Steve Martini - Prime Witness

“How?”

“A stun gun,” she says. “As an alien national, the law didn’t allow him to carry a firearm on the job. So his employer tells us he used a stun gun.”

She sees my eyes go big and round. I’ve already told her about the stun gun taken from Iganovich by the Canadian authorities.

“Exactly,” she says.

I ask her if she’s received it yet.

“It’s being shipped to us as soon as they finish processing it, up there.”

The law in this state establishes only minimal requirements for the possession of an electronic stun gun. There is no licensing or permit required.

“How did he get it on the plane?”

“It only has a few metal parts. Detector probably didn’t pick it up,” she says.

“Good to know we’re in safe hands in the air,” I say.

“Anyway, the ME believes the victims were taken down with a stun gun.”

“How effective is it?”

She makes a face. “Localized cramping of muscle groups, some intense pain. They’d be on the ground, pretty much out of it, anywhere from three to fifteen minutes, depending on the duration of the jolt.”

“Enough time to drag them into the van and tie them up.”

Sellig agrees with this.

“Would it make any noise?”

“About what you’d hear from a garden variety bug zapper.”

I mull this in my mind for a few seconds, then pop the question she knows I will ask. “Did the ME find similar marks on the Scofields?”

She shakes her head. “Not a sign,” she says, another reason for her growing conviction that Andre Iganovich did not murder Abbott and Karen Scofield.

“There’s no sense waiting any longer,” I tell her, “to bring the Russian back.” I will complete the extradition package on Iganovich based solely on the murder of the four college students.

“I’ll have to tell Emil,” I say, “that we are no longer dealing with conjecture, that he’d better start looking for a second killer.” All hell will break loose.

Five weeks have passed since my sojourn to Canada. I’m finishing up a case at the Capital County courthouse, finalizing a plea bargain with the DA, one item Harry will not have to worry about. We finish and I head for the men’s room.

Inside I wash my hands over the sink, looking at my image in the glass which is speckled by silver worn thin on the backside.

I hear voices outside in the hallway. There is something familiar to one side of this conversation, an aversion I cannot place. They are coming this way. I pick up the pace, rush to dry my hands.

The scarred wooden door behind me suddenly opens, and in the mirror I see a hulking kid in his twenties with pimples and spiked purple hair, more studs in his leather jacket than the average snow tire. As he moves through it, I notice that he is big enough to fill the entire frame of the door.

Following closely behind him is Adrian Chambers. He sees me and stops dead in his tracks. His mustached-lip ripples into a thin smile. In the spotted glass of the mirror this takes on a transparent, ethereal quality, a vision from the lower regions.

Chambers breaks off in mid-sentence the conversation with his client, and from the doorway studies the back of my head. I feel bristles of hair standing out straight at the nape of my neck.

“Well, well, counselor, slumming are we? I’d have thought that with your pull, you’d be using the private johns backstage.” He means the ones with the gold fixtures and no graffiti on the walls, the lavatories used by the judges in the private corridors behind their chambers.

He finally moves a little, just a quarter-turn toward pimples, who by now has made his way down the stalls.

“Excuse my social gaffe,” says Chambers. “My client, Mr. James Sloan, meet Paul Madriani,” he says.

I don’t bother to look at the kid. “Charmed,” I say. The spiked head is probably a pedophile caught hanging out in some grade school john. At this point in his career, Chambers is no doubt busy working his way back up the criminal food chain.

“Mr. Madriani here’s the man,” he says. “The district attorney of Davenport County.”

The kid is now leaning into one of the urinals down the line. I get a look from him, all dead in the eyes, then a little quiver, like a shiver. I can’t tell whether this has something to do with his bodily functions, or merely evidences an attitude toward the law. Chambers, I’m sure, would give this punk my home address and phone number if he had it.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he says. “What’s this I hear that you’re not charging Iganovich with the last two murders, the professor and his wife?”

It was in all the papers this morning. Emil and I agreed that for the moment we would put a face on it, no public confirmation about the new stories of another killer, just vague references to insufficient evidence, and an ongoing investigation.

“Well, Adrian, what can I say? If you read it in the paper, it must be true.” My back is still to him as I wad the paper towel and toss it in the can.

“What’s the matter?” he says. “Are we having a little trouble tying up all the loose ends? Or could it be that you’re holding back, in case you botch the first ones, maybe you could fix it by charging him later with the last two?”

I turn and look him straight in the eye. “Gee, Adrian, I wouldn’t want to invade your turf. Fixing things has always been your specialty.”

Suddenly he’s no longer smiling. His face is no more than a foot from my own. We’re staring at each other, unwilling to blink, to look the other way.

Finally he speaks. “Mr. Sloan. I should tell you. Our friend here is a real straight arrow. Mr. Ethics,” he says. He’s talking to his client but without looking. The kid is having trouble getting Willie back in the barn. A dozen zippers on his jacket, and he can’t work the one on his pants.

“A real do-gooder,” says Chambers. Finally he looks down the row of urinals. He’s lost his audience. The kid’s gonna need a surgeon if he pulls up on the thing any harder.

Chambers snaps his head back toward me trying to get away from the porcelain comedy at the other end of the room.

He is a man who not only nurses a grudge. He fosters it, fertilizes it, cultivates it, and watches it grow, until it dominates his life as thoroughly as an untreated cancer.

“You know,” he says. “You ought to be a little concerned. You’re bumping up against the statute for extradition. Getting a little close.”

He’s talking about the sixty-day statute of limitations for an extradition hearing under the U.S.-Canadian treaty. By law if the hearing is not concluded within sixty days of Iganovich’s arrest in Canada, the suspect must be released by the court.

“I don’t think you have to worry about us blowing by the statute,” I tell him.

“Oh, I’m not worried.” He looks at me, an expression like he has something else with which to needle me.

“Tell me,” he says. “Are you ready to dump the death penalty?”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

He pushes past me, on down the row of stalls. “Then it’s all academic,” he says. “You’ll never get him back down here to stand trial.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I tell him.

“Funny thing about the Canucks,” he says. “They’re real sensitive people. Proud,” he says, “and stubborn.”

He bounces a little more venom off his erstwhile client, which from all appearances is sailing well over the spikes on the kid’s head. “I think our friend here has a real problem. A case he can’t fathom,” he says. “But then I’m sure that’s nothing new for him.” He moves toward the stall.