Trial Run

by Anne Metikosh

  “Nooo, not exactly.”

  She drew one long, red fingernail slowly across the cover of the book she was holding. Judging by the thickness and the color of the dust jacket, it was Grisham’s The Chamber, which I had seen lying on the hall table when I came in. “I just wondered, Nina, how well you actually know this David Maitland. I mean, you seemed very chummy the other night. He must have let something slip.” She paused expectantly.

  “Not a thing,” I said firmly. “I had no idea he had any connection at all to the Forresters.”

  “Well, have you talked to him since … ?”

  “Since the party?”

  “Don’t be obtuse,” she said impatiently. “You know very well what I mean. Since Randy Outray was found murdered.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you think he did it? Or Ian Forrester?”

  My voice sounded stiff to my own ears. “As far as I know, there’s nothing to indicate that this murder is related to the Forresters.”

  “Oh, don’t be naive, my dear. It would be just too, too coincidental that those two were hanging around the Outray’s house along with that gang waving their ridiculous posters about the Clubbe and then Randy gets murdered while they’re there? Please, dear, for your own sake, take off the blinders.”

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to go on blind and instinct-driven. But as I sat there at Sonja Reid’s mahogany desk, with its tooled leather top and its gold border etching, the thing that I had been trying to keep back, dammed out of mind, broke over me. I had already spent a sleepless night staring dry-eyed at the ceiling, going over and over everything that had happened since David had entered the scene. I told myself that everything he had said and done could bear an innocent interpretation as well as a guilty one. A word here, a look there. Never did frailer witnesses plead their case more desperately. And the night of the Party … but here memory whirled into such ragged confusion that I felt like Alice in Wonderland lost in a flurry of playing cards. I wondered if I would be forced yet again to put memories away in a drawer, like cards, taking them out at intervals to thumb over in a dreary game of solitaire.

  • • •

  There was no message from David when I got home and no answer at the number he had given me. To fill the void, I did some busywork: dusting, laundry, vacuuming. The thought of scrubbing floors was too much, so I tried David’s number again, still with no reply.

  He was staying at the Forrester’s, that much I knew. He had told me how concerned he was for Ian’s emotional stability and I suspected that he had only participated in the demonstration in order to keep a weather eye on his brother-in-law. I could only hope David hadn’t lost track of him long enough for Ian to have shot Randy Outray.

  About the other possibility, I didn’t want to think at all.

  The weather had been unexpectedly warm all day. Now it was cooling again, and the night air was still, held in a pall of mist. I could hear the occasional soft drip of moisture from the boughs that overhung my roof. Restlessly, I wandered around the apartment, feeling strangely anxious and afraid. Never before had I felt the lack of a friend so keenly.

  On my third pass through the living room, I came to a decision.

  This time, I was not going to wait for bad news come to me.

  Pulling on my boots, I grabbed my coat and headed out.

  • • •

  Ian Forrester’s house was one of a dozen on a key-shaped street that backed onto the ravine. Though the survey was relatively new, enough of the original trees had been left standing that it already looked well established. I drove slowly, trying to make out numbers among twinkle lights and flashing Santas. In the end, it was easy to spot which house must be Ian’s. It was the only one in the key without Christmas decorations of any kind. His was a two-story house of fieldstone and siding, with large bow windows on either side of the front door. The porch light was not on, but lamplight glowed from somewhere at the back of the house. I paused at the front door, studying the beveled glass in the fanlight as I tried to screw up my courage to knock. When I finally did, the door was answered almost immediately by a tall, gaunt man in a bathrobe and slippers.

  He looked startled at the sight of me and I saw his gaze shift to a point somewhere beyond my shoulder, as though he had been expecting someone else. He shook his head, muttered something that sounded like “no interviews” and started to shut the door.

  “Mr. Forrester?” I said quickly, placing my hand on the door to keep it open. “I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Nina Ryan. I’m a friend of David’s. Is he here? Could I speak to him for a minute, please?”

  “A friend of David’s?” he repeated dully.

  “That’s right. Is he here just now?”

  Ian Forrester shook his head. “No. He went out to get something. I thought it was … I thought you were him, coming back. Maybe he forgot his key.”

  I swallowed hard. “Do you know how long he’ll be? I can wait.”

  Something flickered in his eyes as he tried to deal with the thought, and I was sharply reminded of my mother in the days when she still had the strength to fight against the darkness overtaking her.

  “You’re not a reporter?” he said.

  “No. I’m not a reporter, I promise. I’m a friend of David’s.”

  Ian nodded slowly and stepped away from the door, leaving me to close it and follow him down the hall to the family room and the light I had seen from outside.

  It was a comfortable room of generous proportions, with lots of built-in cupboards, and shelves crammed with paperbacks. The walls above the wainscoting had been painted deep red; the rugs and furniture were dark green, with accents of the same rusty shade. Despite the lack of seasonal trimming, it looked oddly festive. In the daytime, sunlight would pour through the sliding glass doors that led to a deck outside. The doors, and the windows that flanked them on the left, looked directly into the ravine where Susan and Tracey Forrester had been murdered. I wondered how Ian could bear it.

  Someone, probably a cleaning lady, was keeping the house immaculate. There was no dust on the tables, no clutter in the kitchen. The only thing out of place was the jumble of photographs on the mantle. Their frames looked smudged with handling. Two white roses drooped in a bud vase beside them.

  In the summer before she died, I had taken my mother for rambling walks along the river. Once, I had bent to gather a few wildflowers, thinking they would make a cheerful nosegay for her room. But she had cried out at me to stop. “Please let them live,” she had said. “Cut flowers die so slowly. Like me.” Without his family, I thought, the man in front of me was dying slowly, too.

  Forrester shuffled across to the trestle table behind the couch. His hands groped over the objects on it as though he were blind, fumbling past the lamp, moving softly over the clock, fingering a magazine, until, finally, his fingers touched a tumbler half-full of amber liquid.

  I said, “Ian.”

  He turned. He had lifted the tumbler as if to drink from it, and across the rim, his eyes met mine. With his back to the lamp, his face was a pale blur, his eyes dark and expressionless. As I looked at him, bewildered, and beginning to be frightened, I suddenly understood. Goose-pimple cold slid ghost-handed over my skin. I was gripping the back of a chair; without it, I think I would have fallen.

  I said hoarsely, “Ian.”

  He took no notice. He put the tumbler down and turned toward the patio doors. Lamplight rippled along the folds of his robe; it caught his face and gleamed back from eyes as wide and glassy as a doll’s.

  I said, “Ian, answer me. Did you kill Randy Outray?”

  The fixed eyes never moved, but he gave a queer little sigh. The obsessive question burst from me. “Did David help you?”

  Ian’s head inclined toward me. I repeated the question urgently. “Did he?”

&n
bsp; It wouldn’t work. The broken man in front of me was going to keep his secrets locked inside. In despair, I watched him fumble with the lock and slide open the door to the deck. He drifted outside to stand at the rail overlooking the ravine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I heard the front door open and shut. The bolt sliding home. Footsteps in the hall. Keys tossed onto the kitchen counter. Then a startled exclamation.

  “Nina?”

  Still gripping the back of the chair for support, I turned to face David. Hot tears stained my cheeks but I made no move to wipe them away.

  David looked haggard, his eyes hard as stones. There were lines in his face that I hadn’t seen there before.

  “Where’s Ian?”

  His voice sounded strained and I heard a blaze of anger licking through it that he didn’t trouble to suppress.

  The question was answered by Ian himself. In a slow turn, he retreated from the middle of the deck to the far side. David lifted his head sharply and I followed his look in time to see Ian melt into the shadows like a wraith.

  David took the space between us in two strides, his leap out of immobility so sudden that I reacted without reason, a blind thing in a panic, releasing my hold on the chair and putting out futile hands to break the tempest.

  David stopped dead.

  “I see,” he said.

  So did I. I had seen even as doubt reacting on fear had driven me to raise my hands against him. Now they dropped slowly back to my sides. I couldn’t speak.

  I began to cry again, not desperately or tragically, but silently and without hope, the tears spilling raggedly over my cheeks and my face ugly with crying.

  I felt David move past me to the sliding doors, heard him say something to Ian. He didn’t look at me as he guided his brother-in-law up the stairs to the second floor. Ian moved stiffly, like an old man, David murmuring encouragement at his elbow.

  I should have gone then. Instead, I moved to the table where Ian Forrester had left the tumbler of brandy. I drank it with appreciation but no respect; it was the effect and not the drink that I craved.

  In the kitchen, I splashed cold water on my face, effectively removing the traces of tears and the makeup I had so carefully applied before I left home. I noticed that the telephone had been unplugged from the wall, and I remembered that, when he answered the door, Ian had been worried I might be a reporter. I could imagine the hell they had created for him, asking the kind of questions that wreck lives and sell ten thousand extra copies.

  When David came back downstairs, I was pulling the drapes across the windows.

  David said, “Ian insists on having them open all the time. He stands for hours just staring out there. Thinking about … what happened.”

  The weariness in his voice made me wince. I forced myself to look at him. I clung to the drapery in my hand as I mustered the courage to say what had to be said.

  “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry.”

  I was crushing the fabric I held. Carefully, I flattened it back out, ironing the creases between my palms.

  “I know it isn’t exactly — adequate — to tell someone you’re sorry you suspected him of murder. But I am. I’m sorry I even let it cross my mind. And that was all it did, I swear it.”

  He stood, head down, like a beaten animal. “The police think I did it. They could see when they let us go this morning that Ian couldn’t possibly have managed it. And I’m their next logical suspect. It’s no secret I wanted Randy Outray dead.”

  I must have made some sound of protest because he looked up at me then.

  “Do you really think I would have shot him?” he said.

  “No, David.”

  A small tired smile glimmered through his beard. He looked at the empty glass on the table and a hint of the old amusement sounded in his voice. “Have you been raiding Ian’s liquor cabinet?”

  “It was already poured when I got here. I could do with a refill, though.”

  He got one for me and poured a generous glass for himself. We settled on the couch, close enough to touch, but not touching.

  “Has he seen a doctor?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure, for all the good it did. He tried to tough it out at first, but with all the publicity and everything, he just couldn’t cope. He wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t eating, hell, he wasn’t even keeping himself clean. I made him go to the family doctor, a guy named Morris. He knew Susan and Tracey. I thought he’d be able to understand Ian’s … problem. Morris gave him a prescription for some stuff to help him relax and told me to try to keep the pressure off as much as possible. I got a cleaning lady in, arranged for someone to cook meals. I make sure Ian has a shower in the morning. I see that he shaves. I keep hoping he’ll spring around but the poor bastard just keeps sinking lower and lower. The doctor thinks I should have him committed ‘to care,’ whatever the hell that means.”

  “How did he end up at that rally?”

  David snorted in disgust. “Half a dozen different outfits have been hitting on him ever since the girls were murdered. They call themselves ‘active interest’ groups. They all have catchy names and a particular cause they’re beating the drum over. I’ve been trying to keep them away from him. You saw him, he’s in no shape to take an active interest in anything. Those people are only interested in trading on his name.” David sighed. “When they came around to the house last night, I was in the shower. I got downstairs just in time to see some guy helping Ian into a van. I high-tailed it after them and we all ended up at the Outrays.”

  David paused to take a sip of brandy. “A bunch of them were already there, out front. They scooped Ian up like he was the prize at a pig-calling contest. It took me a while to persuade them to let me anywhere near him and by the time they did, someone had called the cops.”

  I nodded. “That’s the part they showed on TV.”

  “How did I look? They say the camera adds ten pounds.”

  “Not to worry.”

  He leaned forward to the brandy bottle and splashed some more into our glasses.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “People were running around all over the place. They sort of herded us over to one side, and every time they dragged someone else off the property, they added him — actually, most of them were ‘hers’ — to the pack. This one cop started asking everyone for ID, ladies first. I felt like I was back in school, you know? There’d be a fight in the hall or something and there was always one teacher ‘taking names’ for the principal. It was like that. Eventually, the cop got around to us. Ian didn’t have any identification on him. I left the house in such a hurry, I didn’t have any either. So they put us in a squad car and took us down to the police station and made us swear out affidavits telling them who we were. Checked our references. They were a little worried about Ian. He wasn’t tracking too well and they wanted to make sure the drugs he was taking were prescription. They suggested that being anywhere near the Outrays was not smart. Just as they were about to send us home, the bulletin came in about Randy. I can’t say I was sorry to hear it.”

  “What about Ian? Does he understand what’s going on?”

  David shook his head. “I don’t think so. All the publicity, the ‘Susie’ articles and everything, have worn him down.”

  A spasm crossed his face. “I can’t help feeling partly responsible. When I got here, I just wanted to do something, you know? Anything. Whatever I could to get this guy that had murdered my sister and her child. Ian was a little shaky, I could see that, but I had no idea how bad … I shouldn’t have told him what went on with that mock jury.”

  “Was Ian the source for that story in the Express?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Reporters are constantly at him. I’m not here all the time. He could have done it. More likely he was persuaded to
do it. I’m not sure he can form the intention to do anything himself anymore.” David rubbed his face with one hand. “Maybe Dr. Morris is right, I should have him committed somewhere where they could help him. God knows, I’m not doing him any good.”

  I leaned forward and cupped David’s face in my hand. He turned his head so his mouth was touched my palm.

  “What happens now?” I asked. “You said the police think you shot him, but they haven’t charged you with anything.”

  “Not yet, but they’d like to. It’s a little tough without any evidence, though. Until they find a weapon or a witness or something, all they have is suspicion. It won’t surprise me if they show up tomorrow with a search warrant for this house but until they get one, they’ll have to make do with following me.”

  “What!”

  He beckoned me to follow him into the darkened living room. Floral print toppers in some heavy material that probably matched the sofa curved over its top but the window itself was covered only by sheer drapery. I peered out.

  My car stood where I had left it in the drive, with David’s now tucked neatly in beside it. The right-hand side of the road looked deserted but two doors along on the left, I could make out the black outline of a sedan of some sort. Whoever was in it was smoking a cigarette. He’d left the window on the driver’s side slightly open at the top and as I watched, he flicked a glowing stub out into the street.

  I felt David very close behind me.

  “What’s he waiting for?”

  David shrugged. “For me to do something incriminating, I guess. I noticed the car there earlier in the day but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Then when I went out to get Ian’s prescription refilled, he followed me to the drug store, and home again, and I suspect he’s planning to stay the night.” He flashed me a look. “By now, he’ll have run your plate.”

  “What for? I haven’t done anything!”

  “You’re consorting with a suspect in a murder case.”

  “Consorting?”

  “Just like Bonnie and Clyde.”