“If you say so.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I suppose.”
“That’s all.”
“Redirect,” says the judge.
Tannery is on his feet before I can get out of the way. I seem to have provoked some ire. If he has a weakness, it is a fuse that is a little short for the courtroom.
“Lieutenant, can you tell the jury when you found the cable ties in the pocket of the sport coat belonging to the defendant? The precise date?” he says.
“It was April fifteenth.” This is on the tip of de Angelo’s tongue.
“That was two days after the victim’s body was found on the beach. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And the tensioning tool that you found in the defendant’s garage. Was it in plain view?”
“No.”
“I mean, was it hanging on a hook over the workbench with the other tools?”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Did it appear to you that this tool was being concealed, hidden from view?”
“Objection.”
“Overruled,” says Coats.
“It did. It looked like somebody had pushed the tool to the back of the shelf under the workbench, and placed this piece of carpet over the top of it so you couldn’t see it.”
This begs the question why someone who has used a tool and cable ties to commit a cold, calculated murder would keep such evidence in his garage and in the pocket of his favorite sport coat in the closet. But these are questions better posed to the jury in our closing than to de Angelo on the stand, who no doubt would lecture me on the stupid things that perpetrators do, even perps who are highly educated.
chapter
seven
william Epperson is the mystery man in our case. Tonight Harry and I are pondering our notes on this particular enigma. Everything we know about the man is spread out on a dimly lit table in the lounge of the Brigantine. This has become our after-hours conference room, a short walk from the office, down the jungle path.
It is after ten, and the dinner crowd has long since departed. Harry is nursing a scotch and soda. I am doing soda straight up, avoiding a buzz in the morning when I have to be in court. The era of the hard-drinking trial lawyer is in decline. An older generation, with blown kidneys and liver failure, have imparted their message. The final nail was pounded into that particular coffin by the state bar that now appoints guardians to take over the practice of anybody who comes to court glassy-eyed, with an odor of alcohol on his breath. So I walk the straight and narrow for my own sake as well as for Sarah’s. You think about things when you’re a single parent.
“So when do you think they’ll put him up?” says Harry. He’s talking about Epperson on the stand.
“Not yet. It’s too early.”
We know almost nothing about him, so we have some ground to make up.
“According to the bits and pieces,” says Harry, “he’s the closest thing Kalista Jordan had to a friend in the lab. Stood by her during her travails with Crone, at least according to the others. And, besides the killer, he was one of the last people to see her alive.”
This gets my attention. I look at him.
“The argument that night in the faculty dining room, Jordan and Crone,” he says.
“Did Epperson weigh in?”
“Not exactly, though according to one version he put himself between the two of them for a moment and tried to get her to leave. One thing’s for sure,” says Harry. “He’s the closest thing to a witness as to what was said.”
“And he won’t talk to us?”
Harry shakes his head. Usual criminal process does not permit us to depose him, to take a statement under penalty of perjury outside of the courtroom.
“What do we know about him?”
“Not a lot. He doesn’t seem to cultivate people at work. Except for Jordan, that is.”
“Was that platonic?” I ask him.
Harry gives me a “Who knows?” “They coulda been hitting the sheets. But if so, neither of ’em kissed and talked. I couldn’t get any of the other people at the lab to even speculate. When I asked, it was like I was spreading bad rumors.
“Nobody seems to know him that well. An enigma,” says Harry. “According to the lab techs, he was a big question mark at work. Didn’t say much. Kept to himself.” Harry’s reading from notes now.
“Did Crone hire him?”
“That’s not exactly clear,” says Harry. “Some in the lab think that it may have been Jordan herself who brought him in.”
What is troubling here is that there are no statements to the cops as to what Epperson may have told them. At least nothing they’ve disclosed. Which means they debriefed him verbally and kept it to themselves. There is no doubt a reason for this.
Harry has tried twice to talk to Epperson and twice has gotten the door slammed in his face.
Harry looks through his notes, takes a sip of scotch. “Twenty-eight years old. He appears to have yanked real hard on his bootstraps to get out of Detroit. Went to inner-city schools, never got in any trouble. Seems to have been able to jump well,” says Harry.
I look at him, puzzled.
“Full scholarship to Stanford to play basketball,” says Harry. “According to the press reports, the kid was a high-school prodigy. Lew Alcindor on his way to becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”
“Really?”
“At seven foot six, it’s either that or get a job changing bulbs on streetlamps. Unfortunately for him, the basketball thing didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
Harry reading from his notes. “They call it cardiac arrhythmia. Real common, I guess, in the very tall. According to the stories, they’re doing some studies on it, particularly African-Americans over six feet. Enlarged hearts,” he says. “Epperson has a bum ticker. He couldn’t fulfill the terms of the scholarship, so they cut him loose. But that wasn’t the end of it. Seems the kid’s pretty resilient and very bright. He didn’t get the athletic thing, but they ended up awarding him an academic scholarship, and it wasn’t for P.E. or communications,” says Harry.
“What?”
“Math and science. Crushes every myth,” says Harry. “Kid goes to an inner-city school where he’s gotta dodge gunfights in the halls and find an outhouse cuz the urinals are all cracked, and he still gets straight A’s. He does it again at Stanford. Straight A’s for four years in the engineering department. Graduates near the top of his class, and nearly gets trampled in the recruiting stampede that follows. Every company on the Fortune Five Hundred and a dozen universities all bidding for his services. One thing’s real clear.” Harry takes a sip of scotch. “The kid’s not going back to Detroit.”
He flips a few pages, finds his place. “After that, Epperson spends a year working for this corporation. Place called . . . Cyber—genom, genam, genomics.” He looks at me.
I shrug.
“According to what I could find out, they’re not on the Internet. At least Cybergenomics Incorporated, is not. Gotta be some high-tech thing with a name like that. Anyway, a year later Epperson ends up going to work for Crone at the lab. That’s it as far as his resume goes.”
“Is there any indication that he might have known Jordan before he went to work there?”
“Get to that in a minute,” says Harry. “What’s interesting is that I asked Crone that very question. He told me he didn’t think so. What’s more, neither Epperson nor Jordan has a background in medicine, life sciences or genetics, and yet they’re working at this genetics lab. She’s into this thing called molecular electronics. His specialty is nanorobotics.”
“What’s that?”
“Field of engineering,” says Harry. “Involves small robots. We’re talking microscopic here. Riverdancers doing their fling on the head of a pin.”
“What are these robots used for?”
“Got me. I’m told one application could be medicine.”
“Well, there
you go. There’s the link,” I say.
“Right.”
“And what does Crone say?”
“What he always says. Fell back on the old ‘My lips are sealed’ crap. Like the highest calling of the scientist is to keep his mouth shut. They ought to put this asshole in charge of Los Alamos. He gets my vote. With a client like Crone, who needs a prosecutor? He’ll screw himself to the wall before he’s finished, and us, too. He’s already doing a good job of it.” Harry on a roll.
“What are the other people at the lab saying?”
“The same sorry mantra. Almost makes you think somebody got to them,” he says.
“Does, doesn’t it?”
“The only thing they would say was in reference to some old sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage. Ever see it?”
I shake my head. “Must have missed that one.”
“They shoot this miniature submarine up some guy’s nose or something. Inject it through a needle. Inside are people all shrunk down,” says Harry.
“I knew I missed it for a reason.”
“Anyway the plotline . . .” Harry ignores me. “They’re going on a voyage through this guy’s body to cure some disease or other. If I could remember what he was dying of, I could replace Siskel and Ebert.”
“Siskel’s dead,” I tell him.
“Yeah, well, this tiny sub. It seems we’re there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this nanorobotics shit.”
“Shrinking people?”
“No. I don’t think so. Just the submarine,” says Harry.
“Really?”
“I don’t know. Hell. They would talk and look over their shoulders. A couple of the lab techs. Probably laughing their asses off after I left. I had to pick my time carefully, when the guy Tash wasn’t around.”
“Were they afraid of him? These lab techs?”
“I don’t know if afraid is the word. But he has a certain chilling affect on conversation,” says Harry. “It’s like all these people took a vow of silence. And when Tash is around, you can’t even get ’em to do sign language.”
“People I talked to were lab assistants. I got one of ’em to go on coffee break with me. Guy said he was speaking only in general terms. And if anybody asked, he wasn’t speaking at all. All he would say about this nanorobotics was a reference to this movie.”
“Tiny submarines?”
“That’s the one. On a crash dive through some sorry guy’s bowels. I don’t wanna even know where they come out. I’m feeling like I’ve already been on that trip with Crone. When I pressed each of the lab techs, they all ended up singing the same old chorus. Trade secrets, in four-part harmony,” says Harry.
“Well, at least he’s telling us something that’s true.” I’m talking about Crone.
“Only if you want to take the time to pick through the lies,” says Harry.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember I told you that I asked Crone whether Jordan and Epperson knew each other before Epperson came to the lab? He told me he didn’t think so?”
I nod.
“I wouldn’t take it to the bank,” says Harry.
“This company, Cybergenomics. The one Epperson worked for before he joined the lab. I come to find out they’re one of the companies underwriting Crone’s work at the lab.”
“Really?”
“Corporate grant,” says Harry. “A big one. And there’s more. This same company made a job offer to Jordan about a month before she was killed.”
My eyebrows arch.
“Word around the lab was that it was a point of friction between her and Crone. The offer was for big bucks. I don’t know the details. We’re looking for documents. I’ve got a subpoena out to the company to get what I can. According to one of the lab techs, Jordan was letting it be known that they’d offered her multiple six figures to jump from the lab and come on board with the company.”
“Maybe they made overtures to Crone as well?”
“That was the problem. They didn’t.”
Pieces are starting to snap into place.
“If we know about this, you can be sure Tannery knows as well.”
“You think he’s plying this road, job jealousy?” asks Harry.
“You heard what he told us when we visited him at his office. They were checking out some other angle as to motive.”
“You think that’s it? The job offer to Jordan?”
“That, and perhaps she was taking some items of value with her.”
“Like what?”
“Like the papers Crone says she stole, and the grant money that Cybergenomics was pouring into Crone’s center.”
“Holy shit,” says Harry. “You think so?”
“Think about it. She takes working papers from his office. He goes ballistic. She does everything to get him off her back. She doesn’t need him anymore. She knows what he knows about the project. If she goes to work for Cybergenomics, why would they pay twice for the same research? His funds are going to dry up overnight.”
“There’s a motive for murder,” says Harry.
I nod.
“You think Tannery knows what’s in those papers?”
“I know one thing. We don’t.”
“Maybe it’s just what Crone’s been saying all along,” says Harry. “Maybe they did have professional differences.”
“Where does Epperson fit into all this?”
“I was getting to that,” says Harry. “It’s only surmise, and it only comes from one of the assistants, the guy I talked to over coffee. But according to him, Epperson may have joined Crone’s group as part of a package along with the Cybergenomics grant. Nobody seems to know for sure, but he came on board about the same time.”
“A consultant?”
“Not that I can tell. He seems to have been a salaried employee of the university from the time he went to work there. More like a corporate mole, if the guy I talked to is right.”
“Do we know Epperson’s salary, at the U?”
Harry looks up from his papers, quickly getting to the same place I am. “If he took a big cut in pay to go to the university, you think there might be a reason?”
“Possibly. Maybe stock options. If Crone’s team is developing something hot, and this company, Cybergenomics, has a vested interest, they might send Epperson over to mind the store. To make sure that the research takes the right direction.”
“And make sure nobody else horns in,” says Harry.
“If he was their man in Crone’s shop, stock options would ease a cut in pay, and ensure his loyalty.”
Harry mulls this over. “Interesting you should say that.”
“Why?”
“Epperson has this passion. The only thing anybody seems to know about him. He has an addiction.”
“What’s that?”
“Stays up nights researching. Comes to work bleary-eyed and takes frequent breaks to get to his laptop. Seems he lives to trade on-line.”
———
Saturday morning and its bright and sunny. I can think of a thousand places I would rather be. Instead, Harry and I are planted next to a musty set of code books in our library at the office. We are here to meet with Robert Tucci who has flown in from San Jose up in Silicon Valley for a conference.
For months Tucci has been just a voice on the phone. Today, for the first time, I have the benefit of seeing a face as we speak, judging what kind of a witness he might make if I have to use him at trial.
He is bald. A ragged fringe of black hair droops over his ears. Tucci has the look of some seventeenth-century notable, short and fat with chubby little fingers. There is a shadow of dark beard submerged just beneath the surface of his face that gives it the kind of bluish pallor you would expect to see on some ancient oil portrait hanging in a European gallery. This is appropriate, for some consider Tucci to be the Galileo of modern electronics.
He is seated in a chair across the library table from me with shelves of legal v
olumes behind him finishing off the backdrop so that I can imagine this painting come to life as he speaks.
I have hired him to lead us through the no-man’s-land of science, the maze of molecular electronics, genetics and nanorobotics that Crone and Tash will not discuss.
Harry asks him if he’s ever written about the specific fields we are dealing with.
“Not for publication,” says Tucci. “I’ve prepared some memoranda for internal use by R and D units inside corporations. But that’s another matter,” he says.
Tucci is one of the leading lights in the field of high tech, a writer and theorist who is reputed to have had a major hand in the development of the silicon chip. He’s been published in every major professional journal in the country and holds dual doctorates in physics and biology. Best of all, he has written a number of articles in the general press for the unwashed masses, in major national magazines and newspapers. He is possessed of that special gift for explaining things scientific to people like Harry and me, who are still grappling with the magic of fire.
“This memorandum you’ve written, research and development for the corporations,” says Harry. “Would any of it be helpful for our purposes here?”
“It might. But I couldn’t give it to you. It’s proprietary information.” What he means is another corporate stone wall, trade secrets. This seems to be an article of faith within the field, making me wonder if these guys sleep with computer disks between their knees at night protecting this stuff.
“Been there,” says Harry.
Harry has spent two weeks scoping out the Internet and ravaging university libraries for anything, scholarly articles or news pieces, that might offer a clue as to what Crone and his compatriots are working on. He has found nothing.
Tucci tells us that we’re not likely to. “The science is cutting edge. You won’t hear about it in the popular press until there’s a major breakthrough. By then, the company that controls the process will be throwing patent parties. They’ll have it locked up.”
“What exactly is the process?” I ask.
“A major scientific merger,” he says. “A kind of synergy.”
“Of what?” says Harry.
The Jury Page 9
