Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

The sergeant sat down on the end of my chaise lounge. It creaked under his weight. He had a sunken chest, a beer belly, and was close to retirement. Coral Gables cops aren't the hard guys you find downtown. In the Gables, cops fish too many cats out of trees to get that cold-eyed look. Expensive cats and expensive trees.

The sergeant patted my leg through the blanket. "We take the body to the morgue. We gotta do that under section four-oh-six-point-one-one."

Charlie Riggs nodded. "Subsection one-ay-one. Then the ME determines whether to do the autopsy."

The sergeant looked back at me. "I've known Doc Riggs for twenty years, and we won't write it up, but if you want, why don't we let him have a quick look right here?"

My eyes pleaded with Charlie, and he said okay. The sergeant held a three-foot Kel-Lite and Charlie examined the body. He cupped his hands on her head, felt her skull and neck. He checked underneath her fingernails. He looked at her legs and arms.

The younger cop headed back to the patrol car to call in. The sergeant lit a cigarette and walked toward the dock to admire the Cory, maybe comparing it to a seventeen-foot Whaler he'd like to share with three other cops.

"Jake, I'm going to have to take off her swimsuit," Charlie Riggs said. I nodded and walked away.

After a few minutes, I heard him say, "No stab wounds, no bullet holes, no apparent loss of blood. No contusions or marks of any kind. No injection punctures. Not even an indication of a struggle."

The sergeant had come back from the dock. "A drowning, Doc. Just a drowning."

I turned around. "Charlie, please keep looking."

The other cop returned from the patrol car and told the sergeant they had to check out a ringing burglar alarm on Old Cutler Road.

"If it's the old Spanish house at seventy-three hundred, there's no hurry," the sergeant said. "Goes off every time the humidity's up, which is every week." In a few minutes, they would be roaming the suburbs, pulling over cars with missing taillights. Susan Corrigan would be just another statistic. Accidental death by drowning. Happens all the time.

The minutes dragged by. I watched the big house and concocted a vicious fantasy to vent my rage. Breaking down a door. Looking for them, the widow and the karate thug. Hurting them, killing them. Nice and slow.

Charlie motioned to me. "Jake, come here a second. My old eyes are failing."

The flashlight was shining on Susan's left shoulder. "Do you see any discoloration there?" he asked.

I shook my head wearily. "Maybe a faint pink. Maybe just skin color under the tan. Hard to tell."

"Hmmm," Charlie Riggs mumbled. He went into the cabana and came out with a plastic sandwich bag. Then, with a pocket knife, he cut a little square of skin from the shoulder and put it in the bag. Deep inside me, I felt every tiny slash.

"Jake, how about here on the leg?"

Same thing. A little pinkness, nothing more. I shrugged helplessly, and Charlie did some more slicing.

At the edge of the pool, the water rippled and slid under the lights. I remembered the breeze from the Gulf slapping palm fronds against Granny's little house, the sweetness of Susan under the quilt. I wanted a second chance, to tell her lat had stayed locked inside me. I stood and stared into the pool, motionless.

Charlie Riggs came over and gave me a fatherly hug. Then he looked down at the pool. "Salt water. You don't see many saltwater pools these days."

"Mrs. Goldfarb, do you believe that old expression, where there's smoke, there's fire?"

Reba Goldfarb eyed me suspiciously from her perch in the front row of the jury box. She hadn't gotten settled yet, was still patting her ice-blue hair, locking it into a 1950s pompadour. She looked toward the judge for help, shrugged, and said, "Maybe there's fire, maybe just a teapot blowing its lid."

"Exactly," I said. "Things are not always as they seem. And just because Dr. Roger Salisbury is charged by the state with a crime doesn't mean he's guilty, does it?"

"Goodness no," she agreed, smiling, picking up the rhythm.

"And this indictment," I said, holding the blue-bordered document at arm's length as if it smelled of rotten eggs, "this piece of paper, this scrap, is not proof of guilt, has no more dignity than a grocery list-"

"Objection!" Abe Socolow was on his feet.

"Sustained," Judge Crane declared without emotion. "This is voir dire, not argument, Mr. Lassiter."

During trial I will argue over Good morning.

"Your Honor, I'll rephrase the question. Mrs. Goldfarb, do you recognize that Roger Salisbury, as he sits here today, is as innocent as a newborn child?"

Ignoring the concept of original sin.

She nodded.

"That he is cloaked with a presumption of innocence, that he does not have to prove anything, that the burden of proving his guilt is on the government?"

"I heard that before," she conceded, nodding again. She had seen enough television to know this stuff. My kind of juror, willing to believe that intrigue and incompetence frequently nail the wrong guy.

I liked her. Roger Salisbury liked her. She visited doctors regularly, an internist, a podiatrist, a chiropractor, and a dentist. She was Jewish, and defense lawyers from Clarence Darrow on down liked that. An old saw. Put Mediterranean types on your jury if you're defending. Jews and Italians are more sympathetic. Minorities, too. Blacks are suspicious of the police and will cut you a break in a close case. Hispanics used to fall into that group, but in these parts, they're the majority and may have lost the feel for the underdog. Keep

Germans, Poles, and Swedes off the panel. Too harsh and rigid.

Anyway, that's what the book says. But nearly every defense lawyer shakes his head over a black social worker or schoolteacher who ended up leading the posse for the state. And nearly every prosecutor remembers a Teutonic male who probably once wore a Luger but carried the banner for the defense in the jury room. Go figure.

I needed Reba Goldfarb. I had lost Deborah Grossman, Dominick Russo, and Philip Freidin. All three had said that they wouldn't vote for the death penalty under any circumstances. Socolow challenged them for cause, saving his precious peremptory challenges while I spent seven of mine getting rid of guys who had blood in their eyes.

It isn't fair. Talking about the penalty phase of the case before the trial begins. Mocking the presumption of innocence. But it's legal.

"Are you in favor of capital punishment?" Abe Socolow now asked Earl Pottenger, an airline mechanic.

"Yes sir!"

Hoo boy. This guy's ready to pull the switch. Ayatollah Pottenger. Socolow smiled and moved on to a heavyset black woman.

"Mrs. Dickson, if you find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and if the state convinces you that the crime is sufficiently heinous, could you recommend to Judge Crane that he impose the death penalty?"

"Ah don't rightly know," Clara Dickson said, squinting up at him.

"Do you have moral or religious objections to the death penalty?"

"It's against the preachin' ah believe in."

"Challenge for cause," Socolow said.

"Granted," Judge Crane ruled.

I stood. "Objection, Your Honor. Dr. Salisbury is being deprived of a jury of his peers. We won't have a cross section of the populace if the state systematically excludes those with moral or religious objections to the death penalty."

"Denied. The Supreme Court ruled on this in the Witt case. The state is entitled to a death-qualified jury."

I shot back. "What's Roger Salisbury entitled to, just death?"

Oh, that was dumb. Judge Crane's long, sad face sharpened and he motioned me to the bench with a tiny wave of his gavel. Socolow slid silently behind me, his invisible smile a knife in my back.