I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton Read Free Book Online Page B

through the viewer, patiently cranking my way back through time until I reached the period that interested me. I made notes about a few significant events of that weekend. Christmas had fallen on a Sunday. Isabelle had died very early on Monday. Maybe it’d be helpful to jog people’s memories with a few peripheral facts. A storm had dumped heavy rain over most of California, resulting in a major pileup on the northbound 101 just south of town. There’d been a minor crime wave that included the hit-and-run fatality of an elderly man, who’d been struck by a pickup out on upper State Street. There was also a market robbery, two household burglaries, and a suspected-arson fire, which destroyed a photographer’s studio in the early-morning hours of December 26. I also jotted down a reference to an incident in which a two-and-a-half-year-old boy suffered minor injuries when he fired a .44-caliber revolver left in the car with him. As I read the news accounts, I could feel my own memory ignite briefly. I’d forgotten all about the fire, which I’d actually caught sight of as I drove home at the close of a stakeout. The harsh glow of the blaze had been like a torch against the lowering night sky. The rain had contributed a surreal misty counterpoint and I’d been startled when James Taylor’s rendition of “Fire and Rain” suddenly came on my car radio. The fragment of memory terminated as abruptly as a light going out.
    I combed the rest of the reel, but nothing much stood out. I went back to the beginning and made copies of everything except the print ads and the classifieds. I rewound the filmand tucked the reel of tape back in the box. I paid for the copies at the main desk on my way out, thinking about the people whose whereabouts I’d have to question for those couple of days. How much would I remember if someone quizzed me about the night Isabelle was killed? One fragment had been restored, but the rest was a blank.

 
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    I retrieved my car from the public lot and drove out to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department Detention and Corrections Facility. Morley’s interview with Curtis McIntyre was one of the documents I’d found in the proper file, though the subpoena had never been served. He’d apparently spoken to Curtis mid-September and no one had talked to him since. According to Morley’s notes, McIntyre had been in a holding cell with Barney his first night in the can. He claimed they’d established a friendship of sorts, more on his part than Barney’s. He’d found himself intrigued because Barney was a man who seemed to have everything. Curtis, accustomed to doing jail time with losers, had followed the case in the papers. When the trial came up, he’d made a point of being in attendance. He and Barney hadn’t talked much until the day he was acquitted. As David Barney left the courtroom, Curtis McIntyre had stepped forward to offer his congratulations. At that point, according to the informant, David Barney madethe remark that implied he’d just gotten away with murder. I couldn’t tell if Curtis had elaborated on that or not.
    I parked out in front of the jail, across the lot from the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department with its fleet of black-and-whites. I moved up the walk and pushed through the front door into the small reception area, approaching the L-shaped counter with the glass partition along the top. I’d done an overnight at the jail nearly six weeks before and I was glad to be returning in a legitimate guise. It felt much better walking in the front door than it had going in the back in the company of an arresting officer.
    I signed in at the desk and filled out a jail visitation pass. The woman at the counter took the information and disappeared from the window. I waited in the lobby, perusing the bulletin board while she called down for someone to bring Curtis up to