Ready, set, go. “And he was black, was he not?”
Mrs. Mateer cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”
The gallery burst into excited chatter and Justice Millan pounded the gavel. “Now, children,” she said.
“And he rode a BMW motorcycle, didn’t he?”
“Why, yes.”
And he left the seat up, too, but we won’t go into that. I glanced at Fiske, who looked puzzled. Paul didn’t. “Mrs. Mateer, I have one final question. You never saw Judge Hamilton visit the carriage house, did you?”
“No.”
Thank God, Fiske had kept his trysts nocturnal. “I have no further questions of this witness.”
I sat down and half listened to a repetitious redirect by Ryerson, then put myself on autopilot as Lieutenant Dunstan described in mind-numbing detail the police procedures for license-plate and fingerprint identification. He testified that they’d found Fiske’s prints in the living room, which squared with what Fiske had told me. He’d confined his close encounters to the sofa. Why do you think they call it a love seat?
On cross-examination, I established that the police had dusted the carriage house and found no other fingerprints from Fiske, and had examined Fiske’s Jaguar and had not yet found any evidence of the victim’s blood, hair, or fibers from her clothes. But I couldn’t resist a final line of questions, just to get the press salivating.
“Lieutenant Dunstan, did the police consider that one of the male visitors to the carriage house could have committed the crime?”
He nodded. “We investigated thoroughly, including the gentleman you referred to.”
A shake, rattle, and roll emanated from the back of the courtroom. I looked back. It was Tobin, shaking his box of Jujyfruits, presumably warning me not to press further. Still, I couldn’t resist a parting shot:
“Lieutenant Dunstan, how easy do you think it is to make a fake Pennsylvania license plate, one that would look real at a hundred yards, in the middle of a dark rainstorm?”
“I have no idea.”
“What if I told you I made one this morning in only ten minutes, out of cardboard and indelible markers?”
“Objection!” Ryerson said, but the reporters responded predictably, salivating and scribbling, scribbling and salivating. Justice Millan banged her gavel again and again, to no avail. All the news that’s fit to spin was being spun, like straw into gold.
“Never mind, I withdraw the question,” I said. “I have no further questions.”
I sat down and promised myself that someday I’d try to make a license plate out of cardboard and indelible markers. When I got a spare ten minutes.
18
After the preliminary hearing, we regrouped in Fiske’s study. It was large, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a rolling library ladder for reaching that emergency copy of Milton. Fiske kept the air-conditioning high so the first editions wouldn’t molder and grow mushrooms in the dim room. The only light came from two narrow, arched windows, crisscrossed with leaded glass. It was a nice effect if you liked Early Medieval, but since I came from the serfing class I’d always felt uncomfortable here. Especially today, since I was wondering if I was sitting in this drafty castle with a killer.
Despite my link to these players, I felt suspicious of them. Fiske, who’d been framed for murder-maybe. Kate, who drove an identical black Jaguar with an almost identical license plate, and who was furious at Patricia for suing her husband. And my own beloved, who had slept with Patricia and taken with him the only thing that would prove he knew her. Had Paul killed her? Could he? Could any of them?
It was almost impossible to believe. I had known them for years and never would have dreamed any of them capable of such brutality. And Paul, never. Still, I had lots of questions and no answers, and any lawyer would have been thinking the same way. So I set aside my personal feelings, put on a poker face, and watched the cards. In this case, the face cards, all of which were, not coincidentally, two-faced. I started play with a gutsy opening bet:
“I think someone is trying to frame Fiske for murder,” I said. “Any thoughts? Suspicions? Guesses?”
“Not a one. I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Fiske said. He sat at the head of a long table with six wooden chess games in various stages of play. Next to each chessboard was a stack of postcards. Fiske seemed to be looking at the closest chess game, albeit without much concentration.
“A judge without an enemy? Don’t you make an enemy in every case-the loser?”
“Not really. I’ve been on the bench for almost twenty years and I run my courtroom fairly. Civil litigants know that.”
“How about in the criminal cases, in sentencing cases? You sentence in the drug cases, don’t you? They’re federal.”
“The guideline cases, of course. We’re overwhelmed.”
“Has anybody you’ve sentenced gotten especially upset? Screamed at you, threatened you?”
He shook his head. “Not that I can remember. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. All the possibilities.”
“What about someone from the bar association or your old firm? No old grudges? Nobody on the district court?”
“My colleagues? Judges? No, no.” He fingered the White King, then set it back down. “It’s this motorcycle rider that concerns me.” He winced slightly and I knew he wasn’t thinking about Kf8 and Kc7.
“I agree. I’m going to see if I can find him.”
He looked up from the chess game. “How?”
“Investigate. I have some ideas.”
Kate edged forward on the arm of a club chair, a stubby cigarette smoldering between her fingers, a Waterford ashtray in her other hand. She had apparently started smoking again. “Do you really believe Fiske was framed, Rita? That this was an intentional act? It seems the unlikeliest option to me.”
“Why?” Fiske said to her. “How else would a Jag with my license plate appear in her driveway?”
She shrugged. “How indeed? I can think of lots of reasons short of someone actually trying to frame you, dear. Maybe Mrs. Mateer saw the license plate wrong. She simply could have misread it.”
“You don’t know Mrs. Mateer, do you, Kate?” I asked, but she shook her head.
“Besides,” Kate continued, “it was a great distance, and with the thunderstorm, everything was gray and dark. Maybe she read it incorrectly.”
“Mother, you can read a license plate in a thunderstorm,” Paul said. He stood in front of the window, silhouetted against the sun, and it was hard to see his face. “Yellow letters on a blue background, like the Pennsylvania plate? It’s easy to read.”
“Then maybe she remembered it wrong.” Kate blew a jet of smoke at the high ceiling. “How many times have you thought you remembered a number but didn’t? Gotten one letter wrong or two? I always get phone numbers mixed up.”
Fiske shook his head. “A mistake is more likely with a numbered plate, dear. Not a vanity plate.”
“Oh, you just never liked those vanity plates. You put up such a fuss.” She shaved her cigarette ash to a fragile cone on the thick edge of the ashtray.
I took a breath, then stated the obvious as tactfully as possible. “Kate, one letter wrong is your license plate. And of course it wasn’t you.”
Kate laughed abruptly, emitting a hiccup of smoke. “What are you saying, that-”
“Of course it wasn’t Kate’s car,” Fiske snapped.
Paul’s head swiveled in Fiske’s direction. I wished I could see his expression. “Rita wasn’t suggesting that it was Mom’s car, Dad.”
Of course I was. “Of course I wasn’t.”
“I confess I don’t have much in the way of an alibi,” Kate said, seemingly amused. “When I told the policeman I was gardening all afternoon, he looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.”