Judgement Calls

by Alafair Burke

  political exposure on this Zimmerman thing is huge. You at least need

  to tell him before you try to keep Derringer from getting into it in

  your trial."

  He was right. "I'll talk to Duncan when I get out of trial today." He

  started to walk away, but I couldn't leave it at that. "You know, Tim,

  you could be a little more careful about how you handle things, too. I

  don't think it would help the boss's political image if the newspapers

  heard that the head of his major crimes unit short-shrifts

  thirteen-year-old sex-crime victims and tells jokes about incest."

  O'Donnell rolled his eyes at me. "You want to make it around here,

  you're going to have to tame those emotions. This isn't personal,

  Sam."

  The truth was that I didn't know why I'd snapped at him. He was being

  helpful, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him I appreciated it. "We

  done here?" I asked.

  "Yeah. Come get me when you're out of trial. I want to be there when

  you talk to Duncan."

  I couldn't see any reason for him to baby-sit me when I talked to

  Duncan, other than to show his authority, but it wasn't worth fighting

  about. He was the supervisor of major crimes, had prosecuted the

  Zimmerman case, and was heading the investigation into the anonymous

  letter. With all those legitimate reasons for him to be part of the

  conversation with Duncan, I wouldn't be able to convince him or anyone

  else that he was only stroking his ego.

  I couldn't concentrate after O'Donnell left my office. So instead of

  staring at the Derringer file with my last remaining minutes of the

  break, I ran out to the burrito cart in front of the courthouse. The

  combination of fat and spice was just what I needed before going back

  to court.

  Unfortunately, the bliss was short-lived. Lopez called her next

  witness, a guy named Travis Culver.

  I stood up to speak. "Sidebar, your honor?" Lesh nodded, and Lisa and

  I approached the bench. It was my sidebar, so my turn to speak first.

  "Your honor, it was my understanding that Ms. Lopez would be

  prohibited from calling witnesses other than those included on the

  defense or prosecution witness lists. Mr. Culver was not listed as a

  potential state witness, and the defense did not include him on its

  witness list, either. I don't even know who he is."

  Lesh sounded concerned. "I thought I'd made myself clear, Ms.

  Lopez."

  "You were quite clear, your honor," Lopez said. "I assure you that the

  defense is complying with your order. Mr. Culver is the custodian of

  records for the Collision Clinic, and the person holding that position

  was in fact included in the state's list of potential witnesses."

  "Right," he said. "That's the auto detail shop. The parties

  stipulated to the admissibility of the invoice, which is" Lesh fished

  around for his list of exhibits "State's Exhibit Five. So if we've got

  the stip, why is Mr. Culver here?"

  "Because," Lisa said, "he has relevant testimony that goes beyond the

  stipulation of the parties."

  There was nothing I could do. Anticipating the need to lay the

  foundation for the Collision Clinic, I had indicated on my witness list

  that I planned to call the business's custodian of records. As a

  result, Lopez was allowed to call that person without notifying me in

  advance. If his testimony was irrelevant, I could object after the

  questions were asked, but there was no way to find out in advance what

  he intended to say.

  We retook our seats, and the bailiff called Travis Culver to the stand.

  Culver's coiffure was the classic white-trash mullet. If you're not

  familiar with the name, you're familiar with the look: a short regular

  cut in the front, but with length in the back reminiscent of the great

  eighties hair bands. Also known as the shlong, since it is both short

  and long. Truly versatile. Culver finished off the look with jeans

  that had a brown undertone from wear and dirt, and a nascar T-shirt

  commemorating a race-car driver killed a few years back.

  Lopez started by showing Culver the Collision Clinic invoice. Culver

  confirmed that he owned the business, had filled out the invoice, and

  had given it to one of his employees, who then cleaned, painted, and

  reupholstered Derringer's car. The work was done the day after Kendra

  was attacked, and Derringer paid Culver eight hundred dollars cash.

  "Mr. Culver, we've heard testimony suggesting that the work on Mr.

  Derringer's car only enhanced the market value of the vehicle by a

  couple of hundred dollars. Do you agree with that?" Lopez asked.

  "Yeah," Culver said, "that's about right. On a car like that, guy

  might get a quarter, maybe half, of his money back on resale, so what's

  that? About two to four hundred dollars, I guess."

  "Is it unusual for a customer to spend that kind of money in your shop?

  Money that won't be reflected in the market value of the car?"

  "Nope," he said. "Auto body and detail work hardly ever pays off. Some

  guy bumps you in traffic and dents the back of your car. Might cost

  twelve hundred dollars to fix, even though the dent doesn't lower the

  market value by that much. Fact is, I stay in business because people

  want their cars to look nice. This car here was in good shape

  mechanically, but it looked like " He avoided the expletive. "Well, it

  looked bad. Now it looks a lot better. Real clean inside and out.

  Lots of people willing to pay eight hundred dollars for that."

  "Another thing I notice about this invoice," Lisa said, "is that the

  work was completed on a Sunday. Do you normally work on cars on

  Sundays?"

  "No, we're usually closed," Culver said. Now, that was interesting.

  "Why was the work done on my client's car on that Sunday?" Lopez

  asked.

  "Well," he said, "he had come in earlier that week to talk about

  getting the work done. We were actually supposed to do it the Friday

  before, but I had to call and cancel on him. A couple of my guys were

  out, so we were behind on the cars in the shop that week. So I told

  him we'd do it on Sunday. I do that sometimes to keep us from getting

  backed up."

  "So, if I understand you correctly, Mr. Derringer arranged to have his

  car overhauled several days before you actually completed it. In other

  words, he didn't call you that Sunday morning to get the work done in a

  rush. Is that right?"

  "Right," he said.

  "And, in fact, he had originally planned to have the work done two days

  earlier, on that Friday, correct?"

  "Correct," he said.

  There went my theory that Derringer had gotten the work done to cover

  up physical evidence.

  Lesh must have felt sorry for me, because he saved me from having to

  cross-examine Culver empty-handed at the end of an already humiliating

  day. Even though we were only halfway through the afternoon session,

  he called it quits. Apologizing to counsel, the jurors, and the

  witness, he explained he had an afternoon obligation and that we'd have

  to resume the questioning of Mr. Culver the following morning.
<
br />   The problem, of course, was that nothing was going to change overnight.

  As hard as I'd tried over the years, I still hadn't found a way to

  alter reality. Someday I was going to figure it out. Unfortunately, I

  wasn't able to do so before returning to my office.

  O'Donnell had left a note on my chair. Don't forget. Get me before

  you talk to Duncan. TOD.

  When the two of us arrived at Duncan's office, I could tell that

  O'Donnell must have called ahead, because Duncan didn't seem surprised

  to see us. I wondered if the two of them had already agreed on how

  this would end.

  Duncan Griffith is one of those men who manages to look young even

  though his hair is full-on white. He somehow maintains a year-round

  tan in Portland, Oregon, and I'd wager a bet that the teeth in what

  seemed like a permanent smile are capped. He was as pleasant on this

  day as he always appeared to be.

  "Ah, my two favorite deputies. Come on in, you two. Make yourselves

  comfortable." Griffith gestured to a setting of inviting leather

  furniture.

  The law offices depicted on television are for the most part

  outlandishly unrealistic. Instead of the mahogany shelves and fully

  stocked bars enjoyed by fictional prosecutors, I, for example, work off

  a yellow metal desk with a cork board hutch, and when I'm lucky I can

  scrounge a Diet Coke off one of the secretaries who has a mini-fridge.

  Duncan Griffith's office was an exception, however. The walls were

  lined top to bottom with volumes of the state and federal case

  reporters, and dark leather sofas welcomed whatever guests were

  fortunate enough to gain entrance into the inner fortress.

  I'd only been invited here twice before, once for my job interview and

  once during my second week with the office. I had quickly learned that

  calling a sandbagging defense attorney a scum sandwich on shit toast

  wasn't within the range of what Duncan Griffith defined as acceptable

  deputy DA behavior.

  He was being much nicer to me now than during that last visit. After

  Tim and I were seated, Griffith leaned back against his desk and

  crossed his arms in front of him. "So, Sammie," he said, "the

  Oregonian tells me that the Zimmerman matter has come up in this rape

  case of yours. Where's that stand right now?"

  I gave him a quick overview and told him I thought that Judge Lesh was

  receptive to a motion to exclude any evidence relating to Zimmerman's

  murder.

  Before Tim could open his mouth, Duncan said, "You're a good lawyer and

  an aggressive prosecutor, Sam, and I appreciate you going after this

  guy a hundred and ten percent. But we all need to keep our eye on the

  ball here. The greater good. As an office, we need to get to the

  bottom of this Zimmerman thing and make sure we've got the right

  people. We're talking about the death penalty here. A man's life is

  at stake."

  "I realize that, sir, and I understand that our office is involved in

  the investigation into the anonymous Oregonian letter. But that case

  doesn't have anything to do with mine. The defense is trying to take

  advantage of the publicity surrounding the Zimmerman case to confuse

  the jury."

  Duncan still hadn't stopped smiling. "I understand that, Sam, but

  remember what I said. It's about the greater good. If you file that

  motion, the front page of the newspaper's going to say that you're

  trying to squelch a man's attempt to get to the truth. And I won't

  have you dragging us into a cover-up."

  O'Donnell had clearly primed the pump. Griffith was regurgitating the

  spiel that O'Donnell had given me earlier in my office.

  "What exactly are you telling me to do, sir?" I asked.

  "Don't make this adversarial, Sam. All I'm telling you to do is allow

  this defense attorney to have her say. You might need to do some

  rebuttal, let the jury see that the two cases are unrelated. Tim, you

  can get her up to speed on the Taylor file, right?"

  Tim nodded. "We've already gone over it, sir."

  "Good," Griffith said. When I didn't stand up at his sign that we were

  dismissed, he continued. "No one's telling you to play dead here, Sam.

  You know my rule of thumb in trials is to always stay above the fray.

  If the defense attacks the police, let 'em do it. Never helps your

  case if you look like you've got a personal stake in the outcome. Trust

  me, your jury's going to have more faith in you this way. And, in the

  long run, this office benefits."

  "The greater good," I said.

  "Exactly."

  I felt neither great nor good after I called Lopez and Lesh to tell

  them I wouldn't be filing a motion to exclude Derringer's defense. I

  felt depressed.

  Lesh's response had been simple. "Hey, it's your case. Thanks for

  letting me know."

  Lopez, on the other hand, couldn't just accept the gift for what it

  was. She was convinced I was somehow tricking her. As a result, what

  should have been a thirty-second courtesy call turned into a

  fifteen-minute inquisition about my intentions. Hell, if I was lucky,

  maybe she'd at least lose a little sleep that night wondering what I

  had in store for her in the morning. Truth was, I was seriously

  considering cutting whatever plea I could get if things didn't turn

  around.

  I called MCT to see if they'd had any luck tracking down Kendra's

  purse, but no one answered. I tried Chuck's pager and entered my cell

  phone number in case he didn't call right away.

  I was burnt out and dying to leave, but I checked my voice mail before

  heading out. Among the usual junk was a message from Dan Manning.

  "Samantha, it's Dan Manning from the Oregonian. I was calling to see

  if you had any response to today's events at trial and the alleged

  connection between your case and Jamie Zimmerman. Also, I'd like to

  talk to you about whatever role you might have in the Zimmerman

  investigation. Give me a call."

  I wrote down the numbers that he rattled off and hit the button to save

  the message as a reminder, but I couldn't summon the energy to call him

  back. Besides, what was I going to say? I'm getting my ass handed to

  me in trial and am going to have to cut a deal, but I think he's guilty

  anyway? Not exactly spectacular spin.

  The Jetta and I were crossing the Willamette River over the Morrison

  Bridge when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number as Kendra's

  and answered.

  "You rang?" It was Chuck.

  "You're at Kendra's?" I asked.

  "Just pulled up. I guess you called Ray, trying to track down where

  Kendra's purse came from?" he said.

  "Yeah. Did he tell you why?"

  "Not really," he said.

  I struggled to think of the quickest way to describe what had been a

  draining day in court. It's not easy to explain how the momentum of a

  case can shift with just a few hours in trial. I had to jerk the

  steering wheel back into line as I realized I'd been zoning out on the

  lights reflecting off the river. I waited until I was over the bridge

  and had merged onto the 1-5 to launch into it
.

  "The case fell apart today," I said. "Lopez brought in a guy from the

  Collision Clinic. Turns out Derringer arranged to have the car work

  done before the attack and the shop couldn't get it done until that

  Sunday, so our theory about doing it to get rid of the physical

  evidence is gone."

  Chuck tried to assuage my concerns. "I don't think that part of the

  evidence was that important, Sam. It made a nice icing to the cake,

  but you should be alright without it."

  "You're right that it wasn't the heart of the case. The problem is

  that putting a theory out there and having it torn apart by the defense

  is a lot worse than if we'd never floated it in the first place. It

  gives the defense the momentum. And losing that piece of

  circumstantial evidence makes the fingerprint even more important," I

  said.

  "I still don't know what the problem is there," he said.

  I filled him in on Derringer's temp job doing inventory at Dress You

  Up. "Without the print, all we've got is Kendra's ID and Renshaw's

  testimony about the pethismograph." I had a tough time holding back

  tears as I heard myself admit how bad things had turned in just one

  day. "That's why I really need to know where Andrea got that purse.

  How's it looking so far?"

  "It's a long shot. I finally got hold of Andrea at work. She's not

  supposed to get calls at the restaurant, so she was distracted and I

  was having trouble explaining to her why it was important. Add the

  fact that she freaked at the mention of Dress You Up, going off about