by Michael Nava
“You don’t know that,” Grant said. “And if he had, Henry, it wouldn’t have been your fault.”
“Maybe, but I still feel guilty and it still confounds me, Grant.”
“What does?”
“To have been in love for the first time in my life and to have known at the same time that love wasn’t enough.”
“It can be,” he said after a moment and pulled me into his big body so that we were chest to chest. We held each other and our eyes met but our thoughts were not the same.
I was in the shower the next morning when Grant came into the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain and said, “There’s a police officer here to see you.”
Terry Ormes was in the living room chatting with Grant when I emerged from the bedroom pulling a shirt over my head. She looked at me and grinned.
“Sorry to bother you so early,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d have company.”
“I guess you’ve met.”
Grant said. “My turn to hit the shower. Nice meeting you, Terry.”
“Same here,” she said. After he left she said, “Nice guy. Definitely a keeper.”
“I’ll make sure to record your vote,” I replied.
“I got your message,” she said. “I was coming over anyway to give you what I collected about the accident. What did you want to tell me?”
“The papers that were stolen from my apartment ended up with a lawyer at the firm that represents Judge Paris. His name is Aaron Gold. I thought you might want to question him about how he got them.”
She sat down on the nearest chair. “How did you find out?”
“Gold told me,” I said. “Accidentally.”
“You know him?”
“We went to law school together,” I said. “He was my best friend.”
“I think you owe me an explanation,” she said.
I told her about Gold, and the letters from Hugh to his grandfather he had given me and about our last conversation.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the letters earlier?” she said with quiet anger.
“They didn’t seem relevant,” I said lamely.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The truth is I couldn’t bring myself to read them until recently and I didn’t want to tell you about them until I knew what was in them.”
“What if the letters proved Hugh had falsely accused his grandfather or that he was blackmailing him? You don’t think I would have wanted to know that before I put my neck on the line to investigate a closed case?”
“There was nothing like that in the letters,” I said emphatically. “If anything, they support what he said about his grandfather sexually abusing him.”
“What about the murders?”
“He accuses him of it, but there are no details.”
“I can’t believe you concealed them from me,” she said.
“It wasn’t deliberate.” I went to my desk and extracted the folder. “Here, take them.”
She took the folder. “Are you keeping anything else from me?”
“No, I swear.”
She pulled an accordion file from her bag and shoved it at me. “This is what I have on the accident. CHP reports, a couple of newspaper articles, inquest report.”
“I appreciate this and I’m sorry.”
Her expression softened a bit. “How did it go with Katherine Paris?”
“She threw me out of her office,” I said.
She stood up. “That’s too bad,” she said. “That doesn’t leave us with any leverage with the coroner.”
“Will you question Gold about how he got the papers from here?”
“You have any proof he sent the guys who took them?”
“Isn’t that what you’d be questioning him about?”
She gave me a sour look. “So far, everything I’ve done on this case has been on your say so, but I have to tell you, that’s getting pretty thin. I can’t walk into some lawyer’s office and start asking him questions without something more solid than your word that he told you he saw the papers.”
“You think I’m lying about that?”
“No,” she said, “but without some solid evidence that someone somewhere committed an actual crime, this is starting to look less like an investigation than an obsession.”
“You had your own suspicions about Hugh’s death,” I reminded her.
“Yes, and I still do, but they still don’t amount to much more than suspicions. Look, Henry, I’m getting some heat for the time I’m spending on this case. If something doesn’t shake loose soon—”
“I know,” I said. “Let me dig just a little longer.”
The tense silence between us was broken by Grant singing in the shower.
“He’s a catch,” she said. “Maybe you should think about dropping all this and moving on.”
NINE
The documents in the accordion file Ormes gave me were copies of the papers I had taken from Hugh’s house except for one, the report of the coroner’s inquest. Stamped across the top of the first page were the words, “Confidential. Not to be opened except by order of the court.” I remembered my conversation with Hugh about sealed records and wondered if this was the record he had been trying to obtain.
Grant came up from behind me, kissed the top of my head and asked, “What are you reading?”
“The coroner’s report on Christina and Jeremy Paris’s car crash,” I said.
He hopped over the couch and plopped down beside me. “Anything interesting?”
“It’s odd there was an inquest at all. They’re only convened when there’s some question about the cause of death. That wasn’t the case here. It’s also strange the inquest was conducted in Santa Clara County.”
“The Parises live here,” he said.
“But the accident was in Nevada County,” I said. “If there was going to be an inquest, that’s where it should have been held.”
“Can I see?” he asked. I gave him a few pages of the report. After a moment, he muttered, “What an awful way to die. At least they died together.”
I looked up from the paragraph I was reading describing in grim detail Christina Paris’s injuries. “What did you say?”
Grant read, “ ‘It is the conclusion of the medical examiner that the deaths occurred simultaneously.’ ”
I took the paper from him and read the sentence myself. “That’s not right.” I dug through the CHP reports until I found the paragraph I was looking for. “According to the cops, Christina was dead when they arrived and Jeremy died a few minutes later, just as the paramedics arrived.”
Grant got up and rooted around my desk.
“What are you looking for?” I asked him.
He returned with Professor Howard’s textbook. He sat beside me and flipped through the table of contents, running his finger down the meticulously organized divisions and subdivisions and sub-subdivisions of the ancient law of trusts and estates.
“Found it!” he said.
“Found what?”
He quickly turned the pages to page 293 and tapped the yellow highlighted text. “Here it is, the doctrine of simultaneous death.”
He scooted next to me, resting half the book on my lap and half on his so we could read it together. It didn’t take long. The doctrine of simultaneous death rated less than a page and a half in Professor Howard’s seven-hundred page tome. The discussion consisted of a statement of the doctrine with case citations followed by a number of hypothetical situations in which it might apply, standard law school text explication.
“So,” Grant said, “the basic principle is that dead people can’t inherit from living ones.”
“Makes sense. Where would they spend it?” I replied.
“What’s interesting,” he said, “is what happens if two people die at the same time and one of them has left everything to the other one.” He read, “ ‘In such a circumstance, the law presumes that the beneficia
ry predeceased the testator and the gift is void and would, therefore, revert to the testator’s estate to be distributed in accordance with the rest of the testamentary scheme.’ ”
I skimmed the page. “The presumption is rebuttable by competent evidence. Why did the coroner rule Christina and Jeremy’s deaths were simultaneous when the cops said otherwise?”
“Did the cops testify at the inquest?”
I looked at the inquest and compared it to the accident reports. The witness list at the inquest did not include the officer who had written the report and who had found the bodies. Instead, his partner and the paramedics testified.
“Not the cop who found the bodies,” I said. “His partner. That’s not that unusual if the first cop was unavailable for some reason.”
“What did his partner testify to about times of death?” Grant asked.
“I don’t know. There’s no transcript of the proceedings, just a summary of the testimony and the coroner’s findings.”
“Henry,” Grant said, grabbing my wrist. “Listen to this hypo. ‘A woman of means leaves her entire estate to one of her two sons who is then killed in the same automobile accident that takes her life. The deaths are determined to have occurred simultaneously. Applying the rule of simultaneous death, who would inherit her estate?’ ”
“If she left everything to him,” I said, “and they died simultaneously, the gift to him would be void and his portion would be distributed to her other heirs. But, if there were no other heirs named in the will—”
“Then her estate would go to her intestate heirs,” Grant said.
Comprehension dawned. “Her husband and her surviving son.”
“What?”
“This hypo is about Christina and Jeremy Paris,” I said. “Hugh had a copy of her will. Christina left everything to Jeremy, except for a few small bequests. If they died simultaneously, the gift to him was void and since she didn’t name any alternate beneficiaries, her estate would have gone to her survivors, Judge Paris and her son Nick, but Nick was already institutionalized. I wonder who his conservator is.”
“Judge Paris?” Grant suggested.
“I’m willing to bet.” I picked up Professor Howard’s tome. “How did he know?”
“Who?”
“Professor Howard,” I said. “This hypo. It can’t be a coincidence.” I shut the book. “I have to find him.”
“You know him?”
“I took trust and estates from him.”
“So he’s here, at the university. Could he have known Christina?”
“That’s one of the questions I plan to ask him.”
“What can I do?” Grant asked.
I touched his hand. “I told you this a labyrinth. Are you sure you want in?”
“I already am,” he said. “Besides, this is a lot more exciting than discovery compliance and depositions.”
“I need to look at Christina’s will again. Even if the simultaneous death ruling invalidated the bulk of it, there were some specific bequests. If the will was probated, you should be able to track down a copy.”
“Sure,” he said. “I can do that.”
“Also, find out who Nick Paris’s conservator is,” I said.
“Check,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Find out what you can about the coroner who conducted the inquest,” I said. “The judge may have been forum shopping by having the inquest here and not in Nevada County.”
“You think he was looking for a coroner who would give him the time of death finding he needed to invalidate Christina’s will?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Wouldn’t it make sense that he would have more pull with the Santa Clara coroner than one up north?”
“This really is twisted,” Grant observed. “But is it proof that the judge killed his wife and son?”
“If all of this pans out,” I said, “it at least takes us out of conjecture and into circumstantial evidence. We may not have found the smoking gun, but we can be pretty sure that one exists.”
A couple of hours later I found myself on a dead-end street in an obscure wooded pocket of the campus where retired professors lived in university-subsidized houses. While it was generally acknowledged at the law school that John Howard was still alive, he had not been seen on campus for years. Eventually, an antiquarian in the alumni office had found an address for me and, armed with his textbook, I went off in search of him.
Behind a white picket fence, across a weedy, dying lawn and in the shade of an immense oak tree stood a plain, one-story stucco house with the inevitable red-tile roof. In the summer heat, the house seemed remarkably still, like a ship in dry dock. I pushed open the gate and went up the flagstones to a red door with a brass knocker in the shape of a gavel. I lifted it and let it fall. The small noise echoed in the unmoving air.
A middle-aged Filipina in slacks and a hospital scrub top opened the door, eyed me suspiciously and greeted me with a curt, “Yes, can I help you?”
“I’ve come to see Professor Howard,” I said.
“Is he expecting you?”
I shook my head. “No one at the law school had a phone number for him so I wasn’t able to call ahead.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Henry Rios, I’m a lawyer and former student of Professor Howard,” I said. I showed her the textbook. “I have a legal question for him.”
“Professor Howard is very sick,” she said.
“I won’t take up too much of his time.”
“Wait here,” she said and left me at the doorway while she disappeared down the shadowy hall. On the walls of the hallway were framed photographs of professional gatherings—a banquet of the local bar association showing Professor Howard at the podium, a commencement ceremony—dusty plaques and elaborately calligraphed certificates. No family photos. I tried to remember if he’d been married but drew a blank. When I was a student, my law school professors had existed for me only from the head up. Their private lives were not a subject to which I gave any thought.
The nurse returned. “He will see you but,” she warned, “only for a few minutes. I don’t want you to tire him out.”
“Thank you,” I said. As she started down the hall, I touched her elbow to detain her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with him?”
“Everything,” she said. “Come with me.”
The house smelled musty and faintly sweet, a mixture of cigar smoke and lemon-scented furniture polish. I followed the nurse though an arched entryway into the living room. The furniture was too big for the room, as if purchased for a different house of grander proportions. A vacuum cleaner had been parked between two sofas upholstered in red plush. A pot of yellow chrysanthemums blazed on a coffee-table near a tidy stack of legal periodicals. On a side table in a corner of the room a cigar burned slowly into an ashtray. Enthroned in an arm chair, the same deep red as the two sofas, was a small, white-haired, wasted man wrapped in a sweater and a blanket. Professor John Henry Howard, latest edition.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked in a voice thickened with the sediment of old age.
“Yes, Professor. My name is Henry Rios. I took trusts and estates from you.”
“What class year?”
“Seventy-one.”
“I’d already been teaching for thirty-five years by then,” he said. “I don’t remember you. What was your final grade?”
“An A,” I said.
He lifted his shaggy eyebrows and for a second I thought he was going to demand to see my transcript. “Well, you must have learned something.” He raised a frail hand to a round table covered with bottles and glasses. “Have a drink.”
“I’m fine, sir. Thank you.”
He frowned. “I insist, Mr.—”
“Rios, sir. Henry.”
“Henry, have a drink, if not for yourself, then for me. I’m not allowed to touch the stuff anymore. You’d think my doctors would relax that proscription since I’m dying, but evidently they intend for me to m
eet my Maker sober. There’s a very fine, very old single malt Scotch. Balvenie. Try it.”
I poked around the bottles until I found the Belvenie. I poured some into a glass and returned to him.
“Pull up a chair,” he said.
I grabbed a heavy chair in gold brocade and rested it in front of him, then sat down, tipped the glass in his direction and sipped. Scotch was not my usual drink, but this hit my tongue like fiery silk and left a faint aftertaste of caramelized apples reminding me, briefly, of tarte tatin.
“How is it?” he asked.
“Like it was distilled in heaven.”
He sputtered a laugh. “That confirms what I’ve suspected all along. God is a Scotch drinker. Angie said you had a legal question. You an estate lawyer?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Criminal defense.”
His eyebrows went up. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “My question is about a hypo in your case book discussing the principle of simultaneous death.”
He went very still. “Go on, Henry.”
“A wealthy woman and her oldest son are killed in an auto accident. She’d devised her entire estate to that son. The court uses the rule of simultaneous death to invalidate the will and her estate passes, through intestacy, to her husband and her surviving son, who is institutionalized. What was your source for this hypo?”
“That’s not exactly the hypothetical I posed,” he said. “You’ve added facts I omitted so you already know my source, don’t you?”
“This scenario describes the deaths of Christina and Jeremy Paris.”
He fixed me with a narrow, inquiring gaze. “Who sent you?”
“No one sent me, sir. Christina’s grandson, Hugh, was my friend. He believed his grandfather, Judge Paris, arranged for the car accident that killed her and Jeremy. Before Hugh could expose the judge, he was killed. I believe the judge was behind that, too.”
I paused, waiting for a response, but Professor Howard had arranged his features into an unrevealing mask.
