Her gaze raked my face. “I was a fool.” she said. “Sandy and I were both fools. The only way to deal with vermin—”
“—is to exterminate them.”
“Well? You said it, I didn’t.”
“I said it, but the two of you did it. Whose idea, Ms. Kendall? Yours?”
“You don’t know a damn thing,” she said, but this time as if she were trying to convince herself.
“I know the two of you conspired to kill Ira Erskine. And I know how you did it — the double switch, the whole plan.”
Nelson moaned, “Oh, God...”
“Hush. Sandy, it’s all right. He can’t prove whatever he thinks he knows.” The hot eyes scorched me again. “There’s no proof we did anything, either of us.”
“But there is,” I said. “Enough to have both of you charged with at least second-degree homicide.”
“You’re so fucking smart. Go ahead, then, tell us. How’d we do it? What’s your proof?”
Laying it out in detail was about the only chance I had of convincing them to turn themselves in. I still felt sorry for both of them, despite Kendall’s combative attitude; and whether or not they believed it, I hated this as much as they did and I was suffering right along with them.
“All right,” I said. “Last Sunday in the Napa Valley — that’s when you planned it, the two of you alone somewhere. The problem was to get rid of Erskine quickly and in a way that left you both in the clear. Solution: a double switch to create two solid alibis. On Monday morning you traded cars and places. You drove down to Santa Rosa to take Ms. Nelson’s place on jury duty, she went to Healdsburg to shoot her ex-husband and then back to Geyserville to pretend to be you stranded at home.”
If I needed any further confirmation that I was right, Sondra Nelson’s anguished face gave it to me. But Kendall said scornfully, “That’s ridiculous. How could I possibly take Sandy’s place on jury duty?”
“Easily enough in Sonoma County. When you’re selected here you receive a computer-generated postcard that you take with you on the day you’re to serve. The card comes in two parts, perforated, both of which have your name and juror’s number on it. You tear off one part and put it in a box when you arrive, then go into the jury room and wait for your number to be called. Meanwhile, a clerk in the commissioner’s office checks the stubs against a master list to make sure the summoned person is present. That’s all — nobody checks individual ID at any time. No reason to; it’s almost unheard of for one person to take on someone else’s jury duty.”
“Sandy was called for a rape trial that morning. She was almost seated—”
“Her number was called. Everything is done by juror number — pool selection for a particular trial, individual selection for the jury. The judge or lawyers ask the called juror’s name and some general personal history, but you could answer those questions as easily as she could. And it wasn’t hard to talk yourself out of being seated. Plenty of ways to do that — claimed you were a rape victim yourself, or had a family member who was raped, or simply said you had a strong antirape bias and couldn’t be impartial. Once a juror is excused, that’s pretty much it unless the trial docket is heavy and the general jury pool thin for one reason or another, and those weren’t the cases on Monday. Out of the courtroom, out of the courthouse, and home free.
“And while you were handling things in Santa Rosa, Ms. Nelson drove your car to the Pinecrest Motel, talked her way into Erskine’s room, used her wiles to—”
Nelson: “No!”
“—to throw him off guard, got her hands on his gun, and shot him. She couldn’t go back out through the door because the shot had brought witnesses, so she wriggled out through the bathroom window, slipped around front to where your car was parked, and drove away. Somewhere between Healdsburg and Geyserville she stopped to call Triple A, using your name and card number and a public phone so the call couldn’t be traced. Straight to your house then, where she pulled another switch — the old corroded battery from the garage into the Ford in place of the good one. When the serviceman showed up and put in a charge in the old battery, she signed off as Gail Kendall and reswitched the batteries once he was gone. And then waited for you to return from Santa Rosa to reclaim her car.”
Neither woman spoke when I finished. The silence had a heavy, swollen quality; even the mating birds were still. Sondra Nelson was so pale I could see the fine tracery of veins in her cheeks; the bright-red lipstick she wore made her mouth look bloody. The older woman hated me with an unblinking intensity, as if by sheer force of will she might manage to make me keel over dead at their feet.
She ended the silence by saying, “You’re so goddamn smug, aren’t you?” in a choked voice.
“Smug, Ms. Kendall?”
“Smug and self-righteous. Sees all, knows all. Well, you’re not half as smart as you think you are.”
“Experienced and methodical, not smart. You’re mistaken if you think I’m enjoying this.”
“But that hasn’t stopped you, has it?”
“From doing my job? No.”
“Ruining people’s lives. That’s some job.”
“I didn’t conspire to kill Ira Erskine. The two of you did that.”
“You can’t prove it.”
“You keep saying that. But I don’t have to prove it. That’s up to Lieutenant Battle and the county prosecutor. And I wasn’t bluffing about there being enough evidence to have you both indicted.”
“What evidence?”
“The Triple-A driver can identify which of you was at your house that morning. And I found the other portion of the jury summons, the one you kept, buried in your garbage. There’re other things, too. And more to be found with a little digging.”
“You haven’t talked to Battle yet. Why not?”
“It’ll go easier on you if you confess. That’s why I agreed to come here — to give Ms. Nelson, and you, a chance to go to him first.”
“And if we don’t?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Doesn’t it matter to you why? Any of the reasons why? Don’t you have any compassion?”
“More than you might think.”
“But not enough. Even though you’re right about only part of it. The rest... you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“What part am I wrong about?”
“Tell him, Sandy. Tell him what really happened in that motel room.”
Sondra Nelson jerked a little, as if she’d been touched with a live, low-voltage wire. She said, “No, I can’t go through all that again. What’s the use? It won’t matter to him, he doesn’t care...”
“Tell him anyway. I want to see his face.”
There was another period of silence, more charged than before. A breeze had kicked up and was rustling the trees, bringing the smell of green things growing and the vagrant scent of apple blossoms even though no apple trees were visible in the vicinity.
“Suppose...” Nelson began, and stopped and cleared her throat, passed a hand over her eyes to clear them, too. “Suppose we did plan to kill Ira, just as you said. Planning something like that and actually going through with it... they’re not the same. Even if you know it’s the only way to save your life, he’s still someone you once loved, had a child with. It’s not easy... it’s not... you can’t...”
She was trembling by then. Her eyes, round and moist, were like those of a spotlighted deer.
“Suppose I did go to his motel to... end the fear. With my own gun, one I’ve had for years for protection, in my purse. And suppose I took it out once I was in the room and pointed it at him, and he stood there looking at me in that arrogant way of his and saying, ‘You can’t do it, Janice, you can’t shoot me.’ And he was right, I couldn’t... I tried, I wanted to, but I...” Pause, her throat working, her face paper-white except for red splotches spreading slowly, like patches of spilled blood, across her cheekbones. “And suppose he took my gun away from me, pulled it out of my hand and put it back in my purse and then he... suppose he... stepped up close, smiling the whole time, and hit me hit me hit me and threw me down on the bed and hit me and took my clothes off, not tore them off, took them off, oh he was very tender then, as if it was our wedding night, and tender when he raped me, all the while whispering how much he loved me and exactly how he would kill me if I didn’t go back to Santa Fe with him...”