The Jury

by Steve Martini

  “I’m shocked,” I tell him.

  “And sometimes it disappears. The university set gets real sensitive about scandal. Seems the chancellor at one of the other campuses took a dive on insurance fraud a few years back. It’s one thing to fudge on the state budget, another to screw over an insurance company. Seems this chancellor spent a bundle of state money buying silverware to entertain,” says Harry. “Somehow they misplaced it between trips to Europe. So they file an insurance claim on behalf of the university. Problem was, when they found the mahogany case with the silverware a month later, they forgot to tell the insurance company. Cashed the check.”

  “Oops.”

  “To make a long story short, this lady thinks there ought to be more insurance companies involved in education audits. That or the mob,” says Harry. “Either way.”

  “Sounds like she loves the people she works for.”

  “According to her, the university is anxious to keep a low profile, especially when it comes to gifts, donations and the like. They don’t like judges looking over their shoulder, asking accountants to get out their calculators. This makes the givers nervous,” says Harry. “So disputes are almost always handled in-house. You get two professors pissing on each other over who gets what for research, the chancellor’s office steps in like the pope, resolves it and everybody kisses the ring and moves on. You screw with the chancellor, you find yourself in academic hell.”

  “That means finding records of anything rising to the level of an argument is not likely,” I say.

  Harry points a finger at me like a pistol and drops the thumb like a hammer. “Bingo.”

  “According to the woman in the financial office, you have a director. In this case, Crone. Then you have associates, other people involved in aspects of the same project getting funding.”

  “Jordan and Epperson,” I say.

  He nods. “If the money is apportioned and funding gets shifted around like a shell game, somebody finds out theirs was spent on some other part of the study. Well. You see what can happen,” says Harry. “In that case, whoever got screwed might complain to higher-ups.”

  “Do we know whether that happened here? With Jordan and Crone?”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” says Harry. “I asked the lady in the office. She didn’t know. She says it would be in the documentation, but we might have to read between the lines to find it. And that’s not all.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no form,” says Harry. “You’d think these people would come up with some kind of a form you could look for if there was a dispute. But they don’t seem to want to do that,” he says.

  “For obvious reasons,” I say.

  “Right. So what do they do? They just send a letter to the vice chancellor. That’s if we’re lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes it’s just an e-mail message asking for a review of the grant and a ruling on an item.”

  “Let me guess. There are no copies of the e-mail messages in your pile of papers?”

  Harry nods. “Academic confidentiality,” says Harry. “You can’t look at anybody’s e-mail without a specific subpoena.”

  Before I can say a word, he goes on: “I’ve already prepared one for Jordan, Crone and Epperson. Problem is, Jordan’s computer was re-programmed after she was killed. The cops got into it, took what they wanted, all under the careful eyes of university lawyers. Then they turned it back in to the university. God knows where it is now. I looked at their evidence sheet. There was nothing in the e-mails that came remotely close to a complaint on funding.

  “Crone’s machine is still collecting dust in his office,” says Harry. “But it’s not likely he would have complained about anything. And Epperson. I assume he has his. So we’ll take a look.”

  “There must be a server somewhere.”

  “Paul, listen. I’m tired. Worn out.”

  “It is the university’s e-mail system, right?”

  Harry nods.

  “There ought to be something in a server somewhere if Jordan complained about funding. See if we can subpoena the server?”

  “Fine,” says Harry. A long sigh. He makes a note. I can always tell when Harry’s hit the wall. I’m treading on thin ice.

  “Too bad there was no federal money involved,” he says. “In the grant.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Before he can answer, the phone rings. I look at it. It’s the back line. This number is not listed. Both of us thinking the same thing—Epperson calling.

  I pick it up. “Hello. Law office.”

  “Is Harry Hinds there?”

  I don’t recognize the voice on the other end, but it’s not Epperson.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Max Sheen.”

  “Just a second.” I start to hand the phone to Harry.

  “What did you mean, ‘too bad there was no federal money’?”

  “Who is it?” he says.

  I hold the phone back.

  “If there were federal funds, it’s more likely there would have been an audit at some point.”

  “Ah.”

  “Who is it?” he asks.

  “The press calling. Your friend Sheen.” I hand him the phone.

  Harry takes it. “Hello.”

  I continue looking through the stack of papers on my desk, part of the original grant proposal. There are entire lines of typed print blocked out by black marker. Classified material. No doubt information subject to protection as trade secrets. Arriving at conclusions is going to be like putting a jigsaw puzzle together without all the pieces.

  “Why? What’s happening?” asks Harry. There’s a tone of urgency to his voice that causes me to look up.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He shakes his head at me. Doesn’t answer.

  “When?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  Harry cups his hand over the mouthpiece to the receiver.

  “Epperson is dead.”

  ———

  IN THIS ANCIENT INDIAN VILLAGE OF COSOY

  DISCOVERED AND NAMED SAN MIGUEL BY CABRILLO IN 1542

  VISITED AND CHRISTENED SAN DIEGO DE ALCALA

  BY VIZCAINO IN 1602

  HERE THE FIRST CITIZEN

  FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA

  PLANTED CIVILIZATION IN CALIFORNIA

  HERE HE FIRST RAISED THE CROSS—HERE BEGAN

  THE FIRST MISSION

  HERE FOUNDED THE FIRST TOWN, SAN DIEGO, JULY 16, 1769

  The original native inhabitants of the place might quibble over how well those seeds of civilization took, especially if they could see the macabre scene here tonight.

  William Epperson’s body twists in the dark, damp air of early morning, suspended from a rope around his neck that is looped over the horizontal beam of the massive brick cross that forms the monument.

  The bronze plaque with its words to the friar rests embedded in the white plaster covering the base beneath the giant cross that stands thirty feet high, faced with red brick.

  By the time Harry and I arrive, the medical examiner’s office is setting up a ladder, an extension affair lent to them by the fire department that is on the scene with two of its trucks and several big portable lights.

  Even from a distance, I can see Epperson’s body. Harry and I park at the top of the hill on the street near the colonnade. We slipped in this way to avoid the emergency lights all along the road down below. We drove up past Old Town and came in through the park at the top of the hill. It takes us five minutes to hike down, avoiding the roots of eucalyptus trees and the depressions in the ground obscured by the angle of the bright lights aimed up from the cross and shining in our eyes from below.

  Both Harry and I come out of the woods with one arm up to shade our eyes from the light.

  As we get closer, I can see the rope and crude noose, rough hemp, and hear it strain under the weight and over the hush of voices, as
Epperson twists slowy in the still, damp air and the evidence techs work beneath him around the base.

  He is clothed in a white dress shirt and suit pants, one shoe on, the other lying on the ground, as if shot by gravity from his foot when the body stopped at the end of the rope. The line suspending him is tied off around the bottom of the brick cross, just above the rectangular base with its plaque.

  A painter’s ladder, which looks to be ten or twelve feet in length, is tipped over, lying on its side near the path that fronts the monument.

  It is a picture worth a thousand words, all of them screaming one thing—suicide, all of it bathed in bright floodlights with the SID, the Scientific Investigation Division, crime-scene folks, working it and looking for a different message.

  One of them is examining the soil near the foot of the base, casting light at different angles over the ground, looking for impressions, footprints, though I doubt they will find much. The compacted river-bottom sand is as hard as concrete.

  Several cops are working farther up the hill. They have laid out police lines of yellow tape from tree to tree. One of the uniforms stops us as we approach the tape.

  It takes a couple of minutes to explain why we are here, the dead man being a witness in a case we are trying. He takes my business card. This seems to work its way from hand to hand up the hierarchy, until it gets to somebody in a suit farther down the hill. If the man is impressed, he doesn’t show it. Gives us a look, then back to the card. Words exchanged with one of the uniformed officers that I cannot hear.

  We cool our heels.

  Harry nudges me in the ribs with an elbow. When I look over, he nods, off in the direction of the parking lot down below toward the museum that sits on the opposite hill.

  The lot is crowded with police cruisers, emergency vehicles with strobes flashing, blue, red and amber, enough color to spike blood pressure even if it isn’t in a rearview mirror.

  Getting out of one of the cars is Evan Tannery. He stops to talk to the brass clustered in the parking lot, spending most of his time and attention on an older guy, gray hair, in a uniform. He seems to be in charge. Tannery is pumping him for information. They huddle for several seconds, the cop motioning with his arm up toward the hill behind us.

  Until that moment I hadn’t seen it. Parked in the shadows under a eucalyptus on a narrow service road leading up the hill toward the cross is the dark blue van I’d seen Epperson driving earlier that day. The cops have staked it off with yellow tape and one of the fingerprint guys is giving it a going-over with dust on the driver’s-side door handle and window, spreading the graphite liberally with a brush and blowing every few seconds searching for latents.

  They’ve got a problem, and somebody knows it. A key witness in a felony murder is dead, and the cops are telling themselves this is no suicide.

  “You Madriani?”

  I am interrupted by the detective holding my business card. He has come up the hill behind us and is now looking at Harry and me like something the cat dragged in, interlopers.

  “I’m Madriani. This is my partner, Harry Hinds.”

  “I understand you knew this man?” He squares off in front of me, legs spread, and gestures toward the dangling body with his head. The coroner’s guys have finally got their ladder up, and two of the firemen are giving them a hand, lifting the load so that they can sever the rope near the base and lower the body. They will cut this to avoid screwing with the knot, hoping that the fashion in which it is tied will tell them something about whoever tied it.

  “We weren’t well acquainted,” I tell him. “I talked to him once, about a week ago. I was scheduled to cross-examine him in court.”

  “Looks like that show’s off,” he says. “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “We were alerted by a phone call,” says Harry. “He’s right over there. You want to talk to him?” Harry has spotted Max Sheen in the distance, reporters in a flock, Sheen trying to work his way toward us around the police tape. The last thing the cops want, a conversation with counsel close to microphones, on camera, or anywhere near the pad-and-pencil crowd.

  “Why don’t you come this way,” he says. Open sesame. We are through the police line.

  chapter

  fifteen

  it’s Saturday morning, and we are all in the dark regarding Epperson. Coats’s courtroom went dark on Friday. With Epperson dead, Tannery had no one to talk to. The offer of proof is now in suspense while he scrambles trying to figure what to do next.

  With no witness to confirm Tanya Jordan’s testimony, unless he can come up with another witness, her words are now hearsay. In an early-morning appearance in chambers, Tannery asked Judge Coats for time to consider his moves. He had no difficulty getting it. Harry and I didn’t even oppose the motion. The judge is as mystified as the rest of us concerning Epperson’s death, telling the D.A. he wants details as soon as they are available.

  In the middle of a murder trial there is not much that can get your mind off events in the courtroom. But this morning is an exception. Still unhinged by Epperson and events of the last twenty-four hours, I am also confronted by the fact that the driving force that caused me to take this case is suddenly gone. Penny Boyd has died.

  It happened earlier in the week. Doris called to give me the news, and for the first time since hearing it, I now have a moment to dwell on the passing of a child. It brings back memories of the first death I can remember as a kid. I was seven. A little girl crippled from birth and confined to a wheelchair had passed away. She lived up the block. I saw her often out on the sidewalk, wheeling along trying to keep up with the other kids. A perpetual smile on her face, she would call me by my first name. With her angelic blond hair and sunny disposition, she seemed not to comprehend the injustice dealt to her in life, legs that were dead and lungs that each year filled with pneumonia. I didn’t learn until many years later, after talking to my mother, that it was a bout with pneumonia that finally took her. After all these years, I can still picture her face and remember her name, an indelible impression. I remember the day my mother told me she’d died. I said nothing, went to my room and sat there in shock. In my sheltered world of middle-class America, children didn’t die.

  It seems I have not grown a lot over the years. I was caught completely off-guard when Doris called. I would have expected such a message from someone else, a friend or family member. But Doris was amazingly composed, though her voice was strained, a little raw. The news hit me like a bullet in the brow. Penny had died in her sleep.

  This morning I sit behind the wheel with Sarah in the passenger seat, headlights on as we motorcade from the church.

  We are five cars behind the hearse when we finally park on a gentle curve in the cemetery. I had debated in my mind whether to bring Sarah. The last time she had been to a funeral was her mother’s.

  Nikki has been dead nearly four years, and I feared that cemeteries and caskets would dredge up all forms of memories, most of them painful. But my daughter has come of age. Attending Penny’s funeral was not something for me to decide. When I suggested that she might stay home, that the family would understand, Sarah would have none of it.

  This morning she wears an ankle-length black dress, gathered in high under her shaping bosom, and black leather pumps with heels. She is changing from a child into a young woman before my very eyes, a transition occurring with the speed of time-lapse photography.

  Sarah has thick brown hair, generous and abundant, and has Nikki’s long legs, like a gazelle’s. Her thick ponytail now bobs above her shoulders as we walk toward the assembling crowd at the grave site.

  If it must be, at least Penny goes to God on a bucolic morning, one of those blue Pacific days with transparent wisps of white high in the jet stream. There is only a hint of dew on the grass, and the soulful tune of birds, none of them visible, their songs erupting from the massive oaks and sycamores that shade the graves.

  There are more people here than I would have expected for a child
who has been largely homebound for two years. There are children here Penny’s age—wide-eyed kids, I suspect, from her grade school—and cousins, all confronted, most of them for the first time, with the stark reality of death. Someone they knew, a child, one of their own, is gone.

  Folding chairs are set up in two rows under the canopy that covers the casket. Up front in the center is Doris, seated in one of the chairs. Relatives, another woman on one side and her two surviving children on the other, all within touching distance of the coffin, flank her. Frank, it seems, cannot sit. He stands behind her, his large hands on the back of her chair, his head downcast, a giant in pain.

  Penny’s two surviving siblings, Donald, her little brother who is seven, seems in shock, eyes of wonder. Jennifer, his older sister, Sarah’s friend and classmate, is more controlled.

  She looks to see Sarah and actually smiles. She has inherited the social grace of her mother. Even under the circumstances irrepressible. The last place she wants to be. She loved her sister. Still, this cloud has darkened much of her life; it is probably difficult for her to contemplate life without this load.

  Frank’s gaze is fixed on the coffin, his face puffy, signs of grief. He wears a dark suit that doesn’t fit him terribly well, something no doubt purchased off a rack at the last minute. The spread of his shoulders would make anything not tailored a tough fit. It is hard to say who is consoling whom here. Doris seems, at least at first blush, to be more in control, though she holds a white handkerchief in one hand and is wearing oversized dark glasses.

  For Frank, there is no hiding it. I can see by the way he looks that he is devastated. He had always placed more hope in the magic of medicine, though he never understood it well. For him, Penny’s placement in any study was seen as a guarantee, a reprieve. I tried to warn him, but he would have none of it. Hope sprang eternal.