Chapter 1

Gary Graves sat in my office, the usually crisp and nearly terse speech patterns I'd come to expect from my old friend, sometime employer and occasional attorney of record, blurred and muddied somehow as he felt it incumbent upon himself to explain why he'd just hired me to look into something for him. He was close to babbling, and I was finding it increasingly difficult to understand his problem.

"Well, Gary, surely you've defended men before you suspected were just as guilty as the prosecution said they were. This time can't be the first time you've at least had some doubts about your client's innocence." My private opinion was, most defendants were probably guilty; so sue me.

"No, no, Sheila -- you just don't understand." Pause. Then, "I guess I don't fully understand it myself, now that you put it so baldly to me." Gary sat and fingered his Cross pen for a long moment, finally spinning it like a propeller on my desk before catching himself and jamming it into his breast pocket. But just as I was about to fill the silence with some remark or other, he started in again.

"Of course I've represented clients who were guilty; in fact, no doubt more of them guilty than innocent, truth be told. But whereas the job of the prosecutor is to exact vengeance for a crime, no matter the circumstances under which it was committed, mine is to ameliorate that vengeance with understanding, mercy and, hopefully, justice."

Well, except for the flowery language, that oversimplified things a tad, but what the hell? He was, after all, a superb defense attorney, and being of the old school, that's the idealistic view he brought to all his clients, guilty or not. Still, I couldn't resist a small jab.

"And better still, get 'em off free as a bird, right, Gary?" He turned his mournful old hazel gaze at me, the pain of it all telegraphed clearly. I was forced to capitulate to a degree; he was such a literal-minded man and an old friend I couldn't bring myself to yank him around. "Okay, Gary -- never mind me. Go ahead with what you were saying before I derailed your thoughts."

Barbara Fox was just returning from across the street, our lunches packed up by Perry in two styrofoam cartons. I signaled with my eyebrows she should head right on upstairs with them. Privately I hoped I'd get Gary to spell out exactly what he wanted of me in time to actually enjoy the burgers and fries which I could smell even from here. Gary, bless his aging heart, was oblivious to all, bushy eyebrows wadded in a tangle while he marshaled his thoughts. With some effort, I quashed a sign of impatience with him.

"You see, I've known Howard Rheinhardt for many, many years. Both of our fathers were civil engineers in the Corps of Engineers who, as the circumstances often dictated, were forced to move quite often from one post to another."

Gary cleared his throat slightly before continuing. "My father, you see, was a project supervisor for many years prior to his retirement, and Howard's father was his next-in-command, often pulling up stakes and transferring along, wherever my father's career took him. They were friends as well as co-workers, you see. Still are, for that matter."

"'Still are'? How the hell old are they, Gary? Must be in their eighties at least?"

"Longevity seems to run in both families. My father is nearly ninety and Howard's dad is a year or two younger. When my mother died, the two men soon gravitated back together, living today in a houseboat which they collaborated in constructing on a barge -- beautiful place on Lake Washington, smack in the middle of Seattle."

"Sorry to break your train of thought again. Good for them. But go ahead with what you were telling me about Howard before I blurted in again."

"Howard was a great lad, my superior in every way even if four years younger -- no doubt about it. He was affable, outgoing, athletic, handsome, blindingly intelligent, and simply everything a father could wish for. That he seemed to enjoy my company was flattering to me. You see, I didn't have many friends when I was a youngster. I'd suffered a bout with polio when I was eight which left me with a small limp and a weakness on my left side." That explained it, I thought -- the slight hesitancy in his step I'd always noticed.

"That meant I was always the last to be chosen when . . . well, enough of that."

I could see that although this was nearly sixty years past, the wounds bled afresh at times. But I understood completely. I'd been a lardy youngster, also always the last to be chosen at that age when being chosen mattered enormously.

Gary was plodding ahead, determined to explain himself. "So as I've said, Howard was the first friend I ever had, really. He never seemed to want anything from me, just usually included me in his own plans, and I seldom understood why." He stopped again, lost in dusty thought; I let him think in peace. There was always the microwave.

The repetitive soft thudding I heard from upstairs indicated a small dog, old Fuzz of Chihuahua persuasion, was already leaping up as high as his wiry legs would take him in anticipation of his own share of the booty.

Gary gave a sudden start, sat straighter in his chair, positively flushing. "Why, you must think I'm going all dotty on you, maundering along like this about something which has no bearing at all on the case in hand."

"Not at all, Gary. Shows the reason for your concern, is all."

"My point in requesting your services regarding Howard's predicament is something he said to me the night of his arrest, something I didn't understand then and which he denies saying now. But he said it quite clearly. There's nothing at all wrong with my hearing, you understand. I may not see as well as once I did, but I heard very well indeed." He smiled gently before adding, "My dear wife more than once complained that I should grow deaf in my old age so she could talk about me behind my back without fear of being overheard." His smile was sweet, recalling the gentle woman, dead nearly two years now. It had taken him much of that two years to even approach who he had been with her, now that he was without her.

Fearing he might wander astray again, I pressed him to stick with his point. "So what did you hear him say? And was he saying it to you or only to himself, as it were?" He obviously was forced to think about that last question, so I waited him out.

At last he spoke, the surprise evident in his voice. "You know, now that you put it so plainly, he did seem to be just thinking out loud -- or at least, not actually speaking to me per se. He wasn't looking at me when he spoke but appeared to be fixated on a point directly to my left, staring hard at a spot on the bare wall of the interrogation room."

"And he said what?"

"He said quite clearly, although softly, 'I told you before about that, but you never learn, do you?' And he had this hard, tight smile on his face, his eyes -- well, we've all heard how eyes blazed on someone. But until the other night, I'd never understood that expression. I do now." And Gary gave an involuntary little shudder at the recollection of his friend's demeanor.

"And he said what when you asked him to explain that?"

"He didn't seem to know what I was talking about. When I asked him, thinking he must have been speaking to me, 'You told me about what, Howard,' he lifted his eyes to me and in a totally different voice said, 'What are you talking about, Gary?' I repeated what he'd just the minute before said, clearly and distinctly, and he looked at me as though I'd gone around the bend, swearing vehemently that he hadn't said any such thing, laughing at me almost, shaking his head, intimating I was hallucinating. Since getting to the bottom of that unimportant detail was far from the most vital thing we needed to discuss that night, I let it go finally, promising myself I'd look into it later.

"I admit, I may be making a great stir over nothing. But somehow at the time it just didn't seem like nothing, but rather, something highly significant. His voice was the voice of a stranger -- hard, flat, almost harsh. And his expression was certainly one I'd not seen before, at least not on him. He'd smoothed it over completely by the time he protested about my insistence on what he'd said, and I'm not even sure but what he believes himself he said nothing. But he did. And for some reason I'm far from clear about, I think it may prove to be important. I have an instinct for such things, you know."

And I did know. Gary had shown himself more than once in our long history together to be -- well, for want of a better word, I guess psychic will have to do. He gets these feelings, these hunches, and he's seldom wrong. Having no such ESP talent whatsoever, I'm deeply impressed with those who do. If Gary said he felt it to be important, I believed him -- it would doubtless prove to be important.

"So what is it precisely you want me to look into for you, Gary?"

"I want you to go and talk to the people who knew him when, so to speak. I want you to talk to the family of his first wife. At the time of her disappearance they turned heaven and earth to have him charged with something. His every twitch for six months prior to Elaine's apparent drowning was examined, six ways from Sunday. He had no alibi, but neither apparently did he have a motive, and not a shred of evidence was ever unearthed to connect him to her disappearance. There was no insurance to collect, no other woman at the time, and finding neither a motive, incriminating evidence or even a body, the investigation foundered and was finally closed, at least as far as being active.

"I also want you to go farther back than that, actually. I want you to ferret out people who remember him from the old days. Somehow I have the feeling that I may not have been the most unbiased of observers when we were youngsters, that maybe he was not quite the paragon I remember him to be. If you talk to those who were less under his spell than I, perhaps the picture of what he was and perhaps is today might become more clear."

Gary reached into his tattered leather attachè and extracted a folder, placing it on my desk before he continued.

"I spent the last couple of nights going through old records and papers belonging to my father so I could be more precise in giving you the correct dates and places we were posted in the early days. I've not included any postings overseas after the war -- sorry, but you won't get a free trip to Bremerhaven, I'm afraid," he added, smiling almost like his old self again.

"Ah, shucks, Gary -- always had a hankering to go to Bremerhaven."

"Sorry 'bout that. Anyway, here they are. I've also added a listing of a few areas I remember Howard speaking of where he sometimes spent the summers. His mother and father were divorced. She remarried, her new husband being a farmer in the midwest with four sons whose first wife died years earlier. Gary from time to time spent the summers with her, a situation he was not particularly keen on, if I recall correctly. Something to do with rubbing elbows with the good old boys, I believe -- not his métier."

"This was when, these summers with his mother?"

"Oh, actually during the war -- World War II, when his father and mine were really earning their keep." He stopped for a moment, lost in another recollection, before whipping out his slender gold pen and adding something to the list.

"In fact, that reminds me. Both our fathers were in the States during the actual time of the hostilities, but both of them were posted to Germany in early 1946 with the occupation forces. I was in college by that time, of course, but Howard was forced to spend that entire year, as far as I remember, on the farm. He was -- well, bitter is probably too mild a word. It took some time before he got back to the happy-go-lucky young man I remembered, or so I'm told. By that time we had really drifted apart -- more the life experience difference than one of age, you see. I was going to law school just as he entered college, and we were no longer the same two people."

"Odd, don't you think, that he was in his father's custody rather than his mother's in those days?"

"Not really, no. I understand everyone, including the mother, felt it would be the best thing for Howard. You know, traveling around the country, living an ever broadening life rather than one strictured by the limited resources of a tiny farming community in the boondocks. Everyone just knew Howard would be a very important person one day." And Gary stopped again, becoming stuck in his memories once more.

"And is he?"

He blinked and stared at me. "Is he what?"

"A very important person."

He actually considered it for a moment before gravely shaking his head, "No, not particularly -- not unless being accused of the aggravated murder of your wife makes one very important."

"That's his one claim to fame?"

And my old friend looked positively gaunt, his eyes fastened on nothing as he stared at the beautiful Denver day outside my windows. "God, but I do hope so."

That odd remark stuck in my mind like a limpet, returning to haunt me any number of times as I followed the spoor of Howard Rheinhardt through the years of his youth, talking to various family and acquaintances in many parts of the country.