Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

He sits staring at me. Fluids of unknown human origin streak his neoprene apron, for by nine in the morning he’s been hard at it for more than an hour. Genuine concern registers in his eyes, for George Cooper doesn’t like to say no to a friend.

“I’d like to help you out, Paul. I think you know that. But on this thing Nelson’s got the lid on-tight as a drum.” George Cooper speaks with a slow Southern drawl, the kind that pulls every vowel in the alphabet over his tongue like cold syrup.

By all accounts, George Saroyan Cooper, “Coop” to anyone who has known him for more than a week, is a handsome man. A shock of coal-black hair parted neatly on the left, tempered with specks of gray at the temples, outlines the fine features of his face-a gentle well-proportioned nose slightly upturned at the tip, deep-set brown eyes, and thin lips curled in a chronic grin convey the good nature of the man. His teeth are pearl-white and evenly spaced, set off by a rich and carefully groomed black mustache, itself peppered with faint wisps of gray where it joins laugh lines at the corners of his mouth.

He’s carrying several glass slides in his hand and slips one of them under a stereoscope on the table next to the counter. “I’ve told ’em to bag the hands,” he says. “Always bag the hands.”

I smile at him, oblivious to his latest frustration.

“N-o-o-o-o,” he says. “They roll the cadavers into this place with the hands hanging free, out off the side of the gurney, like the guy’s gotta scratch an itch or somethin’.” He squints into the microscope. He’s talking to himself now, his back to me.

Coop hails from South Carolina, an old Charleston family, of which he’s the black sheep. It wasn’t that Cooper failed to live up to his parents’ expectations. His father and grandfather had been physicians before him. But they tended to the living.

I’ve known George Cooper for seven years. It seems like longer. He possesses the easy nature of the South, a slow, genteel charm. I would guess that if you asked twelve people who knew him to identify their best friend, each in his own turn would name George Cooper. He has worked his magic on me as well, for if asked, I would make it a baker’s dozen.

And yet behind all of the warmth, the hardy good nature, there is the shadow of some baleful quality that sets Coop apart from others in my circle of friendship. The casual acquaintance might credit this ominous phantom to Coop’s occupation, and in a way that would be right. But it’s not the morbid nature of his work that accounts for this schism of demeanor. It’s grounded in the fact that Coop is driven to pursue the pathology of death with a missionary’s zeal. The dead speak to George Cooper. He’s their interpreter, the translator of organic missives from beyond the grave. And to George Cooper, it’s a holy calling.

I lobby him, cajole him for information about Potter’s death. He listens. Like a banker hit for a loan, taciturn. He turns from the microscope, rests his buttocks against the edge of an empty gurney pressed against the wall.

“How’s your little girl?” he asks.

Dealing with Coop can be frustrating.

“She’s fine.”

“I remember Sharon at that age,” he says. “She loved the job, you know. I guess I never thanked you.”

I shake my head but say nothing. In the pit of my stomach I feel a knot beginning to grow. With Ben’s death I wonder what will happen to the law school’s largess, “The Sharon Cooper Trust.” No doubt it will now be dwarfed by another in the name of “Benjamin G. Potter.”

“She would have been a good lawyer,” I say.

He nods. There’s a glaze of water over his eyes. He wipes them with his sleeve. I don’t tell about the limited progress I’ve made on Sharon’s probate. I’ve struck out with Feinberg. After listening to his spiel at the University Club, I approached him cautiously and told him my tale of woe. He declined to take the case-“Too busy,” he said. So I’m back to square one. But it’s my one consolation with Coop: He doesn’t press. Patience is a Southern virtue.

“I’m lookin’ for other leads,” he says, “in Sharon’s death.”

The accident remains an open matter with the police. Sharon’s car had been involved in a single-vehicle accident, careening off the road into a tree. But evidence at the scene revealed that she had not been driving at the time. Coop is on his own quest to find the driver.

“Did you know she wasn’t killed by the impact?” he says.

I shake my head. I’m not interested in feeding this conversation.

“She would have survived. I know it,” he says. “The fire killed her. Whoever was in the car could have saved her.”

“You don’t know that, Coop. Let the cops handle it.”

‘They’re not doing too well right now. They have virtually no leads. I figure anyone walking on that levee road, twenty miles from town, would be seen by someone. Don’t you think?”

I nod to humor him.

My first meeting with Coop came during the prosecution of a manslaughter case, a slam-dunk for the state on which I was putting the final touches. The defendant was a small-time pimp charged with dealing drugs to one of his hookers, who had OD’ed. Coop had already appeared and been cross-examined. But the defense now recalled him, a desperate last-minute fishing expedition. He was ordered to appear and to produce his working papers.

When Coop arrived at the courthouse, I could sense that beneath the thin veneer of professionalism he was seething. The subpoena had been delivered that morning, followed closely by a telephone call from Andy Shea, a fire-breathing counsel for the defense, and mouthpiece of the month among petty junkies and drug dealers. Shea, as was his custom, had bullied and berated half the coroner’s staff over the telephone in an effort to coerce compliance with the subpoena he hadn’t served on time.

In the period of three minutes as I counseled Cooper outside the courtroom, I observed a bizarre metamorphosis overtake the man. As I raced against the clock to explore the legal issues embraced by the subpoena, Coop appeared distracted. Then a strange calm came over him. I was gripped by a gnawing fear that fate had delivered to me the scourge of every trial lawyer-a witness who could not be controlled.

Inside, Cooper took the stand. He seated himself two feet below Merriam Watkins, judge of the superior court. Shea arrogantly demanded Cooper’s working papers. The coroner reached into the manila envelope he was carrying and handed a disheveled pile of documents to the lawyer.

He apologized for the disorganized state of the papers. He was solicitous. He did everything but rise from his chair and bow from the waist.

Shea took the stack and, shaking his head with disgust, retreated to the counsel table to place the prize in some usable order.

Coop turned his soulful eyes toward Judge Watkins, pumped up a little Southern humility, and apologized for failing to make copies for the court. He offered an explanation to the judge, his way of making small talk. Shea was too busy shuffling pages to take heed of the colloquy at the bench.

With no objection from Shea, Coop was free to ramble on. A rakish grin grew under his dark mustache and just as quickly disappeared behind a blanket of courtly charm.

He told the judge how the subpoena had been served at eight o’clock that morning and how five minutes later Mr. Shea had telephoned the office. With the mention of his name, the defense attorney looked up from the table for the first time-it was too late. Coop was on a roll.

He told about Shea’s insistence, and asked if he could quote the lawyer. By this time the judge’s expression was a quizzical mask. She shrugged her shoulders.