Defense for the Devil (32 page)

Carter Heilbronner was with the FBI, maybe the head of the Eugene office, maybe chief of operations of the entire Northwest; she never had found out exactly what his place in the hierarchy was. And he, no doubt, would want to know how she had managed to reel in R. M. Palmer, she thought with satisfaction.

31

Barbara and Frank
talked to Ray briefly in the conference room and then had Bailey take them to her office, where she regarded Carter Heilbronner. He was tall and well built, about fifty, with brown hair and brown eyes, and a crisp no-nonsense air about him. He sat on the couch, crossed his legs, and looked relaxed and reflective. He had said no, thank you, to coffee or wine, to anything she had to offer.

“Ms. Holloway,” he said, “your questioning of Mrs. Delancey has stirred up quite a bit of interest. I believe you’ve never worked in Washington, have you? It’s like a big spiderweb. I watched a documentary about spiderwebs once, very interesting and complex structures. If you touch a strand anywhere on it, the vibrations are carried to every strand, and the spider hiding in her corner knows exactly where the original touch occurred, and even if it’s something she has to do something about. If it’s prey or predator, or too big and threatening, or too insignificant to bother with, even if it’s a suitor come calling. Her response to the touch is instant, or so nearly instant as to make no difference. Amazing creatures.”

Barbara waited.

“If you get Palmer out here, what are your plans?” Heilbronner asked.

“I’ll subpoena him.”

“I thought that was the case. Others thought not. So I said, what the hell, I’d come around and ask.” Obviously he had not said that; it was not his style, and he even smiled faintly, but he was serious when he said, “You’ve got the web in motion, Ms. Holloway, a lot of telephone lines are vibrating. You’re an unknown factor to most people, of course, but since we did work well to the same ends previously, it was decided that I should ask you a few questions and make a request.”

Not quite mockingly she said, “You realize that at this point in the defense case, I may not be at liberty to answer your questions. Do I get to ask questions, also? Or is it to be one-way?”

“Ask,” he said. “Of course, I may not be at liberty to answer.”

She grinned and settled back. “So ask already.”

“Do you have a basis in fact for asking Mrs. Delancey if the Palmer Company moved the furniture? Or was it a wild shot?”

“It wasn’t a wild shot,” she said.

“I thought not, but others… If you get him on the stand, do you intend to bring up her name again?”

She shrugged. “Do you know where Stael and Ulrich are?”

“Yes.”

“Are you keeping them under surveillance?”

This time he shrugged. “I would be very careful if I were you.” He regarded her soberly. “I must tell you, Ms. Holloway, that if a federal agent advises an individual that certain actions would result in obstruction of an official investigation, that individual would be held responsible if he or she persisted in those actions and did indeed cause an official investigation to go awry.”

“I saw that same documentary about the spiders,” she said. “Every night the spider rebuilds the web, whether it was torn apart by a stick or any natural event, or hardly touched at all; overnight it gets rebuilt in a virtually identical structure. Isn’t that interesting? If you’re really determined to be rid of the web, you should step on the spider.”

He recrossed his legs and tented his fingers in a contemplative way. “You can’t step on this particular spider. All you can do is stir it up and get in the way. Perhaps even suffer a dangerous bite.”

“A murder charge or two is a serious effort toward eradication, Mr. Heilbronner.”

“You can’t make it stick. We’re not interested in local murders, as you well know. Go after Stael and Ulrich, and Trassi, if you have the ammunition. I hope you get them. Our request is that you do not subpoena Palmer. And I advise you that we will consider it obstruction if you do.” He spread his hands apart, palms up. “Don’t start something you can’t finish, Ms. Holloway. Any more questions?”

“Am I likely to get any more answers?”

“Probably not.”

She spread her hands in a gesture that mimicked his. “No more questions.”

“I have one,” Frank said suddenly. He had been watchful and very still until now. “Off the subject, I’m afraid. An old friend of mine, Sylvia Fenton, told me an interesting story recently. Seems a con man tried to take her for a big pile and she called bunco. Then, strangely, the FBI asked her to drop the charges. Seems she got to worrying about the con man out there bilking other old ladies, and it’s really preying on her mind that she went along with the FBI. She got it in her head that he might be FBI, too, and since he’s a crook, someone should know about him. I told her to let it be and I’d see if I could find out anything about it.” He looked as guileless as a child. “Carter, she’s afraid she made a mistake, and she thinks that guy belongs in the pokey. And Sylvia can be a handful when she sets her mind to it.”

Heilbronner’s thoughtful expression became as innocent as Frank’s. “I’ll tell you an interesting story. Confidential, of course. Seems one of the offices back East thought a man had information for them, and they were planning to interview him as soon as he returned home from a trip, but an unfortunate drive-by shooting occurred; he was hit and killed instantly on his doorstep. End of story. Tell your old friend not to worry about him, Frank.”

Very gravely Frank said, “I’ll tell her his conning days are over. Thanks.”

Heilbronner stood up. “I’ve kept you from your dinners long enough. I’ll be on my way. Maybe, with luck, the rain has let up. You know, they expect flooding.” He pulled on his raincoat, and they all walked through the hall to the reception room. “Every winter I think I’ll ask for a transfer to someplace where the sun shines once in a while, then every summer I think this is the only place to be.” They shook hands all around, and he left.

Bailey emerged from Shelley’s office.

“You’ve got to get in touch with Jolin,” Barbara said. “Tell him they’re investigating Palmer, big-time.”

“What we have to do is collect John and beat it to my place and eat,” Frank said.

Bailey left to get the car, and she said accusingly, “You know Heilbronner came to find out how much we know, and you practically told him everything.”

“But we had to find out how much Gilmore talked,” he pointed out. “Not much, apparently, but it set them in motion. Besides, he already knew we were on to Palmer and Delancey. Come on. Bailey must be around front by now.”

Frank called Martin and ordered whatever Martin recommended. “Half an hour,” he said, hanging up the phone in the kitchen.

They sat at the dinette table, and Barbara filled in Bailey about Heilbronner’s visit. “So call Jolin and tell him Gilmore’s dead, and they’re going after Palmer on the QT. And that Stael and Ulrich are probably in the area somewhere.”

“You still want to serve the subpoena?” Bailey asked.

“I have to think about it,” she said.

“Well, you’ve got a little time. His plane was an hour and fifteen minutes late, fog. And Seattle’s fogged in tight. Nothing’s moving. Palmer headed for an airport motel. He’ll be stuck there until sometime tomorrow, more than likely.”

Suddenly John spoke. He had been listening silently, not moving, not touching the wine Frank had put before him. “He told you Stael and Ulrich are around?”

“Not in so many words,” Barbara said. “But that was the message.”

John’s face was almost totally without expression; his scar was a pale line, his mouth straight. She knew what kind of effort it took for him to do that, and she reached across the table for his hand. It was unresponsive to her touch. “We expected them,” she said. “We thought they’d turn up, remember?”

“Gilmore’s dead; two killers are loose out there; Palmer’s on his way. When do the fireworks start?” he said tonelessly. “How many more bodies do we get to count? What’s the score to date?”

Bailey stood up. “Use the study phone?” he asked Frank, carefully not looking at Barbara or John.

“Help yourself,” Frank said, also standing. “I aim to set the dining room table.”

They both left the dinette, and Barbara pulled her hand back from John’s. “You know we’re taking precautions,” she said. “Do you have any suggestions to add to what we’re already doing?”

“You can’t guard against a drive-by shooting or a bomb or a guy on a roof with a rifle. I had a suggestion months ago; you chose not to listen.”

“I told you then why that wouldn’t work; nothing’s changed. If I’d told them, they wouldn’t have Major Works or Jolin, or Gilmore, or the other company back East, or the Palmer Company connection. They’d have Maggie and Ray, period.” She shook her head. “I can’t change anything now, it’s done, and I’m on the roller coaster until it stops.”

“I know you are,” he said softly.

The doorbell rang, and he stood up. “That’s probably Martin. I’ll catch a ride home with him. You have work to do here; I have work to do there.”

Frank admitted Martin, and they took the food to the dining room. Barbara walked to the front door with John. Neither spoke now. Martin came back and said sure, he’d be glad to give John a ride, and they left together.

When she got home to the apartment that night, it was after eleven; Alan Macagno was reading a book in the living room; John was in his office, with his door closed. She went into her own office and closed the door behind her.

“Detective Whitaker,” Barbara asked the next morning in court, “would you say that some of the tests you ran were inconclusive?”

“Not really,” he said. “We put in a lot of overtime on that material.”

“I’m sure you did,” she said. “But you said earlier that you could not do DNA tests because of time limitations. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And all you could say about the hair samples you found was that they were not incompatible with Mitchell Arno’s hair, and neither were they incompatible with Ray Arno’s hair. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How does a person pick up hair samples from someone else, Detective Whitaker? Do you have to use their comb, for example?”

“No. If you brush against someone, or sit in their chair or their car, you might pick up hair fragments. They’re all around, even floating in the air.”

“I see. From testimony, we know that Mitchell Arno was in Ray Arno’s house for a period of time. Would you find it surprising that he had picked up some of Ray Arno’s hair on his clothes?”

“No.”

“Did you find other hair samples that were not similar to either Ray or Mitchell Arno’s hair?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try to match them with anyone else’s hair?” He said no, and she asked why not.

“Because there’s no way of knowing when or where they were deposited on any of the material.”

“How many different types of hair did you find?”

“Five.”

“And they are all unidentified? Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You also said that you found no usable fingerprints. Does that mean you found some that you could not identify?”

“Yes. Not complete prints, just smears, and some partial prints.”

“Did you try to identify the partial prints?”

“I tried.”

“Where did you find those partial prints?”

“On the washers.”

“How many fingerprints did you recover altogether from the washers?”

“Seventeen partial prints.”

“And you examined each washer individually?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try to match those partial prints to Ray Arno’s fingerprints?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And could you make a match with any of them?”

“No, there wasn’t enough to work with.”

“Did you try to match them to anyone else’s fingerprints?”

“No.”

“When you tried to match them to Ray Arno’s prints, did you think you had enough to work with?”

“It was a long shot, just a faint possibility, so I tried.”

“Did you try to make a composite print? Put two or more of the partials together to try to obtain a complete fingerprint?”

“Yes, I tried that.”

“And it still didn’t match Ray Arno’s prints, is that right?”

“I didn’t even know if I had partials of the same finger,” he said.

“My question was: Did the composite print you assembled match Ray Arno’s fingerprints?”

“No, I couldn’t match it.”

“And did you try to match it with anyone else?”

“No.”

“So all you were interested in was matching your partial prints to Ray Arno’s fingerprints, wasn’t it?”

Roxbury objected; it was overruled.

“That isn’t the case. I would have sent it to the FBI lab if I had recovered enough for a positive identification,” Whitaker said.

“You stated that you had forensic training with the FBI. Is that correct?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Isn’t if a fact, Detective Whitaker, that the FBI labs can take partial fingerprints and make a composite print that then can be used for identification purposes?”

“If they have enough material to work with.”

“Is that a yes answer?” she asked coolly. “Yes.”

“Did you send your partials to the FBI to see if they could do that in this instance?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have enough for them to use.”

“But you thought you had enough to try it yourself at one time, didn’t you?”

“I tried.”

“Did you think you had enough that you might get an identifiable composite fingerprint?”

“It was a faint possibility, that’s all.”

“Is that answer yes, Detective Whitaker?”

“Yes, I thought I might have enough.”

He hadn’t lost his detached, neutral demeanor, but she knew she had pricked him. “How long would it take for the FBI laboratory to report back on such a task, making a composite print from partials?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She had him describe the procedure: photographers would take pictures and enlarge them, then fingerprint experts would try to match whorls and ridges in a complex jigsaw puzzle.