The Jury (32 page)

My first instinct is to look for the rising signs of respiration. Is there movement? I glance at the wrinkles in his shirt. I can't be sure, vacuous hope, what the brain wants the eyes to see.

I lean over him, roll him onto his back. His eyes are closed. I lift f one lid gently with my thumb. The eyeball has rolled back into his I head. I cannot get a fix on his pupils.

The eyeball rotates down, like the tumbler of a slot machine clicking into place. Harry stirs, a hand comes up reflexively to shield his eyes from the brightness of the lights overhead. He groans. ; I brace his back, sitting him up.

"Easy. Don't try to get up."

"What the hell hit me?" he asks.

I feel around the base of his neck. He flinches when I touch it.

"Jeez.

Careful."

Harry has a lump at the base of his skull the size of an orange.

"Something hard," I tell him.

"Did you get a look at his face?"

"Uh-uh." He reaches for the back of his head, touches it gingerly, then checks his fingers for blood. There isn't any.

hapter twenty

"Last thing I remember," he says, "I came through the front door, out there. I think I was turning on the lights. Then nothing."

The man clubbed Harry as he came through the door in the office, then dragged his unconscious body back here to get him out of the way.

"Did he take anything?"

"I don't know."

"What about you?" Harry is looking at my shirtless body.

"I had a little more warning," I tell him.

"Not that it did me much good."

"Did you see him?"

"Only shadows," I tell him.

"And his fist. It was real big, and hard. How are you feeling?"

"I won't know 'til I try to get up," he says. Harry is propped against the wall, behind the desk. He brings his knees up to brace himself. I help him to his feet.

Harry groans. I settle him into the desk chair. He lowers his head.

The blood rushes in.

"Feels like a building fell on me."

"You're not going to be feeling great for a couple of days. Maybe we should go to emergency."

"No."

"You could have a concussion."

"Ever seen that place on a Friday night? We'd sit there 'til morning. They'd send me home and tell me to take two aspirin."

He stretches his neck, turning it from side to side, making sure it still works.

"All I need is a new head," he says.

With some pain I manage to get the window behind his desk closed and latched. I can see scratches at the top of the double-hung lower wooden frame where it has been jimmied.

We could call the cops and have them dust it for prints, but it would be a waste of time. The man was wearing gloves. I could feel them on one hand as I grabbed him, just before the other fist nailed me.

I step over the mess, back to the front of the desk, looking down at a manila folder, not legal, but letter sized. Its contents are still fastened inside with an Acco clip, punched through the top of the folder and taped. It's the file I ripped from the intruder's hand when he hit me.

With some pain, I reach down and pick this up. The folder has no label; instead, the words "Grant Application" are penciled on the tab in a familiar hand--my own.

I open it and begin to flip pages. Ninety seconds later, eleven pages in, the pieces suddenly begin to fit into place.

I take the file out into the other room. There on the receptionists desk next to the lid for the open box are some of the financial documents for Crone's work, the annual financial reports. These were in our evidence boxes. I look at the file in my hand and the most recent annual statement.

Given what they knew, the innocent genetic information passing between Tash and Crone from jail, Tate and his prosecutors concluded that William Epperson killed himself. It may be the biggest mistake Tate has made in years.

Harry is still doubled over in the chair in his office, trying to get the buzz out of his head as I come back into his office. I reach for the phone, call information. I look at my watch; it is now almost nine. The automated voice comes on at the other end.

"What city?"

I take a guess, "La Jolla."

"What name?"

"Aaron Tash." What I really want is his home address.

"Just a moment please."

A couple of seconds pass with dead air on the line.

"Who are you calling?" asks Harry.

Before I can respond, a voice comes on the phone.

"Sorry, we have no listing for that name."

"Try San Diego."

"Just a moment." She checks.

"Sorry. Nothing."

He could live in Escondido, or up in Carlsbad, anywhere. There are a dozen different directories.

"Thanks." I hang up; think for a moment. I pick up the phone again, dial another number. In my mind I am trying to consider what I will say if anyone answers. It rings five times. No one picks up. I let it ring seven, then nine times. There's nobody home. I consider the dark possibilities. I don't want to think about it.

"Who are you calling?"

"Do we have a home number or an address for Aaron Tash?"

"I don't know. Probably," says Harry.

"Process server would have gotten it for service."

"Do you think you could find it?"

"It's probably in one of the boxes outside." Harry stumbles to his feet. I steady him. Together we work our way to the outer office.

I put my shirt on while Harry rummages through the boxes. It takes him awhile.

He has to sit to get his bearings, legs like rubber. Several minutes later he finds what he's looking for, a return of service on a subpoena we had served on Tash in case we needed him as a witness.

He turns the form over and puts it on the reception desk in front of me. Tash's home address is listed. I was right. He lives in La Jolla. His phone number must be unlisted.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better," he says.

"Are you up to a ride?"

"If you drive."

Ten minutes later Harry and I are headed up 1-5, cutting in and out of traffic in Harry's Toyota.

"You should be careful," he says.

"Unless you wanna get clocked by a cop. And I'd rather not flash all over my own front seat."

"Sorry. But we don't have much time." I get into the fast lane and try to smooth it out, just staying ahead of the flow of traffic.

"I can't be sure, not certain enough to call the cops, but unless I miss my bet our visitor has one more stop to make."

"What the hell's going on?" Harry looks a little green, head in his hands.

"The information was in front of us all the time. Jordan and Epperson were competing for money on different portions of the research project. They'd filed competing grant applications; drawing on funds Crone had set aside. I didn't realize it until I went looking back through the papers tonight. Up until a month before Kalista Jordan was murdered, there was a surplus of funds. Not a huge one, but enough. A hundred and eight thousand and change, according to the figures. That's what the argument between Jordan and Crone was all about."

"Money?" asks Harry.

I nod.

"I've got no hard evidence. No proof. But I think I know what happened.

Crone had carved the surplus out of funds originally earmarked for their budgets. Jordan found out. She went to him, and they argued. Crone refused to rescind his action, so she took some papers from his office. My guess is they were funding documents, probably conditions for the grant from Cybergenomics. As far as Jordan was concerned, she was entitled to the money and she was going to get it. She tried to turn the screws on Crone, but he wouldn't budge. She was angry. It became a blood feud. She ended up filing the sexual harassment complaint. He probably was harassing her, but it had nothing to do with sex. He wanted the papers back. She wouldn't give them to him, and he wouldn't back away on the funding issue. As far as Crone was concerned, it was his project. He was calling the shots.

"So she went to Epperson, and the two of them filed supplemental applications to get the money back. They probably went around

Crone to the university. Jordan did a little lobbying. Crone wasn't well loved in high places, and she ended up getting the funds restored for their research.

Suddenly the surplus disappeared."

"I don't get it," says Harry.

"Why was Crone_holding back funds?"

"Because I asked him to."

"What?"

"It was Penny Boyd: the children's research project. Crone had come up with the funding by cutting into Jordan's part of the pie. She got it back, and the children's project died."

Harry is looking at me, the details beginning to seep in even as the lump on the back of his head throbs.

"There were three signatures on the final forms," I tell him.

"Jordan and Epperson signed the supplemental applications to get the money back. But Crone must have refused to consent to it, because even after the university ordered the funds to be restored, he didn't sign the form authorizing it. He had Tash do it."

Harry looks at me, a question mark.

"What he didn't realize," I tell him, "is that Tash was signing his death warrant."

Suddenly it registers on Harry.

"I didn't realize until I put it all together. That and the conversation I had with Frank Boyd. He was around the bend, but I didn't realize how far."

"It was Boyd," says Harry.

I nod.

"I didn't realize it until tonight. He must have gone out of his mind when the project for Penny was killed. He was convinced it would save her life.

I tried to tell him it was a long shot at best, but he . wouldn't listen. I should have realized when he came to me talking about divorce."

"He murdered Jordan because he held her responsible for killing the project," says Harry |;| "And Epperson, and anybody else whose fingers

might have touched the thing. I suspect he came to the office tonight because he thought we'd figured it out.

"Why did he think that?"

"Because you retrieved the file from Doris, the one she gave you, the one I left at their house after I did the original workup with Crone. That file had everything in it, the project application for the kids' portion of the Huntington study, along with the copies of the supplemental applications for funding from Jordan and Epperson. I'd let Doris keep them because they had nothing to do with the firm. They weren't legal files. She and Frank clearly had a larger stake than I did. All the while Frank was watching the money dry up in front of his eyes.

"My guess is he didn't know you'd come by to pick up the file until he went looking for it. He probably asked Doris. She would have told him where it was."

"It's a wonder he didn't kill me," says Harry.

"He was interrupted."

Harry looks at me wide-eyed.

"He was gathering information. Probably figured he had one last chance to get anybody who was involved before we turned him in and the cops got him.

"When I got there tonight the lid was off one of the boxes out in the reception area. You didn't do it. He nailed you before you got the lights on. So it was Frank. He saw the same papers I did. The stuff you got from the university. The ones with Tash's signature on them restoring the money and killing the project.

They were open on the desk. Those weren't in the file I gave to Doris. The twisted mind," I say.

"He probably figures Tash was in it with them from the beginning."

chapter twenty-one tash lives in a condo development out on the rocky shoals a few miles below the village, just south of a place known to surfers and locals as Wipe-out Beach.

It takes Harry and me twenty minutes to find the area, stopping twice for directions. When we finally locate the street, we are confronted with another maze. Every unit in the massive complex looks like every other one, with numbers on the clustered mailboxes out front.

We find the address for Tash's unit and park in front.

"He's probably out with Crone celebrating," says Harry.

"Lets hope."

I reach for the door "Let's think about this," says Harry.

"We could call the cops."

"And tell them what? Tate and Tannery aren't exactly in a mood to accept my theories on the case at the moment. They're not likely to put out an APB on Boyd based on a few documents. But then they didn't have the conversation I did with Frank about schemes for divorce to avoid medical bills. The guy was desperate."

It's the problem any prosecutor would have at this point. After

holding Crone in jail for months and trying him on capital charges, it's tough to go before the public and tell them, "Oh, by the way, we found another perpetrator." They are not likely to do it, even if it's the right perpetrator.

"So what are you gonna tell Tash when you find him?"

"For starters, I'll tell him to get a hotel room for the night. He and Crone both. I don't know exactly what Frank has in mind. But I'd rather not find out.

Tomorrow I'll try to get ahold of Tate. It's Saturday, the offices are closed, but somebody should be able to reach him. Maybe I can convince him to bring Boyd in, at least for some questioning."

"If you're right, he's a nut case," says Harry.

"I'm banking on it. I'll warn the cops every way I can." If they approach him, I am thinking Frank may go berserk. If they can get him into custody safely, that would cause them to take a hard look."

"What about the family, Doris and the kids?" says Harry.

"I thought about that. I tried calling Frank's house earlier. There was no answer."

"You think he's done something to them?"

"I don't know. I'm hoping maybe Doris took the kids and went somewhere. At the moment, Frank seems to be on a flat trajectory, single-minded. I think his sights right now are fixed on Tash. In his mind, he's racing against time. I'll check on Doris as soon as we're done here."

"That could be dicey," says Harry.

"I know. I can drop you somewhere before I go over there."

"Fat chance," says Harry.

"Just so long as you understand I'm not blocking any bullets for you."