Prime Witness (9 page)

Claude and I are now huddled in Feretti’s old office.

He has not seen this side of me before. Up to now I have been passive, waiting in the wings to help only if called upon. But with Ingel and Acosta now kneeling on my throat, I am becoming, in the jargon of our time, more proactive.

I had noticed as we entered that Claude had assembled an entourage in the outer office, another cop in a uniform I don’t recognize and a second man, heavyset, a gut like Babe Ruth, in a blue pin-striped work shirt. These are the percipient witnesses, the people who found the van and its grisly contents.

“We will need Sellig,” I say. “Have Henderson call DOJ and get her out here.” I am taking no chances with one of the county crime techs. If the case against the Putah Creek killer starts here, I am determined that it will stand on a solid footing, evidence hard as concrete, nothing some slick defense attorney can suppress in a pretrial motion months from now.

“Now tell me what happened,” I say.

Claude’s looking at his notebook again.

“Our guy,” he says, “Iganovich appears to be a Russian immigrant, in the country four or five years now. We ran a rap sheet on him, came up clean, only thing we found is a license from the state, last October. Licensed security guard,” he says. “No firearm permit.”

Claude’s shaking his head. “Can you beat it?” he says. “Guy’s probably not even in the country legally and he’s working security.”

“We can worry about his immigration status later. How did you find this thing, the van?” I ask. I start looking for potential problems, the lawyer’s mind at work.

“It’s all real clean,” says Claude.

“Humor me.”

“Officer Dandrich, outside, is with the university police,” he says.

It’s the uniform I didn’t recognize.

“Two days ago he sees this van parked in one of the university lots. It’s two A.M., the lot’s reserved for day use only, the place is empty. He thinks maybe whoever owns it is working late. So he doesn’t think anything about it. He looks at the rear tire, it’s been chalked by the meter maid. Yesterday he comes back on shift and the van’s still there. There’s a ticket on the windshield. He looks at the tires again, the vehicle hasn’t been moved. Traffic code for the university gives the guy twenty-four hours, then it’s towed. So he calls the tow truck company, a vendor downtown.”

According to Claude this is a commercial garage under contract to the university.

I am following this unfolding drama, my feet propped on the leaf of the desk which I have pulled out for this purpose.

“That’s where this guy Harold comes in,” he says. “Mr. Goodwrench?” He’s referring to grease and pinstripes, outside in the hail.

“Mr. Harold,” he says, “is real careful. He’s been sued before by the angry tow toads, so he makes it standard operating procedure whenever he takes a car from the university to inventory the personal property inside. He insists on doing this in front of one of the campus cops.”

“Trusting guy,” I say.

“Anyway,” he says, “Harold and the campus cop”—he looks at his notes—“Dandrich, they give the van a closer look. One of ’em discovers that the window, on the passenger side over the rear door, has been smashed in.”

“The cop didn’t see this the day before?” I ask.

Claude shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders. “I asked him. He says it was parked next to one of those cement columns in the garage. You couldn’t see it unless you went around the column.”

“So we don’t know when the window was broken?”

“No.”

“Anyway, Dandrich and Harold, when they see this thing, the glass gone, they’re real curious. They reach inside, unlock it and pop the doors.”

“The van was still locked?”

He nods. “What do you think they found?” Claude’s looking at me, a little pregnant pause.

I shake my head, like search me.

“A towel on the passenger seat, covered in what looks like dried blood. That’s not all,” he says. “In the back, in plain view . . .” He adds this latter with his hands outstretched, like he’s protesting no foul. “They find a pile of metal tent stakes, the little shiny ones L-shaped—and bingo—coiled up on the floor next to them, nice plastic clothesline cord, thirty feet of the stuff.”

I arch an eyebrow, like maybe we’ve hit pay dirt. “Where are the stakes and the rope now?”

“Didn’t touch a thing,” he says. “Left them right where we found ’em.”

“Good. Get Sellig immediately. Tell her what you found and how you found it, all the details. I don’t want anybody else to touch that van, understood? Tell her I’ll need a report, a comparison to the rope and stakes found at the other murder scenes. And I would like it as fast as possible. Tell her we need it for a warrant to pick this guy up.” If we are to search the Russian’s apartment, Sellig’s report will be the lodestone in any application for a search warrant, and ultimately for his arrest.

Claude’s fishing in his pockets. His hand comes out with a little vial of pills, some medication, then he’s off down the hall toward the water cooler. Several minutes pass. I get up, stretch my legs and wander out into the hall. Claude is forty feet away at the cooler. He apparently has downed his pills, but now he’s not alone. Lenore Goya is talking to him, the picture of animation. I can tell that Claude is having a tough time getting in a word. She sees me and stops. Two seconds later she disappears back into her office, and closes the door, hard.

Claude pockets the little vial of pills and heads back toward me.

“What was that all about?”

Dusalt makes a face and shrugs a little, like perhaps he’d rather not say. I persist.

“Just curious. She wants to know about Putah Creek. What’s going on.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Maybe I should invite her to join us?”

“I don’t know.” Claude is a mask of indecision. I sense there was more hostility than inquisitiveness in their conversation.

“A little hurt pride,” he says.

“The fact that I was appointed to fill the gap?”

He nods. “Sure. Feretti gets sick and the first thing they do is bring in an outsider. They don’t even talk to her. She carried the load in the office even when Mario was here.”

I raise an eyebrow at this.

“He’d been going downhill for a long time,” says Claude. “Goya covered for him. She paid some dues. She feels more than a little betrayed.”

There’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I say.

It’s opened by a woman, ringlets of straggly brown hair. It’s a familiar face. I think maybe the cleaning woman, lots of wrinkles, and bags bigger than Gucci’s under each eye. Her dress is something from the Goodwill. She is the defining element of frump.

“Can I help you?”

“You Madriani?” she says. A cigarette dangles from between painted lips as she talks.

“I am.”

“They called me at the rest home,” she says.

I take another look at her and think maybe she belongs there.

“I was visiting my mother.”

“And you are?”

“Sheila Aikens,” she says. “They said you wanted me. You want me in here or outside?” Under one arm she has a large file folder, three inches thick, the kind that expands like an accordion, and a purse over the other shoulder. In her free hand is a coffee cup soiled by lipstick.

I look at Claude as if to ask “is this the best we can do?” He smiles at me, a little sheepish.

“You can set up outside,” I tell her. “I’ll find you when I’m ready.”

She’s dripping ash all over the carpet as she stands there.

“Yeah. Sure.” The grating tone of her voice has all the charm of a wood rasp dragged across a splintered board. Her lack of inflection says “sure—hurry up and wait.”

She closes the door.

“Where the hell did she come from?” I look at Claude.

He makes a face, something from the Old World. “You’d have to ask Feretti.”

“It’s a little late,” I say.

Dusalt gives me the shrug, like such matters are clearly outside of his realm.

Though it’s not good to think ill of the dead, given Roland Overroy’s sorry work ethic, and now the vision of Sheila Aikens lingering in my doorway like the odor of Pepe LePew, I am gaining a whole new perspective on Mario’s management style.

“Where were we?” I say.

“Clothesline cord and metal stakes.”

“Yes.”

I probe around the edges inquiring as to exactly where these things were inside the van when first observed.

“We didn’t touch a thing,” says Claude. “It was all right there in plain view, in the back of the van.” On this Claude is a little defensive.

“The vehicle was abandoned,” he says. “The guy has no reasonable expectation of privacy. We didn’t need a warrant to look inside.”

I look at him and smile. “Two days in a pay lot?”

Claude blanches a little.

I don’t want to have to shop for a sympathetic judge, someone who might buy this thin argument, only to be slapped down later on appeal. In the judicial community, judges who issue warrants are like the rabbis of the ancient Talmud, each with his own relative reputation. Pick one who is not highly regarded, and you will pay the price later, in spades.

“Have you talked personally to Mr. Harold about the procedures he uses to inventory vehicles?”

Claude nods.

“Does he inventory personal property inside the vehicle every time he takes one in tow?”

“Like clockwork.”

I make a face. “Without exception?” I trust Claude, but I have seen too many cases in which the cops will fudge their facts to make them fit.

“Always. Invariably,” he says.

Claude knows what I’m asking, whether he feels confident in this information, whether he can sign an affidavit affirming these facts under penalty of perjury, for review by a superior court judge.

“Harold’s outside,” he says. “You wanna talk to him yourself?” Claude is testing me. Seeing whether I trust him, this hotshot defense lawyer turned prosecutor.

“No.” I don’t bite. “We go on what you have.” A little investment in trust.

“We’re OK, at least for the moment,” I tell him. “A properly impounded vehicle subject to a routine inventory. Whatever we find should be fair game.”

It is one of the exceptions carved out by the law. A search warrant will not be required for the towel, rope and tent stakes found in the van. Assuming our judge knows the law, Sellig should be free to do her magic on them.

Claude smiles with this thought. The fickle gods of criminal process have blessed him.

“We still need to do hair and fibers on the van,” I tell him, “and for that we’ll need a warrant.”

He nods. So far so good.

We are getting hourly reports from Henderson and the group staking out Iganovich’s apartment. He has not shown, either there or at the van. Claude is taking bets that the man is in Mexico drinking margaritas.

“The heat’s on,” he says. “Would you stick around?”

“No.” But it’s a truism in the law that those who violate it, more often than not, do dumb things.

I’m busy composing in my head, dictating to Aikens, who is bent over an old IBM Selectric that’s covered by more ash than Mt. Vesuvius. The woman is smoking like a chimney, keying out the affidavit for Claude’s signature. Dusalt has firmed up his facts with the two witnesses and sent them home.

I have a single objective in mind: to convince an impartial magistrate that there is a reasonable probability that evidence of a crime is located in the Russian’s van. With this a warrant will be issued. We can then take prints and fibers, vacuum it for hair, check the tires for impressions, and hope that in all of this we will find some connection with the Putah Creek killings.

I am now dictating from hand-written notes, thoughts I have taken during Claude’s earlier briefing, from his follow-up with the witnesses.

As I talk to her, I have one eye on the paper moving through Aikens’s typewriter and the other on Claude, to ensure that I’m not departing from the straight and narrow as related by the university cop and Mr. Harold.

Claude issues little nods every few seconds as I pass over critical benchmarks in their scenario. He must be comfortable with this declaration. It is his ass in the flames if some judge thinks he lied.

I marvel a little at Aikens. Cigarette and all, her fingers move like a blur over the keyboard. She has used the correction key only once in two pages. I am forming a new opinion, regretting my rash assessment of Mario’s leadership abilities. The lady knows her job.

“What about Lockyer?” says Claude. “He’s an easy touch. We get warrants from him all the time. A slam dunk.” Claude is dropping names in my suggestion box, the process of shopping for a judge who might issue a warrant.

I shake my head. “Not on this one,” I say. Lockyer may be fine for an auto theft ring, or a drug bust. But he’s a former prosecutor. On this one the appellate courts will be taking a more critical look. I want a neutral, detached magistrate to review the affidavit.

I’ve already staked out my judge, placed my phone call while Claude was in the other room with his witnesses. Frances Kerney is a former presiding judge of the superior court in this county and known to be on a short list of candidates for elevation to the appellate court. By the time this case arrives on appeal, it is likely that she will be ensconced there. Whatever she touched while on the trial bench will no doubt receive the subtle benefit of any doubt from her brothers of the cloth. A cynical view, perhaps. But in a capital case, you seize every edge.

I have Kerney on call. I possess her schedule for the afternoon and early evening, and her home phone number should we go late. I am prepared to grovel if I must.

I’m putting the wrap on the affidavit when I sense motion behind me, the swinging gate at the public counter. I turn. It is Kay Sellig and the patrolman I have assigned to chauffeur her, a courtesy intended to produce a quick turnaround. It has not failed. She has a preliminary analysis of the cord and metal stakes.

Sellig drops her briefcase, a slim leather affair, on Aikens’s desk and turns a satisfied smile in my direction.

“Don’t know who he is,” she says. “But he’s hung himself with his own rope.”