Compelling Evidence m-1

by Steve Martini

  In this he is, as ever, practical. Every gesture, each ruling calculated for effect.

  “Your Honor, is it fair that my client should be put to the cost of an appeal?” I ask. “Have the threat of a conviction hanging over her head, perhaps for years?”

  “She has not yet been convicted,” he tells me.

  “Your Honor, look at them. Listen to what they’re saying.”

  He makes a face, cocked off to the side at a forty-five-degree angle, a crooked smile, like he is not responsible for these twelve people. The message is clear. If I am not happy with this jury, I have no one to blame but myself.

  “Your motion is denied,” he whispers.

  We back away, and he puts it on the record.

  Through all of this, I have been carrying a single piece of paper, the little receipt from the hardware store, the piece of paper from Sharon’s probate. I’d had it in my hand when Dee dropped her bomb that the jury was back. I have folded this thing into a million little squares as I wait, the product of my nerves.

  Acosta reads the jury the critical instruction one more time, and delivers a blistering lecture on what it means: that they may draw no inference whatever from the fact of Talia’s silence in this trial, that they may not discuss the matter or allow it to enter into their deliberations in any way. In this, it is as if he believes that by these words, by these admonitions, he can cleanse the record, as one would unring a fire Klaxon clanging in the night.

  The jury, sheepish now, returns to the task, behind closed doors.

  We are a somber, ragtag assembly when we reach my office again. Tod and Talia have been hanging to the rear all the way from the courthouse, little conferences between the two of them. I suspect these are plans for appeal, ways and means to carry on with their lives in the event of a conviction.

  As the flexing metal gate of the elevator slams open and Harry pushes the door that leads to the hallway, Dee is standing there, her arms held up as if this is some emergency.

  “They are back,” she says. “The jury.” This time she says the magic words. “They have a verdict.”

  I look at Talia, terror-struck behind me in the elevator. They have barely had time for a single ballot since we left the courthouse, an ominous sign.

  The gauntlet of klieg lights and cameras with their laserlike strobes is particularly bad now. They block our access to the courtroom, looking for new file shots and footage for this evening’s news. The word is out as we arrive-a verdict is at hand.

  Tod muscles one of the reporters out of his chair on the aisle behind the railing as Harry, Talia, and I take our seats at the table. Tod is in no mood to tarry with the reporter. Arriving with us in our official party, he gives the reporter one mean stare and the journalist decides to hunch down on one knee in the aisle rather than make a scene.

  Acosta has instructed the jury to remain in the jury room until they are called. The judge is in chambers. We are the last to arrive. Nelson and Meeks are already seated. The bailiff sends the word back to the clerk, and ten seconds later Acosta comes out and ascends the bench, followed by the clerk. He nods and the bailiff knocks on the jury room door.

  They come out in two even lines of six, file into their rows of chairs, and take their seats. The jury foreman has a single slip of paper in her hand as she sits down.

  The clerk is ready; the judge bangs his gavel. “This court will come to order,” he says.

  A hundred conversations come to a stop in mid-sentence.

  “Madam foreman, has the jury arrived at a verdict?”

  “It has, Your Honor.”

  “Please give it to the clerk.”

  There’s a quick exchange here. Acosta takes the slip and peers at it for what seems like an eternity. He then looks at Talia, as if this is somehow expected.

  “The defendant will rise,” he says.

  Talia and I are on our feet.

  “The clerk will read the verdict.” Acosta hands it back to her.

  “In the matter of People v. Talia Potter, to the charge of violation of section 182 of the penal code, first-degree murder, we the jury find the defendant, Talia Potter, NOT GUILTY.”

  There’s a roar from the courtroom. Hands are over the railing behind us, reaching for Talia. I can feel a hundred open palms patting on my back. Talia’s leaning over the railing into Tod’s arms, tears streaming down her face. Then to me. She whispers in my ear, barely audible. “Thank you,” she says. “I don’t know how I will ever thank you.” There’s a lot of warm wetness against my cheek.

  I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing, and she turns to hug Harry.

  It is true. There is nothing that exhausts so thoroughly as tension. I slip down into a seat, my chair at the counsel table, and take a single deep breath. Acosta is trying to beat the courtroom back into order with his gavel. Two reporters have somehow gotten into the room with their microphones. They are leaning over the railing behind me for an impromptu interview. I ignore them.

  I look over. Nelson and Meeks are like two orphans at their table. It is as if everyone on their side of the room has come over to ours, like the building may topple to this side.

  Nelson may want to poll the jury. With the commotion he may not get the chance. Acosta looks at him, and Nelson merely shrugs, as if to say “Why try?”

  The judge thanks the jury, but no one hears him. “The defendant is discharged.” He’s now standing in front of his chair on the bench, yelling. “This court is adjourned,” he says. With that he is gone, down the steps, behind the bench, into his dark cavern, the jury still in the box left to fend for itself.

  The press is now roaming over them, inside the box, reporters with notebooks trying to find out what happened behind closed doors. The jury foreman is holding court at the railing. The bailiffs have given up on trying to keep the cameras out of the room. Belted with battery packs, the crews are setting up with anything that looks legal as a backdrop-the bench, the jury box with its scene of unseemly chaos. Nelson crosses over, in front of the cameras, as if to give them a special photo op. As I look up he’s standing in front of my counsel table, his hand extended as if in congratulations.

  “Well-fought case,” he says. “Good trial.” There is something genuine, unfeigned in this. Some of the print press are jostling to capture these few words, writing them down as if they are holy writ. I take his hand and shake it. This is memorialized for the news by one of the camera crews. Then he leaves. Like that, Nelson and Meeks are out of the room, leaving this party to the victors.

  For a moment I am left alone. The reporters have moved around Talia and Harry, asking for reactions. Talia is breathless. Having shed all anxiety, she’s radiant in this moment of victory.

  I’m still holding the single item from Sharon’s probate file, the store receipt with the undecipherable script, only one word of which I can read with any certainty-the word “Bernardelli.” I sit dazed, staring at the evidence cart in a far corner, plastic bags with the hair and the monster pellet-and the exquisitely tooled shotgun bent open at the breech, the shotgun claimed by George Cooper from the hardware store after its repair. The shotgun Coop used the night he murdered Ben Potter.

  CHAPTER 41

  There is a bridge, 900 feet high, over the American River. Some people use it to get to Sutter’s Mill, the place where James Marshall discovered gold. Some people take it to eternity. George Cooper did that on a Tuesday morning in late October.

  His house is in utter disarray. I’ve not been here in more than a year. Had I come and seen the bedlam of this place, perhaps I would have known how far over the edge of reality Coop had truly gone.

  I’ve brought Nikki to help me. Parts of this task require a woman’s touch. There are personal belongings and mementos everywhere. Things from a lifetime spent in public service. She will carefully package some of the more delicate items, things we don’t want to trust to the movers. Relatives from the East have come for Coop’s funeral and have asked us to oversee the packing and
shipping of his belongings to the next of kin.

  Harry has come along today, if for no other reason than to satisfy his curiosity.

  It is what I have sworn I would never do again, another probate for a friend, this time Coop’s own. I am making no mistakes. Peggie Conrad is doing her magic with Coop’s probate file.

  Coop had written to me an epistle of some length, in a scarcely legible scrawl, and mailed it the day he dove from the bridge. In it he apologized profusely for the trial he had put me through, for the torment and agony of Eli Walker’s column, which he had never intended. But as Coop had told me that morning at my house, he never thought I would take Talia’s case.

  “Jeez,” says Harry. “The smell.” Harry’s wandering through the rooms of the single-story farmhouse that Coop and his wife had bought in the early fifties, a place that had seen many happy times when the three of them were together as a family.

  There’s a stench about it now, something I have smelled only a few times before, like the odor of death. In the time of Coop’s marriage this house was spotless. Jessica Cooper was a meticulous housekeeper.

  Now the rooms are cluttered with trash, discarded food containers, aluminum trays of half-eaten TV dinners. This place, I think, is a mirror of the chaos that was George Cooper’s life in those final months of grief, and ultimate revenge.

  There are newspaper clippings everywhere, yellowing strips of newsprint from the local and national press, all with a common thread, Ben’s death, the murder investigation, Talia’s arrest and indictment. The clippings are strewn on tables, on the floor; they rest under dishes of rotting cat food, the pet nowhere to be seen. There are little piles of feline feces littering the carpet. Some of these have begun to breed curious white molds.

  In one corner of the room, propped against the wall, is a metal frame on wheels, a furniture dolly, and a large piece of discarded carpet. Here in this setting, Coop’s story to Nelson, the theories on how to move a body no longer appear so implausible.

  “When did you know,” says Nikki, “about Cooper?” She has been trying to put the pieces together for a week now. I’ve not given her all the parts.

  “Not until the day of the verdict,” I tell her. “Though I should have seen it long before.” I cannot believe how obtuse I have been.

  “The receipt?” says Harry.

  I nod.

  “If it hadn’t been for Peggie Conrad, the work on Sharon’s probate, Cooper’s actions would have gone unseen,” I tell them.

  “He was a sick man,” says Harry.

  “He was lost,” I say.

  Harry’s dropping little pieces of garbage, mostly old food, into some large trash bags he’s found in the kitchen.

  “Looks like Skarpellos told a lot of truth,” he says.

  I nod. It is troubling that much of what Tony Skarpellos attested to in open court-his story of Ben’s plans for divorce, the assertion that Ben had designs on another woman, the items I had ridiculed to the jury as false-I can see now were in fact gospel.

  “Who was the mystery lady?” says Harry. “Potter’s love interest?”

  “Sharon Cooper,” I say.

  This settles on him slowly; a soulful expression tells me he is beginning to fit all the pieces together.

  “Did you suspect during the trial?” he asks.

  “Never. The Greek was right about a lot of things,” I say. “My estimation of Ben blinded me.” It is not that I view their affair, Sharon and Ben’s, as great sin, it is that I credited Ben with more discretion, and as things unfolded, a far greater measure of character.

  In his suicide missive, the one he sent me in the mail, Coop has told me little bits and pieces. I have been left to fill in the rest, but this is not difficult. It seems Ben did intend to divorce Talia, but not until after senate confirmation hearings on his high court nomination were concluded. This is why Talia didn’t know. She wasn’t meant to, not yet.

  “How do you figure a guy in his sixties, and a girl twenty-six?” says Harry.

  “Sharon was infatuated, dazzled by the money, the power,” I say. “Ben.” I make a face, like this is the wildest of guesses. “Maybe Ben was in love. Who knows?”

  “But what would draw her to an old man?” he says.

  “The mix of her dreams,” I tell him, “her desire to be a lawyer, and the doting attention of the managing partner in the city’s most powerful law firm. That’s heady stuff when you’re twenty-six and in law school.”

  Nikki’s nodding like she agrees with this chemistry. “A lot of young women go for power,” she says. The way Nikki says this, I can tell it is not an option she has ever considered for herself.

  “You don’t think about geriatrics when you’re being courted over muscovy duck and Dom Perignon in crystal, on broad linen,” I tell Harry.

  “Coop argued with his daughter when she came to him and told him of their plans for marriage. This was no May-December romance. This was folly, and Coop knew it.”

  There is much of this moralizing in his letter to me. He and Sharon had fought, like only parents and children can, with a venom that leaves a long-lasting trail of pain. It was the last time Coop would see her alive.

  “When it was over,” I tell them, “she’d gone to Ben, against her father’s bitter admonitions. They drove along the river road. The rest is surmise. But I think perhaps they argued. Maybe Sharon wanted to go public with their plans. Ben resisted, adamant that it not disturb his long-awaited nomination. He had been months, the better part of a year, trekking to Washington to lay the groundwork. A retirement from the court was imminent. In some way Sharon distracted him, and Ben went off the road, head-on, into the trees.”

  Nikki has found some family photos in a drawer in the dining room. She’s getting teary. I look over her shoulder. She’s holding one, Coop and Jessica, the photo probably twenty years old, before gray had become the dominant shade on their heads. There is a little girl, Sharon, no more than six or seven. The three of them are standing on some unnamed pier, all smiles and happiness. A fingerling of some fish dangles on the line held by Sharon, a gap-toothed grin on her face. No parent could look at this and not feel some pain.

  “What do we do with these?” she says.

  “Package them all,” I tell her. “The family will take care of them.”

  Sharon Cooper died the evening of the accident, alone in her car, the car Potter ran from in panic, shades of a brilliant judicial career fading before his eyes. He saw scandal in the death of a young woman, questions of an untoward affair.

  What Ben didn’t know when he fled from the vehicle is that Sharon was not yet dead, only unconscious. She died in the ensuing fire, sparked by engine heat and a burst fuel line. He could have saved her. This fact did not elude George Cooper.

  Coop bore his undying enmity, shrouded from the outside world by the visible pain of his lost daughter. It was a hatred that embraced not only Ben but Talia.

  The police had been unusually thorough in their investigation of the accident, a favor to a forensic colleague. But even with this, they could not come up with any leads. In part this was due to the fact that Coop was busy misleading them. He had no desire to see Ben Potter prosecuted for merely fleeing the scene of an accident. He wanted more. Even after killing Ben, Coop continued with the charade, the pretense of the purposeless search for the driver of Sharon’s car.

  Nikki has found copies of investigative reports among Coop’s private papers. In one of these is a note outlined in yellow marker, a single paragraph. A little after seven on the evening of the accident an attendant at a gas station a mile and a half from the crash said he saw a man alone, wearing a business suit, walk to the pay phone on the corner of his property to make a call. Twenty minutes later he was picked up by a woman driving an expensive sports car, a white Mercedes 500 SL. Talia and her spiffy little car. Theirs indeed was a marriage of convenience. Talia, it seems, whether she would have cared or not, was oblivious to Ben’s own infidelity. She shielded him fr
om authorities for the benefit of his career, and after his death failed to comprehend the significance of these events for her own plight. She was in all ways a victim of circumstance. I have said nothing to authorities about these events. Talia Potter has paid a dear enough price for a bad marriage.

  It is not often that one gets a glimpse of ultimate truth following a trial of the proportions of Talia’s ordeal. But with what I know now I have been able to piece together many of the events surrounding Ben’s murder, though I still do not know with certainty where the deed was carried out. If I had my guess I would say here, in Coop’s house. I have not checked the phone records, but I suspect that on the day he died, Ben received a telephone call from George Cooper, a confrontational call in which Coop threatened to go to authorities with what he knew unless Ben came here. He came-and was killed.

  I have a new admiration for Mrs. Foster, for now it is clear that the vehicle she saw in the driveway of the Potter residence on the night of the murder was in fact Ben Potter’s. It was driven by Coop, who needed physical evidence linking Talia with more certainty to the crime. Hair from a brush or comb was needed. After calling the home and sensing that no one was there, he used Ben’s keys to enter the house, then left unseen. Given the neighborhood sentry duty performed by Mrs. Foster, this was an act of God.

  The shotgun was fortuitous. It was left for repairs by Sharon-an errand no doubt run for Ben-and the receipt fell into Coop’s hands after Sharon’s death. The rest is history. He reclaimed it and used it to mask the shot of his own small-caliber handgun, the murder weapon which no doubt is now long gone.

  “What do you think will happen to Skarpellos?” says Harry.

  “Who knows? He won’t be prosecuted for murder. Embezzlement-maybe.”

  I have shared the letter from Coop with Nelson. With regard to Ben’s death, Skarpellos is now off the hook and so am I, though the Greek has other problems. Nelson has an open and active investigation combing the firm’s client trust account, and word is that the state bar is closing in on Tony’s license. Potter, Skarpellos, it seems, will soon have a new managing partner.