Madriani - 02 - Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  Next to Sahdalgi is Vernon Shupe, a law student. Young and well educated, Shupe, I think, sees himself a likely target for Geddes’s venom.

  Like a magnet laid over a compass, Geddes’s insufferable behavior has stripped me of any sense of direction with this grand jury. His odious comments have driven them underground. In their silence, the roving eyes around this table tell me there is consensus on only a single point; that if this were a lifeboat adrift on the high seas, the vote to put William Geddes over the side would be without dissent.

  We are now on a midmorning break. I have finished the presentation of our evidence-in-chief, everything except Chambers’s exculpatory evidence, the items in his Johnson letter.

  Jurors are heading for the door, to stretch their legs, to get a smoke.

  It’s starting to get a little warm in this room, the problem of a dated building.

  Lenore Goya, who is nearest the door, heads for the phone outside on the wall, to call maintenance to have the thermostat turned down.

  Two minutes later she comes back in.

  “Are you ready to do it?” she asks. She’s talking about the Johnson letter.

  I take a deep sigh.

  “Yes. Call them in,” I say.

  She gets three of the jurors who are outside on the loading dock, having a smoke, and we go back on the record.

  I bring them to order, tell them that they have heard all the evidence the state is prepared to produce at this time, that this is, in my view, more than sufficient to return indictments on four counts of first-degree murder against Andre Iganovich.

  I see a number of nodding heads around the table.

  “I believe that the evidence you have seen and heard is more than sufficient to charge the defendant with special circumstances,” I say, “permitting the death penalty.”

  There is considerable evidence of torture, and that Iganovich lay in wait for his victims before he killed them. A finding as to either of these could result in a verdict of death.

  “However,” I say, “there remains one item of business.” I explain the procedure regarding the Johnson letter, that I am not an advocate for the contents of this missive, that they are not required to take evidence on any item contained in it. But that I must reveal it to them as a matter of law, and that they may, if they wish, review the evidence in the Scofield murders. I put a face on it for the record transcript. It wouldn’t do to be too overt in pushing this thing.

  It is now too warm for comfort in this room. I take off my coat.

  I have Goya pass around copies of the letter, the evidentiary points and legal arguments raised by Chambers. Heads go down as they read.

  Goya looks at the door. She would like to open it, get some fresh air in the place. But with a grand jury, secrecy takes precedence over comfort. The faint but growing odors of the country are coming to full blossom in this room. After a few seconds Goya looks at me. She too has picked up on this smell, something from the barnyard, brought to life by the heat now permeating this room.

  Several minutes pass. A few of the jurors turn the letter over on the table or lay it down, signaling that they have read it, that they are waiting for me to move on.

  The last few jurors put down the letter. I study them for any sign of curiosity, scanning for an inquisitive face, some leader among them whom I might induce down into this pit with me.

  “Are there any questions?” I say.

  Blank gazes, not a single hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I know it’s a long letter. Perhaps we need a little more time to digest it.”

  They give me pained expressions, the grownup version of pissed-off adolescents in a history lecture. The message is clear. They are ready to hang the Russian. They want to go home.

  Finally a hand. It is Vernon Shupe, the law student. Good boy.

  “Mr. Shupe, yes.” I smile at him, all the ardor of a used-car salesman.

  “You haven’t indicted the defendant on these murders?”

  “No, Mr. Shupe, we haven’t.” Please. Please. Ask me why.

  “Why,” he says. “I mean, why would we hear evidence on crimes that aren’t charged?” he says.

  Sonofabitch, I think, wasn’t he listening? All the while I smile at him, hoping to cultivate our conversation.

  “Good question,” I say.

  He grins at me, proud of having asked it.

  “Because defense counsel believes that these later crimes and the circumstances surrounding them may serve to exonerate his client. From that perspective, it is important.” I add this last, a flourish to encourage more.

  “Oh.” He settles back in his chair.

  “Oh.” That’s it? “Oh.” There’s an almost audible groan from Lenore at the table next to me. I bore a hole through Shupe with my eyes. Unless he sharpens his mind he will look like Swiss cheese after three years of law school.

  “More questions?” I say. “Someone, anyone?” I move my gaze quickly around the table, no movement except for William Geddes. His nostrils suddenly going crazy, persistent little flares, sniffing the air.

  “Yeah, I got one,” he says. “What in the, excuse me, fuck is that?”

  He looks at me.

  “Don’t you smell it?” he says. “Like somebody died.”

  The woman sitting next to Geddes on one side looks at him with an expression that tells the world “it wasn’t mine.”

  Geddes looks down the line under the table across from him and starts to laugh.

  “One of our farmer friends,” he says. He’s pointing to a pair of cowboy boots, expensive snakeskin with silver tips. These are crossed under the table on the other side from Geddes.

  “You otta at least scrape ’em a little bit before you come here,” he says. “Let me guess—horses?” says Geddes. A cackling laugh.

  He draws a disapproving glance from another juror, a member of the university faculty, who would rather endure the odor than Geddes and his language.

  I am afraid that what to this point has been a silent brawl among this jury is about to spill over into a more public confrontation.

  Sam Holland, the farmer on the other side, is one of the icons of agribusiness in the valley. In the ordinary setting I would think that he and Geddes might find something in common, a redneck heritage. But Geddes has killed any chance of this.

  Holland gives us all the cowboy shrug, a gesture that can mean anything from an apology to the crudest obscenity, depending on how you want to take it.

  Then he points his finger at Geddes. With his close-cropped beard and flowing gray locks cut at the collar, Holland is the buckaroo’s image of Michelangelo’s “Creation,” the accusing forefinger just the slightest crook at the end, pointed from a fully extended arm.

  “And you,” he says to Geddes. “You’re flat-ass wrong.”

  Geddes looks at him, stiffening his neck, ready to take up any challenge.

  “It’s bullshit,” says Holland. “I woulda thought you, of all the people in this room, woulda recognized that.”

  Geddes is out of his chair.

  “Gentlemen, please.” I have both hands up, like a referee about to break a clinch between two fighters. “Let’s focus on the issues, the letter before us,” I say.

  “I’ve had enough of him,” says Holland.

  “Well, kiss my patoot,” says Geddes.

  Holland takes one step on his way around the table.

  “Enough,” I say. I slam one of the heavy briefing books on the table. A thunderous thud.

  They look at me, Geddes and Holland. Both men stop in their tracks.

  “Now sitdown.” I make it a single word, for effect. “Both of you. I’ve a mind to seek contempt, a visit with Judge Fisher,” I tell them.

  Grudging, dragging each step, Holland backs off, neck bowed like one of his pedigreed breeding bulls. He settles into his chair and gives Geddes one final look, what a dog might get before being nailed by Holland’s pointy gunboat boots.

  Geddes gives him what coul
d pass for a mock snarl, the look of some mangy cur safely outside the confines of the corral.

  I look at Goya. She’s rolling her eyes, like what next?

  “This panel has a decision to make,” I say. “The letter that is before us raises serious issues. The question is whether there is a motion to hear the evidence in the Scofield murders as requested by the defendant and his attorney. We must focus on that,” I say.

  Goya sensing her cue, chimes in. “Should we analyze the issues point by . . .”

  “What for?” Geddes cuts her off.

  “We’ve seen and heard enough,” he says. “Your guy’s guilty as sin.” There we have it, from on high, as if with this proclamation and a seal I could take it to an executioner.

  “What difference does it make whether they gas him for four murders or six?” says Geddes. “I don’t wanna waste any more time. I’ve got things to do. Business.”

  I put Geddes down one more time, tell the panel there are procedures that must be followed.

  “Procedures,” he says. “A waste of time.” He looks around the table, at Holland, Shupe, and some of the others. Dead silence.

  Then a quiet, retiring voice, behind me off to the right: “Mr. Madriani?” Ravi Sahdalgi has a question.

  “Yes? Mr. Sahdalgi.”

  Geddes looks at the ceiling.

  “This evidence in the Scofield murders. Is it material to the crimes charged, to the murder of the four college students?”

  “It could be,” I say, “depending how you read the evidence,” I tell him.

  “And the defense attorney,” says Sahdalgi, “he is arguing that whoever killed the Scofields also killed the others, but that this is not his client?”

  “That seems to be his argument.”

  “Then I think we should hear the evidence,” he says.

  I look at him, full on. “Is that a motion?” I say.

  “Yes, it is. I move that we hear the evidence in the Scofield murders.” He looks quickly at Geddes. There is firm resolve in his eyes, like the look of a prophet once he’s convinced his word is holy writ.

  “Crying out loud,” says Geddes. He’s moving like he wants to get up.

  “Sit down, Mr. Geddes. The matter is not open to debate, unless there is a second,” I say.

  He slumps back into his seat, muttering to himself a few profanities. I think I hear a quiet racial slur. He looks at Sahdalgi. Geddes’s legs are splayed wide, his chair tilted back resting against the concrete wall behind him, the look of some surly adolescent.

  “This is bullshit.” He says it under his breath looking now at Holland, little slits of meanness.

  It is all that is needed.

  “I second the motion,” says Holland. His look says it all, “there take that.” “And I call the question,” he adds. This latter shuts the door on any debate, with Geddes only halfway out of his chair.

  “All those in favor,” I say, “of taking evidence in the murder of Abbott and Karen Scofield, please raise your hand.”

  Like stalks of corn in a Kansas field, twenty-two arms reach upward, toward the ceiling.

  Geddes makes a face, a deep groan. In his own way, he has done me an inestimable service. This jury, with a little help, has finally found its voice. It has also cut William Geddes adrift, leaving him alone on the high seas of human contempt.

  I look over at Lenore. She is all smiles, the look of one whose well-laid plans have paid off. We will drink later this evening, after session, at Tories, the bar around the corner, Lenore Goya, myself, and of course William Geddes, for Geddes has played his part to perfection. In this little episode I draw a singular lesson, that Lenore Goya is a quick study in the science of social dynamics. Hers indeed was a better idea.

  It was a well-hatched plan, one that closely but cautiously skirted the bounds of jury tampering. Geddes, while baiting the others to draw a motion, could not himself make the motion, second it or even vote for it. To that extent he had been compromised by Lenore’s brief conversation with him. She had explained to him, outside the record, why we wanted to bring the evidence in. He cut her off, told her to say no more. The rest was pure Geddes. It is said that no actor plays any role so well as himself. In the case of William Geddes, I am now left to wonder.

  Claude has been busy dogging William Rattigan, the elusive director of the World Center for Birds of Prey, a man in perpetual motion. Claude finally nailed him yesterday in his office, only to discover that Rattigan was about to leave on another trip, this time to Southern California, a seminar at UCLA.

  It took some talking by Claude, references to the broad subpoena powers of a grand jury in this state. Rattigan has agreed to a slight detour, to meet with us this morning at the Capital City Airport. Anything he can do, he says, to cooperate.

  This morning, he sits across the table from Claude and me, in the crowded airport restaurant, shaking his head solemnly.

  “It was routine,” he says. Rattigan’s talking about the work that Abbott and Karen Scofield were doing.

  “He was contracted to perform some early research on diminishing peregrine populations in the eastern coastal range of your state,” he says. “He was one of three regional research directors we had working on the project.

  “There’s nothing to hide,” he says. “No mysteries. Peregrine populations in the U.S. have been on the decline for years. They’ve been an endangered species now for more than a decade. But they are a resilient breed. It’s why we keyed on them, as opposed to other species. We believed that there was a strong possibility that with work we could restore them. If not to their original numbers, at least we could bring them back from the brink of extinction.”

  “So what was Scofield’s part in this?”

  “He did initial research for us out here. Mostly locating sites for natural habitat. Places where the birds would have a chance to gain a foothold if released into the wild.”

  “What kind of research?” I ask. I want to know if these activities might have caused him to cross paths with his killer.

  “We had a protocol,” he says. “We would check for a number of things: the absence of natural predators; pesticide use in the area; human foot traffic; projected growth and development; civilian aviation that might disturb breeding patterns.

  “We worked from a list. The data was all fed into a computer and favorable target areas were identified, mostly public lands, where we could release the birds into the wild. Sometimes they would migrate short distances and resettle. Usually not too far.”

  “Anything else besides research?” Claude is probing.

  “Under the contract, Dr. Scofield was also responsible for releasing the birds and monitoring them for a brief time afterward.”

  “The falcons, where did he get them?” I ask.

  “We bred the initial birds at the center. When they were able to fly and hunt, so they could feed off the land, we would ship them out,” he says, “to Dr. Scofield. Part of his contract called for assisting us in the release of the birds into the wild. They were tagged. He would feed them for a while and monitor them for survival and adaptation to their surroundings, nesting, breeding of young.”

  “That explains the feed pellets and the mice,” says Claude. He’s talking about the items purchased by Scofield in large quantities but not found at his lab.

  “These birds would eat mice?” says Claude.

  “Live if possible,” says Rattigan.

  “Do you know where Dr. Scofield released the birds?” he asks. “Exactly where on the Putah Creek?”

  “Where?” says Rattigan.

  “The Putah Creek.”

  “That doesn’t sound familiar,” he says. “Let me check.” He pulls his briefcase onto the table.

  “I have copies of his working maps with me,” he tells us. “But Putah Creek—that does not sound right. As I recall, from my discussions with Abbott, the areas of release called for the birds to be placed in the coastal range.”

  Rattigan finds a large map
in the flap inside the cover of his attache case. He opens it on the table and studies it for several seconds, tracing features with a forefinger.

  “Here,” he says. “This is the spot. In this area.”

  He points to a location on the far side of the Napa Valley, a hundred miles from the site of the Scofield murders and the bird blind in the trees along the Putah Creek.

  Claude gives me one of those looks, the kind reserved for strange phenomena. Then he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out four clear plastic envelopes, little Ziploc bags, and lays them on the table.

  “Could you look at these and tell us what they are?” he says.

  Rattigan picks them up, one at a time and studies them, carefully. He lays three of them on the table.

  “No question,” he says. “Peregrine feathers. Chicks,” he says. This confirms the information from the wildlife lab in Oregon. The last pouch he’s still holding in his hand, lifting it toward the light in the ceiling. It’s a larger feather, broad and ruffled, striated in its coloration.

  “Not this one,” he says.

  It’s one of the feathers we’ve not yet been able to identify. We are still waiting on the lab report from Oregon.

  “Do you know what it is?” I say.

  “Were all of these found in close proximity?” He answers a question with a question.

  “Yes,” I say. “They were virtually mixed together. On the ground,” I say. Actually they were found together in the blind, but I keep this to myself.

  “I don’t understand it,” he says.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “Abbott’s surveys. They didn’t show any trace of predators. We checked carefully. It’s the first thing we always look for.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This feather,” he says. “It belongs to a great horned owl. It’s a bird that’s not indigenous to this area.”

  “You mean the area on the map. The coastal range?”

  “I mean this state,” he says. “The great horned owl is native to the northern forests, Canada and the Northern Rockies. Not down here.”