My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(83)

“I remember.” Clark picked up his glass and tipped it toward Calloway before throwing back the alcohol and grimacing. Calloway lifted the bottle, but Clark waved off a refill.

Calloway spun a bent paper clip like a helicopter blade between his thumb and index finger, listening to the clock on the wall tick and to the low-pitched hum of the fluorescent lights, one still flickering and ticking.

“You’ll file an appeal?”

“It’s a formality,” Clark said.

“How long before the Court of Appeals denies it and grants a new trial?”

“Not sure it will be up to me to decide. New prosecuting attorney might want to cut his losses,” Clark said, apparently already resigned to losing his job. “He’ll have a built-in excuse, blame it on the old guy, say I screwed it up so bad he can’t win a retrial. Why waste the taxpayers’ money? Why blemish his own record for someone else’s shit pile?”

“Speculation and innuendo is all it is, Vance.”

“The media is already running with their stories on corruption and conspiracies in Cedar Grove. God knows what else they’ll come up with.”

“People in this county know who you are and what you stand for.”

Clark smiled, but it had a sad quality to it and quickly dimmed. “I just wish I did.” He set the glass on the desk. “You think they’ll come after us, criminal charges?”

Now it was Calloway’s turn to shrug. “Could.”

“I suppose I’ll be disbarred.”

“I suppose I’ll be impeached.”

“You don’t seem concerned.”

“What’s to be, will be, Vance. I’m not about to start second-guessing myself now.”

“You’ve never thought about it?”

“Whether it was the right thing to do? Not once.” Calloway finished his drink and thought of his wife’s admonition about the storm. “I suggest you get on home while you still can. Go kiss that wife of yours.”

“Yeah,” Clark said. “There’s always that, right?”

Calloway looked again to the trout. “That’s the only thing.”

“What about House? Any idea where he’ll go?”

“Don’t know, but he won’t get far or anywhere fast in this weather. You still got that .38?”

Clark nodded.

“Might want to keep it close by.”

“I already thought of that. What about DeAngelo?”

Calloway shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye on him, but I don’t think House is that smart. If he was, he’d have filed an appeal based on inadequacy of legal counsel. He never did.”





[page]CHAPTER 51





Tracy backed up her Subaru, put it in drive, and gunned the engine a third time. This attempt, the tires bounced over the lip of snow and ice at the edge of Dan’s driveway, followed by an ugly scraping sound beneath her car. She plowed far enough forward to leave room for Dan to park his Tahoe behind her. The noise awakened the alarm system, a chorus of yelps and barks erupting inside the house, though she could not see the dogs because of the plywood still covering the shattered plate-glass window.

When Tracy stepped from the car, her boots sank to midcalf in the snow that had buried the stone walkway. The partially buried lawn lights created pools of liquid gold. She found the spare key that Dan kept above the garage door and called out to Sherlock and Rex as she undid the deadbolt to the front door. Their barking had reached a fevered pitch. When she opened the door, she expected them to burst out and stepped to the side to avoid the impact, but neither dog came at her. Rex showed no interest, and Sherlock only stuck his head out the door, apparently to see if Dan was trailing her. When he realized Dan was not coming, Sherlock retreated.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, stepping in and shutting the door. “A hot bath sounds a lot better.” The adrenaline that had fueled her for the week had dissipated, leaving emotional fatigue and stress, though her mind continued to struggle with the letters and numbers of the license plate of the flatbed truck.

Tracy locked the deadbolt and left her boots, gloves, and coat on the rug by the door. She found the remote control on the sofa and turned on the television, surfing channels for news of the hearing and Judge Meyers’s unexpected decision as she made her way into the kitchen. She settled on Channel 8, which had been running Manpelt’s reports as the lead story every evening, and grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, popping the cap. Returning to the family room, Tracy slumped into the cushions on the couch and felt her muscles immediately relax into the material. The beer tasted better than she could have imagined, cold and refreshing. She put her stocking-clad feet up on the coffee table and examined the scrape on her knee, which was just superficial. She should probably clean it, but Tracy didn’t feel like getting up and going to the trouble. Dan might have to carry her upstairs to bed.

Her mind again drifted to the license plate. The V that could have been a W and the three that could have been an eight. Had it been a commercial plate? She couldn’t be certain.

Tracy sipped her beer and tried to quell her thoughts. Everything had come to such a sudden and dramatic conclusion that she hadn’t had time to absorb the implications of what had happened. Like everyone else, she’d thought that Judge Meyers would end the proceedings and issue a written ruling at a later date. She’d never imagined that Edmund House would leave the hearing a free man. She’d envisioned him being sent back to jail to await the Court of Appeals’ decision on granting him a retrial. Her mind flashed again to that day at the Walla Walla prison when she had seen House’s shit-eating grin. I can already see it, he’d said. The looks on the faces of all those people when they see me walking the streets of Cedar Grove again.