J. Jance - Long Time Gone

“At least the only option they could see,” I countered. “And the answer to your question is that I have no idea. Desperate people seldom see the world in the same terms you and I do. On the tapes you mentioned several times that the man, Albert, seemed angry when he was talking to Mimi. You said you thought he was asking Mimi for something and that she kept telling him no.”

“Maybe his business was in some kind of trouble,” Sister Mary Katherine speculated. “Maybe he needed money.”

“That could be,” I told her. “Money woes often translate into motives for murder, but as I said before, Albert Marchbank was a big deal in Seattle back then. If he was in any kind of financial difficulty at the time, I should be able to find some record of it. But then again sometimes murders grow out of nothing more than a bad case of sibling rivalry.”

“Like Cain and Abel,” Sister Mary Katherine murmured.

“That’s right,” I said. “So maybe sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to be an only child.”

She shook her head. “The whole idea is awful.”

“Murder is always awful,” I returned. “For everyone involved. No exceptions. Now, if you’re up to it, let’s go back to the murder scene again. Can you tell me anything at all about the weapon?”

“About the knife?” Sister Mary Katherine frowned in concentration before she answered, as though trying to peer at the scene through the fog of time. “It was just a regular knife-an ordinary kitchen knife-but it came from Elvira’s purse. I saw her open the purse and take it out.”

“But the newspaper article said that police thought the knife was most likely taken from Mimi’s own kitchen.”

“Then the article and the police were both wrong,” Mary Katherine declared. “Or if it was Mimi’s knife, it was taken from her kitchen at some time other than on that day. I saw Elvira take it from her purse after she got out of the car. And if they brought the knife along with them when they came to Mimi’s house, wouldn’t that mean premeditation?”

“Yes, it would,” I agreed. “You mentioned Elvira getting out of the car. Let’s talk about that vehicle for a moment.” I returned to the file folder and pulled out a stock photo of a 1949 Caribbean coral Frazer Deluxe, one I had downloaded from the Internet. “Does this look familiar?”

Sister Mary Katherine studied the photo for only a matter of seconds before she nodded. “This is the one,” she said. “Or one just like it.”

“The officer in charge of the investigation was a Seattle Police Department detective named William Winkler. Do you ever remember talking to him about what you had seen?”

“No.”

“And you never spoke to any other police officer about what happened that day?”

“As far as I know, no one ever asked me about any of it,” Mary Katherine said. “They may have talked to my parents, but not to me. They should have, shouldn’t they?”

“If they’d been doing their jobs,” I responded.

Bonnie Jean may have been scared by what she had witnessed and by being threatened by one of the killers, but I couldn’t believe she would have kept quiet if any of the detectives on the case had actually bothered asking her about it.

“What about Mimi’s funeral?” I continued. “Did you go?”

Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “Not that I remember. My parents probably thought I was too young to understand what was going on.”

“Did your parents attend?”

“I don’t believe so, but I don’t know for sure.”

“But the woman was your friend,” I objected. “It seems to me they would have gone if for no other reason than to pay their respects.”

“It’s strange,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “It’s as though seeing the pictures has reopened that whole chapter in my life. Now I remember it all-not only Mimi’s death, but the rest of it, too. I thought we were friends, but Mother didn’t agree. She said Mimi felt sorry for us because she was rich and we were poor. Mother said that whatever Mimi did for me she was doing out of pity or charity, not out of friendship. But regardless, Mimi was nice to me. She seemed magical, almost like a fairy godmother. She taught me to play hopscotch and jacks. Sometimes she’d read to me from books she brought home from the library. A few times, we even walked up the street to the drugstore and she bought me strawberry sodas.”

Mary Katherine reached across the table and picked up the picture of the Marchbank Foundation headquarters. This time she nodded in recognition. “Now I remember. That’s her house-the one where Mimi used to live. The house we lived in, Mrs. Ridder’s house, was right over here-to the right of this driveway.”

On the tapes, Bonnie Jean couldn’t remember the landlady’s name. Now the name emerged effortlessly.

“How long did you live there?”

“Not very long-a few months maybe. We must have moved out within weeks of when Mimi was killed, but I could be mistaken about that.”

“Any idea where you went?”

Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “We moved so many times over the years, I’m really not sure.”

The waitress stopped by to refill our cups. “Is Elvira Marchbank still alive?” Sister Mary Katherine asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “She could be. Nothing I found this morning indicated otherwise. Albert died in the early seventies, but as far as I know, Elvira’s still around.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “How is it possible that Mimi died so young and yet Elvira is still walking around free as a bird after all these years? If she’s still alive, she must be in her eighties. I can’t imagine living with that kind of guilt for so many years. I wonder if she ever feels any remorse about what she did.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Most of the killers I’ve met come up short in the remorse department.”

“After such a long time, could she still be convicted and go to jail?”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” I said. “And I’m sure they have some sort of geriatric wing in the women’s prison down at Purdy, but I wouldn’t count on a conviction if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Time, for one thing. As you said, the crime happened years ago. I’m going to do my best to send her there, but you’ll have to be patient. It won’t be easy.”

“Why not? There’s a witness,” Sister Mary Katherine objected, “an eyewitness who saw the whole thing.”

“Yes, but we’re talking about an eyewitness who took half a century to speak up. A good defense attorney will tear your testimony to shreds. And a jury is going to wonder what caused you to suddenly recall those events now. There are a lot of people out there who don’t go along with the idea of repressed memories, so I can’t base my entire case on your word alone. I’m going to have to dig up enough corroborating evidence that a prosecutor and a jury will be willing to go with it.”

“Can you find that kind of evidence?” she asked.

“I’ll do my best,” I told her. “Finding evidence is what I do. It’s what I’ve done all my life.”

“While all I’ve been doing is praying and sewing,” she said. I heard the self-reproach in her voice and knew Sister Mary Katherine was still holding Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s silence against her.

“Sometimes,” I told her, “praying is the only thing that works.”

“It seems to me I should be the one telling you about the wonders of prayer,” Sister Mary Katherine said with a tight smile.

“That’s all right,” I told her. “No extra charge.”

She raised her hand, flagged down the waitress, and asked for her bill. She turned down my offer to pick up the check. “I like to pay my own way,” she said. “And I need to be heading out. I have some shopping to do before I leave town, but Sister Therese expects to have the road cleared by early this afternoon, and I want to be home well before dark.”