Paul Madriani: The Jury Part 1

The Jury.

by Steve Martini.

To Leah & Meg.

Acknowledgments.

as always I owe a debt of grat.i.tude to the people at Penguin Putnam for their tireless efforts and patience, and in particular to Phyllis Grann, my publisher, and to Stacy Creamer, my editor, without whose help Paul Madriani would be but a fleeting image in this author's mind.

I also wish to thank Esther Newberg at ICM and the agents of that firm who have worked diligently to market my works in languages around the world. And to my lawyer, Mike Rudell, without whose steady hand and careful judgment I would have lost endless nights of sleep, I owe my life for having lifted the anxieties of business from my shoulders.

Finally and most important, to my wife, Leah, and my daughter, Megan I owe love and undying devotion for their help and support through difficult times. They have lived with the unending insecurities of a writing husband and father, and for that alone they deserve a place in heaven.

To all of these I owe a debt of grat.i.tude.

SPM.

Bellingham, WA.

2001.

prologue.

her head rested against the concrete coving at the edge of the pool as she gazed up at the stars under a moonless sky. Her eyes were exotic brown ovals with a hint of mystery in the sculpted arch of the brows. They were always the first aspect anyone noticed when talking to her. Men seemed to get lost in them.

Her wet hair cascaded like liquid velvet and floated around her shoulders, tawny skin and slender neck. Her body had an air of athleticism that made Kalista Jordan a kind of magnet to men. Everything about her was perfectly proportioned, except perhaps her ambition.

Tall and slender, she fit the desired body style of the age. Without half trying, she had paid her way through college doing inside spreads for fashion magazines. According to people at the agency, she could have had an annual seven-figure future in modeling. She had been offered some covers but pa.s.sed them up, refusing to move to New York.

The arc of fame for models was too short. Kalista would rather waste her body than her brain, though she wasn't into giving up either easily. She wanted a career that would span more than a few fashion seasons and end up in a pile of used newsprint.

She finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and quit the catwalks. An African-American woman with a straight A average in engineering and science, she was heavily recruited by graduate schools. She ended up taking a full scholarship at Stanford.

It took Kalista six years, but when she was finished she held a doctorate in molecular electronics, one of only two women in the field on the West Coast. It was cutting edge, the latest science for a new millennium.

Lying in the warm waters of the hot tub she marked the guidepost of the dark night sky-something she had learned from her mother as a child.

She located Ursa Major, the "Big Dipper." Then extending her right arm to full length, Kalista formed a loose fist with the thumb and little finger pointed out, like a telephone receiver. Using this to sight, she spanned twenty-eight degrees from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger, the distance from Debhe, the last star on the lip of the Big Dipper, and found Polaris, the North Star.

She c.o.c.ked her head a little for a better angle. Floating at the edge of the hot tub, she slowly mapped the visible cosmos: Leo Minor and Botes, Antares, and Scorpius. Off to the left she found Sagittarius. She averted her vision just a little, using the more sensitive cones of peripheral vision to overcome the light pollution of the San Diego skyline. She scanned the myriad beads streaming overhead, the veil of the Milky Way.

She lost it for a moment, her attention distracted, something in the bushes behind her. She sat up, turned and looked, nothing, shadows. Perhaps a bird or the wind, though the night air seemed still.

She slid back down into the water; her head against the tub's edge anch.o.r.ed her body. Her bottom bobbed off the underwater bench, lifted by the silky warmth of the jetted bubbles. The billion shimmering stars drifted in and out of focus as the rising plume of steam wafted above the churning pool. Slowly the tight muscles of her back relaxed, tensions born in the rancor of a hostile workplace. It was becoming more difficult to get up and go to work each day.

This evening she'd had another argument with David. This time he'd actually put his hands on her, in front of witnesses. He'd never done that before. It was a sign of his frustration. She was winning, and she knew it. She would call the lawyer and tell him in the morning. Physical touching was one of the legal litmus tests of hara.s.sment. While she was sure she was more than a match for David when it came to academic politics, the tension took its toll. The hot tub helped to ease it. Enveloped in the indolent warmth of the foaming waters, she thought about her next move.

The pool was a large, elegant affair-free-form in design. It was located at the center of the complex. Tonight it was empty. The jacuzzi was at the far end. On rowdy nights he had seen it fill with a party of a dozen, pressing flesh and skimpy bathing suits, giggling girls and single guys all looking for a good time. He had been here every night for a week and he had not seen her. Tonight he got lucky.

The only light around the pool came from underwater, dancing blue reflections on the wall of the building nearby. This was the exercise room, though at this hour it was closed, locked and dark. He had carefully checked the facility, knew the terrain and the schedules for security, the locked gates and how to get through them if he had to.

They made it easy. There was an unmanned security kiosk out front, and a rolling iron gate that was automated. Tenants opened it from their car windows with the swipe of a card key. The gate was slow to close. Two or three cars routinely pa.s.sed through on a single cycle and n.o.body checked to see if they were all tenants.

The complex was maybe twenty years old, one- and two-bedroom condos with a few studios. There was a sales office next to the exercise room. This closed at six, on the dot. The only security was a hired company that came by and patrolled from a vehicle every three hours. He had timed them. The guard would do the rounds on the roads inside the complex, then sit in his car and smoke a cigarette in the parking lot out near the front gate. It took him between twelve and fourteen minutes to do the rounds and finish his cigarette. He operated like a night watchman, only without using a clock at checkpoints. Then the little white sedan with the blue private patrol emblem on the door would head out toward Genesee, for the next complex.

The area was condo city, graduate students and undergrads from the university, along with faculty and support staff. Some of the condos were rented, others owned outright.

The windows in most of the units at this hour were dark, though a few insomniacs quenched their need for companionship in the flickering eerie glow from television screens reflecting through closed drapes and drawn blinds.

The parking lot was quiet and for the most part dark, with only a couple of vapor lamps and some low-voltage garden lights to worry about.

He checked his watch. He had more than an hour before security would do its rounds again.

Alone with her thoughts, Kalista knew she was on the cusp of success. Within months, if all went well, she would be the director, with a twenty-million-dollar annual budget and control of all research. It was why she had sacrificed and worked so hard all those years. Her first move was to undercut his authority on part of the funding. This she had done. She then developed allies in the chancellor's office.

David lacked tact and had a tin ear when it came to academic politics. He lived in a world of his own making and believed success should be based solely on one's merit as a scientist. He made enemies daily. In fact, she wondered how he'd survived so long. All she had to do was push him into contact with other people. David did the rest, like a nuclear reaction. If anything, he'd become more volatile and careless since she'd made her first overt moves. The man had an academic death wish. Kalista could have that effect on people.

Unable to sleep, she had a knot like a goose egg high in the center of her back. Whether it was tension or antic.i.p.ation she couldn't be sure. It was why people got married, for the mutual back rubs. She considered this for a moment, then dismissed the thought. The heated waters of the pool didn't require a commitment or ask for compromises in your career.

She sat up on the bench seat and leaned forward arching her back, trying to stretch herself out. She reached behind and started to untie the top to her bikini.

There was nothing as relaxing as floating listlessly in the state of nature. She struggled with the knot for a moment, then stopped, her hands up behind her back. She heard it again, something in the bushes. It wasn't much, the faintest click, like someone winding a child's toy. Perhaps a small animal or a bird hitting the chain-link fence around the pool. It stopped.

She gave up on the knot in her bathing suit. The complex was a hive of single males, some who stumbled home after the bars closed. A glimpse of shoulder-length hair and a tiny pile of Lycra at the edge of the pool would be like waving red underwear at a bull.

Instead she picked up her watch that lay on top of the towel at the edge of the pool. It was just after two in the morning.

She heard it again. This time there was no mistake.

The tip of the nylon cable tie was now locked in the metal teeth of the tool. The pistol grip offered control, leverage if it was needed. A narrow band of white nylon formed a loop more than a foot in diameter and was sufficiently rigid to reach out and snag something. It was designed to bundle large electrical cables and fasten them to an overhead beam or a wall. When tightened it could produce more than two hundred pounds of pressure. Once the loop was pulled closed and tightened with the long trigger grip, only a sharp knife could break it.

He looked up at her apartment window. A single dim lamp lit, probably in her bedroom, marked the unit. He knew because he'd followed her home after work on two occasions and watched from the parking lot as she entered and went up the elevator. He had waited a few seconds, and lights went on in the windows. He then counted from the end of the building, using the outside balconies to distinguish each apartment. She was five in from the end of the building.

Birds sometimes did strange things. Kalista looked out into the darkness, but couldn't see a thing. The bushes were like a jungle around the pool, knifelike long leaves and deep shadows. It was probably a sparrow in the chain-link fence. She had seen them chase insects through the diamond-shaped openings, pecking like a machine gun. The noise had that kind of metallic rhythm, very quick, and then it was over.

She looped the band of her watch around her wrist and fastened it, grabbed her towel, stood, adjusted her bathing suit, skimpy cloth bottom and knotted top, then made her way up the steps and out of the water as she dried her face and toweled her hair.

The quick evaporation from the night air chilled her so that she wrapped the large towel around her shoulders. It only reached to just above her knees, but it cut the breeze as she walked. She headed for the gate. From the inside she didn't need a key, though she would to get into the unit and her apartment. She exited the gate and closed it behind her. Then, before leaving the area with its muted light, she fished for her key. She had fastened it with a safety pin to the inside of the halter top of her bathing suit just under the string that looped around her neck. Looking down she flipped the material down and found the pin, started to squeeze it with her fingers; and then she heard it, a rustling in the bushes movement behind her. This was no bird. Whoever it was was moving quickly through the bushes, thrashing brush, coming around the outer fence to the pool, twenty yards away.

Her fingers fumbled with the pin. The key dropped. It bounced off one of the stone pavers under her feet and caromed into the ground cover around the steps. Kalista turned to look. There was no time. She remembered she had left the door to the inside stairs ajar. If no one had used it after her, she could get in without her key. She ran barefoot down the stairs, headed for the building and her apartment.

She sprinted across the parking lot and down the paved walkway, long legs like a gazelle. She prayed that she might see someone coming the other way. Anyone. But at this hour, the paths were deserted. She ran for the entrance to her building and reached the covered alcove. She pulled on the heavy metal door with its little slit window that led to the inside stairway. It opened. Relief was palpable in her breathing. Kalista issued a huge sigh, quickly stepped inside and slammed the door closed. It locked behind her with the thud of a bank vault.

She stood inside catching her breath, leaning against the wall for what seemed like minutes but were, in fact, seconds. Her heart pounded. Her wet bathing suit dripped on the concrete floor until water puddled around her feet. She turned her head to the left, hugging the wall and the edge of the door with her back, and inched toward the small wire-reinforced window. Outside she could see the path leading to the front door. There was no one on it for as far as she could see.

She stooped down and slipped under the window coming up on the other side. Now she could see the front door, two double plate-gla.s.s doors and inside, beyond them, the elevator doors. There was no one there, and the front doors were closed, locked. Whoever it was had given up.

She caught her breath, and slowly trudged up the stairs, holding the towel around her damp body. She scaled the two flights and came out just across from the elevator doors. When she got to the intersection in the hallway she went to the right, away from her apartment. She went almost to the end of the hall, near another set of stairs and stopped outside of a door with the numbers 312 on it. Hanging in the center of the door was a decorative flower arrangement, silk roses in a basket that hung flat against the door.

Kalista reached up under the basket and found it, an extra key to her apartment. It wasn't stamped with a number. She'd made the arrangement with a neighbor, another young woman who lived alone. They each left spare keys hidden under ornaments on the other's apartment door.

If a stranger found the key, his first instinct would be to try it in the door. It wouldn't work, and to find the right door he might have to try every one in the complex. There were more than a hundred units in this building alone.

She walked slowly down the carpeted floor, pa.s.sed the EXIT sign leading to the elevator and the stairs. The rush of adrenaline had exhausted her. Ten doors down on the left she stopped, inserted the key in the lock of the door, opened it and stepped inside.

She turned and locked the door behind her, flipping the double bolt, then allowed the beach towel to slip from her shoulders. She reached for the light switch next to the door. Her fingers never got there. Like a whisper something moved pa.s.sed her eyes in the darkness, and suddenly like a vise it closed around her throat. Her eyes bulging, she reached up, grasped at her throat. Whatever it was cut into her skin. She tried to scream but couldn't get a breath. Her fingers scratched at the wall. They found the light switch, and suddenly the entry glowed with light. Both hands were back to her throat, she thrashed about, tearing at her own flesh, struggling to get her fingers under whatever it was. She tried to whip her body around, but whoever it was stayed with her. With the sweep of a foot from behind, her legs went out from under her and she landed on the hard wood floor, first on her side, then facedown. She turned her head to one side, and something cut into her throat. She felt it slice the flesh. A warm trickle ran down her neck. Her vision blurred. She lost control of her hands. No longer able to command them. She watched as the long nails of her own fingers lay listless in the widening red pool that seemed to spread from under her head across the wooden floor, the side of her face warmed by the flow.

Vague sensations moved through her body, as if it belonged to someone else. The last sharp note, metal banging on the hardwood floor, as a shiny piece of bra.s.s bounced coming from somewhere high over her. It came to rest a few inches from her nose. Each of her pupils opened like the aperture of a camera moving toward full dilation; the last image of focused memory was of her own key lying on the floor.

chapter.

one.

i notice one of the jurors, a middle-aged guy, taking his time, carefully studying one of the photographs of the victim. The message from prosecutors is clear-Kalista Jordan was an African-American beauty, a woman with a lifetime of opportunities ahead of her. But she was not just some pretty face. She was a professional woman with a Ph.D. in an exotic field of modern science.

In the photo, she is smiling with two girlfriends on a sunny beach. Jordan is wearing a two-piece bathing suit, a sky blue sarong wrapped low over curving hips, dipping into a V beneath her navel where it is tucked. A sculpted bronze thigh escapes through a slit in the sarong on the right side. Someone out of the photograph, a shadow on the sand, is taking the picture.

It is in stark contrast to the medical examiner's postmortem shots. As these make their way through the jury box, they leave a wake of increasingly nauseated expressions like a contagion spreading through the panel. Several of the jurors cast their gazes alternately between the photographs and my client, as if trying to put him in the picture.

In the autopsy photos Jordan's face is swollen almost beyond recognition. The dark purple of asphyxiation is trapped beneath the skin by the thin nylon ligature that is still buried in the flesh around her neck. What is left of the body, only the torso and head, is bloated after nearly a week in salt water. The arms and legs are gone. We could argue sharks, but the medical examiner's report is clear on that point; the victim was surgically dismembered, the legs and arms severed cleanly at the joints, "with apparent skill and medical precision." The prosecutor took pains to dwell on the word medical.

We have argued for two days in chambers over these photographs, which should be admitted and which excluded. For the most part, the state got what it wanted-images of enough violence to support their theory that this was a crime of rage.

Harry Hinds and I are relative newcomers to the legal scene in San Diego, though the firm of Madriani & Hinds has made a name for itself in a short period. We still hold forth in Capital City on occasion, Harry and I traveling north for a trial or a hearing. Two younger a.s.sociates hold down the fort at that end while Harry and I dig to carve out a presence here. The change in scenery was occasioned by a number of factors, not the least of which was the pa.s.sing of Nikki, my wife, who died four years ago of cancer.

It was that experience, a long brush with illness, fearing the worst and living in its grip, that caused me to take this case, for my client is a man of science who offered help to another. It is how I got drawn into this thing.

Dr. David Crone is beefy, broad from the shoulders down, built like a retired NFL linebacker past his prime. He is a big man, only an inch or so shorter than I, and fit. At fifty-six, he does not look his age. In shirtsleeves he shows more hair on his arms and chest than the average chimpanzee. Around a pool some might ask who opened the gate and let in the gorilla. The only place devoid of hair is the tonsure at the top of his head where he is beginning to bald. His brows are heavy, and seem to be perpetually migrating to the center of his head as he studies the direction and nuance of the state's arguments. He makes copious notes at counsel table, as if this entire affair were an academic exercise on which he will be tested for a grade at the end. The softest aspect of his face is the two disarming brown eyes, deep set as they are under brows that keep moving like ledges of rock in a quake.

Evan Tannery is a career prosecutor, twenty years with the D.A.'s office, and no man's fool. His case is made up of bits and pieces, any one of which might be dismissed as mere coincidence. But taken together, they add up to trouble for Crone.

Kalista Jordan had filed a s.e.xual hara.s.sment claim against our client. From all appearances this had nothing to do with s.e.x and everything to do with constant friction in the office. He may have been hara.s.sing her, but it was because she was moving in on his position as director at the center. From all indications, Kalista Jordan knew how to play the game of office politics and she played for keeps.

There were months of acrimony, arguments in the office, a few screaming matches between the two of them. Kalista had made a move on funding for some of Crone's pet projects. What is worse, she succeeded. He had made statements to other colleagues in fits of anger, all of them aimed at Jordan, none of them quite making it to the level of a death threat.

The surgical precision of her dismemberment has been trotted out. The inference is that this was done by someone with experience. Crone, in his medical training, had taken surgical courses. The lack of any alibi, while not pivotal, cuts both ways. The state cannot fix with precision the time of death. For that reason, we cannot provide evidence that our client was unavailable. Worse than that, he has been more than a little vague with Harry and me regarding his whereabouts on the night Jordan was last seen. And finally, there is always the clincher. In this case a d.a.m.ning piece of physical evidence: the nylon cable ties found in his pocket. The problem is that every day is a new surprise.

Tannery is moving at a glacial pace, leaving neither stone nor pebble unturned as he sc.r.a.pes the ground pushing everything in front of him. Crone is being presented to the jury as if he were the Aristotle Ona.s.sis of genetic science. The theory is, Jordan was dazzled by his brain. A woman seduced by gray matter, the power of intellect and a burning ambition to succeed in her career. To this end they have presented my client's world-cla.s.s academic credentials as if he were an expert at his own trial.

David Crone is a research physician at the university. He heads up a team of scientists and plays a significant role in the human genome project. Some might call it science by press release. The specter of some new medical treatment and the hoopla surrounding it have become the golden pathway to public funding and private grants. Isolating a gene and linking it to a specific disease, coupled with a timely press release, can produce a blip in stock values with an upward curve like Madonna's t.i.ts, and can lead a board at a biotech firm to the euphoric equivalent of a corporate climax.

It is here on this field of play that Crone met Kalista Jordan. A recent Ph.D., she held advanced degrees in an exotic area of science I do not profess to understand, molecular electronics. Crone, like a miser guarding information in the Information Age, has grudgingly explained just bits and pieces of their work. Apparently, Jordan was not his pick of the candidates. She came as part of a sizeable corporate grant that allowed him to continue his work in genetics. According to him, Jordan's background made her particularly well suited to computer applications in the study of genetics. Beyond that he says nothing, claiming that patent rights and commercially protected trade secrets are at issue. According to Crone, if we press him too hard in these areas, an entire new level of litigation may spring open in our case. He warns of a wave of trade-secret and patent-infringement suits with business lawyers washing over us, companies that provided grant money and seed financing for his research and who expect a return on their investment. To them, the murder of Kalista Jordan and the fate of my client are mere incidentals to the bottom line in what is shaping up to be a genetic gold rush.

Apparently, Jordan showed sufficient promise in her field to attract the attention of several other universities and a handful of corporations, all of which were vigorously recruiting her at the time of her death. Crone attributes this largely to the combination of her minority status and the fact that she was highly qualified in her field. According to Crone, Jordan would have been a major affirmative-action catch for any of these employers. He had to stay on his toes to keep her, and particularly to keep the grant money that seemed to come with her. He was constantly granting her perks, pay increases and promotions. Crone doesn't complain, but others in the lab have told us that Jordan's demands were frequent and increasingly unreasonable.

The last witness of the day is Carol Hodges. She has begun to light a little fire around the edges of their case.

Hodges came out of the blue, a surprise I suspect that Tannery could not wait to spring for fear that sooner or later we might discover the facts from our own client. He needn't have worried.

"You knew the victim?" says Tannery "Yes."

"How?"

"We roomed together for a period."

"And you remained at the university on faculty. Is that correct?"

"A teaching a.s.sistant. Graduate fellow," she says.

"Now I draw your attention to the evening of the twenty-third of March. Last year," he says. "Do you recall that date?"

She nods.

"You have to speak up for the record."

"Yes."