Paul thought he could still smell artichokes, although it might perhaps have been a massive sewer project that had caught his attention.
Wanda Wyatt had directed them to Building E, a small, flat-roofed, asymmetrical building with ominous overhangs some architect had had a blast-no, had been blasted-designing.
The weekend security guard, a small woman stuck behind a desk, excited to have a break from the existential angst of her daily breadwinning, took their IDs, scratched the back of her neck, and wasted a lot of their time making up questions to ask them, mostly irrelevant. Finally, cowed by the brevity of their answers, she called up to Gabriel Wyatt’s office. “Second floor,” she said, handing back the IDs.
“Thanks,” said Paul with what he hoped was a grateful smile, expressing his deep sympathy for the bored. As they waited for the elevator they read off the names of some of the other small businesses sharing the building. This was clearly not a ragingly successful place.
Wyatt met them at the elevator and led them back into offices accessible only to the chosen few with bar-coded cards.
“How’s it going?” Paul asked.
“Like it’s supposed to.” Tall, maybe six feet two, Gabe Wyatt had glossy fair hair, a thin build, and a loose grace as he pulled a chair up to his desk and sat, crossing one leg. A handsome dude, on the ascetic side.
He resembled Stefan, if you caught his right profile, but in a supercharged, glamorous incarnation. He had strong features perfectly sized and shaped, and skin that appeared airbrushed, scrubbed as clean of texture as the face of a computer-generated game hero. If he were a movie star, he would be typecast in romantic leads, and would lose all the good character roles to Nicolas Cage’s bird beak and bovine eyes.
“Sorry it’s been so hard getting together, but what can I do for you?” Gabe asked. “How’s Stef? Holding up? I haven’t been able to see him since the trial started, in case I need to testify.”
“Not surprisingly, his focus at the moment is getting out of jail. I’m curious,” Paul said. “What all do you do here?”
They were sitting in Gabe’s cubicle, narrow, with poor lighting, a peculiar mix of executive desk, chair, and a tiny window with a distant view of dunes.
“Need to lean on somebody?” Gabe asked.
“Not at the moment.”
“Well, that’s what we do.”
“What do you mean, lean?”
Gabriel Wyatt laughed. “Hey, I’m your worst nightmare. Ever paid a bill late, even though you were on vacation or the mailman delivered to the wrong address? Well, that’s where I come in.”
“We’re talking phone calls, right? Nothing brutal?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” Gabe Wyatt got comfy in his worn but wide upholstered chair. He obviously spent lots of time with his butt planted there. “It’s a hot field. We’re the best in the country at collecting. Most people we call aren’t the ones that forgot a bill or two, or had them lost in the mail, believe me. Most of ’em deserve a mean spanking.”
Paul disliked him instantly. He had talked to Gabe’s type a few times. Explanations degraded into weaseled excuses in their world. “What kind of background do you need for a job like yours?”
“I had two years at Monterey Peninsula College, and a semester at Cal State. Studied communications.”
“You like your job?” Wish obviously was struggling to keep the astonishment out of his voice.
“Sure.” He laughed. “I like dealing with people.”
“Things going well for you here, then?” Paul asked, watching Wish, who was desperately trying to come to terms with his first sight of the devil incarnate.
Maybe Gabe, who rubbed his right arm, had picked up on the negativity of their ions. “Hey, I know people hate me for what I do. I work because I have to, and this is not so bad, as jobs go. I’d rather win the lottery. Wouldn’t you?” He looked out the window toward the dunes. The sky, feathered with white clouds, looked wintry.
“I understand you first consulted Alan Turk about a will,” Paul said.
All the superficial hail-fellow attitude dropped instantly. “What’s that got to do with anything?” Gabriel Wyatt asked. “How will this help my brother?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like secrets when our client’s freedom is at a high risk of being lost permanently.”
Gabe hesitated, finally saying, “I don’t want you to think I wouldn’t do whatever I can to get my brother out of jail. Maybe my mother told you our father died when we were very young?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I consulted Alan Turk about his will.”
“He left you something?”
“There were questions. I needed answers.”
“Why not just ask your mother?”
“I started there. Our mother wasn’t helpful so I went to Alan.”
“Okay,” Paul said, waiting.
“That’s it. You wanted to know. It’s nothing to do with Stefan.”
“So it seems.”
“Anything else I can tell you?”
“Do you like your brother?”
“Funny question,” he said. “But I guess I do. He’s a nice enough guy. If only he could hold down a job.” He said the words lightly, but Paul thought he could detect a slight note of envy.
“Erin, his ex-girlfriend, doesn’t seem to feel you respect him much.”
He frowned. “He was an angry kid, but I think he’s gotten over that since he met her. In spite of his legal troubles, Stefan doesn’t need much to make him happy. I guess she notices that I’m always on his case about how he should challenge himself more, make something of himself.” He laughed. “As if my life’s such a great example. I work too hard for too little. My boss takes advantage of me. Here it is Sunday. Am I out boating on Monterey Bay today? Am I eating ice cream? Stefan would be, if he were out. And I’d be here, working.”
“We need to figure out this connection to Alex Zhukovsky. Stefan claims he never spoke in person to the man, and yet he supposedly hired Stefan.”
“And you think Stefan’s lying.”
“Don’t know,” Paul said, “but we haven’t been able to establish a connection.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you there. Stef never said a word to me.”
“Did you get along as kids?”
“We had the usual rivalries.”
“He saved your life.”
“That’s right. And I’m forever in his debt for that, I guess.”
“Erin says you believe he’s guilty.”
Gabe squinted at Paul. “My brother’s blood was found at the scene. It’s scary. I don’t believe in voodoo, and I’m not that big on religion. But blood evidence… I wish I could explain it away.” He seemed genuinely confused. “I didn’t know he knew her. I didn’t know he went there. How did this happen, where he ended up burying her body in Constantin Zhukovsky’s grave? I’ve asked Stefan, but he can’t explain it. He thinks you should just believe him.”
“Everyone says he doesn’t lie.”
“But-” Gabe said. He picked up the receiver for the phone on his desk and set it gently back into its cradle. “How can you ignore the evidence?”
“Your mom says that as children, you fought a lot.”
“What do you expect with two boys in one house? Maybe we got all our animosity out growing up.”
“‘Rolled on the floor, kicking each other in the face, dust flying,’ she told us,” Paul said. “And she says you were the more fragile of the two. Being sick, I guess…”
“We’re over that,” Gabe interrupted.
“Did you know Christina Zhukovsky?” Wish asked suddenly.
“No.”
“We understand you attended the conference at Cal State. You know, the one last spring, dealing with Russia?”
Gabe’s eyes shifted between Paul and Wish, as if seeking a safe haven and not finding one. “I did, actually.”
“Why?” Paul’s pen took a rest.
“One of the guys I work with spoke at
the conference. I went to see him. It was practically required.”
“See, we heard that,” Paul said. “Unfortunately, your story doesn’t check out. Nobody from this firm spoke at that conference.”
Gabe’s wheels spun. “Well, he canceled at the last minute. I went anyway.”
“Make any good contacts while you were there?” Paul said, not attempting to hide his disbelief.
“Not really. No.”
“Sergey Krilov?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“That surprises me. You were seen together.” No sooner was the lie out than Paul forgave himself.
Gabriel Wyatt didn’t seem discomfited, but then, good God. He harassed people for a living, whether they deserved it or not.
“I talked with a lot of people there,” Gabe said. “Have a stack of cards a foot high. I might have met him.”
“Can I see them? The cards?”
“They’re not here.”
“Later?”
“I was speaking figuratively. I’m sure I threw them away. Nothing lasting came out of that conference for me.”
“You know, Christina Zhukovsky organized the conference. How could you not know who she was?”
“I wasn’t looking for her. Look, it’s just a coincidence, me going there. I get around. If I’d known she’d be dead a week later and my brother would be accused of the crime, I’d have stayed home.”
Paul looked at his notes, zooming in on the one that said, “Call Nina and give her hell for being so distant and sexually unavailable. Make her love you.”
“Strange,” he said.
“What?”
“People saw you talking to her.”
“There were a lot of people there that day!” Gabriel Wyatt said. “I never saw her.”
And I’m P. Diddy, Paul thought.
14
Monday 9/22
BY THE TIME THE FIRST CUP OF COFFEE KICKED HARD ENOUGH TO awaken her, Nina was already sitting in court, listening to the testimony of the forensics expert, Abbott Lumley. She had not slept at all the night before. After she picked Bob up from the train station, hit the shower, and loaded dry dog food into Hitchcock’s bowl while he looked mournfully at her, his way of complaining about the lack of some kind of gourmet supplement, it was nearly eight at night. Then Paul stopped by with all kinds of new information, some so startling she didn’t know where to begin with it.
So, following a long discussion with Bob and an even longer discussion with Paul, she had sat at the kitchen table all night long waiting for a clear picture to form out of the blur. That never happened.
With her lucky pen, she doodled on the pad in front of her, her way of tuning into the proceedings. She drew the Russian medal. Stefan looked down at her drawing. What did the medal mean to him? To read his vaguely alert expression, nothing much. Klaus had started the morning off with the requested pep talk, which also must have helped.
“Mr. Lumley,” Jaime said, “you’ve mentioned your opinion that an attempt was made to clean the crime scene. What, in your opinion as an expert, was the purpose of that attempt?”
Nina hated hypotheticals but maybe Abbott Lumley would offer her an opening, spinning his yarns. She didn’t object.
Lumley, a short, lively, smiling man in his sixties with the plump cheeks of a baby, waited politely for Klaus or Nina to intervene before answering. For all his playful looks, he was a forensics expert who had testified in dozens of murder cases. He knew exactly what to expect in court, and what tone to strike. Today, he was apparently going for earnest and helpful.
“Considering the body of the victim was found buried in a grave, I believe the perpetrator hoped that by cleaning the crime scene, he or she would not only hide evidence of his crime, but would suggest to anyone wondering about the whereabouts or safety of Christina Zhukovsky that there was nothing wrong. If her body had not been found, possibly the crime might never have been detected.”
“But it was. And your team found broken glass with blood, which has since been identified as belonging to that of the defendant, correct?”
“Objection.” Nina thought she had to keep the jury clear on the idea that, no matter what the DNA results, the match was not one hundred percent. “That’s an inaccurate statement of the evidence. These are probabilities, not fact.”
“Overruled.” This kind of probability every court in the land pretty much accepted as fact.
“That’s right, the blood on the glass matched that of the defendant,” Lumley answered, repeating it just in case anyone had missed the train. “When we first arrived at the apartment, we used light tests to identify the presence of blood. We then used standard procedures for collecting samples. We found blood mixed with glass shards only in the kitchen area.”
“How was the glass cleaned up?”
“Swept up with the victim’s broom, where we found one of our samples.”
They skated smoothly along for a while then, right over where the glass went after it was swept up, and around the fingerprint evidence. Nina made notes, punctuating with fancy asterisks.
“Now, let’s go back to the cemetery,” Jaime said. Nina thought, Oh, let’s not. So much of what had gone before was a replay and confirmation of the testimony of Kelsey Banta. But Jaime was on a roll, back to his favorite setting, recalling the grisly deed, the protruding arm of the victim, the three layers of trash bags that were intended to be the shroud for the murdered woman.
Much of what Lumley said had to do with tying Stefan to the grave site, which didn’t interest Nina as much as anything new he might have to contribute about the blood evidence. She knew Stefan had dug up the grave. He had admitted he dug up the grave. Disputing that evidence wouldn’t help their case.
With the obsessiveness of a true professional, Lumley lingered lovingly over details. He described matching the bones found in the back seat of Stefan’s car to what remained behind in Constantin Zhukovsky’s grave. They had found nothing in the garbage bags, other than Christina’s body and clothing. A shovel and gloves in Stefan’s car contained soil that matched that found in the grave.
Because of rain the previous day, the casts of footprints Lumley made from the area outside the grave showed lace-delicate patterns matching Stefan’s Vision Quest canvas shoes. The shoes were irrefutably his, all could see that, right down to the wear marks. Jaime showed the casts and photographs of imprints made from them, then passed around one of Stefan’s shoes so that the jury could see for themselves. They passed the plastic-bagged dirty shoe somberly from hand to hand and Nina could feel Stefan’s body shaking. The absurd sight of his shoe making the courtroom rounds had gotten to him. She realized he was on the verge of erupting into laughter. To give him something else to think about, she nudged him, hard.
“If I’d seen this coming,” he whispered to her, “I’d have worn my new ones to the cemetery. Like wearing fresh underwear in case a truck hits you on the way home. Always best to be prepared.” His humor came out at odd times, but Nina liked him better this way than beaten-down and acting guilty.
But the worst was to come, the moment Jaime stuck his extensive collection of blowups onto an easel: photographs of the victim alive and dead, bagged and unbagged; the graveyard; and the deceptively neat crime scene. Lumley took his turn describing them.
Stefan gripped the side of his chair, as if unsteady, and caught on a rocking boat, but from the table up, he viewed the pictures with steely equanimity, as directed. She could smell his sweat.
From the shots of Christina Zhukovsky at work and at home, Nina judged that this had been a woman who didn’t emphasize her looks. Behind the glasses her eyes had been a pale blue, and the wide cheekbones gave her character. Her long straight hair had been left to wander where it would. She appeared quiet and smart, ethereal and distant. Not a woman of the body, but of the mind. She had enjoyed the money inherited from her father, Nina could deduce that from the photographs of her penthouse apartment with an ocean view that would loo
k enticing on the cover of a home decor magazine.
But she had never made much of a salary from her past jobs, and-Nina rifled through Paul’s notes. Yes, here it was, Alex’s interview. His and Christina’s father, Constantin, was a baker. None of this had to do with what Lumley was talking about, but Nina couldn’t concentrate.
The point was, Christina had inherited money. And money is always worth considering as a motive for murder.
True, the killer hadn’t robbed Christina’s apartment. Nothing had been missing.
Even so, Nina made a note to have Paul look deeper into Christina’s finances.
As Lumley finished up his direct testimony, she reviewed the notes she had made to help her with the afternoon’s cross-examination. Judge Salas excused everybody for lunch, and Nina walked out with Klaus.
Klaus, who had worn a milky glaze over his eyes for most of the morning, the better to nap, snapped awake, walking briskly beside her toward the parking lot, suddenly focused, excited about what delicacies they might select from the deli counter.
They bought sandwiches and drinks, and Nina got Klaus squared away at a table by the window. Within seconds, people sitting at a nearby table recognized him, which got them all into mutual reminiscing going back to days before Nina was born. Nina ate quickly, then stepped outside to make calls. She spoke briefly with her father, who wanted Bob to visit that evening to watch a game, eat barbecue, and stay over. She called Paul, but he didn’t answer. She wondered if he was catching up on some rest after the weekend, and left a recklessly desperate message she hoped would make him drop any alternate plans he might have cooked up for his evening.
At the doors leading into the courtroom, Klaus stopped her. “This Lumley is very sure of himself. The jury likes him. It’s easy to be hoodwinked by the intellectual chicanery of such a convincing advisor. Your duty is to assault his respectability. Ask him who he sleeps with, or whether he knew the victim.” He waved his hand. “You’ll think of something. But you must throw him off balance. Then you might be able to knock him down.”
So, while appearing sanguine and indifferent to this morning’s witness, Klaus had been listening. Just when she thought his little gray cells had dried to dust, he fired them up and shot the sparks her way.
Unlucky in Law Page 19