Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  “Attorney Paul Madriani.” I give her a business card with the county seal printed on it and she disappears, leaving me outside on the doorstep for the moment, behind the security-chained door which she has taken care to lock.

  Several seconds pass and she is back. “Please come in,” she says.

  She leads me through a spacious entryway and into the living room. It is large and cluttered with the knickknacks of a lifetime of work. If there is a theme to this place it is birds: carved wooden birds, books on birds, lithographs of birds and an original oil framed over the fireplace. Bald eagles and ravens, owls and hummingbirds—if it exists and has feathers, I think it has probably found a place in this room.

  The house has the signs of a grand structure, in its day. But it is dated, as if its owners have found other things to do with their time and money, besides remodeling and decorating.

  “My daughter will be with you in a moment.” Before I can turn and look at her, the old lady is gone again.

  I wander in the room, killing time, looking at the various mementos. On an end table by the couch is a framed photo, black and white, a dark-haired man in pants that resemble riding jodhpurs. I pick it up to look more closely. He is handsome and young, standing in a field high with grass. I would hardly recognize him from the grim autopsy shots back in my office; Abbott Scofield in more youthful and happier times.

  “It was taken right after his marriage to Karen . . .” I turn. It’s Jeanette Scofield standing in the doorway. “The first Mrs. Scofield. They were married in 1958,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Curiosity gets the better of me at times.” I put the photo back on the table.

  “It’s OK.” She waves a hand, like no big thing. “He was a good-looking man, don’t you think?”

  “He was,” I say, “good-looking.”

  “Everybody thought so.” She gives me a schoolgirl tilt of the head. “My mom didn’t want me to marry him. Said he was too old for me.” There’s a moment of awkward silence as if by these comments she is forced to reassess the true measure of her loss.

  Then shifting gears quickly, she makes amends for her appearance. She is dressed in a loose-fitting sweatshirt. There is mud on the front of this and a little on her chin. The running shoes are old and tattered, and the towel draped around her shoulders has smudges of dirt and mud. Her hair is pinned back on the sides and gathered in a loose ponytail at the back. She mops a little perspiration from her forehead.

  “Gardening,” she says. “One of my vices.” There’s a giddy smile. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

  I beg off. She is tall, an inch taller than I, even in flat shoes.

  “Mom,” she calls. The woman appears at the door as if she’s been beamed down. I think maybe the old lady has an ear to our conversation. “Would you mind getting me a glass of iced tea,” she says. “You’re sure I can’t offer you something?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  She smiles.

  “Please, sit down.” She gestures toward the couch, and takes a seat herself in one of two overstuffed club chairs, set at an angle in front of the fireplace.

  “How do I rate a visit from the prosecuting attorney?” she says. “I’ve already talked to the police, your Lieutenant Dusalt?” She’s questioning as if maybe she has the name wrong.

  “That’s right. I’ve read his report,” I tell her. “Just a few loose ends,” I say.

  “Isn’t that usually a detective’s job?”

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Is that like efficient government at work?” She smiles.

  “Something like that.”

  The flush of the outdoors is leaving her cheeks. She drapes one thigh over the other, a baggy pair of oversized men’s pants with enough fabric for each pant-leg to wrap twice around each leg. She leans back in her chair. “What would you like to know?”

  “Just some general background information,” I say. “I thought it might help us, as we move forward, if we know more about your husband’s work. Can you tell me a little about it? What exactly did he do?”

  “Ah.” She nods at this, then tepees the fingers of both hands, long and slender, under her chin.

  “Abbott was an ornithologist,” she says. She smiles like maybe she might offer to spell this for me, but I’m not taking notes. “His life—his passion—was the study of birds. As you can see,” she says. She sweeps one arm across the room as if to take it all in. “I sometimes wondered if he might have loved me more had I been born with feathers.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “No,” she says, anticipating my thoughts. “We had a very happy marriage. He had his work and I had him. We each got what we wanted.”

  Her mother returns with her tea, a tall slender glass, sweating with ice. She puts it on the table next to Jeanette and looks to see if maybe she should sit down and join us.

  “I’ll be out in a minute, Mom.” The younger woman fixes her with a stare, and the old lady leaves. When she clears the room Jeanette looks at me, and in a lower voice behind the tall slender glass: “She’s been like a shadow,” she says. “She’s driving me crazy. I’ve told her it’s OK, she can go home, back to Fresno. I can’t get her to leave.”

  I smile at this. She shrugs her shoulders good-naturedly. “Where were we?”

  “Your husband’s job.”

  “Oh yes. Abbott was a tenured professor at the university. He taught several undergraduate courses, but his main duties were in the graduate school of zoology. He was on the tenure track committee for the faculty senate, very active,” she says.

  All of this was in the investigator’s report, details which Claude and his minions have reduced to writing.

  “You told the police you can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to kill your husband?”

  “That’s correct. I can’t. But then,” she says, “I suppose the parents of the four dead college students would say the same about their kids. My God, who could account for the actions of a demented mind like that?”

  She talks a little about Iganovich, the reports in the papers, asks me if I’ve seen the man, talked to him.

  “I saw him. We have not talked. His lawyers will not permit that.”

  She apparently has not seen the article in the Times yet. I am not surprised. The papers from the southern part of the state do not circulate much, outside the capital, in this area. She will no doubt hear about it on the news. It is why I wanted to get here, to talk to her before she does.

  “I’m curious, about the first Mrs. Scofield,” I say. “Their continuing relationship after the marriage broke up?” This is something the cops did not tread on very hard the day after the murders.

  “You’re surprised that they would still see each other?”

  I make a face, like this is part of my question.

  “You had to understand Abbott and Karen. It was mostly commercial,” she says. “They worked together.” This was not in the report.

  “On a personal level their divorce was a mutual parting of the ways. They remained friends even afterward.”

  “You say they worked together?”

  “Yes. Karen had no formal training, no real education, but she did have twenty years working with Abbott in the field. He had confidence in her, continued to rely on her for assistance, in some of his writings and his field work. She was an excellent photographer, took many of the photographs that appeared in Abbott’s books. Some of the ones you see in this room,” she says.

  “And you didn’t object to this, their continuing working relationship?”

  She smiles at me. “Why should I?” There is an innocence here. I cannot tell if it is pure naïveté, or whether this is one of those secure souls for whom life’s competitions offer no real threat.

  “Do you know what you
r husband was working on at the time of his murder, what specific projects?”

  “No,” she says. “I haven’t a clue. Why are you interested in all of this?” She’s sitting forward in her chair now, curious about my little probes.

  “As I said, it’s just a few loose ends,” I tell her. “We’ve been wondering,” I say, “about the time immediately before their abduction that night. Whether there might have been something that put them in harm’s way, maybe something they were working on that might have caused them to cross paths with the killer?”

  “In answer to your question, I’m afraid I don’t know what they were working on. Abbott’s work was not something we shared.”

  I hear a door slam, somewhere at the back of the house. Someone has come in. A few seconds later, I hear footfalls in the hallway, and Jeanette looks.

  “Oh, Jess,” she says. “I’m glad you’re here. Mr. Madriani has dropped by to ask me a few questions.”

  Amara appears anything but affable as he enters the room. From the look on his face he is not terribly happy to see me here.

  “I saw the county car out front and wondered if somebody might be visiting,” he says.

  Sure, just a fortuitous pass on the street.

  “Do you have any news for us, on who killed Abbott, or why?” he asks.

  “Not that I can talk about,” I say. “But then I’m sure you’ve been able to follow developments.”

  “Has Jeanette been able to help you?”

  “She’s been able to clear up a few things.”

  “They are mostly concerned with Abbott and Karen in the hours immediately before the murders,” says Jeanette. “Mr. Madriani wanted to know what they were working on at the time. I told him I didn’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t know what they were working on?” I pose it to Amara.

  “Abbott didn’t talk to me about his work. As for Karen, I never met her.” He looks at me. He does not sit down.

  “Anything else?” he says.

  “Not for the moment.”

  “Then you have what you need?”

  I nod.

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” he says. I am being dismissed.

  I have discovered why Claude is so cool toward this man. Amara has something on the side, another business, an Asian trading company in which he dabbles in foreign investments in this county. It is the kind of thing that Claude would not like, a cop dealing in some sideline business, a potentially lucrative hedge against his years in retirement.

  On the stoop of the door outside, I turn to shake Amara’s hand. It isn’t there.

  “I don’t want to seem uncooperative,” he says. “But if you come back here again, call me before you do. I’d like to be present. I don’t want my sister disturbed unnecessarily.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  With that he closes the door in my face.

  It is nearly noon. On my way to the office, I wonder why it is that Amara is so hostile, whether this is just his nature, or if there is something more. I am not allowed to dwell on this for long. As I drive past the courthouse toward the County Administration Building a block to the south, on the corner at the traffic light are three men that I know. One of them wears his hair long, to the shoulders and gathered in a ponytail, Indian style. This is Benny Sanchez and his brother Ernesto, who own a bail bond agency. They have garnered a reputation and a working relationship with the cops on both sides of the river. I have seen them in town with their scabbarded rifles. They track down wayward clients with the relish of a good deer hunt. The two are fixtures around the local courthouses in this area.

  Their presence here would be unremarkable except for the third man, who is talking to this posse comitatus. Short and stout, his back is to me as I swing through the intersection. But still I recognize him. I thought he had left town three days ago to return to his home down south. It is Kim Park.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I have pleaded with her and begged, but she seems adamant. Lenore Goya says she is leaving the office, resigning, though after much protestation she has agreed that we will discuss this one more time before her resignation is carved in stone, sent along to the county personnel department.

  Today we are gathered for a little ritual, an annual event to honor the secretaries, an office luncheon that Roland Overroy insists is part of the protocol of the place. No one except Roland particularly wants to be here, the secretaries least of all. We are across the river, in Capital City. Overroy tells us there was nothing suitable to the occasion in Davenport. He has rich tastes.

  Saudi’s is one of the priciest restaurants in town, and Roland makes the most of it. He has ordered little crepes smothered in apricot sauce, and escargot, appetizers at eighteen dollars a hit, for a plate the size of a child’s tea saucer. To this he has added three bottles of wine, imported French Bordeaux, of which he has now drunk two-thirds. His face flushed, he is getting more obnoxious by the moment.

  His eyes go all round, as a hefty woman in a tight skirt ambles by our table. He slaps Boudin on the arm, gestures toward her backside and, in a voice that carries, says: “Looks like two alley cats fighting in a bag.” For this we are all treated to a drunk’s inane laugh. Boudin casts a quick glance in my direction, then humors Roland with a nervous grin.

  It would be bad enough if Overroy were paying for this. But he has demanded that excess change in the office coffee fund be raided to subsidize this frolic, a sparse reserve approaching $70 which he has now exhausted before lunch.

  Goya has distanced herself, as far as she can get, from Overroy—this I think to avoid killing him.

  “Given the deal you got from the firm, Lenore, you otta be buyin’ us lunch.” Overroy is loud, big gestures, out of place with his hands. His voice can be heard on the other side of the restaurant. He is talking to Goya about her proposed association with her new employer.

  “Sure, Roland. When hell freezes.” Goya’s reply to springing for lunch.

  Overroy is laughing. She is not.

  She is entertaining an offer from one of the big firms in Capital City. Though she is playing this close to the vest, I have heard rumors, probably the same ones that Roland is hearing, that they have dangled a forty percent pay hike in front of her, and a chance at a partnership. She would no doubt get an office with a view of something more than mortar and chipped red brick. I have little with which to tempt her back into the fold. I would offer her Overroy’s fried testicles for lunch if I thought it would do any good.

  “We’ll have to talk about the Putah Creek stuff. I’m in a position to give you some help.” Roland is offering me his expertise. There’s a little rivulet of wine dripping down his chin as he says this to me, a confident smile planted on his face. He is assuming that with Goya gone he will be getting heavier fare in the office, more noteworthy cases. I grit my teeth a little, unwilling to make a scene here.

  Yesterday I caught him mucking in Iganovich’s case, returning a phone call to the U.S. Department of Justice through which all correspondence must flow on its way to Canada. The U.S. Attorney General is the diplomatic conduit for all formal communications in the international law of extradition.

  I chewed on Roland for five minutes and told him he was not to intervene in this matter again. He called it an emergency, something that could not wait. I kneeled on him one more time, and he appeared properly rebuked, said he understood. But with Roland, I suspect that such assurances are only good until the next time.

  The menus arrive. Overroy recommends the lobster to me. “Delicious,” he says, kissing three fingers like a five-star chef. At market price it should be.

  There are a few toasts around the table. Goya to the secretaries for their silent tribulations in making the office function.

  Overroy, not to be outdone, offers another.

 
I propose a quiet toast to Lenore Goya, a shameless attempt to pluck at the strings of guilt.

  “To a great lawyer,” I say. “Someone we respect and who we will miss greatly.” I nod toward her.

  Lenore takes up her glass and smiles at me. With all that has happened, she still harbors me no ill will.

  “I can honestly say that for the most part working with all of you has been a pleasure, a high point of my life,” she says. She is smiling. “And there are others that if I lived two lifetimes, I will never forget.” I catch her glancing slight sideways slits of hostility at Overroy, who is oblivious, working on one of the little snails with a thing that looks like a chrome cross between a nutcracker and pliers.

  Harry Hinds has come over, across the river, in response to my call. He thinks maybe I’m getting ready to pack it in. Harry has come to encourage me to do the right thing, to cut and run. We are in my office with the door closed. I can hear Overroy outside at the public counter telling some off-color joke in a feigned Mexican accent.

  “Got yourself in a little mess?” says Harry.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “With a hiring freeze, in a few months the place will look like a ghost town, you and an empty office.”

  “Nonsense,” I tell him. “Nobody would hire Overroy.”

  He laughs at this.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I tell him.

  “So did Hitler,” he says. “It ended outside a bunker where they turned him into crepes suzette. Why don’t you tell ’em to jam their case where the sun don’t shine and come back where you belong?”

  What he means is on the right side of the law, with the honest perpetrators of crime. There have been times in the last weeks when this has looked appealing.

  “The supervisors will authorize one more body under contract,” I tell him, “part time, to help out with the Putah Creek thing. They figure they can still save a little money on the benefit package.”

  “Good! Some fool’s gonna buy bleeding ulcers with no health insurance,” he says.

  I arch an eyebrow and look at him.