Until the Final Verdict

by Christine McGuire

  Supervisor Philip Boynton sat farthest from the door at the head of the table, Supervisor Janet Gutierrez to his left, County Administrative Officer Sharon Brice to his right with a stack of papers on thetable in front of her, and Burford beside Brice. When Mackay entered, they looked up and nodded, but didn’t speak. Burford indicated for Mackay to be seated at the foot of the table by the door.

  Mackay hesitated, then swung the door shut. “What’s going on? This feels like an inquisition.”

  “Then I’ll get right to the point,” Boynton said.

  Boynton and Gutierrez supported her ex-Chief Deputy Neal McCaskill, whom she had fired soon after taking office, when he opposed her first reelection campaign. Mackay won the acrimonious race by a large majority, and had since declared a cautious truce with the two Supervisors.

  McCaskill went into private practice, but as a regular columnist for the local newspaper, he continually criticized her administration, often levying totally unfounded charges.

  She leaned forward to rest her forearms on the table and clasped her hands. “I’m listening.”

  “We’ve learned that Doctor Robert Simmons did not suffer a heart attack during the flight from Spain to San Francisco. We also know that an investigation into his murder has been launched, and that the investigation has focused on you as the prime suspect.”

  Mackay raised her hands, palms out, as if to push away an intruder. “Where did you get that information?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Do you deny it?”

  “Damn right I deny it. I didn’t murder Simmons.”

  “That remains to be seen. What I meant was, do you deny you’re the focus of that investigation?”

  “Ask the Sheriff.”

  “We did, early this morning, and we’ve made a decision.”

  “What decision?”

  Boynton glanced around the room. “To demand that you resign immediately.”

  Mackay stared at each person. Only Burford held her gaze. “Who the hell is ‘we’?”

  “The Board of Supervisors.”

  “Without posting an agenda and holding a public hearing, the Board couldn’t make that decision unless it met illegally, in secret. If so, I’ll prosecute every person who attended that meeting, including you, your CAO, and County Counsel.”

  “We’ve committed no illegal acts that you can prove.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “A majority of the Board demands your immediate resignation until you are exonerated, if that is the outcome of the Simmons investigation.”

  Boynton pulled a document from his briefcase and passed it to Mackay. “Your official resignation. We expect you to sign and submit it before you leave this room.”

  Mackay started to read it, but changed her mind, wadded it up, and dropped it on the floor.

  “I refuse. The voters elected me to be their District Attorney, and unless they remove me, I intend to do my job.”

  She pushed back her chair. “Now, if you’re finished with this nonsense, I have work waiting.”

  “Please hear us out,” Boynton said.

  “Make it fast.”

  Brice slid her stack of papers to Mackay. “These are recall petitions, ready to be circulated and filed. You can see they already contain several signatures. If they fail, I’ll file suit.”

  “On what legal grounds?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but it won’t matter. Even if I lose the case, your career’ll be over.”

  “Considering your large margin of victory at the polls,” Boynton interjected, “the Board won’t survive a public confrontation with you undamaged. We know that. But the one thing that would be worse for us, knowing what we do now, would be to do nothing. If that became public—and it would—we’d be tarred and feathered. We plan to preempt such an occurrence.”

  She swallowed the bitter bile that rose in her throat. “I’ve been a successful litigator for more than twenty years. If you repeat what you said to anyone outside this room, or if you circulate those petitions, you’ll have a war on your hands.”

  “Be reasonable, Kathryn,” Burford said. “If you refuse to step down while you’re under investigation, every conviction your office wins will be tainted. They’ll go up on appeal, be reversed, and have to be retried. It’ll bring the criminal justice system in Santa Rita to its knees for years.”

  “I won’t resign just to make it easy for everyone else.”

  “Will you discuss an alternative that’ll make it easier for all of us, including yourself?” Boynton asked.

  “Such as?”

  “The Board will place you on paid administrativeleave until the investigation is concluded, one way or the other.”

  “That’d make me look guilty.”

  “We’ll issue a statement to the press signed by all five Supervisors, stating that out of concern for your office and the public, you came to us and suggested that you take a leave of absence without pay.”

  “What a crock!”

  He ignored her. “Our statement will make it clear that we insisted you accept full pay and benefits until you’re cleared of all charges, which we are confident will happen swiftly, at which time you will resume office.”

  The strength seemed to drain from Mackay’s body. She sat back and put her hands in her lap, gripping them tightly together to stop the trembling. “If I don’t agree?”

  “Then we’d have no choice. The CAO will submit the recall petitions to the Elections Department, and County Counsel will file his Superior Court action by the end of the day.”

  “I suppose you’ve already drafted an agreement for me to sign.”

  Burford handed her a final sheet of paper. “We tried to anticipate all the possibilities and make it as easy for you as possible.”

  Mackay sat silently, considering her options. “Before I sign this, I need to tell my Chief Deputy, Mary Elizabeth Skinner, personally. And appoint her Interim DA.”

  Boynton shook his head. “No. If you accept—and this is not negotiable—we make the appointment.”

  “No one else is qualified.”

  “There’s one experienced, highly qualified person outside your office who could assume the position seamlessly, without being perceived as your clone, or a mere rubber stamp for your policies. He’s agreed to accept the interim appointment.”

  Mackay signed the agreement, snapped the cover on her pen, and replaced it in her bag. “Who?”

  “Neal McCaskill.”

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  25

  THE DOJLAB looked like the FedEx building next door: clean, modern, utilitarian, and nondescript. Unlike the other commercial buildings on Research Drive, though, it backed up against a grassy hillside with a view of the bay that by itself could have converted a $250,000 fixer-upper into a $4 million rustic estate.

  In his late forties, short, and overweight, Neal McCaskill combed his thinning hair over his bald spot and plastered it down with a heavy layer of hair spray. He wore a high-priced winter suit under a slate-gray London Fog topcoat. He was leaning against his Lexus GS430 when Sheriff Granz pulled his Buick into the parking lot, climbed out, and walked over.

  “We going to have any problems?” McCaskill asked unceremoniously.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Are you gonna give me a hard time, or will you work with me as District Attorney?”

  “Interim District Attorney,” Granz corrected. “You could’ve asked me that on the phone.”

  “I wanted to watch your eyes.”

  Granz poked his forefinger at McCaskill’s chest. “I didn’t like you when we both worked for Benton, and I don’t like you now.”

  “Breaks my heart. So, what’s your answer?”

  “I’ll do my job, make sure you do yours.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Then we understand each other.” Granz turned and headed to the lab’s main entrance. “Why did you ask me to meet you here?”

  McCaskill
followed, his short pudgy legs churning fast to keep up with Granz’ long strides. “DOJ has the DNAresults on the Tucker rape kit.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I’m District Attorney. I called ’em because I didn’t want the results to get lost somewhere between your office and mine.”

  “Don’t unpack the moving cartons. Like I said, you’re only an Interim.”

  At the door they were met by a uniformed security guard with white hair. “Hi, Sheriff.”

  “How’s retirement, Richard?”

  “Better’n poundin’ a beat in the Tenderloin, and I don’t have to commute to San Francisco.”

  “We’re here to see Menendez.”

  “Good timing, she just got back from lunch.”

  They signed in, then walked across the lobby to a heavy metal door, where the guard punched in a security code. The door swung open to reveal a tiny, sterile anteroom where criminalist Roselba Menendez waited.

  Like her crime-lab colleagues, she worked in casual clothes—jeans, a Pacific Cookie Company T-shirt, and white Reeboks. She looked like any other pretty young woman, but she was the best criminalist Granz knew.

  She led them past a waist-high swinging gate into a narrow hallway lined with unmarked steel doors. Most were closed, but a few stood ajar, exposing an array of scientific equipment. She stopped at the last door, punched in a security code, and swung it open into a large, open office crammed with desks, chairs, computers, and filing cabinets. She slid two metal stools to a stainless steel bench and motioned them to sit.

  “We’ve completed typing the STRs,” she told them.

  McCaskill unconsciously scratched his head, mussing his stiff hair, causing it to stick up like a rooster’s comb. “What happened to typing RLFPs?”

  Granz snorted. “You’ve been outta the scientific loop too long, McCaskill. Restriction fragment length polymorphism typing went out with dinosaurs and AquaNet in aerosol cans.”

  “Oh. Is that what RFLP stands for?”

  Menendez suppressed a smile, but sensed McCaskill’s embarrassment. She reached over and smoothed his hair.

  “Sheriff’s right,” she confirmed. “The main short-comingof RFLP was that it required large biological samples. That led us to polymerase chain reaction, an advancement enabling us to analyze much smaller crime-scene samples by duplicating the DNA before typing. That led to what we do now—an automated analysis called short tandem repeats.”

  McCaskill started to scratch again, caught himself, and tucked his hands in his pants pockets. “Isn’t RFLP typing preferred because it’s highly discriminating?”

  “Yes, but luckily, STR analysis is as discriminating as RFLP, and has other benefits as well.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mainly, it’s faster and cheaper. RFLP was a manual procedure, which meant we had to wait five to six weeks for results. STRs are amenable to automation, so we can achieve a twenty-four-hour turnaround when necessary.”

  “Obviously, I don’t know much, but I feel still most comfortable with RFLP, it’s been around a long time.”

  “RFLP’s obsolete science, and STR’s been used since the early nineties.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Feds used it first to ID remains of Desert Storm soldiers. In ’93, they used it to identify the Branch Davidian victims in Texas, then the bodies from the TWA’s Flight 800 crash. Most recently they used it at Ground Zero and the Pentagon. It’s a wellestablished typing procedure.”

  “RFLP’s already admissible in court.”

  “True, you’ll probably have to put on an admissibility hearing before you’re allowed to present the results, but I can help you with that.”

  Granz laughed. “Better start now, I think our Interim DAneeds some basic lessons on prosecuting a DNAcase.”

  McCaskill took a step toward Granz. “Kiss off.”

  “Maybe a little primer is in order, Mr. McCaskill,” Menendez suggested, stepping between them.

  McCaskill was relieved to be saved the indignity of backing down. “Shoot.”

  “After DNA is extracted from the biological sample, the technician amplifies, or copies, it using the PCR procedure, which chemically amplifies a sample that’s too small or degraded for RFLP typing. Fluorescent dye is then introduced to mark the beginning and end of each target STR sequence, and to label that DNA section. The labeled products are copied, separated by a special gel, zapped with a laser to establish the genetic profile, and finally printed out as a graph called an electropherogram.”

  “How do you determine if there’s a match or not?”

  “By comparing the electropherograms from several loci. STRs are scattered throughout the human genome, and while a match at one STR loci isn’t conclusive, a genetic profile from several STR loci will discriminate conclusively between any two individuals except identical twins.”

  “Jesus! I’ll just subpoena you and let you explain that scientific mumbo-jumbo to the jury, rather than waste my valuable time trying to sort it out. Bottom line—did you get a match from Tucker’s rape kit?”

  “One. The DNA profile from the vaginal swab matches the profile from Judge Keefe’s blood standard. It was his semen.”

  “How sweet—two judges boffing each other in chambers and now it looks like one of ’em’s a murder suspect. How about her husband?”

  Menendez shot McCaskill a dirty look. “Doctor Sanchez is excluded as donor of the semen on both the vaginal and the anal swabs.”

  “Oh, that’s just great. Can you people tell me who shot the semen up Tucker’s ass, or do I have to use my imagination?”

  Menendez’ olive complexion gave way to a deep red blush. “That’s for you to find out, Mr. McCaskill.”

  McCaskill started to walk away, then stopped and turned. “I thought that’s what you were paid to do. I guess I’m on my own.”

  As he headed to the door, Menendez stared at his retreating back, then flipped him the finger.

  “Shoulda left the little jerk’s hair sticking up so he looks as stupid as he acts,” she told Granz.

  Granz smiled. “Next time.”

  “Next time, come by yourself.”

  Granz patted her on the shoulder. “My pleasure.”

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  26

  GRANZ AND MC CASKILL LEANED against Granz’ Buick.

  McCaskill smoothed his hair. “Where does that leave our investigation into Tucker’s murder?”

  “It isn’t our investigation, it’s mine.”

  “The protocol is for the Sheriff to keep the District Attorney informed.”

  “I know the drill, McCaskill, so don’t create any territorial disputes with me. It’s my investigation until I turn it over to you for prosecution. In the meantime, I make the decisions, including what information you get. Now, get off my car, I’ve got to get back to my office.”

  “There’s one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “The Simmons murder.”

  “I don’t know for certain that he was murdered. He could have intentionally overdosed to avoid a trial.”

  “That’s a crock of bull, and you know it.”

  “Even if he was, I don’t know who murdered him.”

  “Yes, you do, and so do I. I knew you couldn’t keep your personal feelings from overriding your professional obligations. I stopped by the morgue on the way here, talked to Nelson. Take Mackay into custody.”

  “Don’t have probable cause.”

  McCaskill laughed. “You’ve made hundreds of arrests with a lot less PC. Arrest her ass.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Then I’ll bust her myself.”

  Granz pushed away from the car, turned toward McCaskill, and clenched his fists. “Stay away from Kathryn or . . .”

  “Or what? If you’re too pussy-whipped to do your job, I’ll do it for you. Just stay out of my way.”

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  27

  “MOM
, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE ?”

  “I thought I’d give you a ride home from soccer practice.”

  “Ashley and I were going to walk home together.”

  “I need to talk to you, honey. It’s important.”

  Emma tossed her books into the backseat of the Audi A4. “Can we go by Sophia’s and get a burrito? I’m hungry.”

  Kathryn merged into traffic. “It’s only four o’clock. Didn’t you eat lunch?”

  “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. Can we?”

  “I suppose we can pick something up and take it home. We’ve got to eat dinner anyway, and I don’t feel like cooking.”

  Emma gave her mother a long look. “You said youhave something important to talk to me about. Am I in big trouble?”

  Kathryn patted her daughter’s knee. “Of course not.”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Your mascara’s all streaked.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Let’s talk about it at home, okay?”

  Emma rode in silence for several minutes, then asked, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “I know you’re anxious, but please, let’s wait until we get home.”

  She turned into the small shopping center where Sophia’s Taqueria occupied an inconspicuous rear space, dug in her purse, pulled out her cell phone and a wadded-up twenty-dollar bill, and handed the cash to Emma. “Would you mind getting our food while I make a phone call?”

  “Sure. Plain quesadilla with a side order of guacamole, right?”

  “You know me so well.” Kathryn tried to smile, but it turned out to be a grimace, which Emma noticed.

  “You should talk to me about what’s bothering you now. I love you, and I’m a good listener, you know.”