Judgment Calls (26 page)

O’Donnell looked concerned. “Have you talked to the boss about making that motion?”

“No,” I said. It hadn’t dawned on me to consult the District Attorney himself about my trial. In our large office, it was rare that we had any direct contact with the boss, let alone on individual cases.

“Well,” he said, “this is something Duncan would want to know about. He’s feeling the heat on this Zimmerman thing. The last thing he needs is for one of his deputies out there trying to prevent a court from hearing evidence supposedly exonerating Landry and Taylor.”

“But, Tim,” I said, “Lopez isn’t trying to exonerate Landry and Taylor. She’s trying to get Derringer off by confusing the jury and trashing MCT. That evidence has nothing to do with my case.”

“Sam, I’m trying to help you out. How about joining the rest of us in the real world? I don’t get it. You’re so fucking smart, but you’re acting like some rube on misdemeanor row who can’t see the politics here.”

I knew the politics, but I hadn’t connected them to my case. Duncan Griffith ran for DA as an opponent of the death penalty who’d make sure that the law was at least enforced even handedly against the truly reprehensible. In short, he got it both ways. The libs liked him because he talked the talk against the death penalty, but no one came after him on it, because he said he’d enforce the law.

O’Donnell had more advice. “Jesse Taylor is the first scheduled execution this state has seen in decades. And we put him on death row, Sam. This is the center of the storm.

If he turns out to be innocent, Duncan’s got well, he’s got a major problem. The only way he’s going to make it through is if he’s one of the good guys making sure we know who killed Zimmerman. If one of his deputies looks like she’s part of a cover-up, he’s toast. If you don’t go to him with this, I will. The Zimmerman case was mine, and this shit that’s going down now is a hell of a lot more important than some loser like Derringer.”

“Yeah? Well, that loser basically tortured a thirteen-year-old girl and then left her to die. I don’t see much of a difference between him and Jesse Taylor.”

He looked frustrated, but at least his response seemed earnest. “Sam, I wasn’t saying Derringer was a good guy. Hell, maybe I was too quick to write it off as an Assault Three. But be pragmatic. The boss’s political exposure on this Zimmerman thing is huge. You at least need to tell him before you try to keep Derringer from getting into it in your trial.”

He was right. “I’ll talk to Duncan when I get out of trial today.” He started to walk away, but I couldn’t leave it at that. “You know, Tim, you could be a little more careful about how you handle things, too. I don’t think it would help the boss’s political image if the newspapers heard that the head of his major crimes unit short-shrifts thirteen-year-old sex-crime victims and tells jokes about incest.”

O’Donnell rolled his eyes at me. “You want to make it around here, you’re going to have to tame those emotions. This isn’t personal, Sam.”

The truth was that I didn’t know why I’d snapped at him. He was being helpful, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I appreciated it. “We done here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Come get me when you’re out of trial. I want to be there when you talk to Duncan.”

I couldn’t see any reason for him to baby-sit me when I talked to Duncan, other than to show his authority, but it wasn’t worth fighting about. He was the supervisor of major crimes, had prosecuted the Zimmerman case, and was heading the investigation into the anonymous letter. With all those legitimate reasons for him to be part of the conversation with Duncan, I wouldn’t be able to convince him or anyone else that he was only stroking his ego.

I couldn’t concentrate after O’Donnell left my office. So instead of staring at the Derringer file with my last remaining minutes of the break, I ran out to the burrito cart in front of the courthouse. The combination of fat and spice was just what I needed before going back to court.

Unfortunately, the bliss was short-lived. Lopez called her next witness, a guy named Travis Culver.

I stood up to speak. “Sidebar, your honor?” Lesh nodded, and Lisa and I approached the bench. It was my sidebar, so my turn to speak first. “Your honor, it was my understanding that Ms. Lopez would be prohibited from calling witnesses other than those included on the defense or prosecution witness lists. Mr. Culver was not listed as a potential state witness, and the defense did not include him on its witness list, either. I don’t even know who he is.”

Lesh sounded concerned. “I thought I’d made myself clear, Ms. Lopez.”

“You were quite clear, your honor,” Lopez said. “I assure you that the defense is complying with your order. Mr. Culver is the custodian of records for the Collision Clinic, and the person holding that position was in fact included in the state’s list of potential witnesses.”

“Right,” he said. “That’s the auto detail shop. The parties stipulated to the admissibility of the invoice, which is” Lesh fished around for his list of exhibits “State’s Exhibit Five. So if we’ve got the stip, why is Mr. Culver here?”

“Because,” Lisa said, “he has relevant testimony that goes beyond the stipulation of the parties.”

There was nothing I could do. Anticipating the need to lay the foundation for the Collision Clinic, I had indicated on my witness list that I planned to call the business’s custodian of records. As a result, Lopez was allowed to call that person without notifying me in advance. If his testimony was irrelevant, I could object after the questions were asked, but there was no way to find out in advance what he intended to say.

We retook our seats, and the bailiff called Travis Culver to the stand. Culver’s coiffure was the classic white-trash mullet. If you’re not familiar with the name, you’re familiar with the look: a short regular cut in the front, but with length in the back reminiscent of the great eighties hair bands. Also known as the shlong, since it is both short and long. Truly versatile. Culver finished off the look with jeans that had a brown undertone from wear and dirt, and a nascar T-shirt commemorating a race-car driver killed a few years back.

Lopez started by showing Culver the Collision Clinic invoice. Culver confirmed that he owned the business, had filled out the invoice, and had given it to one of his employees, who then cleaned, painted, and reupholstered Derringer’s car. The work was done the day after Kendra was attacked, and Derringer paid Culver eight hundred dollars cash.

“Mr. Culver, we’ve heard testimony suggesting that the work on Mr. Derringer’s car only enhanced the market value of the vehicle by a couple of hundred dollars. Do you agree with that?” Lopez asked.

“Yeah,” Culver said, “that’s about right. On a car like that, guy might get a quarter, maybe half, of his money back on resale, so what’s that? About two to four hundred dollars, I guess.”

“Is it unusual for a customer to spend that kind of money in your shop? Money that won’t be reflected in the market value of the car?”

“Nope,” he said. “Auto body and detail work hardly ever pays off. Some guy bumps you in traffic and dents the back of your car. Might cost twelve hundred dollars to fix, even though the dent doesn’t lower the market value by that much. Fact is, I stay in business because people want their cars to look nice. This car here was in good shape mechanically, but it looked like ” He avoided the expletive. “Well, it looked bad. Now it looks a lot better. Real clean inside and out. Lots of people willing to pay eight hundred dollars for that.”

“Another thing I notice about this invoice,” Lisa said, “is that the work was completed on a Sunday. Do you normally work on cars on Sundays?”

“No, we’re usually closed,” Culver said. Now, that was interesting.

“Why was the work done on my client’s car on that Sunday?” Lopez asked.

“Well,” he said, “he had come in earlier that week to talk about getting the work done. We were actually supposed to do it the Friday before, but I had to call and cancel on him. A couple of my guys were out, so we were behind on the cars in the shop that week. So I told him we’d do it on Sunday. I do that sometimes to keep us from getting backed up.”

“So, if I understand you correctly, Mr. Derringer arranged to have his car overhauled several days before you actually completed it. In other words, he didn’t call you that Sunday morning to get the work done in a rush. Is that right?”

“Right,” he said.

“And, in fact, he had originally planned to have the work done two days earlier, on that Friday, correct?”

“Correct,” he said.

There went my theory that Derringer had gotten the work done to cover up physical evidence.

Lesh must have felt sorry for me, because he saved me from having to cross-examine Culver empty-handed at the end of an already humiliating day. Even though we were only halfway through the afternoon session, he called it quits. Apologizing to counsel, the jurors, and the witness, he explained he had an afternoon obligation and that we’d have to resume the questioning of Mr. Culver the following morning.

The problem, of course, was that nothing was going to change overnight. As hard as I’d tried over the years, I still hadn’t found a way to alter reality. Someday I was going to figure it out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do so before returning to my office.

O’Donnell had left a note on my chair. Don’t forget. Get me before you talk to Duncan. TOD.

When the two of us arrived at Duncan’s office, I could tell that O’Donnell must have called ahead, because Duncan didn’t seem surprised to see us. I wondered if the two of them had already agreed on how this would end.

Duncan Griffith is one of those men who manages to look young even though his hair is full-on white. He somehow maintains a year-round tan in Portland, Oregon, and I’d wager a bet that the teeth in what seemed like a permanent smile are capped. He was as pleasant on this day as he always appeared to be.

“Ah, my two favorite deputies. Come on in, you two. Make yourselves comfortable.” Griffith gestured to a setting of inviting leather furniture.

The law offices depicted on television are for the most part outlandishly unrealistic. Instead of the mahogany shelves and fully stocked bars enjoyed by fictional prosecutors, I, for example, work off a yellow metal desk with a cork board hutch, and when I’m lucky I can scrounge a Diet Coke off one of the secretaries who has a mini-fridge. Duncan Griffith’s office was an exception, however. The walls were lined top to bottom with volumes of the state and federal case reporters, and dark leather sofas welcomed whatever guests were fortunate enough to gain entrance into the inner fortress.

I’d only been invited here twice before, once for my job interview and once during my second week with the office. I had quickly learned that calling a sandbagging defense attorney a scum sandwich on shit toast wasn’t within the range of what Duncan Griffith defined as acceptable deputy DA behavior.

He was being much nicer to me now than during that last visit. After Tim and I were seated, Griffith leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms in front of him. “So, Sammie,” he said, “the Oregonian tells me that the Zimmerman matter has come up in this rape case of yours. Where’s that stand right now?”

I gave him a quick overview and told him I thought that Judge Lesh was receptive to a motion to exclude any evidence relating to Zimmerman’s murder.

Before Tim could open his mouth, Duncan said, “You’re a good lawyer and an aggressive prosecutor, Sam, and I appreciate you going after this guy a hundred and ten percent. But we all need to keep our eye on the ball here. The greater good. As an office, we need to get to the bottom of this Zimmerman thing and make sure we’ve got the right people. We’re talking about the death penalty here. A man’s life is at stake.”

“I realize that, sir, and I understand that our office is involved in the investigation into the anonymous Oregonian letter. But that case doesn’t have anything to do with mine. The defense is trying to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the Zimmerman case to confuse the jury.”

Duncan still hadn’t stopped smiling. “I understand that, Sam, but remember what I said. It’s about the greater good. If you file that motion, the front page of the newspaper’s going to say that you’re trying to squelch a man’s attempt to get to the truth. And I won’t have you dragging us into a cover-up.”

O’Donnell had clearly primed the pump. Griffith was regurgitating the spiel that O’Donnell had given me earlier in my office.

“What exactly are you telling me to do, sir?” I asked.

“Don’t make this adversarial, Sam. All I’m telling you to do is allow this defense attorney to have her say. You might need to do some rebuttal, let the jury see that the two cases are unrelated. Tim, you can get her up to speed on the Taylor file, right?”

Tim nodded. “We’ve already gone over it, sir.”

“Good,” Griffith said. When I didn’t stand up at his sign that we were dismissed, he continued. “No one’s telling you to play dead here, Sam. You know my rule of thumb in trials is to always stay above the fray. If the defense attacks the police, let ‘em do it. Never helps your case if you look like you’ve got a personal stake in the outcome. Trust me, your jury’s going to have more faith in you this way. And, in the long run, this office benefits.”

“The greater good,” I said.

“Exactly.”

I felt neither great nor good after I called Lopez and Lesh to tell them I wouldn’t be filing a motion to exclude Derringer’s defense. I felt depressed.

Lesh’s response had been simple. “Hey, it’s your case. Thanks for letting me know.”

Lopez, on the other hand, couldn’t just accept the gift for what it was. She was convinced I was somehow tricking her. As a result, what should have been a thirty-second courtesy call turned into a fifteen-minute inquisition about my intentions. Hell, if I was lucky, maybe she’d at least lose a little sleep that night wondering what I had in store for her in the morning. Truth was, I was seriously considering cutting whatever plea I could get if things didn’t turn around.

I called MCT to see if they’d had any luck tracking down Kendra’s purse, but no one answered. I tried Chuck’s pager and entered my cell phone number in case he didn’t call right away.