After Dark

by Phillip Margolin

  Reynolds looked down at his plate for a moment, then directly at his associate.

  "The worst words a lawyer can hear is a verdict of death for his client.

  You don't ever want to hear those words, Tracy. I heard them for the first time in the case I tried against Eddie Brace."

  "What went wrong?"

  "Only one thing. Brace stumbled along, I tried a brilliant case, but the jury was for hanging. They really wanted to see my client die. With hindsight I could see that it really didn't matter who tried the case, my man was going to die if a jury was deciding the matter. Brace knew that. He knew his people. That's why he tried so hard to convince me to take the deal. Not because he was afraid he would lose, but because he knew he couldn't lose."

  "But Joel's case... It's different. The judge might have . . ."

  "No, Tracy. Not while there was any kind of argument on Folger's side.

  I know you don't believe that now, but you will after a while. What's important is that I know the judge would have found a way to keep the confession in and the jury would have no sympathy for a spoiled rich kid who took the life of that lovely girl."

  Reynolds looked at his watch.

  "I'm going to take a walk, then turn in. There'll be a limousine waiting to take us to the airport at seven. Get a good night's sleep.

  And don't let this case keep you up. We did a good job. We did what we had to do. We kept our client alive."

  Matthew Reynolds closed the door to his hotel room and stood in the dark. The sterile room was immaculately clean, the covers on his bed neatly tucked in at the corners, a chocolate mint centered on the freshly laundered pillowcase. It looked this way every night.

  Reynolds stripped off his jacket and laid it over the back of a chair.

  The conditioned air dried the sweat that made his shirt stick to his narrow chest. Outside the hermetically sealed window, Atlanta sweltered in the sultry August heat. The lights of the city flickered all around.

  This was the last time Reynolds would see them. Tomorrow he would be home in Portland and away from the reporters, his client and this case.

  Reynolds turned away from the window and saw the red message light blinking on the phone next to his bed. He retrieved the message and punched in Barry Frame's number, anxious to hear what he had uncovered in the Coulter case. "Bingo!" Frame said.

  "Tell me," Reynolds asked anxiously.

  "Mrs. Franklin hung a picture over the bullet hole. This horrific black velvet Elvis. The cops never thought to move it because they have no aesthetic taste. Fortunately for Jeffrey Coulter, I do.)

  Frame paused dramatically.

  "Stop patting yourself on the back and get to it."

  "You can relax, Matt. We don't have to worry about this case anymore.

  I' guarantee Griffen will dismiss once she reads the criminologist's report. See, the picture was too high. No one would hang it like that.

  Not even someone with Mrs. Franklin's awful taste. It bothered me in the crime-scene photos and it was worse when I walked into the hall.

  "In Jeffrey's version of the shooting, he fell back when Franklin pulled out the gun. When he tripped, Franklin's shot missed him. Jeffrey is tall. If Franklin shot for the head, he'd be aiming high. We found a snapshot in the family album showing the hallway three months before the shooting with the Elvis on another wall. I moved the picture and there was a freshly puttied hole. We've got everything on videotape, as well as stills. We dug out the putty. The expert's pretty certain its a bullet hole. The bullet's gone. Ma Franklin must have deep-sixed it."

  "When will we have the criminologist's report?"

  "By the end of the week."

  "Let's step up the background investigation of Franklin. Put another man on it if necessary."

  "What for? The fact that Mrs. Franklin puttied over the bullet hole, then moved the picture to conceal it, proves she was covering up for her son. Griffen will have to drop the charges."

  "Never bank on the prosecution acting reasonably, Barry. Abigail Griffen is not the type to roll over. She may not draw the same conclusions from the evidence that we did. We go full-bore until the moment the indictment is dismissed."

  "You got it," Barry said wearily. "I'll put Ted French on the backgrounder. How are things in Atlanta?"

  "Joel took the deal."

  "That's what you hoped, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "How are his parents doing?"

  "Not well." Matthew paused for a moment and rubbed his eyes. "I'm flying back tomorrow, Barry, but don't tell anyone. I want to take a few days off."

  "Are you okay? You don't sound so good."

  "I'm tired. I need some time to myself."

  "I've been telling you that for years. When do you land? I'll pick you up at the airport."

  "I'll be in at three-ten. And, Barry, that was good work at the Franklin house. Very good work."

  Matthew hung up. His eyes were glazed with fatigue and he was bone weary. He lay back on the bed in the dark and thought about Joel Livingstone and Jeffrey Coulter back in Portland and Alonso Nogueiras in Huntsville, Texas, and all the other people for whom he was the sole difference between life and death. It was too much for one man to do and he was beginning to think he just couldn't do it anymore.

  Matthew thought about Tracy Cavanaugh's drive and desire.

  There had been a time when he moved from one cause to another with the energy of a zealot. Now the cases just seemed to grind him down, and it was taking all his strength to stand up after he was done with them. He needed time away from the clients and the ever present specter of death.

  He needed something . . . someone.

  Matthew turned on his side and hugged a pillow to his cheek.

  The linen felt cool and comforting. He closed his eyes and remembered the way Abigail Griffen looked in one of the photographs he kept in the manila envelope in the lower right drawer of his desk. The photo was his favorite. In it, she stood relaxed and happy outside the French windows of her home, her arms at her side, her right knee slightly bent, looking toward the woods, as if she was listening to some faint sound that carried to her on the wind.

  Chapter NINE

  The morning had been cool and overcast, but the fog burned off by noon and the sun was shining. Abbie circled the cabin taking pictures from different angles with her Pentax camera. She tried to capture the cabin from every angle, because she needed a photographic record of the place that in all the world had come to be her favorite.

  When she was finished photographing the cabin, Abbie followed a narrow dirt path through the woods to a bluff overlooking the Pacific. She took some shots from the bluff, then walked down a flight of wooden steps to the beach.

  Abbie was wearing a navy-blue tee shirt, a bulky, hooded gray sweatshirt and jeans. She hung the camera around her neck and took off her sneakers and socks. There had been a storm the previous day and the Pacific was still in turmoil. Abbie pushed her toes through the sand until she reached the waterline. Gulls swooped overhead, She set up a shot, stepping sideways toward the bluff whenever the freezing water came too close. A wave rose skyward, spraying foam, then fell in a fury.

  Abbie finished the roll of film and continued down the beach.

  She loved the ocean and she loved the cabin. The cabin was the place she came to escape. She would awake with the sun, but stay in bed reading. When she was hungry, Abbie would whip up marionberry, ginger or some other type of exotic pancakes and a caff latte. She would nurse the latte while reading the escapist fiction she had no time for when she was in trial and which helped her to forget the grim work of prosecuting rapists and murderers. Then, for the rest of the day, she would continue to do absolutely nothing of importance and revel in her idleness.

  Abbie hunched her shoulders against a sudden gust of wind.

  The sea air was bracing. The thought of losing the cabin was unbearable, but she was going to lose it. The cabin belonged to Robert and he had made it clear that she woul
d never use it once the divorce was final, taunting her with the loss because he knew how dear the place was to her. It gave Abbie one more reason to hate him.

  The sun began to set. Abbie reached a place where the beach narrowed at the base of a high bluff. She turned for home, leaning forward to fight the tug of the sand. By the time she arrived at the stairs that led back up to the cabin, she was feeling melancholy. She sat on the lowest step and tied her sneakers. She would be able to buy another cabin, but she doubted she would find one that suited her so perfectly.

  Abbie rested her forearms on her thighs and lost herself in the rhythm of the waves. What would she do after the divorce? She would not mind being alone. She had lived alone before. She was living alone now.

  Living alone was better than living with someone who used you and lied to you. What she would miss was the special feeling of being in love she had experienced with Larry Ross and during the early days of her marriage to Robert. Abbie wondered if she would take the risk of falling in love again, knowing how easily love could be snatched away.

  When the chill reminded her of the advent of night, Abbie hoisted herself to her feet and climbed the stairs. She walked slowly along the short path through the woods. Something moved deep in the forest and Abbie froze, hoping it was a deer. She had been on edge since the attempted break-in at her house. When Matthew Reynolds commented that Charlie Deems was the type of person who would seek revenge, Abbie remembered that the burglar's physique vaguely resembled Deems's. The thought that a man like Deems might be stalking her was profoundly unsettling.

  Abbie waited nervously in the shadows cast by the pines, but the source of the sound remained a mystery. She returned to the cabin, showered, then made a nice dinner, which she ate on the front porch. She sipped a chilled Chardonnay that went well with the trout amandine and saffron rice pilaf. Overhead, the stars were a river of diamonds so sharp they hurt her eyes. They never looked like this in the city.

  Abbie loved to cook and usually felt upbeat after consuming one of her creations. Tonight, she was thinking about losing the cabin and she felt logy and maudlin. After dinner, she sipped a mug of coffee, but soon felt her eyelids drag. She emptied the coffee onto the packed earth below the porch rail and went inside.

  Abbie sat up in bed, certain she had heard a noise but unable to tell what it was. Her heart was beating so loudly, she had to take deep breaths to calm herself. The moon was only a sliver and the room was pitch black. According to the clock on her nightstand, she had only been asleep for an hour and a half.

  Abbie tried to identify the sound that had awakened her, but heard only the waves breaking on the beach. Just as she convinced herself that she was only having a bad dream, a stair creaked and her heart raced again.

  Abbie had taken to carrying her handgun since the attempted break-in, but as she reached for it, she remembered that her purse was downstairs.

  She had been too exhausted to change her clothes when she went to bed, so Abbie was wearing her tee shirt and panties and had tossed her sneakers, socks and jeans onto the floor next to the bed. She rolled onto the floor and slipped on her jeans and sneakers.

  There was a deck outside the bedroom window. Abbie grabbed the doorknob and tried to open the door quietly, but the salt air had warped the wood and the door stuck. Abbie pulled a little harder, afraid that the intruder would hear her if she jerked open the door. It would not move.

  Another step creaked and she panicked. The second she wrenched the door open footsteps pounded up the stairs toward her room. Abbie ran onto the deck. She slammed the deck door closed to slow the intruder, then she rolled over the low deck rail just as the door to her bedroom slammed open. For a brief moment, Abbie could see the silhouette of a man in her doorway.

  Then she was falling through the air and slamming against hardpacked earth.

  The deck door crashed against the outside wall and Abbie was up and running. A dirt trail ran between the woods and the edge of the bluff for a mile until it reached the neighbors' property.

  There was no fence and the trail was narrow, but Abbie streaked along it, praying she would not be followed.

  A hundred yards in was a footpath that led into the woods.

  Abbie's brain was racing as she weighed her choices and decided her chances of survival were better in the woods, where there were more places to hide. She veered to the left and shot down the trail, then moved off it and into the woods as silently as she could.

  Abbie crouched behind a tree and strained to hear the man who was chasing her. A second later, footsteps pounded by on the path. Abbie gulped air and tried to calm herself. She decided to move deeper into the woods. She would hide until daylight and hope the man would give up before then. She had almost regained her composure when she heard a sound on her right.

  Adrenaline coursed through her and she bolted into the underbrush, making no effort to be quiet. Her feet churned. She surged into the woods and away from the cliff, oblivious to the pain from branches that whipped across her face and ripped her shirt. Then she was airborne.

  She tried to cushion her fall but her face took the brunt of it.

  Blinding lights flashed behind her eyes.

  The air was momentarily crushed from her lungs. She hugged the earth, praying she would be invisible in the dark. Almost immediately, she heard the loud crack of branches breaking and the snap of bushes as they swung back after being pushed apart.

  The sound was nearby and there was no way she could run.

  On her right was a massive, rotting tree trunk. Abbie burrowed under it, pressing herself into the earth, hoping that the mass of the log would shield her.

  Something wet fell on Abbie's face. It started to move. Tiny legs scrambled across her lips and cheek. An insect! Then another and another. Abbie desperately wanted to scream, but she was afraid the insects would crawl into her mouth. She clamped her jaws shut and took in air through her nose. Every part of her wanted to bolt, but she was sure she would die if she did.

  The woods were silent. The man had stopped to reconnoiter.

  Abbie brought a hand to her face and brushed off the bugs. She expelled air slowly. Her heart was beating wildly in her ears and she calmed herself so she could hear.

  There was cool earth against her cheek and the silhouettes of tall evergreens against the night sky. Suddenly the space between two large trees was filled by the outline of a man. His back was to her, but she was certain he would see her if he turned and looked down. Abbie pressed herself closer to the log, praying that the man would not turn.

  He did. Slowly. A few inches more and he would see her. Abbie felt for a rock or a thick tree limb she could use as a weapon, but her hand closed on nothing of substance.

  Now the man was facing the log. He started to look directly at Abbie.

  Then the sky lit up.

  The ringing of the phone wrenched Jack Stamm out of a deep sleep. He groped for the receiver. When he knocked it off the cradle, the ringing mercifully ceased.

  District Attorney Stamm?

  Stamm squinted at the bright red numerals on his digital alarm clock. It was 4:47 A. M.

  "Who's this?"

  "Seth Dillard. I'm the sheriff in Seneca County. We met at a law-enforcement conference in Boise two years ago."

  "Right," Stamm said, trying to picture the sheriff and coming up blank.

  "What couldn't wait until morning?"

  "We have one of your people here. Abigail Griffen."

  "Is she all right?" Stamm asked, suddenly wide awake.

  "Yes, sir, but she's mighty shaken up."

  "Why? What happened?"

  "She says someone tried to kill her."

  Seneca County was two hours west of Portland and it was almost seven-thirty when Jack Stamm stopped beside one of the two county police cars that were parked in front of an A-frame that belonged to Evelyn Wallace, Abbie's neighbor. When Stamm stepped out of his car, he could see the sun through breaks in the trees and heard the dull shoos
h of the surf through the woods behind the house.

  A Seneca County sheriffs deputy opened the front door and Stamm showed his ID. The A-frame was small. A kitchen and the living room took up the ground floor. Abbie was huddled on the living-room couch wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cup of coffee. Evelyn Wallace, a slender woman in her mid-sixties, sat beside her.

  Stamm was shocked by the way Abbie looked. Her hair was uncombed, there were streaks of dirt on her cheeks and her eyes were bloodshot. Stamm also noticed a number of cuts and bruises on her face.

  "My God, Abbie. Are you all right?" Stamm asked.

  Abbie looked up at the sound of Stamm's voice. At first she did not seem to recognize her boss. Then she mustered the energy for a tired smile.

  "I'm exhausted but I'm okay. Thanks for coming."

  "Don't be ridiculous. Do you think I'd let you drive yourself to Portland after what the sheriff said."

  Before Abbie could answer, the door opened and a tall man with leathery skin and a salt-and-pepper mustache entered. He wore a Stetson and the uniform of the Seneca County sheriffs office.

  "Mr. Stamm?" asked the uniformed man.

  "Sheriff Dillard?"

  "Yes, sir. Thanks for comin'."

  The sheriff turned his attention to Abbie.

  "Do you think you're up to going back to the cabin? My men are almost through and I'd appreciate it if you could walk me through what happened."

  Abbie stood up. The blanket slipped down. She was wearing a tee shirt without abra, jeans and sneakers without socks, and she was covered with caked brown-gray mud from head to toe.

  "You're sure you're up to it, dear?" Mrs. Wallace asked.

  "I'm fine. Thank you so much, Mrs. Wallace. You've been wonderful."

  When Abbie was ready, she got in the sheriffs car. Stamm followed along a short driveway until they reached the highway.

  The sheriff turned left and drove for a little over a mile, then turned down the narrow dirt road that led to the Griffen cabin.

  Abbie and the sheriff were going inside by the time Stamm parked and climbed the steps to the front porch.