The Devil's Interval Read Online Free PDF Page A

spouse the automatic best suspect?”
    â€œGenerally, yes. But Plummer had a dinner meeting that night, and a whole crowd of young gearhead entrepreneurs and their lawyers has given him an alibi until nearly 1 in the morning. Coroner says the time of death was between 11 p.m. and midnight.”
    â€œOkay. But, going back to Gifford, why would he leave a dead body in his car, in his garage?”
    Isabella shrugged. “The prosecution had an answer for that, too. The limousine had darkened windows, no one could see in. He didn’t know anyone would open the door—they claimed he planned to get rid of the body later that day.”
    â€œAnd what about the gun? You said Travis was licensed to carry one. Did they find the gun used to shoot Mrs. Plummer? Was it Travis’s gun?”
    â€œThey did find it,” said Isabella, “and it wasn’t his. Different caliber. It was wrapped in a pretty disgusting mess of used kitty litter in a trash can next door to Travis’s apartment building. It was impossible to tell whose gun it was, because the serial numbers had been obliterated.”
    â€œWhat does your client think really happened?”
    â€œHe doesn’t know. He figures—we all figure—that if she had something going with him, she might have had other extracurricular activities. Though he admits he didn’t think shedid. And it didn’t much matter, because we couldn’t turn anything up before the trial.”
    â€œAnd now?”
    â€œWell, during the habeas process, we’ve got an investigator looking into everything. But frankly, people like the Plummers don’t have lives that open themselves easily to the kinds of investigators we can hire.”
    Eleanor cleared her throat. “Which is where you come in, Maggie.”
    I looked at her. She had that carefully neutral expression I was used to seeing on the faces of my children when I was trying to ascertain who had fed the dog underneath the dinner table.
    â€œThe Plummers and their friends are exactly the kinds of people Small Town covers. You’ve got access to a world and information we just don’t have.”
    Moments like this were precisely when I realized I should have gone to journalism school instead of, as a literature and piano student, lying around on rump-sprung sofas, reading 18th-century novels or scouring the music building for hunky cellists to play chamber music with. I should know how to respond, but I didn’t have a clue.
    I shook my head. “I don’t know. This doesn’t smell all that different to me than the cops coercing information out of media organizations.” I held up my hand. “I know, your cause is just and all that. But, if you do it for one side, you do it for the other.”
    â€œWait a second,” said Isabella. “We’re not asking you to turn over confidential interviews.”
    â€œWhat are you asking, exactly?” I said, as I put the file back on Isabella’s lap.
    Isabella put the file on the floor between us.
    â€œJust this. I think there’s more to the story that we could understand if we had access to the Plummers’ lives. How does a woman like Grace Plummer spend her time? Who does she hang out with when she is doing all her socialite charity activities? Who’s her hairdresser? What valet parkers does she hire if she’s having aparty?” She unfolded her legs, stood up, and started wandering around the living room, patting her pockets in the unmistakable tic of a recently reformed smoker.
    â€œLook, Maggie. It’s not all that different from the journalism professor at Northwestern who sent his class out to uncover evidence to have that Death Row case reopened.”
    â€œIt is different,” I said. “Those kids weren’t working journalists, with a responsibility to a publisher and to their readers. Plus, I’m not an investigative reporter. I’m an editor. I sit in