The Last Innocent Man

3

David let out his belt a notch and groaned with relief. Helen Banks smiled at the compliment to her cooking and began collecting the dirty dishes.

“Why don’t you and Greg get some fresh air, while I get the coffee on?” she said, stacking the dishes on a serving cart.

“Sounds like an excellent idea,” Gregory said as he pushed away from the table. It was Saturday evening and the trial was in recess for the weekend. David had rested after Terry Conklin had finished his testimony Friday afternoon. From all accounts it looked as if victory was assured. Even Rudy, the jail guard, who rarely expressed his opinion about a case, had made a comment about Stafford’s being out soon.

As it did almost every year, the cold of autumn had given way to a week of false spring that fooled the flowers into opening to the October air and brought back pleasant memories of summer. Gregory lit up a cigar and the two friends strolled onto the terrace. The dark river was at peace, and so was David.

“What’s on the menu for Monday?” Gregory asked.

“I don’t know,” David answered as he sank into a lawn chair. “Monica said she might have some rebuttal, but I can’t imagine what it could be.”

“Maybe she’s going to have one of her investigators go out to the motel and try to get some pictures that show a face.”

“Not a chance. I had Terry’s work double-checked by two other professionals before I used it. Given those lighting conditions, there’s no way Ortiz could have seen the killer’s face.”

Gregory leaned back and puffed on his cigar. It was quiet on the terrace. The breeze was cool, and the lights from the houseboats across the way appeared to wink on and off as the boats twisted with the current.

“What do you know about Ortiz, Dave?” Gregory asked after a while.

“Why?” David asked. He felt dreamy, fatigued by too much food and too much wine and lulled by the sounds of the river.

“I don’t know. It just seems strange that he would be so certain, if those pictures are accurate.”

“The mind plays strange tricks sometimes. Don’t forget, he’d just been struck on the head, and he was coming into a darkened room from the outside. There are probably a hundred explanations a psychiatrist could give you.”

“You’re right. Anyway, if it helps you lock this up, I don’t care what he saw.”

“Confusion to our enemies,” David toasted, taking a sip from the wineglass he had carried with him. Gregory raised his cigar.

“If nothing else, this case has at least raised your spirits.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were a pain in the butt to have around the office for a while. I guess I can say it now, because you seem to be over your blue period.”

“I don’t…Oh, you mean that Seals business.”

“And a few others.”

“Was I bitching and moaning that much?”

“Enough so that I was getting a little worried about you. What you need to do is settle down. Find a good woman.”

“Like Helen?”

Greg nodded.

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore,” David said lightly, picturing what it would be like to see Jenny every morning when he woke up, and to kiss her every evening.

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” Gregory said. “Save my place, will ya?”

“My pleasure,” David said, sipping some more wine. Somewhere up the river a tanker’s horn sounded. For a brief moment David felt disoriented, then recognized the unsettling feeling created by a sense of deja vu. The night seemed to belong to two times, and he struggled with his memory to fit the past into the present. Softly, like the night breeze, it came to him. The evening he first met Jenny had been an evening like this. A still river, night sounds, the breeze. Even the air had smelled the same. It was a vivid memory now, warm and real, as if David had been transported back in time and Jenny would soon appear on the terrace, profiled against the sky. He smiled. It was a good memory, a calming thought.

David recalled the first time he had seen Jenny on the fringe of the small group. He remembered his impressions. How beautiful she had seemed.

Then, like the last piece in a Chinese puzzle box, a new thought slipped into place, and David’s inner peace shattered. Something else had happened that day. The interview with the young girl who had been the victim in the Seals case. David sat up. His heart was beating rapidly.

“Coffee’s on,” Helen Banks called from the doorway.

David did not answer. He was thinking back. Trying to be sure and hoping he was wrong.

“Did you hear me, Dave?”

David stood up. He felt sick at heart.

“Is something wrong?” Helen asked.

“I just remembered something I must do. I’m afraid I’ll have to skip coffee.”

“Oh, Dave. Can’t you just take a day off and relax?”

David touched her shoulder and tried to gather his thoughts. He could be wrong. He prayed he was wrong.

“If I don’t check on this,” he said, managing a smile, “I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

“If you’re determined…” Helen said with a sigh.

“Determined to what?” Gregory asked.

“I’ve got to leave, Greg. Something I just remembered, and it can’t wait.”

Gregory looked at him hard. He discerned the lines of worry on his young friend’s face and knew that whatever was bothering David was serious.

“Can I help?”

“No. Thanks. This is something I have to do alone.”

And he was alone. More alone than he had ever been.

The security guard in the lobby signed him in, and David took the only working elevator to the thirty-second floor. He used his key to unlock the door to the firm offices and walked rapidly down the corridor to the file room, flicking light switches as he went. Darkened corridors were suddenly bathed in light as he advanced.

The file was in the Closed section. It was thick and intact. The audiocassette was tucked into a small manila envelope that had been taped to the inside of the folder. David carried the file to his office and closed the door. He took a tape recorder from his bottom drawer and fitted the cassette into it. He pushed a button and the tape began to unwind. David leaned back and listened, praying that he was wrong. Hoping that he would not hear what he knew he would.

It was there. The very first thing on the tape. He pushed the Stop button, then Rewind, and played it again to be sure.

“This is Detective Leon Stahlheimer,” the voice on the tape said. “It’s Thursday, June sixteenth…”

David switched off the recorder.

All lies. She had lied on the stand and she had lied to him. Used him. Had it all been a play to her? A carefully rehearsed role? Had any of the emotions been real? What did it matter? How could he ever love her again?

David switched off the office lights. It was better in the dark. Not seeing enabled him to direct himself inward. What should he do? What could he do? He felt powerless, defeated. He had built a dream on Jennifer’s love and Larry Stafford’s innocence, and the dream had crumbled, breaking him under the debris.

All the despair he had felt months before flooded back, drowning him in a sea of self-pity and disgust. The dead feeling he thought he had conquered returned to gnaw at him, leaving only the bones of a sorry, tired, and aging man.

David looked at the desk clock. It was midnight. Not too late for a confrontation. Not too late to put an end to something that had been so good.

David remembered little of the mad drive to Newgate Terrace. There were occasional lights on the early-morning freeway, then a winding country road and the crunch of gravel under his tires. House lights came on after his second knock, and the first thing he recalled clearly was Jenny’s face, pale from sleep.

“You lied,” he said, forcing her back into the hallway. The darkened surrounding rooms gave him the feeling of being in a miniature theater.

“What?” she asked, still groggy from sleep. He grasped her shoulders and made her look at his eyes, fierce now with the pain of knowing.

“I want the truth. Now. Everything.”

“I don’t-” she started, then twisted painfully in his grasp as his strong fingers dug into the soft flesh of her shoulders.

“I’ll make it easy for you, Jenny,” he said, making the name he had once loved to hear sound like a curse. “We met that evening at Greg’s house. Senator Bauer’s fundraiser. You remember? The first night we made love.”

She flinched. The way he had said “love’ made it sound sordid, like copulation with a whore in a wino hotel room.

“I interviewed a girl that morning at the juvenile home. We recorded the conversation. The date was on the tape. June sixteenth. The day Darlene Hersch was murdered. You couldn’t have been with Larry that evening, Jenny. You were fucking me. Remember?”

Her head snapped sideways as if she had been slapped. He shook her to make her look at him.

“Don’t,” she cried.

“You lied to me.”

“No!”

“Knowing all the time…” he screamed at her.

“I didn’t…I…Please, David, I love-”

“Love,” he shouted, bringing the back of his hand sharply against her cheek. Her eyes widened in shock and she crumpled at his feet.

“So help me, if you ever use that word again, I’ll kill you. You know nothing about love,” he said between clenched teeth.

She reached out blindly, trying to touch him.

“It wasn’t…I…Let me talk to you. Don’t just go like this. Please.”

He watched her, huddled like a child at his feet, her long golden hair cascading over shoulders that jerked with each wretched sob.

“I’m sorry, David. I really am,” she wept, “but there wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Not even telling the truth?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t defend Larry. I thought…It looked so bad. And I still believe he is innocent. But no one else would have.”

David looked at her hard, trying to see behind her ravaged, tear-stained face.

“Innocent?”

“Larry swears he is. I don’t know if…I don’t think he’s lying.”

“But he lied to me about being with you on the evening of the murder.”

“Yes. I told you, that day in your office. We fought. He had dinner with Barry Dietrich, then went back to his office to work. I was sick of it. I never saw him anymore. It was that damn job. Making partner was all that counted. I called him and told him that I was going to leave him.”

As David listened to Jenny, he could hear echoes of his fights with Monica. David sagged and sat down on the bottom of the staircase. Jenny looked spent. She had stopped crying.

“The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. Larry is like a child, self-centered, domineering. Everything had to be what he wanted. That night he came home in a rage. He shouted at me, called me names. ‘I didn’t understand him.’ ‘I didn’t want him to succeed.’ After a while I didn’t even hear what he said. I went upstairs and slammed the door to my room.”

“Your room?” David interrupted.

“Yes. You didn’t know? Of course you didn’t. No, we hadn’t slept together for a month. I told you, things had been bad.

“I heard Larry’s bedroom door slam and it was quiet. I don’t know why I remembered about the fund-raiser. I think the invitation was on my dresser on top of some other mail. I just needed to get out, so I took it and left.”

“And Larry?”

“He was still at home when I drove away. Don’t you see how hard it was for me? I felt so guilty. When I met you, when you made love to me, it was so different. I felt as if you were giving something, not taking, like Larry. I didn’t know what to do. At first I thought I would just leave him. Then I didn’t have the courage. And I still loved him in a way. It was all so mixed up. And it got a little better after that evening. He tried. He cut down on his work a little. Stayed home more. It wasn’t much, but it was an effort, and I was still guilt ridden because I had cheated on him. I didn’t feel as if I’d cheated. It had all been so good. But a part of me felt as if I had betrayed a trust.”

She stopped and he moved over to her, sitting on the floor, letting her rest against him.

“Then Larry was arrested and I realized what night the murder occurred. The evidence looked so convincing. His shirt, our car. That policeman saying it was him. But Larry said he was innocent. That he had stayed home after I left. He swore it to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“I was afraid. I wanted you to represent Larry, because I believed in you. I knew you could clear him. If I told you the truth…reminded you that the murder occurred on the night we met…you would have been a witness against Larry.”

“And now, as his lawyer, I can’t be.”

She looked away from him again and said, “Yes,” in a very small voice.

“So what do we do now, Jenny?” David asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you committed a crime yesterday. You perjured yourself. And so did Larry. And I know about that. Do you know what my duty is under the Canons of Ethics? As an attorney, an officer of the court, I have a duty to tell the judge what you did and a duty to get off the case if Larry won’t recant his testimony. I’m committing a crime and subjecting myself to possible disbarment if I don’t tell Judge Rosenthal about this.”

“You wouldn’t-” Jenny started.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m so mixed up I can’t think.”

David stood up and walked to the door. His feet felt leaden, and he had no heart for anything anymore. The trial, his practice, this woman, his life. Nothing seemed to mean anything. There were no values, no goals.

“David,” she said when he reached the door, “I love you. You know that, don’t you? Tell me you know that I never lied about that.”

David turned to face her. He was not angry at her, just dead inside.

“I know you used me, Jenny. I know you played on my emotions. I know I still love you, but I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”

“Oh, God, David,” she called after him. “Don’t cut me off like this. Don’t you see? I don’t know if Larry killed that woman or not, but if he’s innocent, you must help him, and if he’s guilty…I couldn’t let him go to prison thinking that he’d gone after that woman because of me.”

The roadside flashed by and car horns occasionally broke the stillness. It would be easy to end everything by simply closing his eyes and letting the car take control. When the road began to waver, David shook his head to clear it. He did not want to die. He was certain of that. But life at the moment was confused and a torment.

He had several choices. He could make Jennifer retake the stand and recant her perjured testimony; he could go to the judge if she refused; or he could do nothing. If Jenny recanted, Larry would surely be convicted.

Would that be so bad? Yes, if he was innocent. There was still that possibility. Until tonight David had been convinced of Stafford’s innocence. The pictures discredited Ortiz. Larry’s story was so believably told. But what if he was wrong and Stafford was guilty?

David thought about Ashmore and Tony Seals. He felt sick. Once more he saw the autopsy photographs of the little girls that Ashmore had molested, then killed, and once again he heard Jessie Garza describe crawling down the mountain. What was he doing defending these people?

And Larry Stafford, where did he fit in? David could see the gash in Darlene Hersch’s throat. That was why any lawyer worth his salt fought so hard to keep out pictures of the victims in death. Death could be handled and sweet-talked in the abstract, but pictures made it real for a jury. Made the jury feel and smell and taste the horror that is violent death. David could touch that reality now. The steel shell he had built around his sensibilities had started to crumble with Ashmore, and all his defenses were now down. But his fear of being responsible for setting loose another killer was still at odds with his feelings of love for Jenny. He felt used, he felt a fool, but he still loved her. In the end he no more knew what he would do than he had when he’d left her.