Supreme Justice

by Phillip Margolin

  "Do you think you can keep me out of jail?"

  "From what you've told me, the case sounds thin. No body, no eyewitness. I think we've got a shot."

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  People assumed that Mary Garrett led a lonely life because she was homely, unmarried, and had no children. They were in error. Mary had a close circle of loyal friends and her share of lovers. Those lovers were always glad that they had gotten beyond the superficial aspect of Garrett's looks. There had even been proposals of marriage, but Garrett preferred to live alone and valued the freedom her choice provided. The lawyer thought of her clients as her children, and she poured the passion she would have given to a son or daughter into their defense. Each case was a cause, and she protected her charges with the ferocity that a lioness displays when her cubs are in danger.

  Mary was concerned about her latest client, Sarah Woodruff. For the third time, she checked her stainless steel Franck Muller watch. Sarah was late. Outside, dark clouds were drifting over the high hills that towered over Portland, threatening rain. On the streets below, pedestrians clutched umbrellas and walked fast so they could reach their destinations quickly and gain shelter from the bitter wind.

  Mary had rushed to the courthouse for an early appearance and had not had time to read the Oregonian. While she waited for her client to show up for their hastily scheduled meeting, she glanced through the paper. The Dow was down, the Seattle Seahawks had lost their starting tight end for the season with a torn ACL, the bodies of two men linked to a Mexican drug cartel had been found shot to death in a logging area in the Cascades, and another movie-star couple were breaking up even though they were "still good friends." Mary sighed. Today's paper was an echo of every paper she'd read this week.

  Mary's receptionist knocked on her door, then ushered in Sarah Woodruff. She looked pale and drawn, like someone who was not sleeping well, but the primary emotion Woodruff displayed was anger.

  "They searched my condo," she said. "They did it while I was at the station. There are clothes thrown around. They broke dishes. I bet that prick Dietz told them to trash my place."

  "I wouldn't put it past him," Garrett answered, with an anger that almost matched her client's. "I'll straighten this out and make sure you're treated with respect, if I have to get a court order."

  Woodruff dropped into a seat and ran a hand across her forehead. "I'm a fellow cop. If they'd asked, I would have let them search. I don't have anything to hide."

  "That's what I want to find out," Mary said. She looked grim. Woodruff's head snapped up. "Remember I told you that you had to be completely honest with me?"

  "I have been."

  Mary pushed a copy of a police report across the desk. "This was written by Officer Dickinson after he interviewed you on the evening John Finley disappeared from your condo. Read it and tell me if you think Dickinson got anything wrong."

  Mary watched Woodruff as she read the report looking for any reaction that would tip her to whether Woodruff had lied during their interview. If it turned out she had, Mary would be disappointed, but she had been conned by clients before. After all, many of the people she represented made a living by bending the truth without being obvious. But she'd slowly become convinced that Sarah Woodruff was innocent.

  The judge who'd granted Sarah bail had concluded that the State's evidence didn't meet the criteria for denying a defendant release in a murder case. The inability of the State to produce a body was the tipping point for Judge Edmond and a strong component of Mary's argument for release. Max Dietz had been angry when he left the courtroom because he had lost, and Max hated to lose. But Mary sensed that Max had not laid down all of his cards during the bail hearing. A few sentences Mary had read in the stack of discovery her investigator had received from Dietz had reinforced that belief.

  Woodruff looked confused when she finished reading the police report. "I don't understand, Mary. What was I supposed to see?"

  "You were carrying a Glock 9mm when you returned to your condo."

  "Yes. It's my service weapon."

  "You told Officer Dickinson that you didn't fire it."

  Woodruff's features shifted for a second. Her brow furrowed. "I remember him asking about that. I don't remember firing my weapon."

  "You didn't say you didn't remember firing the weapon. You said that you did not. There's a big difference."

  "Mary, I'd just witnessed an attack on someone I knew. I'd been knocked unconscious. I'd been chasing around the neighborhood. My head was killing me. The doctor at the hospital said I'd suffered a concussion. I think I can be forgiven for being a bit inaccurate."

  "Let's hope the jury thinks so."

  "Why are you so concerned?"

  "For starters, there was a bullet missing from your gun. And do you remember a detective running a cotton swab over the web area between the thumb and forefinger of your hand to test for gunshot residue?"

  "Vaguely. I wasn't thinking very straight. Are you saying they found residue on my hands?"

  Mary nodded. "They can prove you fired your weapon."

  Woodruff put her hands on her temples. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she looked panicky.

  "I don't remember firing the gun. Wouldn't I remember something like that if I'd done it?"

  The grilling had been a test, and Mary thought her client had passed.

  "Maybe not," she said. "After my investigator found out about the inconsistency, she talked to the doctor who treated you at the hospital. He's certain that you suffered a concussion, a traumatic injury to the brain as a result of a violent blow.

  "A blow powerful enough to knock you out can cause your brain cells to become depolarized and fire all of their neurotransmitters at once. This floods the brain with chemicals and deadens the receptors in the brain that are associated with learning and memory. The upshot of all this is that a person who suffers a concussion can experience unconsciousness, blurred vision, and nausea and vomiting."

  "I had all of that happen," Woodruff said.

  Mary nodded. "Another consequence of a concussion is short-term memory loss. Memories of things that happen just before and after the impact are obliterated. Some people even have difficulty remembering certain phases of their life. The memory loss is usually not permanent, but it could account for your statement to Dickinson."

  "It has to, because I've never lied about what happened at my place. I didn't kill John, and he was kidnapped."

  "If Dietz tries to convince the jury that you lied about firing your gun, I'm going to present the testimony of the doctor who treated you, and I've got a call in to one of the top neurosurgeons in Oregon."

  "Then you believe me?"

  Mary wanted to tell Sarah that she couldn't answer that question because she hadn't been in her house when the events that had led to her arrest occurred, but Woodruff looked awful and Mary knew she needed moral support.

  "Yes, I believe you."

  "Thank you, Mary. I need someone on my side."

  "There's another thing I want to discuss, Sarah," Mary said. "Those names you gave me, Larry Kester, Orrin Hadley, and Dennis Lang--they're all dead ends."

  "What do you mean?"

  "No criminal records, driving licenses, social security records. These men are phantoms. It's the same for John Finley. And my investigator can't find any more information about TA Enterprises than you did. It's registered in the Caymans, but we can't figure out what kind of business it conducts. Can you remember anything Finley may have said that can help us here?"

  "I've told you everything I know."

  "OK. That's all I wanted to go over today. I'm filing several motions tomorrow. You'll get copies when I finish them, and I'll call you if there are any more developments."

  "Thanks, Mary. Having you on my side means a lot."

  "Yeah, well, I haven't done anything yet."

  Woodruff reached into her purse and pulled out a wad of cash. "Here's the fifteen thousand you wanted for expenses."r />
  "Thanks," Mary said. "Unless you have any questions, you can head back to work."

  Woodruff looked sick. "That's not going to happen anytime soon. I was officially suspended yesterday afternoon."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Well, you make one person who is," Woodruff said bitterly. "I haven't been getting a lot of support from my fellow officers. You'd think some of them would have the guts to wish me well."

  Mary thought of several empty phrases she could throw at Sarah, but she knew none of them would help.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Woodruff trial was a week away, and Max Dietz was worried. He'd convinced himself that he was prosecuting Sarah because she was a murderer and not because she'd refused to go out with him and had gone behind his back to Jack Stamm in the drug case. Now he was beginning to wonder if indicting Woodruff so quickly had been a mistake.

  Dietz's first problem arose the moment Woodruff hired the Troll. That was Dietz's pet name for Mary Garrett, whom he hated. Garrett was abrasive and pushy and showed Dietz no respect. Worse still, the Troll had beaten him in court the last two times they'd faced off.

  Then there was the evidence. A key to the state's case was Woodruff's denial that she'd fired her gun, but Mary Garrett's witness list included the physician who'd treated the defendant at the hospital and Dr. Peter Wu. Dietz had never heard of Dr. Wu, so he gave Claire Bonner the job of briefing him on the witness. It turned out that Wu was a world-renowned neurologist who had written and lectured extensively on memory loss due to trauma.

  A knock on his door brought the deputy DA out of his depressing reverie. Monte Pike walked in without waiting for an invitation.

  "Guess what?" Pike asked.

  "I don't have time for guessing games," Dietz snapped.

  Pike grinned. "I got a match to one of the unknown prints from Woodruff's condo."

  "What? I thought I told you to forget about the prints."

  "Oh," Pike said, his features an advertisement for innocence. "I guess I misunderstood you. Anyway, I ran the prints through AFIS again and got a hit for a case in Shelby."

  "Shelby? That little town on the Columbia River?"

  "Yeah."

  "What the fuck does Shelby have to do with a murder in Portland?"

  "I don't know. I haven't followed up yet."

  "Well, don't. Is that a clear enough instruction?"

  "But this is Brady material, Max. It's exculpatory evidence. The Supremes say we have to turn it over to Garrett."

  "Bullshit! What's exculpatory about some prints connected to a case in Shelby, Oregon?"

  "Woodruff claims there were people other than her and Finley in her house that night, the kidnappers. This is proof someone else was there."

  "No it's not. You can't date prints. Everybody knows that. Who the fuck knows when they were placed in the house? They could be from a previous owner. Forget about those prints, Monte. I don't want to hear about them again."

  Pike knew it would be useless to argue with Dietz, so he went back to his office. It was almost lunchtime. He rounded up his usual lunch crew and tried to lose himself in Trailblazer sports babble for an hour, but he couldn't forget about the fingerprint. Max Dietz was an ass, but he was also Pike's boss, and he'd ordered him to forget about the print. But Pike was more than a lowly deputy DA. All attorneys were officers of the court and bound by ethical rules. If the fingerprint was Brady material--evidence that could conceivably be used to clear a defendant--a district attorney had an absolute duty to disclose the exculpatory evidence to the defense. Dietz was ordering him to act illegally and unethically. As Pike saw it, he had a duty to his office but a higher duty to the court. The question was how to act in an ethical manner and still stay employed.

  "Shelby Police Department?" a woman answered seconds after Pike dialed.

  "I'm calling from the Multnomah County District Attorney's office about a case you're handling that may have a connection to one of ours."

  "What is the title of our case?" the woman asked.

  "I'm not certain, but we found prints at a Portland crime scene, ran them through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and got a hit referencing a Shelby case."

  "Hold, please, and I'll try to find someone to help you."

  Pike thought about hanging up before it was too late. No one had his name yet. But there was a click on the line before he could make up his mind.

  "This is Tom Oswald. Who's this?"

  "Monte Pike. I'm a deputy DA in Multnomah County. We found a bunch of prints at a crime scene we couldn't identify, so I ran them through AFIS and got a hit on one that referenced the Shelby PD."

  There was dead air for a moment. Then Oswald asked, "Do you have our case name, Mr. Pike?"

  "No."

  "Do you know what type of case we're handling where this guy is involved?"

  "Sorry."

  "When was the print put into the system?" Oswald asked.

  Pike gave him the date. There was silence for a moment while Oswald tried to remember when he'd scanned the print from the China Sea into AFIS.

  "The only thing I can do is have you send me the print, and I'll try to figure out the case it belongs to. It might take a while. Give me your number, and I'll call you if I come up with something."

  Pike gave him his extension.

  "What's the name of your case?" Oswald asked.

  "State v. Sarah Woodruff."

  "Isn't that the cop who's charged with murder? The one where there's no body?"

  "Yeah."

  "And this print came up in connection with it?"

  "The print was found in her condo. It could be nothing. You can't date prints. I'm just trying to tie up some loose ends."

  "Yeah, OK. Get the print to me. I'll give you a call if anything pops up."

  Pike hung up, but Oswald held the phone for a few seconds, his mind on the problem the call presented. He'd been furious with the way the feds had treated the Shelby police force, and he'd put the latent fingerprint into AFIS in a fit of pique. When he'd calmed down, Oswald had thought about what he'd done. The chief had told him to back off, and so had the government of the United States of America. If he told Pike about the China Sea, there could be consequences for his career, but a fellow police officer was in trouble, and the information might help her. Should he sit on what he knew or call Pike? Oswald decided the best thing to do was to think. A day or so wouldn't make any difference.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Max Dietz was in his office reading the motions Mary Garrett had filed in Woodruff when his intercom buzzed.

  "Mr. Dietz," the receptionist said, "there's a police officer who would like to talk to you."

  Dietz didn't like to be interrupted when he was working, and he hadn't scheduled any meetings with police officers.

  "Who is it?" he asked.

  "Tom Oswald. He's from the Shelby Police Department.

  The word Shelby created a sense of unease in the deputy district attorney, but he didn't know why.

  "I don't have any cases involving Shelby. What did he say this was about?"

  "A fingerprint. He asked for Mr. Pike first, but Mr. Pike is in trial. When he told me his business concerned the Woodruff case, I told him you were lead counsel, and he asked to speak to you."

  Suddenly everything fell into place. That little cretin Pike had disobeyed his orders and had spoken to someone at Shelby PD about the fingerprint that had been raised in Sarah Woodruff's apartment.

  "Show Oswald back," Dietz ordered. He'd find out what the policeman had to say. Then he'd take care of Pike.

  A minute later, the receptionist stood back to let Tom Oswald into Max Dietz's office. Oswald looked uneasy as he waited for the receptionist to close the door behind him.

  "How can I help you?" Dietz asked as soon as the policeman was seated.

  "It's about the fingerprint."

  "Yes, the fingerprint," Dietz answered noncommittally, hoping that his confident tone would
convey an impression that he knew exactly what Oswald was talking about.

  "I don't feel completely comfortable being here, but I've been worrying that the print might be important."

  "What's bothering you?"

  "I was told flat-out by Homeland Security to back off, and my chief told me to turn over the case."

  Homeland Security! What the hell did they have to do with Sarah Woodruff?

  "I see," Dietz said out loud, "but you felt it was important to tell us about the fingerprint."

  "It's a murder case, and the defendant is a cop. I wanted to make sure that the right person is being prosecuted."

  "Certainly. So, tell me about the print."

  Over the next twenty minutes, Oswald told Max Dietz about the dead men and the hashish on the China Sea and the cover-up that followed. Each new revelation tightened the knot in the DA's stomach. Mary Garrett would have a field day if she learned that a fingerprint in Woodruff's condo matched a fingerprint on a hatch covering a mountain of hashish that had been confiscated by a government intelligence agency.

  "The chief told me to write a report about what happened," Oswald said when he finished telling his tale to Dietz. He held out a rolled set of papers that had been stapled at one corner. "I brought a copy if you want it."

  "Yes, thank you," Dietz said as he took the report. "And you were certainly right to come to me. But I concur with Chief Miles. You should put this incident behind you. Let me deal with it from here on out. I've got plenty of contacts in the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI. If something odd is going on, I'll get to the bottom of it. By the way, did you conduct any lab tests on this so-called hashish to verify your opinion?"

  "No, the feds took all of it."

  "OK. Well, my advice to you is that you carry on with your duties in Shelby. Rest assured I'll keep this between us. I have no intention of telling Chief Miles about our meeting. I don't want to put your job in danger. And I certainly don't want anyone at Homeland Security or the CIA investigating you."