The Gold Coin

by Eddy Rogers

  “Got it. Stay safe.” No other goodbyes. Odd guy. Probably just busy.

  My next task: call Jane Semang. I wouldn’t take her job as district attorney for all the money in Texas. Her district covers Blanco and Comal Counties, together a far-flung area. Trials are held at each county seat, and with trial preparation trips to various sheriff and city enforcement offices, she must put fifty thousand miles on her car each year. The counties appreciated her skills. In her mid-fifties with dark brown hair and brown eyes, five ten or so, she presented a rather imposing figure, especially since she wore her hair in a tight bun. Except in the courtroom she showed a light sense of humor and an informality that made anyone dealing with her feel relaxed and comfortable talking with her.

  “I’ll be in Johnson City at the court house tomorrow finishing up a short trial, but I’m pushing for a plea deal that avoids having a full, several day-long jury trial. I sorta hate to do that since juries get pissed off that they’ve been called only to be dismissed. A lot of people, particularly retired folks, look forward to jury service.”

  “I understand. Just give me a call tomorrow at my office, and I can be there in twenty minutes or so. Need to brief you on Bruto Rivera and the Longstreet murder.”

  “Bob called me and said the same thing. The three of us should get together.”

  “I’ll check with Bob and see what’s on his plate tomorrow.”

  “Good. Thanks.” All business. Jane was smart and knowledgeable. Her strongest trait was juggling a packed schedule, which she always did with grace and neutrality to all lawyers. Her husband, Tom, built houses for a living. I wondered what the two of them had in common.

  14

  Semang called mid-morning the next day. “I finished up my plea deal this morning,” Jane said. “DUI wreck with several people injured. The guy had two priors, and I figured that at some point he was going to kill either himself or other people, so I agreed to time served on the condition that he go in to a ninety-day rehab and then probation for three years conditioned on his not drinking or taking drugs. He can afford that. Most people can’t. Justice served. And he’ll have to answer to civil suits by the injured parties. Time for lunch. Can we do this over lunch at El Charro?”

  “Sure. Bob will love doing it that way. See you there in a half hour. Okay?”

  “Deal.” Short and sweet.

  After the three of us had consumed a basket of chips and salsa, we got down to business. Bob related the facts from the point of Betty’s death to the fire at my house. Jane scribbled a number of notes.

  “What do you want from me?” Jane asked.

  “Simple,” Bob said. “Bruto claims he didn’t kill Betty, but his DNA puts him at the scene. He’s gonna have trouble wriggling out of that. We want to find out who got him to do the dirty deed. At a bare minimum, someone had to tell him about Betty’s gold cache, where it was, and how to get in without the staff hearing him. That execution style killing would normally get him a death sentence but if you could do a deal with him to tell all in return for a life sentence, we might get the real culprit.”

  “Interesting. You told me he deals drugs around here, so we wouldn’t want him coming back here anytime soon. Maybe life without parole or parole after, say twenty years.”

  “That’s up to you. How do we set this up?” Not being experienced in criminal law, I really didn’t know.

  “That won’t be a problem. Chad Gordon’s already called me, but I’ve been ignoring him. Chad’s pushy and always wants to tell me how to do my job. I’ll just call him and set up a one-on-one meeting with him. I’ve dealt with him for years. Knowing him, he’ll make an unreasonable proffer, I’ll reject it, and then we’ll have a second meeting and get down to brass tacks.”

  Bob and I chuckled. The voice of years of experience.

  “We’ll back off and wait for you to take care of Gordon,” Bob said.

  Then we dived into our lunch. We adjourned more than satiated. I went back to the office, relaxed but determined to get work for other clients done. However, I was still catching up on the sleep I’d lost Sunday night. I dozed in my chair for a good forty-five minutes.

  My phone ringing woke me up out of my stupor. Larry intoned, “Bingo. My instincts are still working. Ya know Orlando Pena? Something’s been nagging me in the back of my brain because of the hit he was bragging about. I got Jim Peterson to run his record for me, and, to my surprise, he was in the Sugarland prison as a guest of the State the same time Bruto was there. Every inmate who’s Hispanic gets sucked into the MS-13 orbit even though they may not join as an official member. Bruto and Orlando know each other.”

  I righted myself in my chair. “Small world. Very interesting, but just because they know each other doesn’t link Pena to the murder. I wonder if anyone’s got Pena’s DNA.”

  “Good idea. I’ll find out. If we can match it to the other DNA on the coin we’re home free.”

  “Not quite. There’s another person behind this. If Pena and Rivera were in league together, or even if Rivera did it alone, where would they have gotten the information concerning where the gold was and how to get to it? Besides, neither of them are the type to think up complicated plans.” We hung up thinking we had even more questions to answer.

  On my way home, I stopped at Loew’s for a few groceries and a bottle of wine. As I was wandering around, I ran into Chuck Blaise. He moved toward me with a worried look. “The fire chief called me to go over the details of my church burning down again. He said he had to do that because the same person who did it to me tried to burn your house down. I’m so sorry. I know how you feel. And I said a prayer of thanks that you and your family are okay. At least no one was in the church when it burned.”

  “Yes, I’m thankful too,” Blaise said sincerely. “I just hope they catch whoever did it soon. Makes me nervous.”

  “I understand. At least whoever it is doesn’t want to hurt us.” Blaise gave every appearance of sincerity and concern. “Good to see you.”

  “Thanks. Off to the bread aisle,” I said as I strolled away.

  •••

  When one’s wife is with child, any new topic can come up. When I got home early for a change, Carla poured a glass of wine for me, and since the temperature was in the high sixties, unusual for late December. She suggested that we stroll out to the gazebo. I knew she had something on her mind.

  “John, I’ve been thinking.” Uh-oh. Time to be quiet. “We’ve got to start working on names for the baby.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait to see what sex the baby is from your sonogram in two weeks?” I said.

  That was the wrong thing to say. “Can’t hurt to be thinking of alternatives. Naming a baby can be the most important decision for us since our baby will be stuck with the name all its life.”

  “Okay. If you’re thinking of John Marshall Mariner, Junior, promise me we won’t call him ‘Chip” or ‘Bubba’.” That got Carla laughing at the exercise, and I rolled off a list of possible names of boys and girls. Many choices, so instead I suggested names we did not want, such as Mary, Brett, Carla and Amy. I’m rather fond of Carlotta. We had plenty of time.

  •••

  Jane Semang called around four-thirty to tell me that she’d finished her latest trial. “Chad called me yesterday after I talked with you and asked for an appointment with me this coming Monday after docket call to discuss the Rivera case,” she said. “He wouldn’t get specific but said he’d like to discuss a plea deal. Good thing. If we do a plea deal with Rivera I need the next of kin on board. Don’t want family criticizing me for agreeing to a lighter sentence, and if we don’t do a deal, Gordon knows I’m going to ask for the death penalty given the execution style of the murder.”

  I brought Jane up to date on Bruto’s background and the link with Pena, though I had no idea whether or not that was relevant. “John, you should be at the meeting since you’re
in touch with the family. There’s no need for Bob to be there when we meet, but if he wants to come, he should feel free. Besides, it won’t hurt to have witnesses regarding what’s said.”

  I quickly agreed to be in the meeting. “I’m looking forward to getting the full story from Bruto. I presume you’ll condition any deal on his testifying.”

  “Yep. I’ll set the meeting up for Monday at two. I can never tell when docket call’s going to be over. Besides, I have a bunch of other things on my plate that morning.”

  The weekend passed quickly. Sunday afternoon, Carla and I decided to drive over to Boerne, where her grandparents lived a half century ago. We were both amazed how that little town dripping with German heritage had metamorphosized into a modern suburb of San Antonio. The old haunts remained. After a long lunch at The Gretel, a restaurant with German fare, we meandered on back roads home. The bratwurst, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes made me sleepy as we drove, so I let Carla take charge to drive us home. “John, what’s bothering you? You seem not quite here today.”

  “Sorry. I’m just worn out not knowing everything about the murder. I’m just antsy about my meeting tomorrow with Chad Gordon. I’m hoping to find out how Betty died and who did it. Thinking about the meeting made me restless last night. I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “I’ll be glad when this is over,” she said sympathetically. “Maybe you’ll find out who started the fire at our house too. Don’t forget to ask that if the story comes out.”

  “I won’t,” I said as I dozed off.

  •••

  Monday couldn’t come soon enough. I left early for Johnson City and got to Bob’s office to pick him up at one-thirty. Bob insisted that we not go to Semang’s office until close to two, since he knew she’d be busy with other things. We went over what we knew and didn’t know over a cup of his office’s bland coffee. I wondered why all institutional coffee is so bad.

  “Hey, John!” Chad Gordon almost shouted when I walked into Semang’s reception area. Gordon was always more than friendly, but I always felt he was putting on his lawyer mask rather than being genuinely friendly.

  “Chad, how’ve you been? You know Bob, don’t you?” We three then performed the usual hand-shaking ceremony, as if we were football captains squaring off on the field for a game. Jane came out of her office, also greeting every member of the group in amicable fashion. Then she joined the handshake routine too.

  “Let’s go into the jury room where we won’t be so crowded,” she said. We filed into the large windowless room adjoining the courtroom, where there were fourteen, not twelve chairs. The extras were for alternate jurors. The jury table was huge, long and rectangular. I’d read that when people gather around such a table to negotiate, facing against each other makes for an adversarial negotiation. The author of the article I read advised sitting next to one’s potential adversary to encourage a sense of working together and avoiding the “me against you” sense. So I sat next to Chad near one end, with Bob on the other side and Jane at the head of the table, judge-like.

  “Okay, Chad. Bob and John have briefed me on the circumstances of Betty Longstreet’s murder, what they found at the crime scene, and the DNA results. What did you want to propose on Rivera’s behalf?”

  Gordon cleared his throat. “First, we need to agree that anything said in this meeting is privileged and confidential, not to be used in testimony if we end up having a trial. Agreed?”

  We voiced agreement. Jane looked at Chad and said, “And Chad, you need to understand that if we agree to any deal, it’ll be conditional on your client telling the truth and being willing to testify if others are involved. Also, if we do a plea deal, the deal only involves the Longstreet murder and no other offenses. Okay?”

  “Yes. Agreed. Now to get down to business, let me run a hypothetical by you. Let’s suppose my client, a previously convicted felon, gets contacted by an old prison buddy. The buddy claims that he is on to a job in my client’s neighborhood that’ll involve grabbing a bunch of gold coins and bars, fifty grand worth. The buddy needs a local to get him to the source of the job and help him with breaking in and moving the loot. Are you with me so far?”

  Again we all nodded. “So this buddy comes to Blanco, and my client and he go to this ranch in a pickup, with a ladder to get to the second floor of the ranch house, at two in the morning. He’s also got two large backpacks to carry the gold they are supposed to find. My client’s driving, and when they get to the gate, his buddy gives him the gate code and they drive through the gate. Again just a hypothetical. It’s a clear, moonlit night. They park the truck fifty yards from the house and wait for their eyes to adjust and listen to make sure no one’s awake. Then they go around the back of the house with the ladder, go up to a second floor porch, and quietly enter through a large set of doors with windows. The buddy walks over and turns on the lights. He pulls an automatic pistol. My client thinks it’s a Glock thirty-eight. He tells the lady in the bed to stay quiet, keep her eyes closed and lay on her stomach.

  He continued, eager to tell his client’s tale. “The buddy seems to know where everything is. He tells my client to go into the closet and look for a door. My client does what he’s told, opens the door, and sees a bunch of gold stored inside a little room inside the closet. The buddy tells my client to load the gold in the two backpacks, which he starts doing. Then he hears the pistol go off and comes back into the bedroom. He sees the woman in the bed sprawled out, dead. ‘What did you do that for?’ my client asks. The buddy just shrugged his shoulders and says, ‘You don’t need to know. Anyway we don’t need any witnesses.’ The buddy then goes into the little room with my client and they pack up the gold. Then my client’s buddy says that they need to leave a sort of calling card as a joke, so they leave one coin….my client’s buddy takes one out of his backpack, gives it to my client and tells him to put the coin right where the gold was stored as a good-bye present.

  Gordon paused and took a deep breath. “My client’s upset that his buddy killed the lady. They leave with the gold, take the ladder with them, and get in the truck and leave. When they get back to Blanco, the buddy takes his backpack with his share of the gold, gets in his car, and goes back to Houston, where he’s from.”

  The room stayed silent for at least two or three minutes. Jane broke the silence. “All hypothetical, but if the story’s true, what do you want?”

  “Bruto’s no dummy and he knows what he’s up against. He can’t stand the thought of being put on death row, or just as bad, being sentenced to life without parole. He’d accept a simple life sentence. That way, with good behavior, he’d be out in ten years. Because he’s been in prison before, we’ve got to get the record sealed to keep his buddy from having another gang member take him out in a prison killing in retribution for his testifying. Comprende?”

  “Sure do,” Jane said. “I tell you what. Your information is a lot to digest. The three of us need to think this through.”

  “There’s more to this story,” Chad said. “My client and his buddy were put on to this by a third party that Bruto says he doesn’t know. That’s how this whole thing started. If we agree to a deal, Bruto will do everything he can to find out who that is from his buddy. He says he doesn’t know right now but can find out. If we got that name for you it’d sweeten the deal for you.”

  Semang raised her eyebrows and said, “Likely story. I resent his holding key information hostage to push us into a plea deal. We need to know the names of everyone involved in this tawdry event. We’ll get back to you by Wednesday and let you know what we think. If we agree to a deal, we need to write the terms down and sign it. Bruto needs to understand what we expect of him.”

  “I’ll make sure he does. Thanks for meeting with me. I know the three of you want to talk over what you just heard, so I’ll excuse myself. You know how to get in touch.” With that, we went through the handshake routine a final time and said our
goodbyes to Gordon as he departed.

  “Well that was interesting,” Jane said. “He put me off with Bruto withholding the name of his confederate and the identity of whoever may be behind this. That shouldn’t hold us back from making a deal if the State and you, John, think a deal’s advisable. What’s your view of all this?”

  “Like peeling an onion layer by layer. We’re just through a couple of layers at this point. I’d need to get to the bottom of this. I don’t expect any pushback from Carroll Johnson or Paul Scranton if we decide to agree to a plea deal that will get us to the truth. Besides, I’m no fan of the death penalty, and if he didn’t pull the trigger, a life sentence is appropriate, even if the law is that if he was with the killer, he’s equally responsible. To me, ten to fifteen years in prison, with the gangs, the boredom, the restraints on freedom, and the boring institutional food, is pretty severe punishment. If we run down the shooter, a plea deal’s much more difficult with him. We’ll see.”

  “I agree with both of you,” Bob said. “The family, the police, and the criminal system need closure. This case’ll go cold in another month or two. Whoever killed her needs a death sentence.”

  “Okay,” Jane said. “I have a bunch of other things on my plate to address. Let’s leave it this way. If I don’t hear a negative from either of you by Wednesday morning at ten, I’ll call Chad and offer him a life sentence in return for Bruto coming clean with the information and then testifying.”

  “Done,” I said. Bob nodded assent, and we left Semang to her other duties. I’d never take her job unless they gave me a lawyer assistant to keep the backlog of cases down. At seventy thousand a year, the sixty-hour work weeks didn’t seem very attractive even with a good assistant.

  Bob and I adjourned to Ken’s Barbeque to think aloud and trade local rumors. For small towns, Blanco and Johnson City sure did generate a lot of stories. Lots of n’er-do-wells for Bob to keep track of. Most of the law-abiding young people leave town for college or oil patch jobs and never come back. We shared opinions on what those involved in Betty’s killing deserved as punishment. Good thing neither of us would be the judge. Like most officers, Bob only wanted to catch everyone involved and then disassociate himself from the justice process, except as a possible witness. Sure, he often was irritated with a criminal who didn’t get prosecuted or got off on some technicality, but he realized that his was not to judge, but to bring bad guys to justice and help build the case against them.