Steve Martini - The Jury

“I was looking at their faces,” he tells me.

“Who?”

“The lawyer’s dozen. Who else? Jury in the panel,” he says. “And they weren’t buyin’ it. There was only one thing moved ’em,” says Harry. “Tannery’s question about the tie that killed Jordan. His inference that it came from the same package as the ones in Crone’s pocket.”

Harry is right. The judge may have kept Warnake from answering it, but the fact that the witness started to, and wanted to, was palpable in the courtroom. The jury could sense it.

“Tannery can take that to the bank,” says Harry.

I have a sinking feeling this morning as we trek to the genetics lab at the university for a meeting with Aaron Tash. We are being forced to spend valuable time trying to get inside our own case, to discover the facts that our client won’t tell us, mostly about relationships; and in particular the one between himself and Kalista Jordan.

University medical facilities abound in this county. There are two hospitals, both teaching institutions, and a list of research and graduate programs that would be the envy of any city in the country. But unlike the Salk Institute and Scripps, the University Genetics Center, known to all who frequent it merely as the Center, is not funded by any perpetual endowment or foundation. In fact, it exists in rented quarters, a four-story office complex just off campus, a measure of its precarious existence that is reviewed every year.

It is left to its own devices when it comes to funding. We are told that Crone has had run-ins with university administrators and a few regents who have tried to monitor his largely private fund-raising efforts. The fear is that because of the center’s ties, the university could get a public black eye if Crone were to take funds from the wrong people, entities that might be political lepers. Crone took offense at this questioning of his judgment. According to observers, Crone is jealous of his independence, the freedom to pursue research and its funding as he sees fit. This has been a continuing source of friction between Crone and the university. This may answer the question of why it was that Kalista Jordan received offers of employment with lavish salary increases from other universities while David Crone was passed over. He has a reputation for being difficult to deal with. There is even a rumor that some in the university hierarchy were eyeing her as a possible replacement to head up the center. We have done everything possible to hunt this story down and drive a stake through its heart. If true, it could supply a damaging motive for murder.

Harry parks on the street, at one of the two-hour meters. Whatever the reticent Dr. Tash has to tell us, it can no doubt be covered in that time.

Tash has been excluded from the courtroom since he appears on our witness list, and though we have interviewed him twice, Harry and I both sense that he is holding back. Getting information from Tash is like distilling water from an iceberg in a blizzard. He is cagey. Get your tongue too close and it may stick like a kid licking a water fountain in winter. If I were preparing him for a deposition, I would tell him only one thing: Act normal. As Crone’s number two, he is keeper of the office flame, the man to whom all secrets are most probably known.

We take the elevator to the fourth floor. When the doors open we are standing in a small reception area, nothing fancy, antiseptic white walls and an industrial carpet to absorb the sound of heels that would otherwise be clicking on concrete. There are six chairs, black plastic institutional seats with chrome arms and legs. These grace the otherwise-bare walls, three on each side of the room. A stack of old magazines, what look like science journals, is spread on a low table next to one of the empty chairs. Straight ahead is a desk, a clean surface with nothing behind it except an open door, hallway to the inner sanctum. There is no receptionist, simply the barricade offered by the desk. Harry’s first instinct is to go around it, just walk right in.

“You did make an appointment?” he says.

“On my calendar for ten o’clock.”

Harry glances at his watch. “On the dot.” He waltzes up to the desk. “Hello. Anybody home?” Harry knocks on the Formica surface.

Like a tomb, all I can hear is Harry’s echo. We wait a couple of seconds, and Harry does it again. Nothing.

“What say we go in?” he says.

Then, before we can move, there’s a slow shadow in the hall, followed an instant later by a tall, lean figure. Tash appears in the open doorway behind the desk. Slender and bald, he gives us an expressionless look from over the top of a file he is holding. I can’t tell whether he is expecting us, or has forgotten about the meeting. With Tash, you can never tell much, a stone face, expressions that never seem to change. You are left to wonder if it is academic reserve, or arrogance, or whether Harry is right and the two are the same.

Tash is wearing a black cotton turtleneck top under a dark herringbone sport coat and dark slacks, so that he looks like a character from a sci-fi flick with undersized production values. Thin is not the word. The turtleneck hangs on him with wrinkles like ribs on a skeleton.

He looks at his watch. “You’re on time.”

“Guess that’s why we’re lawyers and not professors,” says Harry.

Tash gives him a look, sly, off-centered, everything dead from the eyes to the mouth, John Malkovich.

“Come in,” he says. No greeting or handshake. He is not a social animal. Tash would not think to offer coffee, or small talk. He lacks the social grace of his boss. There is not the slightest hint of warmth from the man. From our few meetings, his most admirable quality appears to be loyalty. He reports dutifully to Crone at least once a week. This to a man who is under indictment for murder and who has been suspended without pay by the university. If Tash feels threatened by fidelity to his mentor, he shows no sign of it.

He’s had easy access to Crone at the jail since our earlier meeting, traveling there twice, once with Harry and the second time with me. On both occasions Tash was silent to a fault, all the way up in the elevator and into the small cubicle with its inch-thick acrylic partition they use for attorney-client consultation in the slammer. I had to assure Tash that it was safe to talk on the receiver hanging from the wall, that no one would monitor this during meetings with counsel.

On each trip, Tash treated Harry and me as if we were furniture. Even with his antennae up, Harry was unable to pick up anything. He told me that Crone and Tash perused more numbers, scientific mumbo jumbo, according to Harry. Tash pressed a single sheet of paper up against the acrylic so that Crone could read it. Then Crone wrote a few formulas on a sheet of paper on the other side and held it up while Tash made notes. It was a repeat of the session I’d had a week earlier with the two of them. Tash would then leave, as silent as a six-foot mouse, while Harry or I spoke to our client.

We follow Tash down the long, narrow hallway, past a door with a small plate-glass window in it. Inside I can see stainless-steel tables, glass beakers and electronic equipment. This, I assume, is one of the laboratories.

“We’ll use Dr. Crone’s office,” he tells us.

The university has not yet tried to replace Crone. Caught in a pickle, wondering which way to run, university administrators take a wait-and-see attitude. The official word is “no comment while the case is in the courts,” though they have engaged in some fast footwork over Jordan’s sexual harassment claim. “Maybe we should have looked into it sooner.” This was one of the comments reported in the press from an unnamed source close to the administration. Defending Crone has definite downsides. Abandoning him publicly might push the case toward a conviction, leaving the university facing wrongful-death, or some other civil crisis. Love him or leave him, they are caught in the middle.