Dead In The Water

CHAPTER 42

Stone placed the small duffel on the bed in the aft cabin and looked at Allison, who was sitting on the little stool in front of the vanity, brushing her hair. She looked, he thought, like something out of a Degas oil. He was having a lot of trouble. It wouldn't be the first time, he thought, that he had represented a client whom he knew to be guilty; that was part of his job. It was the first time, however, that he had represented a guilty client with whom he had been enthusiastically making love-one he had grown very fond of-was nearly in love with. It was also the first time he had represented anyone charged with a capital crime. He was trying very hard to ignore his cop's instincts and keep her innocent in his mind.

"Allison," he said absently.

"Yes?"

"After Paul died, why didn't you use the satellite phone to call for help?"

"Two reasons," she said without hesitation. "First, I couldn't get the damned thing to work. I've never been very good at reading manuals, and I just couldn't get it to lock onto a satellite, so I gave up. After I got to port I got it to work the first time; maybe it was because the boat wasn't moving anymore, or maybe it was the crossword syndrome."

"What's the crossword syndrome?"

"You're working on the crossword, and there's a big patch of it you just can't solve. So you put the thing down for a while-maybe until the next day-and you pick it up and immediately get all the words.Maybe it's like that with following directions in a manual."

"I've had that experience," Stone agreed. "What was your second reason for not calling for help?"

"First of all, I did call for help, but on the VHF radio. I didn't know how to work the high-frequency unit-still don't-but I tried calling 'any ship' on channel sixteen, but I never got an answer. I never even saw a ship or a yacht the whole trip. Second, I would have been ashamed if somebody had come to my rescue."

"Why ashamed?"

"Well, I had a perfectly good yacht under me, and I had some idea of how to sail it, so my sense of self-reliance would have been punctured if I'd had to ask somebody else to do it for me. Anyway, in the end, I proved I could sail her." She looked at him in the mirror. "Why did you want to know about the satellite telephone?"

"I thought the police might have seen it during their search and that Sir Winston might ask the question at the trial. If he does, stick with the answer about not able to get the phone to work, and calling for help he VHF; don't mention that business about your of self-reliance. I'm not sure how it would play the jury."

"Okay."

"Later, I'll go through your testimony with you, and I'll fine-tune it."

"You mean you're going to rehearse a witness?"

"You bet I am. Oh, I'm not going to tamper with story; I just want to shape it in a way that will tell jury, in a simple and straightforward way, that you're innocent."

"Okay. What are you going to do the rest of the day?"

"I have to go out and talk to Leslie Hewitt about the trial. I've made some notes that I want to give him."

"I'll be here all day," she said, "or as long as the cops are."

"You don't have some other escape plan up your sleeve, do you? Because if you do, I beg you not to try it."

"Relax, Stone; I've learned my lesson about escaping."

"I hope to God you have."

Stone borrowed Thomas's car and drove along the coast road to Leslie Hewitt's house. He turned down the dirt road to the cottage and parked out front, next to Hewitt's Morris Minor station wagon, and got out, taking a file folder with him. The front door of the house stood open, and Stone stepped inside."Leslie!" he called. "You home?" There was no response. "Leslie!" he called again. He looked in the little study and in the kitchen, but the barrister was not in the house.

Stone walked out the back door and into the garden, but there was still no sight of Hewitt, not even down at the beach. He walked a few steps more, looked around, then turned to go back into the house. As he turned his eye drifted to his left and there, behind a low hedge, lay the inert form of Sir Leslie Hewitt, clad only in faded Bermuda shorts. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned away from Stone; a bucket of hand gardening tools lay next to him and a trowel was near his right hand.

"Leslie!" Stone cried, turning him over on his back and brushing dirt from his face. He slapped Hewitt's face lightly and peeled back an eyelid. The pupil was contracted; thank God for that.

Suddenly Hewitt coughed, then opened his eyes. "Oh, good morning," he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with a fist. "I must have dozed off."

"Leslie, are you all right?" Stone asked. "You were out like a light."

"Young man, when you are my age, you will take the occasional nap, too, believe me." With Stone's help, he got to his feet. "Well now, what brings you to see me?" he asked.

Stone wasn't sure that Hewitt recognized him, and he didn't want to ask. "I brought you some material to read in preparation for the trial," he said. "Do you feel up to reading it?"

"Of course," Hewitt replied. "Come into the house, Stone."

Stone breathed a sigh of relief and followed him into the study.

Hewitt arranged himself behind his desk. "Now, what is it?" he asked, in the manner of a man who didn't have much time for whatever Stone wanted of him.

Stone placed the file folder before him. "Leslie, I know you plan to give the opening and closing state but I put some thoughts together on how you proceed, and I'd appreciate it if you'd read the statements I've prepared. There might be some there you can use."

"Of course I'll read them," Hewitt replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to my garden."

"Do you think you could find time to read them now?" Stone asked. "You might have some questions for me."

"No, no, not now," the man said. "I'll read them this afternoon after my nap; I'm more alert then. Now, I'll see you in the courtroom." He walked out of the room, leaving Stone standing there alone.

Stone followed him as far as the back door and watched as Hewitt knelt down and began digging in the behind the low hedge again, seemingly oblivious to Stone's presence. Finally, Stone shook his head and returned to the car. As he was about to turn toward English Harbour, he had another thought and turned left instead, toward the airport.

He drove through the gates and down the approach with the runway and the single hangar in full view. He pulled up in front of the hangar and got out. The mechanic who had testified at the inquest was working on an engine of the DC-3 that belonged to the St.Marks government. Stone couldn't remember his name, but he walked over to the airplane.

"Excuse me," he said to the man. "I'm Stone Barrington; I heard you testify at the inquest."

"Righto," the man said. "You're the lawyer fellow, aren't you? The one who's defending that lady?"

"That's right. I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute. What's your name again?"

"Harvey Simpson," the man said, turning away from the airplane and wiping his hands with a cloth. "What can I do for you?"

"I was just noticing that the hangar has an overhead door, like a garage," he said, pointing at the ceiling, where the door was retracted.

"That's right; there it is," Simpson said, following his gaze.

"Do you close that every night and lock up?"

Simpson shook his head. "Not unless the weather looks like it's turning bad. That door is a pain in the ass; sticks all the time. I keep meaning to do something about it, but I never seem to get around to it."

"Was the hangar door closed the night before Chester's crash?"

Simpson thought for a minute. "No, we haven't had no bad weather for a while now."

"So anybody could have come in here where Chester's airplane was?"

"That's right, I guess."

"How about your tool cabinet over there," Stone said, pointing to a large, double-doored cupboard. The doors were open, exposing an array of spanners, screwdrivers, and socket wrenches.

"I never lock it," Simpson said.

"Don't your tools get stolen?"

Simpson shook his head. "Everybody who might steal them knows that my tools are American gauge, for working on the American-built airplanes. All the cars on the island and all the other machinery are metric so my tools wouldn't be worth much to anybody."

"So somebody could have come in here the night the crash, taken some tools out of your cabinet, and done something to an engine?"

Simpson gazed into the middle distance for a moment before answering. "Yes sir, I guess somebody could have done that. But there isn't no one on this island who would want to do that to Chester."

"How about to his passengers?"

"I can't speak for the white lady, but I knew the black well, and everybody liked her. Anyway, if somebody wanted to kill her, he wouldn't kill Chester doing it."

"Is there anybody on guard out here at night?"

Simpson shook his head. "Nope. There's a couple of people in the airport office, through there," he said, pointing at a door that led from the main part of the hangar to the offices, "but they wouldn't be out here at night. The runway lights are pilot-operated, you see. The approaching pilot just tunes in the local frequency and clicks his mike three times, and the lights come on."

"I see," Stone said.

"Mister, this is not the first time I've thought about this," Simpson said. "I been over it in my mind a few times. I thought about how it was the morning of the crash, and everything was just like I left it."

"Did Chester make it a habit of doing a run up before takeoff?"

"Well, he made it a habit sometimes, and other times he didn't," Simpson said. "If you know what I mean. Chester been flying that Cessna a long time; he didn't have much use for checklists no more."

He didn't have much use for run ups either, Stone thought. A run up might have saved his life and those of his passengers.

"Chester was a good pilot, though," Simpson said. "A natural-born pilot."

"Right," Stone said. Chester had been a cowboy; Stone had flown with him in the right seat when he had come to St.Marks, and the man was strictly a seat-of the-pants pilot-no checklists. Stone walked over to the tool cabinet and looked at the array of tools inside; then he saw something familiar on the cabinet door. He touched it lightly. Fingerprint powder; he had seen enough of it in his time. "The police have been here?" he asked.

"Sure have; looked at everything, asked, a lot of questions, took my fingerprints."

Stone nodded. "Well, Harvey, thanks for your time." He shook the man's oily hand and walked back to the car thinking, I'll never fly an airplane off a runway without doing a run up first. Not as long as I live. He got into the car and headed back to English Harbour. He didn't want to think about Allison right now; he tried thinking about Arrington instead and found that he missed her. He still hadn't rewritten his letter to her; he would do it before the day was out.