"But surely he knew he didn't have to do anything. He didn't have to talk with you. He could have gotten away with it."
"Of course you're right. But there was an instant yesterday in Waldo's when I saw him crack. One moment he was going to sue me, the next he wanted to talk. At the time I thought he was just playing me, trying out a different tune. Now I think he was making a choice he'd been considering for years. I think he'd gotten whatever it was he wanted out of life. He had wealth and power, but he knew he was a fraud. Then I came along with my accusations, giving him the excuse he needed to self-destruct. But being Spencer, he had to do it the arch-mannered way he'd learned from Waldo, turn it all into ‘a story,’ then make a big flamboyant gesture to certify to its truth. Driving his vintage Jag off a cliff – that's so consistent with what he thought of as ‘high style.’ I think for him going to prison would've been worse that going back to DaVinci. Once he handed me that tape he had no choice, he'd passed the point of no return."
Mace raises his eyebrows. "What gets me is this was a murder-for-hire case and the real killer got home free. Fulraine hires this guy to kill his wife, gets custody of his kids, keeps his secret, lives a respectable life, then dies a respectable natural death."
"Remember what you told me about Fulraine, that he wouldn’t have known how to hire a hitman?"
Mace shrugs. "I was wrong about a lot of stuff. And you know what? Now that this is solved, I hope I never have to think about it again."
I open my room door at 6:00 a.m. and pick up the early edition of the Times-Dispatch. Most of the front page is devoted to the Foster trial, but at the bottom there's a two-column-wide headline:
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST COMMITS SUICIDE WAS INVOLVED IN OLD FLAMINGO MURDER CASE
I quickly scan the story, pausing at the eighth paragraph:
FSI Corp, formerly known as Fulraine Steel Industries, last night released the following statement by CEO Mark Fulraine, son of the more prominent of the two Flamingo Court Motel victims:
"Speaking for the Fulraine family, we do not accept the notion that our father plotted our beloved mother's death. This latest attempt to foist the killings upon a man no longer here to defend himself is one more painful chapter in an awful family tragedy."
Near the end, on the follow-up page, I come upon this:
Sheriff's Department Chief Inspector Mace Bartel mentioned the important contribution of freelance forensic sketch artist David Weiss, currently in Calista covering the Foster trial for ABC News.
Weiss, a Calista native, is the son of the late Dr. Thomas Rubin, a local psychoanalyst who was treating Mrs. Fulraine at the time of the Flamingo shootings.
According to Bartel, Weiss has been obsessed with the case since he was a child. It was one of Weiss's sketches, Bartel said, that persuaded investigators that Spencer Deval was the actual triggerman at the Flamingo Court Motel.
Weiss, Bartel added, is well-known for his work in a number of high-profile murder cases, including drawings that led to the arrest of the Zigzag Killer in San Francisco and the Saturn Killer in Omaha.
Obsessed since he was a child. Yeah, I think they got that right…
Calista County Courthouse
10:07 a.m.
We in the courtroom hold our collective breath as Judge Winterson asks defendant Foster to rise and face the jury.
"We find the defendant not guilty."
My eyes, of course, are fastened onto Kit. The low-key demeanor, sadly hung head, and glazed eyes all suddenly disappear. In a flash, her body straightens, her head cocks up, her eyes bug out, and a wide haw-haw grin stretches her mouth. The meek, soulful waif-defendant becomes the gleeful scam artist. She throws her arms around her lawyer and whirls him around.
At last I have something to draw! I sketch furiously, trying to catch the scene in all its horrible splendor, knowing that if I can get it down right, create a three-frame series of close-ups of Kit's transformation, I'll be able to tell the story of a murder trial gone terribly wrong.
Except for Wash, Starret, Harriet, and me, the courtroom empties fast. Harriet waits respectfully until I finish up my drawing, takes one look, purrs with delight, then rushes out. A moment later, Wash finishes his and hands it off to Starret.
Wash and I glance at one another, then smile.
"It's over," I tell him. "Let's have a drink?"
Even though Waldo's is full this afternoon, people standing two and three deep at the bar, the mood in the barroom is subdued. Harriet and I, Pam, Wash, and Starret sit together at a corner table.
The buzz surrounding us is uniform:
Foster got away with murder; not only is she free, she'll end up with Caleb Meadows's fortune. The only astonishing turn, everyone agrees, was the way she revealed herself at the end.
"I've covered murder trials for twenty years and I never saw a move like that," Wash tells us.
Most surprising to me, nobody in the room appears to be talking about Deval.
I'm sitting on Pam's bed watching her pack, waiting for the evening news. She's flying to D.C. tonight on the eight o'clock, then on to L.A. over the weekend. Since I'm booked on a morning flight to San Francisco, it seems we won't be spending a final night together. Or, viewing it another way, we already did that last night.
Her movements are rapid as she pulls clothing out of drawers and stows it in her bags.
"I wonder if I'll ever get back here," she says. "What about you?"
"I doubt it."
"Make you sad?"
"Not really. I don't have family here anymore."
She stuffs a sports bra into a side pocket of her overnight.
"Anyway, you accomplished what you came here for."
"Yeah, I did."
"And now you're feeling let down."
"Pretty much," I agree.
She finishes packing, sits beside me on the bed, gently takes my hand.
"So a rich, screwy young woman and a rich, decadent old man both got away with murder. So it's an imperfect world. Nothing new about that."
After we watch our respective news shows back to back, we descend to Waldo's for a farewell drink.
Tony's strangely cool when we take our stools at the bar. He refuses to make eye contact, barely nods when Pam requests our usual, a pair of margaritas.
"Something bothering you, Tony?" she asks.
"You better believe it," he mutters without looking up.
"Why don't you tell us?" She speaks gently. "We like you. Be a shame to end things on a sour note."
"I got no problem with you, Miss," Tony says, his eyes sallow, face pale as snow. "It's Mr. Weiss here's got me peeved."
"Because of what I told the papers about Waldo doing blackmail?"
Tony doesn't bother to nod or even look at me, simply faces Waldo's portrait as he speaks his mind.
"Mr. C was a great man. You and some others here would like to tear him down, but the people who really knew him know he could never have done what you say. He was a great man and he will always be great. And now please excuse me, this is my busy time. Lots of clients waiting for drinks…"
Pam and I exchange a look, I leave a hundred dollars on the bar, then we move to a table. A few minutes later a waiter returns the money on a tray with a brief explanation.: "No gratuity necessary, Tony says."
Pam shrugs. "He still loves the guy. What can you do?"
Even in the morning I can still taste her final salty kiss upon my lips, the kiss she bestowed when I dropped her at the airport, along with her parting words: "I hope you call."