Prime Witness (50 page)

In the weeks after I came home from the hospital, Nikki spent time nursing me, draining my wound and packing it. We have talked long hours, about life, and the value of love. In the end, I have learned that among all of her qualities Nikki is, first and foremost, forgiving. Today she waits for me in the car outside.

As I pass through the reception area Jane Rhodes greets me with a smile. The mood in this place seems lighter. I suspect that this is in part a reflection of my own delight in passing the torch to another. I am no longer district attorney of Davenport County.

As I head for the door a man in white overalls is busy scraping gold letters from the mottled glass, the final vestige of Mario falling in chips to the floor.

I will need some help packing boxes to the car. For this a couple of the people from the office have offered.

Bits and pieces of the story are still coming out. I was three days in the hospital before I discovered what happened to Claude outside in the hall that night. He ended up with a massive concussion, and was out on leave for nearly a month. The impression left on his head matched precisely a heavy marble gavel, a paperweight from Ingel’s desk. It seems the image I saw in the shadows that night crouching behind Claude was not Denny Henderson at all, but Adrian.

The police have traced his steps from the few items dropped in his travels. After killing Ingel, and tying Lenore on the couch, Chambers exited the courtroom by way of the locked corridor in the rear. By propping open a door that led to the main hall, he was able to come up on Claude from behind and return to the courtroom by the same route. The rest is history.

It seems that Adrian had managed to place himself heavily in debt, real estate deals gone sour in his time before reinstatement to the practice of law. This was the result of declining land values and Adrian’s high living. I have now seen the offices of “A.C. Associates” in a high-rise across the river in Capital City, more tony than the pope’s private john and with nearly as much art. He had spawned a considerable Ponzi scheme to keep himself afloat, stealing money from later investors to pay off early claims. The bean counters, a small army of accountants, are now trying to determine the full extent of these losses and the ensuing fraud. My own count stopped when they reached twelve million dollars. I am told that figure may well double before they are finished.

Adrian was under the gun. With time running out, he had a deal from developers on the Putah Creek property, a sale with the potential to pull himself even. And then came the birds.

The peregrine falcons first came to Adrian’s attention when a farmer in the area noticed them killing his pigeons. The man complained to Chambers, this according to the man’s wife who is now a grieving widow. A month after talking to Chambers the farmer died in an accident, mysteriously crushed under the tires of his tractor and cut to ribbons by the sharp metal discs it was pulling through a field. The cops are now looking into this accident. We will probably never know whether Adrian had a hand in this.

A few questions and a little research and Adrian soon understood the peril. Any development of the property would require an environmental impact report, a document longer than the Bible, and filled nearly as much with the story of creation. When government agencies discovered from this report the presence of endangered species on the land, Adrian could kiss his sale good-bye. The state would force a major set-aside of the land as natural habitat, severely restricting its development and value. Unable to account for vast sums of money stolen from investors, Chambers would soon be looking at another stint in prison, this one much longer than the last.

Enter Cleo Coltrane. When the Scofields discovered the birds were dying in droves, the victims of some natural predator, they were closing in on Cleo and would soon be onto Adrian. Chambers, strapped for cash, struggling to capitalize on the only thing he owned of any value, was forced to rid himself of another problem. What were two more deaths, more or less? By now he had the cover of the Putah Creek murders. There was no need for further unexplained accidents like the one that claimed the farmer.

I should have seen it, the endless attempts to fold the Scofield murders into the plea bargain for the others. Chambers was confident that once a court passed judgment on Andre Iganovich for all of the murders the cops would close the case on the Scofields. No jury would ever convict another suspect, when the Russian was already doing time on these crimes. To Adrian it was not a question of justice, but efficiency. He knew that Iganovich had done the first four. He was a natural for the Scofields.

As for the Russian, police in Oregon and Orange County have now closed the loop in the unsolved murders there. They have found physical evidence linking Iganovich to those killings. With time and the help of the State Department we have discovered a long and lurid trail of littered bodies and unsolved murders, at least twelve in three countries in Eastern Europe, places where Andre Iganovich traveled and lived while he was waiting for his U.S. visa. That this man could so easily become a security guard says reams about this industry.

We have also found the missing piece of cord in our own case. Like serendipity, it turned up, still in its marked plastic evidence bag, lying in plain view on the floor in the library nearly at the site where the photographers were processing it the day it disappeared. It was found the day after Chambers drove the stake through my shoulder. It seems Roland was seen doing research at the stacks in this room moments before a secretary found the missing evidence. I am told he has a meeting with one of Claude’s deputies this afternoon to explain this.

Adrian it seems, during that last meeting in my office, told the truth about one thing. His part in the Putah Creek cases was not personal, not part of some vendetta. As Jacoby in Canada had noted, Adrian had nearly beat the defendant to the northern border, so anxious was he to pick up the defense of the Putah Creek killer, whoever he was, when he was caught. He must have scoured the papers, kept his ear to the ground with the cops for days. He was no glory hunter seeking publicity. Adrian had other fish to fry. He had a desperate need to steer the defense to his own ends.

To this scheme Adrian brought his tireless efforts at settlement. It is why he demanded a package deal to plead his client out to all six of the murders—the Scofields as well as the four students. It was a quick dirty deal designed to solve all his problems. When his first attempt at settlement failed, he resorted to other less genteel methods: the photo of Sarah at play and the note threatening her life. The cops have now traced the watermark on the note paper used for this pasted-up missive to similar sheets found in Adrian’s desk drawer. They have also found old editions of the
Criminal Law Reporter
, the print type used in part of that message.

I take the last framed item from the wall, a certificate of appreciation from the doyens of this county, something hatched by Emil, a sheepish last gesture, and hung on the wall in my absence. As I drop this in the box, a shadow fills the door behind me. I turn. It is Lenore Goya.

In the battle for our lives, it seems that Lenore has captured the public’s imagination. Papers throughout the state, across the country have covered the story. It seems justice was never served so well in Derek Ingel’s court as it was by Lenore at the point of pike.

In a face-saving gesture, the county fathers have offered her Mario’s old job. But I think they are too late. Lenore is now awash in better offers, including one from the governor to fill Derek Ingel’s old seat on the bench. Somehow I cannot see Lenore in black robes. I think she would find this tedious.

“How are you?” she says.

“Good. You?” The bruise on her cheek and chin have long since healed.

She smiles, like it couldn’t be better.

“You just missed Roland,” she says. “He got the better boxes.”

Overroy has been cleaning out his office as well. He has taken the hint and grabbed the golden handshake, retired while he can. Roland’s stocks have been dipping lately with the powers that be in this county. Besides the unanswered questions about the missing evidence, his part in Adrian’s settlement offers are raising eyebrows in high places, the fact that he was so badly and so publicly duped. That the county leaders would have taken the deals, groveled in the dirt for them, is now forgotten.

“Who’s doing Iganovich?” I say.

“The attorney general,” she tells me. “We thought it was best.” According to Lenore, she will not be around long enough to handle this prosecution.

She tells me that among the things she is looking at is a supervising position with the prosecutor’s office in Capital County.

“Maybe I will see you,” she says, “across the gulf between counsel tables sometime.”

“Maybe.” I smile. I put out my good hand to shake. She steps close, near my ear, and plants a single soft kiss at the nape of my neck, a squeeze, and she is out the door, down the hall.

As I make my way down the gray stone steps toward the plaza and the car beyond, I can see the Sierras a hundred miles away, their outline sharp against an imposing and impossibly blue sky. On the air is a bitter chill as December approaches.

I turn, and look toward the west, toward the plowed fields where dust devils form on the zephyr. In the distance I can hear a whistle, faint and shrill, a sound primordial like the screech of a wild raptor on the wing. I stop, turn and listen. It is a tone crystalline, clear and unquestionable. It is the wind screaming through the canyons of the Putah Creek.

Acknowledgments

I
n the writing of this book special thanks are due to California Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell for his help and assistance relating to the law of international extradition; to George Williamson, Chief Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, Criminal Division; and to Deputy Attorney General Scott Thorp for their assistance in providing color and authenticity to the veiled processes of the grand jury in rural counties.

A special word of thanks is owed to the California Attorney General’s Criminalistics Institute and its manager, Victor C. Reeve, for valuable assistance in the technical waters of forensic science.

To Jim Bissell, Q.C., Director of the Vancouver Regional Office, Canadian Department of Justice, and Mr. John M. Loo, Crown Attorney of that Office, I am indebted for their assistance and guidance in the nuances of the Canadian extradition process.

To Mark Berg, of Auburn, California, the consummate criminal trial lawyer, I owe unending gratitude for his encouragement and counsel on all things legal.

And I am grateful to all those writers and lawyers who during the course of my writing have provided kind words of encouragement or advice, including F. Lee Bailey, Edward J. Bellen, Melvin Belli, Dale Brown, Vincent Bugliosi, Dominick Dunne, Richard Herman, Jr., Clifford Irving, Edward Stewart and William Wood.

In particular I would like to thank author and lawyer John Grisham, whose kindness in public print and whose words of encouragement reveal a generous spirit unaffected by the winds of fame.

I wish to thank my publisher, Phyllis Grann, for her constant support and endless encouragement; my editor, George Coleman, for his guidance in the telling of this story; and my agent, John Hawkins, for his boundless wisdom and good counsel.

And finally but not least of all, my thanks to Leah, who has spent innumerable hours listening to my readings and rantings and who has stood by me with encouragement and interest through long years of struggle. To her and to Meggie I owe the deepest debt of all.

To all of these and others whom, by oversight, I may have omitted to mention, I owe grateful thanks for their advice and insights that have allowed me to craft a work of seeming truth. For any failings that a reader may find in this regard, I am solely responsible.

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Titles by Steve Martini

DOUBLE TAP

THE ARRAIGNMENT

THE JURY

THE ATTORNEY

CRITICAL MASS

THE LIST

THE JUDGE

UNDUE INFLUENCE

PRIME WITNESS

COMPELLING EVIDENCE

THE SIMEON CHAMBER

Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

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