Steve Martini - The Jury

It takes an instant or two to gather myself, adrenaline doping the body, killing the pain. I stumble back to my feet, lean out the window. There is a fleeting beam of light bobbing through the bushes, and then it too is gone.

I stumble around the other side of the desk toward the front door, my forearms crossed, holding my chest, wheezing to catch my breath, fighting off the pain. I get to the door, open it; one foot in front of the other, I stagger out onto the porch. Bracing myself against the railing, I look in the direction of the arched gate, out toward the street. There is nothing. Music and voices of merriment are still coming from Miguel’s. Whoever it was is gone.

It takes me a couple of minutes sitting in the outer office, my knees shaking, before I am certain nothing is broken. I remove my shirt and check my chest in the mirror of the bathroom. There is already a lump forming in the center. There is a sharp pain when I touch it, like a separation. By tomorrow I will have a bruise the size of Connecticut. There’s a contusion on my back near the kidneys that I didn’t feel until now, where something sharp from the top of the desk caught me when I fell.

I walk slowly down the hall toward Harry’s office to survey the damage. I steady myself by holding on to the walls, reach around the corner of the door for the light switch and turn it on.

Inside, the place is a mess. There are papers and files on the floor behind Harry’s desk, part of the contents of one of the filing cabinets dumped there. Books from the credenza have been knocked to the floor and a desk lamp lies next to them, its bulb shattered.

It’s not until I enter the room with the lights on that I see him. There on the floor on the other side of the desk is Harry’s crumpled body.

I move around the desk, stepping on papers as I go, and kneel down behind Harry’s body on the floor. He is curled in a fetal position, motionless. My first instinct is to look for the rising signs of respiration. Is there movement? I glance at the wrinkles in his shirt. I can’t be sure, vacuous hope, what the brain wants the eyes to see.

I lean over him, roll him onto his back. His eyes are closed. I lift one lid gently with my thumb. The eyeball has rolled back into his head. I cannot get a fix on his pupils.

The eyeball rotates down, like the tumbler of a slot machine clicking into place. Harry stirs, a hand comes up reflexively to shield his eyes from the brightness of the lights overhead. He groans.

I brace his back, sitting him up. “Easy. Don’t try to get up.”

“What the hell hit me?” he asks.

I feel around the base of his neck. He flinches when I touch it. “Jeez. Careful.”

Harry has a lump at the base of his skull the size of an orange.

“Something hard,” I tell him. “Did you get a look at his face?”

“Uh-uh.” He reaches for the back of his head, touches it gingerly, then checks his fingers for blood. There isn’t any.

“Last thing I remember,” he says, “I came through the front door, out there. I think I was turning on the lights. Then nothing.”

The man clubbed Harry as he came through the door in the office, then dragged his unconscious body back here to get him out of the way.

“Did he take anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about you?” Harry is looking at my shirtless body.

“I had a little more warning,” I tell him. “Not that it did me much good.”

“Did you see him?”

“Only shadows,” I tell him. “And his fist. It was real big, and hard. How are you feeling?”

“I won’t know ’til I try to get up,” he says. Harry is propped against the wall, behind the desk. He brings his knees up to brace himself. I help him to his feet.

Harry groans. I settle him into the desk chair. He lowers his head. The blood rushes in. “Feels like a building fell on me.”

“You’re not going to be feeling great for a couple of days. Maybe we should go to emergency.”

“No.”

“You could have a concussion.”

“Ever seen that place on a Friday night? We’d sit there ’til morning. They’d send me home and tell me to take two aspirin.”

He stretches his neck, turning it from side to side, making sure it still works. “All I need is a new head,” he says.

With some pain I manage to get the window behind his desk closed and latched. I can see scratches at the top of the double-hung lower wooden frame where it has been jimmied.

We could call the cops and have them dust it for prints, but it would be a waste of time. The man was wearing gloves. I could feel them on one hand as I grabbed him, just before the other fist nailed me.

I step over the mess, back to the front of the desk, looking down at a manila folder, not legal, but letter sized. Its contents are still fastened inside with an Acco clip, punched through the top of the folder and taped. It’s the file I ripped from the intruder’s hand when he hit me.

With some pain, I reach down and pick this up. The folder has no label; instead, the words “Grant Application” are penciled on the tab in a familiar hand-my own.

I open it and begin to flip pages. Ninety seconds later, eleven pages in, the pieces suddenly begin to fit into place.

I take the file out into the other room. There on the receptionist’s desk next to the lid for the open box are some of the financial documents for Crone’s work, the annual financial reports. These were in our evidence boxes. I look at the file in my hand and the most recent annual statement.

Given what they knew, the innocent genetic information passing between Tash and Crone from jail, Tate and his prosecutors concluded that William Epperson killed himself. It may be the biggest mistake Tate has made in years.

Harry is still doubled over in the chair in his office, trying to get the buzz out of his head as I come back into his office. I reach for the phone, call information. I look at my watch; it is now almost nine. The automated voice comes on at the other end. “What city?”

I take a guess, “La Jolla.”

“What name?”

“Aaron Tash.” What I really want is his home address.

“Just a moment please.”

A couple of seconds pass with dead air on the line.

“Who are you calling?” asks Harry.

Before I can respond, a voice comes on the phone.

“Sorry, we have no listing for that name.”

“Try San Diego.”

“Just a moment.” She checks.

“Sorry. Nothing.”

He could live in Escondido, or up in Carlsbad, anywhere. There are a dozen different directories.

“Thanks.” I hang up; think for a moment. I pick up the phone again, dial another number. In my mind I am trying to consider what I will say if anyone answers. It rings five times. No one picks up. I let it ring seven, then nine times. There’s nobody home. I consider the dark possibilities. I don’t want to think about it.

“Who are you calling?”

“Do we have a home number or an address for Aaron Tash?”

“I don’t know. Probably,” says Harry. “Process server would have gotten it for service.”

“Do you think you could find it?”

“It’s probably in one of the boxes outside.” Harry stumbles to his feet. I steady him. Together we work our way to the outer office.

I put my shirt on while Harry rummages through the boxes. It takes him awhile. He has to sit to get his bearings, legs like rubber. Several minutes later he finds what he’s looking for, a return of service on a subpoena we had served on Tash in case we needed him as a witness.

He turns the form over and puts it on the reception desk in front of me. Tash’s home address is listed. I was right. He lives in La Jolla. His phone number must be unlisted.