He shook his head, kept his temper. “I’ve told you every sight and sound and smell that could conceivably relate to this business.” He ticked items off on his fingers. “About my father, as much as we could get about him. About Jarrell, his girl, what I’ve asked Jerry Goldbirn to check out, the fact that somebody was on Fairlee the other night looking for something.”
“Could it be something you’re holding back... unconsciously? To protect Shana?”
“If it’s unconscious, how the hell would I know?”
She sighed. “Dumb question, sorry.”
Selby said then, “If Davic’s got a bomb to explode, I’ll be as surprised as you, if that’s any consolation.”
“It’s not much, Harry.”
A tap sounded on the office door. She said, “Yes?”
Flood’s bailiff looked in on them. “Miss Brett, the judge is robing now. I’ll be calling us to order in just a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Thomas, we’ll be there in good time for his entrance.”
She put her arm through Selby’s. “Let’s go on down and see what they’ve got to blind-side you with.”
But the afternoon session proved anticlimactic. Davic, as agreed between him and Thomson, dropped Selby’s relationship to the Thomsons and directed his attention to other areas.
“You are a widower, Mr. Selby?”
“Yes.”
“Would you describe your relationship with your daughter as trusting and confident? Does she confide openly and truthfully in you?”
“Objection, Your Honor. The questions are irrelevant.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Selby, isn’t it a fact that your daughter called you at your motel in Memphis the day before the alleged attack on her?”
“That’s right.”
“To tell you a car was parked in the dark somewhere near your home?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you she was frightened by the presence of that car?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Were strange cars and vans, motorcycles perhaps, such a common event around your place?”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Davic,” Flood said, “what is the purpose of this question?”
“I want to pursue an inconsistency in the testimony of the witness.”
“Overruled. Proceed.”
“If your daughter wasn’t frightened by the presence of that car, Mr. Selby, why did she place a long distance call to you to tell you about it?”
“Our housekeeper had called the police. Shana felt I ought to know that.”
“Mr. Selby, when you talked to your daughter that night, did she seem her usual self?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, did you notice any undue excitement in her manner?”
“Objection, Your Honor. The question demands a subjective evaluation.”
“Sustained.”
“Your Honor, I was trying to find out if the young lady’s call to her father might have been in the nature of a prank or a practical joke. Because it’s a fact that Mr. Selby didn’t respond seriously to that call. He didn’t cut short his trip and return home. But I will accede to your ruling and ask no further questions along that line.”
Davic excused himself to confer with his associates.
Brett made a series of question marks on her legal pad and underlined each one firmly. Whatever the defense attorney had been developing that morning obviously no longer interested him. Or presented some risk he’d decided not to take. Brett wasn’t sure which. But his present questions, she felt sure, were designed only to provide a camouflage for, a diversion from, whatever he’d been digging into earlier...
Davic returned to the bench and told Judge Flood he had no further questions of the witness at that time but added, “If it pleases the court, we’re expecting further information and would like to reserve the right to talk to Mr. Selby again.”
That night Selby found the quotation, “Hell is alone...” in Bartlett’s. It was from a play, “The Cocktail Party.” The complete line read “Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections.”
He called Brett, but her line was busy. Upstairs, Shana’s shower was running. He took Blazer for a walk, and when he returned Shana’s shower was off and her hair dryer was humming.
Brett’s number was still busy.
Selby couldn’t imagine what it was he had brought to Summitt City that could possibly threaten anyone. But why had the reaction to him been so peculiar? The sergeant, Ledge, he’d told Selby to put the past behind him and forget it. But whose past was he warning him about? His father’s or Jarrell’s or his own?
He dialed Brett again, but got another busy signal. Shana came in and sat cross-legged on the sofa, tipping her head sideways to brush out the damp ends of her hair.
“Honey, doesn’t Brett ever get off the phone?”
“She’s probably talking to one of her sisters,” Shana said. “Kay’s the oldest and she has dogs, a pair of standard poodles. Her other sister, Nancy, is married to a doctor. They have two little daughters. Miss Brett told me she talks to them almost every night, but I think she was showing five”... she looked at him shyly, her expression strangely remote. “Anyway, she said if I needed to talk to her I’d better call her in the mornings at her office. She gets in early.”
“What do you mean, showing five?”
“It’s a signal we use, like a code.” Shana put her brush down and looked at the fire. A stillness smoothed her soft face. “When we first talked about it, about what happened to me, there were things I didn’t want to tell her. So she said to hold up my hand then, you know, show five, like taking the Fifth. That meant I wanted to skip it, or talk about it later maybe.”
“She’s showing five about calling her sisters?”
“Not about that, but about being on the phone. She’s been getting calls that bother her. Not just your neighborhood breather, even I’ve had a couple of those. But somebody’s on her case, so she leaves the phone off the hook. I heard her telling Sergeant Wilger about it. He’s trying to trace whoever it is, but they don’t stay on long enough.”
Shana pushed Blazer away and stood to kiss her father good night. When she straightened up, he held her wrist lightly. She seemed fragile and small and tenderly young in her short nightgown, but her shoulder-length hair and the gravity in her eyes created a curious duality, the girlishness merging before him into a womanly maturity.
“Are you feeling all right about tomorrow?”
“I only have to tell what happened, and I’m not worried about that. Miss Brett will help. We’ve been over and over it.”
“Do you mind that I’ll be there when you’re on the stand?”
“No...” She put a hand on Blazer’s collar and shook her head. “That’s all right, daddy.”
“I don’t have to be there. There’s no law says so. I could go out and have some coffee or something.”
“I told you it was all right.” Her voice was higher. “I want to get it over with, okay?”
“Sure, honey. But I don’t want you to be afraid of anything. I’ll help you any way I can. I love you. I’ll do anything for you. You can put that in your piggy bank.”
She smiled and held his hand tightly against her face. “I love you, too, daddy, but the last piggy bank I had I lost at a show-and-tell in about third grade.”
“Okay, okay, so time flies... good night, honey.”
He dialed Brett after Shana went upstairs. Her line was still busy. He could imagine the receivers off the hook, one on the rolltop desk, the other beside her bed, the electronic beats growing louder as the house became still, humming faintly against window panes, mingling with the crack of the dying embers. His own phone rang then. He hoped it was Brett, but it was Jerry Goldbirn in Las Vegas.