Steve Martini - Prime Witness

I raise an eyebrow.

“No,” she says, anticipating my thoughts. “We had a very happy marriage. He had his work and I had him. We each got what we wanted.”

Her mother returns with her tea, a tall slender glass, sweating with ice. She puts it on the table next to Jeanette and looks to see if maybe she should sit down and join us.

“I’ll be out in a minute, Mom.” The younger woman fixes her with a stare, and the old lady leaves. When she clears the room Jeanette looks at me, and in a lower voice behind the tall slender glass: “She’s been like a shadow,” she says. “She’s driving me crazy. I’ve told her it’s OK, she can go home, back to Fresno. I can’t get her to leave.”

I smile at this. She shrugs her shoulders good-naturedly. “Where were we?”

“Your husband’s job.”

“Oh yes. Abbott was a tenured professor at the university. He taught several undergraduate courses, but his main duties were in the graduate school of zoology. He was on the tenure track committee for the faculty senate, very active,” she says.

All of this was in the investigator’s report, details which Claude and his minions have reduced to writing.

“You told the police you can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to kill your husband?”

“That’s correct. I can’t. But then,” she says, “I suppose the parents of the four dead college students would say the same about their kids. My God, who could account for the actions of a demented mind like that?”

She talks a little about Iganovich, the reports in the papers, asks me if I’ve seen the man, talked to him.

“I saw him. We have not talked. His lawyers will not permit that.”

She apparently has not seen the article in the Times yet. I am not surprised. The papers from the southern part of the state do not circulate much, outside the capital, in this area. She will no doubt hear about it on the news. It is why I wanted to get here, to talk to her before she does.

“I’m curious, about the first Mrs. Scofield,” I say. “Their continuing relationship after the marriage broke up?” This is something the cops did not tread on very hard the day after the murders.

“You’re surprised that they would still see each other?”

I make a face, like this is part of my question.

“You had to understand Abbott and Karen. It was mostly commercial,” she says. “They worked together.” This was not in the report.

“On a personal level their divorce was a mutual parting of the ways. They remained friends even afterward.”

“You say they worked together?”

“Yes. Karen had no formal training, no real education, but she did have twenty years working with Abbott in the field. He had confidence in her, continued to rely on her for assistance, in some of his writings and his field work. She was an excellent photographer, took many of the photographs that appeared in Abbott’s books. Some of the ones you see in this room,” she says.

“And you didn’t object to this, their continuing working relationship?”

She smiles at me. “Why should I?” There is an innocence here. I cannot tell if it is pure naïveté, or whether this is one of those secure souls for whom life’s competitions offer no real threat.

“Do you know what your husband was working on at the time of his murder, what specific projects?”

“No,” she says. “I haven’t a clue. Why are you interested in all of this?” She’s sitting forward in her chair now, curious about my little probes.

“As I said, it’s just a few loose ends,” I tell her. “We’ve been wondering,” I say, “about the time immediately before their abduction that night. Whether there might have been something that put them in harm’s way, maybe something they were working on that might have caused them to cross paths with the killer?”

“In answer to your question, I’m afraid I don’t know what they were working on. Abbott’s work was not something we shared.”

I hear a door slam, somewhere at the back of the house. Someone has come in. A few seconds later, I hear footfalls in the hallway, and Jeanette looks.

“Oh, Jess,” she says. “I’m glad you’re here. Mr. Madriani has dropped by to ask me a few questions.”

Amara appears anything but affable as he enters the room. From the look on his face he is not terribly happy to see me here.

“I saw the county car out front and wondered if somebody might be visiting,” he says.

Sure, just a fortuitous pass on the street.

“Do you have any news for us, on who killed Abbott, or why?” he asks.

“Not that I can talk about,” I say. “But then I’m sure you’ve been able to follow developments.”

“Has Jeanette been able to help you?”

“She’s been able to clear up a few things.”

“They are mostly concerned with Abbott and Karen in the hours immediately before the murders,” says Jeanette. “Mr. Madriani wanted to know what they were working on at the time. I told him I didn’t know.”

“You wouldn’t know what they were working on?” I pose it to Amara.

“Abbott didn’t talk to me about his work. As for Karen, I never met her.” He looks at me. He does not sit down.

“Anything else?” he says.

“Not for the moment.”

“Then you have what you need?”

I nod.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” he says. I am being dismissed.

I have discovered why Claude is so cool toward this man. Amara has something on the side, another business, an Asian trading company in which he dabbles in foreign investments in this county. It is the kind of thing that Claude would not like, a cop dealing in some sideline business, a potentially lucrative hedge against his years in retirement.

On the stoop of the door outside, I turn to shake Amara’s hand. It isn’t there.

“I don’t want to seem uncooperative,” he says. “But if you come back here again, call me before you do. I’d like to be present. I don’t want my sister disturbed unnecessarily.”

“I understand,” I say.

With that he closes the door in my face.

It is nearly noon. On my way to the office, I wonder why it is that Amara is so hostile, whether this is just his nature, or if there is something more. I am not allowed to dwell on this for long. As I drive past the courthouse toward the County Administration Building a block to the south, on the corner at the traffic light are three men that I know. One of them wears his hair long, to the shoulders and gathered in a ponytail, Indian style. This is Benny Sanchez and his brother Ernesto, who own a bail bond agency. They have garnered a reputation and a working relationship with the cops on both sides of the river. I have seen them in town with their scabbarded rifles. They track down wayward clients with the relish of a good deer hunt. The two are fixtures around the local courthouses in this area.

Their presence here would be unremarkable except for the third man, who is talking to this posse comitatus. Short and stout, his back is to me as I swing through the intersection. But still I recognize him. I thought he had left town three days ago to return to his home down south. It is Kim Park.

Ihave pleaded with her and begged, but she seems adamant. Lenore Goya says she is leaving the office, resigning, though after much protestation she has agreed that we will discuss this one more time before her resignation is carved in stone, sent along to the county personnel department.

Today we are gathered for a little ritual, an annual event to honor the secretaries, an office luncheon that Roland Overroy insists is part of the protocol of the place. No one except Roland particularly wants to be here, the secretaries least of all. We are across the river, in Capital City. Overroy tells us there was nothing suitable to the occasion in Davenport. He has rich tastes.