Ridley Pearson - Chain of Evidence

Dart said, “So he didn’t have any use for whatever was on page four. That’s hardly significant.” Dart rarely used even a third of his own notes.

“Oh, yeah? Take a look at this,” she suggested, scooting her chair back from the screen. “To use the OCR software, you have to scan the material first, right? And the only scanner we have is in Records-and that’s a PC, it’s not one of the networked terminals.”

“Meaning?”

“The scanner takes the handwritten notes and turns them into a graphic. The graphic is read by the OCR software and turned into text that can be read by a word processor.” Dart didn’t need an education on OCR. Abby clearly sensed this. She said, “It creates the files in its own directory. What Kowalski does is go down there, create the file, and print it up. He doesn’t move the file; he doesn’t erase it.”

“You’re saying that you lifted his original file?” Dart inquired, impressed.

“ Voila! ” she said, pointing to the screen. “Kowalski’s scanned Gerald Lawrence notes.”

She had copied the file to disk and had moved it to her own PC. Industrious of her, he thought, realizing he would have to watch out for her.

Dart read the screen. Recognizing the kind of notes that had been taken, he realized immediately that Kowalski had interviewed a witness to the Gerald Lawrence suicide. Quotation marks peppered the page.

Dart’s first instinct was to believe the witness had proven a washout, as so many did. It would explain perfectly why Kowalski had not bothered to include the text of the questioning. Dart snagged the file-Kowalski’s official investigative report-from Abby’s desk. Procedure required the investigating officer to list the name, or names, of each and every witness to the crime, including those deemed useless. Dart could find no reference to any witness.

“Her name is Lewellan Page,” Abby announced.

Dart read quickly down the screen. He didn’t like being behind Abby on this. Reading, he protested, “She’s twelve years old, Abby!” greatly relieved. “No wonder he didn’t bother listing her.”

“But he interviewed her, Joe,” she reminded. “He’s required to list her.” She hesitated and asked, “So why did he leave her out? What did she see?”

“Abby,” he cautioned, “it’s speculation.” But for the second time the hopeful thought nagged at him: Is Kowalski involved in this?

She advanced the screen to the bottom of the page. Her finger pointed out a sentence. Dart read:

“I seen a white man. A big white man. He gone on upstairs and …”

“The next page is missing,” she informed him.

Dart reread the material several times. Ohmy-god , he thought. A white man.

“I want to talk to her, Joe. I want to know what it is-who it is-that she saw.”

“Can you find her?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if I do, I want you there.”

Jackson Browne’s music played in the background. He sounded lonely. So was Dart. Ginny wouldn’t agree to meet him at his apartment, and he had no desire to chance an encounter with some boyfriend of hers. So it was to be neutral ground-Smitty’s Bar, a place neither of them haunted, not that Dart haunted any bar. He was more a library man, though loath to admit it.

It was a yuppie bar, with dark wood furniture, white linen, and an island bar that dominated the entrance. It catered to an insurance clientele, white men and women in their thirties wearing dark suits, drinking light beer, and making conversation in the most animated voices they could muster.

Aside from the core downtown, with its gleaming skyscrapers, the only place a bar like this could exist was West Hartford and the valley. Whites, a minority in this city, had to pick their watering holes carefully.

Jackson Browne sang that he would do anything, from flying airplanes to walking on the wings. Dart had felt like that once with her. And maybe, just maybe, she had felt that way with him. But it had failed. Dissolved like a figure walking into a thick fog. He had watched it recede, had reached for it, called out to it, and cried when it had vanished, for such things can never come back-at least that was what she had said.

Ginny Rice turned a couple of heads when she entered, not so much for her looks as her presence-she commanded attention. He thought of her affectionately, though he hoped she wouldn’t sense this, and he feared that she might because for her he was an easy read. She wore blue jeans, a brown bomber jacket zipped halfway to counter the air-conditioning, a teal blue stone-washed silk shirt and the diamond and gold heart necklace that he had given her on an insignificant anniversary. This outfit alone set her apart from the nearly uniform crowd, just as Dartelli’s khakis and blue blazer had differentiated him. She had cut her dark brown hair short, well off her shoulders. She had a perfect nose, small lips and eyes the color of the shirt. A matching pair of gold studs occupied her left ear-nothing in her right. That was Ginny: always something just a tad different. Tomboy. Fantastic athlete. Yet dignified and graceful when she wanted to be. She was somebody else’s now-he had heard the rumors. He swallowed dryly, attempting to clear his voice, wondering once again why he had allowed it to happen.

“Hey, Dart,” she said, pulling the chair out for herself. If he had stood, if he had helped her with the chair she would have been angry at him, so he fought the urge and just sat there. Use of his abbreviated last name was not a formality; she had always called him this. He thought of himself as Joe Dart most of the time, thanks to her. She unzipped the bomber jacket. A couple of the guys were still looking-Ginny knew this, but she was accustomed to it and accepted it as flattery. She wiggled a smile onto her face, like an actor practicing in a mirror. His heart banged in his chest. Let go , he told himself.

He had been told that time heals all wounds, but if that were the case, then time was moving awfully slowly and the wounds still felt raw. And seeing her-the freshness, the comfort with which she carried herself, her apparent happiness-was salt in those wounds. Dart was still back on the time line somewhere. He felt adrift. He had lost Zeller and Ginny in the same two-month period. He had not yet recovered.

Jackson Browne was plaintive-he had messed up a relationship. You and me both, pal, Dart thought.

“You look good,” she lied. She ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks with a twist from a woman who had looked good to Dart a few minutes earlier.

He thanked her and returned the compliment, and she managed that same fake smile again, and his heart stung. She didn’t want to be here; she had better things to do. He could have died at that moment.

Shut up, Jackson , Dart thought. He didn’t want to hear about someone else’s pain, he had enough of his own. Bad idea, coming here , he realized. He looked around and his eye found the door.

“I saw you on television,” she said. “I thought you’d regained some of the weight, but I guess it’s true what they say about the camera adding ten pounds.”

“I’m okay,” he said, but they both knew.

“Good.” The Dewars arrived and she insisted on paying. She had to stretch to reach into her front pocket and Dart realized her every little movement thrilled him, and he hated himself all the more.

“How’s Mac?” she asked.

“Great.” Together they had recovered the Labrador from the animal shelter the weekend before they had broken up. He and Ginny used to visit the pound every Saturday morning. One of the rituals of the relationship. Twelve years old, arthritic, mostly deaf, the dog had been found hiding under a porch, stabbed eighteen times with a knife. No longer had a voice box-when he tried to bark he sounded either like a balloon losing air, or gears grinding, depending on his message. He owned a serious limp, very few teeth, and the sweetest disposition on God’s green earth. The attendant at the pound had named him Mac the Knife, and it seemed appropriate enough, and Dart had kept the name and the dog. Ginny loved Mac too, though she tried not to show it; she was private with her pain. Private with her pleasure too. Dart called out and ordered a vodka-he needed something stronger than the beer that was now empty in front of him.