Evidence of Guilt (8 page)

"You were telling me about Friday night."

"Veritas.
That means truth, doesn't it?"

I didn't answer.

"How about
stercus accidit;
you know what that means? Shit happens. I saw it on a bumper sticker, in Latin. Which one should we choose for the motto of our case?"

"About Friday."

He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. 'There's not much to tell."

"Why don't you give it a try anyway."

Wes leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I left work, went home, took a shower, had a beer. I watched a little of the A's game on television before meeting some friends down at the Oasis."

"And then?"

"And then I drank some more beer, ate a burger-- excuse me, two burgers, with cheese--shot the breeze for a while, played a little pool. Pretty much what I do every Friday night."

"Except usually you're there to close the place down, and this particular night you left early."

He shrugged. "I was tired. I went home and went to bed."

"Is there anyone who can verify that? Anyone who saw

you go into your house or called you at home that

evening?"

"No calls. I think the police talked to the neighbors." And one of them had heard a motorcycle on the street long after the time Wes claimed to be in bed. I decided to leave that for later. "Did you place any calls yourself? Maybe you called out for a late-night pizza, or left a message on a friend's machine."

Wes rubbed the back of a finger along his jaw, his brows furrowed. Finally he shook his head. "Not that I recall."

"You apparently got into an argument with a woman down at the Oasis," I said. "Can you tell me what it was about?"

"No."

"No?"

"No." His eyes met mine; then he sighed. "If I knew, I'd tell you. She just pissed me off, is all. I can't even remember why. It was nothing."

"You remember her name?"

"Doreen, Darnelle. Something like that. She's there most Friday nights."

"Your friends say you were in a foul mood all evening. Was Doreen the cause of it?"

"I told you, the thing with her was nothing. It was just one of those days, you know?" His voice dropped and grew thick with sarcasm. "Or maybe you don't. Maybe for you everything goes the way it's supposed to, like clockwork."

Oh boy, did he have that wrong.

Wes watched me, his gaze unwavering.

"How did you know Lisa Cornell?" I asked.

The muscle in his jaw twitched. "I didn't."

"You sure?"

"I said I didn't."

"Then how do you suppose your rabbit's foot got in her little girl's pocket?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Take a guess."

Wes shrugged. "I lost it a couple of days earlier. Maybe the kid found it."

"A
guy you work with says he saw you with it on Thursday."

"So maybe it was only one day earlier that I lost it. Or maybe the one the police found isn't mine."

"And the dirt on your motorcycle?"

"Dirt's dirt. The stuff at the Cornell place isn't mono-grammed, is it?"

"Dirt's
not
all the same. Besides, we're talking about more than dirt here. There's vegetation, road oil, that sort of thing."

Another shrug. "I ride through those hills all the time. It must be a coincidence."

'There's an awful lot of coincidence about this."

"You got a better explanation?"

I rolled the pen in my hands, exasperated. The room was hot and stuffy, layered with the odors of unwashed bodies and disinfectant. I wondered if the holding cells were as bad.

Suddenly Wes rocked forward. The skin around his eyes and mouth was tight. "You don't believe me, do you? You think I killed Lisa Cornell and her kid."

"What I think isn't the issue."

His laugh was bitter. "Right, you've got to defend me either way."

"I don't
got
to do anything."

"You get paid either way too. Buy yourself a fancy new car, go out to dinner. Maybe when this is all over you'll take a little breather at some resort in the south of France. Win or lose, it's all in a day's work to you."

"To a certain extent that's true," I said, with growing irritation. "But I work hard. And win or lose, I'll have earned my fee."

'That's reassuring."

"And I'll have done my best for you."

This time the laugh was more of a snort. "Right, I forgot. You're one of those super-achiever types. Wouldn't dream of doing less than your personal best. I know you

went to a big-name college, and I bet you went to some equally big-name law school. Me, I'm such a fuck-up. It's a good thing I've got you on my team."

I swallowed my anger, which I realized was really more frustration than genuine outrage. And it was directed as much at myself as at Wes. Why had I let him get under my skin?

"Believe it or not," I said carefully, "lawyers are more effective when they don't take a personal interest in their cases. I'm a good lawyer and I'm going to do the best job I can for you. So will Sam. But it will be much easier, and much more effective, if you cooperate instead of fighting us at every step."

Wes's expression was one of clamped-down anger. He looked at me and said nothing.

"Okay," I began again, recapping, "let's see what we've got. Someone killed Lisa Cornell and her daughter. It wasn't you. Unfortunately, you have no alibi and the police happen to have quite a bit of evidence against you."

"Truth is often stranger than fiction."

"We're going to have a hard time selling that to the jury."

His expression was derisive. "The courtroom angle's a bitch, isn't it?" He turned so that he was no longer facing me.

"You know, there's a chance you might be able to plead to a lesser offense. You were drinking that night, and angry about something. Maybe you took a ride through the hills on your way home, got lost or sidetracked and wound up at Lisa Cornell's place. She might have startled you or maybe threatened to call the police, and you panicked. We could make a case for something less than murder one."

Wes slammed his fist against the table and flew to his

feet. "Jesus, don't you listen? I didn't do it." He banged on the door for the guard. "Enough of this crap. I'm out of here."

'Think about it," I told him.

"Hey, guard!" He beat on the door with his open palms.

"Please, Wes. At least
think
about your defense." My voice had an urgency that surprised me.

It must have surprised Wes too. He turned to look at me.

"Sam and I know the law," I told him. "But you're the one who knows where you were that night, what you did or didn't do. It would help the case if we had a coherent scenario that would explain away the evidence against you." I paused. "And we certainly don't want to be surprised in court."

The guard opened the door and nodded in my direction, ignoring Wes as though he were invisible. 'You finished here?"

I nodded. "I guess so."

The guard thrust Wes against the wall face first, then reached into his pocket for the handcuffs. I turned away, embarrassed to watch.

"Remember Mr. Alridge's history class?" Wes asked over his shoulder. "You sat two rows in from the front, on the left by the windows."

The handcuffs snapped shut with a sharp click. Glancing back, I could see the hard metal edge dig into the flesh of Wes's wrist.

"Bet you don't remember where I sat," he said. |

The guard turned him around and propelled him toward the door. Wes stopped and twisted back to face me. "In fact, what I remember most about that class was watching you. It was a whole lot more interesting than history. You'd sit there with that look of rapture on your face, like

you were interested as hell in all that stuff about George Washington and the Continental Congress. But you used to spend an awful lot of time tugging at the crotch of your jeans." He grinned. "I always wondered if you had your mind on history at all."

After the guard ushered Wes out I stuffed my papers into my briefcase and stomped down the hall to the elevator. The only thing worse than an uncooperative client was one who was also hostile. As far as I could tell, I'd just grabbed the brass ring.

He was also wrong. I
had
liked history. Alridge was one of those teachers who made the subject come alive. Could I help it if tight jeans had been the fashion?

Angrily, I poked the elevator button. Wes had been wrong about something else too. I'd known exactly where he sat. In history and every other class we had together. It was always in the last row, at the back of the room. And it was always the first spot my eyes were drawn to each day. Gypsy magic.

I shifted my briefcase to the other arm and took a deep breath to calm myself. Most of what I needed to do in preparing the case didn't directly involve Wes anyway. With luck, I could do my part without having to interview him further.

Still, I thought it would be helpful if he'd give us something more to work with than "I didn't do it."

Unless, of course, there was nothing more to give because he really hadn't

The elevator arrived and I got on. Two floors down, I was joined by Curt Willis, deputy DA and prosecuting attorney in the Harding case.

"Hey, Kali," he said byway of greeting. "It's been awhile."

I couldn't honestly say whether it had been or not, but I nodded anyway. Curt's a master of small talk and doesn't much care what you say in return. He's about my age, honey-blond hair with matching brows and lashes. Good-looking without actually being attractive. At least not in my book. I find him a bit too polished to be considered sexy, although we'd dated a couple of times when I first got to town.

"I visited your old stomping grounds last week," he said. "San Francisco's quite a place."

I nodded again.

Curt smiled, looked at his watch. "Say, it's just about quitting time; you want to have a drink? It would be nice to talk to a thinking human being for a change. I don't believe I've had a conversation all day with anyone brighter than a toadstool."

"Surely it's not that bad."

"Close."

Although I hadn't actually accepted Curt's offer, we struck out in the direction of Ollie's as though I had. Curt seemed to assume I would join him, and the appeal of a drink won out over any reservations I might have had.

Friday nights are usually pretty busy, but we were early enough to get a table away from the noisiest part of the room.

"I hear you're working on the Wes Harding case," he remarked after we'd settled in.

"Along with Sam Morrison."

Curt gave me a Cheshire cat grin. "You're going to lose this one, sweetheart. Take it from me."

I wasn't bothered by the
sweetheart
bit; that's the way Curt talked. But I was caught somewhat off guard by the conviction in his tone.

"I wouldn't be so sure about winning," I told him. The words were pure bravado on my part, and I hoped they didn't sound as phony as they felt.

He grinned again. 'This case is going to be my ticket out of here. It's already made the Sacramento papers, and there's a woman at a television station in San Francisco who wants to follow the whole trial. People are going to be watching this, Kali, important people. It's the opportunity I've been waiting for."

Like most lawyers, Curt liked winning. More than that, though, he wanted to make a name for himself in a bigger pond than the likes of Silver Creek. The scuttlebutt was that he was a hard worker and fairly bright, but he'd had the misfortune of being a mediocre student at a mediocre law school. From there, it's a tough road to the top.

Our drinks arrived. I licked at the salt on my margarita. "You want to be careful what you wish for, you know."

"You mean about getting out of this town?"