The Tenth Case

by Joseph Teller

  "Fuck you."

  "Do it," said Burke.

  Bonfiglio scowled but did as he'd been told. He pro ceeded to mimic stabbing Jaywalker from the front, first with his right hand on the knife raised above him, then his left, and then both hands. He repeated the process underhanded. He walked around behind Jaywalker, grabbed him unneces sarily roughly around the neck and brought the knife to his chest that way. He tried a couple of other variations, as well.

  "How many does that make?" Jaywalker asked.

  "Ten, twelve," said Burke.

  "What do they all have in common?"

  Burke shrugged. Bonfiglio scowled, looking as though he wished he could play the game for real.

  "Every single time you went to kill me," said Jaywalker, "you did it with the knife held so the blade was up and down. If Samara had stabbed Barry, that's how she would have done it, too. Anybody would have. That's how you knife someone. But if she'd done it that way, the blade would have gone in perpendicular to Barry's ribs and no doubt would have struck one of them, or even two. Only it didn't. How do we know that?"

  "Hirsch," said Burke.

  "Right. Hirsch was crystal-clear on that point. The blade went in flat.That's why it never hit a rib. Hard to do, unless…"

  "Unless what?" It was actually Bonfiglio who asked the question.

  "Unless," said Jaywalker, "you were feeling your ribs with the fingers of one hand to locate the soft spot, so you could get the blade in laterally, right between them."

  There was an eerie silence in the room. Burke walked over to the chalk outline of the body on the floor, and looked down at it. "Interesting," he admitted. "But it doesn't begin to explain how he managed to get the knife to Samara's afterwards, hide it behind the toilet, come back here, collapse on the floor and die. Does it?"

  "No," said Jaywalker, "but that's actually the easy part. Remember that word access. Barry had hidden those things days earlier. Weeks, maybe. He drew some of his own blood, or stuck a finger. Remember, the total amount on the knife, the blouse and the towel wasn't much at all. And the blood was dried. Those things could have been planted anytime. And he hid them where the blood would stay dry and intact. Sitting in the toilet tank, the logical place for Samara to hide them if she really wanted to be stupid enough to save them as souvenirs, the blood would have dissolved in the water. After a flush or two, it would have been history."

  Burke was still far from being convinced. "So you con cede the knife was Samara's?"

  "Absolutely," said Jaywalker.

  "Yet you claim it wasn't the murder weapon. Or, as you'd like us to believe, the suicide weapon."

  "Right."

  At that point Jaywalker reached into one pocket of Barry's coat and, with considerable difficulty, withdrew the six knives he'd taken before leaving Samara's. The coat might have fit horribly, but it came in handy for his rabbitout-of-the-hat moment. Or, to be more precise, his steakknives-out-of-the-pocket moment.

  "Voila!" he announced.

  Burke paid close attention, while Bonfiglio pretended his best not to. But even he was watching.

  "These are Samara's steak knives," said Jaywalker. "They come in sets of six or eight. Never an odd number, right? One of them ended up behind Samara's toilet tank. That makes seven, which leaves one. And that's the one that Barry used to kill himself with."

  "And then ate?" Bonfiglio wanted to know.

  "No," said Jaywalker, playing the straight man. "If he'd swallowed it, Hirsch would have found it."

  "So where is it?" asked Burke and Bonfiglio in perfect tandem.

  "I don't know," said Jaywalker.

  "Great," said Bonfiglio. "You got everything figgered out but the kicker."

  Burke's wrinkled forehead indicated he pretty much agreed. "You get over that hump," he said, "and maybe we've got something to talk about. But without it, I'm afraid…"

  "I know," said Jaywalker. "And for the life of me, I can't figure out how Barry got rid of it. I know this much. With the alcohol and Seconal in him, he could've handled the pain, could even have pulled the knife out. You know, the way that Crocodile Hunter guy pulled the stingray thing out of his heart before dying. I figure Barry had a minute left at that point, certainly a half a minute, before he would have passed out and collapsed. So it's got to be here somewhere."

  "We gave this place a thorough toss," said Bonfiglio. "The crime scene guys did, too. If there was a knife here, we woulda found it."

  "Like you found the Seconal Barry planted in Samara's kitchen cabinet?"

  "What Seconal?" Burke asked.

  "Somebody phoned in a phony prescription a week or so before Barry's death. It was supposed to be for Samara, but she never knew anything about it. She found it among her spices and called me to come see it. Think about that for a minute. If it was hers, and if she'd used it to drug Barry before stabbing him, why would she bring it to my attention? Why wouldn't she just throw it away? What's more, the doctor who prescribed it doesn't exist. I was going to ask her about it at trial, but like a jerk, I decided against it. I was afraid that the name of the phantom doctor sounded too much like Samara Moss, her maiden name.

  "Now get this," Jaywalker continued. "When Samara fled Indiana, she left the rape and the stabbing behind her. In the fourteen years since, she's never told a soul about it, or that her true name was Samantha Musgrove. Not even I knew about it. Nobody did. With one exception."

  "Barry," said the chorus.

  "Right. Now see if you can guess what the name of the phantom doctor was on the Seconal bottle."

  When there were no takers, Jaywalker produced the bottle from the other pocket of Barry's coat and handed it to Burke.

  "Samuel Musgrove, M.D.," read Burke.

  "Bingo," said Jaywalker.

  "Okay," said Burke, "so Barry could have done that, planted the Seconal. I'll give you that much. But let's get back to the eighth knife. Want to tell us where it is?"

  "My guess is it's got to be right here, in the kitchen." He proceeded to divide the room into three, assigning them each a section to search. Jaywalker took the third that included the refrigerator and freezer, and the microwave. He gave Burke most of the cabinets. Bonfiglio ended up with the sink, the trash can, and the dishwasher, grumbling that they'd already been done, "with negative results."

  They searched in silence for fifteen minutes.

  Jaywalker came up dry.

  So did Burke.

  But sometimes one out of three can be good enough. When it happened, it happened quietly, with no fanfare. When Bonfiglio went to open the dishwasher, he found it was in the locked position, as though ready to run a load of dishes. But when he lifted the handle and opened it, it became clear that that wasn't the case.

  Bonfiglio looked carefully. What he saw was a fairly full load of dishes, all of them clean. And there, down on the lower rack, inside the utensil holder among the spoons, forks and table knives, was the eighth steak knife. Barry Tannenbaum had done just as Jaywalker had figured. For tified on alcohol and Seconal, he'd found the soft spot between his ribs, plunged the knife into his chest and pulled it out. Then he'd placed it in the loaded, soaped and readyto-run dishwasher. All he had to do at that point was to close it and push the start button. Then he collapsed on the floor and bled to death.

  "Nice work, detective," said Jaywalker, taking care to keep his voice free of sarcasm or irony. In the end, he knew, he'd be needing Bonfiglio on his side.

  "Thanks," said the detective, the first suggestion of a hero's smile beginning to spread across his face.

  "Absofuckinglutely unbelievable," said Burke.

  "Don't say I didn't warn you," said Jaywalker.

  The best part, of course, had been leaving it to Bonfi glio to find the knife. Having tried cases for two decades now, Jaywalker had come to learn a valuable lesson. Some times the very smartest thing you could do was to let the jurors solve the final piece of the puzzle themselves. So once Jaywalker had put it all together—with a slight assist from
his wife, returning to him in a dream to nag him about unloading the dishwasher—he'd tucked it away and saved the moment of triumph for the detective.

  31

  YES, NO, MAYBE SO

  It was quite a morning in Part 51.

  The jurors, having arrived earlier only to be told to suspend their deliberations, were led into the courtroom and seated in the jury box. The media filled the first three benches of the spectator section, on both sides of the center aisle. The rest of the rows were packed, leaving a good fifty people standing along the back and side walls.

  Word gets around fast in a courthouse.

  With Samara and Jaywalker sitting at the defense table, Tom Burke rose slowly to his feet. "Pursuant to our earlier conversation, with respect to the case of The People versus Samara Moss Tannenbaum, true name Samantha Musgrove, The People hereby move for a mistrial."

  "You understand the full implications of that," said Judge Sobel. "As I'm sure you know, when the defense ob tains a mistrial, the case can be retried in front of another jury. But when a mistrial is granted on the prosecution's motion, jeopardy attaches, and the case is over forever."

  "Yes," said Burke.

  "And I understand your office will be filing a written statement setting forth the reasons for your motion."

  "That's correct."

  "Mr. Jaywalker?"

  "I don't believe we have any objection." "The motion is granted," said Judge Sobel. Just like that.

  The media went absolutely nuts. Broadcasts were inter rupted, specials were hastily put together, and headlines were reset. Before he could get out of the courthouse, Jay walker was besieged for interviews with Oprah, Katie Couric, Larry King, Court TV and all the late-night hosts. Characteristically, he turned them all down, although he was thinking about Jon Stewart's offer when he caught somebody referring to him as the new "celebrity lawyer." At that point, he broke into a run and disappeared from view.

  Samara was only a little less bashful. She faced the lights and microphones for about twelve seconds, just long enough to say how happy she was, and to thank Burke, Bonfiglio, the judge, the jury and Jaywalker. If there happened to be any future Oscar winners or Miss Americas within earshot, they might have learned a thing or two. Though probably not.

  It turned out that the jurors had indeed stood at elevento-one for conviction. But the holdout had been neither Carmelita Rosado, the kindergarten teacher, nor Angelina Olivetti, the actress and waitress. It had been Juror Number 12, George Stetson, the ramrod-straight retired marine colonel Jaywalker had been unable to knock off because he'd run out of challenges. "They would have had to carry me out in a body bag," Stetson was quoted as saying later, "before I'd have surrendered." Several of his fellow jurors shared a somewhat different recollection, that Stetson had in fact been prepared to change his vote to guilty earlier that morning, which would have made it unanimous, when they'd suddenly been directed to cease their deliberations.

  That Friday afternoon Jaywalker was officially sus pended from the practice of law for three years, effective immediately. A petition started making the rounds, asking the disciplinary committee judges to reconsider their sen tence in light of Jaywalker's latest success, but he quickly put an end to it. Three years was actually sounding pretty damn good to him at that point. Not too long ago, in fact, a client of his, a career burglar facing twelve-and-a-half to twenty-five, had heard about the suspension.

  "Three years?" he'd said incredulously. "They wanna give you a trey? Muthafucka, I wish they'd offa that kinda time to me. Sheeet, I could do me a trey standin' on my dick."

  After the previous night, Jaywalker wouldn't have been able to do much of anything standing on his dick. Still, he figured he could do the three years, one way or another.

  Jaywalker's love affair with Samara lasted longer than he thought it would. They went out for the better part of six months, if you were willing to adopt Samara's trialtestimony definition of going out as having sex on a regular basis. Indeed, with a little luck, their relationship might have turned out to be one of those rarest things of all, a love affair complete with a storybook ending. Samara was getting her inheritance after all, and Jaywalker his longanticipated sabbatical. In a word, they were both free.

  But evidently it wasn't meant to be.

  When it unraveled, it unraveled in a hurry. They were sitting in front of the fireplace one night, the same fireplace they'd first made love in front of. But it was July, and the only fire this time was at the far end of a generous joint Samara had expertly rolled for the two of them. They were talking about the trial. They did that infrequently, but they did it. It had been Jaywalker's last trial, after all, and Samara's first and last. A watershed event for both of them.

  "How did you figure out there had to be another knife in the dishwasher?" she asked him, her eyes watery from the smoke but as arresting as ever.

  "It had to be there somewhere," said Jaywalker. "The dishwasher seemed a logical enough place. The refrigera tor or the freezer would have destroyed any fingerprints, but the blood would have been preserved. So I figured the dishwasher was a good bet." For some reason, he realized, he'd shied away from telling her about the dream he'd had. That would remain his secret, his and his wife's.

  "Pretty clever of us, huh?"

  "Us?"

  "Yeah," said Samara, with a mischievous grin. "You deserve credit for figuring it out."

  "And you?"

  "Is my case really over?"

  "Yup."

  "They can never try me again, no matter what?"

  "No matter what. It'd be double jeopardy."

  "And we're both adults?"

  "I certainly am."

  She smiled, and for a moment Jaywalker thought she was reacting to his clever reply. But her smile was just a bit too smug and stayed on her face just a moment too long for it to be simply that. It was a smile of satisfaction, a smile of triumph over having pulled something off despite over whelming odds. But Jaywalker had absolutely no clue what it really meant.

  So he asked her. "What?" he said.

  "Nothing."

  "C'mon," he said. "You can trust me."

  She smiled again and took a long hit from the joint. "You don't really think it was Barry who put that knife in the dishwasher, do you?"

  Jaywalker said nothing. He probably couldn't have if he'd wanted to. All he was aware of was a rushing noise in his ears, so deafening as to drown out everything else. Her words, his thoughts, everything.

  And that was it, the end of the conversation. What was more, she would never, ever go there again, no matter how hard he pushed her. It was as though smoking the joint had loosened her tongue for a moment, but only for a moment.

  So it was never as though he really knew one way or the other. But that was the problem, right there. It would have been okay if he'd known she was guilty. Hell, he'd repre sented enough guilty people in his day, and had gotten his share of them off and then some. He could have lived with knowing she was guilty.

  It was the not knowing that proved to be intolerable, the notion that she might have been playing him all along. And every time he would confront her and ask her, she would deflect his questions and dodge his accusations. She'd say something meant to sound funny, like, "You always said it didn't matter to you one way or the other," or "You're not my lawyer anymore, so our conversations aren't privi leged, are they?" Only her comments never sounded funny to Jaywalker.