Steve Martini - Double Tap

If he were to keep them camped in a hotel for days while he delayed the trial to give us more time, he would likely have a mob on his hands when they returned. The fallout of their displeasure would splash all over the defendant, since he’s the only one the jury can punish. Either way, the court is likely to run headlong into a mistrial or end up on the rocks following an appeal.

“Next time I see Templeton, I’m gonna stuff the little shit in a shoe box and ship him to Mongolia bulk mail.” Harry is bent over one of the boxes, rifling through paper, sniffing for anything that smells as if it might be useable in our case.

This morning we have pulled in the entire staff: both secretaries, the receptionist, and two clerks, including Jamie, our law grad-cum-computer tech, to sift through reams of paper. The chances of us even touching every page, much less reading them all, are remote.

Harry and I are under no illusion. The last-minute timing on the evidence drop from Isotenics was arranged courtesy of the prosecution. Templeton knows that if the evidence from Isotenics were withheld from us entirely, there is a good chance that any conviction or death sentence would be overturned on appeal. If that were to happen, the courts would remand Ruiz for a new trial. Templeton wants to take that arrow out of our quiver. As usual, his timing is impeccable. Having rested his own case on a mountain peak on Friday afternoon, he has buried us in a paper blizzard over the weekend before we open our own case for the defense.

“I think they call this marshaling the evidence,” says Harry. “If this is organization, I’d hate to see what chaos looks like.”

The only silver seam in this dark cloud is on the front page of today’s paper. Next to the three-column headline announcing DOUBLE TAP DEFENDANT, MEMBER OF DELTA FORCE is a boxed sidebar. The story has a wire service byline reporting that an appeal filed by the victim’s company, Isotenics, Inc., which had managed to bottle up evidence being sought by the defense, was withdrawn late yesterday afternoon. Attorneys for the company would not say why. According to the story, as a consequence, at least fifty-eight boxes of documents, enough to fill a small moving van, were expected to be released to the trial court within hours.

Given the fact that the court had not made a decision delivering an opinion, I knew that it would not issue a press release. It would take two or three days before somebody in the press stumbled over the news that Sims had withdrawn his appeal. By then it would be too late. If I am correct, my audience for this story will be up all night, burning the midnight oil in the lamps at the Pentagon and the offices of the Justice Department in downtown D.C.

I put the newspaper down and go to work. We are looking for anything that sheds light on Chapman’s dealings with the Pentagon: printouts of e-mails between her and Satz, internal memos, letters, and copies of telephone messages and phone logs. Anything addressed to Defense or the Pentagon is being organized in separate stacks on the table in the conference room under the watchful eye of Janice, my secretary.

One thing that I know with certainty at this point: if the case goes to the jury for a verdict, Ruiz is dead.

I finish a box of documents, check it with a red marker and write my initials, and set it in a separate stack outside in the hallway of the office. Out in reception there are boxes stacked halfway up the wall and three deep against it, a new delivery by Herman, who has gone back to the courthouse for more. I paw through them, turning a few of the cardboard transfer boxes to check for labels or notations.

“Think I found something.” It’s Jamie, working at one of the secretaries’ desks behind me.

“What is it?” I’m still feeling my way around the cubes of cardboard.

“The box I picked up. There’s a note on the side. Says M. Chapman - desk on it.”

“Let me see it.”

The note on the side is in black marker and dated. Jamie lifts the lid.

Inside are copies of the contents from Chapman’s desk the day she died. Most of these are materials we already have from noticed motions served on the cops. There are handwritten notes, copies of telephone slips, full-page copies of single yellow stickers that were stuck to the glass surface of her desk. A reduction from a computer spreadsheet on letter-size paper, the words 42nd Cong in pencil on the front. These are the dizzying numbers Harold Klepp told me about that night at the bar, the ones Chapman took from him and threw in her in-basket before she told him to get out. Klepp was right: she never got to it. I have seen all of this before. It was scooped up by the homicide investigators who descended on Chapman’s office that night, before Havlitz and Isotenics could get their lawyers to lock the doors in order to filter the stuff that was leaving.

I’m nearing the bottom of the box when I see something that catches my eye. It’s a gray-toned black-and-white copy of a telephone message slip. I pluck it out. On the lines under the boxes, on the one marked Please call , is the neatly penned note Needs to talk about “Looking Glass .” On the From line the name Gerald Satz is written elegantly in the same hand, and a phone number with a 703 area code. The note is directed to M.C. , Madelyn Chapman, and initialed at the bottom by the message taker, K.R. -Karen Rogan.

Tuesday morning. I am snarled in traffic on the Coronado Bridge heading to court to make my opening statement in People v. Ruiz . The cell phone on my belt rings. It is Janice, calling from the office.

“I just got a phone call,” she says. “I thought you’d want to know. Jim Kaprosky died last night. His wife called. She said to thank you for coming by, and that he went quietly in his sleep.”

I don’t remember the rest of the trip. It’s as if I am on autopilot. I end up in the quiet car, in the parking lot a block from the courthouse, the engine off, not knowing how I got there, my mind deep in thought.

I have seen much of death, of both friends and family. The fact that a man I spoke with barely three nights ago now rests in that place, beyond reach, seems to affect me in ways I had not expected.

It seems I have reached that point in life, much nearer to the end than the beginning, so that of late I have been thinking a great deal about what lies beyond the arc of this life. Will we find friends there, those we have loved and lost? In that moment, does some part of our being, unhampered by brain or body, slip from this form into an infinite realm unaffected by the limits of time or physics? These are questions that cannot be answered by tasting fruit from the tree of knowledge. It is the lasting lesson, the ultimate unknowable, man’s legacy from Adam’s fall. It is a bridge to be crossed only by belief, the intimate and secluded secret that lies between us and our maker.

As I lock the car and head for the courthouse, I hope and pray and choose to believe that one day we will find the light and love of a transcendent God. And that if peace may be had, that Jim Kaprosky, having finally been freed from the furies of this world, is there now.

When I arrive, the courtroom is filling fast. The hallway outside is a scene out of Gandhi , a sea of heads swimming on shoulders, all of them moving, trying to get through the bottleneck of the open double doors to their seats inside. Nathan is here again today, moving his way up in terms of seniority. Today he has worked his way up to the middle of the courtroom.

Harry is already set up at the table, Jamie with the laptop, though we have precious little to put in it at this point.