Long Knives (34 page)

CHAPTER 76

W
ithout so much as a knock, the door opened and Detective Drady walked into the room, looked around and stood there, waiting.

“Welcome, Detective,” Dr. Wing said. “Please take a seat in that vacant chair there.” He pointed to the empty chair next to Professor Broontz.

After Drady had taken his seat, Dr. Wing said, “Detective, as I think you know, we’re here investigating—indirectly—the death of Primo Giordano.”

“I understand.”

“Before we get started, I want to remind you that although we have no power to put anyone under oath, we do expect you to testify fully and truthfully.”

“I will certainly try to do that, Dr. Wing. Of course, there’s a still-open police investigation into this matter going on, so there may be some things I won’t be able to share.”

Oh, great,
I thought to myself,
he’s pledging to tell the truth but not the
whole truth, so help him God
. I looked over at Oscar, who was stoically taking notes and seemed disinclined to jump up and scream at the ridiculousness of what Drady had just said.

“We understand you won’t be able to share everything,” Dr. Wing replied. “Also, please note that your testimony is being recorded.” He pointed to the three digital recorders on the table.

“Understood. I assume the recording’s digital. Can someone e-mail me a copy?”

“Of your own testimony?”

“No, of the whole hearing.”

“Well,” Dr. Wing said, “this is a confidential hearing, so I don’t think so.”

“All right, I’m sure we can get it later with a search warrant, or the DA can get it with a subpoena if we need it.”

“I don’t think so, Detective. These things are truly confidential, and I think a subpoena would be squashed.”

I decided not to correct the chairman and tell him that the word is quashed, not squashed—a common error made by nonlawyers. In any case, I suspected the university’s confidentiality claim would, in the face of a criminal subpoena, provide about as much resistance as a fly presents to a flyswatter. It would be squashed.

“Could you start, Detective,” Dr. Wing continued, “by just stating your name and your relationship to all of this?”

“Sure. I’m Detective Von Drady of the UCLA Police Department. I’m one of the officers investigating the death of Mr. Giordano.”

“Thank you. You know Professor James, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Could you tell us what you know about that student’s death and about Professor James’s role in it?”

“If any,” Oscar muttered, almost under his breath.

Dr. Wing seemed to take no offense at Oscar’s barely heard amendment of his question, and said, “Of course, if any.”

“All right,” Drady said. “Earlier this month I got a call that a student had been removed unconscious from a professor’s office at the law school. I was asked by my supervisor to go to investigate. I went to Professor James’s office and found a UCLA security officer, George Skillings, already there. He brought me up to date on the situation, and I began to survey the crime scene. Shortly after I arrived, I learned that the student had died.”

“May I,” Oscar said, “—not to ask a question, but just to clarify something, so someone listening to this later won’t be confused—be permitted to state my understanding that there was no crime scene at that point because there was no suspicion of a crime?”

“Is that right, Detective?” Dr. Wing asked.

“Well, yes, that’s right. At that time it was just an unexplained student death caused by an unexplained illness. I used the term
crime scene
just to mean a place where we were looking for evidence related to the death.”

“Well,” Dr. Wing said, “I’m a doctor, and I’m aware there are lots of students taken ill on campus every year, isn’t that so, Detective?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you don’t usually consider their dorm rooms crime scenes, do you?”

“No.”

I was happy. Dr. Wing seemed to have picked up on what an attempted setup this whole thing was.

“Okay, thanks. Please return to your narrative, Detective.”

“Well, eventually, I treated it as a potential crime scene, especially after Mr. Skillings told me he suspected the coffee the student drank was somehow tainted.”

“Then what happened?” Dr. Wing asked.

“I took the coffee sample Mr. Skillings had collected into my possession, along with the sugar and the beans. Shortly after that Professor James showed up and told me what had happened. One of the things she mentioned was that Mr. Giordano had brought a treasure map with him, but that it was now missing. That later became of very great interest to us.”

At the mention of treasure, Professor Healey’s eyes lit up, and she asked her first question. “Did you ever find the map, Detective?”

“No, ma’am, we didn’t. But I did learn later that Professor James had hidden the information about the map from the EMTs and hadn’t told Mr. Skillings about it either. And now I understand Mr. Giordano’s brother has sued her for the return of the map.”

I sat there and cursed myself for my decision, taken what seemed like ages ago now, to keep the map story to myself initially—a decision I had made not to protect myself but to protect the confidentiality that Primo had seemed so concerned about. It was a lesson I kept having to relearn: stop worrying about other people and worry more about yourself.

Dr. Wing then returned to asking questions. The examination, if you could call it that, wandered on for a while, with nothing much being said that I didn’t already know and eliciting nothing that seemed very damaging. Then Professor Broontz had another question.

“Detective, isn’t it the case that you learned later that Professor James had taken what coffee was left in the pot and tossed it out, along with the coffeepot?”

“Yes, I did learn that.”

“Did that seem suspicious to you?”

“Not necessarily.”

Wow, I thought to myself, that was a straightforward, honest answer.

“Why not?”

“We just didn’t know—and don’t know—all the circumstances of how she came to discard the coffee and the pot. Plus Mr. Skillings had already collected some of that evidence.”

It didn’t seem that anyone else had any further questions of Drady and, as usual, Dr. Wing seemed about to move on without asking Oscar if he had any questions. I looked over at Oscar, because we had discussed a few days ago what had really happened with the discarded coffeepot.

“Detective,” Oscar asked, “do you recall that when you were in Professor James’s office and were about to leave, Professor James asked you what she should do with the remaining coffee?”

“No, I don’t recall that.”

“Maybe I can try to refresh your recollection a bit.”

Dr. Wing interrupted. “You know, Oscar, it seems to me you’re about to try to cross-examine the witness, which is not our approach in this informal setting. I think the detective has tried to answer your question as best he can, and we should just leave it at that for now.”

“Okay, thank you,” Oscar said. “I have nothing further.”

I knew, of course, that had we been in a real courtroom, Oscar would have pressed Drady to the wall about his answer. “I don’t recall that” is one of the most weaselly answers a witness can give. It can mean “I don’t recall one way or the other.” It can mean “I don’t recall that exactly, but I recall something else.” Or it can mean “I don’t recall right now because I don’t want to recall”—as well as a whole host of other things. All of which leave the witness free to recall a more precise answer later on. I truly hated this way of doing things. I thought we were done when Professor Broontz asked one final question.

“Detective,” she asked, “did Professor James tell you she’d been out of the office on a phone call and had left the student alone in her office for a while?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say how long that phone call had taken?”

“She said about six or seven minutes. And George Skillings later told me she’d given him the same estimate.”

“Have you had the opportunity to check her estimate against her phone records?”

“Yes, we obtained her cell phone records from her phone company.”

“What did you find?”

“We found a record of an incoming call to Professor James’s number that started at 7:36
A.M.
on the day of Mr. Giordano’s death and ended at 7:53
A.M.
”

Professor Trolder spoke up for the first time. “So the call was seventeen minutes long, not seven?”

“Yes.”

I guess math was Trolder’s thing.

I looked at Oscar and he looked at me. I was dumbstruck; he appeared merely surprised. This must be the real reason Broontz had brought Drady in to testify. But why had she left the question to the very end? And what inference was going to be drawn from the answer? That I lied? But why would I? While I was pondering all of that, Oscar gave it the old college try.

“Detective,” he asked, “do you know what happens to the call time record if someone receives a cell phone call but doesn’t click off at the end of the call?”

“No, I don’t.”

I didn’t know either, but I suspected that the call had indeed lasted that long. I just hadn’t thought about it since I gave my initial rough time estimate to Skillings. Nor had I thought it was important. Until now.

Broontz was no doubt going to argue later that I blatantly lied about the length of the phone call, even if she didn’t know—yet—exactly why I felt the need to lie about it, or even if it was obvious I’d be caught. But, she’d argue, lie I surely had. And then she’d add, “Once a liar, always a liar.”

As a civil procedure teacher, she was no doubt aware of the California jury instruction that tells jurors: if you think a witness lied about one thing, you’re entitled to disbelieve them about everything else. This wasn’t a jury, of course, but she’d make the same argument to the panel, and she might just get them to buy it. And then who knew what else they’d conclude I lied about? How the receipt for the poison got in my pocket? Whether I had the map?

Shortly after that Dr. Wing declared a lunch break. Before we left he asked Professor Broontz who the next witness would be. She said she couldn’t tell him exactly because of scheduling issues, and she didn’t want to give him a bunch of names and then not be able to bring any of them in. Dr. Wing said okay, that we’d just wait to see who showed up after lunch.

CHAPTER 77

T
he medical school complex is on the southern end of the UCLA campus, not far from Westwood Village. Oscar and I walked the two blocks into the Village to have lunch. We chose the Corner Bakery, which has good, quick food and large tables, some of which, if you pick the right one, have a reasonable amount of privacy. We grabbed one by the windows.

The Corner Bakery is a place where you stand in line and order, and then they bring your food to you. I ordered a chicken panino and a large coffee. Oscar ordered an apple.

Back at our table, I said, “All you’re having for lunch is an apple?”

“That’s what I usually eat, Jenna. Well, sometimes I’ll have a peach, if they have them.”

“Okay. I need more sustenance than that.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

“Do you know where that saying comes from, Oscar?”

“No, where?”

“It was an old proverb popularized in the early 1900s by an ad agency for the apple industry to try to persuade people that apples were healthy.”

“Didn’t people already think they were healthy?”

“Not really. At that time apples were primarily used to make alcoholic apple cider. Carry Nation and her friends in the temperance movement were chopping down not only saloons but apple trees. So the industry decided to promote apples as healthy.”

Oscar took a bite out of his apple. “Huh, who knew? You know, you’re becoming as filled with esoteric information as your friend Robert.”

“It’s a hazard of being a law professor.”

“Well, what does the law professor think so far about our bizarre hearing?”

“It’s driving me crazy. I mean, the information is so squishy it’s junk. I also think it was a mistake to agree to participate and that we should depart.”

“That won’t stop the hearing. If we stay we learn what the police and others are thinking. It will be helpful in any defense.”

“I thought you said they were no longer looking at me, that this was over. If that’s so why do I need to think about a defense, Mr. Criminal Defense Attorney?”

“After listening to this morning’s testimony, I’m wondering if the DA was shining me on. That they’re still looking at you.”

“Great.”

“Jenna, what did you make of the testimony about the length of your phone call?”

“I was shocked. I do remember that guy from the law review just wouldn’t get off the phone, and that the call took a long time. But I would have sworn it was well under ten minutes, not seventeen. I assume Greta’s just going to argue that if I lied about one thing, I’m lying about everything else.”

“Maybe,” Oscar said, “if the information about the timing is correct—and I have no reason right now to think Drady’s lying about it—it should make us rethink what happened here.”

“Please explain.”

“We’ve been working with a time line that says you locked the door the night before and that someone with a key opened it or someone picked the lock. On purpose. Let’s assume instead that you simply forgot to lock it the night before or maybe the cleaning people accidentally left it open or whatever.”

“Where would that get us?”

“If we assume that someone had to pick the lock or use an illegal key, it strongly suggests they were after you, and that they came in the night before and spiked the ingredients for the not-yet-made coffee with sodium azide, hoping you’d drink it.”

“Which is what I’ve been assuming.”

“Right. But if we assume instead that you accidentally left the door open the night before, it erodes that assumption and means that whatever was done to the coffee was likely done either right after Primo got there or right after you left to take the phone call.”

I thought about it. “That could make sense. Particularly if Dr. Nightingale is correct that sodium azide is too dangerously unstable to grind in the coffee grinder and too heat sensitive to be exposed to the high heat of the coffeemaker.”

“Right. It means the poison was most likely dumped directly into Primo’s coffee cup. And if you were out of that office for seventeen minutes instead of only six or seven, it leaves a lot of time for someone to show up and do that.”

Just then our food arrived and was set down in front of us by the server. I began to eat my panino, and Oscar started in on his apple. Before biting into it, he used his knife to peel all the skin away.

“You’re taking off the skin?”

“Sure.”

“But that’s the part that keeps the doctor away. It’s got most of the vitamins and fiber.”

“I do what I do, Jenna. I’m too old to adopt newfangled approaches like eating the skin of an apple.”

“You just throw it away?”

“No. At home I might use some of it to make an apple martini for guests.”

“Oh.”

“Weren’t we discussing,” Oscar said, “who poisoned Primo?”

“Yes. I suppose I’m just trying to take my mind off the whole thing. Three days ago I thought this was over, and now it’s returned.”

“Let’s get back to the analysis, Jenna. First of all, you think you left your office door open when you went across the hall to take the phone call, right?”

“I’m sure I did.”

“If you were gone for seventeen minutes, that means Primo was sitting there by himself for seventeen minutes with the door open, and almost anyone could have come by and seen him.”

“True.”

“Jenna, isn’t this just like when the cops find people murdered in their own house and there’s no sign of forced entry? What do they always say in those cases?”

“I don’t know, Oscar, what do they say?”

“That the killers were probably someone the victims knew, and that the victims let them in.”

“You’re saying if my office door was open for all that time, the person who poisoned the coffee was someone Primo knew who came by and saw him sitting there and invited himself in to chat. Or herself. And Primo made no objection.”

“Exactly, and, while chatting, whoever that was surreptitiously dumped the poison in Primo’s coffee, waited for him to get in too much distress to call for help and then left and locked the door behind them.”

“The only problem with that,” I said, “is that there was clearly poison in the coffeepot itself, too, because it burned the leaves of the plant I dumped it in.”

“All right,” Oscar said, “let’s modify my theory. After Primo was disabled, the killer dumped the poison in the pot, too, in order to frame you, or maybe kill you. That way, it got into the pot without having to be brewed and exposed to too much heat.”

“If you’re right, Oscar,” I said, “that leaves us with two very likely suspects: Julie and Quinto. Both were in the vicinity and both had reason to kill Primo. Julie out of anger and Quinto to get Primo’s copy of the map, with the longitude of the sunken
Ayuda
written on it.”

“Exactly. The problem is that while we now have a plausible scenario, we have no direct evidence against either of them.”

“Except,” I said, “that Julie tore out the diary page on which Primo wrote that Julie had threatened to kill him. And in the diary Primo also wrote that Quinto threatened to kill him if he showed the map to me.”

“Actually,” Oscar said, “that’s not quite what Primo wrote, or not all of it, anyway. You can check the copy of the diary, but, if I recall correctly, what Primo actually said was that Quinto had threatened to kill him if Primo showed you the map in order to ‘involve you’ in ‘our project.’”

“What’s the difference?”

“Your interpretation focuses on Quinto being worried that you’d see the map. I think what Quinto was worried about—assuming the diary reports all of this correctly—was not that you’d see the map but that once you got involved, you would investigate the true facts of their project. Whatever they are. And that perhaps Aldous, who already knew a lot, would help you.”

Just then my cell rang. I answered and listened.

“A drink tomorrow? Sure, I could do that. Five o’clock sounds fine. If I’m going to run late for some reason, I’ll call you on the number you just called me on.”

“Who was that?” Oscar asked.

“It was Tess. She says she’s discovered something I’ll find very interesting.”