Missing Justice (27 page)

I scribbled down the name on a cocktail napkin.

“The check he got is from a company called Gunderson Development.”

I didn’t need to write that one down.

“I didn’t find a listing for either Minkins or the company,” Slip said, “but you’re probably in a better position to track someone down. Maybe you can get a picture of Minkins, see if he’s the one who told Melvin to take the paint.”

“You’re pushing your luck, Slip. I’m here to listen. Don’t tell me how to do my job. Tell me about the fingerprint on the door.”

If Slip was convinced Melvin was innocent, he must have an explanation for the print.

“Melvin went to the house Wednesday night. He was so excited about the new job, he thought it might help if he talked to her in person.”

That’s what Melvin’s mother had said.

“How’d he know where she lived?” I asked.

Slip looked down then looked back to me. “Let’s just say that part doesn’t help me so much.”

“I’m going to assume he did something stalkerish, like follow her home at some point.”

Slip’s silence was enough.

“So what happened when he knocked?” I asked.

“Nothing. No one was home. After he left, he realized that showing up on her front door was probably not the wisest litigation strategy.”

“But threatening letters are?”

“I never said Melvin was rational,” he said, “just innocent. By the way, he tells me he mailed that last letter Monday morning,

and I believe him. And, I know you can explain it away if you need to, but you’ve got to admit that Melvin as a sex offender doesn’t ring true. That leaves you having to explain how your vie got dressed after she died. Come on, Samantha, part of you has a hinky feeling about this.”

I let the comment go. I didn’t need him telling a judge down the road that I had supposedly expressed doubt about the prosecution. “How come I haven’t heard anything about an alibi?”

“That part doesn’t help either,” he said.

“Slip, that’s usually shorthand for sitting alone by himself, with no one to verify it.”

“The kids go to church with Grandma on Sundays. You know those Baptists; it’s an all-day thing.”

“And I assume under your theory, someone planted the hammer,” I said.

“There are no prints on it. And you heard Johnson. He tried to call Caffrey before he homed in on Melvin. If Caffrey was doing your victim, he’d know about Melvin. That’s plenty of time to dump the hammer. And, hell, Caffrey’s powerful enough to have someone do it for him. Melvin was at the mall with the kids from six to nine that night.”

Now that I heard Slip’s attempt to explain the things that had been nagging at me, it sounded ridiculous.

“How does someone get inside the apartment? My cops didn’t see any sign of a breakin.”

“Melvin doesn’t bolt the door, and you should see the locks on public housing. It took my investigator about four seconds to slip it with a credit card.”

It still didn’t sound right. The framing of a defendant is rare enough, but the way Slip spelled it out, this one involved not only someone from the property site but also an elected official. It didn’t fly without a connection between the two.

not

Maybe Slip would find one. I fished the property receipt out of my bag and scribbled my home phone number on the back.

“Here’s a present,” I said. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.

I had some work to do this weekend too, but first I needed to track down the envelope that Jenna Markson had sent interoffice.

Searching for it in my office, I remembered that I still hadn’t returned Susan Kerr’s call from the morning. Better to do it now than to call her over the weekend or let it sit until Monday.

She thanked me for calling. “I feel stupid bothering you when you’re in the middle of the hearing, but I “

“Don’t worry about it, Susan. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering how Townsend was at the hearing today.”

“He was there with his lawyer, but as it turned out he didn’t need to testify.”

“Is that good?”

“Sure. Court proceedings are always difficult for victims.”

“But when you first said he didn’t need to testify, you said it in a way that suggested you were particularly appreciative. Was there a reason for that?”

I wouldn’t normally run down my victim’s husband, but Susan and Tara had already expressed concern about Townsend’s recent appearance, so it wasn’t like I was saying something new. “Well, quite honestly, he didn’t look like he was up to it.”

“So you can see it too.” Susan sounded relieved. “I was wondering if it was just my imagination. I’m really starting to worry about him. When I was with the family last night, he was totally out of it, but I only saw him have one drink.”

I thought about it. Townsend had seemed almost drunk at the death penalty meeting, but I hadn’t smelled any alcohol on him, either then or today in court.

“Maybe it’s just lack of sleep,” I offered. “And he might still be suffering from shock.”

“You’re probably right. Well, it’s the end of a long day, and I’m sure you want to go home. I was really only calling to see if you could try to protect Townsend in court today, but as it turned out it wasn’t necessary.”

“Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.”

“Not a problem. I’m just glad you think what he’s going through is normal. You’ve probably seen a lot more of this than I have, fortunately.”

Actually, I hadn’t. I had no idea what normal behavior was from a man whose wife had been murdered. And Townsend was a man with access to his own personal prescription pad.

“Still, Susan, you should probably keep an eye out for him and ask Clarissa’s family to do the same. He could be prescribing himself medication.”

“I was wondering the same thing but didn’t want to say it. He could lose his license for that, couldn’t he?”

“Maybe not under the circumstances, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Just keep your eyes open, maybe check the medicine cabinets, that kind of thing.” Then I remembered I wasn’t just a sympathetic human being; I was a prosecutor. “Look around if you choose to as a private party, I mean, not as an agent of the government.”

I could almost hear a small smile. “I get what you’re saying. And, Samantha, thanks a lot.”

“No problem.”

I hung up pleased that I had earned Susan’s trust. Even though prosecutors aren’t victims’ attorneys, they should in most cases be their advocates. If I could handle a busy caseload and still find time and compassion for the people in that caseload, I’d be proud of my job.

I went back to searching for the envelope from Jenna Markson, working backward from my office, starting with the mail slots on the sixth floor. It could have been worse. The envelope hadn’t made it into the slot for MCU, but I found it when I pawed through a bin of mail left in front of the boxes. The mail guy had probably checked out at precisely 5 p.m.

Inside I found the printouts Jenna had run on Gunderson. They contained exactly what I was looking for: a list of the properties Gunderson had owned when he had filed for Chapter 11.

It was too late to get into the public library’s archives to do the research I was planning, so I headed home for a long run before Chuck was scheduled to show up. By the time I finished, I had mustered up the energy to call my father, but all I got was his machine. I hung up without leaving a message.

When Chuck showed up twenty minutes late with beer on his breath, I was good and didn’t ask him where he’d been. Then he was better and apologized for being late, explaining how he’d gotten trapped at a sit-down with Calabrese. Apparently Mike and his wife were having a hard time adjusting to life with a new baby.

We were total gluttons and ordered a large pie from Pizza-cata half pepperoni for him, half goat cheese and artichoke for me. An hour and a bottle of chianti later, we were starting to fool around on the sofa while Chris Matthews and his guests played hardball. Some folks might have a problem getting turned on with talking heads going at each other in the background, but with Chuck and me, anything could lead to fore-play, even those icky surgery shows. One minute I’m trying to grab the remote from him, and the next, we’ve got our own doctor show going on my coffee table.

Around the time Chuck had flung my bra into the empty pizza box and I was beyond caring, the phone rang. I started to wiggle out from beneath him, but his warm breath in my ear stopped me. “Don’t even try it.”

I heard my own voice on the machine. “You’ve reached Sam and Vinnie. Maybe we’re home, maybe not. At the tone, proceed at your own risk.”

“Hi uh, sorry to call so late. I’m going to assume that’s a joke so I can hold on to my remaining self-esteem in the event no one picks up. This is a message for Samantha Kincaid.”

See? It works. Ever since Roger moved out and Vinnie moved in, my Frenchie had been my other half on the all-important outgoing message. No reason to advertise your woman-alone status to every creep out there dialing random numbers for kicks.

“This is Graham Szlipkowski.”

My wiggling resumed. In fact, it escalated to an outright scramble. When Chuck realized I was serious about getting to the phone, he sat up, clearly frustrated.

By the time I picked up, I heard Slip say, “I’m sorry to bother you on the weekend, but I need you to contact “

“Slip, it’s Samantha.”

“You mean I made the cut? I’ve earned some honors in my career, but

“

“Slip, it’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night. Get to the point.”

“I looked at the present you dropped on me this afternoon. Needless to say, I want to check it out, the sooner the better.”

“So check it out,” I said, “and tell me if you find anything.”

“That’s why I’m calling so late. I want to track it down with the banks tomorrow, but the bureau won’t release the key to my investigator without your OK.”

“That’s fine. Whom do I need to call?”

“I’m sorry about this, but they need a fax.”

What a pain in the ass. I jotted down the fax number for the property room and assured him I’d figure out something.

When I hung up, Chuck threw me a skeptical look. “Why do I have a feeling that I don’t want to know why a defense attorney’s calling you at home?”

“Because you probably don’t.”

“Most guys, their girlfriend gets a phone call from another man late at night, it means one thing. If only I had it so good. Just promise me you’re not doing anything dangerous.”

“Hardly, unless you consider clerical work dangerous.” I tried to hide my glee that he’d used the girlfriend word. Down the road, he’d need to settle on more mature verbiage. For now, though, I reveled in the general sentiment.

“Get back over here, then,” he said.

“Sorry. I’ve got one more thing to do. I can either drive to Kinko’s or figure out how to send a fax on my computer.”

“You have no idea how to use your computer, do you?”

“Sure. It’s a giant typewriter with a button that puts me on the Internet.”

“I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll send your fax and you turn off Matthews and get your ass in bed. And no sleeping.”

It was a win-win situation.

OOl

Eleven.

I kicked Chuck out the next morning so I could get to work, but not before convincing him to pull DMV photos of Larry Gunderson and Billy Minkins for me.

At first he balked. “My lieutenant will be all over me about Saturday OT on Jackson,” he said, “unless, of course, I can tell him why it was essential.”

When that didn’t get an explanation out of me about who Gunderson and Minkins were and why I wanted their pictures, he finally relented. I was ready to go by noon.

I’d get the pictures to Slip soon enough, but my first priority was the downtown public library.

No doubt about it, the library crowd’s an interesting one: Birkenstock moms, amateur academics, and burnt-out hippie homeless people, all in one quiet beautiful place.

I pulled the volumes I was looking for and searched for an empty table. Finding a work spot was not an easy task, given my criteria: no children, schizoids, or stinky people.

I finally dumped the books on a corner table, retrieved a county map and the envelope from Jenna Markson from my briefcase, and settled in for what I thought would be the first day in a full weekend of research. As it turned out, the task at hand tracking down Gunderson’s stake in the urban growth boundary over the years was easier than I had imagined.

First, I marked all of Gunderson’s seven properties on the map. Without exception, the properties would have been considered the boonies when I was a kid, but they had been developed by the time I was out of college. The next step was to figure out where the properties fell along the growth boundary.

Fortunately, the library maintained a series of maps depicting the original boundary line and all the changes made in the twenty-five years since. The trend became obvious immediately. Six of Gunderson’s seven properties fell just inside the original boundary line. The land would have been rural at the time, then made valuable by the sudden restriction against future growth. The seventh was brought within the urban area after the first boundary expansion.

Either Larry Gunderson was the luckiest landowner in Portland or I was on to something.

I found a records librarian and asked her if she could pull the legislative history for the Smart Growth Act, which had established the original growth boundary in the summer of 1980. She looked at me like I had to be kidding, then sighed heavily and walked away when she realized I wasn’t.

A good hour later, she reemerged with a handcart stacked with ragged and dusty binders. “I can’t tell you exactly where it is in here, but each binder has an index by bill number. Do you need help finding the number too?”

“No, I’ve got it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

I gathered from her look of confusion that she rarely heard those words.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wading through hundreds of pages of legislative findings, debates, floor speeches, and other forms of word combinations that hardly deserve to be called part of the English language. Most of the talk was about whether to limit urban growth and how. What captured my attention, however, were the pages detailing the debates about where to draw the boundary line itself. I couldn’t make sense of it all, so I fell back on my handy dandy anti confusion treatment, list-making.