Defense for the Devil (39 page)

“Objection,” Shelley said coldly. “Leading question based on a false premise.”

“Sustained.”

“Did the defendant tell you he would protect you from his brother, as he had done before?”

“No.”

“If you had asked the defendant to defend you as before, would you expect him to do so?”

“Objection. Speculation.” It was sustained.

“When you informed the defendant that your bed-and-breakfast had been wrecked, did you tell him you suspected Mitchell Arno had done the damage?”

“Yes.”

“Was he enraged?”

“No. He was very sad, and worried about my safety.”

Roxbury hammered at her, making the point that the Arnos had their own code of justice; a daughter and sister had to be protected, that Ray as the eldest son had that obligation: to protect the cherished sister.

Without exception, Shelley’s objections were sustained, and Maggie remained calm and refused to be rattled.

Barbara had suspected that the state intended to play down the money Mitch had carried; the fact that there had been no leak concerning it had reassured her that they had accepted the IRS agreement, as well as the various statements, and that it was a closed issue. She was not surprised that at this time Roxbury never once referred to it. He was going to play his other card: the Arnos were not like the jury panel members, they pursued justice Mafioso-style.

“The Girl Scouts came through with flying colors,” Barbara said to Frank when Maggie was finally excused and Judge Waldman called for a recess. Barbara walked to the women’s room with Maggie and Shelley, and inside, they both started to shake. She laughed and put her arms around them, drawing them in close. “I do that, too,” she said. “But never in court. You were both swell.”

Then, back in court, still on schedule, moving exactly as planned, she called Bailey. He was not dapper, she thought as he was being sworn in, but he was presentable in a brown suit she estimated to be about fifteen years old and a red-striped tie from some historical period. He had shined his shoes, she noted with approval. She would try to remember to compliment him on that bit of heroism.

She had him give an account of his training and experience: the police academy in California, work with the San Diego Police Department as a detective, special FBI training, then his move to Eugene and going into business as a private investigator.

She went straight to their visit to the bed-and-breakfast and the photographs he had taken. He identified the pictures and they were admitted as evidence. “What did you conclude about the damage done to the inn?”

He said two people had been searching, and explained how he had determined that one was left-handed. “It wasn’t the pattern for malicious vandalism; they were looking for something.”

“What is the difference between malicious vandalism and a hasty search?”

He explained: malicious vandalism involved scrawling obscenities here and there, spray-painting walls, breaking windows, defecating on beds, urinating on carpets, flooding the place, and it wouldn’t involve the entire building, because that was too much work. The inn had been searched methodically from top to bottom; it had been fast and they hadn’t cared how much damage they did, but there hadn’t been any of the personal touches of malice.

“On Saturday, August tenth, did you receive a call from Ms. Folsum?”

He said yes, and recounted what he had done.

“Did you receive a report from the FBI?”

“Yes. On August twenty-ninth the report came back and I made a copy for my files and gave the original to Ms. Folsum on the following day, August thirtieth.”

“Do you have that report?” she asked. He said yes, and she asked him to summarize it for the court.

“One set of prints,” he said, referring to the report, “belongs to a man named Jacob Stael, who goes by the name of Bud, address unknown, believed to reside in New York City. He has a criminal record, served seven years in New York State for assault and battery. Another set belongs to Jeremy Ulrich, also of New York City, also with a criminal record, for armed robbery. Both men are employed by the R. M. Palmer Company of New York City.”

“Is either of them left-handed?” Barbara asked then.

“Bud Stael is left-handed.”

“Do you have photographs of those two men?” she asked.

He did.

Roxbury objected strenuously when she asked that the pictures be admitted. There was no foundation for introducing two new characters, he said meanly.

Barbara asked to approach, and at the bench she said, “Those two men will be identified by various people as the defense case proceeds. We will demonstrate that they were in the area throughout much of August, as well as in the Palmer office when Mitchell Arno retained Mr. Trassi.”

“Picking out a man from a single picture isn’t admissible,” Roxbury snapped, “as she well knows.”

“Not like picking out a single car from a single picture?” She turned to Judge Waldman. “We have witnesses who will testify that they picked out these men from among a group of mug shots.”

Judge Waldman looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I’ll sustain the objection at this time, but if your witnesses testify as you state, then you may introduce the photographs after the proper foundation has been laid.”

She thanked the judge and resumed questioning Bailey.

In his cross-examination, Roxbury wanted to make three points, and he drove at them harshly. “Did you recover other fingerprints that were not identified?” Bailey said yes. “It is just an opinion, isn’t it, that the inn was subjected to a search?”

“It was a search,” Bailey said.

“According to the official police report—”

“Objection,” Barbara said. “Improper cross-examination. No one has introduced an official report on the damage. It was not part of discovery.”

“I have it right here,” Roxbury snapped, holding up a sheet of paper.

Barbara shook her head. “But you didn’t supply the defense with a copy, did you, Mr. Roxbury?” She thought she was being very reasonable, and even sweet, but his flush of anger suggested that he didn’t agree.

“Enough arguing,” Judge Waldman said. “Overruled.”

Barbara’s exception was noted, and Roxbury continued.

He tried to give Bailey a hard time, but in Barbara’s opinion, it would take a nuclear explosion to accomplish that.

When Bailey left the witness stand, Barbara called her final witness for the day.

Gene Atherton was a pale, nervous man who had confided to Barbara that he had never been in court before, and worried that it would be an ordeal. She had reassured him as much as possible, but now, today, it appeared that his worst fears had surfaced once more. For a moment he seemed to forget how to spell his name.

In a conversational tone, she invited him to tell the jury where he worked and what his position was. She kept her tone easy, almost soothing, as she drew him out about working in a motel; he began to relax a little.

He worked as desk clerk in one of the Gateway motels off I-5, and had been there for nine years.

“I suppose with so many people arriving and leaving constantly, you don’t particularly remember any of them after a time has passed,” she said. “Is that correct?”

“Usually,” he said. “There’s no reason to remember most of them.”

“But if something unusual happens, then later on you might recall one or more of your guests. Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you recall any of your guests from last August?” she asked, still easy.

“Yes, very well”

“And is that because something unusual happened to make you remember them?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Please tell the jury about that, Mr. Atherton.”

He hesitated, evidently not knowing just where to start. “You mean from when they checked in?”

“That would be fine,” she said. “Just tell it in your own words.”

“Well, two men checked in late on Saturday night, August third. They called first for a reservation and gave a credit card number and said they’d be late and to hold a room. So they checked in, and they said they were tired, ready for bed. New Yorkers, they sounded like, and I thought the time difference, jet lag, something like that, was bothering them. They said they’d be there three or four days, maybe longer, maybe not.” He paused, watching Barbara for a sign of approval, a clue that this was okay. She nodded at him.

“The next morning they were up and out early, before I got off work, even. I work from ten at night until seven in the morning. I saw them take off.”

Barbara interrupted him then. “Mr. Atherton, before you continue, just a few questions to clarify what you’ve already said. What is the procedure when a call for a reservation comes in, with a credit card number?”

“Whoever takes the call reserves the room and then puts the card through the machine for verification, he initials the charge information, and that’s that.”

“All right. So you had that information, a name and credit card number. When they sign in, what is the procedure?”

“They have to sign, or one of them does, in the registration book, and give the license number of their car and a home address, and sign the credit card charge slip. One of them did that.”

“Did you get a good look at them?”

“The one who signed them in, I did. The other one was looking over maps, the tourist information in the rack. I didn’t see him as well”

“You said they were New Yorkers. Did the one who signed in give a New York address?”

“Yes, but it was the way he talked that made me think New York—you know, the accent.”

“What were they driving?”

“A ninety-three Honda Accord, dark blue, with an Oregon license plate.”

“Do you know the number of the license?”

He produced a photocopy of the registration with the license number and read it.

“All right. Did they stay the few days they had said they might?”

“No. They stayed until the morning of August fourteenth.”

“On Sunday morning, August fourth, you said they left very early. Do you know when they returned Sunday night?”

“Yes. I saw them drive in at two-thirty in the morning.”

“Were both of them in the car?”

“Yes. The reason I noticed the time,” he added, “was that I was thinking if they were still on New York time, it was like five-thirty in the morning for them, and it had been a long day for them.”

“Mr. Atherton,” Barbara said, “so far this sounds like very routine motel business. What was it that made it memorable, made you remember them in such detail?”

“It wasn’t then,” he said hurriedly. “I mean, they didn’t do anything to bring attention. It was a couple of weeks later, when a credit card investigator came around. The card was stolen, you see, and the company was looking into it. They ran up a pretty big bill, eleven days, meals. And it turned out that the license plate on the car was stolen, too, and the car was stolen. They asked all of us questions, and it was still recent enough that we could remember, and after we answered their questions, it’s like we’ll never forget now.”

“Did you describe the men for the investigator?”

“Yes.”

She asked him to describe the two men and he did, but his description was not very detailed until he said, “The one who signed in was left-handed.”

“Did you identify them by looking at photographs?”

“Not then. He didn’t have any. Later, another private investigator came around with a book of pictures, and I picked them out.”

“Can you tell the jury about the book of pictures? What was it like?”

“Thirty pictures maybe, in a book, like a photograph album.”

She went to her table and picked up the album and showed it to him. “Is that the book of photographs you looked through?”

He leafed through it, then nodded. “That’s it.”

The pictures were all of ex-cons, dressed more or less the same in sports shirts open at the throat. Their ages ranged from about thirty to about fifty and there was nothing to make one stand out from another. A good mug book that Bailey had assembled over the years. “From those pictures you were able to identify the two men who checked in on August fourth?”

“Yes. One of them was the guy who signed the registration, him I knew right off. I wasn’t that sure about the other one, like I said. But I picked out another picture and I told the investigator I thought that was the second man.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Well, the investigator asked me to put my initials on the back of the pictures, and I did.”

Now Barbara picked up the photographs she had wanted to introduce earlier, and she asked Atherton to look at the initials. “Are those the initials you wrote there?” He said yes, and she showed him the pictures. “Are those the two men you identified?”

“Yes. That one for sure,” he said, pointing. “That one I think is the other man, but I wouldn’t swear to him, not like the other one.”

Barbara asked to approach the bench then, and she and Roxbury stood before the judge and spoke in low voices. “There is peel-off tape on the back of those two photographs,” Barbara said. “The pictures were provided by the criminal justice department in New York City, and have a certification stamp and signature. May I identify the men, or must I introduce yet another witness to do so?”

Judge Waldman took the pictures and peeled off the tape, then showed them to Roxbury. “Will you stipulate the authenticity of the photographs?” she asked him.

It was clear that he wanted very much to say no, but after a moment of hesitation, he shrugged. “So stipulated.”

Judge Waldman nodded to Barbara. “You may identify them.”

Back at her table, Barbara said, “Let the record show that the witness identified Jacob ‘Bud’ Stael as the man who signed his registration book on the night of August fourth, and tentatively identified the second man as Jeremy Ulrich.” She had the pictures admitted and passed them to the jurors, and when they were done looking, she said, “Your witness, Mr. Roxbury.”

37

It was ten-thirty
when Bailey and Shelley left that night.
The rain was hard, relentless, although it was not very cold.