Stuart Woods
Double Jeopardy
1
Stone Barrington walked into his office on a Monday morning and found three pink memo slips, saying that a John Keegan had called and needed to see him urgently.
Joan Robertson, his secretary, came into the room without being asked, and said, “No, I don’t know who he is. He’s been leaving messages on the machine since early this morning.”
“Perhaps you know why there’s no number to call back on these slips?”
“Oh, I just thought I’d make life more difficult for you. Isn’t that my job?”
“I’m just asking.”
“I can only write down the messages left,” she said. “If there had been a number, I would have written that down, too. If past performance is any indication, he’ll call back.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Stone said. His phone rang. Joan picked it up.
“The Barrington Practice at Woodman & Weld,” she said. “Ah, yes, Mr. Keegan, I have him right here.” She handed Stone the phone with a triumphant grin.
“Good morning, this is Stone Barrington.”
“Thank God,” Keegan said. “My name is John Keegan, call me Jack. I need to speak to you in person as soon as possible.”
“Where are you, Jack?”
“In a cab, on the way in from the airport.”
“A New York airport?”
“Sorry, yes. LaGuardia. I just got off the shuttle from Boston.”
“Do you have my address?”
Keegan spoke it to him.
“May I know what this is about?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Suffice to say, it’s a family matter.”
“I’ll be available when you get here. I hope you brought your raincoat and galoshes.” But Keegan had hung up. It was pouring outside.
A few minutes later, the office doorbell rang. Stone’s office was in a former dentist’s office in a house that he had inherited from a great-aunt many years before and remodeled. He heard the sounds of an umbrella closing and outer clothing being shucked off.
Joan stuck her head in. “Mr. Keegan to see you,” she said, “slightly damp.”
Keegan walked in wearing a good suit and a necktie, and carrying an old-fashioned briefcase, stuffed. He dropped it on the floor with a thump and offered his hand.
Stone shook it and waved him to a seat. “I expect you could use some hot coffee,” Stone said.
“Oh, yes.”
“How?” Joan asked.
“Black, please.”
“It’s strong. Do you want it weaker?”
“Strong is good.”
She left and returned with a steaming mug and set it on a small table beside him. He sipped it gratefully.
“You said this was a family matter,” Stone said. “I have only one family member, a son, Peter, who lives in Los Angeles. Is this about him?”
“No, sorry. The other side of the family.” He handed a card over: “Keegan, Kay, and Williams, Boston.”
“And you’re Keegan,” Stone said. “Just a wild guess.”
“I and my father before me. All three of us partners had fathers who preceded us in the firm.”
“Neat and tidy. The other side of the family? The Stones?”
“Yes.”
“They’re all dead, except two of them, who are... unavailable.”
“Mr. Barrington...”
“Call me Stone.”
“Stone...” He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I’m new to this case, and it would be helpful to me if you could recount your knowledge of your Stone relatives, particularly with regard to your residence on Islesboro.”
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“Grandparents.”
“My mother, Matilda, was a Stone. She and my father, a Barrington, were both from western Massachusetts, both families in the weaving business, mostly men’s suitings. My parents fell in love as teenagers; she was studying art at Mount Holyoke and he, law, at Yale. Her parents objected to the pairing.”
“On what grounds?”
“My father had leftist political views. He had even joined the Communist Party for a brief time, mostly to annoy his father, I think. They married anyway — eloped. As a result, they were both banished from their families: he for his politics, she for marrying him.”
“Did you have any cousins on the Stone side?”
“Two first cousins, Caleb and Richard.”
“Did you know them well?”
“Not until, at eighteen, I was invited to spend a summer on Islesboro with them, during a brief thaw in family relations.”
“And how did you get on with them?”
“Splendidly, with Dick, poorly with Caleb, who was both a bully and an ass, as bullies usually are. I finally had occasion to punch him in the nose, earning the displeasure of his mother, who thereafter declared me persona non grata on the island. I was not invited back.”
“Did you see them after that?”
“I saw Dick once, when he came to New York on business. We had dinner and renewed our warm friendship. That was the last time I saw him.”
“Did you communicate on any sort of regular basis?”
“Not really. I never met his wife.”
“And did the Stone brothers have progeny?”
“Dick and his wife had a daughter. Caleb, twin sons.”
“Did you ever hear from Dick again?”
“I received a package from him, with a letter instructing me to put it in my safe and to open it only in the event of his death.”
“What happened after that?”
“He died.”
“Murdered, along with his wife and child, I am informed.”
“You are correctly informed.”
“Did you learn who killed them?”
“I deduced who did. The law did not.”
“What was your deduction?”
“That Enos and Eben Stone murdered all three, along with a number of local, Boston, and New Haven women. Oh, and both their parents. I believe the twins are serving life without possibility of parole in the state prison.”
“That is not quite correct,” Keegan said.
“How not so?”
“The Stone twins confessed to the killing of their parents, pled guilty, and were sentenced to life.”
“What about no parole?”
“Their first parole hearing is the day after tomorrow.”
2
Stone blinked. “Whatever happened to ‘without parole’?”
“Like you, the police deduced that the Stone twins were guilty of all the aforementioned murders, but they did not have the evidence to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In shooting their parents, however, they were careless, and the prosecution had them cold.”
“Wasn’t that good enough for life without parole?”
“It should have been, but two factors intervened: first, the boys claimed, convincingly, that their father had sexually abused them as children and that their mother knew about it but did nothing. Second, the state was deeply embarrassed about its failure to charge them on all counts, and they just wanted the case to go away. So, aided by a clever attorney — my father — they pled guilty to the murders of their parents, in exchange for life with the possibility of parole, something the prosecution thought never would happen.”
“And you,” Stone said. “Are you telling me all this because of the guilt of your father’s participation?”
“Yes. I tried to talk him out of it, but he thought it would be a feather in his cap. As a result, he was asked to resign from his clubs, and he never took another criminal case. Also, the twins were a couple of years behind me at school, and I had always thought they were evil little shits. My great regret is that Maine got rid of the death penalty in the 1870s.”
“All right, we’re both up to date, I think,” Stone said. “Now tell me why we are telling each other all this.”