Dark Specter (44 page)

“If you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it,” he said in a studiously neutral tone. “Only it’s going to make it tougher.”

I was staggered. Here was the guy I’d been counting on to champion my innocence, presumably at vast expense, and he was making it pretty clear that even he wasn’t convinced of it.

“Tougher? How come?”

Merlowitz looked around my cell like a realtor sizing up the selling points of a property.

“Because if this comes to court we’re going to have to plead you not guilty, which means showing reasonable doubt. If we pled you guilty, we could go straight to mitigating circumstances, of which there look to be plenty. You haven’t any priors, and none of the police were hit. It was dark, you were confused. They’d probably let you cop a plea. Worse case, I could get you a short sentence in some tennis prison. Not guilty is a way tougher route to go.”

“Gee, I’m sorry, Mr. Merlowitz,” I retorted sarcastically. “What can I tell you? Next time I’ll make sure and pull that trigger.”

The lawyer smiled faintly.

“I’m just telling you what the deal is.”

Ten minutes later, we were all back in the sheriff’s office. It was an extremely tight squeeze, as Merlowitz commented caustically. Griffiths nodded.

“We’ve been asking for new facilities for near ten years now, but there, just isn’t enough crime in the islands. Maybe if this case attracts enough attention we’ll finally swing it.”

He looked at me.

“OK, son, we’ve had the back story. Now let’s hear what happened after you got here.”

I’d had plenty of time to organize the narrative in my mind, and I told it concisely and fluently. I gave my first impressions of the island and of the community living there, and how these had gradually changed. I mentioned the daily study sessions, and my discovery that the group believed that William Blake’s poetry was the Third Testament and Sam the second coming of Jesus Christ.

I talked about my attraction to Andrea, her account of Lisa’s death, and my son’s dramatically staged appearance on the rock. I went over the split between Mark and Sam and his attempts to win me over. Finally, I described the arrival of the fake police boat and the shoot-out which followed, and how Andrea and David and I had eluded the others and taken refuge in the woods.

The sheriff nodded.

“Well, that’s all very interesting. But what really concerns us here is what happened when we got to the island. And in that respect we’ve got a real problem believing what you say.”

“How come?”

Griffiths lay back in his chair, sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

“It’s like this. We still haven’t figured out exactly how many people were living there, and we haven’t accounted for all the ones who died yet. We’ve got a forensic team out there now, but it’s going to take a while. They’ve got to sift through every pound of ash and work out what’s cinder and what’s human bone, then add up all the bones and see how many complete cadavers we’ve got. We’re talking weeks, maybe months.

“In the meantime, here’s what we’ve got. When Lorne and Pete here and I reached the island, I made an announcement over the bullhorn telling everyone to drop their weapons. Then we started up the trail with the three guys from the fire department. When we reach the clearing where the camphouse used to be, someone opens fire with an automatic weapon. We hit the dirt and call for reinforcements. Soon as they get there, we secure the area and search the place. We find a girl with a broken leg and a woman and a man, both of them badly burned. The man has since died. None of them had an automatic weapon anywhere near them, or were in any shape to use it if they had.”

The sheriff stirred the papers on his desk with one hand, as though embarrassed.

“Soon as it got light, we searched the island from one end to the other. We used a helicopter, a K-9 team from Bellingham and a couple of boats to check the shoreline. We didn’t find anyone.”

“I fail to see the relevance of all this,” Merlowitz interrupted.

Sheriff Griffiths held up his hand.

“I was just coming to that, Mr. Merlowitz. You see, Sleight’s only a small island, and there’s nowhere to hide. So we can be sure that there’s no one still there we don’t know about. We can also be sure that no one left the island last night. I never heard of anyone swimming across those straits, least of all in the dark. Even if they had, they’d have been seen on Orcas. Everyone knows everyone around here, and any stranger’s going to get noticed. And the only boat on the island besides our own launches was riddled with holes and six feet under water.”

He looked at my lawyer, then at me.

“So at the time we came under fire, the only people on the island who weren’t dead or critically injured were you and the woman and child you claim were with you. And you had an automatic rifle.”

“I took it from Sam’s room so as to be able to defend me and my son. But I never fired it.”

Sheriff Griffiths raised a massive eyebrow.

“A bunch of bullets are gone from the clip.”

I suddenly remembered Sam blasting away at his bedroom wall. I was about to explain this to the sheriff when Paul Merlowitz told me not to answer any more question: He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“We recovered some of the bullets that were fired at us,” the sheriff continued unperturbed. “Luckily the aim was high, kind of like you’d expect from someone without too much experience in using that particular kind of gun. A couple of the shells ended up embedded in the tree trunks. The ammo’s the same as what’s left in the weapon you discarded.”

“That doesn’t amount to conclusive proof,” Paul Merlowitz retorted. “My client has stated that there were a large number of such weapons on the premises. They probably bought the ammunition in bulk.”

The sheriff nodded.

“That’s possible. But there are also other possibilities.”

“Name one!” I snapped. “Just give me one good reason why I should have been involved in any of this!”

Sheriff Griffiths looked at me calmly.

“Well, let’s say this woman Andrea found out about your boy being kidnapped and felt bad about it. Let’s say she called you up in Minnesota and told you where he was. I could certainly understand if you decided to take revenge on the people who had seized your son and caused your wife’s death. That would explain why you three were the only ones to survive unscathed, plus a bunch of other things which don’t make a whole lot of sense right now.”

“That’s unsupported hypothesis!” said Merlowitz dismissively. “Your case against my client amounts to nothing more than a bunch of circumstantial details, none of which prove that he was anywhere near the scene when the shooting occurred, still less that he was responsible for it.”

“I was just outlining our thinking as of this time, Mr. Merlowitz,” the sheriff replied mildly. “Our investigation is continuing.”

I was taken back to my cell and locked up.

L
ong, low rolls of surf broke ceaselessly on the shore, collapsing into shallow sheets of water sweeping up the level beach, then draining away again, leaving the sand smooth and glistening. The sun stood high in a flawless blue sky, but a strong breeze kept the air cool.

The beach stretched away for miles in either direction, apparently as endless as the Pacific itself. The few people in sight—adults sunning themselves, children playing in the sand, an older couple walking their dog—made the landscape appear still emptier and more vast.

A woman basking in the sun looked up and called to a boy paddling at the edge of the waves.

“Thomas! Don’t go in any further!”

“It’s OK, Mom.”

“Just keep nearer in, OK?”

Testosterone, thought Kristine Kjarstad. He knows there are dangerous currents and that the water is icy, but he sees those facts as a challenge, not a threat, something to test himself against. And it will get worse as he gets older, until in the end I’ll lose all control. A father could still impose his authority, even once the child grew bigger and stronger than him, simply by drawing on years and years of conditioning. But all a mother had to offer was love and indulgence, and one day that might not be enough.

Such moods came on her very rarely, and were more frightening as a result. Most of the time, Kristine felt vaguely ashamed of being such an irredeemable optimist, convinced against all the evidence that things were basically OK and that the exceptions she encountered in her everyday work somehow conspired, in some way she had chosen not to examine at all closely, to prove that rule. But her abortive trip to Chicago and Atlanta seemed to have broken her spirit. Everything seemed bleak and hopeless, even her ability to do her job. I’ve been faking it all these years, she thought, and they just found out.

“They” meant her chief, Dick Rice, who’d summoned her on her return. The worst thing was that he’d been pleasant, too pleasant, the way you are with people you think don’t quite get it and never will.

“You had the makings of a nice little case there,” he’d commented. “Too bad the perps can’t talk, but at least they got what was coming to them. We ought to be grateful to those gangsters, they saved us all a ton of time and money. Now, Kristine, what I want you to do is forget the whole thing and get on with your job. I realize that everyday crime here in King County may not have the same glamor as a nationwide murder hunt, but the work is there and somebody’s got to do it.”

Kristine had tried to take the Chief’s advice, but it hadn’t helped. She just didn’t seem able to accept the fact that she had come so close to cracking such a huge and obscure conspiracy, and had failed. As Dick Rice had said, the perpetrators were dead, along with an unknown number of their victims. No one would ever know exactly how many people they had killed, let alone why. In one sense it was over, but in another and more important one it would never be over, not for her. She felt that she had been presented with the great chance of her life, and that she’d blown it. Nothing would ever change that.

This realization had triggered a severe attack of depression, in the course of which she not only lost all interest in her work but also came down with a bad cold. It was only when the physical symptoms appeared that Kristine did what she should have done right away, and applied for two weeks of the leave she had coming. Since the weather was good, she had decided to get away not just from work but from the city itself, away to this remote beach on the Olympic Peninsula, the very edge of the continent.

They were only staying a few days, but already the change had done her some good. Thomas, too. He was in mourning for Brent Wallis, who had finally left for Europe with his parents. For a while Thomas had been inconsolable, but in this different environment he finally seemed to have accepted the loss of his friend.

Looking up to check on him, Kristine was relieved to see that he had teamed up with an older boy. The two were busy whipping a beached log with lengths of the tough, snakelike seaweed with which the tideline was littered. The boy’s parents, a hearty couple with a red Jeep four-by-four, had gone off jogging along the beach. If only a family like that would take the Wallis house for the summer, Kristine thought wistfully. But the chances were almost nil, although she’d mentioned it to Paul Merlowitz at the lunch they’d had when she got back from the east. That had been one of the few good things that had happened to her since then.

She’d forgotten just how funny Paul could be, and how closely connected laughing and loving were in her mind. No sooner had she sat down than he’d launched into a story about some guy he knew, a state prosecutor who’d been questioning a child witness in court during a sexual abuse case. The point had been to establish whether the kid knew the meaning of the terms involved, and the prosecutor had led her gently through a verbal multiple-choice exam.

“Is this a penis?” he’d asked, pointing to his ear.

“No,” the girl had replied.

Pointing to his nose, “Is this?”

“No.”

Paul Merlowitz had broken off to order a glass of Oregon pinot noir.

“Then he points to his head, says, “Is this a penis?” And the kid nods and goes, “Yes.” Result, he not only lost the case, he’s now known around the DA’s office as Dickhead.”

While she was still laughing, Merlowitz suddenly demanded, “OK, what did the guy do wrong?”

Feeling put on the spot, Kristine shrugged. Merlowitz smiled and answered his own question.

“He broke the oldest rule there is in this business. Never ask a witness a question if you’re not sure what answer he’s going to give.”

“Maybe we should worry a little less about the rules and a little more about justice,” Kristine replied, nettled by his condescending tone. “If the jury system means anything at all, it means ordinary people working out the truth for themselves.”

Paul Merlowitz closed his eyes.

“Kristine, Talmudic scholars teach that every verse in the Torah has forty-nine different interpretations, each equally valid. Truth isn’t some commodity you buy at Fred Meyer. We’re talking about an exercise in damage limitation. The best we can hope to do is to recognize and control our ignorance.”

And to make a damn good living off of it, thought Kristine as the first course arrived. But she didn’t say anything, and the lunch had passed agreeably. When she mentioned the Wallis house, Paul—punctilious as ever—had promised to see what he could do. As she watched him noting down the details with his Mont Blanc pen, Kristine had felt a stab of pain at the contrast between his organized, methodical efficiency and her own sketchily improvised existence. Paul Merlowitz would never have wasted his time agonizing over something he couldn’t control the way she had with the Dale Watson fiasco. If he had a failure, as even he must occasionally, he would forget it and move on.