Reining in Murder

by Leigh Hearon

  Annie cleared her throat. “Well, the question does come to mind, yes.”

  “Hilda and I’ve known each other since we were children. I’m sorry. I have to remember to refer to her in the past tense. It’s not easy to do. Our families were very close; my aunt was Hilda’s godmother. After I graduated from Wharton, we married because we liked each other a lot, and it was the expected thing to do. But, as time went on, I rather feel that I was supplanted by an ever-expanding herd of horseflesh.”

  Marcus spoke jokingly, but his words intimated a sense of failure.

  “And now this.” Marcus spread his arms out to his sides. “Hilda murdered. A terrible business. I can hardly believe it even now, and I’ve had all night to wonder who would want to do such a thing to my wife.”

  Annie watched his eyes fill with tears and restrained herself from flinging her arms around him in an attempt to comfort him. At least, that’s what she told herself she’d be trying to do. She felt distinctly guilty about the trap that had been set for him.

  “Do you have any ideas?” she asked.

  The words sounded rude, even to Annie. Marcus quickly turned to her and saw a deep blush spread up Annie’s neck and face.

  “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who’s sorry. After all, I’ve been told you’re the person who found Hilda’s body. At least I’ve been spared that agony. It must have been horrible for you.”

  “It’s just hard to believe someone . . . could be that violent.” And suddenly Annie realized that she no longer associated the brutality she’d seen in Hilda’s bedroom with this man for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand.

  Marcus gently stroked Trooper’s mane and looked down at Annie.

  “It’s impossible for me to think so, too. And to answer your question, no, I don’t have a single idea as to who would so savagely kill my wife. But I intend to find out.”

  He leaned over to take in the bay’s smell, thoroughly winning Annie’s respect and, if she admitted it, her heart. She rested her check on the bay’s withers to inhale the bay’s good, strong unmistakable equine odor herself.

  Annie heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel outside. Before she could think of an exit plan, Dan strode through the stable door. Both she and Marcus had involuntarily started as soon as the stable door slid open. Annie could see from Dan’s expression that he assumed they’d been caught in a compromising position.

  “Marcus Colbert. You are under arrest for the murder of your wife, Hilda Colbert. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.”

  As Dan recited the Miranda warning, he twisted Marcus’s arms behind him and secured the handcuffs—rather tightly, Annie observed. Marcus looked astounded but said nothing.

  “You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”

  As Annie watched, Dan frog-marched Marcus out of the stables and into the police vehicle waiting outside. Tony stood beside the patrol car, a set of keys in his hand. She watched him get into a black Mercedes, presumably Marcus’s rental car. She could not look at him.

  As the cars roared off, Annie was full of thoughts she did not have time to express. On the top of the list was to cry out to Dan, “Wait! You’ve got the wrong guy!” The second was, “The least you could have done is hold off until he’d written me a check!”

  CHAPTER 8

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH

  Annie attempted for the third time to ease her pickup truck into the last parking space for the Suwana County Courthouse, high on the hills of Port Chester, the county seat. Her hands were shaking. On the way into town, Dan had called her with the results of Hilda’s autopsy.

  “This is strictly off the record,” he warned her. “You never heard this from me, remember.”

  For once, Annie didn’t have a flip comeback. She was too curious to know what Dan had to say.

  Hilda had died, Dan informed her, from a long, jagged gash to her neck that had severed her jugular vein and her right carotid artery. The good news was that the massive hemorrhaging instantly rendered her unconscious. The bad news was that there was a chance, just a small one, that if help had been immediately summoned, she might have survived. In Hilda’s case, living in an isolated mansion had worked against her.

  “What about the knife?” Annie had asked Dan.

  “We don’t know that it’s a knife, Annie. No weapon was found at the scene.” Dan had been uncharacteristically patient. “It could have been a ballpoint pen for all we know. What we do know is that whoever wielded the weapon used exceptional force. Which pretty much rules you out, strong as you are. Our killer was a one-man fighting machine—and he was mad as hell. Oh, and she’d been dead at least eighteen hours before you found her. Hank, the coroner, said it’s real hard to tell once rigor starts to wear off. But he did say lividity was well set in.”

  Annie hadn’t the slightest idea what lividity meant and certainly wasn’t going to ask Dan for a definition. That’s what Google was for. She silently counted backward, and realized, miserably, that Hilda probably had been murdered the day after their angry phone conversation. She then thought of Marcus’s strong, well-manicured hands. It didn’t seem possible that he used them for anything except signing merger agreements or opening up a good bottle of wine.

  “Annie? You still there?”

  “Yeah, Dan.”

  “We’re still waiting for the blood tests and fingerprint analyses. I’ll keep you informed. But remember, not a word to anyone, and that includes the stud we arrested yesterday. ’Course, we can’t talk to him anyway since he’s lawyered up.” Dan sounded thoroughly disgusted.

  After the call, Annie’s thoughts flitted again to the registration papers that she’d pulled from Hilda’s lifeless hands and, less easily, from the pup’s hungry mouth. She’d thought of telling Dan about them, but the more time went on, the less appealing the idea became. While she didn’t think Dan really would charge her with anything, she realized there were legal terms to describe what she’d done. “Obstruction of justice” and “evidence tampering” were the first that came to mind. Right now, the Scotch-taped papers were safely stored in a cardboard box under her bed, along with her birth certificate and Social Security card. She knew she’d have to deal with the issue sometime, but not giving the papers to Dan immediately made it more difficult to explain why they were still in her possession. She wasn’t sure she even knew the answer to that. Besides, she couldn’t think of any way the papers pointed to Marcus’s guilt, and that was the whole reason she was here in town early on a Friday morning.

  Annie took several deep breaths before getting out of her pickup to join the fray. She didn’t often have cause to visit the courthouse or adjacent administrative building, but when she did, the walls echoed off her hollow footsteps as she walked down the silent halls.

  Today, things were different. This was the day of reckoning for the unfortunate Suwana County residents (and visitors) who recently found themselves afoul of the law. At 9:00 A.M. sharp, Judge Casper would enter the courtroom and the process of sorting would begin. One by one, those charged with crimes would walk to the defense table, hear their crimes recited in open court, enter a plea, and, if they were lucky, be released on bail. Most of those approaching the bench would be clad in the county jail’s pumpkin orange jumpsuits and flip-flops. Marcus would be one of those people.

  As soon as she entered the courthouse, Annie was caught up in a swarm of lawyers and families, all jostling for space along the crowded hallways to talk before the court session began. Edging her way down the corridor to the county’s sole courtroom for criminal cases, she noted that while all the lawyers looked pretty much alike, the families they represented were as diverse as the rows of tomato plants soon to be on sale at the local hardware store. The townies were i
nstantly recognizable. They all were dressed in Northwest Classic, a mixture of Birkenstocks, L.L. Bean, and Lands’ End, with a few retro hippie touches thrown in. County residents farther out sported a multitude of fashion statements, culled from the half-dozen secondhand stores in the area. There seemed to be an inordinate number of babies in the crowd. Having children could lead anyone to a life of crime, Annie thought, but this was downright appalling.

  She squirmed her way through the courtroom doors, noting that there was hardly a seat left inside. Panicking, she looked around until she spotted six unused inches next to a massive woman who looked as if she could spread her girth along the entire bench if she exhaled. Annie walked over and politely gestured that she wished to sit down. The woman glared, but grudgingly moved her rump an infinitesimal space to the right. Annie smiled sweetly and plopped down. The woman quickly moved over even farther.

  It suddenly dawned on Annie why the courtroom was filled to capacity on a day most people would rather be inside by the woodstove. Of course. It was Hilda’s death and the arrest of her supposed murderer. Annie didn’t watch TV. It wasn’t that she had a political agenda that caused her to eschew the media; she simply didn’t have time to watch. She had completely forgotten that the airwaves would be full of the news about Marcus’s arrest and all the lurid details of Hilda’s death.

  Her heart sank. Slowly looking around, she saw the inevitable TV cameras and photographers staked out in one corner. Maybe Judge Casper would throw them out, though she doubted it. The judge was up for reelection in the fall, and he could use the publicity.

  But Judge Casper pleasantly surprised Annie. He promptly dismissed the media with barely concealed distaste and started the docket agenda as if it were any other day in the life of his court. Marcus was the next-to-last inmate to be called. Annie’s heart beat faster as he approached the bench with an attorney who clearly was from out of town. Marcus was still in the county-issued jumpsuit, but Annie noticed that the V in the top revealed a very athletic chest with a generous sprinkling of black chest hair. Damn, the man was good-looking. Annie looked down and squeezed her fists, then looked up as Marcus’s attorney began to speak.

  “Your Honor, I am the attorney of record for Mr. Colbert, and we intend to post bail in the amount of $100,000 immediately following this proceeding. Mr. Colbert is a very busy man who has businesses throughout Northern California. I would ask that the court allow Mr. Colbert to travel back to his primary residence and workplace so that he can continue his life as normally as possible while the investigation continues.”

  The judge had been scribbling on a notepad throughout this speech, but now looked up.

  “Investigation continues? I was under the impression that Mr. Colbert had already been charged with first-degree murder.”

  A subdued wave of laughter wafted through the room until Judge Casper’s gavel came crashing down.

  Marcus’s attorney cleared his throat.

  “I am, of course, quite aware that Mr. Colbert has now been formally charged, but in the weeks ahead, we intend to prove that this charge was prematurely made and should be dismissed with prejudice in short order.”

  Annie glanced at the prosecutor, Judy Evans, who was impeccably attired in a business suit that looked every bit as expensive as the one Marcus had worn yesterday. Dan stood beside her, whispering furiously in her ear.

  Without giving any indication of Dan’s presence, Judy walked forward a few steps and stopped.

  “Your Honor. We would not have brought this most serious charge of Homicide One if we did not firmly believe that we had brought the right man to justice. However, I look forward to seeing what Mr. . . .” She turned to Marcus’s defense attorney.

  “Fenton. James Addison Fenton III.”

  “What Mr. Fenton will provide us in the ‘weeks ahead.’ Our investigation is not yet closed, but I strongly believe that what the Sheriff’s Office will uncover, based on tests and so forth already in the works, will only substantiate our claim that Mr. Colbert is responsible for his wife’s death. Furthermore, we would object to Mr. Colbert’s being released and able to return to California at this time. He is a man of considerable means and has the wherewithal to go anywhere in the world he so chooses. I consider him to be an extreme flight risk.”

  Judy Evans stepped back smartly and stood by the state’s table.

  Judge Casper glared at Marcus’s attorney. “Mr. Fenton?”

  “Your Honor, Mr. Colbert has absolutely no criminal record and is prepared, of course, to surrender his passport. The affidavit of probable cause is specious, at best. It links my client to the crime merely by the existence of a single phone message. We have not yet had time to analyze that message to see if, in fact, it is the voice of our client.”

  Mr. Fenton peered over his horn-rimmed glasses at the prosecutor.

  “Neither, I suspect, has the state. In fact, Your Honor, the state informs me the discovery in this case amounts to a single three-page report written by”—Mr. Fenwick ruffled through his papers on the defense table—“by a Sheriff Dan Stetson. It is essentially a report of a death, Your Honor. A horrible death, we stipulate, but with not a single fact that points to my client as the responsible party.

  “There were more than six men working on the property when Mr. Colbert’s wife was killed. Yet not one of them has been interviewed. As far as I can see”—Mr. Fenton flipped through the flimsy sheriff’s report—“only one worker has been interviewed to date, and he was off the property at the time of Mrs. Colbert’s death. As was my client.”

  The attorney turned and faced the judge.

  “Your Honor, I know as an out-of-town attorney, I am persona non grata among many of the officials of the court. Yet, I feel compelled to tell you that in Santa Clara County, such a case would not even get to this stage. There is simply not one shred of evidence that ties Mr. Colbert to the crime. He is as heartbroken over his wife’s death as anyone would be. It is inconceivable that he would become a fugitive. At the moment, he has the extremely distressing job of planning his wife’s funeral and dealing with the grief attendant to that process.”

  Wheeling around, he glared at Judy Evans, who took an involuntary step backward and put one hand to her chest.

  “Mr. Colbert is just as interested as the prosecution to find the perpetrator of this crime. I suggest she marshal her efforts in that direction rather than trying to pigeonhole my client into a premature posture of guilt.”

  There was a small intake of breath among the court audience, Annie included.

  Judge Casper banged his gavel again.

  “Ms. Evans!”

  Judy Evans walked quickly up to the bench.

  “Is Mr. Fenton correct? Is this report the sole basis of your decision to arrest this man?

  Judy nervously fiddled with the chain of faux pearls around her neck.

  “Well, Your Honor, as I said, we’re in the middle of conducting a number of critical evidentiary tests, and you know how the crime lab is backed up just now. . . .”

  “Well, in that case, I see no reason to make the defendant wait while the state finishes putting its case together. I’m going to release Mr. Colbert, with the stipulation that he post the appropriate bail, and allow him to return to California until such time that his presence is again required in court.”

  Mr. Fenton cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Counselor?” Judge Casper clearly was not amused by the subtle interruption.

  “While my client intends to return to California within a few days, he does need time to make arrangements for his wife’s body. He also needs to talk to his late wife’s staff and review her business records to make sure Mrs. Colbert’s obligations are dealt with in a timely manner. This will require access to at least her business office, which I believe is located in the equestrian area and not the residence.”

  Mr. Fenton stepped back with a feigned air of modesty while Judge Casper decided how to respond.

  Annie could see that
the judge was fuming, but whether it was because of the incompetency of the Sheriff’s Office or because of Mr. Fenton’s requests, she couldn’t tell. For a full minute, the judge did not take his eyes off Marcus’s lawyer. Annie sat rapt, watching the stare-down. She was betting on the judge. In the end, it was a draw.

  Still glaring at Mr. Fenton, Judge Casper demanded, “Ms. Evans? Is Mrs. Colbert’s body ready to be released to the family?”

  The prosecutor nodded curtly. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Then, Mr. Fenton, you can instruct your client that he may begin making arrangements for his wife’s body as of today.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” Mr. Fenton said it with feeling.

  “However, Your Honor,” Judy politely interjected, “the property is still a crime scene. Detectives are still gathering evidence. It’s likely to remain so for several days, perhaps as long as a week.”

  Judge Casper looked pained.

  “Ms. Evans, I don’t want to dictate how the Sheriff’s Office conducts its investigations, but it seems to me that under the circumstances, we could allow Mr. Colbert access to areas that have already been searched. Would that include his wife’s office?”

  Judy hurriedly put up one finger and trotted over to Dan. They whispered tersely to each other for more than a minute. Then Judy returned.

  “Your Honor, we can grant Mr. Colbert access to the equestrian buildings, including Mrs. Colbert’s office, as soon as this afternoon. However, we do request that sheriff’s deputies be stationed in any room Mr. Colbert might enter. And we request that he take nothing from the premises with him.”

  “Your Honor.” Annie thought Mr. Fenton sounded on the verge of a hissy fit.

  The judge put up one of his large palms to silence him.

  “Mr. Fenton, your client may access the areas Ms. Evans has outlined under the rules she has set forth.”

  Mr. Fenton gave a short yelp.

  “With the exception of Ms. Evans’s request not to take business files with him. Ms. Evans, your detectives have had sufficient time to search and seize anything they believe to be of evidentiary value. I am not going to prohibit Mr. Fenton from being able to take care of his wife’s business simply because you want more time to probe. That time has come and gone, at least in reference to these buildings. Furthermore, Mr. Colbert will be allowed to talk to his wife’s staff, in the presence of sheriff’s deputies, about matters that concern the running of the ranch. Do I make myself clear?”