Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

James refuses to back off. “It’s possible,” he says, “that the body, if it were just at the tilting point in the chair at the time of death, could have been affected by the very earliest stages of lividity.”

“Or I suppose it could have been an earth tremor, or a puff of wind, or maybe a séance going on across town-”

“Objection.” Tuchio’s out of his chair.

Quinn slaps the gavel. “The jury will disregard counsel’s last comment,” says the judge. “Any more questions?”

“None, Your Honor.”

“Good. Next witness.”

Tuchio takes up the remainder of the afternoon with Carl’s former supervisor, the head of catering and the manager of the hotel dining room at the Presidential Regis. The witness testifies that Carl was not the best employee. He was often late for work, argued with other employees often over issues of politics, and was twice caught stealing items of food from the kitchen.

When asked why the defendant wasn’t fired, the supervisor explained that in the last year, following two raids by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it had become very difficult to get good help, or to keep it. In other words, Carl only had the job because he didn’t need a green card to work.

Notwithstanding Carl’s shaky record as an employee, the witness told the jury that Carl Arnsberg, like most employees at the hotel, either possessed or had access to a master card key, which would have given him access not only to the victim’s hotel room but to the maintenance closet where the murder weapon, the hammer, was stored.

According to the witness, on the morning of the murder, the defendant left the hotel, disappeared without telling anyone, and failed to clock out with his time card.

End of the day, and Harry and I hoof it back to the rendezvous point.

“I know what I’d like to do. But given the fact that we live in a civilized society, Quinn would probably say no to waterboarding,” says Harry. “We may just have to settle for a few early subpoenas. Turn the screws and hope,” he says. “Let ’em cool their ass on a hard bench in the courthouse, wondering when and whether they’ll be called.”

On Harry’s short list of recipients for witness subpoenas is the literary agent, Richard Bonguard; the Washington lawyer, Trisha Scott; and Scarborough’s editor, Jim Aubrey.

“We bring them out early and sweat ’em,” says Harry. “How much time do you think we have before Tuchio wraps his case?”

“I don’t know. Two weeks at the outside. No more,” I tell him.

Harry and I have gone over the state’s witness list. Besides Carl’s tavern buddies, Tuchio has several witnesses he will no doubt call, one of them a psychiatrist prepared to talk about hate crimes and how political hostility can fit the mold. He will no doubt get the shrink talking about the contents of Scarborough’s book as well as taped videos of some of the author’s more provocative interviews on television and how these might trigger hostility. There are also two hotel employees who argued with Carl about politics and who presumably will testify as to the level of anger he displayed. One of Carl’s neighbors also has a tale along these lines and is on Tuchio’s list. If he wants to put a few flourishes on his case, there are two or three members of the Aryan Posse he could drop on us. Though according to investigative reports, most of these had only a passing acquaintance with Carl. They told the cops that Carl was so far out on the fringes of the group that they didn’t know who he was, and when they were invited to classify Carl as a wannabe with the group, they said they didn’t know. Show the jury pictures of these guys, chopper gauchos with tattoos from here to hell, and the fact that they didn’t know him becomes Carl’s most positive character reference.

“So let’s play it safe and say we have a week,” says Harry. “We serve Bonguard, Scott, and Aubrey ASAP-tomorrow if we can do it-and bring ’em out now.”

We suspect that at least one of them, maybe all, has seen the Jefferson Letter and certainly knows more about it than he or she has revealed to us. If we’re right and we can squeeze it out of one or all of them, we could build a legal bridge, permitting us to talk about the letter in front of the jury. This, plus the shadow in blood on the leather-the inference, because we may not be able to say it overtly, that this silhouette represents the missing letter-gives us at least the bones of a case. Dress it up in a few of the inconsistencies from Tuchio’s own presentation and the skeleton might dance long enough in front of the jury to inflict two or three of them with a terminal case of reasonable doubt.

A hung jury. It may be like kissing your sister, but it’s better than a lethal injection. And who knows? If the gods of reason are asleep over the jury room and somebody switches off the lights, we could even get an acquittal.

“What makes you think they’ll be more cooperative once they come west?” I ask Harry. I’m talking about Bonguard, Scott, and the editor.

“We get them thinking about that hot ball of sun,” says Harry, “the media spotlight over a witness stand in a trial with charged racial overtones.

“Take them out to dinner, separately,” he says, “and talk about the book.”

By the look I give him, he knows I’m not following him.

“Perpetual Slaves,” he says. “That book is positively full of all kinds of hideous history. Tuchio is going to use it to brain our client. So over salad we ask Bonguard his thoughts on the intimate details in the book and its effect on race relations in modern America. Now, that’s some touchy stuff,” says Harry. He stops walking and looks at me.

What Harry has in mind is the modern equivalent of a Renaissance Florentine inquisition-everything but the stake, the pyre, and the burning bodies. If the restaurant would let him in, he would dress in a robe with a hood, holding a staff with a skeletonized hand nailed to the end of it.

“I wouldn’t want to have to talk about that stuff in open court, under oath, on the stand, with reporters in the front row working their pencils to a nub taking notes,” says Harry. “Hell, a single word, an unintended inference, or maybe just the wrong inflection in your voice-on a sensitive subject like that, you could fall on your own sword, kill a career in full bloom right there in front of the world.

“And we haven’t even gotten to the bad stuff yet,” says Harry, “whether Bonguard and Scarborough ever had conversations about all the violence that seemed to be following them around on tour. You know, I’ll bet if we subpoenaed the publisher’s sales records on that book and plotted them against newspapers in the cities where the fire tour visited, you would see a direct correlation between the flames on the front page and the spikes in sales. Scarborough wasn’t an author, he was a firebug.”

To listen to my partner, you’d think that whoever murdered the man didn’t commit a crime, just simply killed a pyromaniac before he could burn another city. If we can’t spring something loose on the letter, this may become our best defense.

“Give me an hour with Bonguard,” he says. “No. No. Forty minutes,” says Harry, “tops. Before we get to dessert, he’ll tell me everything he knows about that letter, whether he saw it, and how many times. Believe me, he’ll be anxious to get on the stand as long as he can talk about anything except that book and how they marketed it.”

“And even if he didn’t see the letter, he’ll swear he did. Right?”

Harry starts walking again, trudging with his head down, hauling his heavy briefcase. “Hey, if he doesn’t tell me he’s lying, how am I supposed to know?”