"Only what I hear in the courtroom."
"Why do you think they're guilty?"
Harry said nothing.
"You're lying," Dennis said angrily. "You call me a friend and you ask for my help, and then-goddamit!-you lie to me. Like everyone else around here does! What the hell is going on?"
"You better stop the car and let me out," Harry said.
"Tell me!"
"Talk to your wife."
"My wife? Harry-"
"Pull over. Let me out of here."
Harry was already fumbling with the car door. Dennis braked firmly and swerved the Jeep to the side of the road, near a gas station and a traffic light. "See you in court," Harry mumbled-and before Dennis could stop him, he leaped from the car and was gone.
"Are you all right?" Dennis asked Bibsy.
"I wish it would be over," she murmured, "no matter how it turns out."
"You're doing fine." He kissed her lightly on the cheek. No matter what she had done or not done, he felt nothing evil or destructive in this woman, or in his father-in-law. He wondered if he would ever understand what had happened and why.
Dennis settled into his chair at the defense table. His eyes swept the banks of spectators. The Springhill people were there: the Frazee and Hapgood clans, Grace Pendergast, the younger Lovells, Edward Brophy and others. Oliver Cone sat next to his uncle. Dennis wondered if the marble quarry had been closed for this occasion.
Harry Parrot had not yet arrived. Dennis was still trying to make sense out of what had happened in the car.
The clerk called the courtroom to order.
Ray Bond called as a witness the Pitkin County deputy who had taken the fingerprints of the Hendersons. He then called a different deputy sheriff, who had received the Remington rifle and pillbox from Queenie at the crime scene near Pearl Pass, bagged them, sealed them and labeled them, and brought them by snowmobile down to Aspen. To complete the untainted chain, Bond called the evidence custodian, and then the CBI agent from Denver-he had a mustache and looked like an old-time fireman-who had analyzed and matched all the prints.
"Once again, sir, is there any doubt that the prints on these two items belong to the two defendants?"
"No doubt at all," the agent said.
To complete the case for the People, Ray Bond recalled Queenie O'Hare to the stand.
Again she was in uniform. Dennis saw some jurors smile at her. They felt they knew her already from the first day of her testimony. Her face was open and friendly, her expression one of unassuming and modest competence.
The prosecutor took Queenie back to her first meeting with the Hendersons in Springhill.
"And did the defendant, in her own home, say anything to you about a pillbox?"
"Yes, she said she'd once owned a silver pillbox. She bought it in Paris many years ago-she wasn't specific about the date. And she lost it. Lost the pillbox three years ago, she said, in Glenwood Springs."
"Did you ever show her the silver pillbox recovered from the dog's grave at Pearl Pass?"
"Yes, I did, here in Aspen."
"Did she have any comment?"
"She said, 'Oh, that's mine. That's the one I lost in Glenwood Springs.' "
Ray Bond moved from there to Queenie's account of the attempt to exhume the bodies of Susan and Henry Lovell, whom she believed at the time-and still believed, she said-were Jane and John Doe, and how the caskets were found to be empty. And in her judgment had always been empty.
"Did you make further inquiry in Springhill about this matter of the empty caskets?"
"I did indeed."
"With what result?"
"I couldn't find out a thing."
"I don't understand," Bond said.
"I couldn't get the local doctor or the local dentist to cooperate with me. The doctor, a Dr. Pendergast, said that as far as she knew-"
Dennis objected; it was hearsay. "Mr. Bond is asking for a statement made out of court. The doctor isn't here to testify."
"Sustained."
Bond smiled. "All right, Deputy. Let me put it to you another way. After you spoke to Dr. Pendergast up there in Springhill, were you satisfied that she was telling you the truth about the cause of death of Mr. and Mrs. Lovell?"
"No, I was not satisfied at all," Queenie said.
"Were you satisfied that the dentist, Dr. Brophy, was telling you the truth about the dental records?"
"No, I was not. I believed he was lying to me."
"What made you feel that?"
"Objection," Dennis said. "We're going into the realm of pure speculation here."
"Withdrawn," Ray Bond said. As Dennis suspected, the prosecutor feared opening up the matter of the dental amalgam and out-of-date restorations: he had no idea where it would lead. And neither did Dennis.
"Did you talk to anyone else up there who might have shed light on this mystery of the empty caskets?"
"I talked to the men who dug the grave, and the men who carried the caskets-that was on the occasions of both funerals. These were all men who worked at the Springhill marble quarry, including the director, a Mr. Henry Lovell Jr."
"Did you learn anything of value from any of those men? Anything that shed light on the mystery of why and how the graves came to be empty?"
"Nothing."
"What was your impression after talking to the men, and to Dr. Pendergast, and to Dr. Brophy?"
"My impression was that they were all involved in some kind of cover-up."
"Objection," Dennis said sharply. "Pure speculation."
"It's offered not for the truth of the statement," Bond said, "but to explain Deputy O'Hare's state of mind at the time. What she thought, what she believed."
"That's fine," the judge said. He looked at Dennis. "Objection overruled."
Bond quickly said to his witness, "A cover-up regarding the true identity of the two people murdered near Pearl Pass?"
"Objection," Dennis called again. "He's leading the witness!"
"Overruled."
"Yes," Queenie answered.
"And you believe those two victims discovered in their lonely graves near Pearl Pass-those two human beings murdered by lethal potassium injection and half eaten by wild animals-you believe they were Henry Lovell and Susan Lovell, former residents of Springhill, is that correct?"
"Objection," Dennis said. "What she believes is irrelevant. She can testify as to what she believes are facts, but not to her speculative beliefs."
"Overruled."
"Yes, I'm sure they were the Lovells," Queenie said.
"Let's move to the late morning of November thirtieth of this past year, Ms. O'Hare. Did anything happen around that time that's relative to this case?"
Queenie related to the jury how she had driven from Springhill to Aspen in her Jeep, county vehicle #7, with Beatrice Henderson in the front seat beside her and Scott Henderson in the rear, for the sole purpose of fingerprinting her passengers.
"During that ride, did either of them say anything to you that surprised you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Henderson did."
"Before you tell us what she said, Deputy, let me ask you this. Did you make any notes about the conversation we're talking about?"
Queenie explained that when she reached the Sheriff's Office in Aspen she had made handwritten notes as to what had been said. And then, with the aid of her notes, she had reported the conversation to Sheriff Gamble. At the sheriff's request, a few days later she typed her notes into the office computer.
"When was the last time you consulted those typed notes, Deputy O'Hare?"
"Just an hour or two ago. They're in the form of what's called a supplementary report. It's printed out by the computer. I have a copy right here." From her lap, Queenie raised a sheaf of papers.
"You keep them," Bond said. "Look at them only if you need to refresh your memory. And now tell us what, if anything, was said in your Jeep that surprised you."
"Mr. Henderson and I had a conversation about the transportation problem in the Roaring Fork Valley. I asked Mrs. Henderson what she thought about it, and she replied that she had other things on her mind. I asked her, 'Like what?' "
Queenie glanced down at her report, where Dennis and others could see that some passages had been brightened by a yellow highlighter. "She told me," Queenie said, "that she was thinking about poor Susie and Henry. She used those words: 'Poor Susie and Henry.' "
Bond raised his head quickly. "Susie and Henry who?"
"I assumed Lovell."
"And what did Mr. Henderson say when his wife mentioned 'poor Susie and Henry'?"
"He tried to stop her from going on," Queenie said. "But he couldn't. He told her to shut up."
Bond looked startled. "He said, 'Shut up!'? To his wife? He used those words?"
"Yes, he did."
"Go on."
"And then she, Mrs. Henderson-"
"Wait a moment, please, Deputy O'Hare. Before you tell us anymore--was Mrs. Henderson under arrest at this point in time?"
"No, she was not."
"Was she in your custody?"
"Not at all."
"She was a passenger in your vehicle, on the way to getting her fingerprints taken, is that what you mean?"
"Objection," Dennis said. "He's leading her again."
"Rephrase, Mr. Bond," the judge said mildly.
"Deputy O'Hare, what was the status of the female defendant at that point in time?"
"She was just a passenger in my vehicle."
"And after her husband told her to shut up, tell this jury what happened then."
Queenie read directly from her notes this time. "I said, 'Mrs. Henderson, if you want to talk to me about it, you certainly can. But I want to explain to you that if you make any kind of admissions to me, they could be used against you.' "
"Did the defendant respond?"
Queenie lifted her eyes from the papers. "She said she wasn't supposed to talk about it, but what did it matter? Susie and Henry were gone, and she didn't have much time left either. And then she turned to her husband-he was in the backseat-and she said, 'You don't either, Scott.' She said, 'I hate to lie.' She said, 'God may forgive all of us for what we did up there at Pearl Pass, but I don't think he'll forgive us for lying about it now.' "
Queenie halted. Ray Bond waited too, to let the words reverberate in the jurors' minds and sink into their memories.
"After that," Queenie resumed, "Mr. Henderson succeeded in getting her to stop talking. He told me she was ranting. He told me she hallucinated out loud sometimes. He insisted that I disregard what she'd told me about God forgiving them for what they'd done up at Pearl Pass. Then he spoke to her rapidly and sharply in a slang I couldn't understand. I've heard it's a second language they have up there. After that she wouldn't talk to me anymore. She closed her eyes and didn't say another word until we reached the courthouse."
"Did Mrs. Henderson seem ill to you, Deputy?"
"No."
"When she spoke to you, was she incoherent?"
"No."
"Did you have any reason whatever to believe that Mrs. Henderson was ranting and hallucinating, as her husband contended?"