Part 7 (2/2)
”Ask him.” Tash gestures toward me.
”Mr. Madriani, I thought I made it clear. You cannot interfere with my work.”
”No, what you made clear is that you won't cooperate in your own defense,” says Harry. ”In my book, that's grounds for counsel to pitch the court for an order to withdraw from the case.”
”Go ahead,” says Crone. ”I won't object.”
”Harry, please.” I give him a forced smile, a signal to back off.
”I must have access to Dr. Tash,” says Crone. ”I want you to instruct the jail personnel that he is ent.i.tled to meet with me whenever.”
”Only your lawyers meet with you whenever,” I tell him. ”Dr. Tash is a visitor. No matter what I say, he would be limited to visitors' hours. I should also remind you that he's on the state's witness list as well as our own. That creates a problem. I cannot allow you to talk out of my presence.”
”Besides,” says Harry, ”if you do, the conversations can be monitored.”
”Let them listen,” says Crone. ”They wouldn't understand a thing. I would challenge them to make heads or tails of these numbers.” He holds up the piece of paper.
”Then you wouldn't object if they copied it?” I ask.
”I certainly would.”
”That's what they may do if he comes here alone.” The fact is they could do so now. Because Tash arrived with us, Crone's lawyers, the guards in the jail have simply a.s.sumed that he is part of the defense team. We did not vouch for him. We merely told them he was with us.
”The guards may not be able to interpret those numbers, but an expert, another geneticist might,” I tell him. ”He or she might also be able to tell prosecutors whether what you're working on has any relevance to the state's case.”
This produces sobering expressions from Crone and Tash.
”Even with us here,” says Harry, ”the D.A. could always put Dr. Tash there on the stand and ask him what the two of you talked about.”
”Is that true?” Crone looks at me.
I nod.
”I could tell them anything I wanted,” says Tash. ”How would they know?”
”Then you'd be committing perjury,” says Harry.
He looks as if this wouldn't bother him much.
”Well, we'll just have to take that chance,” says Crone. ”I must have access to Dr. Tash. You have to understand, we're at a critical stage. Everything we've done for the last five years is coming to a head. You see what's happened? The delays.”
”Then counsel's going to have to be present whenever these meetings occur, and we're going to have to keep them to a minimum. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.”
Crone looks at me, considers for a moment, then nods. ”Very well.”
”No telephone conversations. No meetings,” I tell him. ”Unless they are approved by me in advance and either Mr. Hinds or myself is present.”
Crone nods. ”Right.”
Tash doesn't. He just looks at me, steely-eyed down his long, imperious nose, all the while showering me with his benevolent smile. He turns back to scratch a few more numbers on the sheet of paper with Crone looking on. As he writes I realize that Tash is himself part of the fifteen percent that Crone was talking about. He is writing with his left hand.
chapter.
six.
jimmy de Angelo is forty-seven, a former street cop turned detective. He has the dour expression and heavy-hooded eyes of a man whose business is death. De Angelo has spent a decade and a half working homicide, and he finds refuge in physical conditioning; the man's body does not look as if it should belong to the furrowed face with sad eyes that rests upon its shoulders.
He has the upper body of an NFL linebacker, with a waist that tapers to thirty-four inches and biceps that move like boa constrictors under the arms of his tight sport coat.
De Angelo worked his way up to lieutenant through Vice and did undercover with the narcs before that. He has more than two hundred homicide cases under his belt, everything from winos clubbed in alleys to the abduction and murder of a local software magnate. He has held hands with snitches to get rollover benefits in murder-for-hire cases and has served on the local violent-crimes task force with state and federal agents. He has instincts and can feel his way around the hairy underbelly of crime even when it is not possible to see very well. De Angelo has driven much of the case against my client based on feelings; call it a cop's intuition.
This morning Tannery has him on the stand, fles.h.i.+ng out the grisly details of Kalista Jordan's murder and the discovery of body parts on the Silver Strand, the closest thing they have to the scene of the crime.
”We figure the killer used a plastic bag to dump the body, but it didn't stay together,” says de Angelo. ”Either the surf opened it up, or maybe rocks, or sharks. We can't be sure.”
”Did you find evidence that the victim's torso had been mauled by sharks?”
”No. But there were some ragged pieces of black plastic caught under a cord that was wrapped around her neck. The one used to tie the plastic around the body.”
”So that we don't confuse the jury, you're not talking about the nylon cable tie used to strangle the victim?”
”No. That was underneath the plastic we think was wrapped around the body. We believe that plastic of some kind had been tied around the body, probably to conceal it until it went into the water, and something ripped it off.”
”And all that was ever recovered was the victim's torso and head?”
”And one arm,” says de Angelo. He has an advantage over most of the other witnesses. He has a permanent seat at the prosecution counsel's table as the authorized representative of the state and has heard all the earlier testimony to this point.
”Lieutenant de Angelo, have you ever had occasion to investigate any other homicides in which the victim has been dismembered in this way?”
”If you mean arms and legs severed, the answer is yes. If you mean cut up in the way that this victim was, the answer's no.”
”There was something unique about this case?”
”Objection. The witness is not a medical doctor.”
”But he has experience investigating similar cases,” says Tannery. ”How many cases involving dismemberment have you done, Lieutenant?” He doesn't wait for the judge to make a ruling, and Coats lets him get away with it.
”Eight.”
”In fact, your department has seen enough of these kinds of cases, dismemberment and disposal in the ocean or the harbor, that they have a name for them, don't they?”
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