Hardy: The Suspect Part 26

"Maybe. I don't have to tell you where I'm staying."

"No, that's true. But I need to be able to find you if you're going to testify."

"Who said I was doing that?"

"Didn't your dad tell you about that? You remember. We'll need you if Bethany starts talking about how your dad threatened her."

"She probably won't, though. That's bogus."

"I know, but she might believe that's what happened."

"I doubt it. She's not stupid."

Gina gave up. "All right. But just to support your dad, it'd look good if you were in the courtroom. And then if it came up, we could use you."

"Sure, that's what you guys do, isn't it? Use people. So feel free. Walk all over me if you want."

"I won't do that. I'm trying to avoid having to issue you a subpoena and if you're just there with us, I wouldn't have to." Exasperation played over her features but Gina, trying to stay nice, took another tack. "So. Are you getting enough sleep? You look very tired, Kym."

"So do you."

That was enough. Gina decided to confront the overt antagonism straight on. "Why are you being so rude to me?"

"Because you're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up and it's hurting my dad. You ought to quit."

"I offered to do that yesterday. Your dad decided to keep me on."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because I believe he's innocent. Most other lawyers probably wouldn't. He seems to think that's important." Gina, much more heavily dressed, nevertheless was starting to feel the chill, and knew that Kymberly must be near freezing. She pointed to the door that led to the jail. "I'm cold standing out here," she said, putting it all on herself. "Let's go inside."

The lobby was all gla.s.s block and industrial linoleum, as welcoming as a bus station. But it was dry and there was no wind-an improvement. Gina walked over to the plastic bench against the right-hand wall and sat at one end. Kymberly took the other, as far from Gina as the bench allowed.

"So you've taken some more days off school? Do you think that's a good idea?"

The young woman turned on her. "School? What do you care if I'm in school? What am I going to do in school?"

Falling into adult mode, Gina tried to give her a reasonable answer. "Whatever you were doing there before this happened with your mother, Kymberly. You had plans then. Don't lose them over this."

Kymberly rolled her eyes. "Right. Here's the thing, though. How about if I never went to school in the first place?"

"Is that true?"

"Is that true? Is that true?" Mocking Gina's tone. "Why? Is that such a shock? Nice little Kymmie didn't do what her mommy wanted? What do you think? Like school's going to do me a lot of good, right? I'm going to be a better person? Give me a break. Like all that education made my mom such a sweetheart."

Shaken by this information, Gina barely trusted herself to breathe. She wanted to know more, but knew that if she betrayed that fact to Kymberly, the girl would stop talking. Her expression neutral, Gina looked across at her. "But you wanted to see your dad today?"

"My dad's okay. I wanted to tell him how important it is he gets off on this."

"He knows that."

"No, he doesn't. Not if he's willing to gamble on you just because he likes you."

"What do you mean, likes me?"

"Finds you attractive. How's that? Clear enough?"

"Did you ever think it might be because I'm a good lawyer?"

"How would he know? What've you done good yet?"

Gina opened her mouth but found no words.

Kymberly shook her head. "Just like with Mom."

"What's just like with your mom, Kym?"

"It's the way his brain works. He decides he's with Mom, and so he stays all those years, even when she drives him out of the house for weeks at a time and gives him nothing back. He decides he likes you, so now he's keeping you on. It's just who he is. Even if you're not doing the job he needs done."

"I'm trying to do that job, Kymberly. I really, truly don't believe he killed your mother."

"It's not believing, don't you understand? I know he didn't do it."

One of the jail's admitting officers glanced over from where he stood behind the counter. "Everything all right over there?"

Gina held up a hand-everything was under control. Turning back to Kymberly, she said, "What does that mean? You 'know' it. How can you know it more than I do? Is there something specific you should tell me?"

The questions stopped Kym abruptly. She looked first down, then across to the admitting counter, then at last back to Gina. "I just know him. I just know him." Shaking her head as though to clear her thoughts, she said, "You've got to keep him out of prison. He can't go to prison! Don't you understand? That can't happen!"

Tears welled up and brightened her eyes. Gina reached out to touch her and offer her some comfort, but suddenly she bolted up and, with an anguished sob, broke for the door. Gina, immediately on her feet, got outside only in time to catch a last glimpse of Kym as she disappeared around the edge of the building.

In the attorney's visiting room, trying to shake off her reaction to Kym, Gina heard the knock from the deputy and a second later was standing up, preparing herself to look strong for her client as Stuart appeared at the door. When she saw him, though, she could feel something go out of her, out of the forced animation in her face. "Where are your dress-out clothes?" she asked, her voice sounding hollow and shaky, even to herself.

"Dressing out" was a courtesy afforded prisoners going into trial. They were allowed to wear their own clothes and shoes instead of the orange jail jumpsuit and paper slippers. The idea was to minimize the bias that jail garb creates for a jury. That wasn't the rule at prelim, where there was no jury to be prejudiced. Nevertheless, Gina had over the years tried to dress out her clients as often as she could, if only for the tiny psychic lift it might give them, the nod to dignity. From time to time, her requests to dress out her client for prelim had been granted.

Expecting the same result with this latest request, she'd gone to Stuart's home over the weekend and brought a couple of changes of clothes down to the jail. She'd never received notice to the contrary, so it really hadn't occurred to her that the courtesy would be denied in this case. But here was Stuart now, not just in the typical jail orange jumpsuit, but a red flight-risk jumpsuit, shackled hand and foot.

She seemed to be taking it worse than Stuart, who actually struck a faux-modeling pose for an instant, flas.h.i.+ng a smile at her. "I thought I'd go for something bold in red," he said, then shrugged as though it were of little import to him. "I asked the guards when I should change, and they said it wasn't happening."

"Christ." Gina leaned back against the table.

Stuart came and stood about a foot in front of her. "Hey, it's okay."

She looked up at him. "Not really, Stuart." But all the weight of the morning again bore down on her, and she hung her head. "Christ," she said again.

He touched the side of her arm. "You all right?"

Finally, she looked up and met his eyes. "It's just been a monster of a morning. You're going to want to sit down."

Kelley Rusnak hit Stuart pretty hard. Like Gina, he in no way believed that she had killed herself. She had not been depressed when he'd been talking to her. Quite the contrary, she had been outraged, eager to help right a wrong, ready for a fight. There must be more to the story that hadn't come out yet, that would perhaps be discovered at the autopsy. Gina told him about her call to Jeff Elliott, that he was going to try and follow up on the story if he could. That if they got lucky, it could broaden the case away from him; although since Stuart still stood to gain from any Dryden Socket profits, that effect might be mitigated.

"Of course," he said. "You wouldn't want unmitigated good news."

"Don't worry about that." They were both on the hard wooden chairs at the long table, and Gina knocked on the tabletop. "Okay, that brings us to number two. Again, not pretty."

"How many do we got?"

"Four. First was Kelley. Second, these." She opened her briefcase and took out the photos of the Echo Lake cabin that she'd shown her partner in the Solarium just last night.

Stuart took them, and it seemed to take him a minute to recognize the first picture for what it was. When he finally did, he swore under his breath, then quickly flipped through the bunch of them. "Where'd they get these?"

"Juhle got a warrant and went up to your place."

Stuart took in a deep breath, then let it out in a rush. "I got really drunk," he said. "I've always said I was furious." Then, "Can they use these?"

"I'll try to have them excluded, but if I were the judge . . ." She stopped.

"You'd say they spoke to my state of mind. I think I would too. Okay," he said, "we're now officially even."

"In what way?"

"Well, the problems with the arrest? We can put that on you. But these pictures? I bet I could have remembered what I'd done up there and had somebody go by and clean up a little."

Gina nodded at him. "I bet you could have too."

"It's just with finding Caryn and all. . ."

"I get it. And that's going to be my argument back at them. You had all the time in the world to get back up there and clean it up good as new, and it never occurred to you because you hadn't done anything to make you think you needed to clean it up. That's really okay."

"Yahoo." He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "So what's number three?"

"Number three," she said, "is Kymberly."

He showed nothing but perplexity. "Kymberly? What about her?"

"She was here this morning."

"Where?"

"Here. At the jail. She wanted to see you, but they wouldn't let her in. It was too early."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"It's a jail, Stuart. There's visiting hours."

He sighed in frustration, then suddenly the obvious question hit him. "Wait a minute. She was down here? What about school? Debra told me Kym just went back up after the funeral. She can't be missing this many cla.s.ses." He brought his hand to his forehead, squeezed at his temples. "G.o.d. I've got to talk to her. Is she coming back later? Will she be at the hearing? I've got to see her."

"Stuart." Gina kept her voice low-key. "The thing is, she just told me she never went up to school in the first place."

The confusion played all over his face. "What? Of course she did. I talked to her up there that first week every day. I mean ..." He stopped, stared at Gina, completely at a loss.

"You called on her cell phone, didn't you? Or she called you?"

"She never went up there?"

"That's what she said."

"So what. . . where is she staying?"

"I don't know. I'd guess somewhere in the city. Maybe a boyfriend's? I don't know."

"You didn't ask her?"

"Yes, I did. She told me it was none of my business. She wants me off the case. She says I'm no good for you. You'll wind up in prison. She got very upset. Very upset. Then ran out, crying."

Stuart took it in with his arms crossed, his chin on his chest.

"Evidently," Gina said, "and this is number four, you're keeping me on because you've got some kind of a schoolboy crush on me. And if that's the case, that's a bad reason. I will get you through this hearing and then help you find another attorney."

He sat still for several more seconds before he opened his eyes and looked across at her. "My wife has just been killed, Gina. No offense to you-you seem like a terrific person-but no matter what my daughter says, I'm not in the market. I never said anything remotely indicating that I've got any romantic thoughts about you or anybody else, because I don't. It's just too soon. I don't have any feelings at all, if you want to know the truth, except this . . . fear over how all this is going to turn out. This is so entirely the kind of thing that Kymberly might imagine and make real for herself. Is she taking her pills? Did you ask?"

"I didn't ask. If I had to guess, I'd say no."

He sat with it for another moment. "She never went up to college at all?"

"Unless she was lying to me this morning."

"Which, I hate to say it, we can't rule out. Could you call up there and check? Reed College in Portland."

"Of course. I can do it right now."

It didn't take five minutes. Kymberly had never checked in at the college. They'd already given her dorm room to another student on their waiting list.

Stuart all but talked to himself. "So she might have been here-I mean, in San Francisco-when she talked to Caryn on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday."

For a long beat, Gina sat frozen to her chair. "What did you just say?"

"When?"

"Just now. That Kym talked to her mother on both Sat.u.r.day and Sunday?"

"Yeah," he said. "I told you that." He leveled his gaze at her. "Didn't I? I must have told you that."

"I'm sure I would have remembered, Stuart. This is the first I'm hearing about it. What did they talk about?"

"Kym never said. I never asked. We got off the topic."