I Is for Innocent Read online

  From midnight until approximately 12:45, Isabelle, feeling anxious and excited about the trip, had a lengthy telephone conversation with a former college roommate who lived in Seattle. Some time after that, she heard a rap at the door and went downstairs, assuming the Seegers had arrived. She was fully dressed, smoking a cigarette, her suitcases already lined up in the foyer. She flipped on the porch light and put her eye to the spyhole before opening the door. Instead of seeing visitors, she was staring down the bore of the .38 that killed her. The Seegers showed up at 2:20 and realized something was wrong. They alerted Isabelle’s sister, who was living in a cottage on the property. She used her key to let them in through the rear. The alarm system was still armed at the perimeter. As soon as they spotted her, the Seegers called the police. By the time the medical examiner arrived at the scene, Isabelle’s body temperature had dropped to 98.1. Using the Moritz formula and adjusting for the temperature in the foyer, her body weight, clothing, and the temperature and conductivity of the marble floor on which she lay, the medical examiner placed the time of death roughly between 1:00 A.M. and 2:00 A.M.

  At noon the next day, David Barney was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, to which he entered a plea of not guilty. Even that early in the game, it was clear that the evidence against him was largely circumstantial. However, in the state of California, the two elements of a homicide—the death of the victim and the existence of “criminal agency”—may be proved circumstantially or inferentially. A finding of murder in the first degree can be sustained where no body is produced, where no direct evidence of death is produced, and where there is no confession. David Barney had signed a prenuptial agreement that limited his financial settlement if they divorced. At the same time, he was listed as the prime beneficiary on her life insurance policies, and as her widower he stood to inherit the community property portion of her business, which was estimated at two point six million bucks. David Barney had no real alibi for the time of her death. Dink Jordan felt he had more than enough evidence to convict.

  As it happened, the trial lasted three weeks, and after six hours of closing arguments and two days of deliberations, the jury voted for acquittal. David Barney walked out of the courtroom not only a free man, but very rich. Interviewed later, some jurors admitted to a strong suspicion that he’d killed her, but they hadn’t been persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt. What Lonnie Kingman was attempting, by filing the wrongful death suit, was to retry the case in civil court, where the burden of proof is based on a preponderance of evidence instead of the “reasonable doubt” formula of a criminal prosecution. As I understood matters, it would still be necessary for the plaintiff, Kenneth Voigt, to establish that David Barney killed Isabelle, and, further, that the killing was felonious and intentional. But the onus would be eased by the shift to proof by preponderance. What was at stake here was not Barney’s freedom, but any profits he’d garnered from the crime itself. If he’d killed her for money, at least he’d be stripped of his gains.

  I realized I was yawning for the third time in a row. My hands were filthy and I’d reached the point in my reading where my mind was wandering. Morley Shine’s methodology had really been slipshod and I found myself irritated with the poor man in death. There’s nothing quite as irksome as someone else’s mess. I left the files where they were and locked my office door. I let myself out into the third-floor corridor and locked the door behind me.

  Mine was the only car left in the parking lot. I pulled out of the driveway and turned right, heading toward town. When I reached State Street, I hung a left and headed home, cruising through the empty, well-lighted downtown area of Santa Teresa. Most of the buildings are only two stories high, the Spanish-style architecture of the ground-hugging variety due to frequent earthquakes. In the summer of 1968, for instance, there was a swarm of sixty-six tremors, ranging in severity from 1.5 to 5.2 on the Richter scale, the latter being strong enough to slop half the water out of a swimming pool.

  I felt a surge of regret when I passed my old building at 903 State. By now, someone new had probably moved into the space. I ought to talk to Vera, the CF claims manager, to find out what had happened in the weeks since I’d been gone. I hadn’t seen her since she and Neil got married on Halloween night. As a side effect of being fired, I was losing touch with a lot of people I knew—Darcy Pascoe, Mary Bellflower. The notion of Christmas in the new office setting seemed strange somehow.

  I narrowly missed the light at the intersection of Anaconda and 101. I came to a stop and turned my engine off, waiting the four minutes for the light to turn green again. The highway was deserted, empty lanes of asphalt stretching out in both directions. The light finally changed and I zoomed across, turning right at Cabana, the boulevard paralleling the beach. I took another right onto Bay and a left onto my street, which was narrow and treelined, mostly single-family dwellings with an occasional condo. I found a parking spot two doors away from my apartment. I locked my car and scanned the darkened neighborhood by habit. I like to be out by myself at this hour, though I try to be vigilant and exercise appropriate caution. I let myself into the side yard, lifting the gate on its hinge to avoid the squeak.

  My apartment was once a single-car garage attached to the main house by a breezeway, which had been converted to a sunroom. Both my apartment and the sunroom had been reconstructed after a bomb blast and I now had an additional loft sleeping space with a second bath built in. My outside light was on, compliments of my landlord, Henry Pitts, who never goes to bed without peering out his window to see if I’m safely home.

  I locked the door behind me and went through my usual nighttime routine, securing all the doors and windows. I turned on my little black-and-white TV for company while I tidied my apartment. Since I’m usually gone during the day, I find myself doing personal chores at night. I’ve been known to vacuum at midnight and grocery shop at 2:00 A.M. Since I live alone, it isn’t hard to keep the place picked up, but every three or four months I do a systematic cleaning, tackling one small section at a time on a rotating basis. That night, even taking time to scrub the kitchen, I was in bed by 1:00.

  Tuesday, I woke at 6:00. I pulled on my sweats and tied the laces of my Nikes in a double spit knot. I brushed my teeth, splashed some water on my face, and ran wet fingers through my sleep-flattened hair. My run was perfunctory, more form than content, but at the end of it I was at least in touch with some energy. I used the time to tune into the day, a moving meditation meant to focus my mind as well as coordinate my limbs. I was dimly aware that I hadn’t been taking very good care of myself of late . . . a combination of stress, irregular sleep, and too much junk food. Time to clean up my act.

  I showered and dressed, ate a bowl of cereal with skim milk, and headed back to the office.

  As I passed Ida Ruth’s desk, I paused for a quick chat about her weekend, leisure she usually fills with backpacking, horse trails, and hair-raising rock climbs. She’s thirty-five and unmarried, a robust vegetarian, with windswept blond hair and brows bleached by the sun. Her cheekbones are wide, her ruddy complexion unsoftened by makeup. While she’s always dressed well, she looks like she’d prefer wearing flannel shirts, chinos, and hiking boots. “If you want to talk to Lonnie, you better scoot on in. He’s got a court appearance coming up in ten minutes.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  I found him at his desk. He’d shed his coat and had his shirtsleeves rolled up. His tie was askew and his shaggy hair stood out around his head like wheat in need of threshing. Through the windows behind him, I could see clear blue skies with a scrim of mauve-and-gray mountains in the background. It was a gorgeous day. A thick tumble of vivid magenta bougainvillea camouflaged a white brick wall two buildings away.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “All right, I guess. I haven’t finished going through the boxes yet, but it seems pretty disorganized.”

  “Yeah, well, filing was never Morley’s strong suit.”

  “Girls jus
t naturally do that so much better,” I said dryly.

  Lonnie smiled as he jotted a note to himself, presumably concerning the case he was working on. “We ought to talk fees. What’s your hourly rate?”

  “What was Morley charging?”

  “The usual fifty,” he said idly.

  He had opened a drawer and was sorting through his files so he couldn’t see my face. Morley was getting fifty? I couldn’t believe it. Either men are outrageous or women are fools. Guess which, I thought. My standard fee has always been thirty bucks an hour plus mileage. I only missed half a beat. “Bump it up five bucks and I won’t charge you mileage.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “What about instructions?”

  “That’s up to you. Carte blanche.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course. You can do anything you want. As long as you keep your nose clean,” he added in haste. “Barney’s attorney would love nothing better than to catch us with our pants down, so no dirty tricks.”

  “That’s no fun.”

  “But it allows you to testify without being thrown out of court and that’s critical.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I gotta run.” He grabbed his suit coat from a hanger and shrugged back into it. He straightened his tie and snapped his briefcase shut and was halfway out the door.

  “Lonnie, wait a minute. Where do you want me to start?”

  He smiled. “Find me a witness who can put the guy at the murder scene.”

  “Oh, right,” I said to the empty room.

  I sat down and read another five pounds of garbled information. Maybe I could sweet-talk Ida Ruth into helping me reconstruct the files. The first box seemed immaculate by comparison to the second. My first chore was going to be to stop by Morley Shine’s house to see what files he had there. Before I left the office, I made a few preliminary calls. I had a pretty good sense of who I wanted to talk to and it was then a matter of setting up some appointments. I got through to Isabelle’s sister, Simone, who agreed to talk to me around noon at her place. I also had a quick chat with a woman named Yolanda Weidmann, who was married to Isabelle’s former boss. He was tied up in his home office and would be until three, so she suggested I stop by later in the afternoon. The third call I placed was to Isabelle’s longtime best friend. Rhe Parsons wasn’t in, but I left a message on her machine, giving her my name and telephone number, indicating that I’d try again.

  3

  Since the police station was only a block away, I decided to start with Lieutenant Dolan in Homicide. He was out with the flu, but Sergeant Cordero was there. I spotted Lieutenant Becker in the corner deep in conversation with someone I took to be a suspect, a white guy in his twenties, looking sullen and uncooperative. I knew Becker better than Cordero, but if I waited until he was free, he’d end up quizzing me about my relationship with Jonah Robb in Missing Persons. I hadn’t seen Jonah in six or eight months and I didn’t want to generate any contact at this point.

  Sheri Cordero was an oddity in the department. Being a female and Hispanic, she managed to fill two minority slots simultaneously. She was twenty-nine, short, buxom, smart, tough, somewhat abrasive in ways that I could never quite define. She never said anything offensive, but the guys in the department were not entirely at ease with her. I understood what she was up against. The Santa Teresa Police Department is better than most, but it’s never easy being a woman and a cop. If Sheri erred on the side of being humorless, it was no surprise. She was in the middle of a phone conversation, which she converted to Spanish the minute I arrived. I sat down in the Leatherette-and-metal chair beside her desk. She held up a finger, indicating she’d be with me momentarily. She had a little artificial Christmas tree on her desk. It was decorated with candy canes and I helped myself to one. The nice thing about being in the presence of someone on the telephone is that you can study the person at your leisure without being thought rude. I unwrapped the candy cane and tossed the cellophane in the trash. She was clearly engaged in the subject at hand, gesturing vigorously to make her point. She had a good face, rather plain, and she wore little makeup. One of her two front teeth had a corner clipped off and it added a whimsical note to an otherwise stern expression. While I watched, she began to doodle on a legal pad—a cowboy stabbed in the chest with a cartoon knife.

  She finished her conversation and turned her attention to me without any visible transition. “Yes?”

  “I was looking for Lieutenant Dolan, but Emerald tells me he’s out sick.”

  “He’s got that bug that’s been going around. Have you had that thing? I was out for a week. It’s the pits.”

  “So far I’ve been spared,” I said. “How long’s he been out?”

  “Just two days. He’ll come dragging back in looking like death. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Probably. I’ve been hired by Lonnie Kingman in a wrongful death suit. The defendant is David Barney. I was curious about the scuttlebutt. Were you here back then?”

  “I was still a dispatcher, but I’ve heard ’em talk. Man, they were pissed when he walked. He looked good for the shooting, but the jury wasn’t buying. Talk about frustrated. Lieutenant Dolan was mad enough to bite through nails.”

  “From what I hear, David Barney’s former cellmate claims he as good as confessed once the verdict came down.”

  “You’re talking about Curtis McIntyre. Guy’s in the county jail, and if you want him, you better make it quick. He gets out this week after doing ninety days on a battery,” she said. “Did you hear about Morley Shine?”

  “Lonnie mentioned that last night, but I didn’t hear the details. How’d it happen?”

  “What I heard he just keeled over dead. He’d been in bed with the same damn flu, but I guess he was feeling better. He was having dinner Sunday night? You know Morley. He hated to miss a meal. Got up from the table and dropped in his tracks.”

  “He had heart trouble?”

  “For years, but he never took it serious. I mean, he was under doctor’s care, but it never seemed to faze him. He was always joking about his ticker.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I’m really sorry to see him go.”

  “Me, too. I can’t believe how terrible I feel. Roll call somebody told me Morley Shine died? I busted out crying. I swear to God, I surprised myself. It’s not like we were close. We used to talk over at the courthouse if I was waiting to testify on a case. He was always hanging around there, chain-smoking Camels, munching Fritos or something from the vending machine. It bums me out all those old guys are dropping dead. How come they didn’t take better care of themselves?”

  Her phone rang and she was quickly caught up in another matter. I gave her a quick wave and moved away from her desk. In essence, she’d told me what I’d wanted to know. The cops were convinced David Barney was guilty. That didn’t make it true, but it was another precinct heard from.

  I stopped off in Records and asked Emerald if I could borrow the phone. I called Ida Ruth and had a quick chat with her, asking her to set up an interview for me with Curtis McIntyre at the jail later in the morning. Visiting hours are ordinarily limited to Saturday afternoons, 1:00 to 3:00, but since I was working as Lonnie Kingman’s representative, I could talk to him at my convenience. Oh, the joys of the legitimate endeavor. I’d spent so many years skulking through the bushes, I could hardly get used to it.

  With that taken care of, I asked her for Morley Shine’s home address. Morley had lived in Colgate, the township bordering Santa Teresa on the north. Colgate consists largely of “lite” industry and tract housing with assorted businesses lined up along the main street. Where the area was once farmland and citrus groves, the uninhabited countryside has now given way to service stations, bowling alleys, funeral homes, drive-in theaters, motels, fast-food restaurants, carpet outlets, and supermarkets, with no visible attention paid to aesthetics or architectural unity.

  Morley and his wife, Dorothy, owned a modest three-bedroom ho
me off South Peterson in one of the older housing developments between the highway and the mountains. My guess was the house had gone up in the fifties before the builders really got clever about differentiating exteriors. Here, the Swiss-chalet-style trim was painted either dirt brown or blue, the two-car garages designed so they stuck out in front, overpowering the entrances. Wooden shutters matched the wooden flower boxes planted with drooping pansies, which on closer inspection turned out to be entirely fake. The whole neighborhood seemed dispirited, from the patchy lawns to the cracked concrete driveways where every second house had a car up on blocks. Somehow the Christmas decorations only made things worse. Most of the houses were trimmed now in multicolored lights. One of Morley’s neighbors seemed to be in competition with the house across the street. Both had covered every available stretch of yard with seasonal items, ranging from plastic Santas to plastic wise men.

  This was now Tuesday morning. Morley had died on Sunday night, and while I was uneasy about intruding, it seemed important to retrieve what I could of the paperwork before some well-meaning relative went through and trashed everything he had. I knocked at the front door and waited. Morley had never cared much for detail and I noticed his house had the same slapdash quality. The blue paint on the porch rail, uneven to begin with, had begun to peel with age. I had the depressing sensation of having been here before. I could picture the shoddy interior: cracked tile on the kitchen counters, buckling vinyl tile on the floors, wall-to-wall carpeting trampled into traffic patterns that could never be cleaned of soil. The aluminum window frames would be warped, the bathroom fixtures corroded. A battered green four-door Mercury had been pulled off onto the side grass. I pegged it as Morley’s, though I wasn’t sure why. It was just the sort of clunker that he’d have found appealing. He had probably purchased it new in the year oughty-ought and would have driven it resolutely until the engine died. A new red Ford compact was parked in the driveway, the frame on the license plate advertising a local car rental company; probably someone from out of town. . . .