Flat Lake in Winter Read online

  But that Saturday, Fielder wasn’t looking for an elationship. The chili he’d prepared was for a business dinner. The business at hand was Jonathan Hamilton, and the dinner guest was Fielder’s investigator, Pearson Gunn.

  Gunn showed up around seven, driving a ‘57 Chevy Impala, the kind with the huge seagull-wing tail fins. It brought with it a cloud of blue smoke, which would hang in the air a good ten minutes after the engine had been killed. Gunn climbed out, a gallon of red wine suspended from one index finger, which looked like it barely fit through the glass ring at the neck of the jug. Fielder, whose own taste in reds ran to dry merlots and cabernets, noticed that when Gunn swung the bottle, the wine didn’t slosh around so much as it oozed, the way a heavy-duty motor oil might do in the middle of winter. He accepted the offering graciously, but refrained from looking at the label, just in case it turned out to be from someplace called Valvoline Vineyards, or Château Chevron.

  In the vouchers for payment the two men would submit many months later, they would claim to have worked only two hours that evening, but it is likely they were simply being prudent about the way in which they billed. The fact is that they ate around nine, drank until midnight, and sat up well past three, reviewing what they knew about the case, what they didn’t know, and what they needed to do next.

  Carter and Mary Alice Hamilton had no known enemies. Both were well into their eighties at the time of the murders. Since the deaths of their son and daughter-in-law in the fire a decade earlier, their world had gradually closed in around them. In recent years, they had seldom ventured beyond the stone walls of the estate. They had few friends they hadn’t outlived, and those they kept in touch with by phone, or through the occasional exchange of letters.

  Gunn had thoroughly investigated the Armbrusts, the German couple who lived on the estate and had been taking care of the Hamiltons. Everything about them checked out. They’d worked for the family for close to thirty years, tending to the needs of the land and three generations of its owners. Klaus had had one arrest, at age seventeen, for driving without a license; Elna had no record whatsoever. By all accounts, they’d gotten along well with Jonathan’s grandparents, and were not only grief-stricken by the murders, but appropriately concerned for their own safety. Financially, their needs were modest and had always been met. It seemed they had nothing to gain from the deaths, and everything to lose.

  Gunn had spoken briefly on the phone with Bass McClure. McClure was the one Jonathan had reached by phone the morning of the killings, and it was McClure who’d been the first person to view the crime scene, other than Jonathan himself. Gunn knew McClure, and liked him. He also sensed from his undisclosed law-enforcement contact (again, this was almost certainly Captain Roger Duquesne) that the prosecution was less than happy with McClure. Whether this displeasure was simply the result of McClure’s failure to safeguard the integrity of the crime scene, or whether it went beyond that, was something Fielder wanted Gunn to look into further. A reluctant prosecution witness can sometimes turn out to be the defense’s best friend.

  Finally, the conversation focused on Jonathan Hamilton himself. Neither Fielder nor Gunn came right out and said it, but both men were privately convinced that Jonathan had committed the murders. What they didn’t know was why. Furthermore, they had every reason to believe that the prosecution was in exactly the same position. Other than Jonathan, no one alive had witnessed the killings. There was Jonathan’s “confession” to Deke Stanton, but that had been oral, unpreserved on tape, and not witnessed by anyone other than Stanton. It was consequently somewhat limited in terms of its value, even if the prosecution could convince Judge Summerhouse that it was admissible. Except for that, Gil Cavanaugh was left with a purely circumstantial case.

  Just why prosecutors worry about circumstantial proof is somewhat a case of the tail wagging the dog. Proof can be divided into two types, direct and circumstantial. Direct proof is an eyewitness account: I saw that it was raining. Circumstantial proof is the proof of some fact which, once established, leads to a logical inference of a second fact: I saw water on the pavement, and there were people carrying open umbrellas.

  It turns out that the vast majority of what we call “miscarriages of justice” occur in direct-evidence cases. The culprit is almost always human error - faulty eyewitness identifications, lapses of memory, or imperfect accounts of observations. In contrast, there is nothing stronger than a compelling set of circumstances that point inexorably at the accused.

  But juries don’t think so.

  Somewhere along the line, somebody juxtaposed the words “purely” and “circumstantial,” and trials have never quite been the same since. For some reason, a jury will accept the word of a confused, traumatized, biased, and error-prone witness who gets up on the witness stand and insists under oath that he’ll “never forget that face,” over a trail of scientific evidence and deductive logic that leads to an accused with almost mathematical certainty.

  And prosecutors have learned this. So, lacking an eyewitness, they cringe in fear over the possibility that the jury will reject their case as “purely circumstantial.” They instinctively look for what they consider to be the next best thing to an eyewitness identification.

  A motive.

  A motive is something that never has to be proved. In that respect, it is not to be confused with intent. Many laws, including murder, may require proof of intent. But “intent” merely refers to a person’s immediate objective: The defendant shot the victim with the intent of causing his death. “Motive,” on the other hand, refers to what produced the intent in the first place: The defendant, motivated by his anger at having been betrayed, shot the victim with the intent of causing his death.

  But a prosecutor without a motive is left feeling a little something like a lion without a mane. Sure, he’s got his claws, his teeth, his strength, his speed, and his cunning. But no mane? Panic immediately sets in. And, the more important the case, the greater the panic becomes.

  FIELDER POURED SOME more wine from the gallon jug. In a moment of weakness, he’d peeked at the label and noticed the modifiers Ruby Red, followed by a third R beginning yet another word. He’d immediately looked away, not wanting to know just what it was he’d been drinking all night. But the mind loves to fill in blanks: Ruby Red Rotgut? Ruby Red Roof Tar? Ruby Red Rain Sealant? Ruby Red Rear Axle Grease?

  “You better believe Cavanaugh and his team are worrying about motive jush as hard as we are,” Fielder said.

  “Jush?” Gunn wasn’t going to let Fielder’s slurring go unnoticed.

  Ignoring him, Fielder pressed on. “We’ve got to beat him to the punch on this,” he told Gunn.

  “Hey, no problem,” said Gunn, watching the reflection of the fire in his glass. “I’ll get on it. So what if it’s fuckin’ impossible? You want it, I’ll do it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Fielder, who was by that time lagging behind Gunn by a good quart or so of Ruby Red, and an equal amount of mental clarity, tried hard to digest what he’d just heard, but his mind refused to cooperate.

  “Whajoosay?”

  Alcohol was Pearson Gunn’s briar patch: He was never more at home than when he was seriously tanked. Now he simply pressed some internal button and rewound his mind to the spot that had been requested. “I’ll get on it,” he repeated. “So what-”

  “No, no.” Fielder sat up. “The last part.”

  Gunn fast-forwarded a bit. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “A will,” Fielder said. “These were wealthy people. They’ve gotta have wills lying around somewhere. Sooner or later, even a clown like Cavanaugh’s going to figure that out and try to find ‘em, see who they left their money to. If it turns out to be Jonathan - bango! There’s his motive.”

  “‘Bango’?”

  IN TAKING THE MEASURE of his adversary, Matt Fielder had formed an initial impression shared by most o
f Gil Cavanaugh’s opponents, both before and since. Having watched the district attorney pirouette before the cameras and pander shamelessly to his constituents, Fielder had sized up Cavanaugh as half demagogue, half buffoon. That was a serious underestimation on Fielder’s part. For all of Cavanaugh’s theatrics, he is a smart man who misses very little and knows how to play the angles.

  Even as Fielder and Gunn sat in front of their fire, pleased at their cleverness in having stumbled upon the notion of a last will and testament as a possible motive for the killings, Gil Cavanaugh slept soundly in his bed, seventy-five miles away. He’d thought about a will a full week earlier and already had had one of his assistants move for an ex parte court order to gain access to it.

  Not only that, but Cavanaugh was well ahead of Hillary Munson, too, in terms of subpoenaing records relating to Jonathan Hamilton. Still unknown to the defense was the fact that, as part of the initial “processing” of his prisoner, Deke Stanton had had Jonathan sign a number of forms. Included had been several fingerprint cards and a personal-property receipt, both standard-enough stuff. Not so standard were the blank authorization forms, the same type of forms Hillary Munson had presented to Jonathan a week later. The only difference was that Hillary had explained to Jonathan exactly what it was that he was agreeing to, and why it was important that he do so; Stanton had simply instructed him to sign his name on the dotted line. Jonathan, with his limited reading skills and compliant nature, had of course done as he’d been told. Stanton had turned the signed forms over to Cavanaugh, who promptly stapled them to subpoenas and had them served on the appropriate agencies.

  FIELDER WOULD FIND out about all of this in due time, when recipients of his own subpoenas began calling him to tell him they’d already furnished the material he was looking for to the district attorney. The discovery would lead Fielder to fire off an angry letter to Cavanaugh, rescinding his client’s prior authorization. Which was, of course, a little like closing the barn door after the horses had left. It would also cause him to change his estimation of Cavanaugh, and to realize, soberly, that the defense investigation was running well behind that of the district attorney.

  But as annoying as that realization might be, it would hardly be a novel position in which Fielder would find himself. The truth is, the defense almost always lags behind the prosecution; it’s the very nature of the process, in which the prosecution tends to act, while the defense tends to react. But, ironically enough, it’s also one of the aspects of the game that appealed to Fielder and got his competitive juices going. Being cast in the underdog role was one of the things that had drawn Matt Fielder to criminal defense work in the first place. Like many defense attorneys, he takes pride in the knowledge that he does some of his best work when things look bleakest and when the odds against his succeeding seem absolutely overwhelming - right around the time the prosecutor is thinking about putting a bottle of champagne on ice for his victory party.

  “Man, you’re some cook.” Pearson Gunn’s voice brought Fielder out of his trance. “What kind of meat did you use to make that chili so rich?”

  This from a man whose investigative prowess Fielder was counting on in order to save a man’s life.

  “Venison, I bet, huh?”

  So there they sat, the captain and co-captain of a ragtag, three-member pickup team who’d never played a game together in their lives, up against a seasoned, all-star roster of veteran heavy-hitters. Not only were they seriously overmatched, but they were also playing in the other team’s ballpark, in front of a hostile crowd, and under the eye of a biased umpire. And before long they’d find out they’d already spotted the home team a couple of runs before even coming up to bat.

  The way Matt Fielder figured it, pretty soon he’d have Gil Cavanaugh right where he wanted him.

  BY MONDAY, Matt Fielder had pretty much gotten over his hangover. He’d slept past nine Sunday morning, a full three hours later than his usual rising hour. By the time he’d finally gotten his bearings, there was no sign of Pearson Gunn, who - as best Fielder could remember - had lapsed into a deep coma on the couch sometime around three in the morning. But the disappearance of the Impala from the driveway told him that Gunn had somehow returned to life and driven off.

  The rest of the day had been something of a fog for Fielder. His tongue felt like it had fur on it and was too big for his mouth. There had been alternating waves of nausea, throbbing headaches, and a dryness in his throat that made it painful to swallow. He felt thirsty, but every time he took a sip of liquid, his stomach threatened to turn itself inside out.

  Around two in the afternoon, he’d decided that some activity was called for. He’d found some shoes, climbed into the Suzuki, and headed down Route 28 for Utica. Twice he’d almost gone off the road trying to negotiate routine turns; each time, the ensuing adrenaline surge had sustained him for the next ten minutes or so.

  In Utica, he’d bought coffee and a bagel, and found a copy of the Sunday Times. Heading back north, he’d driven with the window wide open to stay awake. To keep from freezing, he’d turned the heater up full-blast. Somehow he’d made it back, but it must have been pretty much on automatic pilot; afterward he could barely remember driving.

  Straightening up his cabin that evening, Fielder had come across the culprit lying on its side by the couch: the gallon jug, frighteningly close to empty. He’d summoned up his courage and forced himself to read the label in full. Ruby Red Port. He’d gagged and had tasted a mixture of coffee, bagel, and pulverized fermented grapes.

  It would be more than two years before he dared drink anything stronger than cider.

  He’d glanced through Sports Sunday, checking the baseball scores. The cartoons in The Week in Review had failed to strike him as particularly amusing; one of them he didn’t get at all. He’d spent twenty minutes with the crossword puzzle, but had trouble making out the fine print of the clues, especially the absurdly tiny numbers in the boxes. Twice he’d written answers in the wrong place. And, to top it off, the puzzle was a stepquote. He hated stepquotes.

  By seven-thirty that evening, he’d climbed into bed, begged for forgiveness, and prayed for sleep. Around ten, some merciful god had finally relented.

  PEARSON GUN SPENT most of Monday trying to track down the last wills of Carter and Mary Alice Hamilton. Because they’d been dead only two weeks, he knew that nothing would be probated yet. That meant he’d have to find the lawyer who’d drawn up the wills in the first place, and who, hopefully, had retained a copy of them in his or her files.

  There were about fifteen lawyers who practiced in and around Cedar Falls, and Gunn knew most of them, having worked for many of them at one time or another. But the Hamiltons had lived over by Flat Lake, and Gunn didn’t know any lawyers from around there, or indeed if there even were any. Worse yet, there was no village of Flat Lake to speak of, so any lawyer in the vicinity would have to be working out of his home. And you couldn’t very well drive around knocking on doors, asking if there was a lawyer in the house.

  He called every lawyer he knew of in Cedar Falls. No one had written a will for the Hamiltons. He tried the yellow pages, looking under ATTORNEYS. There were none with addresses in Flat Lake. Running out of ideas, he went to see Dot Whipple at the courthouse, and she let him look in a red book that had a lawyers’ directory in it.

  “Used to be, they listed the names by county,” Dot told him. “But they changed things a few years back, and now it’s simply one big list containing all the lawyers in the state in alphabetical order.”

  Which made it no use at all.

  “Help me out here, Dot,” Gunn pleaded. He’d learned long ago that the surest way to get assistance was to come right out and ask for it. Made people feel needed.

  Dot scrunched up her face for a moment. “How about Jonathan’s parents?” she asked him.

  “Gonna be hard to ask them,” Gunn said. “Both of ‘em burned up in that fire. Gotta be ten years now.”

  “I know that,” snapp
ed Dot, who kept track of just about everybody in the county, and certainly knew that Jonathan’s parents had died in the fire, which had been in 1989, actually. February.

  “So?”

  “So they’re dead.” She stated the obvious.

  “Yeah?”

  “Which means their wills got probated long ago.”

  WITH PEARSON GUNN busy Monday in Cedar Falls, trying to hunt down the wills of Jonathan’s grandparents, Matt Fielder decided it would a good time for a road trip. He’d called Gil Cavanaugh that morning with a request to examine the physical evidence in the case - whatever items had been recovered at the crime scene, taken from Jonathan at the time of his arrest, or later seized from his cottage pursuant to the search warrant. Cavanaugh had been helpful to a point. The good news was that Fielder was welcome to inspect the evidence (though any other answer would have amounted to a violation of law, as well as etiquette). The bad news was that it was all currently being held for safekeeping by the troopers at Troop H. Troop H houses the New York State Police Headquarters and Training Academy, and happens to be in Albany. For Fielder, that meant a drive of 130 miles. Each way.

  Then again, it was a nice day for a ride. And as long as Fielder was going to be in Albany, he decided to make a day of it. He phoned Hillary Munson and arranged to meet her at her office that afternoon. He figured they’d better get started putting together a mitigation letter to present to Cavanaugh. Not that it would do any good, of course: Cavanaugh was going to do what he was going to do, and they both knew what that was. But that couldn’t stop Fielder from trying.

  Beyond that, Fielder almost certainly had an ulterior motive in mind. It had been almost two years since he’d seen Hillary. Ever since the day of their lunch together, he’d kept her business card in his wallet, and a vivid picture of her in his mind. It was that picture of Hillary Munson - of her pixie smile and her soft, curly hair - that now caused the miles to fly by for Matt Fielder and his trusty Suzuki Sidekick.