Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

Harry says nothing. Silence in the car for a moment. “And so you’re thinking this is especially true if the second person is Katia’s own lawyer.”

“We’ve been working together for too long. You’re now doing mind melds,” I tell him. “Let me ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“What would you say if I told you I met up with Katia more than one time before the murders?” I am concentrating on the road, but as I say it I can tell that Harry gets whiplash turning his head to look at me.

“What are you saying?”

“That I saw her one other time before Pike was murdered.”

“Aw, shit,” says Harry.

“I know. Don’t say it. I didn’t tell the cops. One of the stupider things I’ve ever done.”

“This is like a bad dream,” he says.

I glance over and Harry is bug eyed, staring out at the road as if in a trance.

“Nothing happened,” I say. “It was in the afternoon, about a week before the murders. She called me at the office, said she was going to be in Coronado later that day. She said her friend had some business to conduct and she was going to be window-shopping. She wanted to know if I could get together with her for a drink. I checked my calendar. I had nothing up, so I told her sure, why not? We met at the Brigantine, out in front of the office, had two drinks. The conversation lasted maybe forty minutes, that was it. She left and I went home.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“They didn’t ask for an alibi, so I figured they weren’t looking for an accomplice, they were just trolling for information. They wanted to know if I was representing her, and if there was no lawyer-client relationship to get in the way, they wanted to know how I met her and what we talked about. What could I say? There was no lawyer-client relationship when we met. You can be sure they’d already talked to Katia and they knew that. I told them about the first meeting, how she got my card, and that was it. They asked me if I’d talked to her or seen her since, and I said no.”

Harry gives me one of his stern looks.

“You don’t have to say it, I was stupid. I felt sorry for her, in the country all alone. I knew she wasn’t happy. When we had drinks at the Brigantine, she told me she wanted to go back to Costa Rica but the guy she was living with wouldn’t let her go. I told her to call the Costa Rican consulate or the police and they’d find a way to get her home. I told her if she had problems with them to call me and I’d wade in. If I told the homicide detectives this, it would have been all they needed to hang her. They would immediately assume she’d found another way to get free and that she willingly turned her back on the simple legal recourse that was available to her. So I didn’t tell them. So go ahead and shoot me,” I tell Harry.

“Find me a gun,” he says.

“I figured it was none of their business. If they were looking for evidence to bury her, they’d have to find it someplace else.”

We rumble over the freeway for a couple of minutes in silence as Harry absorbs all of this, his head in his hand as his elbow rests against the lower sill of the window on the passenger side.

“Katia didn’t have a cell phone,” says Harry. “She had to take Pike’s to call the taxi when she escaped from the house. That means there’s a good chance that when she called you to set up drinks that afternoon, it was from the landline at Pike’s house.”

“And Templeton would have the phone records,” I say. “I know that now. It’s why he’s breathing down my neck. He knows somebody at the house called the law office just a few days before the murders. He knows you didn’t know her. We’d never done any legal work for Pike, so he wouldn’t be calling us. So it had to be Katia who was calling and it had to be me on the other end, because he knew we’d already met.”

“How did you pay for the drinks at the Brigantine?” says Harry.

“Three guesses. First two don’t count,” I tell him.

“Credit card.”

“Yep. You can bet that Templeton’s had his investigators visiting every place I’ve spent money since I met her, flashing photographs of Katia and me and asking the help if they ever saw us together.”

“So the cops would have already been to the Brigantine talking to the bartender and the waitresses,” says Harry.

“Do you want to go over and ask them?” I say.

“No.”

It entered my mind like an icicle two nights ago as I lay in bed and thought about everything Templeton had said during our meeting. He believes I have taken Katia’s case for one reason, so that I can control her, keep the police away, and keep her quiet. Once she is convicted, who is going to believe her? His invitation across the desk to Harry to talk to his client was Templeton’s effort to save her. He’s not sure about Harry, but he has reason to believe that I’m the devil.

He has no doubt already seen my credit card statements and phone records. He could do that without my knowledge. Unless I’m wrong, he won’t wait long to get his hands on my calendar. Why he is waiting, I’m not sure.

As Harry and I enter the courtroom this afternoon, Templeton is in his special chair that he uses only in court, perched up high at the prosecution-counsel table. He doesn’t need the chair for mobility, but for height. Huddled around him are four other people, one of the homicide detectives, a woman, and two gentlemen with their backs to us. They’re all wearing blue power suits, the men in pinstripes. There is a heavy satchel briefcase on the floor next to one of them. Unless they are carrying this for exercise, it appears to be locked and loaded, ready for action.

“The Dwarf’s brought the entire office,” says Harry. “I thought he said he wasn’t going to oppose this.”

The seats on this side of the railing, for the public, are empty except for two journalists. Arguments over a motion on evidence, even in a notorious murder case, never draw much of an audience. They know the defendant won’t be here. Katia’s presence is not required. I told her I would call her at the jail the moment we’re finished.

Communication with Katia is becoming a problem, especially since eruption of telephone-gate at the county jails. A few weeks ago the sheriff’s department was caught recording lawyer-client conversations on the jailhouse telephone system. Copies of these found their way to the DA’s office on discs. Ordinarily this would be a felony under state law, but to do this you have to prove intent. The sheriff claims the lawyer-client stuff was mixed in with other telephone conversations that the department was allowed to record, a glitch in the computer-operated recording system. Except for lawyer-client communications, jail inmates have no right of privacy. Bugging cells and “accidentally” installing snitches to sleep in the bunk above a target inmate has always been part of the game.

Regardless of what law enforcement does to gloss over this, communicating with Katia is now a problem. Unless Harry or I hop in the car and drive twenty miles, all the way out to Santee, there is no safe method for talking to her.

Harry and I approach, up the center aisle toward the swinging gate at the bar in front of the judge’s bench. The woman at the table turns and suddenly I recognize her. She is Kim Howard, the United States attorney for the Southern District of California.

Harry and I become walking ventriloquists, put on our best smiles and try to suck it up.

“What is she doing here?” whispers Harry.

“I don’t know.”

Apparently one of the reporters is wondering the same thing. Now that she has turned toward him, he’s leaning over the railing trying to engage her in conversation.