Double Tap (23 page)

“You never told me what brings you down here.”

“Oh, that,” he says. “That’s nothing. Senate Committee on, Redistricting.” He touches the side of his nose with his finger. “A lotta BS. I’ll be glad to be rid of it. Pain in the butt, all the members constantly crying on my shoulder about their districts and where they want the lines drawn for the next election so they can do in all the competition.” Nathan talks as if he’s never done this himself.

Politics is its own form of insanity. In California, beds in this asylum are assigned in the state legislature and Congress every ten years, with district boundary lines redrawn based on the last federal census. Ever since term limits were imposed on the legislature by voters, political panic on the order of a hotel fire has raged through the state capitol, with members of both parties eating their own in an effort to survive. The hallowed ground is Congress, where term limits don’t apply.

“You remember. I used to tell you about the games played. Somebody running their district boundaries thirty miles along a railroad track so they could circle a university or capture some ethnic ghetto while they registered all the hobos along the way.”

“You must have done that one and forgot to tell me about it.”

“Well, those were the good old days. Back when Machiavelli was writing the legislative ethics rules. When every vote cast in an election had an actual voter behind it.”

To listen to Nathan, the state legislature is now the third ring of hell. He can’t wait to get out.

“But that’s not the reason I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been following the trial in the papers,” he says. “Your Ruiz case. I don’t know the details, but I heard something you should know. I was out at Isotenics. They crunch numbers for us, do the district maps. And I heard some comments about this IFS thing. It came up in connection with the trial. IFS has been in the papers.” Nathan tells me this as if I’m from Mars. “I know some members,” he says, “people in Congress who are very upset about it. As they should be. I don’t know how you feel about personal privacy. You know that I’ve always felt very strongly about it. Computers. High tech. It’s eroding any sense of civil liberties. Pretty soon corporations and the government are going to know more about us than we know about ourselves.”

Nathan is now cutting to the chase. I can smell him trying to get a jump start to some committee in the House of Representatives. He is probably telling them that he has an inside track with the lawyer trying the case and that if they can pump enough heat and fire up my skirt, they can use the illumination to expose the White House. It’s what you love about Nathan: he never quits.

“Check out the nurse over there. I think I need more medicine,” he says. Nathan’s talking about the cocktail waitress.

“When did this meeting occur?”

“Hmm?”

“Out at Isotenics?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Couple of days ago. We were meeting with these two execs out there. One of them was midlevel type. I’ve been dealing with this guy for a couple of years. You know the kind: makes the company go. Jack lives in the corporate synapse, between executive decisions and action, if you know what I mean. Kinda fella who puts the spark in the gap that usually makes things happen.” He pauses. “Good idea man, and he usually knows what’s going on. The other guy I didn’t know. Never met him before. Jack’s boss.”

I nod knowingly as I listen. Nathan has a way of making a short story long.

“Anyway, there were several of us at the meeting: two members of the assembly, myself, and some congressional staff sent out to cover their interests. The two executives knew I’d just been elected to the House. They were overflowing with congratulations. Isotenics can use all the friends they can get in Washington right now, as I’m sure you’re aware. If there was a fire hose long enough, they’d be pumping water from the Pacific to try and reduce the heat on themselves.”

I nod again and take a sip from my glass.

“I suppose they were trying to impress me, so you can probably take it with a grain of salt, for what it’s worth,” he says. “But one of them, the boss, gets a phone call during the meeting. We were in a rush to finish up since the assemblymen had to catch a plane.

“So this guy decides to take the call on the extension in the conference room where we’re gathered. All I can hear is half the conversation, but he’s talking about the case. Ruiz’s name comes up, so of course I’m all ears. Something about when the case is over they can ramp up again, but not until, he says. He’s talking under his breath and I guess whoever’s on the other end can’t hear him, because this guy keeps saying he can’t talk any louder, he’s in a meeting. Fortunately I had my back to him, sitting right in front of the side table where he was talking. If I’d leaned back any further I’d have been on the phone with him,” says Nathan.

“Then he says—the guy on our end—he says something. . . .” Nathan’s reaching with the fingers of one hand as if he’s trying to pluck the precise words from the air over our table. “He says something: they’re understaffed, that DOD is all pissed off, something to that effect. That if she had left it alone, everything would have been fine. But now that she’s dead somebody’s going to have to go pick up the pieces because she wouldn’t leave it alone.” He looks at me to see if this is producing any revelations. “I don’t know if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, but if you are, I’m thinking the dead person they’re talking about has to be Madelyn Chapman, and the project DOD is involved in has to be IFS. Does it make any sense to you?” he asks.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“It sounded to me like maybe they are caught in a whirlpool of shit at the moment and they can’t get out of it until your case is over. That when that happens they’re back in business. Doing something. God knows what,” he says. “I may stick around and watch the trial. I have nothing going on up in Capital City. And it sounds like all the fireworks may be happening down here.”

“Do you have names? The two executives at your meeting?”

“Yeah. Jack Hansen is the guy I’ve been meeting with for years. The other guy, the guy on the phone, I’d never met him before. His name was Harold Klepp. Head of research and development.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
his morning when I arrive, the hallway outside the courtroom is jammed, standing room only. I’m pushing my way through when I run face-to-face into Nathan.

“What are you doing here?”

He’s drinking a Diet Coke from a can and laughing at me. “You got more press here than the White House,” he says. “I figure I’m resigning from the state senate next week, so I may as well be where the action is. I got nothing to do up in Capital City.”

This is Nathan, the ultimate groupie. By next week he’ll be trading secrets in Washington, the inside dirt on the trial, what it really means for IFS.

“I thought I’d come and see how you do. Besides, I haven’t been in a courtroom in years. Thank God,” he says, and takes another swig from the can of Coke.

Several reporters, notepads in hand, cruise in my direction through the crowd.

“We’ll have to continue this later,” I tell him.

Inside, the courtroom is already filling up. By the time we convene, every seat will be taken. There is a line downstairs in front of the main door to the courthouse. I would estimate more than two hundred people are waiting to get in, hoping someone will leave and offer up their seat. Two bailiffs, one upstairs and one down, communicate by walkie-talkie, allowing one person into the courthouse at a time as seats are surrendered. It is a test for concrete kidneys and iron bowels. Get up to go to the john and you lose your seat.

The crowd is here to listen to Larry Templeton deliver his opening statement in the trial of
People v. Ruiz
.

For nearly two weeks now the cable news stations have been playing this up, leading hourly with speculation and hype as to the way the prosecutor will build his case. So many lawyers have now offered their televised guesses as to precisely how Templeton will play it and what kind of magic will be necessary for the defense to counter the state’s evidence that it hardly seems necessary to try the case before the jury. Vicarious courtroom thrills have replaced the soap opera on daytime television. Without scripts or actors, production costs are cheap, since every lawyer in America for an hour of face time in the form of free advertising will offer their guesses and commentary for nothing, which is generally what they are worth.

I have heard my last name mispronounced at least five times on three different stations in the last two days. As I head down the aisle toward the swinging gate in the railing, I hear it whispered in a few places floating on the ether in the courtroom, and notice fingers pointing and a few heads turning. The Middle Ages may have been dark, but if having your every word explored and your image and each gesture exploited on the nightly news is the ultimate reward for life in the age of celebrity, society might do well if we were to regress to more primitive forms of communication. One wonders if the media cynics aren’t right, whether the term
free society
has become nothing but an excuse for profiteers to transform life into a dissolute electronic flshbowl.

Halfway toward the front of the courtroom I see a head of gray hair as she turns. I am surprised to see Jean Kaprosky seated on the aisle about six rows back. I tap her on the shoulder from behind. She looks up and sees me. “Oh, hi,” Jean says. She grabs my hand and smiles. “I was hoping I might have a chance to talk to you. At least say hello.”

“Where is Jim?” I ask.

“He’s not feeling well. He’s been in and out of the hospital the last several weeks,” she explains.

“I didn’t know.”

“He doesn’t
want
anybody to know. His health has been slipping lately.” The tone of her voice has a certain finality to it. “He has a hard time getting out and about. I take him to the doctor and that’s pretty much it. My sister is staying with us for a while, so she’s at home with him right now. He wanted me to come and see what was happening here and report back. I told him that I was sure that your case had nothing to do with what happened to us,” she says. “But in Jim’s mind, it’s all connected. You understand.” She gives me an expression as if to say the mind is slipping along with the body. “I don’t know what to say to him anymore, so here I am.”

“Tell him . . . well, tell him for me that I hope he’s feeling better soon.”

“I’ll tell him, but I know what he’d like more than that: he’d love to see you, talk to you one more time. Here. Let me give you our address.” Before I can shake loose, she takes a scrap of paper and a pen from her purse and starts to scribble as she talks.

I have known for months that I could not use James Kaprosky as my computer software expert at trial. He was both conflicted in terms of his interests in the case and too ill. If we come to that—if Harry and I are able to get to the evidence surrounding Satz and Chapman, what was going on with the Primis software and whether it could have been a motive for murder—I have already retained another expert.

“Jim told me that he enjoyed the meeting at your office so much,” she says. “He’s mentioned it several times. He said that you and Mr. Hinds were the first two people in years to take him seriously, to listen to the details of what happened. I hope you can read this.” She is scribbling her address, her hands a little palsied. “Jim has lived with all of the misery regarding the litigation for so long it seems the only thing he can still relate to. He still gets phone calls from one of his lawyers every once in a while, but they all sort of drifted away. I think they felt so bad because of the result. And I suppose because we had such hope. The meeting in your office, while it dredged up a lot of bad stuff, was in its own way therapy for him. I suppose you could call it closure,” she adds.

“I wish there was something more I could do. It’s an awful situation. The loss of your business, his health.”

“No. No. Don’t feel bad. Come and see him.” She presses the note with their home address into my hand. “I’ll tell him that we talked, that I saw you.”

I wish her well. “Say hello to him for me.” Then I head toward the counsel table.

Harry is already there waiting for me. At the table next to him is a young intern we have hired to operate the laptop, the computer that will be connected to the overhead visualizer aimed at a large projection screen for presentation of evidence to the jury as the case progresses. Jamie Carson is a UC law graduate waiting for his bar results, and is a possible addition to the firm. Harry has been working with him for months to gin up the computer, scanning in copies of police reports, crime-scene photographs, all of the documentary details that are likely to come in by way of evidence.

As I swing through the gate, past the railing, I notice that Harry’s earlier fears have been realized. Two custom-made boxes, the one at this end with a step leading up to it, are spanned by wooden planks, each twelve feet long and two inches thick, arranged on top of them. In the center there is a third box to keep the spans from bouncing like a diving board. This entire affair has been set out in front of the jury box in preparation for Templeton’s opening statement.

The prosecutors are not yet here. My guess is they are huddled backstage somewhere, probably in a room near the holding cells, putting the final touches on their opening and coordinating the visuals that have already been approved by the court for presentation at this point. Most of these are neutral, arrived at by stipulation: photographs of the outside of Chapman’s house on the beach and of the rocky outcrop overlooking the ocean behind it, and a large aerial of the house taken from a police helicopter. There is a close-up of the murder weapon, a .45-caliber automatic, just as the cops found it in the flower bed near the seawall at the back of the yard, and another shot of the screen that was pried off the window and left propped against the side of the house where the killer gained entry. None of these present much controversy. All of them would no doubt be admitted into evidence even if we were to object. To save time and avoid the appearance of foolish disputes in front of the jury, we have stipulated to their use.

In the front row, just beyond the rail behind the prosecution table, is an elderly woman. It is Madelyn Chapman’s mother. Sitting next to her is the victim’s younger sister. They put the visual hex on me as I assemble the documents from my briefcase on the table.

Two rows behind them, Nathan sidles toward one of the center seats as some young kid gets up to give him his chair. The kid heads for the door. Nathan is using a legislative intern to hold his seat. Knowing Nathan, he’ll probably have one sleeping outside on the sidewalk tonight, holding his place in line for tomorrow.

I take my seat and open the folder with a fresh notepad inside. Trying a case can be an exercise in writer’s cramp as you catch all the details so that you don’t miss anything on cross-examination.

Harry leans away from Jamie and the computer and across the open chair that has been left vacant between us for Emiliano.

“As you can see, they’ve already started constructing the gallows,” says Harry. He nods toward the planks spanning the space in front of the jury box.

I give him a resigned look. “It’s what we expected.”

“Yeah, but it’s not nearly as menacing when it’s just a mental image in your mind.”

A second later the door leading to the holding cells opens and the prosecution team enters the courtroom. They are led by Mike Argust, the lead homicide detective in Chapman’s case. Argust is a twenty-eight-year veteran assigned to the case the night of the murder. Unless Ruiz testifies, Argust, who is the state’s representative in the case, is the only other witness allowed inside the courtroom during the trial unless they are on the stand. Witnesses on both the prosecution and defense lists have been excluded by the judge following a stipulation by Templeton and myself. Potential witnesses have been instructed not to discuss their testimony with anyone except the lawyers and representatives for the prosecution and defense, and then only if the witnesses choose to talk with them. We are still awaiting a decision from the court on Sims’s appeal concerning Gilcrest’s ruling on evidence from Isotenics. No doubt, whatever happens, if Sims loses he will take the appeal to the state supreme court, if for no other reason than to stall for more time.

I tried to coax an affidavit out of Nathan Kwan regarding the telephone conversation between Klepp and whoever was on the other end of the line during Nathan’s meeting out at Isotenics. A declaration under penalty of perjury might be enough to convince the judge to allow me to question Klepp more thoroughly. But Nathan declined. He said he couldn’t get publicly involved, especially now, being new to Congress. It could blow up in his face. I understood. Bringing information and delivering it to me was one thing. Getting his name in the press and involved in the case on the wrong side was another.

Argust takes the seat in the middle at the prosecution table, counterpart to Ruiz. The computer tech, an expert who performs visualization duties in most of their heavier cases, is at the far end. Templeton takes the chair nearest me and climbs onto the box that is already assembled on top of the seat waiting for him.

A few moments later a burly guard from the sheriff’s jail unit opens the holding cell door once more. He is followed by a second guard. They take their time, checking the courtroom, making eye contact with each of the guards stationed at the back of the courtroom and along the side aisles. When they are satisfied, one of them turns and offers the come-hither sign, the signal for the guards inside to bring him out. Emiliano walks through the open door followed by two more guards. Harry and I both stand as they usher him toward our table. The choreography here is like a polka. Ruiz could turn in any direction and instantly be dancing with a uniformed guard. They surround him. I have demanded on several occasions that none of this be played out in front of the jury and that the guards melt into the walls before they bring the jury panel in. If they fail in any way, I will document each instance on the record as grounds for appeal. A show of law enforcement on this order can pollute a jury faster than anything said at trial. It sends a less-than-subtle signal that, not only does the state view the defendant as a stone-cold killer, but that an overwhelming show of force is needed to prevent him from escaping and killing again, and to protect the jury itself. If jurors begin to fear for their own safety, your case is over.

Ruiz is clean shaven; his hair, a little longer than when we first met, is neatly combed. He is dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and solid burgundy tie. The suit is a bit baggy on his body since he could not be fitted for it. Janice, my secretary, selected Emiliano’s attire off the rack from a men’s shop a few blocks from the office. The shoes, buffed-up cordovans, are stiff as boards, right out of the box, making Ruiz’s stride as he enters the courtroom a little stilted. They have to steady him to keep him from stepping on the feet of the guards.

Ruiz seems surprised, somewhat taken back by the size of the crowd in the courtroom, even though Harry and I have told him to expect this. He is looking out at them over the railing with an expression approaching mystification as they lead him toward the table. The guards wait until he finds his seat and takes it, hovering over him for a few seconds, checking things out before they back off. They finally leave us and take up positions at the sides and back of the courtroom. Two of the guards station themselves down the darkened corridor along the side of the raised bench leading to the judge’s chambers in the back.

None of the guards or bailiffs carry firearms, only pepper spray and collapsible metal batons that, if used with enough force, can shatter a clavicle or fracture a skull. Whether the judge will be packing when he takes the bench, no one knows. In this state there have been enough violent confrontations in courtrooms—including a judge in Marin County who was taken hostage, then shot and killed outside the courthouse—that some judges have been known to carry loaded, concealed handguns under their robes.

Ruiz leans toward me and speaks almost without moving his lips: “Quite a crowd.” He is breathing heavily. I suspect it is the largest group of people he has ever seen assembled in one place for any event in which he was the center of attention. Fighting a battle and staying alive is one thing; dealing with a crowd where everyone in the courtroom is looking at him as if he is some caged beast is another.