The Jury (27 page)

"Why don't you come this way," he says. Open sesame. We are through the police line.

chapter fifteen It's Saturday morning, and we are all in the dark regarding Epperson. Coats's courtroom went dark on Friday. With Epperson dead, Tannery had no one to talk to. The offer of proof is now in suspense while he scrambles trying to figure what to do next.

With no witness to confirm Tanya Jordan's testimony, unless he can come up with another witness, her words are now hearsay. In an early-morning appearance in chambers, Tannery asked Judge Coats for time to consider his moves. He had no difficulty getting it. Harry and I didn't even oppose the motion. The judge is as mystified as the rest of us concerning Epperson's death, telling the D.A. he wants details as soon as they are available.

In the middle of a murder trial there is not much that can get your mind off events in the courtroom. But this morning is an exception. Still unhinged by Epperson and events of the last twenty-four hours, I am also confronted by the fact that the driving force that caused me to take this case is suddenly gone.

Penny Boyd has died.

It happened earlier in the week. Doris called to give me the news, and for the first time since hearing it, I now have a moment to dwell on the passing of a child. It brings back memories of the first death I

can remember as a kid. I was seven. A little girl crippled from birth and confined to a wheelchair had passed away. She lived up the block. I saw her often out on the sidewalk, wheeling along trying to keep up with the other kids.

A perpetual smile on her face, she would call me by my first name. With her angelic blond hair and sunny disposition, she seemed not to comprehend the injustice dealt to her in life, legs that were dead and lungs that each year filled with pneumonia. I didn't learn until many years later, after talking to my mother, that it was a bout with pneumonia that finally took her. After all these years, I can still picture her face and remember her name, an indelible impression. I remember the day my mother told me she'd died. I said nothing, went to my room and sat there in shock. In my sheltered world of middle-class America, children didn't die.

It seems I have not grown a lot over the years. I was caught completely off-guard when Doris called. I would have expected such a message from someone else, a friend or family member. But Doris was amazingly composed, though her voice was strained, a little raw. The news hit me like a bullet in the brow.

Penny had died in her sleep.

This morning I sit behind the wheel with Sarah in the passenger seat, headlights on as we motorcade from the church.

We are five cars behind the hearse when we finally park on a gentle curve in the cemetery. I had debated in my mind whether to bring Sarah. The last time she had been to a funeral was her mother's.

Nikki has been dead nearly four years, and I feared that cemeteries and caskets would dredge up all forms of memories, most of them painful. But my daughter has come of age. Attending Penny's funeral was not something for me to decide. When I suggested that she might stay home, that the family would understand, Sarah would have none of it.

This morning she wears an ankle-length black dress, gathered in high under her shaping bosom, and black leather pumps with heels. She is changing from a child into a young woman before my very eyes, a transition occurring with the speed of time-lapse photography.

Sarah has thick brown hair, generous and abundant, and has Nikki's long legs, like a gazelles. Her thick ponytail now bobs above her shoulders as we walk toward the assembling crowd at the grave site.

If it must be, at least Penny goes to God on a bucolic morning, one of those blue Pacific days with transparent wisps of white high in the jet stream. There is only a hint of dew on the grass, and the soulful tune of birds, none of them visible, their songs erupting from the massive oaks and sycamores that shade the graves.

There are more people here than I would have expected for a child who has been largely homebound for two years. There are children here Penny's age--wide-eyed kids, I suspect, from her grade school--and cousins, all confronted, most of them for the first time, with the stark reality of death. Someone they knew, a child, one of their own, is gone.

Folding chairs are set up in two rows under the canopy that covers the casket.

Up front in the center is Doris, seated in one of the chairs. Relatives, another woman on one side and her two surviving children on the other, all within touching distance of the coffin, flank her. Frank, it seems, cannot sit. He stands behind her, his large hands on the back of her chair, his head downcast, a giant in pain.

Penny's two surviving siblings, Donald, her little brother who is seven, seems in shock, eyes of wonder. Jennifer, his older sister, Sarah's friend and classmate, is more controlled.

She looks to see Sarah and actually smiles. She has inherited the social grace of her mother. Even under the circumstances irrepressible. The last place she wants to be. She loved her sister. Still, this cloud has darkened much of her life; it is probably difficult for her to contemplate life without this load.

Frank's gaze is fixed on the coffin, his face puffy, signs of grief. He wears a dark suit that doesn't fit him terribly well, something no doubt purchased off a rack at the last minute. The spread of his shoulders would make anything not tailored a tough fit. It is hard to say who is

consoling whom here. Doris seems, at least at first blush, to be more in control, though she holds a white handkerchief in one hand and is wearing oversized dark glasses.

For Frank, there is no hiding it. I can see by the way he looks that he is devastated. He had always placed more hope in the magic of medicine, though he never understood it well. For him, Penny's placement in any study was seen as a guarantee, a reprieve. I tried to warn him, but he would have none of it. Hope sprang eternal.

If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is that his thoughts of divorce to save the family from financial ruin are at an end.

The priest has traveled with us from the funeral mass at the old mission a few miles in from the coast. I am told he is a longtime family friend. He opens his prayer book and begins the intonation from the head of the casket, sprinkling it with holy water from a gold canister held by an altar boy who has accompanied him for this task.

Deliver her, O Lord, from death eternal in that awful day, when the heavens and the earth shall be moved: when thou shalt come to judge the world .. .

All heads are downcast, except for some of the children, who seem to look on wide-eyed.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.

Deliver us ... Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Our Father, who art in heaven .. .

As the priest recites the Lord's Prayer he circles the bier with its undersized coffin one last time, sprinkling it with holy water. The

collective voices rise in volume and confidence, until in unison they become a single Amen.

The gathering begins to break up, mourners dispersing, many of them making their way toward Doris to offer their final condolences.

At that moment, I notice that Frank is no longer standing behind her. I look for a moment. He has disappeared. Then I see him. He has made his way around the row of chairs, his lumbering body moving as if in pain like a wounded bear. He moves to the head of casket, leans over and reaches out with his left hand. I think for a moment that he merely touched it, a final farewell.

The priest consoles him, a few words. He takes Franks large hand in both of his.

From the look on his face, it is not clear whether Frank has even heard him. He seems in a daze. It isn't until the priest steps aside that I notice that Frank has placed something on his daughter's coffin. There on top is a single long-stemmed pink rose.

The cops are still trying to put the pieces together. The media is calling Epperson's death suspicious, an "apparent" suicide.

They have somehow sniffed out that Epperson was scheduled to appear in court behind closed doors. They are now fueling suspicion that Epperson was about to identify the killer when he himself was killed. Speculation is running high that the dead man knew more than authorities are willing to say about Kalista Jordan's murder.

Harry and I, Tannery and the investigating detectives huddle this morning in Judge Coats's chambers to gather the facts. Tannery's face reveals that from the state's perspective it is not good.

He has already delivered something to the judge in a sealed manila envelope.

Printed on the front in large red block letters the words:

SDPD police evidence

Coats opens the envelope in front of us, removing the contents, what appears to be two printed pages, eight and a half by eleven. Coats holds them at an angle, reading.

The judge finishes one page, reads the other, only a few lines at the top, then places them facedown on the desk.

"Where did you find these?"

"They were in the victim's printer, at his apartment," says Tannery.

"We dusted the pages for prints."

"And?" says Coats.

"Nothing. The original document was in his computer."

The judge would not have touched any of this, an open homicide investigation, suicide or not, except that the matter now threatens to wind up in the middle of a murder trial over which he is presiding.

"You haven't shown this to Mr. Madriani, I take it?"

Tannery shakes his head.

"I think he should see it, don't you?"

"I would question its admissibility," says Tannery.

"It's not signed."

"That may go more to the weight of the evidence," says the judge.

"Your Honor ..." Tannery is not happy.

"Is there a legal reason we should not share this with counsel for the defense?"

asks Coats.

"No," says Tannery.

The judge hands me the document. Harry reads over my shoulder. For two days it has been rumored that there was a suicide note. Until now, we had not seen it.

It is dated the third. I look at the calendar on the judge's desk; the previous Thursday, the day Epperson died.

It is neatly typed, a few misspelled words. I quickly flip to the second page without reading all of it. Harry reaches over as if he isn't finished. I want to check for a signature. Tannery is right. It is unsigned, but Epperson's name is typed neatly in the center of the next page.

I flip back to the first page, and there in the center, two graphs

down, is the bombshell, almost buried in the middle of a sentence, a confession by Epperson that he could no longer live with himself after having killed Kalista Jordan.

"Shit." Harry says it out loud. The judge doesn't bother to chastise him; I suspect because he is thinking the same thing.

"It's a little too neat, Your Honor. The night before he's to testify he hangs himself. It should not be allowed in."

"What do you mean by 'too neat'?" I ask.

"What he means is a tensioning tool, and cable ties, just like the ones in evidence, were found on the table by the computer in Epperson's apartment." The answer doesn't come from Tannery, but from behind us. Jimmy de Angelo, the homicide dick in Kalista Jordan's case, is seated on the judges tufted leather sofa, squeaking every time he moves.

Harry's eyes get big as saucers. He turns to look at de Angelo.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. Defense lawyer's wet dream," says de Angelo.

"Somebody went to a lot of trouble. There was just a little too much at the scene," he says.

"That may be your argument," says Harry.

"Where were you last night?" de Angelo asks him.

"I was busy with my partner working."

"I'll bet."

"Enough," says Coats.

"I would ask Mr. Madriani whether his client knows anything about this. But I don't think there's a need, seeing as he would be aware of the requirement that he disclose it. There is no attorney-client privilege for a felony in progress."

He would ask, but he won't, since he just has.

"Your Honor, my client knows nothing."

"Yes, and if he did he wouldn't tell you," says de Angelo.

"It's possible Mr. Epperson didn't want any questions about the authenticity of the note," I tell the judge.

"So he left physical evidence along with it." I'm referring to the cable ties and the tensioning tool.

"Then why didn't he sign the note?" asks Tannery.

"That would have been pretty good authentication. Could it be that whoever killed him couldn't get him to cooperate?"

"You have evidence that it was murder?" I ask.

Tannery doesn't respond.

"You say the note was still in the printer?"

De Angelo nods.

"There's your answer."

"Why didn't he take it out?" asks de Angelo.

"We can debate why he did or didn't do a lot of things," says Harry.

"A man about to string himself up is not always rational."

"What about fingerprints?" I ask.

"Did you find anybody else's on the computer?"

"No." De Angelo says it flatly, grudging response.

"But anybody ^| $%' could have known about the tensioning tool. Its in evidence. Been in all the papers, along with the cable ties."

"Then Mr. Tannery can argue it to the jury," I tell him.

"The fact remains that without some perpetrator, a face and a name to hang on it, and somebody to tie that person to my client, Dr. Crone is going to walk and the state knows it. He was conveniently in jail at the time of Mr. Epperson's death. Unless they can tie Epperson's death to my client, that suicide note cries reasonable doubt."

"What about the physical evidence at the scene?" asks the judge.

"The area around the cross?"

"We found some tire marks that didn't match the victim's van," says de Angelo.

"We're still trying to make a match. Checking them against tire impressions from some suspects."

"What suspects?" asks Harry.

"Persons of interest" is all de Angelo will say. My guess is they are checking out anybody and everybody who's had contact with Crone in the last months, jail inmates who have been released who rubbed