Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series)

by Robert B. Lowe

  The hotel clerks, the waitresses, the bellboys, the maids and the manager didn’t care where they went or what they did. They were just happy for the continued employment. If their guests claimed to be working on a farm, that was all right. It made a certain amount of sense. Casa Grande is in the heart of the Arizona cotton growing region. No one cared that the men came back without dirt on their shoes, sunburned necks or salt stains on their golf shirts that come from working, even a short time, under the relentless sun.

  Had anyone followed the Chryslers, the Buicks and the Fords heading toward the east, they would have seen them pull onto the asphalt apron, all in a row, next to a large hangar at an abandoned airport 40 minutes away from the Whalers Hotel.

  It was an old gray building with a corrugated roof and a heavy metal door in front painted black. New vents were spaced every 30 feet around the building, each carrying the hum of a powerful air conditioner. Inside was a science laboratory that would have been the envy of the nation’s most prestigious universities…had they only known that it existed.

  • • •

  THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S Office was located two blocks away from City Hall in an aging granite office building filled with narrow corridors, worn linoleum and doors with frosted glass. It reminded Lee of the grade schools he had attended as a boy - constructed after the war with hardly a dollar devoted to renovation since then.

  Barry McDonell, the Assistant District Attorney for felony prosecutions, was in his mid-40s. He was a small, wiry guy with sandy hair cut short, a whippet of a prosecutor.

  Lee entered his office wearing his chinos, docksiders and a blue nylon parka over a striped dress shirt. He sat on a blue and purple couch with chrome legs and arms, a 70s throwback. Flanked by a big, dusty rubber plant on his right, McDonell spelled his name for Lee and then leaned back behind his heavy mahogany desk and waxed eloquently about Adams, his climb within the office toward bigger, more difficult prosecutions, and his prosecution style - quietly understated but hiding an incisive mind that could slice apart a weak argument.

  McDonnell described Adams’ intense disappointment during the rare times that he lost a case. He always felt it was a personal failure. He would dwell on it, almost to the point of depression and analyze and re-analyze every step to determine where he had gone wrong. He was a perfectionist. It made him a good prosecutor and Adams would be missed by the office.

  “A couple of hours before he died, Orson stopped by to talk about a hung jury,” said McDonnell. “He was berating himself for not eliminating the juror who hung the case. She just couldn’t bring herself to convict. She developed some attachment to the defendant, Orson said.”

  “What was the case?”

  “Uhh. Let’s see.” McDonnell put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling while he thought. “Was it Washington? It was something like that. Or, maybe Warrington. I think that’s it. Warrington. Just a burglary case in Municipal Court. It was a bullshit case that should have been bargained down, but the guy’s attorney thought he could get him off. Orson was great about taking it.

  “See. That’s the kind of guy he was.” McDonnell continued and pointed his finger at Lee for emphasis. “It should have gone to someone more junior, but everyone else was up to here.” McDonnell held his hand at the level of his forehead.

  “Did he have any other cases coming up?” Lee felt foolish as soon as he had asked the question.

  “Are you kidding? He was responsible for 70 or 80 cases. He probably had trial dates penciled in for the next three months.”

  “Any really big cases? You know, important cases?”

  “I guess they’re all important to the defendants,” said McDonnell. “Let’s see. He had a good drug case. A few rapes and armed robberies. I don’t think he had any capital cases. Orson wasn’t to that stage yet, taking the cases where the prestige of the office is on the line. He was a couple of years away but he was getting there.”

  “Any threats?” As soon as he asked the question, Lee wished he hadn’t. Stick to the profile, he told himself. Limit your losses.

  “Hey,” said McDonnell. “I thought you were working on a profile.”

  “I am. I’m just curious. And, as long as I’m here…”

  “If there had been any threats, I wouldn’t tell you while the investigation is ongoing. But Orson hadn’t mentioned anything. Sure, defendants screamed at him on occasion. But that comes with the territory. Some people take going to jail too personally.”

  Lee closed his notebook, thanked McDonnell and headed out the door. In the corridor, a final question occurred to him. McDonnell watched his back through the door while the reporter teetered in indecision. Finally, Lee turned back to face the prosecutor.

  “Who was the judge in the Warrington case?” Lee asked. “Was it Miriam Gilbert?”

  “Yep. I think it was. Pretty strange, her dying in her chambers like that, huh?”

  • • •

  WHEN HE AWAKENED an hour after dawn the next morning, Lee’s head was feeling the effects of too much single-malt scotch and beer consumed at the Bull’s Eye, a neighborhood watering hole where he had gone to practice his dart throwing, flirt with a barmaid named Donna and wash away the increasingly bitter taste that his confrontations with Pilmann were leaving.

  He pulled on sweats and tennis shoes and walked down to the corner where he dropped two quarters into the newspaper box and pulled out a copy of the Chronicle. As he climbed the stairs to his flat, he read a front page Chronicle’s story that was almost the same as what he had written after Santos’ press conference.

  MYSTERY DISEASE REMAINS UNSOLVED

  By Lawrence W. Frankman

  The strange disease that took the life of Municipal Court Judge Miriam Gilbert earlier this week remained a mystery yesterday but health officials said they believe the disease poses no immediate health threat.

  San Francisco Chief Coroner Michael Santos said laboratory tests failed to identify the foreign substance, virus or bacteria that resulted in Gilbert’s death. Researchers also found no evidence that whatever caused the judge’s death is infectious.

  In addition, local hospitals reported no other deaths or illnesses similar to Gilbert’s, another indication that whatever caused the judge’s death does not presently pose a health threat.

  Santos said medical researchers locally and at other research centers throughout the nation continued to attempt to isolate the cause of Gilbert’s death and to discover how she contracted her fatal illness…

  • • •

  THE TWO LAWYERS in Courtroom Three were arguing about the portly gentleman in the witness box with a toolbox sitting on his lap. The dapper attorney with black blown-dried hair and a gray double-breasted suit complained that the witness was not qualified to testify as an expert witness on home construction techniques. Lee settled in the back pew. Ah, the courts, he thought with an inner smile. Where all the details of people’s lives – from the mundane to the sordid – get spilled out on the table for public inspection.

  Still fighting a hangover, Lee had purposely arrived just before noon. He had once written a story about a judge who guarded his private time so zealously that he made a sequestered jury wait overnight before delivering its verdict so he could keep a date with his mistress at a delicatessen: (“It was a pastrami on rye, hold the justice, please…”)

  Lee knew the stomachs of most judges were well trained by the custom of the lunch recess so that only the most urgent business kept court running into the lunch hour. He could tell that the end of Mr. Double Breasted’s argument would soon be cut short in favor of a meatball sandwich.

  “Thank you Mister Sawyer,” growled Judge William Canady, a veteran of the bench who looked particularly bored at the moment. “Recess until two o’clock.” Canady tapped the gavel quickly to cut off any protest and headed for the door so fast that no one had an opportunity to stand.

  While the attorneys gathered their papers, Lee walked quickly through the gate
separating the spectators’ section from the business end of the courtroom. He strode up to the young woman who sat at the enclosed desk below and in front of the judge’s seat.

  “Melissa Jensen?” he said.

  “Yes.” She had a round face and long blond hair parted down the middle that was held in the back by a mother-of-pearl clasp. Her glasses were old-fashioned horn rims that might have been throw-back fashionable on someone else. She wore a pale yellow blouse with frills in front and at the end of the sleeves, and a plain blue skirt loose enough to accommodate her rather generous hips and thighs.

  “I’m Enzo Lee of the News. I want to talk to you about Judge Gilbert.”

  The expression on Melissa Jensen’s face changed from quizzical to pained. She swallowed and looked down at the papers in front of her.

  “God,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m so tired of talking about it. I just want to forget about it. It was too horrible.”

  Lee explained that he wanted to tell readers what Judge Gilbert was really like. He had heard so many wonderful stories about her. Then he assured Melissa Jensen that he understood how difficult and horrible the entire episode had been. He could scarcely imagine the horror himself.

  Mostly, what Lee did as he was trying to talk Melissa Jensen into an interview about her deceased former boss was stick to her like glue while she finished gathering her papers and when she stood up and walked past the bailiff into the private corridor behind the courtroom used exclusively by the judges and their staffs. The bailiff raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Lee guessed that law clerks are a couple of notches above bailiffs in the courthouse hierarchy.

  He had learned through a couple of telephone calls that Melissa Jensen had recently graduated from Golden Gate Law School. He also knew that she had arranged to keep working as a clerk to Judge Canady whose original clerk had contracted hepatitis and was out indefinitely. It was only when Lee saw the nameplate outside the office that she turned into that he realized that Melissa Jensen was still working out of Judge Gilbert’s chambers.

  Melissa was describing Judge Gilbert’s dedication and amazing work habits, how she labored well into the night, long after Melissa had left for the day. Lee was asking questions and taking notes for the profile almost by rote.

  “What was she working on that night?” Lee finally asked. “You know. The night that she died.”

  “I don’t really know. Just going through her usual backlog, I suppose. We always had briefs pouring in. She was one of the few judges who actually read the things all the way through. Footnotes and everything.”

  “Hmmm. What was her last day like?” asked Lee. “Do you remember what happened in court that day?”

  “Oh sure. It was a strange case,” she said. “A trial that lasted four or five days. It was a mistrial because some crazy woman would not vote to convict. It seemed an easy decision to me.”

  “Someone mentioned that case to me,” said Lee, feigning forgetfulness as he tapped his forehead with his pen as if trying to knock loose a memory. “Was it Whittington or Wellington, something like that?”

  “Warrington. Right.”

  “What was it?” said Lee. “Burglary?”

  “Right. The police caught him coming out of one of the University of California medical buildings.”

  “Where?” asked Lee. “Parnassus Heights?”

  “Right. Somewhere near the hospital,” Melissa Jensen replied. “He was coming down the fire escape. He admitted breaking a window and everything.”

  “Sounds guilty to me. What was his defense?”

  The law clerk tilted her head and adjusted herself in her chair. Lee felt a legal discourse in the works.

  “Well, for burglary you need breaking and entering,” she said. “That wasn’t an issue. But you also need intent to steal something. That wasn’t so clear. See, Warrington didn’t have anything with him from the lab. He said he went in there to get information about illegal experiments on animals.”

  “I see,” said Lee, digesting the information. “But, wouldn’t that be stealing information?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? It might be something that was, or should be, public information. If you believe him, it gets murky as to whether his intent was to steal. You might think illegal experiments are a greater evil than stealing the information.”

  “Wow. That sounds like a creative defense. But, it also sounds like something a lawyer would dream up.” Lee glanced at his watch. “Say, I know you’re probably going to lunch. May I look at the judge’s office? It’s just so I can describe where she worked.”

  Melissa stood up and opened the door that connected the outer office with the inner chamber. He stepped inside. He noticed the blue volumes lining the back wall with the wide desk sitting just in front. The desk was stripped clean. Just bare, gleaming wood. No papers lay on it.

  Lee circled the desk slowly. When he reached the opposite side, he noticed the gray plastic wastebasket underneath the desk. He pulled it toward him. The only thing in it was a empty package made of some sort of clear plastic material. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and had been ripped open.

  Chapter 8

  MELISSA JANSEN HAD let Lee peruse the court file for the Warrington case. He found the old police report of Warrington’s arrest which listed an address on McArthur Boulevard in Oakland. He should have used the time to make some more telephone calls to wrap up the reporting for the profiles of Miriam Gilbert and Orson Adams. But, he headed to Oakland anyway. He was curious about this Warrington character and his animal rights defense. Was it mere coincidence that the judge and prosecutor had shared the same courtroom before their deaths? What the hell, he thought. He was already on Pilmann’s shit list. If he ended up needing an extra day for the profiles, it couldn’t get much worse.

  It was early afternoon by the time Lee got to Oakland. As he pulled in front of a yellow stucco house with a covered porch that spanned the entire front, Lee saw a tall, skinny black woman in silver high heels, red hot pants and a skimpy white vest waving at him from the intersection just ahead.

  An early bird, he thought. By nightfall she would be fighting for curb space.

  Lee went to the door. He was greeted by a heavyset guy wearing a blue ambulance company uniform with “Nick” stitched onto a patch. He had a stringy black goatee and was puffing on a Marlboro. Lee looked past him and saw plastic garbage bags sitting on the kitchen floor. The carpet in the living room was dark green, threadbare and splotched with what Lee guessed were the stains from beer, wine, coffee and the pitbull pacing behind Nick with an anxious whine.

  “Ain’t here,” said Nick. “Don’t know where he is. Don’t think he works. He’s a weird fuck.” He tossed down the Marlboro and crushed it with his foot on the door sill.

  “Try People’s Park,” added talkative Nick. “He ‘angs out with the homeless bums.” He exhaled twin plumes of smoke as he shut the door.

  People’s Park, adjacent to the UC Berkeley campus, still held some mystique for Lee as an early battleground that helped define the 1960s counterculture. Perhaps that was why it always depressed him to see the place now, a square block that looked like a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds interrupted only by clumps of small, deformed trees. Strewn around the park were clusters of people, surrounded by shopping carts, plastic garbage bags and bedrolls. Green wine bottles were making their rounds.

  People’s Park had taken on a new, surreal quality since Lee had last been there. After 30 years of failure, the university had finally managed to put its stamp on the park in the early 90s by constructing two volleyball courts. In the late afternoon shadows, trim college sophomores wearing gym shorts and clean T-shirts spiked, blocked and dinked while the burned out, chewed up and spit out sprawled on the sidelines.

  Lee found Lloyd Warrington sitting on blankets with two other guys and a girl. He was skinny, built like a gawky kid although he looked like he was in his 30s. He had shoulder-length blond hair tied back in a ponytail and
wore black-framed glasses on his narrow face. The smell of marijuana was in the air but Warrington, sitting cross-legged and straight-backed, looked at Lee with eyes that were clear and appraising.

  “You Lloyd Warrington?” asked Lee.

  “Who are you?”

  The beefy guy in dirty jeans and Mexican serape sitting to Warrington’s left laughed.

  “That your name, man? Lloyd.”

  “Shut up,” said Warrington. “What do you want?”

  “I work for the News. I wanted to talk to you about your case, about the trial.”

  Warrington examined Lee for few moments. He tapped his fingertips on the brown blanket underneath him.

  “You must think I’m pretty stupid,” said Warrington. “Talk to my lawyer.”

  “Listen, I’m not trying to get your confession,” said Lee. “I want to talk to you about the experiments. The illegal experiments. About why you were at the labs in the first place.”

  Warrington was silent. He started rocking back and forth to the sound of a couple guys playing congas at the other end of the park.

  “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” asked Lee.

  After a few seconds, Warrington stood up and walked slowly with Lee until they were out of the earshot of his companions.

  “So, tell me about the experiments,”

  Lee said.

  “Are you religious?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I believe in a god.”

  “If you know anything about religion. I don’t mean Sunday School bullshit. I mean religions. Not just Judeo-Christian ideas. Then you know that Western culture and religion is the most egocentric and ethnocentric in the world. You should know that. It is ends-oriented totally. It excludes every other way of thinking. It is basically intolerant, of other religions, of other people, of other beings and creatures, even though we all come out of the same slop.

  “That’s where it starts,” Warrington continued. He was getting cranked up now and shook a fist in Lee’s face. “Sacrifice everything for the greater glory of mankind. The environment. The land. The forests. Screw the animal kingdom. If they’re below us on the evolutionary ladder, screw ‘em. Where does it end?”