Steve Martini - Prime Witness

Dear Bill:

In reference to your letter of 9 Feb., three pair are now in place. We are watching them closely for progress. An additional seven have been put out individually. If things continue to go well, we will be at full strength by early summer, and in a position to observe progress on an ongoing basis.

If you can ship four more pair, before spring, we believe we can place them before the snows fall. Will await your reply.

Karen

“What do you make of it?” She’s looking at me.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “It would help if we had some way of determining what might have come before this letter. Other pieces in the chain of correspondence.”

“It’s only a guess,” she says. “But I think maybe the writer numbered everything under each topic sequentially, each file with a separate number.”

“Is there any way to find out what else was in the Peregrine directory? To retrieve the lost files?”

She makes a face like this is a long shot.

“Could you do it? Here in the office?” I say. “I can’t allow the computer to leave the office.”

She looks at me like I don’t even trust my wife.

“When am I supposed to come into the office to do this?” she says.

“You can do it at night,” I say. “I’ll watch Sarah.” I can tell I am pressing the outer limits of Nikki’s tolerance. She looks at me almost dazed that I would have the gall to ask this again. The audacity of the lawyer.

She gives me a major shrug. “One more time,” she says, “and then that’s it. And you make an end of this case. Next quarter I go back to school, come hell or high water. Do you hear me?” she says.

I nod my agreement.

“I mean it,” she says. “I don’t care what your problem is. You get back to a single law office or we are history,” she says.

Five days later I am in Feretti’s old office, cloistered with Lenore Goya, preparing for the eventual trial of Andre Iganovich. In Vancouver, they are now three days into an extradition hearing that was originally expected to take only two. We are getting hourly reports, color, and play-by-play from Denny Henderson whom Claude has sent north for this purpose.

Lenore and I are busy preparing for the preliminary hearing where we will test the evidence to date in front of an impartial magistrate, our quest for a holding order on the Russian to bind him over for trial on four counts of first degree murder in the superior court.

In all probability that is at least four or five months off.

The phone rings on my desk, the hot line, direct from the outside.

“Hello.”

It’s Henderson, breathless and excited.

“You’re not gonna believe this.” He’s sucking air like he’s run the four-minute mile. “He’s on the street,” he says.

“Who’s on the street? What are you talking about?”

“Iganovich. The court released him five minutes ago.”

“What?”

“A problem with the documents,” he says.

The blood in my veins runs cold. All documents sent to Canada originated in this office.

“Slow down,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”

“Defense made a motion at the end of the hearing, what they called a ‘no evidence motion’ based on a defect in the documents. It came out of the blue,” he says. “Could have knocked Jacoby over with a feather. Iganovich’s lawyers discovered that the certified copy of the charging statute was the wrong one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The section of the penal code, the murder statute, that we used to charge the Russian, it was an old statute that’s been repealed and reenacted in another form. We sent the wrong one under certification up to Jacoby.”

Oh shit. I think this to myself, silently, in that place reserved for all private panic. What Henderson is telling me is that someone has botched the uncomplicated job of copying the statute, and certifying it for use in the Canadian hearing.

“Hold on,” I say. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Who copied the statutes for the extradition package?” I’m talking to Lenore.

She shakes her head, like she has no idea. “It was done before you brought me on board, into the case,” she says. “What’s goin’ on?”

“The Russian’s been released.”

Round eyes from Goya.

“Find out who assembled the documents. Get ’em in here,” I say.

She’s out the door, to the steno pool.

I’m back on the line. “Where is he now?” I’m talking about Iganovich.

“He left the court with his lawyers. I followed ’em downstairs. They didn’t waste any time. Got in a taxi and left. Jacoby had two RCMP officers follow them. To try and keep tabs,” he says.

“I can’t believe this,” I tell him. “They couldn’t hold him?”

“Jacoby says no. Says everything turned on the documents. Kept telling me the devil was in the detail, whatever the hell that means.” His voice fades a bit, like he’s turned away from the mouthpiece. “Here, you wanna talk to him?”

The next voice I hear on the phone is Herb Jacoby. “Listen, my friend,” he says, “I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do. With the sixty-day statute running, the court had no choice but to release him. You should be happy you’re not up here,” he tells me. “His Lordship was rather pissed off.” Jacoby’s talking about the Canadian judge. “Three days of his time down the johnny flusher, and forced to release the man on a technicality,” he says. “Not a good show, not good at all.”

I apologize for the screwup. Tell him I’m getting to the bottom of it.

As I’m talking to Jacoby, my mind is wandering back in time, to Chambers’s smug attitude in the washroom that day. Suddenly it hits me, he had been lying in the weeds aware of this deficiency in our filing for weeks, biding his time, waiting to spring this trap.

Jacoby wants to know how long before I can get another warrant up, to rearrest Iganovich. “I trust you can understand, given the man’s propensities we would rather not have him walking free up here-too long,” he says.

“I’ll have one in an hour,” I tell him. “I’ll fax it up there. It may take a little longer for the diplomatic note from the State Department.” This is a requirement to effect a provisional arrest in a foreign country pending an extradition hearing.

Lenore’s back in the office, followed by Irene Perez, one of the stenos.

I can tell by the look on her face that she is scared, primal senses tell her that she is on the carpet, but she doesn’t know why.

I tell them to hold on a minute.

I hit the intercom button on my phone. I get Jane Rhodes.

“Get me the number for the State Department in Washington, the lawyers who did Iganovich. I’ll wait.”

Irene Perez is beginning to shake all over my carpet. I think she may soil it if I don’t relieve the tension. “Sit down,” I tell her. “Relax. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Rhodes is back to me. “Do you want me to dial them?”

Thank God for a little efficiency. “Yes. Ring me the moment you have them. Tell ’em it’s an emergency. If they’re in a meeting, tell them we have to break in.”

Irene Perez is twenty-five years old, a single mother, with a little baby I have seen in the office on family occasions. She is pleasant and anxious to please. At this moment she is terrified, sitting in a chair across from my desk.

“I don’t hold you responsible,” I say. “It’s my fault for not checking the documents,” I tell her. “But I have to know how this happened.” I explain the mess up in Vancouver, the document in question.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” she says.

I look at her, like thank you for this absolution, now tell me what happened?