My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  “But you were so good.”

  “Too many painful memories. The last time I saw Sarah was the 1993 Championship in Olympia.”

  “Is that why you also never come back to Cedar Grove? Because the memories are too painful?”

  “Some,” she said.

  “And yet you’re about to dig up those memories all over again.”

  “Not dig them up, Dan. Hopefully bury them for good.”

  CHAPTER 22

  After dinner, Tracy walked into the den and picked up a golf club leaning against the wall. At the other end of a narrow strip of Astroturf was what looked like a tin ashtray.

  “Do you play?” Dan stood in the kitchen drying the last of the dishes and stacking them into the cupboards.

  She lined up a golf ball, tapped it, and watched it roll down the Astroturf. It hit the ashtray, rolled over the top, and kept going, rattling along the hardwood to the baseboard, drawing Rex and Sherlock’s attention from where they’d been lounging on the rug. “Like I said, not a lot of time for hobbies.”

  “You’d pick it up quick; you were always a good athlete.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Nonsense. You just need the right instructor.”

  “Yeah? Can you recommend anyone?”

  He set down the bowl he’d been drying, walked into the room, and set another golf ball at her feet. “Stand over the ball.”

  “You’re going to give me a lesson?”

  “I paid a lot of money to be a member of a country club. I was determined to get something out of it. Come on, stand over the ball.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Feet shoulder-width apart.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I’m a serious guy.”

  “Not the guy I remember.”

  “Yes, but I told you I’ve changed. I’m a hardened lawyer.”

  “And I’ve had hand-to-hand combat training.”

  “I’ll remember that if I ever need a bodyguard. Now turn around. Feet shoulder-width apart.”

  She smiled and did as he said. Dan stepped close behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He touched her hands, trying to adjust her grip. “Loosen up. Relax. You’re strangling it.”

  “I thought you were supposed to keep your arms stiff,” she said, feeling suddenly warm.

  “Your arms, not your hands. Soft hands. Light touch.”

  He placed his hands over hers on the shaft of the club, his breath warm against her neck, his voice soft in her ear. “Bend your knees.” He touched the back of her knees with his own to make hers flex.

  She laughed. “Okay. Okay.”

  “Now, it’s a nice easy stroke back and forth, like a pendulum.”

  “That I can relate to,” she said.

  “I thought you might.”

  He guided her arms back and gently forward. The putter struck the ball and sent it rolling slowly down the green carpet. This time when it hit the tin cup the sides folded and the ball rolled up and came to rest in the center.

  “Hey,” she said. “I made it.”

  “You see,” Dan said, his arms still around her, “I may not be any good in chemistry but I could teach you a thing or two.”

  She’d closed her eyes, imagining what she might do if Dan were to suddenly kiss her neck. Her knees felt weak at the thought.

  “Tracy?”

  “Huh?”

  He let go of her arms. “Maybe we should talk about your file?”

  She let out the breath she had been holding. “Yeah, I think that would be good. But first, bathroom?”

  “Beneath the stairs.”

  Tracy found the bathroom, shut the door, and held on to the edge of the sink. In the mirror, her reflection stared back with flushed cheeks. She took a moment to regroup, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water on her face. After drying her hands on a Boston Red Sox hand towel, she returned to the kitchen.

  Dan stood near the table flipping through the pages of a yellow legal pad, each one filled with notes. He’d placed Tracy’s file in the center of the table and he’d also refilled their wine glasses. “Do you mind if I stand? I think better on my feet.”

  “Be my guest.” She sat at the table and took a much-needed sip of wine.

  Dan said, “I have to tell you, I was skeptical when you came in this morning. I really thought I was just humoring you.”

  “I know.”

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “I’m a detective, Dan.” She set down her glass. “I’d be skeptical too. Ask me what you want.”

  “Let’s start with the traveling salesman, Ryan Hagen.”

  Vance Clark stood at the counsel’s table. “The State calls Ryan P. Hagen.”

  Edmund House, seated beside his court-appointed defense attorney, long-time Cedar Grove resident DeAngelo Finn, turned for the first time since he’d entered the courtroom in handcuffs. Clean-shaven with his hair cut short, House looked like an East Coast prep student. He was dressed in gray slacks, the collar of a white button-down shirt protruding above a black V-neck sweater. His gaze locked on Hagen as he entered the courtroom, looking like he attended the same imaginary prep school in khakis, a blue sport coat, and a paisley tie, but then House’s eyes shifted across the packed gallery and came to rest on Tracy. It made her skin crawl and she reached for Ben’s hand, squeezing it tight.

  “Are you all right?” Ben whispered.

  Hagen pushed through the gate in the railing and took the witness stand. With thinning hair parted down the middle, Tracy thought Hagen had elfin features. Vance Clark walked the traveling auto-parts salesman through his job and how it required him to be on the road as many as twenty-five days each month, traveling throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

  “Is it unusual for you to not keep abreast of the local news?”

  “Not unless it’s my Mariners or my Sonics.” Hagen had the easy smile of someone in sales and looked to be enjoying the spotlight. “I’m not much for picking up an out-of-town newspaper or watching the evening news when I get to my hotel. I usually look for a game.”

  “So you were unaware of Sarah Crosswhite’s abduction?”

  “I hadn’t heard about it, no.”

  “Can you tell the jury how you did come to hear about it?”

  “Sure.” Hagen turned to face the jurors, five women and seven men, all white. Two alternates sat in chairs just outside the railing. “I got home one night from an account at a reasonable hour, for a change. I was having a beer on the couch and watching my Mariners when a story came on during a break about a missing woman from Cedar Grove. I have a number of clients up that way, so I paid attention. They showed a picture of her.”

  “Did you recognize the woman?”

  “I’d never seen her.”

  “What happened next?”

  “They said she’d been missing a while, and they showed a photograph of her truck, a blue Ford, abandoned along the shoulder of the county road. That jarred my memory.”

  “Jarred it how, Mr. Hagen?”

  “I’d seen the truck before. I was certain it was the truck I saw one night when I was driving back home from visiting accounts up north. I remembered because not many people use the county road anymore, with the interstate, and it was raining hard that night and I thought, ‘Bummer of a night to have your truck break down.’ ”

  “Why did you drive the county road that evening?”

  “It’s a shortcut. You learn them all when you drive as much as I do.”

  “Did you remember the particular night?”

  “Not initially, no. But I remembered it was in the summer because the storm surprised me. I’d even debated not taking the county road because of it. It’s dark. There aren’t any street lights.”

  “Were you subsequently able to determine the night?”

  “I keep a calendar of my appointments and went and checked. It was August 21.”

  “Of what year?”

>   “1993.”

  Hagen had his calendar in his lap. After introducing it into evidence, Clark asked that it be shown to the jury. Then Clark asked Hagen, “And do you recall anything else about that evening?”

  “I remembered that I’d seen a red truck. It was driving toward me.”

  “And why would you remember that?”

  “Like I said, there were no other cars on the county road that night.”

  “Did you get a look inside the cab?”

  “Not really, no. But I got a good look at the truck. It was a Chevy stepside. Cherry red. You don’t see too many of those. It’s a classic.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “The news program put up a phone number for the Sheriff’s Office, so I called and told the person what I’d seen. I got a call back from the sheriff saying he was following up. So I told him what I just told you.”

  “Did you recall anything else while talking to Sheriff Calloway?”

  “I recall thinking that I had stopped to get gas and something to eat that night, and thinking that maybe if I hadn’t, I could have reached that girl first.”

  DeAngelo Finn objected and asked that the statement be stricken. Judge Sean Lawrence, a big man with a full head of red hair, sustained it.

  Clark left that final thought with the jury and sat.

  Finn stepped forward, notepad in hand. Tracy knew DeAngelo and his wife, Millie. Her father cared for Millie, who had debilitating arthritis. Balding, Finn parted his hair low on his head and combed it over the top. No more than five foot six, the hem of his suit pants dragged on the marble floor as he made his way to the podium, and the cuffs of his jacket reached the palms of his hands, as if he’d bought the suit off a department store rack that morning and hadn’t had time to have it tailored.

  “You say you saw this truck along the shoulder. Did you see anyone standing beside the truck or walking along the road?” Finn had a high-pitched voice that the expansive courtroom swallowed.

  Hagen said he had not.

  “And this red truck you claim to have seen, you didn’t get a look in the cab, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you didn’t see a blonde woman in that cab, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  Finn pointed at House. “And you didn’t see the defendant in that cab, did you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t catch the license plate number?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you claim to recall this truck that you admit you saw for just a fraction of a second on a dark and rainy evening?”

  “It’s my favorite truck,” Hagen countered, the salesman’s smile returning. “I mean, cars and trucks are what I do for a living. It’s my job to know them.”

  Finn’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His eyes shifted between his notepad and Hagen several times. After several uncomfortable seconds, Finn said, “So your focus was on the truck and you didn’t see anyone in the cab. No further questions.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Dan flipped through his notes. “I’m having a hard time believing that, seven weeks after the fact, Hagen made note of a red truck he passed briefly on a dark road in heavy rain. Finn never really explored it in cross-examination?”

  Tracy shook her head. “He also never questioned Hagen about the news station Hagen claimed to be watching, or sent subpoenas to get copies of any of the newscasts during that period.”

  “What would he have found if he had?”

  “I have every tape of every newscast. I didn’t find any newscast even remotely like the one Hagen described during the time period he claims to have seen it. Sarah’s disappearance was old news by then. You know how it is. The press, police, everyone in town was absorbed with it initially, but as the weeks passed, so did their interest. I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.”

  “What about the reward?”

  “That also never came up at trial.”

  Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.”

  Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes.

  Far from it.

  Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?”

  “About two months later.”

  “Can you explain the circumstances?”

  “We got a witness tip.”

  “And can you tell the jury where that tip led?”

  “To Ryan Hagen.”

  “You interviewed Mr. Hagen?”

  “I did,” Calloway said, and over the next five minutes he confirmed what Hagen had testified the prior day.

  “And what was the significance of the red Chevy pickup?”

  “I knew Parker owned a red Chevy and I remembered seeing it in his yard the morning Sarah was reported missing.”

  “Did you confront the defendant with this new evidence?”

  “I told him we had a witness. I asked if he had anything to add.”

  “And what did the defendant say?”

  “At first he didn’t say much, except that I was harassing him. Then he said, ‘Okay, yeah, I was driving that night.’ ”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He said he’d been drinking at a bar in Silver Spurs and was driving home on the county road because he was afraid of being pulled over on the interstate. He said he passed a blue Ford truck on the shoulder and a little farther down saw a woman walking in the rain. He said he gave her a ride to an address in Cedar Grove, dropped her off there, and that was the end of it. He said he never saw her again.”

  “Did he identify the woman?”

  “I showed him a photograph and he positively identified Sarah Crosswhite.”

  “Did he provide the address where he claimed to have driven her?”

  “Not the address, but he described Sarah’s home.”

  “Did Mr. House say why he didn’t tell you this when you first questioned him?”

  “He said he’d heard in town that a woman was missing, saw one of the fliers, and recognized the photograph on the flier as the woman he gave a ride to. He said he was afraid nobody would believe him.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Finn objected and Lawrence sustained it.

  “What did you do next, Sheriff Calloway?”

  “I brought the information to your attention and asked that you secure search warrants for Parker House’s property and truck.”

  “Did you take part in those search warrants?”

  “I executed them, but we brought down crime scene investigators from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab to do the forensic work. Based on the evidence located that day, we arrested Edmund House.”

  “Did you talk with him again?”

  “In custody.”

  “And what did Mr. House tell you?”

  Calloway turned his focus from Clark to Edmund House, who sat with his hands in his lap, face impassive. “He smiled. Then he said we would never convict him, not without a body. He said if the prosecutor cut him a deal, he’d tell me where to find Sarah’s body. Otherwise, he said, I could go to hell.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Dan paced near the flat-screen te
levision. They’d moved to the family room. Tracy sat on the couch listening as Dan alternately asked questions and thought out loud.

  “The obvious question is, if Calloway was telling the truth, why would Edmund House change his story? He’d already spent six years in prison, which means he’d likely received a pretty good legal education. One has to assume he would have known that changing his alibi would be enough for Calloway to get the search warrants. And if he was going to change his alibi, why would he tell Calloway he’d been drinking at a bar in Silver Spurs, something Calloway could so easily refute, though he apparently never did?”

  Tracy said, “I spoke to every bartender in Silver Spurs. No one remembered Edmund House, and no one remembered Calloway coming in and asking any questions.”

  “Another reason to suspect Calloway lied about the confession,” Dan said.

  “Something else. Finn never cross-examined Calloway about it at trial,” Tracy said.

  “A mistake, for sure,” Dan agreed, “but that’s not what got House convicted. What got him convicted was what they found at the property.”

  Late in the afternoon, the storm intensified, causing the lights hanging from the courthouse’s ornate box-beam ceiling to flicker. The wind had also kicked up, the trees outside the courtroom windows now swaying violently, their limbs shimmering.

  “Detective Giesa,” Vance Clark continued, “with respect to the truck, would you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you found?”

  Detective Margaret Giesa looked more like a runway model than a detective, with long, light-brown hair and blonde highlights. Perhaps five foot four, she looked considerably taller in four-inch heels and wore well a gray, pinstriped pants suit. “We located multiple strands of blonde hair varying in lengths from eighteen to thirty-two inches.”

  “Would you show the jurors exactly where your team found these strands of hair?”

  Giesa left her chair and used a pointer to direct the jury’s attention to a blown-up photograph of the interior of the red Chevy stepside that Clark had set on an easel. “On the passenger side, between the seat and the door.”