Invasion of Privacy (38 page)

"No matter what happens in the trial, I’m buying you a potted plant afterward," Nina said.

"What? Oh, don’t bother. I’ve been given flowers, ferns, succulents, and cacti. They all die. No direct sun, and I forget to water." He laid the papers down, pushed back in his chair, put his arms behind his head, and sighed. "It’s a sad thing," he said. "A key witness in my Mexican Mafia case. One of the defense attorneys found out she was an illegal alien and told the Immigration people about her. I doubt if I can keep her here for the trial. She’ll be deported back to Guatemala with her kids. God only knows what it took her to get here. She’s going to think the lawyers ruined her life, and in a way, she’s right."

"Too bad," Nina said, feeling slightly hypocritical. A hostile prosecution witness had been disposed of, quite legally. It was a reprehensible, acceptable defense tactic.

Collier looked so weary, so resigned. His shirt had spent a cramped night in the dryer. He closed his eyes, his hands still folded behind his head, as though he had momentarily fallen asleep. Trial work had a way of retiring its practitioners by the age of forty-five or so. The body reacted to the stress with a heart attack, or an addiction in many cases. How old was Collier? Forty? Fifty? If he became the district attorney for El Dorado County, his trial days would be over, in a natural and wise progression.

Strange. They were antagonists, and here she was, worrying about his health.

Sitting across from him on her metal folding chair, she studied him. He had more resources, more experience, more colleagues to share his problems with. But she had more freedom, more chance of financial success, and no burden of proof to speak of

"You need someone to take care of you," she said, and he jumped.

"I was just thinking the same thing about you," he said. "You were shot last year, you work in this despised profession, you’re a young woman with a child —you need someone to rub your feet at night and put you to bed."

"Nobody would put up with my schedule," Nina said. "Oh, well."

"Oh, well," Collier said. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Collier said, "Cup of coffee?"

"Not the stuff they make here."

"I bet you’re going to grab a pizza or a burger on the way back to work at your office until eight or nine. That’s why we die young."

"I bet that’s your plan too," Nina said.

"Let’s go grab some dinner at a casino," Collier said.

"I don’t know. That would be, er ..."

"Fraternizing? Look, we have to eat, and we have to talk about this case. So let’s put on our best Type-A personalities and combine the two. I promise you won’t have any fun."

"Fun? What’s that?" Nina said. "Okay. Let’s go." They left, ignoring the pointed stares of the secretaries.

Prize’s Club was jumping. The line for the buffet stretched back to a line of slot machines. "Excuse me," Nina said, feeling around in the bottom of her purse for quarters, her fingers itching to hit the machines.

Two cherries popped up, and she made her money back, plus two. "Quit while you’re ahead," Collier advised, but she kept going until she’d emptied her pockets of coins.

"I’ve lived up here long enough for all the glamor to fade. So why do I still throw my money away?" Nina said.

"You never want to miss a bet, even a bad bet," Collier said. They argued at the cashier over who would pay. Nina won, saying she’d bill it to her client as a business dinner, with a passing thought about whether Kurt could ever pay her, and how to stick Riesner for holding back the retainer money.

Inside the huge ballroom, they took a table in the middle and went down to the front where buffet tables flaunted mounds of colorful food. When they returned, the waiter had brought a carafe of red wine.

"To Justice with a capital J," Collier said, raising his glass. "May it prevail over all the bullshit."

"I’ll drink to that," Nina said. She let the wine warm her. Over the buzz of hundreds of diners, she said, "We’re totally anonymous here. Tourists from all over the world meet here to lose their money. It gives you such a warm, fuzzy feeling." Three of her salads had gotten mixed up on her plate. The result was delicious.

"You are about to say, why don’t I drop the premeditated murder charge in the London shooting, since she kept the gun at her house for years and no other evidence of premeditation showed up?" Collier took a bite.

"How about it?"

"I’ll do it if you’ll sleep with me tonight." Collier hit his head with his palm, said, "Oh, sorry. Forgot. I’m not supposed to require that anymore."

"Ha, ha. Will you? Drop the first-degree charge?"

"Might as well. Milne will grant your motion. We’re both tired. Let’s save ourselves the trouble of arguing it."

"That’s great."

"Your good work. I had no idea the Kettricks knew London well enough to know the gun was at her house all along. Now it’s your turn. Want to talk to your client about one count of second-degree murder? Fifteen years with credits if Milne’s in a good mood."

"And you would agree not to bring any charges regarding Tamara Sweet?"

"I couldn’t promise that. Something new may come in."

"Forget it. I don’t think he did either of the shootings. I’m getting some ideas about some of the witnesses—"

"Raising those reasonable doubts—"

"I’m trying to say something sincere. This is not a trial tactic."

"Everything we do in this situation is a trial tactic," Collier said. "Even sincerity."

"I’m not going to plead Scott out," Nina said. "Let my actions speak for themselves."

"You just don’t have a good enough offer yet. Really, you’re playing the usual defense game. Look what you did, bringing in Ralph Kettrick and serving him up to the jury to distract attention—"

"He doesn’t have an alibi. He was as close to Terry London as anyone got. His dad lied for him—"

"Or maybe you just confused his dad. Or are you saying they’re both in it together?"

"I’m not saying anything. I’m just catching flaws in your case when they leap out at me. It doesn’t help that you’ve managed to mix the Tamara Sweet shooting up in it."

"You ought to quit while you’re ahead."

"Oh, let’s just give it a rest, Collier. I’m too tired to spar with you right now."

"Good enough," Collier said. They finished the meal in companionable silence. He drove them back to the courthouse parking lot, saying, "I’ll be calling you to the stand after Mrs. Sweet. Tomorrow’s a Friday and Milne’s going to recess early, so I suppose it will be Monday morning. Nervous?"

"No." She was lying. She had had a classic dream before the trial started, when noises were first made about her being a witness. Naked except for her briefcase, which she tried to cover herself with, mightily aware of her physical imperfections, the mental imagery of her audience spilling into her mind as they criticized and judged her, she was marched to the witness box and turned to face her accuser.

"Are you ready to confess?" said the judge, who was gradually assuming the hard-planed, malicious face of Terry London. The court, the audience, and the prosecution merged into a faceless crowd of accusatory looks.

"Confess what?" she had asked. A big laugh. Everyone knew what she was supposed to confess, everyone but her. Her confusion and growing consternation made them laugh harder. They saw inside her, everything, even the secrets she kept from herself. The judge whipped out a video camera and began filming her as she tried to cover up her private parts....

" ’No fear,’ " she said, quoting the logo from her son’s hat, which presently reposed in the police evidence locker. If Collier only knew ...

"Well, good. And good luck on your work tonight."

"Bye. Same to you." And with that half-ironic good-bye, Nina drove off.

39

"CALL JESSICA SWEET."

Tamara’s mother took the stand on Friday, eleven days into the trial. Outside was another one of the 307 days of sunlight Tahoe enjoyed each year, a clear and perfect late July day. The jury had divided into the alert and the inert, but Nina thought she knew what one thing they all agreed on. Anywhere but here, in this airless closet of emotion and death.

Everyone connected to the case seemed to have showed up today to see Terry’s film.

Mrs. Sweet’s tan had deepened since Nina last saw her, if that was possible. Her blinding health had to remind the jury that her daughter should have had a lot of good years ahead of her. She wore her silver hair shorter than ever and turquoise studs in her ears that brought out the blueness of her eyes. She looked competent and respectable. The women on the jury would find her stalwart and believable.

Her unhappiness could be seen only close up, in the way her mouth habitually turned down at the corners. Her destiny had been a missing child, years in limbo while she tried to find out what had happened, and her husband’s crippling accident. Then she had suffered a final blow, finding her child was dead, had been dead the whole time. But she was strong, and she hid her unhappiness as well as she could.

Collier took Mrs. Sweet through the story she had already told Nina, how she and her husband had gone to a property owners’ meeting the night of Tamara’s disappearance, how they had worried when she didn’t come home, how they had reported her missing the next morning. She gestured gracefully with her hands as she talked about the investigation that followed, the false leads, the hope slowly evaporating as days became months and years. It was a sad story, and at times her reserve failed her, and her chin trembled.

"Had your relationship with your daughter changed in the year prior to her disappearance?" Collier asked.

"Uh-huh. She used to share her life with me. I thought we’d gotten through her adolescence very well, with a minimum of the misery you’re told to expect. But during her senior year in high school, she turned away from us. We tried to talk to her many times, but ... she was angry. It seemed as though we disagreed about everything. She stopped communicating with us. Then, one night about three weeks before she disappeared I found a piece of paper in her dresser drawer. Some pills fell out when I unwrapped it. We had a heated argument. She was hostile, resentful. She said to quit snooping; she was over eighteen and she’d move out if I didn’t respect her privacy.

"She stopped talking to me. I lectured her, I admit it, and I tried to get her to talk to our family doctor. I told Jonathan what I had found and he was sick about it. We talked about having her leave the house, because we didn’t know what to do. I knew she was seeing a lot of Doreen and Michael. I thought it was strange. She and Michael had broken up, and now he was with Doreen.

"She came home late and left early. I thought, it couldn’t just be the three of them. Tamara was so lovely. There had to be a young man she was seeing too." Mrs. Sweet turned to the jury and said, "If we could have just got her past this one bad spot, she would have been all right. She fell off the edge. So many children do at the point of adulthood."

"Did you learn who this young man was?"

Her hands wrung themselves. "I had seen a young man pick her up in front of the house a month or so before I found the pills. I described him to the police, but my understanding is they didn’t have enough evidence—"

"Objection," Nina said. "Calls for hearsay. Non-responsive."

"The jury will disregard the last sentence of the testimony," Milne said.

"And is the young man who you saw twelve years go, a few weeks before your daughter disappeared, in the courtroom today?"

The jury’s eyes followed her finger to Kurt. "The record will show the witness has indicated the defendant in answer to the question," Milne said.

Kurt scribbled a note to Nina. He had become agitated. Nina wrote back, "Don’t worry. Several weeks before. No big deal."

"Last year, did you and your husband meet with Terry London for any purpose?" Collier went on.

"Yes. About two years ago we contacted an old friend at UC Davis who had made some documentary films, and asked her if she knew of anyone who might be willing to make a short film about Tamara’s disappearance. We would pitch in financially. She got one of the real-life mystery shows interested in doing their own story on Tam.

"Then the Tahoe paper, the Mirror, did a story about the renewed interest in the case, and that’s when we got a call from Terry London. She offered her services for a very reasonable price, if we would help with expenses. She seemed to think she could make a profit. By then, the television people seemed to be stalling, so we talked to her several times, and decided to go ahead."

"Did Terry London then make this film?"

"Yes."

"Titled Where Is Tamara Sweet?"

"Yes."

"Your Honor, if I may," Hallowell said, waving to the projector that had been set up.

Nina didn’t object. The lights went down, and this time the jury saw not Terry but her work, the film Nina still didn’t fully understand. As she watched, all the old questions came back: Why had Terry made the film? Because she killed Tamara, and couldn’t take the chance someone else might discover that fact in the course of the filming? It sounded like a good theory, but it just didn’t work. If Terry had to make the film to protect herself, she would never have suggested Tam had been murdered. She would have suggested Tam was alive, living a new life, to deflect attention.

If Terry hadn’t shot the girl, then why not make Kurt the killer in her film? With Terry’s obsession to find him, why hadn’t she accused him? Then the police might have started looking for him, have located him, even charged him with the murder and brought him back, as she seemed to desire.

The film was nearly over, and now Nina saw again the actress playing Tam walking slowly, on that freezing day, toward that familiar trail.... Kurt’s note, passed down the counsel table and hard to read, said, "I’d swear that was Tam."

Put it together. If neither Terry nor Kurt killed Tamara, who else could have gotten at the rifle? The young girl sitting down on the white rock while sad music played, snowflakes falling on her long hair, wearing her boots and black pants and that ratty rabbit jacket ... Where was that jacket?

She remembered Terry’s amusement, her knowing attitude, her grandiosity. Terry thought she was above ordinary morality, ordinary life.

The thought came to Nina that the film was Terry’s macabre joke. She’d known who killed Tamara. She had told the truth for once, obliquely, "artistically." Terry couldn’t resist revealing what she knew, that it wasn’t her, and it wasn’t Kurt.

It was someone else. The eyes watching from afar. The secret watcher, deeply hidden in elemental darkness. Who?

The thought came, like a door opening into that chaotic darkness, what about the three other girls who disappeared into the snow? Why include them in a tight film that probably involved a lot of cutting?

Why not just take the film at face value? The film suggested Tam was murdered, before her body was found. So Terry had known for twelve years that Tamara was dead.

She looked at the girl on the screen, beginning to fade into darkness. She covered her mouth with her hand, sickened, watching, watching, thinking, oh, no, it can’t be, she wouldn’t....

But of course Terry would. She had been there that night, on the trail up to Angora Ridge. She had filmed Tamara, the real Tamara, her camera whirring quietly behind one of the boulders. And she had seen who came to meet Tamara.

Tamara’s slight figure slowly faded out, and the music and credits began to cross the screen.

There was no credit for the girl in the reenactment. Terry’s audacious hint just made Nina feel sicker.

Terry had known all along, had seen the murder, had filmed at least this part. And one day, she had learned a film was to be made. Of course she had approached the Sweets. She couldn’t resist the joke on everyone, going as far as she dared. And inserting the real footage of the real girl ... How Terry must have hugged herself and laughed!

Nina felt the eyes, in the dusk of the courtroom, looking at her. She was sitting there, and the dark person could hurt her there, just as she had been hurt before. She began to shiver uncontrollably right there at the counsel table. Someone watched from a seat behind her. She felt once again the shot that had knocked her into the witness box. Run, before it’s too late! She jumped up. Kurt’s shackles clattered. He was turning to her in surprise. She opened the gate to run the gauntlet of the crowded aisles, to get out of there....

The film ended. The lights came up. Deputy Kimura watched the crowd alertly. There was no gun trained on her.

She surveyed the audience. Barbet Cain and the other reporters. Doreen and Michael Ordway whispering at each other in their usual chairs. The Kettricks, father and son, seated together, on the left. Monty Glasser, the producer of Real-Life Riddles, who had come up from L.A., probably thinking about what a great episode this trial would make. Jonathan Sweet, pugnacious and resentful in his wheelchair; detectives and criminalists; courthouse cronies in the back. Milne and Collier—and Kurt beside her, saying "What’s wrong?" in a low tone.

"A lot," she whispered back. But court was still in session, and she didn’t have time to think. As soon as the day was over, she would go to the office, lock the door, think it through ...

"Is this the film that Terry London made and thereafter showed to you?" Collier asked Mrs. Sweet.

"Yes." The film went in as evidence.

"Now, were you asked in June of this year to provide the South Lake Tahoe police with the name of Tamara’s dentist?"

"Yes. I knew they’d found ... remains. I went to see them. I’d seen the belt before. She told me it was a present, but she wouldn’t say from who. And that watch. I certainly didn’t recognize anything else as my daughter." Her chin was trembling again.

"Thank you, Mrs. Sweet. No further questions," Collier said.

Nina gathered her thoughts, driving the panic of the moment before from her mind. She looked up at Tamara’s mother. A composed Jessica Sweet waited, hands in her lap. "How long have you been married, Mrs. Sweet?" she asked.

"Thirty-five years next fall."

"How did your husband get along with Tamara in the year before she disappeared?"

"If you mean that stupid police report—"

"You did call the police?"

"Yes, but—"

"Your husband did knock Tamara down the stairs, resulting in a trip to the hospital and permanent scarring?"

"The paramedics called the police, not me. It was an accident, but by the time the police had given the report to me to sign, it looked like my husband had ..."

"Assaulted her? You did sign the police report?"

"Yes. I was angry at Jonathan. No charges were ever brought. It was an accident, I tell you. I was there." She made a washing gesture with her hands, then clenched them firmly together under her chin, as if to stop them from talking.

"Did your husband have a number of arguments with Tamara during that time?"

"Several. Naturally. He was concerned at the way she’d been behaving."

"When Tamara disappeared, you were quite adamant when you talked with the police that she had not just run away, is that correct?"

"Uh-huh. I knew she didn’t."

"Why were you so sure? She had developed a problem with drugs. She had threatened to leave. She didn’t get along with her father. She didn’t talk to you ... Why were you so sure?"

"I just knew she wouldn’t take off like that."

"Did Mr. Sweet go out again that night, after you returned from your meeting?"

"No!"

"You were concerned about her. He didn’t go out to look for her?"

"I said he didn’t."

"Was he suffering from the disability that requires him to use a wheelchair at that time?"

"No. The car wreck happened the following year."

"Your husband also gave a statement, Mrs. Sweet. Twelve years ago. You evidently haven’t reread it recently in preparation for your testimony." Nina brought up her copy.

Mrs. Sweet said, "Oh, yes. He ran out for half an hour, but he didn’t see her."

"How do you know that?"

"It says so right here—"

"Do you have any personal knowledge that he never found her?"

"Your Honor, is this attack on my husband allowable?" Mrs. Sweet said, shifting in her seat.

"You’ll have to answer the question," Milne said.

"I can’t believe she’s doing this!"

"Answer the question."

"How could I have personal knowledge?" Mrs. Sweet shouted. "I wasn’t with him! But I know he didn’t do it!"

"And how do you know that?"

"Because she did it!"

"Who?"

"Terry London!" Mrs. Sweet said defiantly.

"Did she tell you she killed your daughter?"

"She didn’t have to. It was there, in her attitude, the night she showed us the film. I couldn’t prove it. I just knew, when I saw the film, that Tam was dead, and that Terry London knew all about it." She hid her face in her hands.

"Let’s give the witness a moment, Your Honor," Nina said. Milne nodded, and Nina sat down. The courtroom filled with whispers.

Nina’s hand sketched a funny animal picture: a rabbit and a catlike lynx. She looked down. What was her unconscious mind trying to tell her? The secret was there, but it was so extraordinary, so perverse, that none of them were bold enough or smart enough to perceive it.

Terry had known it was beyond their experience, and she had enjoyed the mystery.

Damn her! Terry had been a part of the darkness. At that moment, Nina felt no sadness that she had been swallowed up in it. Matt was her victim, not the other way around.

Mrs. Sweet was quiet again. Nina said, "You don’t have any proof that Terry London killed your daughter, do you?"

"No," she said in a subdued tone.

"Her manner at the time of the screening indicated to you that she knew who killed your daughter?"