Regina's Song

by David Eddings

  “So will the district attorney square off against Mr. Rankin?” Sylvia asked.

  Trish shook her head. “The DA’s too important for that. He’ll hand it off to some second-stringer, and Mr. Rankin will have him for lunch.” Then Trish looked at me. “Is Renata still speaking exclusively in twin?” she asked.

  “That’s all I’ve heard from her so far,” I replied.

  Trish frowned. “Is she raving? I mean screaming, or anything like that?”

  I shook my head. “The twins never spoke their private language in anything louder than a whisper,” I replied. “They didn’t want anybody eavesdropping.”

  “Good,” Trish said. “She won’t interrupt the proceedings then, and I’m almost positive that Mr. Rankin will want her to be physically present. One look at her should be all that it’ll take to persuade the judge to rule in our favor.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  There was obviously no way to keep what’d happened out of the newspapers or off the evening news on every TV channel in western Washington. The media geeks went ballistic, and by the end of the week, you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a new—and usually distorted—“Joan the Ripper” story.

  The almost universal yearning for fifteen minutes of fame produced some bizarre stories, ranging all the way from, “I think I saw her in the library once,” to “I saw right off that she was very strange.”

  The media bloodhounds tracked down several of Renata’s sorority-girl chums, and by Saturday of that week the sidewalk in front of the boardinghouse was teeming with reporters and cameramen. Trish advised us that Mr. Rankin had more or less issued a prime directive. Our only response was supposed to be “no comment.”

  I was spending a lot of time running back and forth between the boardinghouse and the medical center. By Sunday, it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to write any decent seminar papers this quarter. I didn’t care too much for the notion, but my only way out would be to take “incompletes” on my two seminars, and then try again after the storm had passed.

  Erika was spending more time at the medical center than I was, but at least she had connections there. She reported to the gang on Sunday evening that Renata was pretty much out of the woods on the pneumonia front, and that she’d probably be released from intensive care and transferred to the psychiatric ward by Tuesday at the latest. Trish almost danced on the table when she heard that. “That was the one thing that had me worried,” she told us. “Once she’s installed in that psychiatric ward, we’re home free. A sanity hearing will be almost automatic at that point.”

  “She’s such an enthusiast,” Erika murmured. “The least little thing sets her off.”

  “Don’t pick on me, Erika,” Trish told her sister. “How are you doing with Dr. Yamada?”

  Erika shrugged. “He bought into it, and he’ll keep his mouth shut until he’s on the witness stand.”

  “What are you girls up to now?” James demanded.

  “Oh, nothing much,” Erika replied with a look of exaggerated innocence. “Dr. Yamada’s a forensic pathologist in the coroner’s office, and he moonlights teaching pathology in the med school. I’ve taken a couple of his courses, so I know him fairly well. I made a suggestion, and he agreed to follow up on it.”

  “What kind of suggestion?” Charlie demanded.

  “It’s sort of technical, Charlie,” Erika replied. “Let’s not get into all the gory details, OK?”

  “I hate it when she does that,” Charlie grumbled.

  “Aw,” Erika said, “poor baby.”

  On Monday, the fifteenth of February, I went to Padelford Hall and hit Dr. Conrad’s office before he met with his seminar. He’d heard the news, of course, and he agreed to speak with my professors for me. “It’s not uncommon, Mr. Austin,” he assured me. “We’re fairly flexible in graduate school. An ‘incomplete’ doesn’t show up on your permanent record. All it means is that you’re on hold until the crisis passes.” Then he hesitated slightly. “How’s she doing?” he asked me.

  “Not good, Doc,” I replied. “She’s pretty much shaken off the pneumonia, but her mind’s gone bye-bye, I’m afraid. She came out of the asylum for just one reason. Now that she’s taken care of it, she’ll probably be going back inside again.”

  He sighed. “It’s a shame. We’re losing a great talent there.”

  “Shit happens, Doc,” I told him bluntly. I definitely didn’t want to start getting emotional at this point. I still had a long way to go. I could fall apart later. Right now I had to keep my act together.

  After supper that evening, Charlie took James and me aside. “Let’s go check in with Bob,” he suggested. “He’s our pipeline to the opposition, and we don’t want any nasty surprises cropping up.”

  “Won’t he get in trouble if he passes things along to us?” James demanded.

  “It’s not as if we’re going to rat him off, James,” Charlie replied. “He knows that he can trust us to keep our mouths shut. I’m not all that interested in cop-shop secrets when you get right down to it. But we need to know what Burpee’s up to. Bob’s cut him off at the pass on this case, and Burpee’s probably eating his own liver by now. Let’s face it, guys. Bob stuck his neck way out with that ‘protective custody’ scam, and Burpee’s most likely trying to blindside my big brother. If we want to keep Bob on our side, we’re going to have to help cover his buns.”

  “He’s got a point, James,” I said. “We really need Bob to be in charge at this stage. If Burpee manages to get Bob kicked off the case, we’re in deep trouble.”

  “Good point,” James agreed. “Let’s go have a chat with Big Brother.”

  James drove us to the Green Lantern in his station wagon. For some reason, the term “SUV”—sports utility vehicle—offended the hell out of him. “It’s a station wagon, dammit!” he’d thunder at us any time we slipped and used the more contemporary term. James had lots of old-fashioned words in his vocabulary—“station wagon,” “truth,” “ethics”—all those quaint, out-of-fashion concepts.

  Bob was already sitting in that back booth when we arrived—obviously, he’d been expecting us. That suggested that this meeting was a put-up job. The brothers West made a good team.

  “Hey, big guy,” Charlie said. “What’s happening?”

  “Sit down and shut up, Charlie,” Bob growled at him. “We’ve got problems.”

  That tightened up my insides just a notch.

  We all slid into the booth, and Bob leaned forward and spoke very quietly. “Burpee’s seriously pissed off about the way I handled the Greenleaf girl last week, and he’s trying everything he can think of to get me off the case. The chief of detectives thinks I did the right thing, but Burpee’s trying to sneak around behind him. He’s doing his best to buddy up to the lawyers in the District Attorney’s Office, and he’s managed to persuade some half-wit over there that he’s the resident expert on serial murders. It’s pure, unwashed bullshit, of course, but if he can float it past some fumble-brain prosecutor, Burpee’s gonna wind up on the witness stand lying his guts out.”

  “Can’t your chief tell him to keep his goddam mouth shut?” Charlie demanded.

  “Not if the prosecutor’s on Burpee’s side, he can’t. Burpee had that Cheetah obsession, and the ‘Joan the Ripper’ thing scared Cheetah out of town. The way Burpee looks at it, that torpedoed any chance he’d ever have for a promotion. He blames the Greenleaf girl, and he’s out to get her—any way he can. He’s got enough suck-ups in the department that if we keep having these little meetings, he’ll find out about them and splash the news all over any TV channel that’ll listen to him.”

  “Damn!” James rumbled.

  “Damn only begins to describe it,” Bob said. “From now on, we stay away from each other. I know Burpee well enough to figure out what he’ll do. He’ll push the prosecutor to take this case into open court—preferably with wall-to-wall TV cameras present. He’s working behind the scenes right now, but if this goes into criminal
court, he won’t be able to resist giving a public performance. He pees his pants every time he sees a camera, so his head’ll shut down, and he’ll make a big splash on TV. That’ll blow any chance for a sanity hearing, and the Greenleaf girl will be tried for first-degree murder. Burpee might get demoted or even kicked off the force, but that won’t do us much good.” He paused. “Now, you did not hear this from me—have we got that straight? Get to that girl’s lawyer and tell him that you heard this from ‘a reliable source.’ If Rankin’s as sharp as he’s supposed to be, he’ll know how to shortstop Burpee. Our main goal right now is to keep that son of a bitch off the witness stand.”

  The girls weren’t too happy when we got home and broke the news to them. Sylvia unlimbered the darker side of her vocabulary, but Trish went directly to the telephone.

  Sylvia was still bubbling over like a little teapot when Trish came back out to the kitchen. “Cool it, Sylvia,” she told our little housemate. “I just got off the phone with Mr. Rankin. He wasn’t too happy about this, but now that he knows what’s happening, he knows what has to be done.”

  “You didn’t rat Bob out, did you?” Charlie asked her.

  “Of course not,” Trish said promptly. “Your brother’s on our side, so I’m not going to get him in trouble. Mr. Rankin probably knows who our source is, but he didn’t make an issue of it.”

  “What can he possibly do to head Burpee off?” James asked her.

  “Given the circumstances and Renata’s present condition, Mr. Rankin’s almost certain to request a closed hearing—along with a gag order from the presiding judge. That’ll cut the ground out from under Lieutenant Belcher’s planned public performance.”

  “What a shame,” Erika said. “No Academy Award for poor Burpee this year.”

  “Mr. Rankin did have some good news, though,” Trish told us. “He’s had a couple of off-the-cuff discussions with the district attorney, and they’ve more or less agreed that a preliminary hearing’s in order. The DA didn’t like the idea, but Mr. Rankin could tie the case up for years if he refuses. The way things stand, just about everything hinges on which judge presides over that hearing. If we’re lucky, we’ll get the right judge. There are a couple that we really don’t want sitting on the bench.”

  “It all boils down to luck of the draw then, doesn’t it?” Charlie suggested.

  “What a clever way to put it, Charlie,” Trish replied sardonically.

  “Have they come up with a date for the preliminary hearing yet?” I asked her.

  “That’s up to the judge,” she replied. “The court dockets are pretty full right now. It could all come down to a plea bargain on some other case that’ll free up one of the judges. Everything’s still up in the air.”

  The next morning I went to Padelford and arranged to take incompletes on my two seminars. Evidently Dr. Conrad had put in a good word for me, so I didn’t have any problems—at least not administrative problems. Now that my academic career was on hold, I didn’t have anything to do—except to sit around and worry.

  Trish went to work at the law office on Thursday of that week. She’d never really explained what was involved in her part-time job. I guess that a law clerk spends a lot of time wading through law books looking for precedents and such.

  She was all fired up when she came home, though. “We got a break today,” she announced at the supper table that evening. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I think Mr. Rankin called in some favors. The presiding judge in Renata’s case is going to be Alice Compson. She’s tough but fair, and she absolutely hates having reporters cluttering up her courtroom. Almost all of her hearings are closed to the public—and to the news media. The reporters scream bloody murder about that, but she makes them wait until the transcripts are available—sometime a week or so after the fact.”

  “That’s a leisurely approach to the ‘late-breaking-news’ business, isn’t it?” James noted with a faint smile.

  “Judge Compson’s a throwback to a more leisurely time,” Trish said. “She refuses to be hurried, and she’s militantly indifferent to the needs of the news media. A lot of reporters have wound up in jail for crossing her.”

  “I like her already,” Charlie said, grinning broadly.

  “It gets better,” Trish told him. “Mr. Rankin told me today that the prosecutor in the early stages will be a Mr. Roger Fielding. He’s a new man in the district attorney’s office, and probably still wet behind the ears. I’d even bet he’s the one who swallowed Lieutenant Belcher’s cock-and-bull story.” She paused then. “By the way,” she continued, “don’t make any plans for Saturday. Mr. Rankin would like to meet with all of us on Saturday morning. He’ll probably be calling most of us as witnesses during the preliminary hearing, and he’ll definitely need our testimony if this goes into a sanity hearing. Lawyers hate surprises in open court, so Mr. Rankin wants to get to know us before the hearing.”

  “Is there any word yet on when the hearing’s going to be?” Sylvia asked.

  “Not yet,” Trish replied. “That’s up to Judge Compson, and she’s not going to let anybody push her.”

  It was raining on Saturday morning, but there was nothing unusual about that. If rain bothers you, stay away from Puget Sound.

  Since James had the largest vehicle at the boardinghouse, he drove us on downtown in his station wagon. Since Trish worked at the law firm, she had a pass that got us into the parking garage in the basement of the towering office building in the business district. Then we took the elevator to the sixteenth floor. The whole place had an air of subdued luxury about it—deep-pile carpeting, rich hardwood paneling, and broad windows overlooking Elliott Bay.

  “Classy,” Charlie observed.

  “Just a comfortable little place we like to call home,” Trish replied. She led us through the silent main office to a large conference room on the west side of the building, where she tapped lightly on the door.

  “Come,” a rich voice replied, and we all followed Trish into the room.

  Mr. Rankin rose to greet us. He was one of those disgustingly handsome older gentlemen with snowy white hair and a robust tan. I judged that he spent quite a few hours under a sunlamp to maintain that. He was casually dressed and seemed fairly relaxed. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends, Patricia?” he suggested. “Then we can get down to business.”

  Trish went down the line, giving her boss our names and our major fields of study.

  “Interesting combination,” Mr. Rankin observed. “Now, then, let’s get down to cases. As Patricia’s probably told you, our main goal during the preliminary hearing will be to steer Judge Compson in the direction of a sanity hearing. Miss Greenleaf’s history lends itself to that outcome, but naturally Mr. Fielding will attempt to thwart our efforts. The media, and in all probability the public as well, would prefer a lurid criminal trial that can be simplified into headlines consisting largely of one-syllable words. We’ll want to complicate it. The way things currently stand, a criminal case would be open-and-shut, and it wouldn’t take much more than a day or two. I’ll probably be calling all of you as witnesses, and I’d like to hear each one of you speak. Try to relax. Speak in a normal tone of voice, and don’t rush, no matter how much Fielding tries to push you.”

  Rankin had one of those rich, oratorical voices that made him sound like a member of the U.S. Senate. He could probably have made a weather report sound like earthshaking news.

  “Mr. Forester,” he said then, turning to James, “When did you first meet Miss Greenleaf?”

  James pondered that. “If I remember correctly, she came to dinner at the boardinghouse one evening in late September or early October last fall. Mark had mentioned her background and her mental problems, so we didn’t really know what to expect. She charmed us all into a corner, though, and entertained us with stories about the private sanitarium—she called it the nuthouse—where she’d spent a fair stretch of time following her sister’s murder.”

  Rankin was staring at James w
ith an awed look on his face. “You have a magnificent voice, Mr. Forester,” he said. “I’ve got to get you on the witness stand. You sound almost like the voice of God.”

  James smiled. “That might depend on your definition of God, Mr. Rankin. We could talk about that if you’d like, but I’m not sure the witness stand would be the best place for such a discussion. The limitations of ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ could interfere with theological speculation, don’t you think?”

  “I could listen to this man talk all day,” Rankin told the rest of us with a broad smile.

  “Keep him clear of Hegel, though,” Charlie suggested. “Kant’s OK, but Kierkegaard and Hegel make my teeth hurt.”

  “Patricia tells me that you’re a scientist, Mr. West,” Rankin said.

  “I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, Mr. Rankin,” Charlie replied. “I’m an engineer. I make stuff. A scientist works with theories; engineers work with nuts and bolts. Science guys are usually covered with chalk dust, but we’ve got grease and metal filings on our clothes. We get paid better than they do, though.”

  “And when did you first meet Miss Greenleaf?”

  “That same evening James did. Mark brought her to dinner. She was auditing a class he was teaching, and she did a paper—’How I Spent My Summer Vacation.’ That’s what got our gang interested in her. Mark’s still got copies, so he can give you one. Keep a tight grip on something when you read it, though. Reality starts to slide away about halfway through that puppy.”