Steve Martini - Prime Witness

He doesn’t say anything. He knows as well as I that, once started, the Putah Creek cases will be like an Asian land war, much easier to get in than to get out.

“Some people have told me you’re a good lawyer,” he says.

I make a face, like compliments are nice.

“In coming here your reputation precedes you,” he says.

Now he’s sugarcoating it. From Hyde to Jekyll in a heartbeat. The man is mercurial, more faces to his character than Lon Chaney.

“But I for one don’t think much of lawyers who bed their clients,” he says.

Like the wind’s been knocked out of me, a sucker punch. My face goes cold. He talks about dirt in my past, allusions to my earlier affair with Talia Potter, before her case, when Nikki and I were separated, ancient history. This is not news, I think. It was in all the local papers, my cross to bear during the Potter trial. And I’d thought it was over, killed by the heat and bright lights of public exposure. Now Ingel is dredging it all up.

I say nothing, but sit there and take his shellacking.

“As a courtesy, Judge Acosta called from Capital City,” he says, “when he read that you’d been appointed as special prosecutor here. You will learn,” he says, “that judges talk.”

Apparently like fishmongers. Ingel’s been holding forth with the Coconut, Armando Acosta, Mexico’s answer to the Lord of the Flies. I should have seen it coming.

Acosta presided over the trial of Talia Potter, whom I defended in Capital City on charges of murdering her husband. This was seven months ago. Before that, during a period that I was separated from my wife, Nikki, and long before the Potter trial, Talia and I had had an affair. This was to my eternal discredit, because Talia’s husband, Ben Potter, had been a friend and benefactor. I had not disclosed my earlier relationship with the defendant to the court when I took the case. By that time the affair was long over. It was ancient history. But to my chagrin, the papers and the Coconut found out, during the trial. Acosta had threatened to draw and quarter me during the case. And to this day he has not forgiven me for this deception.

“He was not pleased that we took you on,” says Ingel. “He has particular reasons for this.” He’s talking about Acosta.

“I can imagine.”

Right now the Coconut’s pleasure is not my concern. I am seething out to the tips of my ears. That Acosta should pack his arrogance across the river to poison my well on this side has me wondering if I have grounds to lay complaint to the Commission on Judicial Performance, the agency that dogs judges for misconduct in this state. No doubt my temporary role as public official swathes his slander in the protections of the First Amendment.

When I protest, Ingel tells me there’s a reason for all of this. He means the Coconut’s involvement in a case outside his own county.

“One of the victims,” he says, “the coed Sharon Collins, was his niece.”

I sit slack-jawed.

“His younger sister’s daughter,” says Ingel. He’s giving me a lecture on the Coconut’s family tree. Poor Mexican immigrants who made good, though his sister is not so well connected as the judge, so he is taking the lead on her behalf, according to Ingel, looking for a little extra justice no doubt.

Sonofabitch, I think, of all the people on this planet.

“From what I understand, Judge Acosta was like a father to the girl. Mother was divorced,” he says. “He is pretty broken up over the whole thing,” he tells me.

Ingel looks at me like I’m supposed to do something about all this.

“Sorry to hear it,” I say. “He probably has a lot of company.”

Ingel stares at me.

“The parents of the other victims, the other kids,” I tell him. The message is clear. Tell the judge to get in line.

He gives me steely eyes.

“We need to get something straight,” he says. “While you may have slipped through the cracks in getting here, you have a contract, and you will fulfill it, or I will see to it that you answer to the State Bar.”

“On what charge?” I say.

“Abandoning a client,” he says. “Unless I am wrong, that is still grounds for legal discipline. And don’t think about dumping the Putah Creek cases, rolling over on some early motions, allowing the cases to be dismissed so somebody else can refile them later. If I smell any collusion or negligence, I will have your ticket. You’ll be writing briefs by mail order for lawyers in other states. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly. I take it the county has no intention of retaining a permanent prosecutor for these cases?”

He makes a face, like if he knows, he’s not saying. He picks up his watch. “If I can ever do anything more for you,” he says, “feel free to ask.” He looks at me stone cold, something from Rushmore. I get up, out of the chair.

“One last word of advice,” he says. “There will be a lot of people watching you.”

“Because of Judge Acosta?” I say.

“He does have a personal stake in all this.”

Sure he does, and he’s driving it into my ass.

The state crime lab is an immense, low-lying block of a building, a modern concrete fortress. It is set back the length of a football field from the street, behind a verdant lawn bisected by a ten-foot-high iron fence that surrounds the entire facility.

The largest of its kind outside of the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia, this place is the province of the state attorney general.

Claude Dusalt has set up this meeting. He wants to familiarize me with the evidence early, in case his investigators need a quick search warrant. The Putah Creek killer is drawing increased press attention and Claude wants to be ready to move on a moment’s notice with the first break.

Derek Ingel, Davenport’s answer to Roy Bean, has been looking over my shoulder on every move, wanting to know the state of our evidence. No doubt so that he can pass it back to the Coconut. So far I’ve been able to keep him in the dark, because that is where I am. Ignorance is bliss.

I fill out a form and get a security badge from a guard in a kiosk inside the main entrance to the crime lab.

A few minutes later I hear the click of heels on concrete. A woman is approaching down a long corridor. I can see her through the slotted glass of the security door. From a distance she has the look of a secretary. Her eyes reading me as she walks tells me this is my escort. She is short and a little dowdy, to the far side of middle age. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t place it.

“Mr. Madriani.”

She is stone-faced, seemingly preoccupied. But in her tone I sense this is no receptionist.

“Kay Sellig,” she says. “The director has asked me to brief you.” Brown eyes caught between a few wrinkles and crow’s-feet look at me from under a salt and pepper wedge cut, something easy to care for. She doesn’t offer her hand, but instead reads my mind.

“Not what you expected?” she says. She is a quick study.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

Finally there’s a smile, not amiability, but satisfaction at having read my thoughts.

In the limited universe of criminal forensics the name Kay Sellig conjures legend, a reputation that belies the image standing before me now.

We make small talk as she leads me through the labyrinth, the maze of little chambers inside this building.

Then as I watch her walking from behind it settles on me, this sense that we have met before.

“You were there,” I say. “On the creek.”

She nods. “I processed the scene.”

I have heard the name Kay Sellig for a dozen years, mostly banter in courthouse corridors, the war stories of lawyers, embellished with each telling. But I have always accepted as fact my good fortune that I have never had to cross this woman in court. In her time she has buried more than her share of criminal defendants behind the concertina-wired walls of Folsom and San Quentin.