The Judge (32 page)

She is either with me, or with friends elsewhere. In all of this, she is my biggest concern.

There is no movement from the van. Still I remain low on the roof, always to the rear of the house. I work my way laterally, across my neighbor's backyard, and then up a valley on the roof. I am beginning to think I could not possibly have thrown it this far when I see it wedged in a metal crevice around a skylight. The shine of clear plastic and the white radiance of the powder inside glimmers like a heavy cloud resting on the roof. The bag appears to be sealed, unbroken, and for a moment I think that perhaps it is safer here than back in my house.

I am about to make my way back down the roof toward the side yard when I hear the sound of a car door, not being slammed, but rather care fully closed. I inch my way to the ridge and peer over. Two guys are coming this way, crossing the street from the dark van. In the muted glow of the vapor light, at this distance, I can make out no features.

I duck below the ridge and lie completely still, prone on the roof. I scan for avenues of escape. It is a ten-foot drop, perhaps, more to a concrete patio in my neighbor's yard. Part of this is covered by an aluminum patio roof that, if I had to guess, would not support my weight. Even if I could make the jump, they would certainly hear me when I hit the ground.

"I'm telling you I saw something." The words are whispered, but still audible in the still night air. It comes from in front of my house, where Sarah is sleeping.

"There's nobody up there."

"Not the lawyer's place," says the other voice. "Next door. Over there. " They continue to whisper and the voices come closer.

I edge up the roof on my stomach. The rain is now coming harder.

Near the skylight, where one edge nearly reaches the ridge of the roof, I peer around one corner for a look.

One of them has something strange wrapped around his forehead, two large protrusions like antennas jetting several inches out from his head.

"I know I saw something," he says.

"Probably a cat," says the other.

"No. Too big." He adjusts the item on his head, and brings it down, until the protrusions are over his eyes, and suddenly it hits me--the guy is wearing night-vision goggles.

I jerk my head below the ridge so quickly I nearly get whiplash. The motion causes me to slide nearly a foot on the wet roof.

"What was that?"

"I didn't hear anything."

"Shhh." I am wondering whether the device on his eyes can possibly pick up the rising waves of my body heat over the ridge, images like a green ghost against the cold wet roof.

"I don't see anything." It's the other guy's voice. "Come on. Let's get back in the car. It's wet out here."

"I told you we shoulda searched up there the other day."

"We didn't have time. I'm going back to the van. My ass is soaked. You coming?"

"In a minute."

"Suit yourself. If some pain-in-the-ass citizen calls in a prowler, it s your ass in the flames."

"Why don't you check and see if he's asleep in bed?" "Who?"

"The lawyer. See if you can see anything through his bedroom window."

"You check. I'm going back to the van." I can hear soggy footfalls on my neighbor's front lawn as one of them departs. Several seconds go by and I wonder if perhaps they have both left. Then I hear a car door slam, only one.

Suddenly there is movement high in the limbs of a bush, near the area of the fence where my front yard merges with the neighbor's. I hear feet, the distinct sound of climbing against the wooden fence, then silence.

An instant later, footfalls in the dirt. Someone has scaled the fence and is now on the path along the side of my house near the broken bathroom window.

I am stretched out on the roof with no easy avenue of escape. Behind me, off to the right of the patio roof, is a brick chimney. This would provide some cover from the rear yard, if the intruder were to go in that direction. But from a right angle, if his eyes were drawn to the roof he would easily see the bag and its white contents.

I rise to my knees and quietly work my way around the skylight, toward the valley. I grab the bag. It squishes in my hand, the texture and consistency of powdered sugar.

Soundlessly, I dodge down the roof toward the chimney, and crouch low in the V that is formed where it joins the edge of the roof rising toward the front of the house. There I brace myself in the shadows, knowing that this is a futile exercise if the man below has night vision. I am holding twenty years of hard time in my hand. Not even Radovich could save me.

It was a stupid move. I should have left it, but I knew I could not.

Sooner or later someone would discover it and remember the futile raid on the house next door.

I hear him moving now near the back of my house. I push the bag and its contents into the groove formed where the chimney meets the I edge of the roof on top of the metal flashing in order to free up my hands.

I can see nothing in my yard. It is pitch black. Here the glow of the vapor light is blocked by trees on the front street and the rise of roofs. I am wondering if at this moment he is staring back at me, peering through goggles from some shadowy hole in my own yard.

Then footsteps and the creak of a hinge. He is entering the back door of my house. My mind is filled with a single thought: Sarah asleep in her bed.

I manage to climb down a section of the wrought-iron supports for the patio roof, cocaine in one hand, and move quickly to the fence. I look over and he is gone, but the back door to my house is half-open. I had left it closed when I came out.

As quietly as I can, I am over the fence. I tear my Windbreaker and rip my arm on a nail, but my adrenaline is pumping so furiously I feel nothing.

I look about for something handy. We keep a small woodpile, kindling, and a few logs for cold winter evenings near the side of the garage. I grope about until I find what I am looking for: a piece of well-seasoned oak, about two feet long and with the diameter of a baseball bat. I stash the bag of cocaine under several pieces of wood.

Armed, I head for the back door. I edge through this without touching it. He has night vision; I have the familiarity of my own house. I can see there is no one in the laundry room, so I hug the wall to the door, the opening to the kitchen, and sneak a quick look. There is no one there.

Then I hear it, the drag of a shoe on carpet. He is in the hallway, somewhere beyond the door leading out of the kitchen. I consider the possibilities. I could yell, hoping the noise would startle him, drive him out my front door. But I am concerned what might happen if he panics.

He is no doubt armed. I don't want bullets passing through ceilings or walls with Sarah sleeping in her room upstairs.

I close the distance between us, passing soundlessly over the kitchen floor, until I am pressed against the wall near the refrigerator, looking down the hall, seeing a shadow moving at the far end. He is approaching the foot of the stairs. From the silhouette, the shape of his head, the night goggles are in place.

He puts one foot on the bottom step, and I know there is no way I can allow him to start up, with Sarah there alone. I reach for the light switch on the wall and flip it. The lights in the hallway come on, and with a cry like a banshee I race down the hall. The glare of light through the goggles in his eyes must be blinding, because he actually takes a long step backward and stumbles off the first step. He tries to pull the goggles from his eyes as he turns, and is only partially successful. He has one hand on a pistol halfway out of the black nylon holster under his coat.

My piece of oak meets solid bone, a backhand across his forehead. This is well timed and has all the physics of a bat meeting a fastball in the strike zone.

He sinks like a sack of sand, his legs gone to rubber. There is blood all over my carpet, some of it spattered in an arc on the wall behind him.

For a moment I look down at his still body on the floor, wondering if I have killed him. Then he groans, dazed. He reaches lazily for the pistol and I take it from him.

There, sprawled on my hall floor, is cable man, his eyes open but glazed, pupils rolling alternately up under the lids. I grab him by the shirt collar and drag him to the front room, where I flop him over on his stomach like a beached whale.

On top of my television set is the length of coaxial cable that he left three days ago, still coiled in its wrapper. I grab this and hog-tie him, hands and ankles, tight until he bends like a bow. He groans with discomfort as I do this.

"Like you said" I am in his ear "all you're gonna be seeing for a while is a lot of snow."

ARE NOW FOUR DAYS INTO THE STATE'S CASE, and Kline's presentation of the evidence, if not electrifying, is methodical.

He leaves no stone unturned, and misses no opportunity to score points, regardless how slight.

Outside of court, he has managed to deflect Radovich's expectable rage over the second intrusion by the cops into my home. Chief Hansen has been pushed up front as the point man to take this one on the chops personally. He has now suspended all of the officers involved in the initial raid. I have learned that cable man is a cop named Howard Hoag attached to Vice. He was one of the officers present the day that Zack Wiley was killed. After I cold-cocked him in my hallway I called 911.

Hoag was arrested on several misdemeanor counts, including criminal trespass. He was released the next morning on his own recognizance.

His buddy in the van did not wait around to see what happened, but drove off when the first squad car arrived at my house with lights flashing.

Kline has put this entire episode behind him and chooses to move on with the trial as if nothing has happened. It is a good act, but he knows that the conduct of Hoag and his compatriots confirms the central tenet of our defense: that there is a contingent of bad cops out of control in this city.

Kline has spent three and a half days with the two lead investigators on the stand. They testified as to both the scene in the alley where the body was found as well as the evidence in Hall's apartment. They told of seeing hair and fibers on the blanket in which the body was wrapped, and instructed forensic technicians to collect these. One of them testified about finding similar evidence, hairs at Acosta's house and collecting car pet fibers from the trunk of his car. It is all predictable and straightforward.

They seem uncertain as to a murder weapon, the consensus being that the victim's head struck the sharp metal corner of the coffee table, though they have tried to embellish this with testimony that she was slammed repeatedly against this object.

Radovich sustained my objection to this on grounds that the testimony exceeded the expertise of these witnesses. Neither man is medically qualified, and had no specific training in blood-spatter evidence, the element of crime scene reconstruction that cuts to this point.

Kline closed with the detectives on a strong point, perhaps the most damaging evidence in the case, the note on Hall's calendar in her own hand, that by inference at least, shows that Acosta met with the victim on the afternoon of the murder.

I had objected to this notation as hearsay. It is one of those ironies of the law, that the victim who suffered most, who in the case of murder lost everything, cannot testify. The problem is that Acosta, when confronted with the calendar note before his arrest, did not deny a meeting with the victim. In fact he claimed no privilege, and according to the cops made certain gestures and comments leading them to believe that a meeting had occurred. He now denies this, but acknowledges that he may have been foolish in his comments to police. It was enough for Kline to get the note into evidence as an adoptive admission, one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule. I have had words with my client over this, that a judge could be so foolish.

It is here that I start, this morning, to undo some of the damage. Detective John Stobel is in his late forties, fair skinned and bald, a twenty-year veteran of Homicide who could pass for an accountant or college professor if you saw him on the street. His manner is low key, professional. Every word he utters is a plain statement of fact, with little embellishment, simple yeses and noes wherever he can. He offers no spin, and in this way is the most dangerous of witnesses, because he comes across as credible.

This morning we exchange pleasantries. He looks at me square on, not what I would describe as amiable, but neutral. He tolerates me as a necessary part of the process and conveys this attitude well to the jury, part of his air of professionalism.

"Detective, I want to call your attention to the victim's calendar." This is already propped on an easel in front of the jury. It was introduced by Kline into evidence two days ago. The wall-hanging calendar has pictures of far-off places printed on the back of each month so that when you lift and pin up the next month it is a whole new world. What I am looking at is a shot of an old covered bridge bathed in spring somewhere in New England.

Stobel nods that he can see the calendar adequately from where he sits. "Who actually first saw the notation with my client's name? Was it you or your partner?" He ponders this for a moment. "I think it was me."

"And you then called Detective Jamison's attention to the notation? Is that correct?"

"Right."

"So you both read this notation?" "Yes."

"And you made a note of it on your pad? Your investigative notes?" "Yes."

"Because you thought it was significant?" "Objection. Calls for a conclusion," says Kline.

"Overruled." Stobel makes a face. "Yeah. I thought it was significant. "

"Did you make notes of any other entries from the calendar in your notebook?" I already know the answer to this from my examination of his notes.

"No."

"So in your judgment none of the other notations that the victim made on her calendar were significant to your investigation?"