A Plague of Secrets

by John Lescroart

  After, to Hardy, an agonizing half minute, enough time for the gallery to begin to hum again, Chiurco entered in his trademark coat and tie, looking confident and, as opposed to his bosses Hardy and Hunt, well rested. He’d been waiting with Bracco upstairs in the homicide detail for the sign that it was almost time and he should move down to the corridor outside the courtroom. Now, passing up through the bar rail, by the defense table, he proffered a quick, silent greeting to Hardy, who was already standing in his spot before the witness chair.

  But Hardy, intent and self-absorbed, didn’t look up.

  The clerk swore him in.

  Craig looked expectantly at Hardy, who carefully walked him through the statement he’d prepared about their discussion two nights before. Upbeat, Chiurco gave every indication that he was glad to be testifying. “Now, Mr. Chiurco, to backtrack a bit. Just a moment ago you told the jury that you had been assigned by your employer, Wyatt Hunt, to locate Levon Preslee, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Up until that time, had you ever heard of Levon Preslee?”

  “No.”

  “To your knowledge, had you ever met him?”

  “No.”

  “And you did, in fact, locate Mr. Preslee, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a matter of hours?”

  “Right.”

  Hardy went back to his table and picked up a piece of paper. “I think you told us how you found Mr. Preslee. Didn’t you just say that you had done a Web search and found out that Mr. Vogler was convicted for robbery back in 1997, and that he had a partner in that crime named Levon Preslee? Does that sound about right?”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words, your employer did not tell you that Mr. Vogler’s partner was Mr. Preslee?”

  “No.”

  “And why not, do you think?” This was technically objectionable, but as Hardy had hoped and predicted, Stier remained silent, certain that Braun was not going to interrupt.

  Chiurco’s expression wavered briefly, a moment of indecision. But Hardy exuded encouragement, and Chiurco gave him his answer. “He didn’t know it, not at that time.”

  “Mr. Hunt didn’t know Mr. Preslee’s name, that is?”

  “Right. We just knew that Vogler had a partner in the robbery he’d committed. We didn’t know who it was.”

  “So again, how did you find that this partner was Mr. Preslee?”

  “As I said,” Chiurco still cooperative, but some exasperation breaking through the veneer, “I did a Web search.”

  “You looked on Google or Yahoo?” Hardy asked. “That type of thing?”

  “Yes. I don’t remember precisely which one.”

  “Do you mean you don’t remember which search engine you used?”

  “Yes. There are a lot of them. Prison databases, city and county records, and so on.”

  “And looking on one of those databases, you found a site that somehow informed you about the crime that Mr. Vogler and Mr. Preslee had been convicted of, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you must have checked on Mr. Vogler’s name first?”

  “That was the only name I had, so yes.”

  “And then keying off Mr. Vogler, you found a related site for Mr. Preslee, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Nodding, Hardy again went back to his desk and picked up another couple of sheets of paper, then came back to the witness. “Now, Mr. Chiurco, I have here in my hand a copy of the cover page of the criminal proceeding that resulted in Mr. Vogler’s conviction and sentencing back in 1997.” Thanking his stars for Glitsky and his access, Hardy stepped closer to the witness box. “Would you please read for the jury the title of this case? Right there inside the bracketed area.”

  Now with a bit of reluctance, Chiurco came forward and accepted the paper. “The People of the State of California v. Dylan Vogler. Case number SC-137804.”

  “Thank you.” Hardy held out his hand, and Chiurco handed him back his copy. “And now, if you please, would you read the title of this other case, which for the jury’s benefit resulted in Mr. Preslee’s conviction and sentencing?”

  Working to regain a semblance of cordiality, Chiurco took the next sheet of paper. “The People of the State of California v. Levon Preslee. Case number SC-139504.”

  Hardy again took the paper back. “As you can see, Mr. Chiurco, and as you’ve just read to the jury, these are different case numbers, are they not?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “Obviously. But, if these cases are indeed separate and unconnected, this leads to the question of how you referenced one of them and had it lead you to the other. Can you tell us how you did that?”

  Chiurco sat back, his face set, and bounced his shoulders a few times. “I don’t exactly remember. They showed up together in one of the Web sites. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “And from that you got Mr. Preslee’s name and then were able to find his address and go out to his house, is that right?”

  “Right.”

  “A house where you had never been before. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “A house that you’d certainly never been inside?”

  “Right.”

  “A house where police could never, under any circumstances, have found your fingerprints. Is that correct?”

  Chiurco’s face had gone dark now, and he turned to the judge, then back to Hardy. “What’s this all about? What do my fingerprints have to do with anything?”

  Hardy stepped closer to the witness. And after the earlier two witnesses Braun clearly was inclined to give him his head. “Mr. Chiurco,” he said, “did you not already know who Mr. Preslee was, and that he had been Mr. Vogler’s accomplice in the robbery that sent them both to prison, when you received your assignment from Mr. Hunt?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “In fact, didn’t you request the assignment from Mr. Hunt so that you could keep from Mr. Hunt the reality of your relationship with Mr. Preslee?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Are you saying you did not have a relationship with Mr. Preslee?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “You hadn’t been to his home before as a guest?”

  “That’s right. I’ve already said that.”

  “Yes, you did,” Hardy said. “Then perhaps you can explain the testimony we just listened to this morning from Officer Jessica Cunningham of the San Francisco police lab, who identified your fingerprints inside Mr. Preslee’s home.”

  Chiurco’s eyes shot out beyond Hardy, past Hunt, to the back door, over to the side doors. “Obviously, she either made a mistake or she lied. I’ve never been inside the place.”

  Hardy moved a step closer to him. “Are you telling the court that you hadn’t seen both Mr. Vogler and Mr. Preslee together at Bay Beans West in the last weeks of their lives?”

  “I don’t know where you get any of this.”

  “If I were to tell you there were two witnesses—”

  “Well, they’re lying, too, whoever they were.”

  Hardy now hung his head, half turned briefly to the jury, his face impassive. “Mr. Chiurco, isn’t it true that you attended the University of San Francisco here in the city between 1992 and 1995?”

  Suddenly, at this gambit, Chiurco’s back went straight, his head snapped quickly from side to side. Hardy, aware of the bass rumble behind him starting to develop in the gallery, nevertheless pressed the attack. “Mr. Chiurco? Your Honor?”

  Braun glared out to the gallery, her gavel poised. Then leaned over the bench. “The witness will please answer the question.”

  Chiurco shrugged into his sports coat. “Yes.”

  “And while you were there, were you not acquainted with both Mr. Vogler and Mr. Preslee?”

  This time, as the gallery fairly erupted behind Hardy, he stood locked into eye contact with Chiurco while Braun gaveled the crowd back into silence.

>   “Mr. Chiurco?”

  “I think they were both there when I was, yes.”

  “And if we just heard from a witness, who said she knew all of you back then, testify that you were close friends of both of them, would that witness have been telling the truth?”

  No answer.

  “That’s the truth, isn’t it, Paco?”

  All belligerence now. “Who’s Paco?”

  “You are, Mr. Chiurco, or you were, weren’t you?” Hardy kept waiting for the judge to step in to advise Chiurco of his Fifth Amendment rights, but if she wasn’t going to do it, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it for her. This man had killed at least two people, probably three, and had tried to frame his client, and Hardy couldn’t possibly have cared less about his rights.

  Chiurco, still unresponsive, pulled at his tie, cleared his throat.

  Hardy let a few seconds pass, silence settling into the room until it was complete. “Mr. Chiurco,” he asked, “where do you buy your coffee?”

  “All over the place.”

  “Have you ever bought coffee at Bay Beans West on Haight Street?”

  “I might have. I can’t say for sure.”

  “Mr. Chiurco, did you not tell your employer, Mr. Hunt, that you were a regular customer of Mr. Vogler’s marijuana business at Bay Beans West? If you’d like, we can have Mr. Hunt come up here and so testify.”

  The witness did not move, did not speak.

  “Mr. Chiurco?”

  “I don’t have to answer that question. It might tend to incriminate me.”

  “So you’re invoking the Fifth Amendment?”

  “Only against whether or not I bought marijuana, yes.”

  “All right,” Hardy said. “Let’s move to another topic. Do you own a handgun?”

  Chiurco brought his hands up to his mouth, pulled at the sides of his face. “All right. I own a gun. So what?”

  “What make of gun?”

  But Chiurco just shook his head. “That’s all. I’m not saying anything else.”

  The already heavy stillness seemed to take on an oppressive weight in the packed courtroom. Chiurco stared stone-faced into the space between him and Hardy.

  “I’m not answering,” Chiurco said again. “I’m taking the Fifth.”

  Hardy nodded, took another step forward to within spitting distance of the witness. “Isn’t it true, Mr. Chiurco, that you used that same Glock .40 to kill Dylan Vogler and a liquor store clerk named Julio Gomez during a robbery in 1995?”

  At this the gallery fully exploded behind Hardy. And over that tumult, finally Stier found his voice again. “Objection, Your Honor. The witness has taken the Fifth.”

  She banged with her gavel, again and again, her voice strained as she tried to make herself heard. “The objection is sustained. That’s enough.” Bam! Bam! “Sustained.” Now standing, leaning out over the bench, at the top of her voice. “I want order in this courtroom! Order!” And the sound of gavel pounding rang out again and again.

  At last, a semblance of silence. Braun, still on her feet, shaking with rage, now asserted her authority, order after order. “The jury is to retire to the deliberation room. Bailiffs, clear the courtroom. Clear the courtroom! Mr. Chiurco, you will remain on the witness stand. Counsel, stay at counsel table!”

  The gallery’s removal took the better part of ten minutes, much of the crowd objecting and even refusing to move until Braun had more bailiffs called in to help from neighboring courtrooms.

  When, finally, the last spectator had been cleared, Braun pointed down at Chiurco. “Sir, as a witness in this courtroom, you have asserted your Fifth Amendment rights. You need to talk with your attorney. You will consult with counsel and return to this courtroom with your attorney on this coming Monday at nine A.M.”

  But Hardy, still standing in front of Chiurco, couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “Your Honor, with respect, that’s unacceptable. Mr. Chiurco should be taken into custody.”

  Now she raised her gavel as though it were a weapon. “That’s all, Mr. Hardy. How dare you try to tell me what’s acceptable or not in my courtroom. That’s absolutely all from you.” And now unnecessarily banging her gavel on every note for emphasis, she added, “You . . . will . . . not . . . disrupt . . . this . . . courtroom . . . further!”

  And again at last in total control, the master of her domain, Braun looked around in a kind of stunned disbelief at what her pronouncements had wrought. “Bailiffs,” she said evenly, “the defendant goes to the holding cell. Mr. Chiurco, you go find yourself a lawyer. Counsel, in chambers. Right now. It’s quarter of.” Then, with another glance out at the empty gallery, “Bailiffs, you may readmit the spectators. This trial resumes again in precisely fifteen minutes.”

  In Braun’s office Stier was near apoplectic. “Talk about no evidence! In spite of all of his self-serving rhetoric Mr. Hardy presented no evidence out there just now, Your Honor. All that was just a blatant attempt to find a handy scapegoat to distract the jury.”

  “Ridiculous, Your Honor. Fingerprints at the crime scene are evidence, particularly when the person whose fingerprints they are says they couldn’t be there. What’s your theory, Mr. Stier? Did Chiurco loan somebody his fingerprints? Did his hands take a walk without him? The fact is,” Hardy said, “that I’ve presented more evidence this morning that my client is innocent than Mr. Stier has presented in his entire case against her.”

  “She’s not innocent until the jury says so,” Stier said.

  Hardy held out a hand in a behold-the-ass gesture: “Actually, Your Honor, Mr. Stier’s got it exactly backwards. Maya’s innocent until the jury finds her guilty. I think they still teach this in law school in this country.”

  Braun had finally lost all pretense of a judicial demeanor. “God damn it! No more!”

  But Stier kept on. “Mr. Hardy can split hairs, but I’m confident the court understood what I was saying, Your Honor. And this testimony from Ms. Foreman that Mr. Chiurco maybe used to be called Paco? On what planet does this rise to the level of evidence?”

  “The same one,” Hardy shot across at him, “that you landed on when you had Cheryl Biehl testify. I’m just, frankly, stunned that you think you’ve still got a case.”

  Stier harrumphed. “To the contrary, Your Honor, since Mr. Chiurco does investigative work for Mr. Hardy’s own law firm, I wouldn’t put it past them to have colluded to put on this entire elaborate charade just so the jury would have to consider an alternate suspect.” Then, directly to Hardy, “So, how do you do it? You give your guy a bonus when this is done for the inconvenience you put him through?”

  “That’s the most ridiculous and insulting accusation I’ve heard in all the time I’ve been practicing law, Your Honor. It’s beneath contempt.” Hardy, finally reaching his limit, raised his own voice. “Here’s what I did, Paul. I paid your police department to plant his fingerprint inside the scene of a murder and maybe on the casing from a cartridge at the scene of another murder. What kind of a bonus would you recommend for someone who’s willing to put themselves in prison for life?”

  Braun slapped a palm down on her desk. “That exchange, gentlemen, just cost you each a grand. Want to go for another one?”

  Hardy, dizzy with adrenaline, fighting to reassert his rationality. “The plain fact, Your Honor, as I said out there, is that Chiurco ought to be under arrest right now. He’s a danger to himself and to the public. The police should be searching his stuff for spatter and Preslee’s place for his DNA. We need to continue this trial at least into next week, or even longer, to let the police finally conduct a real investigation.”

  Braun hated this whole thing. She hated Hardy’s provocative and believable theory. She hated Stier’s entire presentation of the case, the sideways involvement of Jerry Glass, Schiff’s sloppy investigating, the political ramifications, the testimony about things that may or may not have happened as much as fifteen years before.

  Above all, Braun hated the idea that she might have to
tell the jury that this trial might be prolonged another week or even longer. There was no way she could accept a police investigation at this stage into another suspect without dismissing the charges against the current defendant.

  “Well, gentlemen,” she began in a cold fury, “it seems we’ve gotten ourselves into—”

  At that moment the first gunshot echoed from somewhere close by, inside the building. And they heard a woman scream.

  38

  Chiurco didn’t move from the witness stand for a short while after he’d been dismissed. Things had happened fast, but the judge had told him he could go, so long as he returned to court next Monday morning. He heard the back door of the courtroom open behind him, watched Hardy and Stier march solemnly past him on the way out. Still he didn’t move.

  At last, though, since the audience had returned en masse to the gallery—in fact, if anything, with the news of the drama, the crowd had increased—the noise level was gearing up again. The mayor and Fisk and Maya’s husband came forward off their seats and Maya had turned around, the bailiff hovering in hesitation about obeying the judge and bringing her back to the holding cell. Everybody talking about his testimony, what had just come down.

  Glitsky and DA Jackman were on their feet, stretching their backs, deep in discussion. Debra Schiff, over at the prosecution table, sat hunched over, head down, fingers at her temples. Chiurco’s boss, Wyatt Hunt, had disappeared behind some other standees, everybody up and talking talking talking.

  It was now or never.

  Chiurco got to his feet, his shoulders squared, face set. Completely within his rights, he got out of the witness chair and crossed the open courtroom. Opening the bullpen gate, he stepped into the center aisle of the gallery, now clogged up with the overflowing crowd. A reporter grabbed at his elbow and said something, but the world had turned into a blurry tunnel that ended in the doorway about thirty feet away in front of him, and he shook the reporter off, moving forward, moving.

  Off to his side, in conversation with Jeff Elliot, his damn wheelchair in the aisle slowing everything down, Hunt and Gina Roake, at first barely noticing him except, now, for Hunt’s double take as he passed. And hearing, as though muffled through water, Wyatt’s cry—“Abe!” Then louder, “Abe!”