Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“Did you find anything?” I ask.

Harry and I eat stale sandwiches out of wrappers from a deli around the corner. We are standing up at a counter listening to the strains of “We Shall Overcome” over the backdrop of the percussion section of the Nazi National Orchestra beating their hard hats against garbage-can covers they’ve turned into shields.

“There’s a lot of stuff there,” says Harry. “And there’s no way to be sure we got it all.” He tells me that he has left two paralegals separating the materials by date and subject. The most important-the stuff pregnant with possibilities, according to Harry-are Scarborough’s e-mails, though he did a quick toss, turning as much of the stack as he could upside down looking for early drafts of Scarborough’s book. It is here, according to Trisha Scott, that Scarborough left references to the letter supposedly written by Jefferson, the would-be dynamite for Scarborough’s next book.

“Nothing,” says Harry. “Maybe she’s right. If he shredded the printout copies of all his old work, maybe he erased everything from the computers as well.”

The state’s theory is that Carl killed Scarborough for reasons of racial animus, not because the author was black, since he wasn’t, but because his words both written and verbal threatened the Aryan sense of racial superiority-that, and to impress others with similar views.

Over all of this, the missing Jefferson Letter now looms large. There is the question of its intrinsic value as a motive for murder, assuming that the original letter was available and Scarborough could get his hands on it. It is also possible, though there is no evidence at the moment, that perhaps the author had the original at the time of his death. If so, the fact that it is missing and that the police did not find it on Carl or at his apartment in the hours following the murder may be the stuff of which a credible defense is made.

Beyond this is the information from Trisha Scott, how Scarborough tried to use the letter in Perpetual Slaves and how she convinced him not to, for reasons of questioned authenticity. We have the detective’s note, following his interview with Bonguard, that the letter was the inspiration for all-the book, the tour, and what is now approaching $30 million in earned royalties. It is possible that whoever possessed the original of the letter, and who presumably gave Scarborough his copy, might be jealous. Maybe he wanted a cut of the book’s earnings and Scarborough refused to give it up? All of these are possible motives for murder, and from everything we know, none of them apply to Carl Arnsberg.

The Jefferson Letter is the seething force that inspired Scarborough’s historic venom. It is there, throbbing, at the heart of our case. We cannot see it, but its effect and its force are palpable.

It’s one forty-five when the wizard finally comes out from behind the curtain and takes the bench. Quinn shuffles a few papers as he looks down to make sure that Harry is really there and that it’s not somebody in a Harry mask.

Finally satisfied, he looks down at Tuchio. “Is the prosecution ready to proceed?”

Tuchio stands. “We are, Your Honor.”

“Then you may present your opening statement.”

The prosecutor circles the front of the counsel table until he is standing before the jury, no more than six feet from the alternates seated directly in front of him. His arms are folded, feet slightly apart, the power suit draped on his body. He looks at them for a few long seconds in silence, studying the twelve in the box from one end to the other before he finally speaks.

“Why are we here?”

He allows the question to linger in the air just long enough. Tuchio has a sense of timing.

“I’ll tell you,” he says.

Somehow I thought he would.

“We are here so that the People of the State of California can present evidence to you”-the volume of his voice rises now-“evidence of a heinous, cold-blooded crime, the most serious crime possible, the intentional taking of another human life, the capital crime of murder.

“I am going to tell you a story, ladies and gentlemen. It is a true story-”

I was hoping for Hansel and Gretel.

“-with evidence to support it and witnesses who, under oath, swearing to tell the truth, will sit right there.” Tuchio points with an outstretched arm toward the now-empty witness box. “Witnesses who will tell you in their own words what they saw and what they heard. You will see the murder weapon. You will see photographs of the crime scene in all its horror. You will hear experts, scientists and others, explain to you their professional opinions concerning aspects of the evidence and how they came to arrive at their conclusions.

“After you have seen all the evidence and heard all the testimony, you will be instructed by the judge on how to evaluate what you have seen and heard here in this courtroom. And then you will be asked to render a verdict.

“Your Honor, I would ask the defendant to rise.”

The judge wasn’t ready for this. Neither was I. Quinn looks befuddled, but he complies with Tuchio’s request. “The defendant will stand.”

Carl looks at me like, What’s going on?

I tell him to stand, to look straight at the jury. Don’t look away.

We both get up. Carl faces the jury once more. But this time he isn’t smiling. He looks scared.

Tuchio turns back to the jury box. “You will be asked to decide whether that man”-he turns, again with an outstretched arm, his finger pointed like a cocked pistol at Carl-“whether on July eighth of this year, the defendant, Carl Everett Arnsberg, in cold blood and with malice aforethought, murdered Terrance Scarborough.”

Tuchio drops his arm and stands there in front of them in silence. Carl is still standing, looking at the jury like a stone statue. No one is smiling at him from out of the jury box this time. I tug gently on his coat sleeve, and we both sit.

Tuchio turns and looks at us, wrings his hands a little, then starts again.

“On the morning of June fourteenth, a warm, sunny day here in San Diego, Terry Scarborough, a man of letters, an author of some considerable note, who was to appear on national television that night, was busy in his hotel room preparing to appear on Jay Leno’s show.”

Tuchio doesn’t mention that Scarborough was also a lawyer. Why risk tweaking a broad public bias?

“Mr. Scarborough had everything to live for. He had just published a new book, a book that had become a number-one national bestseller.” He nods his head, strokes his chin with one hand, and begins to move in front of the jury, pacing. “Oh, it was a controversial book to be sure. It was a book that dealt with serious issues.” He ends up at the prosecution table right on beat, and from a cardboard box on top he plucks a copy of Scarborough’s book. Then he heads back toward the jury, studying the book’s cover, opening it, fanning a few pages until he gets back to the closed cover. I have now seen this enough times that the image on the book’s jacket is burned into my brain.

The Tush and I have argued behind closed doors with the judge about whether the jury should be allowed to read the book. For the moment the answer is no, though Quinn has left himself enough room to change his mind if he chooses to. The question is whether the book is relevant. Tuchio says that it is, his argument being that it was the content of the book that formed the motive for the murder, or rather Arnsberg’s resentment of that content. The judge is not satisfied that the state has established this. He wants to see more evidence.

“Perpetual Slaves: The Branding of America’s Black Race,” Tuchio reads the title to the jury. Then he holds the book up so that they can all see the front cover.