The Jury Master (8 page)

The group dissipated with final handshakes and thumbs-up, until only Tina remained.

“I thought you said you were taking today off. I thought you were going rock climbing,” she said.

Sloane walked behind his desk and picked up a letter at the top of the stack. “I wanted to clear my desk so I wouldn’t worry about it. Guess I didn’t need to. Thanks for cleaning up in here.”

“Me and two bulldozers.”

He nodded to the ficus plants. “The plants are a nice touch.”

“I thought you needed more oxygen.”

“In here or in general?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

“What’s the smell?”

“Fresh air.”

She turned and closed the door. At thirty-three, Tina Scoccolo was four years younger than Sloane, but at times she treated him like a mother would, perhaps because she was one. She had a nine-year-old son, Jake, from a failed marriage that had left her a single parent at the ripe old age of twenty-four, an experience that had apparently hardened her. Sloane had never known her to date, though not from a lack of opportunity. At the firm’s parties, when the attorneys drank too much and mingled too casually, she was the plum in the bowl of fruit. At five feet eight inches, she had a runner’s build: lean legs and strong shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist. And though not what some might call beautiful, she had a natural attractiveness. Shoulder-length auburn hair framed fair skin, with a trace of freckles spotting the bridge of her nose giving her a youthful appearance. Her blue eyes sparkled when she laughed, and became stone-cold gray when she was unhappy. She either ignored the unsolicited advances, put the attorney in his place with a deft comment—often about his spouse—or left the party early before the alcohol loosened tongues.

“Are you all right?” She crossed her arms like a school principal expecting a truthful answer.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You look tired.”

“I am tired. That’s what trials do; they make you tired.”

“You’re not sick?”

“You’re not that lucky.”

She stepped closer, considering his face. “What’s with the bump on your forehead?”

He pulled down the brim of his hat. “Just a bump. Hit my head.”

“Rock climbing?” she asked with disapproval.

“Not yet.”

He took off his windbreaker and slid into the leather chair, but Tina remained resolute. After so many years together she knew his bullshit, and God knew she never hesitated to call him on it.

He sat back. “Okay. Someone broke into my apartment and trashed it pretty well. I’ve been up most of the morning dealing with it.”

“That’s horrible. Did you—”

“Call the police? Yes. And they came and took a report and that’s as far as it will go because they have no suspects and it does not appear anything of value was taken.”

“Are you going to—”

“File a claim with my insurance company? Yes. It’s another one of the reasons I came in.”

“Do you—”

“Have any idea who did it? No, just the usual suspects who hate me.”

She frowned at him. “Fine, be that way.” She turned to leave.

He put down the stack of mail. “Tina?”

She turned back to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m just a bit tired and frustrated. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Apology accepted. Is there anything I can do?”

“How are you at picking out furniture from catalogues?”

“They wrecked your furniture?”

“I need a sofa and a matching chair. Leather. Basic colors. Just a place to sit. I’ll also need a television, a stereo, and a new mattress.”

“They stole your mattress?”

“Just ripped it open.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “That is the question. Find some place that will deliver. Put it on my credit card.”

“Do I have carte blanche?”

“Don’t empty my account. Oh, and would you bring my personal insurance file on the building?”

He waited for her to close the door behind her. Then he swiveled his chair toward an expansive view of a crystal-blue, cloudless sky above the slate-gray waters of the San Francisco Bay. An airplane had left a small white streak, like a painter’s errant brush on a blue canvas.

Five minutes later Tina walked back in. “David—what are you looking at?”

He turned from the window. “Just thought I’d admire the view for a moment.”

She walked to the window. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Why not?”

“Because in the ten years I’ve been here I’ve never seen you do it before.” She handed him three pink message slips and four unsigned letters. “I forwarded the rest of your messages to your voice mail.”

With his success she had started screening his calls and his e-mails. He recognized the first two messages and categorized them as “not urgent.” He did not recognize the third name.

“Who’s Joe Branick?”

10

Charles Town,

West Virginia

M
OLE!”

J. Rayburn Franklin’s voice rumbled down the hall like an avalanche, spilling coffee cups and papers from desks. Marty Banto jerked in his chair, banged his knee on a drawer, and swore. “Damn. Here we go again.”

Franklin’s appearance was always a letdown. He was the only man Tom Molia had ever met who couldn’t compete with his own voice. The voice belonged to an overweight, cigar-smoking politician or a high school football coach. With round, wire-rimmed glasses on a thin, perpetually strained face, Franklin looked like a constipated accountant during tax season. The deep baritone had to have been a gift from God, a weapon in what appeared to be an otherwise empty arsenal.

Assistant United States Attorney Rivers Jones had been fast.

Franklin ripped the glasses from his face, getting one of the wires caught behind his ear and bending it as he struggled to pull it free, which only added to his frustration. He was out of breath, though the walk from his office was perhaps twenty yards.

“Do you want to explain to me how, in the course of a five-minute conversation, you can manage to piss off an assistant U.S. attorney
and
insult the president of the United States?”

“Hell, Rayburn, all I said—”

Franklin raised a hand. “I’m not interested in what you said or have to say. What I am interested in is what he had to say you had to say. Do you get some perverse pleasure out of making my life miserable?”

“Rayburn—”

“Don’t you have any other hobbies to keep you busy?”

“Chief—”

“Because if you don’t, I would strongly suggest you find some.” Franklin held his index finger and thumb a fraction of an inch apart and leaned well into Molia’s personal space. “I am this close to involuntary retirement, and if I go, I guarantee you I’m taking you with me.”

“The guy was a horse’s ass, Ray. Hell, I was looking out for you.”

Franklin smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “You were looking out for me?” He stood back and waved his arms, the glasses dangling from his hand. “Well, hell, why didn’t you just say so? I guess I made a mistake. I guess I should be thanking you.”

“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

“No, Mole, why would you think that? It’s not like you just told off a U.S. attorney calling on behalf of the president of the United States—”

“—United
fucking
States.”

“What?”

“He called it the ‘United
fucking
States.’”

“I don’t give a shit what he called it. I just got my ass chewed out so bad I may not sit for a week in my
fucking
office.” Franklin delivered the final sentence inches from Molia’s face; strands of his thinning hair, which he parted in the middle and slicked straight back, fell in front of his eyes.

“You
are
being sarcastic.”

Franklin pulled back. “Come on, Mole. Christ. Quit fucking around here.”

Molia spoke softly, as he did when pacifying his children. “He called it an
investigation,
Ray. Why do you think he would call a routine suicide an investigation?”

Franklin blinked one long blink. It could have been an incredulous blink, as if he could not believe what he had just heard, or it could have been a pause to regain his composure, but Molia suspected it was neither. He suspected that it was a blink of frustration, but with a hint of curiosity. As much as Molia frustrated the crap out of J. Rayburn Franklin, he was also his best detective, and his instincts were rarely wrong.

“I don’t care what he called it,” Franklin said. “I don’t care if he called it Christ’s Last Supper. What I care about is keeping my job. And I assume you do, too, or are you independently wealthy and I didn’t know?”

“I don’t like this one, Ray. My stomach’s bothering me.”

“With your diet, I don’t doubt it. You eat crap a billy goat wouldn’t touch.” He put his glasses back on, pushed the hair back from his forehead, and smoothed the sides with his palms, calming. After a moment he asked, “Okay, so what’s bothering you?”

“We still haven’t heard from Coop.”

“Coop’s got the weekend off. He put in for it two weeks ago.”

“There’s no answer—”

“At his home. I know. That’s because his wife is in South Carolina showing off the baby to her family, and Coop’s using the time to get in some hunting and fishing. She took the car, so he put in to use the cruiser for the weekend. I okayed it. Said he was taking off immediately after his shift. Would you or I leave immediately after pulling the twelve-hour graveyard? No, but we aren’t twenty-five years old anymore, either, Mole.”

“What about the park? Why would he just take off, Ray, just leave the scene?”

“Coop’s a rookie, Mole. Rookies do stupid things; you know that. He probably spooked when he realized he was out of his jurisdiction, and didn’t feel like coming back here to get his ass bit and lose vacation time filling out the paperwork. You of all people know the saying about ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission.’ Hell, I think you
invented
it. Coop will come crawling in here Monday asking forgiveness. I’ll chew on his ass then. Until then, as for this Branick thing, last I checked, the Justice Department was pretty well staffed, okay? So that there is no misunderstanding, I’m going to say this slowly. Close . . . your . . . file. If you have anything in the works, call it off.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?” Molia liked to let Franklin have the last dig. It soothed his ego.

Franklin didn’t disappoint him. “Take the file, put it on your chair . . . and sit . . . on . . . it.” Franklin started out of the office, then turned in the doorway. “I’m serious, Mole. I don’t want to hear even
rumors
you’re working on that file.”

Molia raised his hands as if under arrest. “No problem. I got enough to keep me busy.”

“Sometimes I’m not so sure,” Franklin said, the sound of his shoes slapping against the linoleum as he walked down the hallway. When he rounded the corner he looked back through the wire-mesh window. Molia stood, closed the manila file, placed it neatly on his chair, and sat on it.

11

T
INA PLUCKED THE
message slip from Sloane’s hand and eyed it as if suspicious of her own handwriting, then handed it back. “I don’t know.”

Sloane laughed. “I take it he didn’t leave a message?”

She took the slip again, considered it further, gave it back. “Does it say he left a message?”

“So who is he?”

“How should I know? Probably the latest twenty-three-year-old go-getter with the hot stock tip of the week. You get about five a week now.”

He smiled. “Maybe we could find out for sure?”

“Call the number.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, I get it. ‘We’ means ‘me.’” She plucked the slip from his hand with a roll of the eyes and walked out the door, talking under her breath.

A minute later she walked back in.

“That was fast.”

“Maybe not fast enough. Dianne just called. His Highness wants to talk with you about your meeting with Transamerican Insurance Monday morning. You want me to block out the next three hours of your day for that blowhard?”

Sloane was in no mood for a meeting with Bob Foster. “What did you tell her?”

“I gave her the runaround, said you were in the bathroom. If she calls again, I’ll tell her you slipped out before I could give you the message.” She gave him a smug smile.

He grabbed his windbreaker off the back of his chair. “You’re a genius.”

“Talk’s cheap. I want a raise.”

“I’d stop and put in a request for you, but I don’t want to make a liar out of you to Dianne. Have a nice weekend.”

She put a hand on his chest like a school crossing guard, handed him the file with his insurance papers, and stuck three letters under his nose, along with a pen. “Hold on a minute, Mr. Top Gun. I need your autograph.”

He scribbled his name, handing each letter to her. “What am I signing here?”

“Nothing important. Pay raise for Tina. Paid vacation for Tina. My annual review. I took the liberty of filling it out for you.”

He handed her the pen. “How did you do this year?”

“Great as always.”

“Good for you.” He slipped the folded pink message slip into his pocket, knocked the painting on the wall crooked, and gave her a wink as he stepped past her, disappearing into the hallway.

12

T
OM MOLIA WAITED
until late afternoon, when Clay Baldwin wouldn’t perceive it as anything more than the simple act of getting an early jump on the weekend. He even slid the damn magnet from the
IN
to the
OUT
column, which always grated on his derriere. He suspected the board to be the brainchild of Franklin, Baldwin’s brother-in-law. Franklin liked to keep track of his officers, especially Molia. After twenty years of coming and going as he pleased, Molia didn’t like the idea of someone keeping tabs on him, except maybe his wife, who had earned the right by enduring him for twenty-two years of marriage. He had declared war on the board.

Inside his 1969 emerald-green Chevy he replayed his conversation with Assistant United States Attorney Rivers Jones. He’d set out to tweak Jones and see if anything shook free. It had, like leaves in autumn. Jones’s use of the word “investigation” wasn’t a slip of the tongue. The Department of Justice was investigating an open-and-shut suicide, and that request apparently had come from the White House. Why? The only logical explanation was that someone wasn’t convinced it was a suicide, which made it a possible homicide, which made it Tom Molia’s business.