Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

Under Davic’s prompting, Dr. Clemens gave as further examples women who exercised “in brief attire” in front of undraped windows, used washing machines in basement laundry rooms or public laundromats late at night because they had supposedly forgotten or postponed that chore during the day, loitered in poorly lit stacks in public libraries, allowed their cars to run out of gas on deserted highways or turnpikes, or hitchhiked along such highways... or rode a bicycle at dusk on lonely country roads, even short distances from their homes...

A pause as Davic looked at Shana, and then at the jury.

These were not accidents, Dr. Clemens said... no, they were contrived situations in which the elements of seduction were gathered together with premeditation — subconscious or not — in a place favorable to sexual combustion, just as if paper and dry twigs and kindling had been piled high and splashed with flammable liquids, needing only the single chance spark to set them off...

At that point Counselor Davic thanked his witness and announced to the bench that he had no further questions. With a pleasant smile he addressed Dorcas Brett with an old-fashioned legal phrase, “The People may inquire if they so wish.” Then he sat down at the defense table.

Brett’s face was white with anger. She stood up and said, “The People certainly intend to inquire, Mr. Davic. We will examine the expert witness and his novel speculations. We—”

Judge Flood interrupted with a glance at the wall clock. “If it’s agreeable, Miss Brett, and to you, Mr. Davic, I think tempers might cool over a recess for lunch.”

Victoria Kim was a striking Eurasian in her early thirties, Selby judged, with a narrow, elegant face and graceful hands. Her clothing and eyes heightened her exotic appearance; a slim pink cashmere suit, heavy coral bracelets. Her eyes were dramatically emphasized with blue eyeliner and a velvet sheen of mascara on her thick lashes.

They met in a suite with a view of the river and its sculling boathouses. A suede coat and pieces of matching luggage were in the adjoining bedroom. After they introduced themselves, Miss Kim lifted a receiver and dialed room service. “Would you like coffee and sandwiches, Mr. Selby, or something to drink and a decent lunch?”

“Just the coffee, thanks,” Selby said. He hadn’t been eating regularly, and while he was hungry he couldn’t rid himself of a vague suspicion that he might be accepting hospitality in the camp of the enemy. There had been so many evasions and lies to this point that he accepted a sense of paranoia as his only practical defense against them. If you didn’t suspect that the pulling guards had homicidal designs on you there would be no need for face guards and helmets.

Selby unwrapped the package that contained his father’s diaries and placed the weathered notebooks on a coffee table.

After explaining how they had come into his possession, he said, “As far as I know, Miss Kim, no one has seen these but my father and the lawyer in Truckee, California. I took them to Summitt City but never had a chance to show them to Jarrell. This is my part of the trade. Now here’s what I’d like in return...”

Her smooth oval face and dramatic eyes remained impassive as she listened. Then, in her incongruous idiom and accent, she said, “Hell, that’s no problem, no sweat at all, Selby. There’s nothing like a call from a senator’s office to lubricate the bureaucracy.”

Dialing Senator Lester’s office in Washington, she tapped a narrow suede pump impatiently. As she waited she told Selby the senator would be joining them later; he was flying in from Brussels and a car would pick him up at the Philadelphia airport... To someone named George in the senator’s office, she said, “Call Albany right now and get hold of Bill Touhy. He’s chief of the section that bonds and licenses private eyes, armed couriers and so forth. I want everything he’s got on two investigators. Here’s their names. Aron and Ben Cadle.” She spelled the last name carefully. “Got it? They’re believed to be in the Philadelphia area and may be undercover using aliases. Find out where they’re staying, who they’re working for, what they’re driving, leased or personal, everything. And George... tell Bill Touhy that Senator Lester is personally interested. It’s urgent.”

A knock sounded and Miss Kim opened the door to a white-jacketed waiter who pushed in a service cart. She signed the check, and when the waiter left she lifted the silver cover from the small sandwich tray, saying, “It’s Kim, or Vickie, if you like, Mr. Selby. Victoria was my grandmother’s name. She was born in Hong Kong and married a Brit who ran a souvenir shop and sold tons of Empress Victoria dolls to cockney sailors. I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and was a cheerleader at Northwestern, pom-poms and all.”

She poured their coffee, excused herself with a smile and began to look through Jonas Selby’s diaries. Her dramatic eyes reminded him of clicking camera shutters; they embraced a page at a time, apparently fixing in her mind the words with one sweeping glance.

“We’re already in the picture on a good bit of this, Mr. Selby.” She closed the books and sipped her coffee. “The major, who is George Thomson, of course, the court-martial and the chief, who was — and is — General Adam Taggart. The railroad names and songs seem like grace notes, a kind of lonely poetry but don’t mean much to us... So, why do you think the defense introduced your father’s court-martial into your daughter’s trial? That’s what our deal is about, right?”

“To influence the jury — that’s logical, isn’t it? To convince them I’m out to nail Thomson for something done to my father by his father... something that has nothing to do with the attack on my daughter.”

“But just to save Earl Thomson’s sweet buns?” Kim sipped her coffee. “Somehow I doubt it. There s an old Chinese saying, Mr. Selby, which goes... ‘If a piece of paper gets dragged into a courtroom, two teams of oxen can’t drag it out.’ ”

Frowning, she put down her cup. “So why Davic would use K.S. 36663864 still beats me. But let’s get to our deal.”

Settling back on the couch, she tucked her legs under her. “Before the senator gets here I can tell you this much from what we’ve pieced together from the records, some letters and from telephone conversations Senator Lester had with your father. Jonas Selby served his five-year sentence in Seoul, then was transferred to a rehab center in Colorado. That wasn’t done by the book. He’d received a dishonorable discharge and wasn’t entitled to further army treatment. But somebody needed to keep him under surveillance.”

“In other words, he was a prisoner those additional years.”

“Technically, yes... Please hear me out. When he left Boulder, your father moved about and finally settled in Truckee. He was married by then, Jarrell was a young child. His wife, Rita, died about thirteen years ago. Jonas Selby, ill or not, or whatever he was, saw your brother through highschool and into college.”

She studied him with her remarkably vivid eyes. “Which brings me to an important question. When were you last in touch with Jarrell?”

Selby told her about the call from the motel in Quinton, New Jersey. Kim made a note on a pad.

“But you didn’t actually talk to him?”

“No.”

“Then anyone could have called and given that message to your housekeeper?”

“That’s true.”

“She wouldn’t have recognized his voice?”

“No. But I want to know why you’re interested in my family now. You weren’t there when my father needed you. You saw that in his diaries. He wanted help the night he was killed. Where was Lester then, and the other elements that are supposed to lubricate the bureaucracy?”