Spring Melt

Chapter 1

George

She made him nervous, sitting in his office with her back straight, her collar high and tight around her throat, and her eyes focused on nothing at all outside his second-floor office window. Ella Devine had been like this for at least five minutes with her pale hands clenched in her lap, gripping each other so hard her knuckles were almost pure white. Her state, fixed and unyielding, left George Alberts unsettled for a couple of reasons, both practical.

Maybe she would never speak again. Maybe his questions had pushed her into this catatonia, and she had permanently shut down. He’d read about people who did that—became mute and numb after some kind of trauma. Then where would he be? She was a key witness. He needed her for this trial. The three men who had killed on her behalf—or might have killed; He was still uncomfortably unsure himself—needed her. Or maybe, she was about to explode. She was obviously a strong woman, tall and slender, but with a frame that required plenty of muscle to hold it like she did. And she’d kept all this inside for nineteen years. Time can do that to a person. Time and suffering.

He looked around his office at the possibilities: a thick brass table lamp, two glass paperweights just inches from her chair, thick, heavy, legal books that could be grabbed from the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind him and tossed with lethal force. A less desperate lawyer would probably give her a break, but George couldn’t take that chance. She might walk out and never come back. He was losing Ella Devine to her memories. He would have to push harder.

“Mrs. Devine.”

George cleared his throat, moved between her and the window, and looked directly into her face in hopes of getting her attention. Tears, just a few, caressed her cheeks. That was a good sign. She was showing emotion. She was still at least partly with him, and those tears were too soft and gentle to be born of anger.

“Mrs. Devine. I know this is hard, but we must continue. This is very important.”

Part of George was ashamed he had to put her through this. He didn’t want to hear her story any more than she wanted to tell it. But this was a murder trial, and Ella Devine’s story could prove the victim was no victim. The victim was a rapist. Worse, he had raped a child. The jury needed to hear what kind of a monster their supposed victim really was.

“How about some water?” he asked. “Would you like a glass of water?”

George motioned to his clerk, who slipped out of the office and down the narrow hallway toward the bathroom. Then he retreated to his desk, giving Ella Devine space to breathe and pull herself together. George would need her tears in the courtroom, but not right now. Right now, he had to finish this statement. He had to know exactly what he was dealing with, just how much sympathy her story could elicit from a jury of twelve men so many years after the rape had occurred. He needed to recreate that picture of a nine-year-old girl, unable to move with her chest aching in terror, her lips blue with fear and her body shaking uncontrollably, barely able to whisper as she called for her mother. It was that picture he had to plant in their minds, a picture horrible enough to make three generally peaceful men violently ill. Ill enough to kill and ill enough to be forgiven.

Ethan, his clerk, returned with the water. George gave it to Ella Devine who took the glass with her trembling hands and brought it to her lips, to his relief. She did not brush away the deep brunette curls that had fallen from the bun at the nape of her neck and into her face. Her tears slowed and some had dried, leaving salty streaks on her skin. As she drank, her breathing grew steady again and a slight touch of color emerged in her cheeks.

She was different, far different from other women of her status. That was another thing that made George nervous. Nervous and curious, he had to admit. She was only twenty-eight years old and the wife of Dr. Devine, who liked to flaunt his money. George would expect a woman of her wealth to spend her days at the salon, getting her bob trimmed, or home in bed recovering from the night before, or at the shops, comparing shades of red lipstick and trying on bead-fringed dresses that rested above the knee while smoking long, slim cigarettes. She was a young woman of the 1920s, yet she avoided all that. Ella Devine covered every inch of her long body with her outdated floor-length dresses and her laced-up boots. Her small, delicate face, never powdered or made up, had the perfect paleness of a woman who spent most of her time indoors, rarely seeing the sun. Still, somehow, she was beautiful. Strikingly beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” Ella said, staring into her glass. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” George pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, more out of habit than need. His hair had disappeared years ago from everywhere but the sides of his head, and cool spring air moved in from his office window with the help of a fan.

“Get your thoughts together and we’ll start again. Let’s go back to the moment you left the house. You said you were going to get your mother some wood, right? Do you remember about what time that might have been?”

By the time Ella Devine left, it was nearly six o’clock. George had only one more hour before the crowds surged through the doors of the Pontiac Theater below his office and his floorboards began to shake with the deep, rich sounds of the trombone, the clarinet and the saxophone. He knew he should stay and work through it, but then he would miss dinner again. Marianne would be upset even though she was usually supportive when she knew he had a case coming to trial.

Marianne was that kind of wife. She had seen him through law school and his scotch and cigar days. She was patient during those years when he had believed success was measured by the weight of a client’s wallet and the length of the marble staircase leading to the courthouse doors. And, when all that was out of his system, she brought him here to a place that could only be described as God’s country. Well, God’s country with just enough wealthy New York City tourists in need of lawyers to keep a good, solid roof over their heads.

But Marianne was easily agitated these days, completely on edge, and not without reason. He knew she was aware of the date, though she’d said nothing. She didn’t have to. It was evident in the swollen skin beneath her eyes, in the way she sipped her coffee and pushed her buttered toast aside, in the silence—the completeness of it—at the breakfast table and around the house while just beyond their walls children emerged from neighboring homes and paired off for the walk to school. Six months. It had been exactly six months since Sammy left home, and nothing had changed.

If they’d only known what Sammy was thinking, what he was planning, that morning when he was part of that procession, sauntering down the street with his lunch pail in his hand. He never gave them a chance. Instead, he intentionally deceived them, letting them believe he was at school or with friends until his dinner grew cold and, finally, George and Marianne checked his room, discovering the note he’d left on his bed. By then, he was probably already settled in, eating dinner with relatives he’d just met on the Onondaga Nation, an Indian territory just south of Syracuse, living among “his people.” His people. Those were his words and that was the problem.

At fourteen years old, he had no right to call anyone else his people. His place was at home with his parents, under their roof, at their dinner table eating the food Marianne prepared for him, studying the subjects they approved of and climbing into the bed they provided him. At least he was safe. That much George knew, and that knowledge helped him sleep at night. Marianne wasn’t so sure and nothing George said or did could convince her otherwise.

George took a long, deep breath and tried to concentrate on the trial that would begin in six weeks. Just how had he become involved in all this? Why did they choose him? He rubbed his forehead hard with the palm of his hand. Only six weeks to prepare the defense for three murder suspects. Under normal circumstances he would have had more time—six or seven months, maybe even a year. But one defendant, John LeRoche, was ill. His heart was poor and had already given out on him once. He was still alive, but his breathing was shallow, his face was gray, and he could not lift his body from his bed. His co-defendants were loyal to a fault. Some would call them stupid, but George understood their decision.

They were willing to risk their own freedom by forgoing most of the pretrial discovery hearings and moving the case along. It was their gift to him—resolution and, hopefully, absolution, before his death. John LeRoche would not testify. He would not even attend the trial, under his doctor’s orders and with the judge’s consent. The judge promised he would instruct the jury to hold no prejudice against him for his lack of participation. It was unusual, for sure, and there were no guarantees John LeRoche would even make it until opening day. But he was trying. He was saving his energy, laughing when he could and letting his family care for him. Few who knew him doubted that he could make it until the verdict came in.

George was staring at the legal pad full of notes from his interview with Ella Devine, thinking about exactly how and when to use her testimony, when Ethan slipped through the slightly ajar door and sat in the chair Ella had recently vacated. Ethan was long and thin like Ella, but unlike her, it seemed that there was no strength in his frame. He had a fragile look about him, like he would snap under the pressure of even the slightest breeze. But that was what made him so valuable. Ethan was born and raised here in the Adirondack Mountains, where clusters of civilization were isolated from one another by miles and miles of thick, seemingly impenetrable wilderness. In his thirty-two years, Ethan had learned how to get around. He knew how to bend and glide and ease his way through the most impenetrable of situations. And he usually did so unnoticed.

“I’m stepping out for a bite to eat, but I figured on coming back,” Ethan said, his voice full of energy. He was excited about this case. He had been excited from the moment the three defendants had first contacted George. “Just leave me a note. You’ve got an early morning ahead of you.”

“Don’t bother. This might be your last night to yourself for the next two months. Take it,” George said, waving him out of his office. “I’ll need you to be fresh tomorrow anyway. No sense burning out now.”

“Really, I don’t mind. I’m only—”

“Go.”

“Well.” Ethan stood as smoothly as he had seated himself and placed a hat over his unnaturally straight, dark, copper hair. “All right then. I’ll be around if you need me.”

George heard the heavy door shut at the end of the hallway as his clerk headed down the dimly lit staircase to the street below. When the office was quiet, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the intricate patterns in the pressed-tin ceiling above. In most cases like this, each defendant would have his own lawyer, but these men weren’t like that. Cyril Cole, John LeRoche and Paul McDonald had been friends for decades and their bond was tight. They were determined that if the jury found one innocent, all would be freed. If one died in the electric chair, so would the others.

“That’s just the way it is,” Cyril Cole had said.

That was how they approached George Alberts—together during a meeting at the sick man’s house. He tried to talk them out of it. He’d never handled a murder case before, and he should have turned them down. But they were convincing, and he was far too tempted. He needed this. George had had no regrets about moving to the Adirondack Mountains, where his wife grew up, to raise their son. But he had other regrets, regrets he’d kept from Marianne. He’d been excited by the law in the early years, and he couldn’t seem to find that passion anymore. Somehow, his work had become routine, a source of income instead of a source of pride. This case thrilled him in a way no case had before, and he couldn’t let go of that. He didn’t want to.

George was certain his clients had planned Henry Roth’s death, and he believed they were capable of carrying out that plan. But he did not believe they were guilty of murder. His clients were not helpful in their own defense. They gave few details of that day or of the week that led up to it, though they readily admitted their knowledge of the rape and their rage. They loved Ella. She was like a daughter to them. Their reaction to her rape was no different than any other father’s might have been.

They each told the same story of Henry Roth’s death, how he stepped before a sled full of logs, just after they were released for their journey down an icy path toward the river and was crushed to death. Yet they fell silent when pressed for more details. George made it clear he wanted to hear only what the men were willing to say under oath. He gathered from their silence what a jury would gather, that they were hiding something. Worse, if they failed to answer questions on the stand, the judge might find them in contempt of court.

For those reasons, he knew he could not let them testify. This would make his job even more difficult. Though the judge would instruct the jury not to assume guilt from their lack of testimony, George knew the jurors were only human. He would have to work harder than ever to overcome that prejudice and that meant hours and hours, days and days of investigative work on top of the work he was already doing. Fortunately, he had Ethan and plenty of friends who owed him favors. He already had put the word out that he needed everything he could get, including any rumors about Henry Roth, names of enemies he might have made, any conversations overheard among the three defendants, especially any that might have implied that they were planning a murder. He needed to know what was out there that might incriminate them.

Though he’d never handled a murder, George did have twenty-three years of trial experience. And one thing he had learned was that it was a mistake to overlook even the most seemingly insignificant piece of evidence. Already, he had lined up two interviews for the next day with potential witnesses who might be able to testify in favor of the three men. One of the witnesses saw Cyril Cole, the foreman of the logging crew, and Paul McDonald calm down the third defendant who had tried to fight Henry Roth. Another was a sheriff’s deputy who said he had information George would find quite interesting. He wouldn’t elaborate and he insisted on meeting George on a remote beach on Lower Saranac Lake, a half-mile hike from the road. George knew he was taking a chance meeting with the deputy alone in such a remote area, so despite his request that he tell no one of their meeting, he told Ethan. He was willing to take some chances, but he did have a family to think about.

With that meeting on his mind, George grabbed a stack of files and shoved them in his briefcase. He snapped it shut, threw his suit jacket over his shoulder, turned off his office lights and locked the door on his way out. The rest of his work could wait until Marianne was snug in bed, he decided. Marianne could not.

Chapter 2

Ella

It was drizzling and the sun was beginning to set when Ella Devine left the tiny, dark, law office above the theater and stepped into the car George Alberts called for her. Her legs shook under her dress as she walked, and she prayed no one would notice. She did nothing to keep herself dry though the driver tried desperately to follow her with an umbrella. She hoped the rain would wash away some of the stains on her face and maybe some of the horrible scenes that continued to replay themselves in her mind. Her husband would know by now that she was the one. She was the little girl Henry Roth had raped. She had driven three men to murder—three innocent, well-liked, and now-old men. She should have stayed out of Henry Roth’s way. Far out of his way. Then none of this would have happened.

Someone must have seen her go into that office. Someone would have been watching. By now, it would be all over town. She was sure of that. That was the way gossip worked in Saranac Lake. It spread within minutes, and it seeped quickly into even the furthest, deepest, and darkest corners. She felt naked as she climbed into the large Ford sedan and settled into the back seat, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She felt naked and ashamed.

Saranac Lake was her home. It had been her home since the rape, and she had told no one about it. That was part of the deal her mother made with Henry Roth’s parents, and it had never occurred to her to break it. Not that she could have told anyone if she had tried. For the longest time, she carried no memory of that night.