Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

Jaime made short work of Klaus’s attempt to rehabilitate Erin, effectively blowing away any molecules of credibility that might hover in the courtroom air. Then, out of the jury’s hearing, he asked that Erin be arrested for perjury. Salas should have done it. To Nina’s amazement, he turned Jaime down. Maybe he had a daughter Erin’s age, or maybe he was just tired of filling up the jail.

Some people just catch the breaks. Maybe lucky Erin could keep Stefan’s bad luck at bay.

Wanda Wyatt appeared next as an adverse witness. After Erin’s high-pitched sweetness, she smoldered, low-voiced, deep lines sinking around her mouth. She wore a sober brown skirt with a few stray dog hairs attached, and sensible heels, her long gray hair defiantly free down her back.

“You are the defendant’s mother?” Jaime asked.

“That’s right.”

“Remember back, please, to the night of April twelfth of this year. That was a Saturday night, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You told the police you took a ride that night.”

“Yes.”

“You went out?”

She pulled the words out. “I did.”

“Where did you go?”

“I drove over to my son Stefan’s house in Monterey.”

“You drove to your son’s house at what time?”

“Late. I can’t say exactly what time.”

“Why did you go over there late at night?”

“I knew they were usually up that late on a weekend night. I had cooked a big dinner and had leftovers. I just thought I would drop some by.”

“When you arrived at your son’s house, what did you see?”

Wanda became silent.

“Mrs. Wyatt?”

“I saw my son loading things into the trunk of his car.”

“My own mother,” Stefan moaned to Nina.

“She doesn’t have any choice,” she whispered. “She can’t deny it, Stefan.”

“What kind of things?” Sandoval asked.

“It was dark! I’m not sure.”

“And yet the next morning, didn’t you tell your neighbor, Donna Lake, that you saw your son loading gardening implements…” He took up a piece of paper and read, “‘A shovel, a pick, that kind of thing’? And isn’t that what you admitted to the police?”

“I didn’t know what I saw,” she said stubbornly. “I couldn’t see what he was putting in there.”

“‘It was bizarre,’ you said. ‘I couldn’t imagine why he’d need a shovel at that time of night.’ You did say that to your neighbor before you heard your son had been arrested, didn’t you?”

Wanda glanced at the audience, at Nina, and finally, at Stefan, then shook her head, sighing. What could a mother do with such a beetle-headed son?

Klaus did a little better on the cross-examination this time. Nina couldn’t decide if he was aware of how badly he had done with Erin or not, but with Wanda, the old-gentleman game worked. He had her relieved and nearly smiling by the time she stepped down. She had told the jury what a basically good boy Stefan had been, and she had shown she loved her son in spite of any doubts she might harbor about his judgment. The defense, at this point in the prosecution’s case, with all the evidence in the world showing her son was guilty, could hope for no better.

Saturday 9/27

“I NEED YOU TO MAKE PHONE CALLS AND DO SOME COMPUTER WORK from the office,” Nina told Paul on Saturday morning. He didn’t like Nina telling him to do things he didn’t want to do, but he inferred from the inflexibility of her tone that he wasn’t going to be set free to go find the Russian.

He sat across from her desk in the tiny office in the Pohlmann building. For once the day had dawned clear and brilliant, so the light could pour down on her brown hair, which seemed to have come straight from bed to the office without a stop at the brush station. She was wearing tight jeans and a black sweater, and with her pale skin and red lips she looked like some elfin beatnik from the fifties.

“The defense case starts on Monday and we have to get as much of the grunt work in as we can at this point. Dean Trumbo didn’t do the job, so…”

“Klaus didn’t do the job,” Paul said. “Look, honey, Sergey Krilov is important. He’s probably the killer. He’s a pro.”

“And he’s back in Moscow or someplace right now, thinking he’s got the last pieces of poor Constantin Zhukovsky,” Nina said. “Lucky for us, Ginger has the samples she took just before the assault.”

“I talked to her. She shouldn’t have taken the guy on.”

“She came out of it better than Father Giorgi.”

Paul thought about his wasted trip to the hospital the night before. The priest’s face, as he argued with a nurse about how much medication he needed, had a kabuki pallor. The nurse said his injuries were superficial. He had a broken finger, some slight cuts to his chest, and a shallow neck wound that would heal nicely. He was doing fine. Paul supposed medical people had a looser definition of “fine” than he did.

After thanking Paul for saving his life, Giorgi had begged off any further conversation. Paul spent the long drive back home from the city hashing over each not-too-bright move he had made. Giorgi had been subjected to two-bit torture, all in two minutes. Every time he thought about the way the Russian had efficiently slit the man’s throat, just so Paul would have to stop and he could get away, he burned. He would never forgive the attack on Ginger. How gratifying it would be to find the guy and… “The Russian chose not to kill him, or else Giorgi would be dead. He knows his knives.”

“Yeah,” Nina said.

“It’s my fault. I need to find Krilov.”

“Prepare the defense now, take revenge later,” Nina said. “It’s an excellent working philosophy.”

“But he’s the killer!”

“Just a minute ago we were thinking the killer was Christina’s brother, Alex,” she reminded him.

“Look. We start poking around in the dirt in this case and we turn up a pit viper. We can’t just let Krilov crawl away.”

“He’s already gone, and we only have a few days left,” Nina said. “We have to figure out why he wanted the bones, I agree, but Paul, we won’t find out by finding him. We’ll find out from working the people and facts that are sitting right here.”

“Well, what does Ginger say?”

“She has no idea. We were kicking around some ideas. Maybe Constantin wasn’t really Christina’s father. Ginger’s going to check for paternity.”

“So what if he wasn’t?”

“There’s a money aspect. He left a million bucks to each of his children,” Nina said. She showed Paul a probate file. “I got this from the county clerk’s office at the Monterey courthouse right after court.” Paul flipped through the old man’s will. He had given the contents of his stock accounts at Charles Schwab to his children Christina and Alex. He had also left a trust fund in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars to his housekeeper of many years, Wanda Wyatt.

“Wait a minute!” Paul said. “Wait just a doggone minute! Wanda Wyatt? Stefan Wyatt’s mother? She was Constantin’s housekeeper?”

“Fresh off the presses.”

“Incredible!”

“How to use it to help Stefan is the problem,” Nina said. “It makes Wanda a liar. She said she didn’t know the Zhukovsky family. Well, she did. By the way, Alan handled the Zhukovsky probate. He also handled the transfer of an annuity to Wanda Wyatt. He knows both families. He could have helped me link some of this up.”

“Alan Turk? Anal Alan? Have you talked to him?”

“I called his house at eight this morning. He sang the usual song. It’s all lawyer-client privileged information.”

“But this firm represents Stefan Wyatt!”