Prime Witness (46 page)

I pick up the phone to call Nikki at the bed and breakfast. The man at the front desk answers.

“Laura Warren,” I say. It is the name we have registered Nikki under.

“Ms. Warren has stepped out,” he tells me. “With her daughter.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. They left several hours ago.”

“Have her call her husband when she gets back,” I tell him. I give him the number, and wonder where Nikki would go, left in a country village with no mall or shops, where they roll in the sidewalks at dusk.

Chapter Thirty-four

I
hear tapping on the glass, my office door, a figure through the translucence on which Mario’s name is still stenciled in gold letters, reversed like an image in a mirror.

“Come in.”

A dense expression invades my face as I see who it is.

“You got a minute?” It’s Adrian Chambers, a wrinkled suit, collar button open, the knot on his tie four inches down.

I look at him, wonder what he’s doing here. I suppose he can read this thought on my face.

“Dusalt told me you might be here,” he says. “I ran into him in the parking lot at the PD, twenty minutes ago. Headin’ someplace.”

Claude’s running late for the airport. Denny in a cold sweat caught the afternoon flight. Dusalt should have picked him up, and his surly cargo, at the airport ten minutes ago.

“I’m working on jury instructions,” I tell him. What he should be doing. We have a meeting in an hour.

He rolls his eyes. “The sonofabitch is obsessive, isn’t he?” he says. He’s talking about Ingel and his penchant for early jury instructions.

“You got a couple of minutes?” he says. “I’d like to talk.”

I look at my watch. “Not much time,” I say. I’m trying to get rid of him.

I am glad that Claude is not bringing Coltrane back here. A chance meeting with Adrian and our case might suddenly take a turn for the worse, though this is hard to imagine. Chambers has the olfactory senses of a bloodhound. A meeting with someone, Coltrane, he’s not seen before, in the middle of our case, and he would smell weighty consequence all over the man.

“It’ll just take a second,” he says.

I give him a look of annoyance, as if to say “if we must.”

“Come in.”

He drops his briefcase, reaches in his pocket and comes out with a pack of cigarettes. He offers me one. I decline. Adrian looks tired and drawn. Out of practice for five years, and older, I think maybe he’s forgotten the sapping mental and physical strain that is a major felony trial. Those on the nether side of fifty tell me that you begin to see this as the work of the young, like thirty-year-olds dragging their haunches across Astroturf in the NFL.

I motion to one of the client chairs. He sits.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been hearing things,” he says. “Talk.” He lights up. There’s the flare of spent tobacco from the tip. He’s talking, choppy words, as he strips little pieces of the raw unburnt stuff, using his teeth and one finger, from the tip of his tongue.

“It’s a small town. The bar’s a tight group, whether here or in Capital City,” he says. There is no real direct eye contact here. Instead he is looking around the office, at the pictures on the wall, the windows, anything but me. He is a map of simmering indifference, Adrian’s image of cool.

“Word is, that you believe I took this case as some kind of vendetta, that it’s personal, between you and me,” he says. He is not smiling as he says this, not that I much care.

“I hear that you’ve been saying that I took this case for one reason, to break your back.” Now he looks at me, for the first time I get the force of full eye contact.

I have said this to a few people, Claude and Harry, one or two others, intimates whom I trusted to keep a confidence. Now I feel like a fool, betrayed by my own predilection to talk, not because my assumption is wrong, but because it is coming back to me in my own words.

I smile at him, nearly laugh. “Well, Adrian, you gotta admit, there’s no love lost,” I say.

“We’ve had our differences,” he says. That he can call five years without a license to practice law “a difference” is a measure of Adrian’s powers of reduction.

“So what do you want?” I say. I’m growing restive with this conversation.

“I thought it was time that we cleared the air,” he says. “I wanted you to know that for my part this is no vendetta. I did not take this case because you’re involved. You’re not that important to me. I am not that obsessive.”

“This sounds like a conversation you should be having with your analyst,” I tell him. For Adrian this is a major disrobing of the soul, an unnatural act for the lawyer as renegade.

“Fine,” he says, “you wanna keep the bad blood flowing, then it’s on you, not me. Don’t go telling people that I’m engaged in some crusade of vengeance, when it’s you who won’t let it go.”

This stops me in my tracks for a moment, this man whom I despise sitting before me analyzing my thoughts—not because he is doing it, but because he is so right. I will not let it go.

“I took no personal pleasure,” he says, “in what happened today.” He’s talking about the disemboweling of Dr. Tolar. “I did what I had to, advocated for my client. You forget I’ve been sandbagged myself.” Adrian is talking about his bout with perjury, the fable-as-evidence that got him disbarred.

Then it hits me, like a thunderbolt. He’s putting me in his own shoes. He thinks I knew Tolar would lie when I put him up. He talks, and it becomes clear that this is his basis for détente. In Adrian’s mind we now have something in common, his image of me as the fallen angel.

I look at him, about to toss him from the office.

“Ingel threatened to go to the bar, didn’t he? Fucking judges,” he says. “A robe and a pension for life and they forget what it is to scrape for a living.”

Before I can say anything he’s telling me how he found out about Tolar and his failure to perform the Scofield autopsies. Curiosity silences me, bottles my anger for the moment.

“A lotta luck,” he says. “Another client, a civil matter.” He’s smiling at his good fortune.

“The kid works as a lab tech over at the medical school. Word gets around,” he says. “Tolar’s a schmuck. A six-figure income and tenure, he figures the world owes him based on his IQ.”

Adrian looks. No ashtray. He taps the ash on the carpet and steps on it with his foot.

“Once I found out, the evidence was easy to get,” he says. “How often do you listen to tapes of an autopsy prepping for a case? What lawyer has time? But there were nuggets in there I did not expect.”

It is like Adrian, talking to my placid, painted smile, a discussion of worthless confidences, trading on secrets no longer of value, shopping for a little good will.

Then he says: “I will tell you, that the knife wounds, the fact that they died somewhere else came as a real surprise.”

Adrian’s talking about the Scofields. He must have thought an oracle had intervened to send him copies of the Scofield autopsy tapes. These no doubt filled in all the blanks. Cryptic references to “sharp-edged lacerations at the point of entry wounds,” these in the written reports, on tape became stab wounds caused by a knife before introduction of the metal stakes. Naked, unembellished observations in the written report about the limited volume of blood at the scene, on tape seemingly drew conclusions: that the Scofields were killed elsewhere and moved to the creek.

That we finessed some of these findings and conclusions to keep him in the dark is a nuance Adrian can appreciate. “All’s fair,” he says.

“Glad you feel that way. Now as I’ve said I’ve got some work to do.”

“That’s only part of what I came to talk to you about. I’m looking at things. The jury is not exactly what we would have hoped for. From our side, Ingel’s voir dire”—he’s talking about the judge’s questioning of prospective jurors—“left a lot to be desired. And you,” he says, “your case is flying like some wounded duck.”

“Thank you for the appraisal, but I’ll wait for the jury’s verdict if you don’t mind.”

He puts up a hand and smiles. “No offense,” he says. “It’s what happens in trials. Things we can’t control.”

Given his creative approach to evidence, I’m surprised that Adrian would concede the possibility.

“I know,” he says, “there could be some rocky places for our side from here to the end. The stuff in the van, the broken window—who knows what a jury will make of it all? That’s why I’m here. My client is nervous. He’s dreaming about death at night.”

He does not make clear whether these visions are of the Russian’s own demise or of some bloody bodies on the Putah Creek.

“You understand,” he says, “that I don’t necessarily agree with this. But he wants me to take one more shot, to get the charges reduced.”

I can’t help myself. “You wanna plead?” I am more than a little surprised that, given the state of our case, he would even broach the subject at this point.

His look at me is almost whimsical.

“Not the same deal, you understand. Your case is not what it was when we started. Major holes in your theory,” he says. “It’s why I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Then it hits me. This man indeed does have crystal balls. Somehow he knows. Someplace he has heard. The leaks continue. Someone has told him that we have the prime witness. The confirmation. At this moment, Adrian Chambers may not know his name, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that Cleo Coltrane will finger his client for the murder of Abbott and Karen Scofield.

“Why so generous?” I say. “It would seem to cut against the grain of nature.”

He makes a face, like these things can happen.

“Second degree, terms to run concurrent, fifteen to life,” he says. “Same deal, we package ’em all. The six,” he says. “No loose ends.”

“And he’d be out in nine,” I say.

Adrian gestures with one hand, a little swivel at the wrist, like whatever happens.

“It’s a certain result for both of us,” he says. “The judge, I think, will go for it.”

He is probably right, Ingel at this moment is not exactly a well of confidence overflowing with faith in my abilities. With Acosta no doubt heckling him from the wings, the Prussian might do anything at this point to avoid an acquittal, or worse, a dismissal of the case by his own hand, for lack of evidence.

Adrian studies my expression like a rug merchant looking for a sale.

Before I can answer, the phone rings, the back line, the one not available to the general public.

“A second,” I say, telling Adrian to be patient.

He waves me on with his cigaretted hand, like go ahead.

I reach over and grab the receiver. It’s Claude.

“Guess who’s looking for you?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Adrian.”

“I know.”

“He’s there. You can’t talk?”

“Right. Where are you?” I ask.

“We got a problem,” he says.

“No Denny,” I say. I’m watching what I say in front of Adrian.

“No, he’s here all right, with Coltrane.”

I can hear the hum of human traffic and a PA system in the background. Claude’s at the airport.

“Problem is Coltrane won’t talk to anybody but you. He says he made the deal with you. If you’re not there, he wants to see a lawyer.”

This is a major problem for us. If Cleo Coltrane gets legal counsel, the first advice he will receive is to say nothing. It will take a week, maybe a month to negotiate the thicket with a lawyer, concessions on the federal charges. By then my case against Iganovich will be history.

I give a deep sigh. Ingel will kill me. Probably issue a bench warrant for my arrest, but I will have to send Lenore in my stead to talk about jury instructions at four o’clock.

“I’ll be there,” I tell Claude. “Tell him I’ll be there.” I take down the information from Claude, on the little calendar, the one propped up this way so Chambers can’t see. I write “Coltrane” across from the time. Claude estimates four-fifteen. I will have to make myself scarce so Ingel can’t find me.

“Where?” I ask Claude.

“Interrogation room four, ground floor of the jail,” he says.

I write this down next to Coltrane’s name.

“What’s Chambers want?” says Claude.

“Not now,” I say. “We can talk later. See you in a few minutes.”

Claude hangs up.

I look at Adrian again, seated in the chair, seemingly aloof, like he’s doing me some favor, indifferent as he plumbs my being for some answer, a sure result against the vagaries of a jury.

“A problem?” he says.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

He smiles.

“No deal,” I tell him.

Suddenly his leg is off the other, beady little slits for eyes.

“Why not? Your case is in the shit can,” he says.

“Like I said, Adrian. I’d rather take my chances with a jury.”

There are a lot of expletives here, Adrian’s voice running the range to the soprano. I can see the shadowed forms of secretaries outside my door standing idly, listening to this tirade overflow in my office.

He finishes, his face flushed.

I look at him. “Nothing personal, Adrian.” This seems to send him ballistic.

“Fine. It’s your funeral,” he says. “See you in court.”

He slams the door going out, nearly breaking the glass.

I pick up the phone and hit the intercom button.

Lenore answers after one ring. Before she can say anything, I start.

“Listen, I’ve got a problem. You’re gonna have to take the meeting with Ingel and Adrian alone.”

We are standing in a dimly lit little room, not much larger than a closet, Claude and I, looking through a one-way mirror into an interrogation room at the county jail. For the moment it is empty. Denny Henderson is bringing Coltrane up now.

I’ve told Claude about Adrian’s eleventh-hour deal. His suspicious mind is like my own. He believes that Adrian is anxious to cut a quick deal, before this witness can bury his case, place Iganovich at the scene of the Scofield murders and end Chambers’s hopes of fixing doubt in the jury’s mind. How he got news of the witness neither of us can guess. “Maybe the man’s clairvoyant,” says Claude.

I make a face. With Adrian one never knows.