Heartstone

Al smiled and nodded.

“Okay. Now back to Shaeffer. How much do you think we should tell him?”

“I don’t know. I think we should at least give him an outline of our case. I don’t think we should give him the transcript of Esther’s hypnosis interviews, because there is too much there that he could play with.”

“I agree, Al. I’m thinking of telling him just enough to get him worried, but no reports or transcripts of interviews. Now, we have to give him copies of the statements his client made when he was interrogated in ’61 and I’ll have to give him witness statements the day before they testify, but he’ll be too busy with the trial to do much with those statements when he gets them.”

A buzzer rang and Heider pressed down on his intercom switch.

“Send him back,” Heider said. A few moments later, Mark Shaeffer was seated next to Al.

“What can I do for you?” Heider asked with an expansive smile.

Mark was nervous. He knew Heider by reputation and he felt out of his league. He was unsure of himself dealing with someone with the experience Heider had. He also realized that under the state’s discovery laws he was entitled to damn little information. He did not want to antagonize Heider or the D.A. might not talk with him at all. Still, he knew that sometime during the meeting he would have to bring up the refusal of Esther Pegalosi and, this morning, Dr. Arthur Hollander, to discuss the case with him.

“I’ve been retained to represent Bobby Coolidge.”

“So I understand. You know that Bobby and Billy are going to get you great press. They sound like a country and western duo. Good-looking boys, too. It’s this type of case makes me wish I was in private practice.”

Heider winked and Mark laughed. Maybe Heider would be all right after all. He certainly wasn’t coming on strong.

“Say, Mark, can I get you some coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“Well, I guess, why you’ve arrested Mr. Coolidge after all these years.”

Heider laughed.

“That’s simple. We have the goods on him.”

Mark watched the easy way Heider had spoken that sentence. He saw the D.A. leaning back in his chair, his jacket open, and at ease. There was none of the tension or nervousness about the man that Mark was experiencing. He wished that he could have just a fraction of that self-assurance.

“What are the goods?” he asked, trying to hide his nervousness with an ineffectual smile.

Heider leaned forward in his chair.

“You know, Mark, I’m under no obligation to reveal our case, but this is such an unusual case that I’m going to tell you a little about it.

“Back in 1960, when Richie Walters was murdered, the police found a pair of glasses and some other objects that obviously belonged to a woman down the hill from the boy’s body. You can get all this out of the newspaper accounts. The glasses were traced to a girl named Esther Freemont, who claimed that they had been stolen before the murders.

“It turns out, now, that Esther suffered amnesia caused by the trauma of seeing that boy murdered. We had a psychiatrist work with her…”

“Dr. Hollander?”

Heider nodded.

“And he was able to break through her resistance. She now has an independent memory of the events. We can put her in the presence of your client and his brother, through their own statements, at approximately the time of the murders. We have independent witnesses who will testify that Billy Coolidge pulled a switchblade knife during a fight earlier in the evening of November 25, a few hours before the murder. The coroner will testify that a knife of the type described would have been capable of causing the wounds that killed Richie Walters.”

“You’re saying that Esther saw the Coolidges kill Walters and the girl?”

“She saw the events on the hill.”

“What does…? How did she say it happened?”

Heider leaned back in his chair, tilting it precariously, so that he was able to rest his heels on his desk. He smiled.

“I’m afraid that you’ll have to wait for the trial for the answer to that one. Or, you can ask Esther.”

“I tried to do that yesterday, Phil,” Mark said, feeling uncomfortable about using Heider’s first name, “and she said that you told her she shouldn’t talk to me.”

“Whoa,” Heider said, holding up his hand. “I never told her that. I told her that she had to make up her own mind who she talked with. I guess she just decided that she doesn’t want to discuss this case more than she has to. She’s a frightened girl, you know. You can’t see something as savage as those killings and not be affected. Don’t forget, that experience was so horrible for her that she developed amnesia because her conscious mind couldn’t deal with it.”

“Dr. Hollander wouldn’t talk with me either.”

Heider shrugged.

“Some people are like that. I’m sorry I can’t help you there.”

“You can call and tell him it’s okay to talk to me.”

“Well, Mark, I feel that this is a choice each individual should make on his own. I certainly don’t want to influence the man one way or the other.”

“In other words, you won’t tell him it’s all right to discuss this case with me,” Mark said, begi

“That’s exactly what I did tell him when he asked me. I guess he just decided that he would rather not talk with you.”

“I see,” Mark said.

“Good,” Heider smiled. It was a smile of smug satisfaction, made by the man with the whip hand. Mark felt an overriding desire to get out of Heider’s office. They discussed some preliminary matters concerning trial dates and length of trial and Heider gave Mark copies of the police reports concerning Bobby Coolidge’s statements when he had been interviewed in 1961. When Shaeffer had gone, Heider turned to Albert Caproni and laughed.

“Candy,” he said.

Sarah Rhodes had not slept much the night before. She had been doing some hard thinking. What did she know about Bobby Coolidge? He seemed to be a nice boy. An older man, really. That, she guessed, had been the attraction. He had traveled, been in the army, the people he associated with were not the same type of people that most of the other freshman girls knew. It made her feel more mature to be seen in the company of someone like Bobby.

But there was another side to Bobby. A dark side. His arrest for murder had brought back vivid memories of his sleepless nights and the conversation they had had in the early dawn hours one morning. She could still hear his sorrow-filled voice quietly telling her about the person he had been before the war. The person who had done “bad things.” It had been such a childlike statement. So out-of-place coming from such a strong man. Almost as if the voice had been pitched through him by an unseen ventriloquist.

And was he such a strong man? Yes, on the surface. It took a strong man to go through the war the way Bobby had. In weak moments, he had told her of some of his experiences and she knew that she could never have endured them. It took a strong man to try to get an education, given Bobby’s background.

But there was the other, hidden side to him. The feeling she had from time to time that he was like a delicate china vase that could shatter at any moment, if the right type of pressure was applied. There was guilt hiding in the closets and the attics and eating away ever so slowly. Guilt that could be easily explained by the personal knowledge that he had stabbed a young man to death and raped and strangled a young woman. And, if that was true-if he was the type of man who could do such a thing, with premeditation, in cold blood-then how could they go on? How could she possibly hold such a man, let him touch her, knowing what his hands had done?

These were the things that she had thought about last night when she debated with herself about calling her parents. She had read the account of the Murray-Walters case in the paper. She had seen the headlines after she and George had left Mark’s office and purchased a paper. The details were graphic and they had shaken her. Could she ask her parents for the money to defend a person who may have done such a thing? Yes, if-and it was a big if-she loved him. But did she? That was the question that was tearing her apart.