Above the Law (24 page)

She walked me to the front door. We stood at the threshold, her in, me out.

“Good night, Nora. Thanks for dinner.”

“Thanks for coming. And for not shutting me out.”

“I’ll stop by your office tomorrow, in the morning, before I take off.” I was flying home that afternoon.

“See you then.”

She leaned forward and kissed me, on the lips. A quick brush, but it was on the lips.

“You’re a good man, Luke.”

“Thanks, Nora. You’re a good woman.”

“A good man is hard to find.”

“So’s a good woman.”

“A good man is harder. Much harder.”

I didn’t reply.

“Good night, Luke.”

She stepped back inside and closed the door. I walked to my car. I was going to have to keep my distance from Nora. Actually, the reverse was true—I was going to have to make sure that she kept hers from me.

“L
ADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF
the grand jury, good morning …”

The Muir County grand jury meets in what used to be the old high school, which no longer functions in that capacity since the new regional one was built two blocks away, a decade ago. Now the facility is utilized for various civic purposes—adult ed, dance classes, senior-citizen workshops, teen drug and alcohol programs. As the grand jury in this sparsely populated county meets sporadically, it wasn’t fiscally prudent to give them their own, permanent space.

I was seated on a folding chair on the stage of the auditorium. It was a large, dark room, old wood wainscoting, peeling paint of that ubiquitous washed-out puke-green color that always seems to cover the walls of public institutions such as schools, jails, and mental asylums. Half the overhead lightbulbs were out, left unreplaced, which compounded the dreariness of the place.

Nora stood at the podium. She was dressed in one of her professional ensembles—dark gray skirt and jacket, starched white blouse buttoned to the neck, opaque white hose, low heels. Almost no makeup, hair done plain. The grand jurors, eleven men and women, most of them retirement age, sat in the first two rows of the center section, facing us, in seats that had fold-down arms for student note-taking. A few of the old ladies, the ones with penned hair and makeup on straight, had pens and notebooks in hand. The others didn’t. They knew their duty: do what the D.A. tells you to do. You don’t need to take notes for that.

“It’s nice to see all these familiar faces,” Nora said, smiling.

Some of them smiled back. Others looked like they needed a caffeine jump-start.

“I’ve appeared before you several times over the past fourteen months, since you were sworn in,” Nora continued. “Today, however, I’m not here in my normal capacity. This is a unique occasion. I want to introduce all of you to an old friend and colleague of mine. Luke Garrison”—she turned and pointed—“is the distinguished former district attorney of Santa Barbara County. He has been appointed a special independent prosecutor by the state of California to investigate a crime that occurred here.”

I listened with bemusement; I liked the “distinguished” bit, although it made me feel like a relic up on a shelf, something of importance one’s grandfather saved from his youth, dusting it off and bringing it down once a year for a special show-and-tell.

“Mr. Garrison is here because this situation is too expensive and time-consuming for my office to handle,” she told them candidly, feeling the need to explain why she wasn’t doing this herself—that my coming in and taking over didn’t mean Muir County was second-rate; or by inference, that they were.

“This happens sometimes, in counties all over the country, big ones as well as small. It doesn’t mean we can’t do the job ourselves—it enhances the possibility of doing it better. It’s actually a star on our chart,” she continued, “that the state thinks this situation is so important they’re willing to spend money to help one particular county.”

She looked out at her people. None of them seemed to be in a snit about my being here.

“Mr. Garrison is going to investigate the shooting that occurred six months ago, out at the area we used to call Remington’s Woods, before it was bought up and turned into what we later found out was a haven for drug dealers. You know the place I’m talking about.”

Most of those facing us nodded; the others were too lethargic.

“As you recall, there was an aborted drug raid there last fall, which resulted in the tragic deaths of three federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as the deaths of four men who were in that compound at the time. Four criminals, I must say, whose activities, and those of similar men, poison our children across the county. They were not nice men. But it would have been better if they had not been killed. It would have been better if no one had been killed.”

She was laying it on thick, so they’d understand that they were going to be sitting in judgment of the killer or killers of people who, in a just world, deserved to be killed.

“One of the men who was killed, whose name was Reynaldo Juarez—in this case, we may find out the word
murdered
is the correct word—is going to be the subject of Mr. Garrison and his team’s investigation, which if successful may result in indictments in one form or another—first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, so forth. You’re all familiar with those terms, I’ve asked you for such indictments before. The object is to find out who killed Juarez, and perhaps why, although that is a separate issue from what Mr. Garrison will be addressing today.”

She glanced back at me again. I nodded in agreement.

Continuing on, she said, “I’m sure you know the Drug Enforcement Administration has been conducting their own investigation of this killing—they’ve been all over Blue River and Muir County the past months. Some of you may have talked to agents, formally or informally. So far, I’m sad to say, they haven’t come up with any suspects, or any leads towards developing a suspect or suspects. And for now, they don’t seem to be able to.”

She paused to make sure they were still with her. They seemed to be.

“Reynaldo Juarez was a rotten human being,” Nora said, “but at the time of his killing, he was in federal custody. He was a prisoner, with all the rights our system accords people who have been arrested but not yet convicted of anything. He was in the custody of agents of the federal government, but he was killed in Muir County.”

Another quick pause, a glance back at me, then she pressed on.

“As Muir County D.A., I am mandated to investigate all crimes that take place in this county. That’s why you elected me. Not to pick and choose, not to decide whether I like, or have any sympathy for, the victim of a particular crime—which, as I’ve said, I didn’t, in this case. My feelings are irrelevant, as yours should be. We’re a nation of laws, not emotions, and although that can be a pain in the neck sometimes, in the long run it’s good, it protects our freedoms.”

This is eloquent, I thought as I listened. She’s good at this; it sounds as if she really believes it, too. Maybe she could run for state assembly someday, or Congress. It would get her out of here while allowing her to keep some roots, some connection to Dennis. Perhaps that mental compromise could assuage the guilt feelings she has that have kept her, all these years, in what has to be an alien, not desirable place.

“So,” she concluded, “that’s all I have to say, for now. I’m going to turn you over to Mr. Garrison, who will explain what he is going to do, and what he expects from you.”

I got up, buttoned my jacket, walked to the podium, shook Nora’s hand, turned to face the small group.

“As Mrs. Ray has told you,” I began, “my name is Luke Garrison. I am a lawyer, a member of the California bar, a former district attorney in this state. Also, as she told you, I have been appointed to be a special independent counselor to investigate and, if proper evidence is forthcoming, to bring forth indictments against the person or persons who killed Reynaldo Juarez in this county in September of last year.”

Their stares were blank. I took that to mean they’d be compliant, as grand juries normally are. Nora hadn’t given me reason to think otherwise.

“The investigation we’re about to embark on, ladies and gentlemen, will require the same things you’ve done in every case that’s come to you during your time serving on this grand jury. You will, at our request, be issuing subpoenas and warrants, taking testimony of witnesses, suspects, and so forth.”

I cleared my throat. “The difference in this case is that for openers, we
think
we had a crime committed, but we’re not sure—how this man Juarez was killed may turn out not to have been prosecutable. I doubt that, but it’s a possibility. What is different here is that we don’t have a suspect; or to put it more precisely, we have dozens of possible suspects, and what we’re going to do is try to develop a few of them, or maybe only one, from these dozens.

“We’re going to be pushing kind of far afield to do that, and you’re going to have to help us. You’re going to have to trust us, and know that we’re doing this for the right reason: to find guilt. Not to punish innocent men, or in any way be vindictive.”

I waited to make sure they were still paying attention, then I proceeded, “We have about thirty-six legitimate suspects in this killing. They are agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. There may be more suspects we’ll want to investigate, down the line. We’ll find that out as we develop this case. But there are at least thirty-six suspects out there.”

There was a faint stirring down below me; the first animation of any kind I’d seen.

“Why so many?” asked one of them, an old lady, one of the old ladies who had brought a notebook and pen.

“Because that’s how many people were there and fit certain general criteria,” I answered.

Arriving at who was a suspect was simple arithmetic: subtraction. None of the prisoners could have killed Juarez, because they were all in secure custody. When the chase ended and the agents had staggered back to their base, the other prisoners were as they had been left—handcuffed; which meant they weren’t suspects, they couldn’t be. Secondly, while most of the agents had discharged their side arms during the assault on the compound, a minority hadn’t. Ballistics proved that some guns had not been fired that night. So those agents were cleared up front.

Which left everyone else. Head nods told me they understood.

I had carved away the fat and the gristle. Now I moved on to the protein.

“I want this grand jury to authorize almost unlimited investigative authority to me. I am going to want warrants that will let us go into their private records. We need to look at bank accounts, phone logs, travel schedules, marital problems, anything suspicious. The same for their wives, close relatives, close friends. We are going to get into some real private places, places you and I wouldn’t want the government looking. But you have to give me that power if I’m going to have any chance of getting at the truth.”

This was heavy stuff, the prosecutor as bully-inquisitor. But I saw no other way to do it.

“We aren’t going to go fishing in every ocean in the world. But in the waters we will be trolling, I need to be able to throw out as many lines as I can, even if no one thinks there’s any fish out there.”

I looked at each of them one more time.

“This is a tough job, for you and for us. We’re going to be investigating who killed a career criminal, an unregenerate bastard, excuse my language. If that man had been properly arrested and brought to trial, Mrs. Ray or a state or federal prosecutor would be throwing the book at him—life imprisonment without parole, maybe even the death penalty. That’s what makes this situation so difficult, so unique. And so necessary.”

Sheriff Miller poured me a cup of coffee. “How do you take it?” he asked.

“Black’s fine.”

He passed the cup across the desk to me, poured one for himself. “Watch it,” he cautioned. “It’s hot.”

I took a careful sip. “This is good,” I said, surprised. I hadn’t had coffee of this caliber in Blue River. I didn’t know you could find it.

“It’s Pete’s,” he informed me, stirring a dollop of two percent into his. “I prefer it to Starbucks.”

“I didn’t know you could get those here.” I hadn’t seen designer shops of any kind in Blue River. Maybe in the Ralph’s, the only chain supermarket in the county. I had yet to pay it a visit.

He smiled, shook his head. “You can’t. I get it mail order. You want anything of decent quality here, you get it sent in. I’ve got every upscale mail-order catalogue there is. You want, I’ll lend ’em to you. Man of your tastes isn’t going to be satisfied with what’s on the local shelves.”

“Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”

He took out his tobacco and cigarette papers and rolled a thin, tight smoke, lighting it with his signature match to boot sole, his exhale of blue-gray smoke lazily drifting above his head.

As I watched him perform his brief ritual, I was reminded that this was no hick I was dealing with. He might be the small-town sheriff with mud-caked rough-out Western boots up on the desk and the roll-your-own cigarettes, but he was a former FBI agent, a graduate from a quality law school, a man who had lived in Washington and other big cities, had rubbed elbows with powerful people.

“So what was it like out there that night?” I’d covered some of this with him before, but that had been informal. This was official.

He shook his head in doleful remembrance. “Unadulterated hell. Classic bad news. Everything that could go wrong, did.” Another head-shake. “Jerome got anxious and…” He trailed off, watching his smoke plume curl up to the ceiling.

“Did you have a good, clear feel for what was going on, when it was going on?”

He shook his head.

“I had a good feeling for it—good if you mean did I know what was happening. I’ve been in law enforcement my entire life, nothing much gets by me.”

“Of course,” I said deferentially.

“What you’re asking is, was I part of it, physically, did I have input?” The question was rhetorical—he answered it himself. “No. I was excluded. Me and my deputy. We were there strictly for show. So that later on Jerome could say we were, by the book.” Another head-shake. “But no, we were relegated to the sidelines.”