Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  I take him by the hand on a verbal tour of the stakes and the cord found in the defendant’s vehicle, the bloody rag found on the front seat. The fact that forensics has tied these items to the four murders.

  By the time I finish, Osgood is a full convert to my line of argument, confident, shaking his head, like certainly this has been clear from the beginning, a judge who’s come to a decision.

  “Mr. Chambers, the district attorney makes a persuasive argument,” he says. “I think the section would apply in this case.”

  Chambers is up out of his chair, trying to talk.

  Osgood’s hand is up cutting him off, like a good traffic cop. He doesn’t want to hear anything that might turn his decision to mush. He would plug his ears, and hum, if he could.

  “Even if I were inclined,” he says, “to release your client”—he looks at the press out front which is now getting writer’s cramp—“which I am not.” He says this last sternly, with meaning, shaking his head now, jowls like Richard Nixon, swaying for emphasis. “The law is clear. I cannot release your client on bail. The motion is denied.”

  Chambers sits down, talks to his client, a few whispered exchanges, conversation through the interpreter. Iganovich trying to talk with his hands is hampered by more than a foreign tongue. The handcuffs and waist chain are in his way.

  “Where were we?” says Osgood.

  “A date for the prelim,” I say.

  “Oh yes.” He looks at Chambers.

  “How long do you think for the defense?”

  Chambers doesn’t hear him. He’s still talking to Iganovich.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Chambers, if you don’t mind.”

  Chambers finally looks at the judge.

  “How long do you need for your case in the preliminary hearing? We’re trying to fix a date.”

  “It’s academic,” says Chambers.

  “Not if you want a date for prelim,” says Osgood.

  “We have one,” says Chambers.

  Osgood’s getting pissed. He may not know the law, but he certainly knows proper etiquette in his own courtroom. Treatment like this from a lawyer does not cut it.

  “Counsel,” he says, “we are trying to fix a date for a preliminary hearing. If you cannot help us, I will assume that your case will take no more than”—he thinks for a moment—“two days.” The price of fucking with the judge. “And we will set it for . . .”

  “The preliminary hearing will have to be in ten days,” says Chambers. “The defendant refuses to waive time,” he says.

  Osgood sits in his chair, his body seeming to smoke, like he’s been hit by lightning. He looks at Chambers, not certain that he’s heard him correctly.

  “Your honor.” I move toward the table. “This case cannot possibly be ready in ten days,” I say. “This is a capital case. A man’s life is at stake. Does the defendant understand this?”

  “He does,” says Chambers. “If he’s going to remain behind bars pending the preliminary hearing, he refuses to waive time.” He looks at me and smiles.

  “Ridiculous,” I say.

  Chambers shrugs this off. “The district attorney has a choice, preliminary hearing in ten days or release my client and dismiss the charges.”

  Chambers is citing the law. In this state, a defendant who refuses to waive time is entitled to a hearing or indictment within ten days. Otherwise he must be released.

  “This is absurd,” I say.

  Osgood’s shrugging his shoulders, like what can I do?

  “Talk to the defendant, your honor. Ask him if he understands the consequences,” I say. I am worried about appeal later, a trumpeted cause for incompetent counsel.

  Osgood makes this point, like an echo with Iganovich through the interpreter. There’s a little sorting out between Chambers and the translator. What is clear. What does not require translation is that Chambers is driving this decision. Iganovich sits passively and nods while his lawyer talks through the interpreter. His expression grows more sober as he contemplates. He utters something, a few words, his tone one of quiet resignation now.

  “I understand,” says the translator. “I follow my lawyer. I refuse to waive time.”

  “Mr. Chambers, I hope you know what you’re doing,” says Osgood.

  “I do,” Chambers smiles at him, a mocking little grin, “know what I am doing, your honor.”

  “Your guy’s a real fucking hustle artist,” says Claude. This is how he describes Adrian Chambers.

  I have asked Claude to make some subtle inquiries about Chambers, specifically how Adrian came to land the Iganovich defense. I am wondering how he will get paid. But there is not a doubt as to why he wants this case. Besides a shot at my ass, he is getting advertising he could not buy, a case that regardless of outcome could go a long way toward restoring a ruined reputation.

  “The Russian’s got an aging aunt down in the valley,” says Claude. “This was his contact to get into the country, and Chambers’s key into the case. She’s ninety-two,” he says, “a few bricks shy of a full load, but still the closest relative.

  “Seems her name was in the papers right after we searched the Russian’s apartment. Some enterprising reporter dug it up out of employment records with the security company, Iganovich’s employer. They interviewed her. She gave ’em a lot of babble in print, character references for her nephew.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  He flips open his notebook. “Seems Chambers landed on her doorstep with a briefcase full of contracts the morning the story appeared. This man lets no moss grow,” says Claude.

  “She signed up?”

  He nods. “Didn’t cost her a dime.”

  “Generous man,” I say.

  “A real prince.”

  “What did he tell her?”

  “That he could help her nephew. That he was convinced that Iganovich didn’t commit the crimes. That her nephew had an honest face. Russian’s picture was in the paper that morning,” says Chambers, “the one from his licensing file.” Claude’s talking about the agency that licenses private security guards in this state. Photos are required for their application.

  “The old lady signed on all the dotted lines,” he says, “gave Chambers a full authorization to deal in the case with the only proviso that Iganovich accept him, ratify the contracts.”

  “Which of course he did,” I say.

  “Of course. Oh—and one other little piece of paper.” He takes a folded sheet of letter-size paper out of his pocket and hands it to me. I open it and read. It’s a contract, signed by Chambers and the Russian’s aunt, conferring on Adrian Chambers all film and literary rights pertaining to the Putah Creek murders and the trial of Andre Iganovich.

  “Well, at least now we know how he’s gonna get paid,” says Claude.

  “Ten days?” she says. “Get real. I figured we’d have at least ninety. I’ve got a full plate.”

  Lenore Goya is in my office, through the open door. She’s looking for some papers, something she laid down in the commotion on my return from the Russian’s arraignment. She turns and is back out again, searching, mumbling to herself, under her breath. Lenore will bear much of the burden of preparation in the next nine days, this along with her other duties, some disorder already created by Roland Overroy who is now in over his head on several of Goya’s old cases.

  “So had I,” I say, “figured we had more time.”

  I humor her, tell her that in refusing to waive time, Chambers shows all the signs of a man operating with less than a full deck.

  “Wonderful,” she says. “It’ll give new meaning to the term incompetent counsel. Another grounds for the defendant to appeal.”

  We both know this is garbage. Chambers is crazy like a fox.

  “He knows exactly what he’s doing,
” she says. “He’s jamming us. Balls to the wall.” Lenore is of course correct. There is method to his madness.

  “Anybody who would do this in a death case.” She shakes her head. “When they circumcised him they threw away the wrong part.” Her assessment of Chambers as a lawyer.

  She settles into a chair on the other side of my desk, and begins to come down, out of the stratosphere. It is what saves her as a trial lawyer. While she has flashes of anger, she has learned to control these quickly, and to mask it in court.

  She smiles finally, lightens up. “Tell me,” she says, “I’ll bet Lester Osgood was a real help this morning?”

  I roll my eyes as if to confirm her suspicions that the judge was worse than useless. “I had to coach him,” I say, “to even get it on the record that Iganovich understood the risks involved in shortening time. The judge was willing to walk away and leave it unstated.”

  Now that Osgood has touched this case, he will no doubt draw the preliminary hearing. It will be his penance from the presiding judge for allowing Chambers to screw up the court’s calendar.

  We talk about this prospect, Lenore and I.

  “If he gets it, he’ll be in over his head,” she says. “And the first sign of fear is hostility. He’ll turn his wrath on us.”

  She is right. I have visions of Osgood playing to the press, a judicial sonata designed to cover his ass, with an oft-repeated theme—the prosecution served up this case, brought these charges, and now they are not ready. In the chorus he will sing the travails of the overworked and unsung judge.

  “Every time he reaches for his gavel and it turns to shit,” she says, “he will blame us.”

  She looks at me cold and stark for a moment. “Osgood might just cut him loose,” she says.

  I disagree. “It is the one thing he will not do. Even if he has to issue a grudging holding order to bind Iganovich over for trial, and blame us for the defects, he will do it. He will blame us for the plight that the court is in, pillory us at every turn, but he will without fail ship this case to the superior court for trial.”

  What scares me is that it may be a defective holding order, based on marginal evidence we cannot defend on appeal, something that might be overturned two years from now after a costly trial, and conviction.

  Lenore and I talk about the probable defenses that Chambers will raise in the preliminary hearing. We agree that he will not trot out his best horses for this show. Any surprises that might be fatal for our side, a potentially credible alibi witness, a notable forensic expert reading persuasive tea leaves, these he will save for the trial jury. The state’s burden of proof in a preliminary hearing is not sufficient to risk everything at this level. If he shoots his wad and misses, he will have tipped his hand for trial, given us valuable information on his case. Instead, he will push us to reveal our own, to produce our best evidence, which given the shortness of time we may now be forced to do. With only nine days to prepare, finesse is not our first strategy.

  “He’ll kick us hard with Scofield,” she says.

  I agree.

  “It’s a golden opportunity to confuse an already hapless judge,” I say. If he is deft, Chambers will have Osgood asking more questions about these unsolved murders than we have answers. The press will have a field day.

  “We will look like shit,” says Goya.

  I raise my gaze, look directly at her. “Unless,” I say.

  She looks up. “Unless what?”

  “Unless we don’t take him to a preliminary hearing,” I say.

  Puzzlement on her face for a brief instant, then like sonar plumbing the depths, she reads my mind. “A grand jury,” she says.

  I smile and nod.

  The grand jury has been an unused vestige of the criminal courts process in this state for the better part of two decades, ever since a liberal-leaning state supreme court ruled that every defendant was entitled to a hearing before an objective magistrate—a preliminary hearing—even those indicted by a grand jury. Two years ago angry voters showed the liberals on the court the door, and their predecessors the light, when they voted by initiative to restore the criminal grand jury to its prior eminence.

  As I look at her, I see a sparkle in Lenore’s eye.

  “It’s perfect,” she says. “We lock out Chambers, make him wait outside in the hall.”

  Criminal defendants, while they have a right to testify before a grand jury, have no right to counsel there. Like the star chambers of yore, grand jury hearings are closed, secret, not only to defense attorneys, but to the press and the public as well.

  “And,” she says, “we dump Osgood.” There’s a satisfied smile on her face with this thought. There is no judge to sit in hearings, to preside over a grand jury.

  “Thank Providence for little favors,” I say.

  Suddenly her mood is lighter, there is some cheer in her face, a way out of a tedious and sure to be punishing public hearing.

  “I don’t want to be greedy,” I say, “but there’s one more thing.”

  She looks at me.

  “At the moment you’re closer to the evidence than I am,” I tell her.

  I get a wary look, like she thinks maybe I’m on the verge of asking her to take on something more.

  “Do you think there is any chance . . .” I study her for a short moment before going on, thinking. “Do you think there is any way that we could get the Scofield evidence before a grand jury?”

  She stares at me, a picture of puzzlement.

  “You mean charge the Russian with those crimes?” she says.

  I shake my head. “No. I mean can you think of any argument, any theory that would permit us to play out the details, the physical evidence in the Scofield murders before this grand jury, without charging Iganovich with the actual murders?”

  She looks perplexed, like she can’t figure why I would want to do this.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Not off the top of my head. We control the proceedings, but that’s a far reach. Some appellate panel looking at the transcript later might question the relevance,” she says. “Might even find prejudice if they believe we used the stuff to further incriminate Iganovich without charging him with the murders.”

  “You wouldn’t recommend it then,” I say.

  She shakes her head, still a bit puzzled. “Why do you ask?” she says.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just a thought.”

  We end. She leaves me musing in my office.

  It’s what professional prosecutors call “a cop shop.” Buried two floors beneath the Davenport County Sheriff’s Department, down a long corridor marked by outdated and faded civil defense signs, is a single door of solid wood, with no glass panels or windows, and no sign. We open it and step inside.

  Lenore’s behind me. I look at her. “What do you think?”

  She makes a face. “For the kind of party we’re throwing, it looks about right. How many cops upstairs?” she asks Claude.

  “During the day shift, in the office, maybe ten, twelve.”

  It seems we have found our grand jury room. It’s a problem in this state. With the high court decision fifteen years ago, grand jury rooms with their windowless facades, designed for secrecy, fell into disuse, and over the years were commandeered for courtrooms, or consumed by other burgeoning bureaucracies.

  I have decided to convene the grand jury here in the basement of the sheriff’s office for reasons of security. Since Iganovich was delivered back to Davenport County we have received more than a dozen threats on his life.

  We lock the doors and head back upstairs. Behind the public counter Emil Johnson is waiting for us.

  “Counselor. You got a minute?” He wags at me with his finger, then turns and heads for his office.

  I nudge Lenore to join us, and the two of us follo
w Emil’s big haunches toward his office.

  Inside he closes the door and asks us to take a seat.

  “What’s this I hear about a special grand jury?” he says. “What’s wrong with the one we got?”

  “The key man system?”

  He nods.

  “Key man” is the selection process that permits a few powerful judges and elected politicians to put their friends and, in some cases, family members on the county grand jury.

  “It won’t work, Emil.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the defendant has a right to a representative grand jury, a cross section of the population,” I tell him. “Have you taken a look at your grand jury lately? It’s whiter than snow. It has only two women.” I don’t mention that one of these is the concubine of a county supervisor. “There are no Hispanics or blacks.”

  “Two thirds of that jury was appointed by the superior court judges. You’re telling me that ain’t good enough?”

  “The white friends of white judges don’t cut it,” I say.

  This sets him back on his heels. By the look on his face I can tell that my words will be passed along, chewed on over stale sourdough rolls and wilted lettuce at the next meeting of the Lincoln Club with all the county pillars.

  “Politics has nothing to do with it, Emil. Read Smith v. Texas and Alexander v. Louisiana,” I tell him. “U.S. Supreme Court decisions. They give the defendant the right to question the composition of the grand jury that indicts him. He can file a motion to discover the demographics of the jury as well as the method that was used to impanel it. If it’s not representative, any indictment would be quashed. I assume you don’t want to do this more than once?”

  He shakes his head. “We’ll do it your way.” In the final analysis, Emil is a pragmatist.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Let’s see what we’ve got,” I say.

  “Not much from my end. Like I told ya, a pack a tree-huggers.” This is how Claude describes his telephone inquiries into the World Center for Birds of Prey.

  Lenore’s back from the library, leaning against the edge of my desk. Claude’s in one of the client chairs on the other side.