I’d waited him out. “The afternoon before Karen Hastings’s body was found in Murdoch’s house. You happen to remember what you were doing?”
He had an answer right away. “Driving back from Davenport. Had to look at some property over there.”
“Alone.”
“Yes, alone.”
I could sense that he would be most unhappy if I pushed beyond this point. I didn’t feel up to arguing with an eleven a.m. drunk. I said thank you and hung up.
I was just going through my notebook, transferring some of the notations to a larger sheet of paper, when the phone rang.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. McCain.”
“I’m Mr. McCain.”
“My name’s Janice Wilson. Scotty told me you were looking for me. I need to drive into town, anyway. Why don’t I stop by your office in two hours or so?”
“That’d be fine. I appreciate the call.”
That’s the best way of all, when they come to you.
The Judge has paid exactly two visits to my office. Today was the second one. In her tailored gray suit with the long leather and very dramatic gray gloves, she had the imperious elegance of a fading movie queen. Every move was straight from finishing school, every utterance straight from her upper-class New England education. I’m pretty sure she once gave lessons to Katherine Hepburn in haughtiness.
“You really do need to get better digs, McCain.”
“So I hear.”
I said this as I walked around my desk, brushed off the better of the two client chairs, and held one out for her. She looked at it as if I’d just bought it at a leper colony garage sale. But she put her important ass in my unimportant chair, lighted a Parliament and dramatically exhaled smoke. She saw the rubber band before I did. A lone rubber band sitting near the edge of my desk. How could she resist picking it up, using her thumb and forefinger as a bow, and firing it at me the way she usually did? But we were both getting crafty. She pretended not to see it and I pretended not to see her pretending not to see it. She went so far in trying to fake me out that she sat all the way back in her chair and raised her eyes to meet mine.
“I’m here because Deirdre Murdoch asked me to be.”
“Deirdre? Why doesn’t she call me herself?”
“She’s in a panic now since she found out there’ll be no bail.”
“No bail?”
“The judge—me—has decided there’ll be no bail.”
“But why?”
“I’m recusing myself from this whole matter. But until a new judge is selected, I’m not going along with bail. I’m too good a friend of the family.”
“So meanwhile he sits in jail.”
She paused a moment. I wondered if she was thinking about the rubber band. She loved playing Pearl-Harbor-sneak-attack.
“I came here, McCain, to ask a simple question. I wanted to see your face when you answered it. Irene Murdoch is an old friend of mine. I’m afraid she’ll have to go back into the sanitarium.”
“I know. Deirdre told me.”
“Thank God for Deirdre. Ross was gone so much—the only lasting friendships Irene has had were with me and Deirdre.”
“I guess I don’t know what your question is.”
“It’s a very simple question, McCain. Because if I don’t get the answer I want, I’ll have to start preparing Irene and Deirdre for the worst.”
“That being?”
“That being that Ross did commit these murders and will be going to prison.”
“And you want to know if I think he’s guilty?”
“Exactly. We don’t always get along, McCain, but I do have some respect for your word.”