Silent Justice (48 page)

“Kids?”

Tomlinson nodded. “See that apartment complex over there?”

Mike glanced in the direction he was pointing. He could just barely make out a high, shingled roof beyond the tallest of the trees.

“They live there. Not a very prosperous location. The kids come here to play.”

“To play in the dirt?”

“They were on a treasure hunt, it seems.” He jerked his thumb to the left, where two boys about elevenish were standing with a female police officer. “You can talk to them later, hear their story for yourself. They were out looking for pirate booty, and they saw a large pit where the dirt had obviously been turned. So they started digging.”

“And found something a hell of a lot more interesting than booty.”

“That would be one way of putting it.” Tomlinson glanced at the boys. “They got the shock of their lives. I have a hunch those two are going to be in therapy for a good long time.”

“Where’s the body?”

Tomlinson pointed. “Over there. On the gurney. The coroners couldn’t get their van back here, so they went back for more hands.” Mike started toward the sheet-covered corpse. “I should warn you, though—it isn’t pretty.”

“Is it ever?” Mike growled. “Certainly not on this case.” He crouched down beside the gurney. “I just want to see what that sick bastard did to his victim this time. Find out what merciless tortures he was able to inflict after I let him get the drop on me.”

Tomlinson stuttered, just as Mike reached for the drape. “Oh—you think—oh no—”

Mike whipped his head around. “What? What is it?”

“I think you misunderstand.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “I guess I didn’t make it clear on the phone.”

“You said you found another one of the killer’s victims.”

“True. But it isn’t George Philby.”

Mike’s eyes bugged. “It isn’t?”

“No. The body’s in bad shape—but I’m sure of that. It isn’t him.”

“You mean the killer’s gotten someone else since then?”

“Actually—I think this corpse may predate all of the others.”

Mike had had enough. He pulled back the sheet covering the corpse.

The face was familiar, what was left of it. He’d definitely seen it before. But he couldn’t place it.

“All right, Tomlinson. I admit it. I’m stumped. Who is this poor chump?”

“The distinguished and honorable professor Joseph Canino, civil procedure expert at the TU College of Law.”

Mike’s lips parted. “Of course. The Tiger.”

“The one and the same. Although at the moment, his growl isn’t what it used to be.”

Mike ignored his second’s poor humor. “This is the guy Ben substituted for the day James Fenton showed up with a sawed-off shotgun and took the whole class hostage. We speculated at the time that he might have been looking for Canino. But we never found him.”

“And with good reason. He was pushing up dirt on the other side of town.”

“You think he’s been dead that long?” The gears were whirring inside Mike’s head. “Since the hostage incident?”

“I do. I don’t have anything official from the coroners yet … but look at the signs of decomposition, all over the body. Look at the color of the skin, the protruding skull. Look how the worms and other insects have burrowed into the body.” Mike looked, although he didn’t enjoy it. “He could’ve been here for six months. Or more.”

“James Fenton knew at least one of the killer’s other victims. And now it seems Canino was a member of their little club, too. Whatever the hell it was. The Fishermen of Evil.”

Tomlinson did a doubletake. “What?”

“Never mind. I’m just babbling.” Mike pushed himself to his feet. “I guess I’ll go talk to those two kids. Have their parents been notified?”

“Moms are standing guard nearby. They’re not too happy about this, either.”

“I can imagine. Probably pissed that their kids were out here in the first place. What if they’d gotten lost?”

“They were following a trail,” Tomlinson said. “That’s what they say, anyway. Tracking the dangerous pirates. Following spoor, broken branches, trampled leaves. That sort of thing.”

“They were following a trail—today?”

“So they say.”

“A recent trail?”

Tomlinson’s brows knitted. “I guess.” He pointed. “See for yourself. But …”

Mike walked several paces down the trail. It wasn’t long before he found another place where the soil had been turned—not recently, but turned, just the same. “Did anyone dig in here?”

Tomlinson shrugged. “Well … no. We didn’t have any reason.…”

Mike grabbed a nearby shovel and started digging. Some of the other men at the crime scene gave him a strange look, but no one interfered.

Less than five minutes later, Mike felt the blade of his shovel lock into something soft but unyielding. Something that wasn’t dirt.

After strapping on his plastic gloves, Tomlinson bent over and started pushing away dirt from the surface. Soon the general outlines of a body began to appear.

“The face,” Mike said, staring intently. “Uncover the face.”

With the stain of red dirt, the translucent skin, the pockmarks eaten away by small insects, the face was much changed. But it didn’t matter. Mike had no trouble identifying it.

It was George Philby, the killer’s fifth victim—or sixth, if you counted Professor Canino. The one I could’ve saved, Mike thought silently. But didn’t.

A
FTER TWO MONTHS OF
trial, Ben was no longer able to distinguish one day from another. They all seemed to blur together, like a hazy montage from a dull and much-too-long movie. He had grown used to the fuzzy fluorescent lighting that made everyone in the courtroom appear a sickly dull gray color. He was accustomed to seeing mounds of paper piled up on his table, day after day, so high that he couldn’t tell what was what without consulting Christina. He was used to the tacky bankers boxes they used to transport exhibits, the tan London Fog—type overcoats every lawyer seemed to wear. He had stopped noticing the doleful horn of the train passing the courthouse every morning at nine ten. He was no longer aware of sirens speeding by, sonic booms overhead. All were reminders that there was a world outside the courtroom, but that world seemed distant, muted, far far away.

Some of the days had been packed with suspense and excitement, marked by a pain in Ben’s gut or a fear in his spine that kept him functioning with adrenaline-based enthusiasm. But as in any lengthy trial, most days were ordinary, perhaps even dull, riddled with interruptions and procedures and exhibits and all the rigamarole that so infused the modern trial as to insure that it never became too interesting. One day, Ben had noticed one of Colby’s many assistants dozing at counsel table. And he hadn’t been appalled. He had been jealous.

At the conclusion of the evidence, as expected, Colby made yet another Motion for Directed Verdict. Ben didn’t even attempt to reply; he was much too exhausted to speak intelligently about complex legal issues. This was what he’d hired Matthews for; let the man go earn his salary.

Colby and Matthews went back and forth for more than an hour, out of the presence of the jury. Once again, Judge Perry announced that he was troubled by the “extraordinary causation problems” in the plaintiffs" case. Matthews tried to address each concern point by point, citing reams of relevant authority, spewing out case names at the speed of light. Ben only followed half of it, but he was clear on one point—hiring Matthews was the brightest move he’d made this whole trial. The man was seriously smart; he knew what he was talking about. He had an answer for every rabbit Colby pulled out of his hat.

“I am appalled by what has taken place in this courtroom,” Colby said, turning his moral outrage up full throttle. “My client has been subjected to reams of bad publicity, has been accused in open court of the most monstrous crimes, and there is still not a shred of reliable evidence to prove that Blaylock’s actions caused those kids" leukemia!”

“All very dramatic,” Matthews replied calmly. “But it does not in any way get him around the lenient standard for the admission of developing or experimental scientific evidence established by the Supreme Court in the
Daubert
case.…”

When all was said and done, Judge Perry was unwilling to rule that the plaintiff had presented insufficient evidence to submit the case to the jury. “Although many aspects of this case still trouble me,” he said, “it still goes against the grain to take the case away from the jury. I’m going to deny your motion, Mr. Colby. Let’s get to work on jury instructions.”

Ben didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Well, he was relieved, of course—but this meant the case would proceed. The ordeal would continue.

The only remaining legal matter before closings was the finalization of the jury instructions. Preparing jury instructions for this case had been particularly arduous. Ostensibly, the purpose of jury instructions was to advise jurors on legal issues so that they could reach a verdict. As a practical matter, it was one last opportunity for each attorney to try to push the jury in their direction. As Ben had learned, a good jury instruction could win a case—particularly when the issues were as complex as they were here.

Christina had been working on the jury instructions for weeks, aided by Professor Matthews’s research; Ben pitched in whenever he had time, which hadn’t been often. All of them did their best to slant the law in the plaintiffs" favor, but for the most part—it wasn’t. The burden of proof was always on them, the odds were always against them, and it was difficult to craft instructions that didn’t make that painfully obvious.

The other problem was dealing with the vast complexity of the issues raised. On the whole, Ben thought juries deserved more credit than they got. In his experience, most jurors worked hard and tried to do the right thing. But you couldn’t expect them all to be experts in hematology or cancer epidemiology. Colby, of course, had tried to exploit this to the max. The jury instructions he had submitted were so dense and complicated a Ph.D. in semantics couldn’t have deciphered them. Ben and Christina had spent hours reworking the instructions, trying to boil them down and make them comprehensible, without rendering them so simple that they misrepresented the often subtle nuances of the law.

And they had failed. It was shamefully clear to Ben, as he listened to Judge Perry reading the final draft instructions aloud to the jury. They had failed. The instructions were still too complex—and they still favored the defendant. In the extreme.

“The fact that you may have determined that the defendant acted negligently or with careless disregard does not necessarily prove that its actions caused harm to the plaintiffs. In order to find in favor of the plaintiffs, you must find that it has been proven by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant’s wrongful actions did in fact cause the injuries to the plaintiffs.…”

Ben listened silently as the judge laid it all out, plank by plank. He was making a valid legal point, of course. Causation cannot be assumed; it must be proven. But to Ben, and to any juror, it just sounded like a lot of hoops that had to be jumped through before they could find in favor of the plaintiffs—a litany of reasons to vote for the defendant.

“Even if you find that the defendant did act recklessly, and that its actions caused harm to the plaintiffs, it does not mean that you have to make an award of actual damages or punitive damages to the plaintiffs. Punitive damages should be awarded only in the most extreme circumstances, where a party’s actions have shown wanton or willful disregard for another party’s rights. If you find that an award of punitive damages is appropriate, the amount awarded cannot be arbitrary. The punitive damages award must bear some rational relationship to the evidence presented in the case.…”

Now this was a matter of critical importance to the plaintiffs. Punitive damages. What every defendant feared most. Ben could only assume a big portion of both sides" closing arguments would be devoted to this subject. But now the judge was getting his two cents in, outlining in detail how difficult and complex it could be to make such an award to the plaintiffs, an award that was absolutely critical to compensating the plaintiffs—not to mention keeping Ben out of bankruptcy court.

“If you find that the corporate decision makers did not authorize or approve the wrongful conduct, you may consider this factor in mitigation of any award you might otherwise make. Other mitigating factors that may be considered include …”

Ben’s eyes began to roll up into his head. He couldn’t follow it anymore; trying just made his head throb. To their credit, he noticed the jurors were not falling asleep. On the contrary, they were listening closely, attentively. Perhaps for the first time ever, they were realizing how difficult the task set before them really was.

Well, it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do about it now. He had one last chance, he told himself as he approached the jury to deliver his closing. One last chance to make a difference for his clients.

After that, it would all be over.

”It is George Philby,” Mike said as he compared the fingerprint on his record chart to the ones just taken from the corpse he had unearthed. “No question about it.”

Bob Barkley, the medical examiner, forced a bristly smile. “Wonderful. May I please take possession of the body now?”

“Sure,” Mike said, but he didn’t move away. “Care to give me a hint on the cause of death?”

Barkley tried to push past him. “You’ll see the report.”

“No doubt. But every moment I wait is a moment the killer can go on killing.”

“Give me a break, Mike. You know I’ll get crucified if I give you any half-baked preliminary conclusions.”

“Off the record, then.” Mike pointed to the black patches all over the naked body. “He was electrocuted, right?”

Barkley glanced over his shoulder both ways, as if someone might be eavesdropping here in an undeveloped lot a hundred feet from the nearest road. “Just between you and me?”

“Right, right.”

“He got some juice, sure. Probably from that gruesome setup you discovered at his house.”