Steve Martini - Double Tap

“No wonder the cops didn’t want us to know about it.” Harry is indignant. “According to the shop owner, Chapman wrote him a check on the spot and took the piece with her when she left the store. The gallery offered to deliver it but she said no. She wanted to take it with her. They packed it up and helped her load it into the front seat of her car.”

“And the cops have no idea what happened to it?” I ask.

“Catch this: we hit ‘em with a motion for discovery,” says Harry. “Demanded everything they had regarding that object of art previously owned and in the possession of the victim, Madelyn Chapman, and known as the Orb at the Edge . We attached a photograph and a written description of the glass from the catalog.” Harry is holding an envelope. He removes a folded piece of paper, a single sheet through which I can see three or four lines typed on the other side. “Listen to this. This is what we get back. And I quote: ‘This office is not in possession of any object either identified as the Orb at the Edge or resembling the item described in your motion for discovery dated. .’ blah, blah, blah.” Harry looks at me and smiles, teeth bared, like a shark. “That’s it. That’s all they say. Can you believe it? An item valued at more than half a million dollars is missing, the owner is dead, shot twice through the head, and they see no motive for murder in any of this.”

“Come trial, they may claim our client took it,” I tell him.

“Then where is it?” Harry asks.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe as good as theirs. Any idea how many other people were in the gallery at the time Chapman showed up to look at the piece?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” says Harry.

“Problem is,” says Herman, “according to the shop owner, only other people in that part of the store that afternoon were two old ladies. He remembers ‘cuz he wanted ‘em to leave so he and Chapman could talk in private.”

“I’ll bet.” I’m looking at the single page from the DA’s office that Harry has just handed to me. I spin around in my chair and begin thumbing through a stack of files on the credenza behind me.

“What are you looking for?”

“I’ll know when I find it,” I tell him. It takes a minute or so. I locate it about halfway down in the stack that has been growing steadily with each motion for discovery served on the DA and the cops. I pull several stapled pages from the pile along with an envelope containing some photographs. I place the stapled pages on my desk next to the DA’s letter. I jot a note to myself on a Post-it and stick it on the letter. Then I paper-clip the entire bundle together, with the DA’s letter on top.

“What is it?” says Harry.

“Could be a point for our side-that is, if the sand doesn’t shift under our feet between now and trial.”

“Let’s just hope the cops don’t find this Orb thing in a pawnshop somewhere with a ticket under Ruiz’s name,” says Herman.

“Now, that’s a cheery thought,” says Harry.

“Well, like your partner says, that’s the kinda sand you don’t want shiftin’. You want lotsa optimism, go into politics,” says Herman.

Herman is right. Happy thoughts of easy endings are fine for those who deal in pixie dust. But a criminal-defense lawyer who skips into court on a bubble of buoyancy is likely to slink out missing a sizable chunk of his ass, to say nothing of his client’s. Even when you’ve crossed all the t ‘s and dotted all the i ‘s, you can still find yourself bouncing objections off the uneven surface of some intellectual gremlin in black robes. Unanswered questions about the Orb , why it disappeared and where it went, may be one of our better arguments, but to place all of our hopes in this one basket would not be wise. Ask any defense lawyer and they will tell you. You can usually punch more holes in a prosecutor’s case with a shotgun than a rifle.

For the moment we drop it and move on.

“Do we know whether the cops have a time frame for the murder?” I ask.

“If they do, they aren’t saying,” says Harry. “Playing it close to the vest.” According to Harry, they are going to make us pick through everything in their reports to reconstruct the state’s best guess as to when the murder occurred. “According to the police reports, none of the neighbors heard the shots,” he says.

“No mystery to that. Silencer on the rocks.” Herman makes it sound like a posh new drink in some upscale bar.

Besides the murder weapon, the handgun that the police found in a flower bed in the backyard, they also found a six-inch cylindrical silencer, its gun-blue finish not even scratched or dented on the sandstone ledge of rocks behind the victim’s house on the other side of the wall near the ocean.

“We do have something from the art shop where she bought the glass,” says Herman. He takes a small notebook from his pocket and starts flipping pages. The cheaters have now slid down his nose so that he is holding the notebook at arm’s length and reading long-distance. “Talked to the owner and his son. Middle Eastern fella. Last name is Asani. Father is Ibram. Boy’s first name is Hassan. Best they could figure, the victim left the store a few minutes after five. Kid says five-ten, no later than five-fifteen. The father says it could have been as late as five-thirty. Old man was a little uptight, the kid was spacey. You want my advice, I’d go with the father.”

“Do we know whether she stopped anywhere else before going home?” I look at them, elbows on the desk, hands open, looking for an answer. Herman shrugs his shoulders. “Last place she was seen alive was the art shop. Far as I know.”

Harry shakes his head. “Figure it’s unlikely she’s gonna stop anywhere else. I wouldn’t want to leave something as valuable as the Orb inside a vehicle on the street or in a parking lot, would you?”

“Unless, of course, she delivered it someplace else on her way home.” I tap the DA’s letter still lying faceup on my desk. “Of course, if she did that, then what’s all this packing material doing all over her kitchen?” I turn the police photograph around and show it to Harry. The victim’s kitchen.

Harry peers at the photo. “Quite a mess.”

“Surpassed only by the blood all over the entrance hall,” I tell him. “Her purse and some bottles were spilled on the floor out in the garage.”

“You think there was a struggle?” says Harry.

“No. I think we have a lady in a hurry.”

“You think they’re playing games with us on the Orb ?”

“Who knows?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time some cagey prosecutor left a tempting piece of evidence out on the end of a limb, hoping some stupid defense lawyer would crawl out there to get it.”

“Let me see the DA’s letter again,” says Harry.

I hand it to him.

He reads silently to himself, forefinger of his right hand running over the letters on the page. “Interesting,” he says. “They say they don’t have it. Doesn’t say they don’t know where it is.”

“Yeah. I noticed that too.”

“They can do that?” Herman asks.

“That depends. If it’s only an educated guess and it can’t later be said that they had specific information, maybe.”

“Is it possible she took it back to her office?” Harry offers.

“Five-thirty on Friday night. The traffic in the area around La Jolla can get thick. We know she had a dinner engagement later that night.”

“Eight o’clock,” says Harry. “She was meeting friends for dinner.”

“She coulda brought the glass piece to her office instead of the house,” says Herman.

“I don’t think so,” says Harry. “Cops found all the packing material at her house. The box, tape, bubble wrap.”