Steve Martini - Double Tap

“The forty-five automatic has more stopping power,” Ellis continues testifying right through Templeton’s pantomime.

“One final point. You stated earlier that this model of firearm, People’s exhibit six, was designed in part for close-quarters combat. With regard to training in that area, have you ever heard the term double tap used?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the jury what the term means within the realm of military training?”

“A double tap is a technique for firing two shots in quick succession into a single target.”

“And can you tell the jury the purpose of the double tap-what it’s intended to accomplish?”

“To make sure that a target that goes down does not get up again,” says the witness.

“To make sure that the target has been killed, in other words?”

The witness nods. “In a word, yes.”

“And would this technique, the use of the double tap, be instinctively instilled by training through close-quarters battle techniques in those who underwent such training?”

“If the training was done properly, yes.”

“So that it might become second nature?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“Do you know whether the defendant Emiliano Michael Ruiz was schooled in these techniques, methods of close-quarters battle, and specifically the application of the double tap?”

“Yes. He was.”

Templeton turns on his stool toward me. “Your witness,” he says.

Early Saturday morning, in the middle of a trial, I am camped out at the office, going over damage assessments.

The testimony by Major Ellis put some sizable holes in us. But this morning I am thinking that it could have been worse. During his testimony I had one of those moments of sudden revelation, as when the finger of the grim reaper brushes your shoulder. There was the definite sensation that Templeton had dropped something in my path that he wanted me to touch.

Unless I am wrong, Hammon Ellis was the evidentiary equivalent of live ordnance, high explosives attached to a trembler switch just waiting for me to touch him the wrong way.

Templeton set the fuse when he had Ellis testify that he, the witness, had access to Ruiz’s personnel files and used it to compare signatures. At that moment I realized that the prosecution knew more about my client’s background than I did. Templeton is no doubt being fed information by the feds, who would like to wrap the case up and make it go away as quickly as possible. The fact that Templeton can get willing cooperation out of the Pentagon in the form of witnesses is an indication of their position.

Other than the broad field of training with firearms, Templeton never asked Ellis for specifics regarding what it was that Ruiz had done in the military. He left this dangling in front of me for a reason. He wanted me to tug on it. That way he could have picked the pieces of what was left of me off the courtroom walls after the answer.

Without knowing exactly what Ellis would say in front of the jury, I had to steer clear. But I am convinced that any question regarding Ruiz’s background would have gone off in my face. The fact that Templeton would set this trap causes me to think that Emiliano’s repeated assurances that none of this is relevant are wrong.

On cross, all I could do with Ellis was to get the witness to acknowledge that the original military kit containing the murder weapon also included a “laser-light-aiming module,” the missing laser sight. The witness went so far as to admit that if this sight had been mounted on the pistol the evening of the murder, it would have made targeting easier. The question is, for whom?

There is something Ruiz is not telling us. While his skill with a handgun is clear, the details of what he did in the Army, besides range training, is a looming mystery that now has my stomach producing acid around the clock.

Efforts to plumb this with subpoenas served on the personnel office at Fort Bragg as well as the Pentagon have netted nothing beyond copies of the records already in our files, the ones with a seven-year hole in them. Phone calls by Herman along with a three-day trip to North Carolina turned up nothing. When Herman told them what he was looking for, he was even denied admission onto the base at Fort Bragg. With the publicity surrounding the trial, and with the political heat turned up under the IFS program, the screws have been tightened by the brass at the Pentagon, so that any information bearing on our case is now verboten.

As I’m sitting in my chair, weighing all of this, I feel a vibration on my belt. A second later the familiar chime on my cell phone rings. I take it out of the holster and check the incoming number. It’s Harry’s home phone. I flip open the phone and hit the talk button.

“Hello.”

“Where the hell are you? I called your house, there’s no answer.”

“Sarah is off for the weekend with some friends. I’m at the office.”

“Guess what. I’ve got some news for you. Remember the name you were looking for?” asks Harry.

“What name?”

“The day we were going over the evidence. You wanted to know the name of the person who called Chapman’s house from the restaurant the evening she was killed-who it was who called the cops.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll never guess.”

“Keep me in suspense,” I say.

“Maxwell Rufus. As in Karr, Rufus and Associates. Ruiz’s employer,” says Harry. “And there’s more.”

To pick up the slack, Harry hired another investigator, one of the larger firms downtown. Their report came by fax to his house late last night.

“They must work all hours,” he says. “I found it on the floor in front of the machine in my study when I got up this morning. And the thing ran out of paper, so there may be more. Karr, Rufus is in trouble. According to the information in the report, the firm is facing serious financial problems, a settlement in a class-action death case that could push them into bankruptcy.”

Rufus is one of Templeton’s witnesses who is probably nearing the on-deck circle. We are guessing that he is likely to be up on the stand Monday or Tuesday.

“Are you sure of the information?”

“The report has an awful lot of detail, including a court-case number. It was filed in Texas eighteen months ago. They’re on the brink,” says Harry.

According to the information, five years ago, while expanding their empire into the state of Texas, Karr, Rufus swallowed up a poorly operated competitor in Houston. Two years into the deal, one of their uniformed security guards apparently started stalking a female employee of one of the large accounting agencies in a high-rise in Houston’s tony financial district. Karr, Rufus had the contract to provide security in the building.

To makes things worse, the guard in question, who was armed under the terms of the contract, had a prior felony conviction for assault and domestic violence in another state, something Karr, Rufus claimed they didn’t know anything about.

“The problem is,” says Harry, “according to the FBI, which did a routine criminal background check on the man when he was hired-part of the normal background check required by the state for licensing of security guards-Karr, Rufus was notified in writing of the guy’s felony conviction almost a year earlier. How it slipped through the cracks, nobody knows. The employee had lied to the company when he applied for the job, checking the box on the application that said no prior criminal record .

“It hit the fan on August eighteenth three years ago,” Harry goes on. “The guard walked into the accounting firm’s main office on the twenty-second floor armed with two semiautomatic nine-millimeter Glocks and started shooting employees. When the melee was over, seven people were dead, including the guard, who shot himself along with the woman who was the object of his affections. The civil complaint was for seventy-five million dollars and change,” says Harry. “Karr, Rufus settled out of court under terms of a confidential settlement. But they had to borrow money because the settlement was in excess of their insurance coverage. The firm’s headquarters in La Jolla was used as security on the note, which is due in ninety days. According to the information in the report, unless they can refinance the note-and so far they haven’t been able to-Karr, Rufus is insolvent. The bank will land on everything they have, including the building in La Jolla.