Vicious Circle

by C. J. Box

  “He did?”

  She nodded, and ash blew off the tip of her cigarette onto the shoulder of her black dress. “Whenever I saw him, he told me about the adventures the two of you had together. He said you saved his life when you floated him through the rapids on a river, and he said he was there when you recovered the ashes of your father from your truck.”

  “Both of those things are true,” Joe said. In his recollection of those events, he’d never really thought of doing them with Farkus—like they were some kind of team. In Joe’s memory, Farkus had simply been present. And he’d been peripheral and annoying. That Farkus remembered them the way he did made Joe feel guilty and small.

  “He said you were a good man.”

  Joe didn’t know how to reply.

  “Too bad he was such an asshole at times, though,” she said. “Maybe more people would have showed up at his funeral.”

  With that, she shook her head and walked across the dry grass toward her car.

  —

  JOE ATTRIBUTED the increase in hunters in the mountains to the fact that the poaching ring seemed to have paused their operations. There had been no new reports, tips, or leads.

  Rick Ewig had come through with a list of white Suburbans in Twelve Sleep County, and there were twelve of them scattered over five thousand square miles. Joe had been too busy with his day-to-day duties to check on them all, but he’d cleared three of the vehicles when either their tire tread didn’t match up to the evidence at the scene or the owners of the vehicles could be ruled out.

  In regard to Dallas Cates’s case, Joe had heard from Sheriff Reed that the forensics and DNA results had come back positive, and Dulcie was champing at the bit to go to trial.

  And the day before, while Joe was out of cell phone range checking on an elk camp near Hazelton Road, he’d received a message from new Wyoming governor Colter Allen’s office asking that he return the call. It was the first time Joe had been contacted by the man who’d replaced Governor Spencer Rulon, and he had no idea what the call was in reference to. Like his predecessor, apparently, Allen was inclined to bypass the protocol of talking first to Joe’s supervisors and preferred to go direct.

  When Joe had called back, it was after six p.m. and the governor’s office was closed for the day. He’d left a message that he’d be in court in the morning, but free in the afternoon.

  But that was before Marcus Hand had made the motion that the case should be immediately dismissed.

  —

  THE BENCH CONFERENCE WITH HAND, Dulcie, and Judge Hewitt was long and intense. Joe observed with growing alarm as Dulcie waved her arms as she made a point, and as Marcus Hand stepped back from her as if afraid she might strike him. His arguments to Judge Hewitt seemed calm but serious. More than once, Hand turned his head and looked at Deputy Spivak sitting next to Joe.

  “What is going on?” Joe asked him. “Did you do something you shouldn’t have?”

  Rather than reply, Spivak shook his head quickly, as if he didn’t want to deal with the answer.

  Joe felt something cold start to build in the pit of his stomach.

  When the conference broke up, Dulcie charged back to her table with her heels clicking like castanets and her murderous eyes fixed on Spivak the whole time, and Joe knew trouble was on the way.

  13

  “The defense would like to call Bruce White to the stand, Your Honor,” Hand said after he’d resumed his place behind the defense table.

  Joe noted that Hand performed differently when the trial was before a judge and not a jury. He was calmer, and he stayed in one place so he could glance down at his notes. But in front of a jury, the attorney who’d perfected the “eight percent theory”—of being so persuasive despite the evidence to convince at least one juror of his client’s innocence—he was a mesmerizing presence.

  White snapped to attention and strode through the swinging doors to the witness stand. As he was sworn in, Dulcie turned slowly in her chair and glared at Spivak once again.

  “Lester . . . ?” Joe asked.

  “Not now,” he snapped.

  After White was sworn in and had gone through his credentials and his employment by Marcus Hand, the attorney asked White to recount his actions since he’d arrived in Saddlestring, in particular his first visit to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department six days before.

  White withdrew a Field Notes pad from his breast pocket and opened it. “On November tenth, I entered the sheriff’s office on North Main at ten-thirty a.m. The sheriff was out, but I showed my private investigator’s license to the officer in charge and asked if I could inspect the evidence locker. I offered to let an officer come with me the whole time, but the deputy said that wasn’t allowed.”

  As if anticipating the first line of inquiry Dulcie would pursue when she got a chance to cross-examine White, Hand said, “Why did you zero in so quickly on the sheriff’s department and why did you request to check out the evidence room?”

  “Our office—your office, I mean,” White said with a slight smile, “received an anonymous tip. Someone told our receptionist that our client was being framed. This person said to find what was missing from the evidence room, and all the rest would be self-evident.”

  Hand stroked his chin. “So the anonymous caller appeared to have inside knowledge of the murder investigation?”

  “That was my conclusion.”

  “Was the caller a man or a woman?”

  “The receptionist said it sounded like a young woman . . .”

  “Objection,” Dulcie said. “This is hearsay evidence. Mr. White didn’t speak to the anonymous caller himself.”

  Judge Hewitt waved her off. “Because this is a motion hearing, I’ll allow it.”

  Dulcie sighed and sat back down.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Hand said. Then to White: “So what did you do next after you entered the sheriff’s department?”

  “Since they wouldn’t let me into the evidence room, I asked if it was okay to take a look at the log. The log is where law enforcement personnel and officers of the court sign in and out when they want to look up or retrieve items tagged into evidence for court proceedings. It’s a public record.”

  White was good on the stand, Joe thought. He was serious, articulate, and gave precise answers.

  Hand asked, “Did you find anything of particular interest to this case on the log-in records?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you find?”

  “I found that on midnight of October thirty-first—Halloween night—Undersheriff Lester Spivak signed into the evidence room during the last few minutes of the shift for the officer assigned there that evening.”

  “Did the log state what Undersheriff Spivak was after?”

  “It did not.”

  Joe let out a sigh of relief.

  Hand asked, “Isn’t that unusual in your experience?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dulcie objected while still seated. “Your Honor, Mr. White cannot have any intimate knowledge of the internal procedures of our sheriff’s department. He was just a visitor there.”

  Hand produced images of the log from a file and gave copies to Judge Hewitt, Bruce White, and Dulcie. She studied her copy and audibly sighed.

  “What do you see there, Mr. White?”

  “I see page after page of entries where an authorized person logged into the evidence room to look at or retrieve a certain piece of evidence. The item they are seeking is referenced by the evidence tag number as well as a description of the item.”

  “And on the entry log-in made by Undersheriff Spivak on October thirty-first, what is the item number he is seeking?” Hand asked.

  “There’s no entry in that box. Nor is there a description.”

  Joe squinted. He wasn’t sure where Hand was going, although
Dulcie, the judge, and a nonchalant Dallas Cates certainly did. And so, it seemed, did Spivak.

  “And when did Undersheriff Spivak come out of the evidence room?”

  “That’s not specified,” White said. “It was after the officer in charge went off shift and Deputy Spivak obviously didn’t sign out.”

  “That’s also unusual, isn’t it?”

  “Your Honor,” Dulcie said, but her voice had lost its passion, “again, there is no way—”

  “Looking at the pages in front of you, Mr. White,” Hand cut in, “do you see a single instance where someone signed into the evidence room and failed to sign out?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Objection overruled,” Hewitt snapped at Dulcie.

  Joe studied Hewitt’s face. He looked angry and his eyes were getting more and more hooded. But he wasn’t angry at the defense.

  “When you noticed the discrepancy in the logbook that day, what did you do?”

  “I asked the officer in charge if he would do an inventory of the items in the evidence room to see if he could find out what was missing. He didn’t want to do it, but when I said I’d come to this court for an official request order, he set about doing it.”

  “Was the sheriff aware of your request?”

  “I don’t know. If he was, he didn’t stop it.”

  “Was Undersheriff Spivak aware of your request?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “So,” Hand asked, “how long did it take for the officer in charge to complete the inventory?”

  “I just received it this morning,” White said.

  “So, six days. Six long days,” Hand said, shaking his head in disappointment.

  “Is that a question?” Hewitt hissed.

  “No, Your Honor, just an observation.”

  “There’s no jury to perform for, Mr. Hand. Make your observations someplace other than my courtroom.”

  Hand bowed in apology, then asked White, “How many items did the officer in charge report were missing from the evidence room?”

  “Two, sir.”

  “Only two,” Hand said. “So unlike some evidence rooms you’ve observed in your career, that’s pretty impressive that only two items of evidence were unaccounted for?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what, pray tell, were the two missing items?”

  White again referred to his notes, although Joe suspected he was doing it more for effect than to refresh his recollection.

  “The first item missing was evidence tag number 0707190015-A. The number is a reference to it being entered into evidence at seven p.m. on July 7, 2015. There are other items with the same prefix but they’re designated 0707190015-B, 0707190015-C, and so on.”

  “What was missing item 07190015-A, according to the inventory report?”

  Joe held his breath.

  “Item 07190015-A was a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle chambered in .223.”

  Joe let it out. It was the same rifle found in Dallas Cates’s vehicle the night he was arrested. He felt like he’d been head-butted in the chest.

  “Does it have a serial number?” Hand asked.

  “The report indicates the serial number was filed off. The item was seized from the trunk of a car in a drug case but apparently not used in the trial.”

  “And who was the arresting officer in that particular drug case?”

  White chinned toward the back of the room. “The record says it was Undersheriff Spivak.”

  “Was there anything else you discovered by looking over the logs as it pertains to Undersheriff Spivak and this particular rifle?”

  “Yes, sir. As you’ll see in the copy of the log everyone has in front of them, Undersheriff Spivak checked out the .223 the first week of October as well. The log indicates he had it for three days and returned it to be logged back in.”

  Hand paused, letting what White had said sink in.

  Joe was flummoxed at first about what it meant, and then it came to him. Spivak had borrowed the rifle and no doubt fired it, probably at the police range. It wasn’t all that unusual for officers to test and train with different weapons. If Spivak had fired the .223, he’d also expended shell casings he could have collected and saved to scatter around the murder scene.

  “You said there were two unaccounted-for items. What was the second missing item, Mr. White?”

  Again, an unnecessary look at his notebook. “The second item was a blood sample taken after a subject was arrested for a DUI in August.”

  “A blood sample?” Hand asked theatrically. “Like a vial of blood?”

  Joe knew Dulcie should have objected, because White couldn’t testify as to a container he’d not seen. But she didn’t.

  “I assume so,” White said.

  “And who did the sample belong to, according to the record?”

  “David M. Farkus.”

  Dulcie slumped in her chair and her head nearly hit the table. Joe’s breath came in shallow gulps.

  Hand pressed on.

  “Mr. White, you have brought some interesting artifacts into the courtroom today, haven’t you?”

  “At least I think they’re interesting,” White said reasonably.

  “What are they?” Hand asked White. Then, to Judge Hewitt before Dulcie could render an objection: “These objects have not been entered into evidence yet, Your Honor. They were just found. We will of course enter them if necessary, but I doubt it will be necessary.”

  “Artifacts?” Hewitt said with sarcasm.

  “Show us,” Hand said to White.

  Bruce White leaned back in his chair and dug his hand into his front pocket and pulled out a crumpled white envelope. He waited for Hand to ask him to open it, then he did.

  Three small metallic objects tumbled out of the envelope into White’s left palm.

  “What are those?” Hand asked White theatrically.

  “Bullets.”

  “From what kind of weapon?”

  “My expert opinion is that they come from a .223 rifle.”

  “And where did you find them?”

  “I dug them out of a sandbag at the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department shooting range. They were found in a specific area of the range reserved for the sheriff and undersheriff. Although I haven’t had the time to send them in for analysis, I would speculate that they came from the Smith & Wesson M&P15 in question.”

  “How interesting,” Hand said. “How convenient.”

  Joe turned his head and stared at the side of Lester Spivak’s face, but the deputy wouldn’t look over.

  —

  JOE HEARD HAND’S ARGUMENT for dismissal of all charges against Dallas Cates through a fog. He looked up when Judge Hewitt asked Dulcie if she wanted to cross-examine Bruce White.

  With a sigh of resignation, Dulcie said, “Your Honor, I have no questions for the witness.”

  Hewitt turned to Hand and told him to proceed.

  “Your Honor,” he said to Judge Hewitt, “the prosecution’s entire case—unless they’ve got some trick up their sleeve they haven’t shared with the defense—has just gone poof. Their entire case was built on a three-legged stool that has collapsed.

  “The first leg was to positively place my client in a bar with other unknown associates the night before the murder of Dave Farkus to provide a motive for killing him. Unfortunately, the bartender who would make that identification has vanished and no longer appears on the witness list the prosecution has provided us.

  “The second leg of the stool was the weapon—a .223 Smith and Wesson assault rifle—that left casings at the murder scene and slugs within the body of Mr. Farkus, and which was later miraculously discovered in my client’s vehicle as he drove home from the grocery store. Who found the weapon? Undersheriff Spivak—the same man who had ‘bo
rrowed’ the so-called murder weapon earlier, fired it at the department shooting range, and who had the opportunity to toss shell casings around at the murder scene like candy at a Fourth of July parade and press slugs from the rifle into wounds on Mr. Farkus’s dead body. This is the same Undersheriff Spivak who used his knowledge of the staffing change at the sheriff’s department to slip into the evidence room and slip out without logging in the items he borrowed.

  “The third leg of the stool was the blood evidence. Dave Farkus’s blood was found on the interior and exterior of my client’s vehicle. Now we know that a vial of Mr. Farkus’s blood was taken from the evidence room the night before Undersheriff Spivak and his team went to the murder scene. No doubt that blood came in handy when my client was apprehended under false pretenses and arrested for murder.

  “Your Honor,” Hand said in his deepest bass as he bent over his table and shook his woolly head from side to side, “there is no stool. There is no case against my client. After what we’ve learned today, surely you won’t ask the fine taxpayers of Twelve Sleep County to pay for the bogus prosecution of my client.”

  Joe twitched when Hewitt banged his gavel so hard the handle broke.

  “I’m pissed off,” the judge shouted. “Motion granted to dismiss.”

  He stood up and pointed to Dulcie, Spivak, and Joe.

  “Miss Schalk, Mr. Pickett, and Undersheriff Spivak, I would like to see the three of you in my chambers in five minutes.”

  To Dallas: “You’re free to go, young man. But I’d suggest that when it comes to leaving my county, you don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

  Dallas nodded at the judge and gave himself a double thumbs-up.

  Then he slowly turned around in his chair and winked at Joe.

  Hand said, “Your Honor, shouldn’t I be invited to your chambers as well? Isn’t this an improper ex parte communication with just the prosecution team?”

  Judge Hewitt turned his head to glare at him, his eyes narrowed into snakelike slits.

  “I think maybe I’ll just go home,” Hand said.