Unreasonable Doubt

by Vicki Delany

  Meredith smiled. “Thank you. You have a story to tell. I’m here to listen.”

  The interior of the Bishop and Nun was empty at this time of day. The few customers had taken tables on the small square of sidewalk out front. Meredith had chosen this place precisely because she knew they were not likely to be interrupted.

  “My folks are getting old,” the man said. “Dad wants to fight, but I’m worried it will kill him. Mom’s got one foot in the grave already.”

  “Surely your parents understand they have nothing to fight with. Or against. The case is closed. Over. At least as far as Walter Desmond is concerned.”

  “It’s not over for them. It will never be over. Not for me, either. Sure, I’ve been able to get on with my life, more or less, but they’re stuck in time. Not a single thing has changed for them since Soph died, except their rapidly aging bodies and deteriorating health.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mr. D’Angelo?” Meredith asked. She kept her attention focused on his face. Her eyes were warm and soft, her expression one of sympathy and understanding. She’d practiced that expression in front of the mirror often enough.

  “Call me Tony.”

  She nodded. “I’m happy to, Tony.”

  Tony D’Angelo, younger brother of the late Sophia, only surviving child of Gino and Rose, arrived in Trafalgar yesterday afternoon. He lived in Toronto, he told Meredith on the phone, but came home at this difficult time to be with his family. Friends of his parents had been in and out of the house constantly, bringing cakes and casseroles, paying condolences, digging for gossip, exactly as if there’d been another death in the family. To the D’Angelos there might as well have been. The man who’d murdered Sophia was not only out of prison, but he was here, walking the streets of Trafalgar along with decent, law-abiding people. Everyone said it was a disgrace. At least that’s what they said to his parents’ faces. What they said behind their backs was another matter entirely. A lot of people were saying Desmond was innocent after all. That the police had screwed up.

  They were a pack of vultures, Tony thought, picking over the carcass, searching for the few last, juicy scraps. The people of Trafalgar had forgotten the D’Angelos and their tragedy a long time ago. They thought it was over when Walter Desmond went to prison. They carried on with their lives as Tony’s mother and father sank into a premature old age. That Tony himself had fled the mourning-drenched home as soon as he was old enough, and over the years his visits had become increasingly infrequent, was something he tried not to think about. He’d overheard Mrs. Morgenstern (bearing a chicken casserole) breathlessly telling Father McIntyre, who had not been the priest back in Tony’s childhood, that her daughter Meredith was home for a visit. Meredith had a very important job with a newspaper in Montreal, did Father McIntyre know? Meredith was doing very well for herself; she had a byline in the paper.

  Tony’s ears pricked up. He didn’t know who Meredith was, but if she worked for a big paper maybe she could help him out. Someone needed to tell his family’s side of the story. He’d later found her parents’ number in the phone book and gave her a call.

  He played with the beer mat on the table. He looked up, then back down again. “It’s just…” He paused to stutter. Women liked that. “We’re afraid my sister, the beautiful older sister who I adored, is being forgotten in all of this.”

  The waitress brought their drinks. “Want anything to eat?”

  “No,” Meredith said quickly. “Thank you.” The last thing she wanted was Tony munching his way through the conversation. The waitress gathered up the menus and left. Meredith pulled a small digital recorder out of her bag and placed it on the table. “Do you mind if I record what you have to say? Helps me remember when I write up my article.”

  “Not at all.” Tony sipped his beer.

  “You’re a good deal younger than Sophia,” Meredith began.

  “That’s wrong,” Tony said.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you said…”

  “She was born five years before I was. But I am much older than she will ever be.”

  Meredith dabbed at her right eye.

  “I adored her,” Tony said, “What was not to adore? She was beautiful, smart, and, above all, kind. She looked out for me. She taught me about girls, about the proper way to behave around them. My folks were pretty old-fashioned, they couldn’t teach me much about dealing with modern women. I’ll always be grateful that Soph was there to do that.”

  As he spoke Tony D’Angelo could almost believe himself. Sophia had never given him a minute of her time, and that had suited him just fine. One thing no one ever said about Sophia after she died was that she was a nasty-mouthed vindictive bitch. The first time he’d been interested in a girl, he’d been fourteen, awkward and shy, already wearing thick glasses and embarrassed about it. The girl herself—he didn’t even remember her name—had been all bones and angles and equally shy. The first time he brought her around to his house, Sophia, who at nineteen should have had better things to think about than ruining his life, whispered to her that Tony liked to masturbate with the door unlocked, hoping she’d walk in. He’d come back from the bathroom to find the girl gone, his confused mother holding a tray of pop and cookies, and Sophia with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

  That his parents had been old-fashioned was certainly true. He wondered now if part of the reason Sophia had turned out as mean as she was, was her way of getting out from under their control. Her curfew had been hours before her girlfriends’, so she climbed out the bedroom window to head back to the party. She hadn’t been allowed to date in high school, which meant she lied to the folks about where she was going and never brought her boyfriends home to meet them. Even he, the much younger brother, knew Sophia was a slut.

  Everyone knew that.

  Everyone but his parents.

  Being a slut got her killed, Tony believed. She would have agreed to meet Desmond at the empty house. Probably said she needed to test out the bedrooms or even the kitchen floor before deciding whether or not to buy. And she ended up getting more than she bargained for. As for finding him creepy, the way her work friend had suggested? Ha, sweet little Sophia liked the creep factor, all the better to rub it into her parents’ faces.

  Although, try as she might, they never saw it.

  He figured their old-fashioned ways caused her death. He’d told them so, on more than one occasion. He’d thrown it into their faces. They hadn’t wanted her living in the big city, where she’d be away from their control, so they gave her money to settle in Trafalgar. If she’d stayed in Victoria, she would have settled down eventually. She would have married a nice Italian boy and had the pack of grandchildren his mother so desperately wanted.

  “She was very popular at school,” Tony said to Meredith. “All the kids loved her.”

  Well, the boys sure loved her. Not a word of that had come out after her death. Respect for the dead and all that. Tony had followed Walter Desmond’s trial closely, his parents so wrapped up in their self-absorbed grief they didn’t have a thought to spare for their surviving child.

  He may have hated his sister. She might have been a slut and a thoroughly nasty person, but she didn’t deserve to die; she didn’t deserve to be murdered in the brutal way she was. At the hands of Walter Desmond. Now Desmond was out of jail and, by all accounts, back in Trafalgar.

  And every emotion, of hate for his sister, contempt for his parents, even a deeply suppressed guilt that as her brother he should have protected her—every feeling Tony D’Angelo had bottled up all these years was also back.

  He felt something touch his hand. He blinked. Meredith had reached out and laid her fingers lightly on his. He realized his fists were clenched. Embarrassed, he pulled away. “This must be so terribly difficult for you,” she said in her soft sympathetic voice. “I am in awe of the courage it must take to talk about it. I can see how deep
ly the pain still lies.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Let me digest all this, and put down some ideas for my story. I think it might have national appeal.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I planned to write a little story for the local papers, sort of a tribute to Sophia. With Desmond getting off, there’s potential for this to get attention all across the country, so I’m going to pitch it to my paper. People are interested in miscarriages of justice, but I’d like to remind my editors and the reading public that we mustn’t forget the victim in all of this.”

  “The only miscarriage, as you put it, is happening right now. That man killed my sister and he’s walking free.”

  “The appeal was very persuasive,” Meredith said. “A witness was located who put Desmond far away from the scene of your sister’s killing at the time it happened.”

  “Witnesses make mistakes. They can be bribed. They forget things. How come everyone’s so quick to believe the cops screwed up twenty-five years ago, but this new witness must be on the level, eh? Tell me that.”

  Meredith backtracked as fast as she could. “I totally see what you’re saying, Tony. Good heavens, that might be something to look into.”

  Tony saw the gleam in her eye. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I guess I get carried away when I think…”

  “I understand.” Meredith lifted her hand and indicated she was ready for the bill. “I’d love to have a picture of Sophia. The paper ran one the other day, but it was small and blurry. Do you or your parents have a nice one I can use? I can’t promise to get it into the paper, you understand, but I’d like to know what she looked like. I’d like to understand her better.”

  “Sure.” The bill arrived. Tony put up a token protest but, as expected, Meredith insisted on paying. “We can go around there now, if you like,” he said.

  “Your parents won’t mind me dropping in unannounced?”

  “They won’t mind. We can walk. It’s just a couple of blocks away.”

  They stepped outside and Meredith put on her sunglasses. “I haven’t asked about you, Tony,” she said. They walked up Elm Street and headed west on Front. “What do you do for a living?”

  The sidewalks were busy with shoppers and those browsing and enjoying the day. The restaurant patios were full as people relaxed in the sunshine. The Mountain in Winter Gallery was open; the front window featured a single watercolor painting by Nelson artist Maya Heringa—sweeping strokes of blue and orange and green representing mountains and sky, trees and water.

  “Did you hear what happened here Wednesday night?” Meredith said to Tony.

  “No, what?”

  “A woman was attacked in the alley. Thank goodness, a passerby ran him off, or who knows what might have happened.”

  “That’s too bad,” Tony said, not much interested. He stopped dead, the words caught in his throat. Up ahead a man and a woman were studying the menu outside a restaurant. The woman was middle-aged, tall and slim, but nothing worth a second glance.

  The man, however…

  If Tony D’Angelo had passed Walter Desmond in any other place at any other time, he wouldn’t have given him a second glance. A lot of years had passed, and the man had changed. He was older, of course, but also much harder looking. His gray hair was cropped short and he was bigger than Tony remembered. Not bigger, as in fat, but in muscle.

  “What’s the matter?” Meredith asked.

  “Will you look at that? As bold as brass. Walt Desmond himself.”

  “Heavens. I think you’re right. Tony, don’t do anything foolish.”

  He didn’t hear her.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Molly Smith was also watching Walter Desmond. Although she was trying very hard not to look as though she were. He was with one of the dragon boat women. They walked together like any longtime couple or two casual friends. They didn’t touch, but kept in step and chatted. That is, the woman chatted, and her laughter drifted down the street, while Desmond looked around, wide-eyed. It made Smith think of herself the first time she’d been to Seattle on a visit to her grandparents. The child who’d always lived near a small town and grew up with the wilderness as her playground had been awed by the zooming traffic on the highway, the tall buildings stretching overhead. “Catching flies?” her older brother Samwise said, and she snapped her mouth shut. After sticking her tongue out at him first, of course.

  She’d come out of the pedestrian walkway leading to the alley that ran behind the Mountain in Winter Gallery, thinking she could fry an egg under her Kevlar vest if she were so inclined, at the moment Desmond and the woman went past. The cops on the beat had been ordered to patrol the alleys and walkways regularly. That alley in particular was often used as a shortcut or as a place for shop employees to park. Not today. Today, everyone was spooked.

  Most everyone, anyway. She’d run off a pack of teenage boys hanging around the back of the convenience store who said they were on guard. Oh, great. Fourteen-year-old vigilantes hopped up on testosterone and action movies. That was sure to end well.

  The police had been ordered not to interfere with Walter Desmond in any way. Molly Smith had no intention of breaking that order. She hadn’t seen Dave Evans or Jeff Glendenning since Thursday evening. She’d tossed and turned all that night (more like all morning, as she’d finished work as the sun was coming up) and eventually decided to say nothing about what had happened. Not to Evans or Glendenning or anyone. Glendenning was a sergeant and these days he was just filling in time waiting for retirement. Nothing she could do about him. But Evans was her contemporary, the same level as her, and they worked closely together. She’d be keeping her eye on him.

  Desmond and his friend stopped at The Front Street Diner, where a section of the sidewalk had been marked out as a patio. Walt took off his hat and scratched at his short gray hair as they studied the restaurant menu displayed on a stand at the hostess desk. A couple, looking like they were back from a hike in multi-pocketed khaki pants and cotton shirts, thick socks, and solid boots, got up from a table, hefted their backpacks, and left. The hostess picked up menus and gestured to Walt and Carolanne to follow her.

  Smith decided to head in the other direction. She’d cross at the intersection and walk back through town on the far side of the street. If she so much as looked at Walt Desmond sideways, he might think she was bothering him.

  Before she could move, a man ran past, followed closely by, of all people, a worried-looking Meredith Morgenstern. Meredith caught Smith’s eye and said, “There’s going to be trouble.”

  The man grabbed Desmond’s arm and spun him around. Desmond dropped his hat. “You bastard,” the man yelled. “You murderous bastard.”

  Carolanne screamed. Passersby either leapt out of the way or gathered around to get a better view. Desmond had twisted out of the other man’s grip and had his arm pinned behind his back before Smith could so much as blink, much less interfere. Meredith had her phone out and held it up in front of her, snapping pictures.

  “Break it up.” Smith pushed her way through the crowd. “What’s going on here?”

  “That man,” Carolanne yelled and pointed. “He attacked my friend for no reason at all.”

  The man struggled in Desmond’s grip. With a single twist, Smith knew, Desmond could break his arm. The man looked at her. His eyes were dark, his hair black, his skin olive, living testimony to his southern European heritage. Smith’s heart sank. This had to be the D’Angelo son. He looked a lot like his dad.

  “Thank you, Mr. Desmond,” Smith said. “You can let go now. There’ll be no more trouble here.”

  Desmond stared at her for a long time. She did not look away. Then he shoved the man toward her. “I did nothing to him.”

  “Nothing! You call murdering my sister nothing? Arrest him,” D’Angelo shouted at Smith, spittle flying, eyes red
with rage. “He attacked me.”

  “Sir,” Smith said, “you can’t say that. I was standing right over there. I saw everything that happened. You ran at this man and you would have assaulted him had he not been faster than you. Is your name D’Angelo?”

  “As I’m sure you know.” He was considerably overweight, his face flamed red, and a vein pulsed in his forehead. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. He swiped his hand across his face.

  Guy’s a walking heart attack, Smith thought. “Why don’t you come with me, Mr. D’Angelo? We’ll go for a walk, let these people enjoy their lunch.”

  D’Angelo turned back to Desmond, who had pushed Carolanne behind him. Walt’s face was perfectly calm: it showed so little emotion it might have been carved of granite. In contrast, Carolanne’s eyes were wide with shock, her lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. D’Angelo clenched and unclenched his fists. He looked as though he might explode any second.

  “Please, Mr. D’Angelo,” Smith said, “if you attempt to continue this fight, I will have to ask you to come with me.”

  “You’d arrest me? And let that son of a bitch sit in the sun and have a drink?”

  “Do you know his first name?” Smith whispered to Meredith.

  “Tony.”

  “Tony, help me out here, please. Mr. Desmond has as much right to walk the streets as anyone else. Don’t make an issue of it. Go home.”

  For several long seconds no one moved. Cars continued to drive by on the street, but a crowd was gathering. She heard whispers of “Poor Sophia” and “How dare he?” along with “Crooked cops.” This could turn ugly in a flash. She touched her radio. Time to call for backup. Walter Desmond was clearly able to handle Tony D’Angelo, but she feared if it came to a fight, some of the men standing around might decide to jump in.