Double Tap

by Steve Martini

  “Come trial, they may claim our client took it,” I tell him.

  “Then where is it?” Harry asks.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe as good as theirs. Any idea how many other people were in the gallery at the time Chapman showed up to look at the piece?”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” says Harry.

  “Problem is,” says Herman, “according to the shop owner, only other people in that part of the store that afternoon were two old ladies. He remembers ‘cuz he wanted ‘em to leave so he and Chapman could talk in private.”

  “I’ll bet.” I’m looking at the single page from the DA’s office that Harry has just handed to me. I spin around in my chair and begin thumbing through a stack of files on the credenza behind me.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’ll know when I find it,” I tell him. It takes a minute or so. I locate it about halfway down in the stack that has been growing steadily with each motion for discovery served on the DA and the cops. I pull several stapled pages from the pile along with an envelope containing some photographs. I place the stapled pages on my desk next to the DA’s letter. I jot a note to myself on a Post-it and stick it on the letter. Then I paper-clip the entire bundle together, with the DA’s letter on top.

  “What is it?” says Harry.

  “Could be a point for our side—that is, if the sand doesn’t shift under our feet between now and trial.”

  “Let’s just hope the cops don’t find this Orb thing in a pawnshop somewhere with a ticket under Ruiz’s name,” says Herman.

  “Now, that’s a cheery thought,” says Harry.

  “Well, like your partner says, that’s the kinda sand you don’t want shiftin’. You want lotsa optimism, go into politics,” says Herman.

  Herman is right. Happy thoughts of easy endings are fine for those who deal in pixie dust. But a criminal-defense lawyer who skips into court on a bubble of buoyancy is likely to slink out missing a sizable chunk of his ass, to say nothing of his client’s. Even when you’ve crossed all the t‘s and dotted all the i‘s, you can still find yourself bouncing objections off the uneven surface of some intellectual gremlin in black robes. Unanswered questions about the Orb, why it disappeared and where it went, may be one of our better arguments, but to place all of our hopes in this one basket would not be wise. Ask any defense lawyer and they will tell you. You can usually punch more holes in a prosecutor’s case with a shotgun than a rifle.

  For the moment we drop it and move on.

  “Do we know whether the cops have a time frame for the murder?” I ask.

  “If they do, they aren’t saying,” says Harry. “Playing it close to the vest.” According to Harry, they are going to make us pick through everything in their reports to reconstruct the state’s best guess as to when the murder occurred. “According to the police reports, none of the neighbors heard the shots,” he says.

  “No mystery to that. Silencer on the rocks.” Herman makes it sound like a posh new drink in some upscale bar.

  Besides the murder weapon, the handgun that the police found in a flower bed in the backyard, they also found a six-inch cylindrical silencer, its gun-blue finish not even scratched or dented on the sandstone ledge of rocks behind the victim’s house on the other side of the wall near the ocean.

  “We do have something from the art shop where she bought the glass,” says Herman. He takes a small notebook from his pocket and starts flipping pages. The cheaters have now slid down his nose so that he is holding the notebook at arm’s length and reading long-distance. “Talked to the owner and his son. Middle Eastern fella. Last name is Asani. Father is Ibram. Boy’s first name is Hassan. Best they could figure, the victim left the store a few minutes after five. Kid says five-ten, no later than five-fifteen. The father says it could have been as late as five-thirty. Old man was a little uptight, the kid was spacey. You want my advice, I’d go with the father.”

  “Do we know whether she stopped anywhere else before going home?” I look at them, elbows on the desk, hands open, looking for an answer. Herman shrugs his shoulders. “Last place she was seen alive was the art shop. Far as I know.”

  Harry shakes his head. “Figure it’s unlikely she’s gonna stop anywhere else. I wouldn’t want to leave something as valuable as the Orb inside a vehicle on the street or in a parking lot, would you?”

  “Unless, of course, she delivered it someplace else on her way home.” I tap the DA’s letter still lying faceup on my desk. “Of course, if she did that, then what’s all this packing material doing all over her kitchen?” I turn the police photograph around and show it to Harry. The victim’s kitchen.

  Harry peers at the photo. “Quite a mess.”

  “Surpassed only by the blood all over the entrance hall,” I tell him. “Her purse and some bottles were spilled on the floor out in the garage.”

  “You think there was a struggle?” says Harry.

  “No. I think we have a lady in a hurry.”

  “You think they’re playing games with us on the Orb?”

  “Who knows?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time some cagey prosecutor left a tempting piece of evidence out on the end of a limb, hoping some stupid defense lawyer would crawl out there to get it.”

  “Let me see the DA’s letter again,” says Harry.

  I hand it to him.

  He reads silently to himself, forefinger of his right hand running over the letters on the page. “Interesting,” he says. “They say they don’t have it. Doesn’t say they don’t know where it is.”

  “Yeah. I noticed that too.”

  “They can do that?” Herman asks.

  “That depends. If it’s only an educated guess and it can’t later be said that they had specific information, maybe.”

  “Is it possible she took it back to her office?” Harry offers.

  “Five-thirty on Friday night. The traffic in the area around La Jolla can get thick. We know she had a dinner engagement later that night.”

  “Eight o’clock,” says Harry. “She was meeting friends for dinner.”

  “She coulda brought the glass piece to her office instead of the house,” says Herman.

  “I don’t think so,” says Harry. “Cops found all the packing material at her house. The box, tape, bubble wrap.”

  “I can check with the company, this Isotenics place,” says Herman. “See if they have any record of the Orb bein’ there.”

  “Check it,” I tell him. “But I suspect Harry is right.”

  “If it’s not there at her office, and the cops don’t have it, we have to figure whoever killed her grabbed it,” says Harry.

  “One would think so. Back to the time of death: what do we have from the state’s pathologist?” This is not likely to be of much help. Without witnesses to nail it down—someone who saw the victim alive, and another who discovered the body—this is a guessing game at best.

  “He says it could have happened anytime between five-fifty and ten-forty that night. They’re assuming she left the glass gallery sometime between five-fifteen and five-thirty. The cops found the body just before eleven that night,” says Harry.

  “Sounds to me like they’re operating on the notion we are: that she went straight home from the art shop,” Herman says.

  “How do you figure?” Harry asks.

  “She couldn’t have gone to her office and made it back home in twenty minutes,” Herman explains. “Not that time of day—not with the traffic and all.”

  “That’s if she left at five-thirty,” Harry says. “What if she left a few minutes earlier? What if the shop owner’s son is right?”

  “Maybe,” says Herman. “But I don’t think so. Traffic’s too heavy to go anywhere else. And, like you say, she ain’t gonna park the car someplace and leave the Orb sittin’ there.”

  “If no one heard the shot, why did the cops show up at her house? Who called them?” I wonder.

  “She missed a dinner appo
intment,” says Harry. He is looking through the pile of papers in his lap, finds what he wants, and scans it with his eyes. “Chapman had a dinner appointment at eight o’clock that evening. A place in San Diego. Restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter. When she didn’t show, people waiting for her called the house, then her cell phone. They left messages both places. The cops confirmed it: messages on voice mail. First one was received at eight twenty-two that evening. She didn’t answer.”

  “Then the pathologist is off,” I say.

  Harry looks at me.

  “The time of death. Medical examiner is saying anytime between five-fifty that evening and ten-forty that night when the responding officers showed up. But if she wasn’t answering the phone at eight twenty-two, it’s a fair assumption that she was already dead.”

  “You’re right,” says Harry.

  We are now down to a time frame for the murder of less than three hours. Unfortunately, Ruiz has no alibi for the evening in question. According to the statement he gave the police, he was at home alone in his apartment, asleep, since he had worked the graveyard shift the day before and was scheduled to go to work at eleven that night.

  “Cause of death,” says Harry, “was bleeding coupled with massive trauma to the brain.” He is looking at the pathology report.

  “Who was it that called the cops?”

  “Someone in the dinner party waiting for her. They got worried about her and called the security contractors at Isotenics. When they couldn’t reach her and she didn’t show up at the restaurant, they called the police. They asked for a drive-by. Cop went to the front door and saw the body on the floor through an opening in the curtain on one of the windows next to the door.”

  “Do we have a name, the dinner guest who placed the call?”

  Harry looks through the papers. “Hmm. That’s strange.”

  “What?”

  “No name. The police report lists all the witnesses, neighbors they talked to, people at dinner waiting for her, but it doesn’t say who placed the call.”

  “It had to be somebody who knew her pretty well if they had her cell phone number,” says Herman.

  “See if you can find out,” I tell him. Herman makes a note. “So let’s work the time frame,” I say. “Figure it took her, what, maybe fifteen minutes to drive home from the glass studio, depending on traffic.”

  “And assuming she didn’t stop anywhere else.” Harry is milling through one of the files on his lap as he talks.

  “That would have put her in the house maybe five-forty-five at the latest. So play out the theories. First one to consider is theft.”

  “The art glass,” says Harry.

  “Right. Let’s say someone who saw her in the shop got a good look at the piece, a sense as to its value. Maybe he overhears the sounds of commerce, a figure mentioned. He’d have to know where she lives.”

  “Or follows her home,” says Herman.

  “He’d have to have access or find a way in. But most important, he’d have to find the gun before he could shoot her.”

  “Figure he followed her,” Harry hypothesizes. “Waited to break in. Got into the yard, found the window. Even if she’s in the house, like you say, it’s a big place. She’s downstairs. So maybe the killer goes upstairs looking for the Orb, doesn’t find it immediately, so he starts going through drawers.”

  “Why would he be going through drawers? We have pictures of the item. It was too big to fit in a drawer,” I tell him.

  “Maybe he figured he’d grab a few other trinkets as long as he was already inside.”

  “And he stumbles on the gun?”

  “It’s possible,” Harry says.

  I’m shaking my head.

  “Why not? Cops didn’t find the body until almost eleven.”

  “Yes, but if we’re right, she was already dead by the time the call came in from the restaurant. That was what?”

  “Eight twenty-two,” Harry answers. “That means the guy had about three hours.”

  “It’s not the lack of time: it’s too much time.”

  “What do you mean?” he says.

  “Think about it. You break in and you’re rattling around in somebody’s house, a strange place, going from room to room, going through drawers. If it was that easy to get in, why take the chance on getting caught? Why not just go back to your car, watch the house until she leaves, then go back in and take whatever you want, including the Orb?”

  Harry mulls this over for a moment, the devil’s advocate at work. “Maybe she was in the shower. Didn’t hear the phone when they called her from the restaurant. In which case our guess as to time of death may be wrong.”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because he killed her in the first few minutes after she got home.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Where are the crime-scene shots? The ones showing the victim.”

  Harry looks at me, then starts pawing through one of the files. He finds a large manila envelope, opens the flap, and turns it upside down so that a half dozen eight-by-ten glossies slip out and slide across the table, stopping only when I slap my hand down on them.

  I pick up the photos and finger through them until I find the two I’m looking for. One of them shows Madelyn Chapman lying facedown on the floor. Her left eye, the one I can see, is open, staring at eternity. What is left of her lower jaw is resting in a large dark pool of blood, strings of blond hair matted to the floor. Blood has soaked into her white silk blouse, turning portions of it along her left side into what looks like a mottled, formless shade of black. A shot like this can subvert notions of justice. Mystical abstractions like the burden of proof and reasonable doubt tend to get lost when jurors start having nightmares. If this photo makes its way into the jury box, Harry and I will need the overhead sprinkler system in the courthouse to put out the fire every time Ruiz makes eye contact with a juror.

  I turn the picture toward Harry. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but according to witnesses, her secretary at work and the studio owner, this is the outfit she was wearing that day.”

  “Ah. You’re right.”

  “No. She was dead within minutes after she got home. Think about it. She’s going out to dinner, has to be there at eight. She’s going to want to change, and probably shower first. With most women that’s going to take at least an hour, and that’s if they’re speedy.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” says Harry.

  “Trust me, I’m an expert, having once been married,” I tell him.

  “Go on.”

  “By the time she selects and lays out her wardrobe, showers, puts on new makeup, fixes her hair, gets dressed, and selects her jewelry, you’re looking at a minimum of an hour. If she bathes, figure anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours. It’s going to take her at least a half hour to get wherever she’s going for dinner. Friday night south on Five to the city. She’d be lucky to get there and park in that time.”

  Harry nods in agreement.

  “She’d be getting ready by six-fifteen, six-thirty at the latest. But here she is”—I point to the picture—“still wearing the same outfit she wore to the office that day. She never even had time to get upstairs. Look”—I point at the victim’s feet—“she’s still wearing her high heels.”

  Actually, one of Madelyn Chapman’s shoes came off of her foot as she twisted and went down, part of it still visible in the photo, pointing in the opposite direction as if she’d been walking in it backward. “No woman I know wears four-inch heels around the house after she gets home from work. She hadn’t taken them off yet because she hadn’t finished what she was doing when she came in the door.”

  I turn the other photograph toward Harry. This one is less graphic, a shot of the kitchen, pieces of plastic bubble wrap and shipping tape strewn across the granite countertop and on the floor. Next to the sink is a small-wheeled cart of some kind. An empty cardboard box sits on the counter; the two corners facing toward the camera a
re slit from top to bottom, its side facing the lens, laid down like an open drawbridge. The knife is still on the countertop next to the box.

  “The pictures tell the tale,” I tell him. “She came in from the garage and unwrapped it in the kitchen. We know that because her purse was found by Forensics on the floor in the garage where she dropped it while wrestling the box in. Uncrating it couldn’t have taken her more than two, maybe three minutes. Where the art glass went from there I can’t say. But when she was finished, she walked from the kitchen toward the front of the house, probably headed for the stairs to go up to her bedroom and bath to get ready for dinner. She would have been in a hurry. Her purse. Most women don’t go anywhere without it. If they’re home, they usually keep it in one place where they can find it. But hers was on the floor in the garage where she dropped it.”

  “Maybe they tussled out in the garage,” says Harry. “Could be that’s where he first confronted her. Why she dropped her purse. The cops found some plastic bottles, cleaning fluid spilled on the floor in the garage. Indication is there could have been some kind of a struggle there.”

  “If that’s the case, why was she shot in the entryway?”

  Harry shakes his head. He has no answer for this.

  “The answer is the cleaning cart,” I tell him. “In the photograph of the kitchen.”

  Harry looks at the photo.

  “I’m guessing she used it to roll the box containing the glass into the kitchen from the garage. It would have been easier than carrying it and safer if she didn’t want to drop it. If she was in a hurry, she probably just swept the bottles off the top of the cart in the garage onto the floor. Figured that hired help could clean it up later. The bottles on the floor are not a sign of struggle. It’s a woman in a hurry.”

  “Which is why she forgot to go back out and get her purse,” Harry adds.

  I nod. “One thing is clear: she never got any further into that house than the front entry. Otherwise her high heels wouldn’t be on her feet. Most women would kick them off at the first chance, but she had her hands full, first opening the box and then running upstairs to get ready. Only she never got there.”