Kate Wilhelm - For The Defense

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Synopsis:

Teddy Wendover is a hulking twenty-eight-year-old with the mind of a child. An accident at eight left

him severely retarded. But did it turn him into a cold-blooded killer? Someone has bludgeoned Oregon

congressman Harry Knecht to death. Knecht was the man who organized the ill-fated field trip that led

to Teddy's injury. Two more murders convince defense attorney Barbara Holloway that there's a broader

circle of guilt. Before staging a dramatic courtroom performance, she must sift through dead ends,

hearsay, and veiled clues--only to discover that truth is more dangerous than speculation . . . .

PROLOGUE.

If he almost closes his eyes a certain way, the trees turn into black monsters that start to rush at him;

then they go right by-whoosh--and the sun hits his eyes and he has to close them the rest of the way.

Whoosh.

He wants to ask when they'll get there, but Gail told him grown-ups don't like it if you ask more than

once, and it's best to wait until you have to go or something. He squinches his eyes again. Whoosh.

"Smell that?" Dad asks... He sits up straight and sniffs. River, trees, the car, then he leans forward.

Skunk. He can't see anything on the road, but the smell is all around, not bad, not like it was when the

skunk got in their camp that time and they had to go away and camp somewhere else.

"Remember when we tangled with the skunk over at John Day?" Dad asks, turning to grin at him.

He nods happily. Maybe the skunk smell is really bad in Mr. Praeger's truck. He hopes it is. He hasn't

seen the red truck for a long time. Maybe he had an accident and fell in the river. He hopes that, too.

"There's a shelter around here somewhere," Dad says.

"Get your shoes on and we'll stretch our legs, have a look. That's where we'll camp tonight."

"Mr. Praeger won't stay with us, will he?"

"No way. Don't worry about him." He slows down and then pulls to the side of the road and stops.

"See? Told you."

Teddy laughs and pulls on his sneakers. He doesn't bother to tie them. Outside, with no more car noise,

the only sound is the river, and the wind making whispers in the trees.

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"Can I go look at the river?"

"Not now. Later, when we camp, there'll be plenty of time. If you have to go, now's your chance. Back

around the shelter."

As soon as he steps around the little house without a door, it's just as if he's the only one here, a funny

good and bad feeling at the same time. He spots a black-and-brown streaky rock and picks it up,

examines it carefully, then puts it in his pocket.

"Teddy, you want a Coke?"

"Yeah," he calls. He aims at a flat rock sticking out of the ground and pisses. Reid said girls pee, boys

piss. He grins at the rock turning shiny and black under his stream.

He was drowsy before, but when they start driving again, he's wide awake.

"Dad, if you spit on a worm, you'll get a fish every time, won't you?"

Dad laughs.

"Who told you that?"

"Mr. Versins."

"Well, maybe the worm gets more squirmy because it's trying to shake the spit off."

"I'll try it." Under his breath he says, "Wormy squirmy, squirmy worm, wormy squirm..."

Then they see the red truck in the road, with Mr. Praeger standing by the door. He looks mad. Teddy's

stomach gets tight, and Dad reaches over and pats his leg. Mr. Praeger gets back in his truck and drives

on a little dirt road. Dad follows.

"He's a grouch," Dad says.

"Don't pay any attention to him."

"Like the Grinch?"

"Exactly like that."

Maybe this isn't the smallest road they've ever gone on, or the steepest, or the crooked est but he can't

remember another one like it. He strains forward against the seat belt, watching the red truck appear and

vanish, appear and vanish. It looks too big to fit on the road, like it might fall off. He wishes he could

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see over the edge on Dad's side. If he put his hand out the window on his side, he could brush the

mountain with it. Then they turn again, and there's nothing to see on either side, just trees.

Maybe they're almost there, at last.

"Scared?" Dad asks.

Teddy looks at him, puzzled, and Dad grins.

"You'll have to put on socks and your boots when we get out," Dad says.

"Can I take my hammer and collection bag?"

"Sure."

After they stop, while Teddy is putting on his boots, Mr. Praeger and Dad start to argue. Teddy doesn't

look at them; he pretends he can't hear them, because Mr. Praeger is mad at him again, because he's

there.

"He'd better keep up. I don't intend to wait for him."

"He can keep up. I'll have to rein him in, in fact."

Then they start hiking, with Mr. Praeger way out in front.

Teddy asks, "What does rain him in mean?"

"Rein in means 'hold back," like you have to do with a horse that wants to run."

"Rain, like raining? "Nope. Different rein. Then there's another reign, like to be boss, to be a king. They

just sound alike." Dad spells the three kinds of rain.

Teddy thinks Mr. Praeger wants to be a king, and Dad won't let him. Teddy likes the woods better than

anything--the way it smells here, how it feels under his feet, the way the air is cold and hot at the same

time. Where the trees don't make a roof, the sun makes slanty lines, like sliding boards. He can smell

mushrooms.

Big rocks are sticking up out of the ground, but no little ones he can pick up; they're all covered with

needles and moss and stuff. But Dad said they'd go to a place where there are lots of rocks.

Mr. Praeger started off pretty fast, but he's going slower all the time; now Teddy is impatient. When the

two men stop to rest, he darts off to one side of the trail, then the other, just looking at stuff. He likes to

feel the cool moss on tree trunks.

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They leave the trail to go up a steeper way, and Dad makes him stay in the middle, between him and Mr.

Praeger. Teddy pretends he's Swift Foot, climbing the highest mountain in the world, leading Dad to a

special place only he knows about.

At the top, Mr. Praeger stops to catch his breath and wait for Dad. Teddy stops, too, staring; then he

races ahead.

"Wow!" he yells. There are piles and piles of rocks, hills of rocks, rows of rocks, rocks everywhere. He

squats at one of the hills and begins picking up rocks, some as big as his hand, some bigger than his

head, some with shiny little specks, like mirrors. He tosses most of them down again, puts a few in his

collection bag. He darts to another pile, then another. He doesn't need his hammer here; someone else

already broke them up.

Mr. Praeger and Dad look at a map and make lines on it while Teddy examines the piles of rocks. He

pays no attention to them until he hears Dad say in his mean voice, "Jesus, Praeger, give it a rest. Who's

he going to tell? I'm not leaving him out here. If I go in, so does he."

Mr. Praeger starts to talk too low for Teddy to hear; he walks toward the cliff behind the piles of rocks.

"Come on, Teddy," Dad says in his usual voice.

"Now's your chance to see a mine."

Teddy watches Mr. Praeger bend over and go in a hole in the mountain; then Dad goes in the same way,

bent over, and he ducks and follows them. It's a cave, he thinks in excitement, maybe a bear cave. But

bears don't stay in caves in the summer, he remembers. They go through a little hall, and into a bigger

room made out of stone, with a lot of rocks and stones all over the floor, everywhere. These stones and

rocks are big, not already broken in little pieces like the ones outside.

Dad and Mr. Praeger go across the room; then Dad comes back and says, "We're going in a little farther.

You stay in here until we get back, okay?"

"Can I break some rocks?"

"Sure. Help yourself." He goes out through another hole that looks black as night. He turns his flashlight

on.

This room doesn't need a flashlight, even if the light is dim, like after the sun is down, but not really dark

yet. Teddy begins to examine the rocks, and soon he starts to hammer on one to break off a chunk.

His collection bag is bulging when he hears Dad's and Mr. Praeger's voices again. He is turning -a rock

over and over, waiting to show it to Dad, but Mr. Praeger comes in first. Teddy drops the rock into his

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bag.

"Let's go," Dad says.

"We'll go make camp, do a little fishing. You ready?"

They start down, this time with Teddy in the lead; Dad and Mr. Praeger follow, talking. Mr. Praeger

wants Dad to drive out first, and Dad says, "No way. You'd be goosing us all the way down that

miserable road." Teddy giggles when Dad says "goosing."

It's black dark now, no moon, although Dad says there will be later on. The wind is making whispers in

the trees, and the river noise is loud. Teddy is in his sleeping bag in the little house without a door; Dad

is sitting by the fire, drinking coffee.

"Dad," Teddy says, then stops. Reid said it's soupy to talk about feeling good and having a good time

and this was the best day of his life and things like that. Mom said of course he could say it, but Reid

said guys don't talk like that. Reid said, "Dad already knows; you don't have to tell him."

"What, Teddy?" Dad says when Teddy doesn't finish what he started to say.

"Will you tell me a story?"

"Sure." He drinks more coffee, then starts: "One time, the men of the tribe had gone to the coast to set up

summer camp, and the women and children were following slowly when Swift Foot's mother came upon

a deer with a broken leg."

Teddy smiles; he loves stories about Swift Foot, who is eight years old, just like him, and who does

really neat things.

"Swift Foot's mother said, "We'll butcher this deer and dry the meat. You'll have to cross the mountain

and tell your father that we'll be with them when the moon is full, so they won't get worried about us."

She prepared his food, and gave him a rattle and a bunch of feathers.

"If you see a cougar," she said, 'shake the rattle and feathers and jump up and down and yell as loud as

you can, so that it will be frightened and run away. If you see a bear, become as still as a tree, because

you can't frighten a bear, and you can't run faster or climb higher than a bear. If you don't move, it won't

see you, and it will go away."

" The wind whispers in the trees, the river noise becomes a song, and Dad's voice rises and falls, but

Teddy's eyes are closed, and he is alone, trotting through the forest, where the bear waits.

Frank holloway had no intention of walking the few blocks to his office that Friday afternoon. It was

October, the weather would change any day, and he had too much to do: some leaves to rake, a garden to

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put away for the season, tools to clean.... When he entered his house from the back porch, he should

have gone straight to the kitchen for the drink of water he needed, but instead, he found himself at his

study door, where the telephone light was blinking. He scowled at the answering machine. It was too

soon for Barbara to call, he reminded himself as he drew near and then pushed the message button.

"Hey, Dad, you can wrap up that Barton mess. I got the deposition this morning. You-know-who broke

wide open, spilled everything. I'll fax it to the office and send the original by overnight mail. And last

night, I ran into a couple of friends, and we're going to hike in Kings Canyon a few days. Expect me

home Tuesday or Wednesday. I'll kiss a sequoia for you. Congratulations on the Barton deal."

He had to grin even as he hoped and prayed she would be careful, not fall into a canyon, not fall off a

cliff, not get hit by an avalanche. His grin broadened.

"Cluck, cluck," he said softly.

He listened to the second message then. His secretary. Patsy Meares: "Mrs. Mary Sue McDonald says

she must see you today. If she doesn't hear otherwise, she'll be in at four. I can call her back and put her

off, I guess. If I don't hear by three, that's what I'll do. But from the way she sounded, I think you'd better

see her."

Damn woman--Patsy, not Mary Sue. Patsy would check his socks for holes if he let her. He listened to

Barbara's message again, smiling at the laughter in her voice. Then he removed the tiny cassette,

replaced it with a new one, and put the one with her message in a box with half a dozen other tapes that

contained messages from his daughter.

That day, he had planted garlic, had thinned out winter kale and collards. It was one o'clock, time to

knock off for a bite to eat; then maybe he would wander down to the office, see what was on the fax, see

what was on Mary Sue's mind. Some damn do-good committee that wanted free legal advice, he told

himself grumpily.

Later, in the office, his perusal of the fax was desultory, and he had to admit to himself that he couldn't

care less if he saved Phil Barton a hundred thousand. And that was his problem, he knew:

He was bored with it all. Working bored him; not working terrified him: his problem. Barbara had done

a bang-up job, of course, just as he had known she would, although she was as bored with it as he was.

Crooks skinning each other left and right. Let them.

But the real problem, he knew, was that if Barbara got too bored, she might take off. She preferred her

ghetto clients, who paid in plucked chickens and zucchini, to his fat-cat clients.

Give her an extra quarter and she was off climbing some damn mountain, hiking in some damn

wilderness, tying beads or tie-dyeing T-shirts.

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He studied the picture of his dead wife in a double silver frame, side by side with Barbara's photograph,

so alike, so unalike.

"We messed up somewhere," he said softly to the photograph.

"Never taught her squat about valuing money."

Pam, the receptionist, buzzed him. Mrs. McDonald was there; should Shelley bring her back? Shelley?

He recalled her then, a new girl, an intern.

"Bring her on back," he said.

Shelley was pretty and still a baby, in her early twenties, with an awful lot of blond hair; she wanted to

stay in the office when she delivered Mary Sue, but he thanked her and motioned her out. Poor Shelley,

no one let her do anything interesting, he thought, and extended both hands to Mary Sue McDonald.

"Mary Sue, it's been ages. You look wonderful!"

She was five feet tall in her shoes with an inch of heel, and she couldn't have weighed more than ninety

pounds after the biggest Thanksgiving dinner imaginable. She was seventy-four or so, well wrinkled and

not trying to pretend otherwise, with startling green eyes and curly gray hair.

"I look like the incredible shrinking woman," she said with a dismissive wave.

"I don't want money, or for you to join anything.

What I would like is a glass of wine." "You've got it," he said.

"You want to sit over there or at the desk?" He pointed to several comfortable chairs and a couch

grouped at a low table.

"Desk," she said.

"This is business, not social." She walked to a client's chair by his desk--she was very erect--and he went

to the bookshelf wall and opened the bar concealed there.

"Chardonnay, sherry, claret..."

She chose claret, and after he had handed her the glass and seated himself behind the desk, he thought

again how diminutive she was, childlike from any distance. She had to perch on the edge of the chair or

it would have swallowed her. She sipped her wine, then put the glass down.

"First," she said, "tell me something. Are you required to divulge what anyone says? I understand client

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attorney relationship, but I just want advice. Does that make me a client? Do you have to tell what I say

to you?"

"Tell whom?" Her mouth tightened.

"But, yes, if you retain me to give you advice, you are a client. Horses wouldn't drag it out, Mary Sue."

"Do we sign something?"

"We have a verbal agreement as of this moment. Later, you can sign an agreement if you choose."

She considered this for a moment, then nodded.

"Very well.

You know about Harry Knecht's death, over at Stone Point? His murder?"

"Just what was in the news."

"I was there that day. I think I may have aided and abetted, or something like that, whatever the legal

term is." She picked up her glass and took another sip, looking past him now, out the window.

Frank leaned back in his chair, acknowledging a soft, unvoiced Ah of satisfaction.

"Just tell me about it," he said.

She looked at him with a sharp frown.

"Well, that's why I'm here. But don't interrupt. Story first, questions after." She waited for his nod before

continuing.

"Every summer for the past five or six years, one of the grandchildren comes around and we head out to

the coast for a week or two. I hate driving the coast road anymore, and refuse the interstate--all those

trucks--and you know what it's like eating in restaurants alone...."

This year, it was James and Carla's daughter, Leigh, who had gone with her. They had arrived at their

cottage at Stone Point about five-thirty, and Leigh had gone down to the beach for a walk or a run,

whatever it was the young people did.

"I made the reservation months ago," she said, "the day I read that Harry would be speaking. I wanted to

hear him, see how he turned out as a politician. Anyway, Leigh went down to the beach, and I sat on the

front porch a bit; I got chilled and went inside for a sweater. We had cottage number one, on the point,

almost directly across from the rear of the inn. And Harry apparently had the corner suite just opposite. I

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happened to glance that way when I walked back to the door, and I saw him in his room. No mistaking

him," she said.

"That big head. He was just inside the sliding door to the balcony on the second floor. Then he turned,

and a second later he had a telephone in his hand, and he moved out of sight. I went on inside and got

my sweater. It took a few minutes--I had to open a suitcase and rummage for it. You know those

cottages?"

Frank shook his head.

"I've been there, but I don't remember them particularly."

"There's a narrow covered walk from the carport to the door; it goes on to the front, where there's a nice

covered deck. Wonderful for watching a storm at sea, more than a hundred feet up over the water, with a

sheltered, unobstructed view.... Anyway, I was on the walk going back to the deck, when a movement

caught my eye. I stopped at the same place as before and saw that it was a curtain blowing out the

sliding door to Harry's room. The screen was open. Before I took even a step, another man came into

view, a waiter. He had on black trousers and a white shirt with a black bow de, and he was wearing

white gloves, carrying a tray with a bottle. He walked into the room a few feet and then seemed to lose

his balance or something; he nearly fell down and he dropped the tray, and next thing he bent down to

the floor, out of sight. Then he straightened up again and looked back over his shoulder and ran out the

sliding door to the balcony. Another man had entered the room, and he had a gun. He bent down out of

sight, too, then straightened and started to run after the waiter, who had reached a post by then and was

scrambling over the rail. The waiter dropped down to the ground and tore across the stretch between the

cottages and the inn, straight toward me. And the one with the gun was running down the stairs."

She stopped and sipped her wine again, her gaze once more on the view out the window, past Frank's

head. Her hand was trembling. He didn't move.

Her voice was steady when she went on.

"At the time, I don't believe I thought through anything, I just acted. That young man was going to be

shot, I felt certain, and something had happened to Harry. I was only a few feet from my cottage door. I

simply opened it and pointed when the waiter dashed up, and he raced inside and shut the door. I went to

the front deck and sat down, and not ten seconds later the one with the gun ran up. He yelled at me, had I

seen anyone running, which way did he go, things like that, and he was waving the gun around in a

demented way. Then a second man came up and pulled him back and they talked for a few seconds; the

second one asked me, more civilly, the same things. I said I was locked out, waiting for my

granddaughter to return from the beach, that I had seen no one."

She stopped speaking and drained her wineglass. Silently, Frank rose, went back to the bar, and brought

out the bottle. He refilled her glass.

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"You're not asking why," she said, taking the glass from him.

"Later. For now, just what." "I've asked myself why a million times," she murmured. She put the glass

down without tasting it.

"Anyway, what. They ordered me to stay still, and they were talking on walkie-talkie gadgets. There

were four or five by then. I stood up and saw that someone was trying the cabin door, and someone else

was looking through the car. You know, my Cadillac. I started down that way to tell them to leave it

alone, and one of them nearly pushed me back into the chair and yelled at me to stay put."

She picked up her glass again.

"I have to confess that made me a little angry."

Sipping her wine, she finished her story. The men had separated and run off in different directions.

When Leigh came up from the beach and opened the cabin, Mary Sue had told her they were leaving

instantly, to put the bags in the trunk; they would call the hotel from wherever they found rooms for the

night. They were not going to go to the desk. They would not check out or make any explanations, but

simply leave before someone got shot. Men with guns!

She had not seen the waiter then. Leigh went to the bath room, and within five minutes they had

everything in the trunk and were heading out the drive. One of the men security men, she had learned

later started to wave Leigh down, but another one motioned for her to keep driving, and she did. They

found a motel ten miles down the coast, in Florence, and when Leigh went inside to see if there were

rooms available, the waiter had popped up in the backseat, opened the back door, and fled. He did say

thanks, she added. She had not known he was back there.

"He must have gotten in while Leigh was in the bathroom and I was putting something in the trunk," she

said.

"I keep a throw in the back. I suppose he lay on the floor and pulled that over him."

"He could have murdered you both," Frank commented.

"I was more afraid of the idiot with the gun," she snapped.

"Waving it around like a Fourth of July sparkler."

For several seconds, they were both silent while Frank considered all she had said.

"Now your questions?" she asked finally.

"A few."

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Kate Wilhelm - For The Defense

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