A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  Still, the events of that day had been eating at her like a worm in her stomach. She was desperate to talk to someone about it. Sophia would be a good one to do it with. She could pretend she knew someone who knew something, and was asking on behalf of this imaginary friend.

  “If your mother is working for this man, she must think he is innocent,” she ventured.

  Sophia shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. Everyone deserves a good defense, guilty or innocent. That’s up to juries to decide.”

  She was repeating what her mother had told her. She was her mother’s daughter, no matter how hard she tried not to be.

  “So she thinks he is guilty?” Tina asked. That would take a lot of the pressure off, if someone working for this man thought he was the murderer, but was doing her job anyway, because in America everyone had a right to a fair trial.

  “She doesn’t know,” Sophia answered. “But the more we get to know him, the more we think he isn’t.”

  “We?” Tina asked in surprise and alarm. “You know him, too?”

  Sophia nodded. “I ride horses up at the ranch with his grandmother. She’s a friend of mine and my mom’s. I’ve seen him a bunch of times.” She could feel a blush coming on. “He is really cute. Definitely hot.”

  Tina sat back. She could feel the marijuana paranoia coming back. “Have you…”

  Sophia stared at her open-mouthed. “God, no! Are you kidding? I don’t get near him, it isn’t allowed. But I would,” she confessed. “When this trial is over, if he gets off, which he should, I really do think he’s innocent, and Luke Garrison, his lawyer, who my mom works for, is the best there is.” She laid back against the couch cushion. “But he wouldn’t. I’m like a kid sister to him. He’s way beyond me.”

  That’s where you’re wrong, Tina knew. If he could have sex with you, he would. Like the boys she and Maria had been with. They were also in college, older, experienced. At least more than she was—Maria had been as experienced as a grown woman, to hear the stories about her. But the boys hadn’t known that. They were out to have sex with girls, and they didn’t care about their history. They didn’t care about anything, except to have pleasure.

  She knew that Sophia knew that. She was saying that Steven McCoy wasn’t interested in her to protect her feelings, in case she tried to get friendly with him and he rejected her.

  Tina needed to find out more about Steven McCoy. She also needed to talk to someone about what had happened with her and Maria that day. She didn’t know anyone else she could talk about it with, except Sophia. Her mother would tell her to talk to the priest, but she had stopped going to confession years ago. Priests were no better than police. All those allegations about molestation proved that. She remembered sitting on a priest’s lap at a fiesta when she was ten, when they still lived out in the countryside in Guatemala. He had touched her legs and her bottom under her thin dress. She had been scared to go to church for months after that. And once they had come to California, she had given up on religion. She still went to church when she couldn’t avoid it, because she didn’t want to get into a fight with her parents, but it meant nothing. It was like watching a movie. It wasn’t real to her anymore.

  Tonight was not the time to talk to Sophia about something this important. She felt too uptight—from the marijuana, the vodka, and from being in a house that not only wasn’t her own, but belonged to someone—Sophia’s mother—who would pounce on her if she ever found out about Tina being with Maria and those boys. But sometime in the future she would open up to Sophia, if she could figure out how to keep herself and her family safe. The weight on her, of what she knew, had become too hard to keep to herself forever.

  It was late, after eleven. Kate had dinner alone, and now she was back in her hotel room. Earlier, she had tried to call Sophia, but didn’t get an answer, which wasn’t unexpected. It was Friday night. Sophia would be out with friends. She was more at ease now socially. That was good.

  Out of the dozens of people she had talked to about Steven, not one had a bad word to say about him. Guys on the volleyball team, different girls he had dated, students in his classes, teachers. He was a good guy, a good friend, fun to be with, but not a slacker—he was serious about where he was going in life. A leader. No way would he murder anyone. That was the unanimous consensus.

  One surprise to Kate was that for a man as attractive as Steven, his relationships with women seemed clouded in mystery. One girl, who was striking and was up-front about how much she had liked Steven, hypothesized that he had a secret lover, and saw other women when she wasn’t available. A woman who lived out of town, maybe. Or more likely, this girl conjectured, the unknown woman was married. The relationship had to be clandestine. She had no basis for thinking this, she told Kate, it had been an instinctive judgment. Or perhaps it was hurt feelings talking.

  She mulled over today’s interviews. Generally, people Steven’s age led transparent lives. They were too young to be guarded. But Steven was an exception. He was friendly and warm, but he definitely kept his own counsel. His almost willful lack of cooperation about what he had done on the day Maria Estrada was killed was evidence of that. Which supported the notion that he had a secret life he didn’t want anyone, not even his best friends, to know about.

  Kate had breakfast with Steven’s parents in the hotel dining room. Garrett and Laurie seemed ill at ease with her. Or perhaps, she thought, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were worried about Steven, and seeing her reinforced their fears.

  “It seems strange for a parent to say this,” Laurie told her, as she tortured a croissant into crumbs, “but Steven’s been a mystery to us from the time he was in high school.” She crimsoned slightly. “Not a mystery, exactly. We know our son, and we know he’s a good person. That’s not in question. But it’s like…” She groped for the right terminology.

  “He’s self-sufficient,” Garrett said, filling the void. “He doesn’t like to be dependent on anyone. Never has, from the time he was small. He always wanted to be in charge of himself. He takes after my mother that way. Even when…”

  “Steven’s very bright,” Laurie said, overlapping her husband. “Did you know he got into Stanford?”

  Kate shook her head. “No.” By now she knew that any mention of Juanita sat poorly with Laurie, who would immediately turn the conversation in another direction.

  “Oh, yes,” Laurie said proudly. “They were hot after him.”

  This woman sets my teeth on edge, Kate thought. There was nothing she liked about Steven’s mother, and almost nothing about his father, either. But she had a job to do. She couldn’t let personal feelings get in the way. Luckily for Steven, he was a throwback to his grandmother. At least in some respects.

  Laurie’s tone had cued Kate that she was expected to ask the obvious. “Why didn’t he go to Stanford?” she inquired.

  “Arizona gave him a full ride,” Garrett answered. “For volleyball, but he could have gone on academic scholarship, too,” he added with a parent’s prideful boastfulness. “Stanford only had a quarter-scholarship available, volleyball can’t compete with football and basketball. But we didn’t care,” he added quickly, “we were prepared to pay for Stanford.” He glanced over at his wife, whose face looked like it was set in concrete. “But Steven didn’t want that,” Garrett continued. “He wanted to do it on his own.”

  “He didn’t want to be beholden to us,” Laurie chimed in yet again. “That’s how he put it to us. Eighteen years old, and he doesn’t want to be beholden to his parents.”

  Steven was good at pulling the rug out from peoples’ expectations, Kate thought, even when they didn’t want him to. He may not have known he was doing that, but that was the result. That could also be the reason his father and mother weren’t as supportive of him in his time of need as would be expected. He had divorced himself from needing them, and now they didn’t know how to be there for him.

  She thought yet again of her relationship with her daught
ers. So far from perfect. It was getting stronger with Sophia, but with Wanda, no matter how much they loved each other, there would always be that chasm. Wanda had paid for her own education with scholarships, grants, and loans. She had never complained about the mountain of debt she had taken on, but it was there, in her face. She’d be paying off her student loans into her forties.

  Sophia would be in that situation too, unfortunately. Another reason for Kate to finish law school and get in a position to make real money, better than she could ever do as a PI.

  That was in the future. She had to deal with now. “Did Steven ever talk about his…” She hesitated.

  “What?” Laurie asked impatiently.

  “…Love life.”

  Laurie jerked back. Garrett shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Not in any detail,” Laurie said cautiously. “We knew some of the girls he dated. He brought some home occasionally. Generally, he didn’t keep us up on that. Why do you want to know about that?”

  Jesus, what planet were these people living on? “He’s accused of killing a woman,” Kate answered, biting her tongue to stop the acid drip. “If there is, or was, a special woman in his life, it would be very helpful to talk to her.”

  Laurie glanced at Garrett. “Not recently,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not for some time,” she added reluctantly. The croissant in front of her was confetti now. She pushed the plate away as if the sight of it repulsed her. “His friends would know better than we do about those parts of his life,” she said tightly. “You should ask them.”

  A feeling of boisterous anticipation was in the air: Arizona was hosting USC in a critical PAC-10 game. Except for the traditional shoot-out with Arizona State, this was the most important football game of the year. The Wildcats had been a PAC-10 doormat for years, but this year the team had finally come together and was on the verge of breaking into the AP top twenty-five poll for the first time in over a decade. They were only a game behind Southern Cal in the conference standings, so a win today would catapult them into the running for the Rose Bowl, or at least a prestigious lesser bowl.

  The campus was packed with fans, almost none of them students. Tailgating parties had sprouted all over the parking lot and out in the adjacent streets. Even before noon, the current time, the level of alcohol consumption was copious. Everyone seemed to have a margarita or a beer in their hands. The smells and smokes of the portable barbeque grills drifted in the air. Impromptu games of touch football were breaking out all over the area. Unbridled revelry was the order of the day.

  This looks like fun, Kate thought, as she elbowed her way through the crowds past the stadium toward the library, where she was going to meet with Tyler Woodruff. She had never been to a football game in her life. Wanda had dated a boy in high school who was a member of the basketball team, but she didn’t think Wanda had gone to his games. If she had, she’d never talked to Kate about it. She’d been too busy with her own stuff.

  Kate had never been taken with men’s team sports. Too much unbridled testosterone. But right at this moment, weaving her way through the throngs of happy fans, she felt left out, as if these thousands of people, and millions like them all over the county—all over the world—had something she didn’t. Something in common to root for, agonize over, argue about. A great feeling of community.

  Tyler was sitting on the steps in front of the library, waiting for her. He stood up as she approached. “It’s a 200 out there,” he commented with a smile. “It’s been crazy here for three days.”

  “I didn’t realize,” she said. “Is the football team good this year?”

  “Better than usual,” he answered. “It’s SC weekend, that’s why it’s such a wild scene.”

  “Are you going to win?”

  He laughed. “Do you believe in miracles?”

  “Not usually. But sometimes I pray for them.” Like for your friend Steven’s defense.

  “If we beat them, it’s going to be a true miracle,” he said. “But they do happen.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Are you going to the game?” she asked.

  “Naw. I’d rather play than watch. And we’ve got volleyball practice this afternoon. I’ll probably go to the Arizona State game at the end of the season. That’s the one that really counts for us.” He turned toward the entrance. “We can talk in the library. It’ll be quiet.”

  She followed him up the stairs and into the building. After they passed through the metal detectors, Tyler signed her in. They went to a section in the stacks where there was a small area for sitting and reading. There was no one else there, so they could talk comfortably without disturbing anyone.

  Kate took Tyler’s file out of her bag and opened it up on the table between them. “Has the District Attorney’s office been talking to you?” she asked.

  The friendly smile faded from his face. “Yes.”

  “Did you tell them anything I don’t already know?”

  “I don’t think so. They went over the interview with me again. You’ve read it, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, several times. Luke Garrison has it memorized, practically,” she told him with a tight smile. “I have some different questions for you.”

  “Okay.”

  She picked up the legal pad she’d jotted her questions on and looked at it. “What did Steven do in Santa Barbara he hasn’t told us about?” she asked bluntly. “Where was he, or who did he see that he’s keeping a secret?”

  Tyler flinched. “What do you mean?”

  She stared at him. “Something happened that afternoon that he doesn’t want anyone to know about. It was so important, or so reflective on him in a negative way, that he’s holding it in, even at the expense of possibly being convicted of murder. We don’t know what it could be, but there’s something, I’m convinced of it. You don’t get lost for that amount of time with no accounting, the way he’s told us.”

  Tyler was visibly uncomfortable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “For real?” She tapped the legal pad with a fingernail. “This is not the time for coyness anymore, Tyler. His life is at stake.”

  Tyler shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to lie?” he asked plaintively.

  She held her stare for a moment longer. “So from the time you went off with…” She looked at her notes.

  “Serena Hopkins,” he prompted her.

  “Serena, right. From the time you and she left Steven, until he showed up outside the movie theater that night, you don’t know anything about what he did.”

  He started at her blankly. “Only what he told the cops.”

  “He didn’t say anything to you later? Something in confidence?”

  “No. He didn’t say anything.”

  She recalled the conversation she’d had the day before with the girl who had speculated that Steven was involved with a married woman. If anyone knew about that, it would be Tyler. She mentally crossed her fingers.

  “You know the girls Steven’s dated here, don’t you?” she asked him.

  “Most of them,” he answered cautiously.

  “Was one of them married? Or in a relationship that Steven and she would need to protect?”

  Tyler’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

  Kate nodded. “One of his former girlfriends thought it was a possibility.” An idea suddenly came to her. “Could this woman have known you two were going to be in Santa Barbara, and went there to meet him?”

  “I don’t…” he stammered.

  “This is important, damn it!” Kate said fiercely. She felt like she was on to something. Her detective’s gut. “If there is a woman out there Steven’s protecting, Tyler, we have to know. This is no time for chivalry. Steven’s life is at stake. I mean that.”

  He groaned. “There isn’t,” he told her. “At least, I don’t know if there is. Which I think I would, we’re pretty tight.” He looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  Kate fell bac
k against her chair. This was a dead end. She had hoped for a breakthrough, but it wasn’t going to happen. She tried to read Tyler’s body language. He seemed to be telling the truth. He wasn’t covering for Steven. Too damn bad.

  She picked up the pad and flipped through the pages. “The gun that Steven found in the house. That killed Maria Estrada. Steven says he picked it up that night and put it back in the gun case. Did you see him pick up that gun and put it away? Actually see him?”

  Tyler looked away. “It was dark in the house. We were only inside for a few minutes. I couldn’t see much. Steven knew his way around, so it would have been easy for him to do it.”

  “But you didn’t actually see him pick the gun up and put it back in the gun case,” she pressed.

  A slow head-shake. “No.”

  A jury would hear that and believe that Steven had lied. Luke would have to work awfully hard to overcome that one.

  She looked at the pad again. “The gate.” This was the most important piece of the puzzle. “Initially, you told the police you thought it had been locked when you went to Santa Barbara.”

  He nodded.

  “But then you remembered it hadn’t been. Correct?”

  Another nod.

  “Because Steven insisted he had left it open.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you did leave it open, like Steven said.”

  “Yes,” he answered slowly.

  “You’re sure of that.”

  He exhaled deeply. “I would say…yes.”

  You aren’t sure of that at all, she thought, looking at him. He was miserable. All he wanted to do was protect his friend.

  “You’re going to be on the stand at Steven’s trial, Tyler,” she said. “You’re going to be under oath. You’re going to swear to tell the truth. Which you must do,” she reminded him sternly.

  “I know that.”

  “So tell me now. I’m the D.A., and I’m asking you that question. Do you swear the gate was open when you left that morning?”

  The way Tyler shook his head it looked like it weighed a hundred pounds. “No. I can’t swear that.”