Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  There’s a long sigh. “That’s true.”

  “Then, Officer Johnson, how do you explain the lack of burning or singeing on that sample of hair?”

  There is a long pause, the kind that catches a juror’s attention.

  “I don’t know,” he says. He seems clearly puzzled by this, probably angry with himself that he has not considered it before.

  “Isn’t one possible explanation that perhaps the hair wasn’t there when the weapon was fired, but was placed there later?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the expert, officer, isn’t that one possible explanation?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s possible.”

  “Thank you.” Now I am finished.

  I’m ecstatic, trying to hold myself on the floor as I return to the counsel table. Harry is struggling to hold back a moonbeam smile.

  Talia has already failed, clutching my arm as I get to the chair.

  Nelson is getting hammered; he cannot leave it like this. He knows that unless the momentum shifts he may not weather a motion to dismiss at the close of his case in chief. There’s a heady conference at the prosecution table, Meeks and Nelson.

  “Redirect?” says Acosta.

  Nelson gets up and approaches the witness box.

  “Officer Johnson, according to your testimony only one chamber of the shotgun was found to be loaded, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then isn’t it possible that the strand of hair in question might have found its way into the empty chamber, and that this might explain why it was not singed or scorched?”

  Johnson looks pained, as if under the burden of one who has just seen a friend fall.

  “I don’t think so,” he says.

  There is the stark expression of certain trouble in Nelson’s eyes. In desperation he has violated the cardinal rule: Never ask a question unless you know the answer. But it is too late to stop. The jury is waiting for the follow-up.

  “Why not?” he says.

  “The shotgun in question was an over-and-under, two barrels one on top of the other, not a side-by-side double barrel. It was the top chamber that was fired.”

  Nelson’s dilemma is painfully obvious to anyone who has been following this little exchange. The strand of hair could not have reached the empty bottom chamber without a portion of it passing through the hot chamber on top. They cannot explain why this hair is not singed, fried like some crisp Chinese noodle.

  CHAPTER

  31

  THE phone is ringing. Saturday morning, rolling alone in the sheets. I’m in a half-daze as the cheerless gray dawn creeps through the white gauze that Nikki called drapes and hung on our bedroom window.

  I reach for the receiver in a stupor, wiping sleep from my eyes.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Have you seen the paper?” A female voice, hostile and cold, like a debt collector with her fangs in some deadbeat. It’s Nikki.

  “What time is it?”

  “After nine,” she says. “Have you seen today’s paper?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better take a look,” she says. Then she hangs up, hard in my ear.

  I roll over and replace the phone on the cradle.

  Saturday morning, gimme a break. Groaning, I start to get up.

  Before I can find my slippers, it’s the doorbell. The cheap Westminster chimes, sans a few of the tones. Something else that needs repair.

  There are a lot of foul words as I make my way down the hall, fastening my robe around me, barefoot, to the front door, stepping on dirty underwear and abandoned shoes. Wash day, I think. I check the peephole before opening, a little caution, a criminal lawyer’s due.

  George Cooper, his head a distorted oval with a pointy hat, stands in a light drizzle on the stoop. I turn the bolt and open.

  “Coop, sonofabitch,” I say. A counterfeit smile on my face like I’m happy to see him at this hour on a Saturday morning.

  “A bad time?” he says. “I can come back.”

  I’m yawning, stretching in his face. “Don’t be silly,” I say. I’m out on the step with him now, looking for the morning paper. It’s nowhere in sight. Wet and raining—chances are the boy threw it in the bushes again. Whenever it is wet and raining, he does this. I’ve been charitable, not complaining, assuming that the little plastic wrapper spoils his aim.

  “I thought you might want this,” he says. Coop’s packing a large envelope under his arm inside his raincoat, sheltered from the elements. He squeezes it open like some fish’s mouth. There are scraps of paper inside, the size of ticker tape in a parade. I had hoped for a little more organization.

  “For the taxes?” I say.

  He nods.

  I turn, heading for the kitchen.

  “Come on,” I tell him, “close the door.”

  Coop knows he’s not supposed to be here. A key witness for the prosecution. If Nelson knew, he would have Coop’s ass. We’ve had to suspend our infrequent lunches, meetings two or three times a month at a Mexican restaurant we call the ‘57 Chevy, Naugahyde booths carved with knives and stained by hot sauce and melted cheese.

  I remind him of this, the fact that we are not meeting.

  He agrees. A social call, he insists. “A trial doesn’t suspend the First Amendment, does it?” he says. “Freedom of association?”

  I tell him that these are lofty notions, unfamiliar to Armando Acosta, whose ancestors perfected the thumb screw and found use for molten lead in the human ear.

  Despite his protestations of basic rights, Coop is sufficiently sensitive that he comes here, to my house, a place where people won’t see us.

  “Coffee?” I ask.

  “Not if you have to make it.” After getting me out of bed, he’s too polite to put me to any trouble.

  “Believe me, I have to make it.” In the kitchen, under the flat fluorescent light, my face is a forest of black stubble.

  “Doin’ the midnight oil?” he says.

  “Harry wanted to celebrate,” I tell him. “He’s feeling good about the trial.”

  We finished the week on a high note. Nelson put on his ballistics expert. The witness confirmed that tests on the little handgun found at Talia’s were inconclusive in any match to the jacket fragment found in Ben. The state was forced to do this, to prevent us from scoring points on this issue in our case for the defense. It would not look good to hide this from the jury.

  The best Nelson could do with his army of ballistics experts was to let the jury know that such a gun was available to the defendant. His problem with this is that there are enough guns in this city capable of having fired the bullet and fragment to arm the foreign legion, a point we hammered home on cross.

  After court, Harry and I trekked to the Cloakroom, where we ended up under a table come closing hour. I don’t know that it was so much a celebration as just letting off some steam. Both of us had been on the wagon since the trial started.

  “I take it things are going well, then?”

  Coop’s been cloistered from the trial, locked out. Percipient witnesses and experts are excluded from the courtroom by order of the judge. This to keep them from contaminating each other with their testimony. In the stress of a trial, suggestion is a powerful force.

  I let him know that it’s going better than we have any right to expect, but no details, nothing that might compromise me, give him an edge when we have to confront each other in court.

  It is clear that Coop is not comfortable with this thought, the fact that we must do battle before judge and jury. He tells me that friends who do this risk chilling their relationship.

  “It’s professional,” I tell him. “You do your job; I do mine. When it’s over, we forget about it. Simple as that.”

  He makes a face at this, like he’s heard this from friends before. This morning Coop seems morose, out of sorts. I attribute this to the reason for his visit, Sharon’s probate.

  He has a rolled-up newspa
per stuffed in the pocket of his raincoat. I motion toward it. This looks better than crawling around in a wet juniper.

  “Today’s paper?” I’m thinking about Nikki’s phone call.

  “The shopping news,” he says. He’s got the envelope on the countertop now.

  I will have to go on safari after all, in the bushes.

  I’m filling the little paper filter with ground coffee. Black and muddy, Jo Ann Campanelli’s own recipe.

  “I think I’ve got everything,” he says. Coop’s opening the envelope. It’s filled to overflowing with receipts, the papers for Peggie Conrad to finish Sharon’s final tax return.

  “Anything new in the investigation?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. Coop is curt. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but the message is clear. The forensics man loaned to him by the cops to comb Sharon’s car has struck out. This means the case is at a dead end. The average taxpayer would never believe the number of unsolved cases plaguing most police departments in this country. Sharon’s driver, by all accounts, may skate.

  “The other thing,” he says, “the claim check. I looked. No sign of it. So I called the hardware store. An old toaster. Sharon must have dropped it off for repairs. Don’t worry about it.” Coop already has too many pieces of Sharon around him, reminding him of this pain. I take him at his word.

  The Mr. Coffee is making noxious sounds, the little port at the top gagging on the glue that’s dripping into the carafe.

  Coop’s mucking around in the kitchen now, looking for some little tidbit, something to chew on. He breaks off an edge of bread from the end piece of a stale loaf on the counter and starts to gnaw.

  “Tell me about the case,” he says, “your little victories?”

  I look at him askance.

  “Why don’t you ask me what I intend to do when Nelson puts you up?” I say.

  “OK. What do you intend to do?”

  I flash him a big smile. I can’t tell whether he is joking, or just shameless.

  “Do yourself a favor,” he says. “Plead her out.”

  “Fat chance,” I tell him. “I didn’t sweat blood over the jury to cut and run now. Nelson’s in disarray. If you were there, you would know. It has all the signs of a rout,” I tell him.

  He’s pulling the newspaper from his pocket, the tabloid shopper, flattening it out on my kitchen table to read.

  “How about some breakfast?” I ask.

  “No, thanks. I think you may want to look at this first; you may lose your appetite,” says Coop. He’s got the paper, holding it flat with the loaf of bread on top.

  The only thing I can see is the masthead and a byline. The Camp Town News is a local throwaway used by supermarkets to advertise sales on tuna and mayonnaise. The byline belongs to Eli Walker. This is one of the local rags that still buys Walker’s “syndicated” column, running it on the front page, like hard news. The reputable general-circulation press have all dropped him. Seems Eli kept getting lost in a bottle on his way to deadline.

  Coop takes a slice of bread and puts the loaf near the sink. My gaze is hit by the four-column banner like Moses getting the fiery finger of God on Sinai:

  LAWYER IMPLICATED IN POTTER KILLING

  The story is copyrighted. Coop looks at me, stone-faced, like “Read on.” I catch the lead, the first graph:

  CAPITOL CITY—In an exclusive to this reporter, sources close to the investigation in the Talia Potter murder trial have identified Paul Madriani, Potter’s defense attorney, as one of the men with whom Mrs. Potter carried on a lengthy and involved extramarital affair in the period preceding her husband’s death.

  The police have for months been looking for an elusive accomplice who they believe acted with Talia Potter to kill Benjamin G. Potter, the noted lawyer. Sources in Washington have indicated that before his death Potter was an odds-on favorite for appointment to the United States Supreme Court.

  There is a rush of adrenaline, a silly smile on my face, the kind you see in movies an instant after the thwop of an arrow cuts through the character’s chest. “Jesus,” I say. It is all I can think of.

  “Then it’s true?” he says. I have not said this, but Coop has drawn his own conclusions. There’s no surprise here. For George Cooper, Eli Walker’s column holds no revelations. Unless I am wrong, he has harbored suspicions for some time that my relationship with Talia, while now purely business, may have been something more in the recent past.

  “This came out last night?” I ask him.

  He nods.

  “What kind of play is it getting?”

  I can hope that, since it comes from Walker, the serious press is treating this like food delivered by some pariah.

  “The Journal and the Trib ran it this morning—both on the front page. It should hit the tube tonight, the six-o’clock news,” he says.

  Eli Walker must be off on the biggest drunk of his life, dreaming of attribution on the networks, his name in lights.

  I pull back to the table and read more. It is blistering, a dizzying series of shots, all taken by people hunkering down under the moniker of “highly placed sources.” The only thing more stinging is the fact that Walker, by design or destiny, has come remarkably close to the truth.

  Only Duane Nelson is quoted by name, a single and terse “No comment.” Nelson, it seems, takes the court’s gag order seriously, though some on his staff do not. Even without names I can place some of these.

  According to the article, an unnamed witness has identified me as one of a number of men seen over a period of months checking into a local hotel with Talia. The hotel goes unnamed. But Walker says the witness will appear at trial.

  Lama’s motel clerk. Jimmy Lama has made good on his threat. He has staked me to an anthill. I finger the edges of the paper. If this becomes evidence in Talia’s case, the jury will be giving me all the credence they would give a snake-oil salesman.

  Another unidentified source has told Walker that I was fired from the firm when Ben Potter discovered I was having an affair with his wife. It seems the Greek has finally put all of the pieces together, enough to guess at my reasons for departure from the firm, to make this charge, without proof, from his bunker of anonymity.

  I look at Coop, my expression one of a child in search of a father confessor. Suddenly, I have a burning desire to talk, an overwhelming compulsion to unburden myself on a sympathetic shoulder into a friendly ear.

  He senses this. His hands are on my shoulders, his face in mine. “I can’t hear this,” he says. “Not now.”

  He’s not angry. He’s protecting me. Whatever he knows, whatever I tell him, Nelson can force Coop to repeat in court. He knows this. In this time of panic, my lawyer’s wits abandon me. Coop is thinking more like the lawyer than I.

  “Why don’t you pack it in,” he says. “If the jury gets wind of this, if Nelson gets this into evidence, she’s dead.” These words ring with finality. “You may go down with her. Cut a deal now.”

  “What kind of deal can I get with this?” I sweep the tabloid off the table onto the floor with my hand.

  “Only one thing worse than a tainted defendant,” he tells me, “is a tainted defendant represented by a fallen lawyer.”

  Nikki’s phone call. She has seen this. I have to talk to Nikki.

  “What can I say?” I ask him.

  “Nothing.”

  I just want him to leave, so I can call Nikki. For her to know about my affair is one thing. To have her nose rubbed in it, to be humiliated in public print, is another. The irony of this is that Nikki is the one person I can bare my soul to with impunity, husband to wife. But I fear she will not want to hear it.

  Coop’s heading for the door now, repeating his advice that I cut a deal, and chiding me a bit. “Common sense,” he says, “should have told you not to take her case, for her own sake, if not for your own.”

  He is of course right, but now I simply want him to leave.

  “What will you do?”
he says.

  “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Harry, the court. Assess the damage,” I tell him. “I need to think.”

  “If there’s anything I can do,” he says, “within the bounds.” He’s got his pipe out, getting ready to pollute my house.

  I thank him and move him farther toward the door.

  “Don’t forget to call off your woman, the paralegal,” he says as I close the door. “Tell her to forget about the claim check and the hardware store.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I tell him. This is the last thing on my mind. I sprint for the phone and dial Nikki. Her line is busy. Friends have begun to call, the women in her cabal, all picking from my bones.

  CHAPTER

  32

  ELI Walker may have dreamed of fame, but never, in his driest moment, did he expect this. We are in chambers again, Nelson and Meeks, Harry and I, Acosta and the court reporter. Walker has the seat of honor, next to his attorney, directly in front of the judge’s desk.

  Acosta is dressing him down, giving him a lesson in gag orders and how they operate. While the court’s order doesn’t directly bind Walker, he’s been subpoenaed by the court to answer certain questions, out of the reach of the jury. The Coconut wants to know the identity of certain of Walker’s sources, primarily those touted as being close to the investigation. The inference here is that these people were part of the prosecution team, and hence bound by the original gag order.

  Eli is playing this notoriety for all it is worth. He showed up in court, walking the gauntlet of cameras in the hallway outside the courtroom, a slow procession, as if he were wearing ermine and carrying a scepter. Now he confers with his attorney, hand cupped to ear, like some syndicate boss in a senate hearing.

  The Coconut is beginning to fume with these antics, psychic smoke rising from his ears.

  Eli’s lawyer tells Acosta that Walker is asserting the state’s Shield Act, that the information is privileged, that Walker cannot be compelled to disclose the identity of his sources.