Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell
to hurt her, to spoil what we have. She knows that.” Filmore’s large dark eyes filled with tears. “She knows I never—”
“Then in the late afternoon you went out,” David said. “Where’d you go?”
“Well, again, I’ve said this before, I try to run several times a week. My time was good in the San Diego Marathon last year.”
Big fucking deal.
“Where did you run that day?”
“Catalina Avenue, down the grade to the place where they train the dolphins, and then back up.”
“You live in University City and you drove all the way to Point Loma?”
“Obviously you’re not a runner or you’d know that variety keeps the training fresh.”
Filmore loved the sound of his own voice. He definitely could not be trusted on the stand.
“Anyone see you?”
“If you mean that I talked to, no. No one.”
Outside, a siren wailed up First Street headed for Harbor View Hospital. In the wake of its passing, David heard the clang of the trolley one block up. Four people in the tiny interview room, four sets of lungs inhaling the air-conditioned oxygen, exhaling lunchtime garlic and coffee: no wonder David had a headache. Filmore appeared not to mind the crowd. He probably thought he deserved Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles at his table after writing a check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to Cabot and Klinger. Their biggest retainer to date.
Not for the first time, it occurred to David that for a man who loved to be out of doors and who enjoyed the camaraderie of sport, he’d chosen a strange, confined, and confining profession. Maybe he should have been a coach. That’s what his uncle wanted for him. Instead he was going to spend the next thirty years in jails and courtrooms defending the Constitution. Which nobody seemed to care about anymore.
Gracie might hate Filmore or feel nothing at all; you’d never know from her cool velvet voice, almost a monotone but with a hint of challenge, like she dared Filmore to give her a hard time. She asked, “What happened after your run?”
“I’ve said this before.” He looked over at Allison. “Don’t you read her notes?”
“Tell us again,” David said.
“I knew it was the night my wife was going to her book club . . .”
But that night Marsha Filmore had stayed home, had gone next door to give moral support and comfort to Lolly Calhoun’s mother and father.
“So I just pulled on my sweats and drove up to Carlsbad to see Lord of the Rings. It was so good, I stayed to see it twice.”
It was a lame alibi. Without proof no jury would buy it.
“Why’d you go to Carlsbad?”
“I wanted to stop at the outlet stores, but when I got there I didn’t have my credit card so I just went to the movie.”
The alibi wasn’t lame, it was paraplegic.
At the theater no one remembered his good-looking face, and he hadn’t kept the ticket stub. David wrote a note to send Allison out to the theater with photos. A pretty blonde with blue eyes and plenty on top, she might be able to coax something out of one of the guys there.
Three-year-old Lolly had been chloroformed and strangled. The evidence against Filmore was flimsy. A few fingerprints that could have been left at any time over the last few months and a crummy alibi. Surprising, really, that the government thought it had enough to convict.
Lolly had been tied in a plastic bag and tossed down the side of a hill near Lakeside. By the time a rider found her body, coyotes had torn the bag open.
David drank from his water bottle, hoping to wash away the bile burning his throat. He thought of Bailey, of the life bursting out of her. He could not think of her as retarded or emotionally disturbed; he never used these terms to describe her. She was Bailey, and he loved her, and if anyone ever laid a hand on her he would commit murder.
He had to figure out a way to keep Bailey out of his thoughts or he’d lose the objectivity he needed to defend his client.
Frank Filmore was saying something, declaring something. Gracie looked at David and raised her perfect eyebrows. His attention snapped back.
“I did not do this . . . this awful, this horrendous thing. You must believe—You believe me, don’t you, David? I’m innocent.”
David heard his father’s voice saying only an idiot lawyer believed his client.
“It really doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, Frank, and it’s not my job to prove your innocence.”
“I have a lovely wife; we’re expecting a baby. Why would I do such a thing? And Lolly, I loved Lolly, I used to watch her swimming in her little pool—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“But how can you prove I’m innocent if you don’t—”
David rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not my job to prove you’re innocent. What Gracie and I do is, we make the prosecutor prove you’re guilty. We see that justice is done. That’s all we do.”
Frank Filmore looked offended. “You’re saying you don’t believe me?”
“I’m saying what I believe is irrelevant. You can be telling the truth or lying like crazy, what we have to do is make the prosecutor prove his case one hundred percent. It’s like in football.”
Allison laughed, then quickly covered her mouth.
“The ref ’s job is to make sure the teams play fair, win fair. That’s all a defense attorney’s supposed to do, make sure the prosecutor follows the rules.”
Gracie said, “David used to play ball, Frank.”
“I hope you won. I hope you won all the time.”
A guard knocked on the door of the interview room and told David he had a phone call. “She says it’s urgent.”
On the other end of the phone Dana was almost hysterical. David could barely make sense of what she said.
Chapter 5
Two white cars with Union-Tribune logos on their doors were parked against the curb, and television vans blocked Miranda Street in front of the Cabot house. On the edge of the park neighbors and busybodies stood and stared and gossiped.
Between phone calls to the police and David and the appearance of the first reporter, Dana had hung a sheet over the broken window in the living room. Now there were police in the house and strangers under the olive tree, some of them flicking cigarette butts into the beds of white impatiens. Bailey loved every minute of it. While Dana sat on the stairs in the entry, the little girl kept up a vivid commentary from the dining room, where she stood on a chair watching the street through a pinched-back corner of the blinds.
The eleven o’clock news would show her elfin face peering out at the world as if the daughter of the man defending Frank Filmore were herself a prisoner.
“Daddy’s home,” Bailey cried as she jumped off her chair and ran across the tiled entry to the front door, ponytail flying. Dana grabbed for her arm. Screaming, Bailey twisted away. She was agile, too fast for Dana and twisty as a morning-glory vine climbing a fencepost. David opened the door and Bailey leapt for him. On cue, the flashbulbs flared, shutters clicked, and the video cams pressed forward.
David kicked the door shut behind him. His color was high, and his eyes flashed when he grinned at Dana and brushed back the thick hank of black and silver hair that had fallen across his forehead.
He loved being in the middle of things.
He lifted Bailey into his arms and held her. “What