Free Extenuating Circumstances by Jonathan Valin Page B

lighted hall, Len broke down and sobbed. Finch looked away.
    After a while Trumaine collected himself. "He'll go to the electric chair," he said, turning to Finch.
    "You have my word on it," Finch told him.
 
 
    I drove back to the Lessing house with Len and Meg Lessing. It had stopped raining by the time we got to Riverside Drive. Slanting sunlight broke through the storm clouds, drawing water from the hazy, distant hills. Already you could feel the fierce heat seeping back into what was left of the day.
I helped Meg Lessing out of the car and over to the stairs. She still didn't look as if she knew who I was.
    I said, "I'm very sorry about your son, Mrs. Lessing."
    "So am I," she whispered.
    Gripping the handrail, Meg Lessing walked stiffly up the stairs. When she got to the top Don Geneva came out of the front door and helped her inside.
    "I can't believe she's still on her feet," Len said, looking up at her.
    "Is there anything else you want me to do, Len?"
    "I can't think of anything -unless you could make the whole thing go away." He stared at me for a moment, his face slack with exhaustion. "I guess we'll have to handle it on our own from here on."
I started to mention Carnova, then thought better of it. But the kid was on Len's mind, too, because he looked back at me as he started up the stairs.
    "Ira was a good man, Harry. He really was. People won't forget that overnight."
    "All right, Len."
    I watched him walk up to the terrace, then I went over to the car and drove home.
 
 
    14
    Of course Lessing's murder made the front pages of both Cincinnati dailies and banner headlines in the northern Kentucky newspapers. The fact that Carnova was a male hustler was mentioned in each article, although no inferences were drawn about Lessing himself. In fact, the papers reported that Carnova had confessed to mugging Ira to get money to purchase drugs. Lessing was made out to be the random victim of a homicidal teenager.
    It was obvious that Finch had succeeded in getting the boy to tell his story the way the D.A. wanted to hear it. When it came down to it, it was the way I wanted to hear it too. For the family, for Len. And for Lessing himself.
    I hadn't known the man, but I'd met enough of his friends to form an opinion about him. And whether he'd been a closet homosexual or not -and I wasn't convinced that he had been- I figured he'd earned some slack from the media and from the rest of us.
    Terry Carnova was arraigned on Tuesday morning and bound over to the grand jury without bail. An attorney was assigned to him by the court.
    On Wednesday morning I went to the cemetery to see Lessing buried. It was a hot cloudy day, heavy with the promise of rain. A steady wind blew across the cemetery lawn, lifting the skirts of the canopy above the coffin and obscuring the voice of the priest as he spoke the final words. There were several hundred people at the graveside. I stood in the midst of the crowd, well away from the immediate family. When they lowered the coffin, Meg and Janey turned away, and Len Trumaine gathered them into his arms.
    Because of the number of mourners, it took awhile for the traffic to clear out of the cemetery grounds. Rather than wait in the line of limos, I sat on a bench under an elm tree until most of the other cars had driven off. As I was sitting there Sam Kingston walked past me. At first I didn't recognize him without his doctor's white frock coat. Just another sad face in a sea of sad faces. But when I saw him stop by a car with the Lighthouse insignia on its door, I went over and said hello.
    "Oh, hello," he said uncertainly.
    "Stoner," I said. "The private detective who was working for the Lessing family? The guy who gave you the canceled checks?"
    "Yes, of course," he said with a polite smile. "I couldn't place you for a second. I've had a tough time remembering anything this week."
    "It's been a bad week, all right."
    The smile on his face faded away. "It's a terrible loss. To the family.