Unreasonable Doubt

by Vicki Delany

  Smith sometimes wondered who thought he was fooling whom.

  John Winters had joined the group by the back door of the art gallery and was talking to Ray Lopez, his detective constable. As Smith and Tocek approached, Winters went back inside.

  “Need me for anything more?” Tocek asked. Ron Gavin crouched on the ground, dabbing at a few spots of what looked like blood. Fortunately, there was very little of it.

  “No,” Gavin said.

  “Look, you gotta at least pick him up,” Evans said to Lopez.

  “No.”

  “Pick who up?” Smith said. “Do you know who did this?”

  “No, we do not,” Lopez said.

  “A known sex offender arrives in town and no more than a couple of hours later a woman’s attacked and you think that’s a coincidence?” Evans said. “When’s the last time we heard of a stranger attack around here, eh? It’s been months.”

  “A sex offender?” Smith said. “You don’t mean Walt Desmond? The court says he didn’t do it.”

  “Get real, Smith,” Evans snapped. “Do you believe everything the lawyers say?”

  “I don’t…”

  “I said leave it,” Lopez said. “We have no reason whatsoever to bring Walter Desmond in for this. Besides, our witness says it was a young man.”

  “Witnesses say a lot of things,” Evans said. “Not always true, even if they think it is. Desmond was seen heading toward town not more than an hour or so ago.”

  “We were told to stay away from him,” Smith said. “Didn’t you hear?”

  “I don’t need the likes of you to tell me what the chief’s orders were.” Evans glanced over Smith’s shoulder. She sensed Adam behind her. He said nothing. “I saw the guy walking down the street earlier, okay?” Evans said.

  “We have no more reason to question Desmond than anyone else you saw out walking tonight,” Lopez said. “Leave it, Dave.”

  For a moment Evans looked as though he were going to keep arguing. Then he abruptly deflated and walked away. He glared at Smith as he passed.

  “What was that about?” she said.

  Lopez shook his head. “Dave’s got a heck of a bee in his bonnet, but I don’t entirely blame him. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind asking Desmond what he was up to earlier myself, but John reminded me of the chief’s orders. That guy just being here is a can of worms.”

  “Let’s let these people get back to work,” Tocek said. “I feel like ice cream.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “You ever done any paddling, Molly?” Dawn Solway asked.

  Smith glanced up from the computer in the constable’s office. She was beginning her shift, checking in, reading over last night’s reports. The biggest incident of the night, by far, had been the attack on Eliza Winters.

  “Sure. I’ve kayaked all my life.”

  “I mean competitively. On a team. Like these dragon boats.” Solway had changed into shorts and tee-shirt before heading home after her shift.

  Smith shook her head. “Looks like fun, though.”

  “It does. I’ve been thinking I might like to give it a try. How about you?”

  “You mean join a team?”

  “You’re off Saturday, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve pulled a double shift today. Then I’m on afternoons tomorrow. I’ll be beat.”

  “Fresh air and exercise’ll perk you right up. The dragon boat people are having an open house at the river on Saturday. Anyone’s welcome to come by and give it a try. Game?”

  Smith had gone down to the park to see the women practice yesterday. She’d sat on a bench for a long time, just watching. The sleek, brightly colored boats moving low and fast across the water, powered only by the strength of the women’s muscles working in unison, appealed to her. “You’re on!”

  Solway grinned. “Good. See you Saturday. Everything, uh, okay with you and Adam after I left last night?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a grin. “All good. Norman got the call out and I helped, but we came up with nothing.” Before heading home, they’d gone for ice cream—triple chocolate fudge for Adam and a single maple walnut for her—and walked with Norman down to the park by the river. They’d held hands and exchanged nibbly little kisses while Norman sniffed at benches and lampposts, the chase forgotten, checking out the news from the dog neighborhood. Adam had tasted of chocolate and beer. And love. He always tasted of love.

  “Word’s spreading of the attack on Eliza,” Solway said. “I must have been stopped a dozen times last night.”

  “By the sounds of it, Merrill was the hero of the hour. It’s probably natural she’s going to be telling the story far and wide. How’s Mrs. Winters?”

  “Shook up, but she should be fine. She took a couple of punches, but she refused to go to the hospital.” Solway lowered her voice. “As you can imagine, John’s on the warpath. I swear, Molly, I’ve never seen anyone so silently angry in all my life.”

  “Could Eliza or Merrill identify the perp?”

  “The usual. White guy, average height, average weight, average age. Merrill said he was wearing a denim jacket; Eliza said he had on a gray sweatshirt.”

  “Typical.”

  “Catch you later.”

  It was seven in the morning. The sun was up, and outside the office windows traffic moved slowly, most of it heading into town bringing people to work. A quiet time. Time to catch up on paperwork. Tough about what happened to Mrs. Winters, but by the sounds of it she got off easy. Smith didn’t know Eliza Winters well and found her cool and distant the few times they’d met. She wasn’t the typical cop’s wife, that was for sure.

  Smith could only hope that when she and Adam had been together as long as Winters and his wife had, Adam would still love her that much. If the perp knew what was good for him, he’d be halfway across the country by now. Which was probably the case. There hadn’t been reports of any stranger assaults around town lately, so this was likely someone passing through. He’d be afraid the women could identify him if they saw him again, and be long gone.

  She turned to her computer and opened up Google. She searched for information about the Sophia D’Angelo/Walter Desmond case. Like pretty much everyone in town, she knew the bare bones of it. The murder itself had been largely forgotten over the years by anyone who didn’t know the people involved, but the arrival of lawyers from Waterston and Gravelle and the subsequent national publicity of the appeal brought it crashing back to the town’s radar.

  In the summer of 1990 when she was twenty-two years old, Sophia D’Angelo moved back to her hometown of Trafalgar from Victoria where she’d earned a BA in history. She found a job in a bank as a teller. Apparently she’d been unhappy working at the bank and living in the small town, and wanted to go back to Victoria. Her parents tried to encourage her to stay by offering to pay the down payment on a house for her.

  On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 15, 1991, Sophia D’Angelo asked permission to leave the bank early to view a property for sale. She left work at three-fifty and was observed by one of her coworkers getting into her car, which was parked in the staff lot behind the bank, and driving away.

  At four thirty-nine p.m., the Trafalgar City Police received a call from 176 Pine Street. Walter Desmond, Trafalgar resident and employee of Town and Country Realty, had arrived to show the house to a potential buyer. Sophia’s car was parked in the alley at the rear of the house. Desmond found the back door unlocked and upon entering had immediately discovered the body of Sophia in the kitchen. She had been tied up, sexually assaulted, and her throat had been slashed.

  Desmond claimed he’d been late to the meeting, having had a flat tire on the highway as he returned—alone—from showing a mountain property. At the time of the initial investigation, no one reported seeing him fixing his tire at the side of the road where he said the incident occurred, although
police found a tire in his trunk which had been punctured by a nail and the temporary replacement tire on the car.

  The homeowners had been in Ontario visiting relatives at the time of the murder. The house had been for sale for a long time, as it needed a substantial amount of work. Fingerprints lifted off the front and back doors and kitchen surfaces were all identified: the homeowners, Walt Desmond and two other realtors, both female, and the few people who had viewed the house, most of whom were women.

  Desmond had been arrested at his home two days later.

  On a quick superficial read, Smith thought the case looked weak. Yes, Sophia had an appointment to meet Desmond at the place she was killed. When police arrived Desmond had blood on him, but he claimed he’d touched the body to check if she was still alive. The back door had been unlocked, Desmond said, and that had surprised him. A key to the house was kept in a coded lockbox for access by real estate agents. The homeowners told police they had given a spare key to a neighbor to keep an eye on the house. The neighbor was a seventy-six-year-old woman who emphatically claimed she’d never lent the key to anyone. Smith read quickly. She’d need to search court documents, but it didn’t look as though the defense lawyer had bothered to point out that keys were easy to duplicate, or that the code to the lockbox was available to anyone who worked in a real estate office. The neighbor said that when Desmond visited the house, he always parked outside by the front sidewalk, where the car would be visible to anyone passing by. But that day he parked in the back alley, so no one could say what time he’d arrived. Desmond claimed he parked in the front or back alternately, depending on the direction he’d come from at any given time. But the defense had not raised that point in court.

  Innocent or guilty, Walt Desmond’s lawyer had put up a mighty shoddy defense.

  She checked another page. The lawyer had died of bowel cancer about a year later. She wondered if he were already ill at the time of the trial.

  According to one of her coworkers, Sophia had been wearing a new bracelet the day in question which she, the coworker, particularly admired. A tennis bracelet, thin and sleek made of gold with a single inset row of diamonds. The stones were glass, not real diamonds, and the gold was cheap, but it had still been very pretty. It had been a gift, Sophia boasted to her friend, from her boyfriend.

  The bracelet was not on her body when she was found. The police had searched the house, Walter Desmond’s home, yard and garbage, Desmond’s clothes and his wife’s clothes. The thin bracelet made of glass stones and impure gold had never been seen again.

  Smith pulled up the archives of the Trafalgar Daily Gazette. Some of their old stories had been converted to digital, anything to do with the D’Angelo killing among them. Tensions in town had been running strong, and not many people were on Walt Desmond’s side. She wondered about that. The man had no prior record of any sort, evidence wasn’t conclusive, he protested his innocence, yet people were quick to condemn him. She made a mental note to talk to her mother.

  One of Sophia’s coworkers at the bank testified that Sophia said she found Desmond “creepy.” The witness couldn’t say why, in that case, Sophia had continued to deal with him. The realtor’s office had other agents. A friend from high school testified that Sophia never liked to “make a fuss.” The defense lawyer had not objected to testimony that amounted to little more than hearsay and implications, and jurors were left free to conclude she hadn’t asked for another agent for that reason.

  Other than the fingerprints, no forensic evidence had been submitted.

  Walt Desmond was found guilty of first-degree murder, largely on the basis of the timing of the killing. Sophia left the bank at three-fifty saying she had an appointment to view the house at four o’clock, and was seen getting into her car at that time. The house was a five-minute drive from the bank. Desmond had left his other clients, at the property a good half-hour outside of town, at quarter after three. He phoned the police from the house phone at four-thirty-nine. He was known for his punctuality, witnesses said, and although he did have a flat tire in the trunk of his car, no one could say when the flat had happened. The police had not examined his car at the scene, leaving the prosecution to claim the man had deliberately run his car over a nail and changed the tire in his own garage after the killing, in order to set up an alibi.

  Sophia, by all accounts, was a timid young woman. A stickler for the rules, they said. Her parents and boss insisted that she would never have gone into the house without the realtor letting her in. Even if the door had been unlocked when she arrived, she would have waited outside in the cold.

  It was a weak case, built on timing and impressions of what the dead woman had supposedly been like. Timid. Shy. A stickler for the rules. No forensic evidence tied Desmond to the sexual assault or the killing. The victim did not have any defensive injuries, thus it was easy to conclude that she’d inflicted no wounds on her assailant. She had probably been taken by surprise and subdued immediately.

  Smith then accessed the police files, starting with the autopsy report, wondering why, if there had been a sexual assault, there hadn’t been any useable forensic evidence. She read quickly.

  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Oh, God.

  Poor Sophia had been raped with a knife.

  Blood would have been everywhere. No wonder Desmond had the woman’s blood on him. Anyone walking unknowingly into that room would have been covered in it. The knife was a kitchen one, a good sharp chef’s knife, taken from the wooden block on the kitchen counter. No prints, other than those of the homeowners, were found on the knife.

  But, the Crown claimed, Walt Desmond had been wearing gloves when the police arrived. The gloves had been soaked in blood.

  Sure he was, Smith thought. It was January. The gloves were light leather, not big bulky warm ones, the sort one would wear driving and might not remove before entering a house.

  Reading these reports, all these years later, and only a quick overview at that, led Smith to conclude the case had been so flimsy it never should have gone to court. Walter Desmond had a right to be in that house, where Sophia was killed, at the time he was. His excuse for being late was believable. He had no record of any sort, certainly not of violent attacks on women. A witness had testified that Sophia thought Desmond was creepy. The jury was left to conclude that meant he’d been making unwelcome advances on her. It was nothing but hearsay, and Smith was surprised it had even been allowed in court.

  Walt Desmond was found guilty of the murder of Sophia D’Angelo and sentenced to life in prison.

  Over all the years he’d steadfastly maintained his innocence, even knowing that confessing and expressing remorse would have helped him get parole.

  Then, a couple of years ago an organization dedicated to helping the wrongfully convicted took up his case. An appeal can only be launched if new evidence is found. Simple reinterpreting of previously given evidence or testimony isn’t enough. The lawyers, headed by Louise Gravelle, dug up that new evidence.

  And it looked mighty bad for the TCP.

  She’d begun to read the report of the appeal when her radio cracked to life. “Five-one?”

  “Five-one. Go ahead.”

  “Altercation at 1894 Victoria Street.”

  “I’m on it.” She abandoned the computer and headed out back for a car. She slapped the console. Brought up lights and sirens. “Isn’t that the Glacier Chalet?” she asked the dispatcher.

  “Yes. Ellie Carmine called it in. A man has attacked one of her guests.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Smith pulled her cruiser to a halt half on the sidewalk outside the gorgeous Victorian mansion. She ran down the path and bounded up the steps. The door opened before she reached it. A woman, not Mrs. Carmine, someone Smith didn’t know.

  “Thank heavens you’re here, Officer. He’s gone berserk.”

  Smith told dispatch she ne
eded backup and stepped cautiously into the front hall. “Follow me,” the woman said. She led the way into the dining room. The room was large enough for four tables of varying sizes, set with white tablecloths and pink-and-white china, and a long buffet with coffee and tea things, boxes of dry cereal, a crystal bowl full of sliced fruit, and containers of yogurt. The walls were papered in a dusty rose pattern; a chandelier dripping crystal tears hung in the center of the room; the windows were set into deep recesses overlooking the garden. Portraits in gilded frames, of stern-faced Victorian ladies and rigid mustachioed gentlemen, graced the walls.

  Smith glanced around the room quickly, checking everyone out. They were all on their feet, the remains of breakfast abandoned on the tables. Aside from the two men who’d apparently been fighting, the other occupants of the room were women of a similar age, dressed in identical outfits of black spandex shorts and red tee-shirts with the name of their team, Kelowna Pepper, across the front of them.

  The two combatants had been separated, placed in their own corners like boxers. The younger man seemed to have gotten the worst of it. He sat in a spindle-legged chair, more ornamental than designed to hold a person, with a box of tissues on his lap. A woman stood over him, holding his head back, pressing tissues to his nose. A pile of discarded tissues, red with blood, lay on the floor around him.

  He pulled his head away from the woman’s gentle hold as Smith came into the room. She recognized Walt Desmond immediately from the picture Winters had shown them.

  The other man was older, much older. He was pressed up against a corner, Ellie Carmine planted firmly in front of him, while a dragon boat woman, short but powerfully built with close-cropped gray hair, held his arm.

  Gino D’Angelo. Sophia’s father.

  Not good.

  “What’s going on here?” Smith feared she didn’t need to ask. Ellie Carmine had phoned the police station yesterday evening to say Walt Desmond was staying at her B&B. It was entirely possible she’d told half of Trafalgar as well. And so Sophia D’Angelo’s father had come looking for him. Outside, sirens announced the arrival of her backup.