Without a word, Klaus passed over his legal pad. “Detective Banta,” said the tall slanted letters at the top of the page. What followed was a concise outline of topics to be covered in Klaus’s superbly angular Germanic handwriting.
Nina began feeling better. “But-if you want me to take a witness and it’s not an emergency or something-can you please let me know the night before? I could use more time to plan.”
Klaus set down his fork and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Look here,” he said. “Do you know what happens when a lawyer sits up all night memorizing old testimony and reports and concocting long lists and so forth?”
“What?”
“She sacrifices the ability to listen to the testimony as it comes from the witness’s mouth. She is so busy checking off items, thumbing through exhibits, flipping through paper, she hears nothing.”
“I prepare,” Nina said. “That’s the way I practice law.”
“Then it is time to jump to a higher level,” Klaus said, “where you demonstrate your mastery of law, not your practice of it. When Detective Banta speaks, don’t look at your notes. Don’t think about the next thing she might say. Open up to fresh ideas. What does she tell you with her body, her voice, and only last of all, her words? When does she exaggerate? Watch her when she skids over a topic. Note statements in her direct testimony that don’t sound right. Go straight to those things and follow them to where they lead.”
“What about this outline you prepared?”
He tapped on it, and she read it. It was unlike any notes preparing for testimony Nina had ever seen. Five topics in capital letters were followed by brief notes in the present tense that summarized the night Stefan Wyatt was arrested and Banta’s subsequent activities:
1. STATION
Millman leaves and Banta takes over suspected homicide. Wyatt in an interview room asleep in a chair waiting for his lawyer (Mr. Turk, who got there at 9 A.M.). Stefan is booked and searched. Medal found and tagged.
2. CEMETERY
Arrives 7:00 with her partner-still pretty dark (fog)-backhoe has encountered a thick clump of black trash bags lying on top of an older coffin. She gets in, wearing gloves, opens the bag, and sees the victim-secures premises-calls investigative team and D.A.’s office. Calls Alex Zhukovsky again for permission to open coffin-inside, body has been removed. Takes statements from cemetery security, checks for ID, finds none, calls in medical examiner and forensics team.
3. STATION
Returns to station and meets Alex Zhukovsky-he’s in a very upset state (still doesn’t know it’s his sister). Takes statement re: his father, Constantin’s, burial. Shows Alex the bones and he says clothes are those his father was buried in-but medal is missing-describes the medal of St. George.
4. MORGUE
The medical examiner, Susan Misumi, calls to say Christina’s body has been taken to county morgue. Banta takes bones and Alex to morgue where he IDs Christina and breaks down.
5. CHRISTINA’S APARTMENT
Banta and partner now go to Christina’s address on Eighth. (Alex gave key. Unable to attend.) They enter. See very little sign of anything at first. Prelim tests for blood on kitchen floor are positive. Find glass. They bring Forensics in. Talk to D.A. Sandoval and decide to hold Stefan on suspicion. Alan has been to station. Then they go off-shift.
“That’s it?” Nina said.
“Jaime always asks his questions chronologically,” Klaus told her. “He is as reliable as the annual monsoon floods in Bangladesh. As for what Detective Banta will have to say on these matters, you will have to listen to find out.”
The bill arrived. He pulled out the firm’s credit card, leaving a whopping tip on the slip of paper. Bantering with the waiter, he seemed completely relaxed, completely unconcerned. Nina watched, wondering.
Klaus had handled the Millman cross adequately. Maybe he was okay after all, a memory lapse here or there as you would expect from an elderly person, but what about the opening statement? What about the Banta cross? Was he doing this to her on purpose, trying to train her as though she were fresh out of law school?
I have plenty to learn, she thought, looking at the concise notes, but is Klaus still a good teacher?
“What do we want to get from Banta?” Nina said. “Where’s a list of discrepancies among the reports? She’s a hugely important witness…”
“We do not know what she can give us until we hear her,” Klaus repeated. “Shall we go?”
“Klaus, I can’t work like this,” Nina said. “Fortifying in advance-it helps me cope with surprises and contributes to my being able to operate on a more intuitive level during trial. Yes, I go on guts at times, but I arrive in court with the facts well analyzed and memorized. I can be more creative on my feet when I’ve got my background in place. Plus it keeps the anxiety from turning me into a zombie.”
“How long have you been practicing law, Miss Reilly?” Klaus asked without waiting for an answer. “Several years, and in the last couple of years you have conducted major trials. How long do you think you are going to last as a trial lawyer, the way you work? I will tell you. I give you ten years, then you will have to retire into another line, because you are too tightly wound to last any longer. You will give yourself cancer or a heart problem. Look at me, eighty-one years old and I still smoke cigars and my wife and I are still an item.” He put his hands on the table and pushed up. “Listen to the witness,” he said. “She will invite attack. You will notice it in her voice and in that pinched place between her eyes. You will discern fissures in her testimony, and into those cracks, you must go.”
She followed him outside to the old silver Jag. Klaus got into the passenger seat and tossed her the keys. Somehow over the past couple of weeks, in addition to being second chair, she had become the official Pohlmann chauffeur.
“You should have stayed with me,” Klaus said, fastening his seat belt.
“That’s not fair,” Nina said. “I learned a lot from you, but I had to leave to learn other things.” She thought for a moment, then said hesitantly, “I’m not you. I don’t have your set of talents. I have to work hard to make up for my deficiencies-my lack of experience.”
One thing definitely remained: Klaus’s lovely, booming laugh. “I’d trade my talents to have the forty years of law you still have ahead of you. Why pay attention to what I say, anyway? You think I’m very far over the hill, in the next valley wandering aimlessly amid the cows and sheep and goats, don’t you?”
“No. Of course-”
“Moo-oo-oo!” He laughed again, looking out the window.
Now did not seem the right time to share her fears. Besides, Klaus seemed spookily aware all of a sudden, as alert as ever. She said, “What exactly are you trying to advise me with regard to this case?”
“You cannot treat this case as an intellectual exercise. It is not. This tragic story holds great mystery and hidden truths we will discover, because our client didn’t kill the woman. Somebody else did. We will expose that person, Miss Reilly. That person and the motives behind this crime will leap from the shadows at us, and we will grab for them.”
She checked the street and pulled the car into traffic, enjoying the smooth hum of the engine and incredible receptivity of the steering. Klaus knew how to live, and had shown over and over he knew how to practice law. Nevertheless, she checked again for wayward cars once she got into the flow. She liked to know what was out there. She preferred her shadows mapped.
As she let Klaus out on the curb, he said, “You and I are privileged to be called to practice this great art.” And she thought, Forty more years? I’ll never make it.
Inside the courtroom, the bailiff called everyone to order just as Nina slipped into her chair. The jury members appeared to have enjoyed their midday repast in the back room. Stefan had spent the break fulminating about Erin. What did Nina think the jury thought so far? What would the newspapers say? How might Erin respond when she read the reports? As a witness, she couldn’t be
in the courtroom during the trial, and she was continuing to refuse to see him. “I made the biggest mistake of my life, that night, didn’t I? I fucked up!”
Nina worked on him, trying to turn his thoughts to what was happening in the courtroom right now. “Don’t finger your tie,” she reminded him. “Keep your hands on the table, relaxed. Face the court. Look strong, but not conceited. Look at the jury.”
He tried. His tie drooped.
“Call Detective Kelsey Banta,” Jaime said. Detective Banta, who had been sitting right next to him, strode quickly, making short work of her journey to the witness box.
A well-respected cop, Kelsey Banta had worked herself up from her initial position as a receptionist into a job as one of only two homicide detectives. It had taken her almost twenty years. Five years before, her brother, a police officer in Campbell, California, had been killed while trying to prevent a bank robbery. Paul had told Nina that Banta had reacted badly, winding up in an alcohol rehab facility eighteen months ago. Since then, her record had stayed clean, though-no DUI’s or alcohol-related legal problems.
Busty and long-legged, she had black eyebrows, pink cheeks, deep-set blue eyes, and long bleached blonde hair pulled into a work-time ponytail in back. She wore black pants and a blazer with a lacy beige blouse beneath, one button more than appropriate slyly undone. She didn’t seem to have altered her usual style at all for her day in court. Maybe she had been in so many trials she had adopted this low-key uniform for them.
As Banta answered Jaime’s introductory questions in a cigarette voice, Nina wondered how well Paul knew her. He had been on the Monterey police force himself, working homicide detail, several years before.
Funny, when she was practicing law at Tahoe, she had never thought about the web of friends and acquaintances Paul would have down here on the Monterey Peninsula. He had been married twice when he was younger, and had always liked women. Right now, she could feel his presence behind her, comfortable in the familiar setting, lounging on an aisle seat so that he could leave when necessary.
Had he and Banta exchanged glances as she came into court? Nina hadn’t noticed.
Just as Klaus, who seemed to be snoozing at her left, had predicted, Jaime took the events of Banta’s long shift the night of April 12 through 13 in chronological order, starting with taking custody of Stefan Wyatt from Officer Millman at the station.
Trying to take the hint from Klaus’s instructions, Nina took no notes. Like most of the jurors, she just watched and listened. Immediately she realized that Kelsey Banta was a straight-shooter. Banta did not infer anything, but offered precise, probing analyses of the facts. She was a good witness with an excellent memory, who only occasionally refreshed her recollection from her report. Talking about booking Stefan on suspicion after a phone conversation with Jaime, whom she woke up at home, she described how the attorney from Klaus’s firm, Alan Turk, had come in for a brief conference with Stefan. He later left, with instructions to Stefan to exercise his right to remain silent.
Not very enlightening yet, but Nina did wonder what sort of legal problem had led Stefan’s brother, Gabe, to the firm and Alan. She wrote on her pad, “Talk to Alan Turk,” then sat back, folding her arms to listen some more. Banta was answering questions about the search of Stefan’s clothing on booking.
“Now, this medal you found on Stefan Wyatt…”
“I didn’t know what it was at the time,” Banta said.
Stefan folded his arms, whispering to Nina, “As if I did!”
“But the amount of dirt suggested it probably came out of the grave,” Banta continued. “I scraped off a sample for forensics. I could see the remains of a striped orange and black ribbon and a round metal thing about the size of a silver dollar. There was some engraving on it, but the inscription was in Cyrillic.”
“Cyrillic?”
“The Russian alphabet.”
“You can read it?”
“I studied Russian in high school. All the renegades from French did.” So she had a sense of humor and intelligence in addition to a knockout body, Nina thought. Ouch.
“What did the inscription say?”
“I only took two years, so I’m no expert, but I could tell from the words along with the image on the medal that it said something about Saint George. He’s slaying the dragon on the image there.”
“Go on.”
“I put the medal in a plastic bag and listed it. It went into the evidence locker with the clothes.”
“Did you then go out to El Encinal Cemetery?”
“Yes. We arrived at seven A.M., when it was getting light. Officer Graydon, the backhoe operator, and the groundskeeper from the cemetery were waiting outside the tape line Officer Graydon had set up. I pulled on my gloves and went in and looked down in the hole. The floodlights were bright. I clearly saw an arm sticking out of a trash bag.”
“What did you do then?” Jaime had a rhythm going with her; he must have taken her testimony dozens of times.
“I got on the ground on a tarp, reached in with scissors, and opened the bags. There were three layers of trash bag. I cut a slit maybe three feet long. There was a woman’s body in there.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We didn’t move her. She was cold. She had been dead for a while. I took photos and put a call in to the pathologist, Susan Misumi, and our forensics technician. While Dr. Misumi was en route we checked out the area. Officer Graydon pointed out some apparent footprints. We took casts.
“When Dr. Misumi arrived, she spent some time with the victim. She examined the remains in place, taking photos, then she had us remove the body for transport to the morgue at Natividad. By then the sun was well up and we turned off the lights.
“I had called Alex Zhukovsky again regarding opening up his father’s coffin. He gave his permission. The backhoe hit the top of the coffin at about eight A.M. and, with the assistance of Officer Martinez, I opened it.”
“And what, if anything, did you find?”
“The mahogany coffin had been recently disturbed. The satin lining inside was ragged. There was some gray hair at the top. Evidence of insect activity. Shreds of clothing. The bones, which I would expect to find, were missing.”
By now, the gasps had abated to tsks, but they were very unhappy tsks.
“Pretty obvious the coffin had contained a human body, which had been removed, although we couldn’t tell when. Dr. Misumi came over and looked at it and more photos were taken.”
Surprisingly, Jaime skipped through the details of that hideous early morning find. Nina hurried along with him in her mind, wondering why he was in such a rush to leave the grave, not finding her fissure yet.
“Did you then return to the station?” asked Jaime.
“Yes. I had received a radio message that Alex Zhukovsky had showed up. He’d received two phone calls from us and he wanted to know what was going on.”
Salas called the mid-afternoon break and everybody rushed out for enough caffeine to float them through the final afternoon session. Klaus and Nina stayed at the conference table with Stefan.
When they returned, the jury, so fresh and ironed in the morning, had the look of laundry left too long on the line, shirts and sweaters sagging. Weary hands stroked eyes and foreheads. Concentrating for so many hours took a lot of effort, and the golfing lady Klaus had winked at rubbed her leg often, as if to keep it awake or stave off some pain.
During the break, Nina had decided she understood Jaime’s strategy-he had seen the break coming and saved the luscious best for last. He would give those jurors something to dream about! Sure enough, he, who appeared as combed and fresh as he had in the morning, leisurely pulled out the forensics photos and transported them back to the graveyard, evoking the fog, the cool morning, the digging toward the victim, all the time questioning Banta exhaustively on the details. By the time he was finished spinning his scene, the dank soil, black bags, and bones had practically taken seats in the courtroom.
Stefan said, “Gabe-my brother. Gabe consulted him a while back, had some legal thing with him.”
“Any idea what it was?”
“Sorry, no.”
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Only as good as you guys in court. In other words,” he attempted a smile, “ups and downs. Like I keep saying, you have to get to Alex Zhukovsky somehow. It’s too weird, this thing where his sister’s body was found in their father’s grave. I mean, he’s the link, the only link. Plus, he hired me. He killed his sister and buried her in their dad’s grave for his own reasons, or else why lie about hiring me?”
And then why hire Stefan to dig them both up? It made no sense. “We’re working on it.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Stefan said in a pragmatic tone at direct odds with his expression of abject defeat.
“Why not?”
“I’m jinxed. Always have been.” He licked his lips and thought about it. “Cursed from birth. I wasn’t born to a good life.”
“Has your life been so terrible?”
“Erin was my only good luck, and now she’s gone.” He held tight to the chain he always wore around his neck.
“She may still come around.”
“You’re a woman,” Stefan said.
Nina laughed. “Well, yeah. Mostly.”
“Do you think-if someone was in jail for a long time-and maybe he would never get out, how would you feel about him?” The hard work of asking made his big shoulders slump. “Could you ever forgive him?”
If Paul went to jail, and she never knew whether he would get out, how would she feel? The question, one she had never asked herself, made her shiver. Paul deserved jail, at least in the eyes of the law. He had killed to protect her at Tahoe, and she was complicitous in that murder, because she knew and because she said nothing. She shook herself free before the alarming swing of her thoughts knocked her down. Focusing on Stefan’s earnest, dark eyes, she said, “You need to ask Erin those questions, Stefan.”
Unlucky in Law Page 9