Close Case

by Alafair Burke

  Heidi followed her supervisor, dubious about how special this project would turn out to be. Three years ago, she had thrown everything she owned into her hand-me-down BMW 2002 to leave the East Coast and work for this paper. To date, the only break she caught from endless photocopying, line editing, and fact-checking was the occasional fluffy sidebar about yet another useless community activity.

  Tom closed the office door behind him and drew the shades.

  “I know it’s been a hard morning for everyone. I’m still reeling from the news myself, but I need you on this. I just got a call from our legal counsel.” Tom was fiddling with the blue lid of his Bic pen. “The police are here to search Percy’s office.”

  Heidi couldn’t believe that Percy would be wrapped up in anything nefarious. “What did he do?”

  “Nothing,” Tom snapped. He was clearly upset. “Geez, I had no idea you were so jaded.”

  Heidi looked at him blankly. “So why are the police here?”

  “I just told you.”

  “I know, but why would the police search Percy’s office if he didn’t do anything?”

  “Oh, boy. You haven’t heard?”

  Heidi shook her head.

  “You’re a reporter, all right,” he muttered. “Percy was killed last night. Channel Twelve just broke the story.”

  “I was in the dungeon all morning,” she said. Before she had a chance to let Tom’s words sink in, he was telling her to go down to Percy’s office. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I just got a call to make sure no one goes into Percy’s office. Someone from building maintenance is there now, but I guess they want someone from the news department to be there too, just in case something happens. I’d do it myself, but it sounds like it might be a while before legal sorts things out with the cops.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Stand outside Percy’s office and page me if something happens. If you can’t find me, get Dan Manning.”

  His implication was clear: If someone’s time had to be squandered, it should be Heidi’s. This was precisely the kind of meaningless task that had filled her weeks and months at work, not exactly what she expected when she agreed to move to Oregon. At the time, Heidi thought she’d hit a journalist manqué’s jackpot. After graduating from Yale, she had taken a job at a small-town paper in Vermont. From there, she’d gone to a not-quite-as-small small-town paper in Rhode Island.

  The chain of events that brought her to Portland began with a visit from her parents, checking up on her quiet northeastern reporter life. The weekend started out well enough: brunch at the B and B, a peek at Slater Mill, and then Heidi would put them back on a plane as planned. But during a final afternoon stroll in Waterplace Park, up the street rode a buddy of sorts, Brent Last-name-unknown, straddling his Harley, his mop of curly hair wrapped in a bandana.

  “Hi-diddly-ho, Heidi Ho,” he called out, apparently oblivious to the likely relationship between Heidi and the older couple accompanying her. “I left my belt at your place. I’ll swing by later?”

  Heidi’s parents stared at their daughter as she watched Brent ride away with a friendly horn blast to say farewell. “If it makes a difference, it’s nothing serious,” she said.

  Not long after, her father called with an offer. His Skull and Bones buddy had just become the Editor—with a capital E—at the newspaper in Portland, Oregon. The two had met for rib eyes at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse when Dad was in the Pacific Northwest for a merger. A job was waiting for her if she wanted it.

  Despite her father’s obvious ulterior motive, that conversation had meant the world to her. Daddy was a corner-office partner at a big New York City law firm where former senators went to serve “Of Counsel.” Corben Hatmaker, although not a former lawmaker himself, was nevertheless not the kind of lawyer who had to bill hours. He was one of the privileged few whose name on the letterhead justified his enormous annual draw. And Mom—well, Mom was a woman who’d married her dad. In short, they hadn’t understood her drive to be a journalist.

  So when her father told her he’d used his contacts to secure her not a publicity job with Vanity Fair or an events-planning position at Vogue but a real line-entry job at a plain old regular city newspaper, she knew she would have been nuts to say no.

  Three years later, facing yet another one of Tom Runyon’s mundane chores, she wondered why she hadn’t stayed put.

  On the way to Percy’s office, Heidi saw Lon Hubbard from the facilities department talking to two policemen. The beefy darker one was also the more animated. He was holding a piece of paper in front of Lon’s face, pointing at specific words for emphasis. The younger, fitter, and, in Heidi’s opinion, hotter one appeared to be maintaining his cool. He was simultaneously attempting to calm his friend and convince Lon to read a document. Heidi assumed it was the warrant.

  The cute one’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and handed it to the angry one, who answered it and stalked off down the hall. With the confrontation temporarily on hold, Heidi let Lon know that she’d been sent down from the newsroom.

  Heidi doubted a cop would disclose details about Percy’s death, but it was worth a shot. She put on her friendliest smile. “Do you know anything yet about what happened?”

  “It’s too soon to tell.”

  “It can’t be too soon if you’ve got a warrant, right?”

  The cop took a second look at Heidi, like maybe she reminded him of someone. “Yeah, but it’s a warrant for the victim’s office. Standard operating procedure, so to speak.”

  “But it must be based on something. You had to have told the judge what happened to Percy, at the very least.” Heidi was a firm believer that any reporter who coveted a crime beat needed at least a basic knowledge of how the court system worked.

  The detective smiled. To her surprise, he handed her the papers he was holding. “Here. Knock yourself out.”

  She eyed the document. Cops didn’t hand over summaries of pending investigations. The papers would simply establish the fact that Percy Crenshaw was a homicide victim. Still, she’d take what she could get.

  The description of the evidence lacked detail, but just a few words were enough to give Heidi a sense of Percy’s terrible last moments. A carport. A blunt instrument. Repeated massive blows.

  “You OK?” the detective asked.

  “Sure. I hardly knew the guy.” She returned the pages to the detective as if she’d seen it all before.

  The dark-haired detective emerged from the hallway, seemingly more calm. “Your girl says to hold tight while she calls this friggin’ lawyer we keep hearing about.”

  Two minutes later, the dark-haired cop’s patience was apparently exhausted, and he told his partner he needed to get some air. Heidi took the opportunity to excuse herself as well and head to the restroom. There, she found a stall and cried quietly for a coworker she’d hardly known.

  4

  From the look on her face, I could tell that Judge Abigail Wilson was not a happy camper. Seeing David Bever’s tall thin frame standing before the bench with a stack of papers in hand, I had a pretty good guess as to the source of her discontent.

  Judge Wilson was currently assigned to handle the ex parte docket. For judicial types, this gig was about as close as you get to winning an extra vacation day. The body might need to be there in its black robe, but the brain could check out.

  Why? Because the only sure way for a judge to avoid the usual bickering between litigators is to leave one of them out of the room, and ex parte is a fancy way of saying that one party is talking to the judge outside of the other party’s presence. For simple things like uncontested extensions of deadlines and trial set-overs, head over to the ex parte docket, assure the judge your opponent has no complaints, get your order signed, and you’re out of there. Easy work for the lawyer, even easier for the judge.

  But David Bever’s unusual request was anything but simple, and any hopes Judge Wilson may have carried for a day of mental coasting were q
uashed.

  “Ah, Ms. Kincaid. You’re here.” Wilson’s long gray hair was pulled back loosely at the nape of her neck. Although she sat at her bench, she hadn’t bothered throwing the judicial robe over her cream-colored silk blouse. “David, why don’t you provide Ms. Kincaid with a copy of your papers so she can get up to speed.”

  They were precisely what I expected after my conversation with Calabrese. The Oregonian was asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the Portland Police Department or the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office from entering their building. The end goal was to permanently quash the search warrant authorizing a search of Percy Crenshaw’s office.

  Wilson had the authority to issue the order ex parte but, like most judges, had chosen to hear at least a preview of what both parties had to offer. From the tone of Wilson’s voice, I was not off to a good start. Consciously or not, judges sometimes hold a grudge against the lawyer responsible for bringing them work. I thought of that lawyer as Bever; he, after all, was the one asking for the TRO. Unfortunately, Wilson seemed to hold me responsible for this intrusion, since the police had sought the vexing warrant in the first place.

  Once my quick and casual flip through the papers made it clear that I didn’t place much stock in them, Judge Wilson asked for my position.

  “What it would be in any other criminal case involving a lawfully obtained search warrant. The police are authorized to execute the warrant. If the search yields incriminatory evidence against a suspect, that suspect can challenge the search in his trial. I don’t understand why Mr. Bever feels entitled to commence such a highly unusual proceeding in response to what is truly a run-of-the-mill search.”

  “There’s nothing run-of-the-mill about it,” Bever said, removing his wire-rimmed glasses to maximize the appearance of scholarly pontification. “The police are entering a building owned and operated by a newspaper for the express purpose of searching through a reporter’s office. They want to search—and seize, don’t forget—quote: ‘Any documents, notes, files, papers, or photographs, including but not limited to those in computerized, digitized, or electronic formats, that pertain to the murder of Percy Crenshaw.’ Apparently it is left to the officers’ discretion to determine what does or doesn’t pertain to their investigation.”

  I had to hand it to Bever; he’d earned his reputation as a fierce protector of the Constitution. Coming from him, our standard warrant language sounded downright Big Brothery.

  “With all due respect to Mr. Bever’s thespian talents, his dramatic reading failed to emphasize the fact that the reporter in question, Percy Crenshaw, is a homicide victim. Searching the victim’s home and office is a vital part of the beginning of an investigation, and the clock is ticking.”

  “But here’s my problem, counselor.” Shoot. I was right. The judge had a problem. “This particular victim was a reporter, and that means you’re searching the offices of a newspaper. I find that very troubling.”

  Fortunately, I had more to argue. “Your honor, Zurcherv. Stanford Daily is directly on point.” I recited the facts and controlling law as if I’d read the case minutes earlier: The police executed a warrant to seize photographs that a campus newspaper had taken of political demonstrators who assaulted a police officer. The paper balked at the search, but the Supreme Court didn’t. Evidence is evidence, even if it’s in the hands of a newspaper.

  I couldn’t help but feel satisfied. I have never been able to memorize anything—strike that. I have involuntarily cemented thousands of failed Hollywood liaisons and sappy love-song lyrics into my brain matter, but much to my frustration I cannot memorize the names of cases. Meanwhile, scores of lawyers routinely dupe judges into thinking they’re smart by rattling off the case names, regardless of what they say or whether they’re relevant. Today, though, I caught a break. I knew this particular case because it had occurred on the very campus where I had first read it in law school.

  Bever knew it also. “Stanford is distinguishable. In that case, the paper’s cameraman had actually been present at the scene of the crime, taking photographs while the crime was committed. Here, the police don’t even know whether the victim’s death had anything to do with his position at the newspaper, so how can they possibly know whether his office contains evidence?”

  I knew in my gut the police should be allowed to get in there. How could they know if there was a link between the murder and the paper until they checked it out? I gave it another shot. “I find it hard to believe that Mr. Bever’s client would want to impede the investigation into the murder of one of its employees. More importantly, I find it even harder to believe that Mr. Crenshaw would agree with this maneuver if he were around to hear about it.”

  “She does have a point, David.” Then why did I feel so lousy? Because apparently my opponent was on first-name terms with Judge Abigail Wilson, while I was the pronoun prosecutor, She. “We’re off the record. Why in the world would you want to stop the police, given the circumstances?”

  Bever’s gaze alternated between me and the judge. “I’m not trying to be an obstructionist. I have absolutely no problem with the police looking at anything that might lead to whoever did this, but the warrant is so broad that it amounts to a fishing expedition. I’d be a heck of a lot more comfortable with this if the police had something—anything—tying this terrible crime to Percy’s reporting. My concern is that they’ll scour all his notes and files, many of which will undoubtedly reveal confidential sources and pending stories, and then find nothing relevant to their investigation. Maybe once the TRO is in place, Ms. Kincaid and I can hammer out a compromise.”

  The only reason Bever wanted a TRO while we sought a compromise was to put me over a barrel in negotiations. And if all he was after was some middle ground, why hadn’t he just picked up the phone? Before I realized what I was doing, I spoke the latter objection aloud.

  I knew it was a mistake the second the words left my mouth. Courthouse gossip gets around fast, even with the judges, and Wilson wasn’t going to let the moment pass.

  “As I recall, Ms. Kincaid, you were accused of pulling a similar stunt not so long ago.” On my first case in the Major Crimes Unit, the one Percy Crenshaw had turned into a movie option, I had sprung a surprise confrontation on the City Attorney himself. He had refused to let me examine a missing judge’s files, and without any notice I had hauled him over to the courthouse to defend himself. I had won the battle, but Dennis Coakley hadn’t kept the incident to himself. In the longer war of professional reputations, I had suffered a hit.

  Bever had an additional reason for heading straight to the courthouse. “To be frank, your honor, I’m not precisely certain what you’re referring to. But, since you’ve asked, Ms. Kincaid, I’ll tell you why I didn’t call you directly. In light of my firm’s past dealings with you, I had the perception that you might not be receptive to working something out between the lawyers.”

  Various people had warned me over the years that my antics would eventually catch up to me, and today seemed to be the big day. Bever was referring to the same case, different conflict: My shitbag of an ex-husband, Roger, worked at Dunn Simon and had represented the missing judge’s husband. Let’s just say we butted heads a few times, and now the three hundred or so lawyers at prestigious Dunn Simon think I’m a snake.

  I could see where this road was heading, and I wanted off.

  “I’d be happy to try to work something out with David,” I said, trying to join the first-name club, “but it shouldn’t be with a groundless restraining order in place. Your honor, Judge Schwartz issued the search warrant this morning after a thorough review of the affidavits supporting the warrant request. Perhaps she would appreciate the chance to rule on the motion?”

  Wilson had been a rainmaker at one of the big firms before coming to the bench, which meant she didn’t know a lick about real-life police work.

  “Trust me, I’d love to dump this on her, but she just started a monthlong trial so I’m stuck w
ith you. I see what the state is saying about the routine nature of searching a homicide victim’s property, but I don’t like the idea of the police having unfettered access to a journalist’s office. Crenshaw could very well have been working on something critical of the city or even of the police, and there would be nothing to preserve the confidentiality of that work once the search warrant was executed.” She paused, and I could tell that she truly was torn about what to do. “You don’t have anything suggesting a link to his work?”

  She was looking for a way out. I suppose I could have told her that the police viewed a link to a recent story as the most likely scenario. But it wouldn’t have been true. And she and Bever would know it wasn’t true once they got wind of the interview I had just seen on the news moments ago. Six months from now, this moment too could come back to bite me.

  Better to repair the damage. “No, we don’t. In fact, it may have been an attempted car theft that got out of control. One of the neighbors heard someone say something to the victim about his car last night, and another witness saw some kids in the parking lot. It’s too early to tell, though, and it’s vital that we explore all the possibilities.” After forty-eight hours, the odds of solving an unsolved homicide start slipping fast.

  “And they say lawyers are never honest,” she said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I am persuaded that there is a risk of irreparable damage to the Oregonian if I permit this warrant to be executed as written, so I am going to enter the TRO. But I don’t want to halt a valid step in an ongoing murder investigation. So, Mr. Bever, have your client choose an employee to work with Ms. Kincaid to search the victim’s office. Ms. Kincaid, you can choose one police officer to assist you, and I’m entering an order that requires confidentiality from all those involved for any information that isn’t relevant to your investigation. Any problems?”

  On my way back to the office, Frist stopped me in the hallway. “Alice said some Dunn Simon fuck was trying to get a TRO on something?”