Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“Okay. So she’s pretty,” I tell him.

“Pretty!” Templeton’s voice goes up a full octave. “Your partner must be quite the lady’s man.” He looks at Harry. “If all he can say about Katia Solaz is that she’s ‘pretty,’ his date card must be full every night.”

He waits for me to say something, but I don’t.

“As I was saying, according to all the witnesses we’ve spoken to, she never had a problem finding men to talk to. Fact is, unless I’m mistaken, isn’t that how you met her? The first time, I mean.” When I look up, Templeton’s glowing face is boring in on me.

“What?”

“I was informed from one of the police reports that that’s how you and Ms. Solaz first met. What was it, she approached you in a grocery store and started talking, is that right?”

“Yes.” What else can I say?

“How did she do it, just walk up to you?” he says.

“She was looking for something. I don’t remember,” I lie.

“I’ll bet she was,” says Templeton.

“It was nothing like that,” I tell him.

“Right,” he says. “And your heart didn’t go pitty-pat either, I’ll bet. Well, if she met her lawyer that way you can figure she may have found men to do other things for her in the same way. Spread a little honey around and bees will come.”

The blood drains from my head as I filter all the details. The cops showed up at our office door with my business card, the one they found in Katia’s purse when they arrested her. I had given it to her that morning at the grocery store in Del Mar. The police asked me if I was her lawyer, and if not, how she came by my card. I explained it to them, and they left.

If the cops have been busy looking for a co-conspirator, it begs the question. Why have they never returned to ask me if I had an alibi for the night of the murders? My mind starts to race. Where the hell was I? I have a sudden compulsion to tear through the pages of my calendar. I can’t remember.

Harry and I sit stone faced, staring at the Dwarf from across the desk.

“You look surprised.” Although this is not directed at one of us in particular, Templeton seems to be looking at me as he says it.

“Do I?”

“Surely you didn’t think she did it alone?”

“I don’t think she did it at all,” I tell him.

Templeton ignores me. “She would have needed help to blank out the camera at the side of the house and to take down the motion sensors. You didn’t think we bought into the concept of coincidence, did you? Hell, she couldn’t possibly have carried all those coins herself. We got an estimate from a coin expert, just on the stuff we know is missing, and the weight would have been more than a hundred and forty pounds. That’s more than she weighs, and it doesn’t include the stuff she took, the coins she hocked along the way on her bus trip. No, there’s no question, somebody entered the house from that side, and they left the same way when they were finished.”

This would, of course, explain what happened to the large cache of missing coins and Pike’s computer. According to the police, Katia’s co-conspirator has them.

“And there’s a good chance that whoever it was set her up,” says Templeton.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“Well, think about it. He left with the lion’s share of the coins, and he avoided having his picture taken on the security cameras coming and going. You notice he sent her out through the front gate, right into one of the security cameras that was still working. Guess he figured somebody had to take the rap. So now he’s got most of the gold, and she’s left facing the death penalty, twisting in the wind, as you might say.”

He allows this to settle on us like mustard gas.

“Bullshit,” says Harry. “If what you’re saying is true, she’d be mad as hell. You don’t think she would have told us by now?”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” says Templeton.

“What?” says Harry.

“I don’t know. Mr. Hinds, maybe you should talk to your client. You are, of course, free to make of this evidence whatever you can in her defense. Personally, I don’t think it will make a difference,” says Templeton.

“Spare us your heartfelt assessment of our case,” says Harry.

“Of course, but there is one more item, the reason I asked you to come over here today. A bit of a wrinkle that’s developed.”

“What wrinkle?” I say.

“Do I have your word that what I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room?”

I look at Harry. He nods. “Go ahead.”

“It better be good,” says Harry.

“Ordinarily I’d let you flounder for a few weeks, push and shove over the items in dispute. I could leave you with the illusion that they’ve simply been misplaced. But that would be deceptive.”

“And, of course, you’d never do that,” says Harry.

“Never,” says Templeton.

“You’re talking about the missing photographs?” says Harry.

“Six of them, I believe. They were taken from your client and inventoried when she was arrested.”

“Where are they?” I ask.

“That’s the problem.”

“Don’t tell me they’ve been destroyed,” I say.

“No, at least not as far as we know.”

“What do you mean as far as you know? Listen,” says Harry, “either deliver them up or tell us where they are.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t.”

“Why not?” I say.

“I can’t tell you that either. What I can tell you is that you would be wise to take the matter into court at your earliest opportunity. File a Brady motion. I won’t oppose it. Give you my word. Get a ruling from the court if you can.”

Brady v. Maryland is the seminal case in criminal discovery. Under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the government is required to deliver to the defense any and all exculpatory evidence. Even if the evidence by itself may not prove innocence, if it tends in that direction the state must turn it over.

“Personally, I think the photos are probably irrelevant and immaterial,” says Templeton. “It’s hard to see how you could fashion a defense around six photographs. Of course, I don’t know what the photos represent. Maybe you could enlighten me,” he says.

“Last time I looked, Brady is a one-way street,” says Harry. “We don’t have to truck information in your direction.”

“I just thought as long as we were sharing things,” says Templeton. “And, of course, as far as I’m concerned you’re entitled to look at the photographs.”

“But you can’t just give them to us?”

“Sorry,” he says.

“I don’t get it,” I tell him. “If you think the photos are immaterial, why wouldn’t you oppose a Brady motion?”

“File it and find out,” says Templeton. “That’s all I can tell you. You won’t get the photographs any other way.”

Anyone familiar with such things might have been skeptical, but Nitikin knew that regardless of the passage of time, more than forty years, the device itself was virtually pristine.

The reason for this was the manner in which it was stored. Soviet physicists had long known that the greatest threat of deterioration to a gun-type nuclear device would be from oxidation and corrosion of the metal parts, and degradation of weapons-grade uranium if it were subjected to oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere for long periods.

Corrosion resulted from the close proximity of highly enriched uranium and ferrous metals, in this case tungsten carbide steel. Separate the uranium from the steel, and store each of them properly, in the case of uranium in a vacuum-sealed container, avoiding moisture and humidity, and the shelf life for a weapon of this kind would be extended geometrically, almost indefinitely.