Steve Martini - Double Tap

“You can be sure that’s what the cops are going to say when they get on the stand in your trial,” says Harry. “It’s a major point for them, and while it doesn’t go to the murder itself, it goes to the murder weapon, the tracing of the firearm. We probably can’t keep it out.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I say.

“What?” Harry turns to me. “Like a jury isn’t going to make inferences that a man who steals a gun might use it in a crime? Let’s be realistic.”

“Actually, that might be a point for our side,” I tell him. “After all, Mr. Ruiz had to know that the firearm was registered in his name on military records. You did know that, didn’t you?” I look at Ruiz.

He nods.

“So if he knew the weapon was going to be traced back to him, why would he use it to kill Madelyn Chapman? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Lovers’ quarrel, crime of passion. People don’t take time to think under those circumstances,” Harry points out. “Besides, it’s the fact the gun was stolen that puts him in a bad light. You have to admit, it’s not something that helps the case.”

“That may depend on whether Mr. Ruiz takes the stand. Right now all they can say is that the firearm once owned by the federal government, according to their records, was last known to be in the possession of our client. That was six years ago. Without Mr. Ruiz’s admission on the stand, they can’t say whether it was stolen by him or lost somewhere along the way. Fact is, they don’t know what happened to it.”

Harry looks at me a little cross-eyed, like I’m crazy. Any rational jury can connect the dots. “What are you saying? That we can sell the jury on the theory that somebody else managed to get ahold of a firearm that was once issued to the defendant? That they held it for God knows how many years and they used it to kill Madelyn Chapman so they could frame him? Why?”

I give him a look like Who knows ? “I’d be willing to bet that military records regarding issuance of firearms and ammunition aren’t that orderly or neat. You can bet they make mistakes and that somewhere there’s a written report or a government audit showing the frequency of such errors: lost or stolen firearms, military weapons used in crimes. It’s the one thing you can count on in any government bureaucracy: they keep records on everything, including their own mistakes. All I’m saying is that we can shower a good deal of doubt on who had this gun last.”

“Yeah, but here the defendant kn-” I put up a hand and stop him before Harry can finish the thought: that it’s too much of a coincidence that Ruiz knew the victim, had stayed overnight in her house, and that his firearm was used to kill her.

I look at Ruiz. “Let me ask you: Do you have any sense as to how often the Army might make mistakes in this area? Say somebody checks a gun back in and fails to sign off, or they lose a piece of paper. There are people in the military, I assume, who would know this, if in fact it’s a problem. We could put them on the stand.”

What I am telling Ruiz is that there may be a way to put an evidentiary wedge, a slice of reasonable doubt, however slender, between him and the murder weapon, deceptive as this may be.

I stop talking and all eyes are on him. Ruiz looks to Harry, then back at me. Finally he shakes his head. “I don’t get it. What’s the point?” he says. “The gun is mine.”

It’s the thing about desperate defendants, especially those laboring under a psychic load of guilty knowledge with no one to share the burden. In such cases it’s the rare soul who won’t grab any straw in an effort to weave some gold. And I’ve never known one yet to ask questions about ethics in the process.

“I think you understood it very well, Mr. Ruiz. It’s simple and it’s straightforward. It’s called the truth. It’s not the answer a lawyer might look for in court, but then, a smart lawyer would never put you on the stand and allow the question to be asked since he already knows, as I did, that any other answer would be a lie and would likely be exposed as one.”

“So you’re testing me to see if I’ll tell you a lie?”

“You have to excuse him,” says Harry. “He’s a lawyer.”

“And you’re telling us that you didn’t kill Madelyn Chapman and you don’t know who did. Is that right?”

Ruiz looks at me for a second, wondering, I’m sure, what part of the question is a trick. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. You don’t believe me, I guess I’m just going to have to go look for another-”

“Relax, Sergeant. I believe you.”

At first glance the grounds of Isotenics, Inc., aka Software City, look like an Ivy League academy. However, once inside the gate, a closer inspection reveals something more akin to a military base.

The outer-perimeter fence, constructed of ornamental iron for architectural effect, is at least eight feet high and decorated at the top of each picket with a fleur-de-lis, forked and needle sharp like the point of a pike. Anyone trying to climb this would require either the strength and agility of an Olympic gymnast or a ladder on each side. One slip and you would end up like a hot dog on a skewer.

The front gate, with a guardhouse in the center, is manned by uniformed security backed up by surveillance cameras on poles set on high ground as I drive in.

Beyond the gate, the blacktop lane winds through the hills and climbs in elevation toward the top of a ridge in the distance. On the way I pass clustered villages of redbrick buildings, commercial offices designed to approximate colonial New England with names posted on signs for various divisions of the company. The buildings, some with ivy climbing their walls, are erected in a rectangle around a green common, the irrigated and well-manicured lawn contrasting sharply with the dry grass of the California hillside. In places carefully engineered hedgerows covered with oleander and ficus have been used to conceal inner security fences, electrified chain link topped by tight coils of razor wire. None of this is unusual for a company whose principal client is the United States Defense Department. Marked private patrol units cruise the roads.

The rolling hills, more than a thousand acres of brown grass parched tinder dry by the arid climate of Southern California, are punctuated by occasional groves of stately eucalyptus trees.

As I climb, and look back down from on high, the buildings, their peaked roofs and gabled ends glistening in the morning sunlight, spread out below me, then disappear behind a ridge as I round a curve. It is plain to see how the place acquired the appellation campus among the press, its various divisions separated as they are like colleges at Oxford. According to the materials I have read, Madelyn Chapman designed the setting so that corporate divisions could each compete against the other in that elevated entrepreneurial quest, the pursuit of perfection.

Halfway to the top the hill, I am stopped at a second security kiosk where the pass I was given at the front gate is collected and exchanged for another. My name is checked off a clipboard and I am handed a paper parking permit. Here the surface of the road suddenly transforms from asphalt to cobblestone arranged in an intricate herringbone design. The road is lined with jacaranda trees, their petals in late bloom covering the ground like a sky-blue shadow under the spreading branches. I take all of this to be a sign that I am entering the commercial equivalent of nirvana, a place set apart, above the mercantile gnashing of teeth and struggle for survival in the world below.

As the Jeep’s tight suspension rattles over the surface of the road, I look to my left and see the endless blue haze of the Pacific as it comes into view a few miles to the west.