Steve Martini - Prime Witness

I am now dictating from hand-written notes, thoughts I have taken during Claude’s earlier briefing, from his follow-up with the witnesses.

As I talk to her, I have one eye on the paper moving through Aikens’s typewriter and the other on Claude, to ensure that I’m not departing from the straight and narrow as related by the university cop and Mr. Harold.

Claude issues little nods every few seconds as I pass over critical benchmarks in their scenario. He must be comfortable with this declaration. It is his ass in the flames if some judge thinks he lied.

I marvel a little at Aikens. Cigarette and all, her fingers move like a blur over the keyboard. She has used the correction key only once in two pages. I am forming a new opinion, regretting my rash assessment of Mario’s leadership abilities. The lady knows her job.

“What about Lockyer?” says Claude. “He’s an easy touch. We get warrants from him all the time. A slam dunk.” Claude is dropping names in my suggestion box, the process of shopping for a judge who might issue a warrant.

I shake my head. “Not on this one,” I say. Lockyer may be fine for an auto theft ring, or a drug bust. But he’s a former prosecutor. On this one the appellate courts will be taking a more critical look. I want a neutral, detached magistrate to review the affidavit.

I’ve already staked out my judge, placed my phone call while Claude was in the other room with his witnesses. Frances Kerney is a former presiding judge of the superior court in this county and known to be on a short list of candidates for elevation to the appellate court. By the time this case arrives on appeal, it is likely that she will be ensconced there. Whatever she touched while on the trial bench will no doubt receive the subtle benefit of any doubt from her brothers of the cloth. A cynical view, perhaps. But in a capital case, you seize every edge.

I have Kerney on call. I possess her schedule for the afternoon and early evening, and her home phone number should we go late. I am prepared to grovel if I must.

I’m putting the wrap on the affidavit when I sense motion behind me, the swinging gate at the public counter. I turn. It is Kay Sellig and the patrolman I have assigned to chauffeur her, a courtesy intended to produce a quick turnaround. It has not failed. She has a preliminary analysis of the cord and metal stakes.

Sellig drops her briefcase, a slim leather affair, on Aikens’s desk and turns a satisfied smile in my direction.

“Don’t know who he is,” she says. “But he’s hung himself with his own rope.”

I’m all eyes. I tell Aikens to take a break. She reaches for the package of Camels in her purse and is out the door. In the next five minutes tobacco stocks will go up four points.

I turn to Sellig. “What did you find?”

“He must have used whatever was handy. Or else he’s a fool,” she says.

“The clothesline cord,” she says.

“It’s traceable?” I ask.

“Like a trail of bread crumbs in a cave.”

I am matching her own satisfied smile.

“It’s composed of bundles of thread,” she says, “tightly woven, and wrapped in a sheath of white plastic. No two manufacturers use the same number or composition of threads.”

She reaches into her briefcase and pulls out a single typed page.

“The cord found in the van has a hundred and twenty-one interior filaments, nine different plastic types and one metal filament.” She looks up at me. “Identical in all respects with the cord used to tie down the first four Davenport victims.”

“The kids?” I say.

She nods.

I can see in her expression that this begs a question: the Scofields? Sellig ignores this for the moment. Half a loaf is better than nothing.

“It’s good,” I say, “but not conclusive. Might be strong enough to secure a search warrant, certainly for the van, maybe for the Russian’s apartment. How common is this stuff?”

“This particular cord is manufactured by only one company. But as to points of sale, it gets weaker. In this state at least eight thousand stores sell the stuff, nationwide maybe forty thousand.”

My expression sags. A good defense lawyer would have a field day with this. A critical judge, asked for a warrant, weighing the odds, might say that these tent stakes and this cord are probative of nothing more than the fact that perhaps Mr. Iganovich likes to camp.

But Sellig is still smiling. I sense in her demeanor that she’s not finished.

“The white plastic sheathing around the cord is a different story,” she says. “When it’s applied around the filaments, it’s hot. The stuff shrinks to a tight fit when it cools.”

She’s held the best for last.

“And?”

“The outer threads from the filaments leave their impression in the soft hot plastic on the inside of the sheath. The cutest little extrusion marks you ever saw,” she says. “Just like fingerprints all over the inside of the plastic sheathing.”

There is a nanosecond of bare silence between us, Claude and me taking this in. Then almost in a daze Dusalt puts our mutual thoughts to words: “Whoever possessed the rope in the van is dog meat.”

Sellig nods. “Pure Alpo.”

She shows us a photograph, an eight-hundred-percent blow-up of two pieces of plastic sheathing with its filaments removed. This looks like a giant straw, except for the little bumps and nodules on the inside of each tube.

Even my untrained eye can see that the patterns on the two pieces are an exact match, nodules and bumps in all the same places.

“These are two matching ends of the same cord,” she says. “The one on the left is the end piece from the coil of cord in the suspect’s van. The one on the right was taken from the wrist of Sharon Collins, the last coed killed. The other pieces taken off the kids.” Sellig’s referring to the student victims. “It is conclusive,” she says. “They all match. Sequential pieces cut from the same length of rope.”

I will not have to grovel before a judge for a search warrant.

By the time I follow Claude and Emil Johnson to the third floor, an evidence tech is already putting up yellow tape to block off one end of the hall close to Iganovich’s apartment.

I grab Claude, whisper in his ear. “We should get Sellig in here, now,” I tell him.

He nods and issues a quick instruction to one of the cops in the hall.

Two special enforcement officers packing M-16’s, guys in black combat garb, with paramilitary training and hair triggers, come out of the apartment. One of them is unloading his weapon, soft-nosed cartridges in a clip, lead that will expand like putty when it hits a target.

The suspect is obviously not home. We wait outside the door. A few seconds later Sellig is escorted up the stairs by a uniformed cop. She’s carrying a small black case, like an undersized brief box. She goes in, and we follow. I have my hands in my pockets.

I feel a little ridiculous, trussed-up in a Kevlar flak jacket that reaches from belt to collar. Emil has asked that I be here, in case questions arise during the search. His effort I think to spread some accountability.

“An all-points bulletin has been issued for Iganovich,” he tells me. This based on the arrest warrant I secured, the evidence contained in Sellig’s report on the cord found in the Russian’s van.

“Be careful by the door.” Emil’s command presence. Across the threshold there’s a bowl of cat food, little white fuzz growing on its contents, and flies, flies are everywhere. The most overpowering sensation about the place is its odor. This is something between rancid meat, and a leaking septic tank.

Claude has a handkerchief over his mouth. He is trying to make his way through the cluttered filth to a window on the other side of the room. He opens it and there’s a slight cross ventilation. The full fury of this smell passes me on its way to the door where I am standing.