In the Clearing (3 page)

Berkshire nodded.

“I assume your daughter and son-in-law are divorced?” she said.

“In the process.”

“And it’s gotten ugly?”

“I won’t answer that.”

“It’s going to be a long night. You might want to wait at home.”

“I’ll wait right here.”

Tracy left him on the sidewalk. A senior prosecutor from the county’s Most Dangerous Offender Project would be coming, since MDOP responded to every homicide scene in King County. He or she could deal with Berkshire.

Inside, Kins was walking back from the bedroom. “You talk to the lawyer?”

“Atticus Berkshire,” she said.

“Shit.”

“It gets worse. Angela Collins is his daughter.”

“No,” Billy said.

“I think our grounder just took a bad hop,” Kins said.

CHAPTER 2

I
t had been a long night and a longer morning. Tracy and Kins had worked late with King County Prosecutor Rick Cerrabone to prepare the certification for determination of probable cause, setting out the known evidence showing that Angela Collins had shot her husband and should be detained in jail pending the filing of formal criminal charges.

Tracy flashed her shield to the court corrections officers and stepped around the metal detector inside the Third Avenue entrance to the King County Courthouse. She found Kins and Cerrabone huddled outside the district court. Cerrabone was the MDOP prosecutor who’d come out to the scene the night before, and he and Tracy and Kins had worked multiple homicides together.

Tracy was delayed because she’d been researching the King County Superior Court’s civil files. She handed Cerrabone a legal pleading. He put on reading glasses as Tracy gave them both the highlights. “Angela Collins filed for divorce about three months ago,” she said. “And from all appearances, it’s been nasty from the start. She alleged cruelty, emotional and physical abuse, and adultery.”

“Sounds like her civil attorney is taking lessons from her father,” Kins said.

Washington was a “no-fault divorce” state. There was no need for either side to assign blame. The idea was that making such allegations was inflammatory and usually intended to embarrass, or to try to gain the moral high ground when it came to divvying up the estate or child custody.

“Mediation failed. They were scheduled to go to trial next month,” Tracy said. “The index fills three computer screens. It looks like they’re fighting over every asset. The attorney’s fees will wipe out most of the estate.”

“Not anymore,” Kins said.

Cerrabone flipped the pleading back to the first page. “Berkshire will allege self-defense. That’s going to complicate things.” Once a defendant made a self-defense claim, the prosecutor bore the burden to prove the killing had
not
been in self-defense, not the other way around.

“But if it was self-defense,” Kins said, “why isn’t she talking to us and telling us what happened?”

“Probably because she grew up watching
Hill Street Blues
and because the first words her father taught her were ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,’” Tracy said. “Or she’s covering for the kid.”

They’d discussed the possibility that Connor Collins had shot his father and that Angela Collins’s quick confession had been motivated by a desire to protect her son—something they’d have to investigate going forward.

“Battered wife syndrome still plays well in Seattle,” Cerrabone said. Early afternoon, he already had a five-o’clock shadow, which accentuated his hangdog appearance—pronounced bags beneath his eyes and cheeks that sagged, though Cerrabone wasn’t heavy. Faz had pegged Cerrabone as a “dead ringer for Joe Torre,” the one-time New York Yankees manager.

Tracy knew Cerrabone well enough to know he would want to slow down the train and give her and Kins time to gather the evidence and sort it out before formally charging either Angela Collins or Connor Collins; he was fine with whatever played out. King County prosecutors didn’t like to bring charges and ask questions later, and they really despised having to dismiss charges due to a lack of corroborating evidence.

Cerrabone folded his glasses and returned them to the breast pocket of his charcoal-gray suit. “Let’s go see what Berkshire has in store for us.”

Tracy followed Kins and Cerrabone into the cramped courtroom. Spectators and media filled the usually empty benches in the gallery. More people stood at the back of the room.

Atticus Berkshire sat in the first bench. Any trace of the sympathetic father and grandfather had vanished. Berkshire’s silver curls were swept back from his forehead, just touching the collar of his blue pin-striped suit jacket. He was busy typing on an iPad, head down. An oscillating fan on the corner of the clerk’s oak counter swung from side to side. With each sweep, papers weighted down by her nameplate fluttered like the wings of a bird. There were no counsel tables—attorneys and their clients stood at the counter during what were typically brief hearings.

At 2:30 p.m. Judge Mira Mairs entered from the right, strode between two burly corrections officers, and quickly took her seat. An American flag and the green flag of the state of Washington hung limply behind her. Ordinarily, Mairs would have been considered a good draw for the prosecution, but Mairs had forged a career prosecuting domestic violence cases against husbands and boyfriends, and Tracy feared she could be overly sympathetic to Angela Collins’s anticipated self-defense argument. Mairs instructed the clerk to call the case first, no doubt so she could get back to the normal afternoon routine.

Angela Collins entered in white prison scrubs with the words “Ultra Security Inmate” stenciled on the back, her hands cuffed to a belly chain. After a visit to the hospital to treat the bump on her head with three stitches and to x-ray her jaw and ribs—both were negative—Collins had spent the night in jail. The cut near the corner of her mouth had scabbed over and looked to be turning a dark blue.

Cerrabone stated his appearance. Mairs looked to Berkshire, who was whispering to his daughter. “Counselor, are you joining us this morning?”

Berkshire straightened. “Indeed, Your Honor. Atticus Berkshire for the defendant, Angela Margaret Collins.”

Mairs picked up the certification and folded her hair behind her ear. It flowed gently to her shoulders, as black as her judicial robe.

“Your Honor,” Berkshire started. “If I may—”

Mairs raised a hand but did not look up, turning over the pages and setting them on her desk as she read through the document. When she’d finished, she gathered the pages and tapped them on her desk to even them. “I’ve read the certification. Anything else to add?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Berkshire said.

“From the State,” Mairs interrupted. “Anything else to add from the State?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Cerrabone said. “It has come to the State’s attention that in addition to what is set forth in the certification, the defendant and the deceased were involved in a contentious civil divorce that was set to go to trial next month after a failed mediation.”

Cerrabone could have elaborated, but Tracy knew he preferred not to try his cases in the press. Berkshire had no such qualms.

“A civil divorce my client initiated after years of mental and physical cruelty,” Berkshire said, becoming animated. “The shooting took place in Mrs. Collins’s residence after the deceased had moved out and had no legal right to be there. In fact, she had obtained a restraining order.”

“There you have it,” Kins whispered to Tracy. “Self-defense. He was attacking with his back to her.”

“Save your arguments, Counselor,” Mairs said. “I find that there’s probable cause to detain the defendant. Do you wish to be heard on bail or defer to the arraignment?”

“The defense wishes to be heard,” Berkshire said.

“The State objects to bail,” Cerrabone said. “This is a murder case.”

“This is a self-defense case,” Berkshire said.

Mairs lifted a palm as if to say “Have at it” and sat back in her chair.

“As the State well knows,” Berkshire said, “every person in the state of Washington is entitled to bail. Mrs. Collins has not been convicted of any crime, let alone been charged. She is innocent until proven guilty, and that presumption of innocence applies here. The only issues here are Mrs. Collins’s ties to the community, whether she is a flight risk, and her criminal history, with which I will start. The defendant has never had so much as a parking ticket. She has been an upstanding member of the community. She has a seventeen-year-old son who lives with her, as well as parents who live in the area. She is far from a flight risk. We would ask that the court release Mrs. Collins on personal recognizance.”

Mairs looked to Cerrabone.

“Your Honor,” he said, “Mrs. Collins purchased a handgun while the couple was in the midst of a contentious divorce that was approaching trial. She admitted in a 911 call that she shot her husband. She also admitted that she called her attorney. When officers arrived at the home, she again admitted to shooting her husband, and she asked to be read her Miranda rights. All of this is evidence of someone operating with all of her faculties, and possibly evidence of premeditation. As for self-defense . . . she shot Timothy Collins in the back.”

“She bought the gun because of a long history of physical and verbal abuse by her former husband,” Berkshire said, not waiting to be asked to respond, “including the night of the shooting. And she asked for her Miranda rights at her attorney’s instruction.”

Mairs sat forward. She’d clearly made up her mind, and she was ready to get on with it. “I don’t believe the defendant is a flight risk, nor do I believe she is a danger to the community. I am going to order that she surrender her passport and any weapons she possesses. The defendant will be placed on home confinement with an ankle monitor. Bail will be set at two million dollars.”

“May I be heard on the amount of bail?” Berkshire said.

“No.”

“Your Honor—”

“It’s a murder case, Counselor. Bail will remain at two million dollars. Madame Clerk, call the next case.”

Berkshire took another moment to speak softly to his daughter before she departed. Angela Collins would be taken back to jail, processed, fitted with an ankle monitor, and released, assuming she could come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars and a bail bondsman willing to cover the difference. That likely meant signing over a deed of trust on the house to the bail bondsman, or borrowing from her father.

Tracy and Kins followed Cerrabone out of the courtroom and into the hall. “I have another hearing. I’ll call you later,” Cerrabone said.

As the prosecutor departed, Tracy made her way outside the courthouse with Kins. On a Friday afternoon, Third Avenue was already congested. The commute home was likely going to be a bitch. She and Dan O’Leary, the man she’d been dating a year, had no chance of easily getting out of Seattle on their drive south to Stoneridge, a small town on the Columbia River.

“I’m sorry to be bailing on you,” Tracy said to Kins as they walked up the hill to the Justice Center. She and Dan were attending a funeral—for the father of Jenny Almond. Jenny had been the only other woman in Tracy’s Academy class.

“Don’t sweat it,” Kins said. “Faz says you promised him a lunch if he helped out. You should have just bought him a car. It would have been cheaper.”

CHAPTER 3

B
y the time Tracy and Dan rolled their suitcases into the lobby of the Inn at Stoneridge, the sun had already set. The restaurant and garden patio had closed, and rather than the “awe-inspiring images of the mighty Columbia carving its path through canyon walls,” as the inn’s website proclaimed, the river looked like the world’s largest blacktop highway.

At least the room was as romantic as advertised. The soft light of the bedside lamp colored the cedarwood walls gold, and soft jazz played from the nightstand stereo. Dan pulled back the curtain covering a sliding glass door. “Can’t see the mountain,” he said. It was too dark and overcast to see the snowcapped peak of Mount Adams to the north.

“I’m sorry we didn’t make our dinner reservation,” Tracy said. Dan had gone to considerable effort to get them a table at the inn’s four-star restaurant. They’d had to cancel when it became apparent they wouldn’t get there in time. Instead, they stopped and ate fast food.

“But consider the carbo-loading we did for our morning run,” he said, smiling but not able to completely mask his disappointment.

“We’re running in the morning?” she said.

“We are now.”

“Ugh. I’m going to take a shower,” Tracy said. “Care to join me?”

Dan had picked up the remote control. He gave her a sheepish smile. “I’m really beat,” he said. “I know you are too. I vote we veg—watch some TV, and crash. That okay?”

She knew he was tired; Los Angeles lawyers were wearing him out in a contentious personal injury lawsuit, but she was concerned Dan was becoming frustrated at their inability to find quality time together. They’d grown up childhood friends but had lost touch until Tracy returned to their hometown of Cedar Grove for answers about her little sister’s disappearance twenty years before. Hunters had found Sarah’s remains buried in a shallow grave, and Tracy wanted a new trial for the man accused of killing her, because she’d believed he was innocent. She’d hired Dan, the best attorney in town, and they developed a romantic relationship. But Tracy lived in Seattle, two hours away, and no sooner had she returned home when she became embroiled in the hunt for the Cowboy.

She wrapped her arms around Dan’s neck. “Are you upset?”

He set down the remote. “If I was upset, I’d be upset at you, which I’m not. I’m disappointed at the situation—that we didn’t get to enjoy the evening we’d planned.”

“We can still have part of the weekend we had in mind,” she said.

“Sort of a ‘you wash my back and I’ll wash yours’?” he said.

She smiled. “That assumes you’re taking me up on my offer, and one of us is turning around in the shower.”

They didn’t make it to the shower, and Dan didn’t seem too disappointed he had to postpone watching ESPN. They made love on the bed until, exhausted, they fell asleep wrapped in the Egyptian cotton sheets.