Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  She’s right. Nikki’s been working at the sink while I huddled behind the paper. Her voice has been a constant din in the background, competing with the television which Sarah is still watching in the other room. But I have seen and heard none of this, not even the box scores which my eyes have traversed four times on the page in front of me. My mind is on Putah Creek, the choreography of my grand jury.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “My mind is elsewhere.”

  “Right.” Nikki gives me a look, like what else is new?

  “I’m taking Sarah to the movies, and then we’re having dinner with Laura Benson and her girls.” Laura Benson is another lawyer’s widow, married to a trial mogul, one of the local tort sharks, who at any time has more irons in the fire than the village smithy.

  Nikki has joined the “widows’ web,” a network of lawyers’ wives who in effect have given up all hope of weaning their husbands from their obsessive work ethic. I have seen some of their literature, mimeographed sheets with the motto on top:

  “Live with ’em or leave ’em—

  either way you lose ’em.”

  It is the latest in self-help for the lawyer’s spouse.

  “Your dinner’s in the ice,” she says. “The dish covered in foil. Five minutes in the microwave,” she tells me.

  “What time will you be back?”

  “Whenever we get back,” she says. This is another of their tenets, brazen independence, to the point of impudence.

  “Some clue as to a time would be nice,” I say. “Today? Tomorrow?”

  She ignores me. “Sarah. Turn off the TV. Let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” she says. “Sarah and I are going to have fun.”

  My conscience begins to ease a little with this thought.

  “When you’re finished with your trial, you can join us,” she says. “We’ll still be here—maybe,” she says.

  This is her exit line. She leaves me, with this knife still twisting in the open wound.

  We are now three days in on the presentation of evidence to our grand jury. Straightforward and uncomplicated I have spoon-fed them Kay Sellig’s testimony of the rope and metal stakes, the match which points to Andre Iganovich as the killer of four college students, the manner in which that evidence was found, and the details of his flight from Davenport.

  Goya and Sellig have worked out the details on the Scofield evidence. Now they are lying in wait for an opportunity to put this before the jury.

  We have decided that, no matter what, we will not reveal the medical evidence from Dr. Tolar’s autopsy, the fact that the Scofields were killed elsewhere and moved to the Putah Creek. I do not want this in the grand jury transcript for Chambers to read. I will hold it like a trump card for trial.

  My biggest fear is that they will let the Scofield evidence slide, read the Johnson letter and yawn. In our final strategy session Goya and I had discussed a little farce, something she and I could play out if things went badly, a few questions and answers in front of the jury. This was intended as a way to drag the bait, to set the hook, to draw a motion to hear the Scofield evidence. But our hastily drawn parody was thin, shallow as a sandbar and nearly as dangerous. It was not likely to deceive the quick-witted, particularly a judge on appeal, or Chambers if he chose to test the indictment. An appellate panel might wonder what our colloquy is doing in the record.

  Lenore said she had a better idea. I listened to this with some trepidation. But in the end I agreed.

  Our enemy thus far has not been the facts or the law, or for that matter the wily mind of Adrian Chambers, who is present here only by his writings. Instead it is the small contrary factions on this jury that are causing the most grief. Little budding walls of animosity have cropped up between groups of jurors. These have nothing to do with the issues or the evidence before us.

  From the perspective of a prosecutor, the best grand jury is a closed and intimate thing, like a family pulled together in crisis. The introduction of a single discordant member can cause considerable pain. And I have found mine.

  William Geddes has short cropped hair and a thin angular face. He is a transplant from the big city, a retired cop. Off on a disability dive from the Los Angeles Police Department, he lives like the landed gentry, with his horses and his fourth wife, on a spread outside of town. From all appearances he is a fifth-degree loudmouth with a wandering libido.

  Between belches over Diet Coke, he’s been drooling all over the table, lecherous looks at Lenore Goya and another juror, a young school teacher, a blond seated at the other table across from him.

  On the first day of evidence, Geddes copped looks at the blond’s long legs under a short dress, until she showed up the next day in pants, and sat down the line, where he could no longer leer without wrenching his neck.

  Yesterday he crossed the line. He hit on Goya. It started with a few soft off-color jokes and guileless references to sexual trivia. Not to anyone in particular. Geddes uttered these just under his breath in the quasi-privacy of our afternoon break, as if it were all in good fun, an innocent quest for a few laughs. But always his eyes were on Lenore, like a radar dish searching for prurient shadows.

  Then he made his breathless move. As she headed for the door on an errand, in passing traffic, he spoke in her ear just loud enough to be overheard by two of the other jurors and me.

  “How about a drink, just you and me, after work?” he says. Novel he is not.

  As for Goya, she slowed only half-a-stride, turned and looked him in the eye. “God already put one asshole in my pants,” she said. “Why would I want another?”

  One of the jurors doubled up over at the table, laughing out loud.

  Geddes shot him a mean look.

  This did not faze the man, a farmer of Dutch stock, built like a snowplow. Geddes was relegated to a variation of his initial malignant gaze. He put a face on it, tried to pass it off.

  “Jesus.” He shook his head and laughed. “I’ll bet she gives head like a barracuda.” It was a feeble search for sympathy from the male contingent, an appeal to the redneck brotherhood that did not fly.

  Goya had cleared the door and didn’t hear his last comment. The jurors I’m sure thought this was lucky for Geddes. Otherwise he would have been explaining to his wife how it was that “Mr. Doodles,” Geddes’s one-eyed monster in the turtleneck sweater, got his two cylinders crushed.

  This morning Geddes is obstreperous, a seeming stream of pointless questions, as if by this he is taking his revenge on the group.

  The three farmers sit next to each other at the table like Larry, Moe and Curly, with beefy, hairy forearms folded across their chests.

  A college professor and two housewives sit on the other side, quiet, not disposed to ask questions or make comments, except under their breath to each other. I have no idea what they or others on this jury may be thinking.

  Ravi Sahdalgi, a Pakistani graduate student, is closest to me, sitting near this end of the U-shaped tables.

  “Rag-head.” It is what Geddes uttered under his breath the one time Sahdalgi sought to speak up. This thoughtful and introspective man has been silent ever since.

  Next to Sahdalgi is Vernon Shupe, a law student. Young and well educated, Shupe, I think, sees himself a likely target for Geddes’s venom.

  Like a magnet laid over a compass, Geddes’s insufferable behavior has stripped me of any sense of direction with this grand jury. His odious comments have driven them underground. In their silence, the roving eyes around this table tell me there is consensus on only a single point; that if this were a lifeboat adrift on the high seas, the vote to put William Geddes over the side would be without dissent.

  We are now on a midmorning break. I have finished the presentation of our evidence-in-chief, everything except Chambers’s exculpatory evide
nce, the items in his Johnson letter.

  Jurors are heading for the door, to stretch their legs, to get a smoke.

  It’s starting to get a little warm in this room, the problem of a dated building.

  Lenore Goya, who is nearest the door, heads for the phone outside on the wall, to call maintenance to have the thermostat turned down.

  Two minutes later she comes back in.

  “Are you ready to do it?” she asks. She’s talking about the Johnson letter.

  I take a deep sigh.

  “Yes. Call them in,” I say.

  She gets three of the jurors who are outside on the loading dock, having a smoke, and we go back on the record.

  I bring them to order, tell them that they have heard all the evidence the state is prepared to produce at this time, that this is, in my view, more than sufficient to return indictments on four counts of first-degree murder against Andre Iganovich.

  I see a number of nodding heads around the table.

  “I believe that the evidence you have seen and heard is more than sufficient to charge the defendant with special circumstances,” I say, “permitting the death penalty.”

  There is considerable evidence of torture, and that Iganovich lay in wait for his victims before he killed them. A finding as to either of these could result in a verdict of death.

  “However,” I say, “there remains one item of business.” I explain the procedure regarding the Johnson letter, that I am not an advocate for the contents of this missive, that they are not required to take evidence on any item contained in it. But that I must reveal it to them as a matter of law, and that they may, if they wish, review the evidence in the Scofield murders. I put a face on it for the record transcript. It wouldn’t do to be too overt in pushing this thing.

  It is now too warm for comfort in this room. I take off my coat.

  I have Goya pass around copies of the letter, the evidentiary points and legal arguments raised by Chambers. Heads go down as they read.

  Goya looks at the door. She would like to open it, get some fresh air in the place. But with a grand jury, secrecy takes precedence over comfort. The faint but growing odors of the country are coming to full blossom in this room. After a few seconds Goya looks at me. She too has picked up on this smell, something from the barnyard, brought to life by the heat now permeating this room.

  Several minutes pass. A few of the jurors turn the letter over on the table or lay it down, signaling that they have read it, that they are waiting for me to move on.

  The last few jurors put down the letter. I study them for any sign of curiosity, scanning for an inquisitive face, some leader among them whom I might induce down into this pit with me.

  “Are there any questions?” I say.

  Blank gazes, not a single hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I know it’s a long letter. Perhaps we need a little more time to digest it.”

  They give me pained expressions, the grownup version of pissed-off adolescents in a history lecture. The message is clear. They are ready to hang the Russian. They want to go home.

  Finally a hand. It is Vernon Shupe, the law student. Good boy.

  “Mr. Shupe, yes.” I smile at him, all the ardor of a used-car salesman.

  “You haven’t indicted the defendant on these murders?”

  “No, Mr. Shupe, we haven’t.” Please. Please. Ask me why.

  “Why,” he says. “I mean, why would we hear evidence on crimes that aren’t charged?” he says.

  Sonofabitch, I think, wasn’t he listening? All the while I smile at him, hoping to cultivate our conversation.

  “Good question,” I say.

  He grins at me, proud of having asked it.

  “Because defense counsel believes that these later crimes and the circumstances surrounding them may serve to exonerate his client. From that perspective, it is important.” I add this last, a flourish to encourage more.

  “Oh.” He settles back in his chair.

  “Oh.” That’s it? “Oh.” There’s an almost audible groan from Lenore at the table next to me. I bore a hole through Shupe with my eyes. Unless he sharpens his mind he will look like Swiss cheese after three years of law school.

  “More questions?” I say. “Someone, anyone?” I move my gaze quickly around the table, no movement except for William Geddes. His nostrils suddenly going crazy, persistent little flares, sniffing the air.

  “Yeah, I got one,” he says. “What in the, excuse me, fuck is that?”

  He looks at me.

  “Don’t you smell it?” he says. “Like somebody died.”

  The woman sitting next to Geddes on one side looks at him with an expression that tells the world “it wasn’t mine.”

  Geddes looks down the line under the table across from him and starts to laugh.

  “One of our farmer friends,” he says. He’s pointing to a pair of cowboy boots, expensive snakeskin with silver tips. These are crossed under the table on the other side from Geddes.

  “You otta at least scrape ’em a little bit before you come here,” he says. “Let me guess—horses?” says Geddes. A cackling laugh.

  He draws a disapproving glance from another juror, a member of the university faculty, who would rather endure the odor than Geddes and his language.

  I am afraid that what to this point has been a silent brawl among this jury is about to spill over into a more public confrontation.

  Sam Holland, the farmer on the other side, is one of the icons of agribusiness in the valley. In the ordinary setting I would think that he and Geddes might find something in common, a redneck heritage. But Geddes has killed any chance of this.

  Holland gives us all the cowboy shrug, a gesture that can mean anything from an apology to the crudest obscenity, depending on how you want to take it.

  Then he points his finger at Geddes. With his close-cropped beard and flowing gray locks cut at the collar, Holland is the buckaroo’s image of Michelangelo’s “Creation,” the accusing forefinger just the slightest crook at the end, pointed from a fully extended arm.

  “And you,” he says to Geddes. “You’re flat-ass wrong.”

  Geddes looks at him, stiffening his neck, ready to take up any challenge.

  “It’s bullshit,” says Holland. “I woulda thought you, of all the people in this room, woulda recognized that.”

  Geddes is out of his chair.

  “Gentlemen, please.” I have both hands up, like a referee about to break a clinch between two fighters. “Let’s focus on the issues, the letter before us,” I say.

  “I’ve had enough of him,” says Holland.

  “Well, kiss my patoot,” says Geddes.

  Holland takes one step on his way around the table.

  “Enough,” I say. I slam one of the heavy briefing books on the table. A thunderous thud.

  They look at me, Geddes and Holland. Both men stop in their tracks.

  “Now sitdown.” I make it a single word, for effect. “Both of you. I’ve a mind to seek contempt, a visit with Judge Fisher,” I tell them.

  Grudging, dragging each step, Holland backs off, neck bowed like one of his pedigreed breeding bulls. He settles into his chair and gives Geddes one final look, what a dog might get before being nailed by Holland’s pointy gunboat boots.

  Geddes gives him what could pass for a mock snarl, the look of some mangy cur safely outside the confines of the corral.

  I look at Goya. She’s rolling her eyes, like what next?

  “This panel has a decision to make,” I say. “The letter that is before us raises serious issues. The question is whether there is a motion to hear the evidence in the Scofield murders as requested by the defendant and his attorney. We must focus on that,” I say.

  Goya sensing her cue,
chimes in. “Should we analyze the issues point by . . .”

  “What for?” Geddes cuts her off.

  “We’ve seen and heard enough,” he says. “Your guy’s guilty as sin.” There we have it, from on high, as if with this proclamation and a seal I could take it to an executioner.

  “What difference does it make whether they gas him for four murders or six?” says Geddes. “I don’t wanna waste any more time. I’ve got things to do. Business.”

  I put Geddes down one more time, tell the panel there are procedures that must be followed.

  “Procedures,” he says. “A waste of time.” He looks around the table, at Holland, Shupe, and some of the others. Dead silence.

  Then a quiet, retiring voice, behind me off to the right: “Mr. Madriani?” Ravi Sahdalgi has a question.

  “Yes? Mr. Sahdalgi.”

  Geddes looks at the ceiling.

  “This evidence in the Scofield murders. Is it material to the crimes charged, to the murder of the four college students?”

  “It could be,” I say, “depending how you read the evidence,” I tell him.

  “And the defense attorney,” says Sahdalgi, “he is arguing that whoever killed the Scofields also killed the others, but that this is not his client?”

  “That seems to be his argument.”

  “Then I think we should hear the evidence,” he says.

  I look at him, full on. “Is that a motion?” I say.

  “Yes, it is. I move that we hear the evidence in the Scofield murders.” He looks quickly at Geddes. There is firm resolve in his eyes, like the look of a prophet once he’s convinced his word is holy writ.

  “Crying out loud,” says Geddes. He’s moving like he wants to get up.

  “Sit down, Mr. Geddes. The matter is not open to debate, unless there is a second,” I say.

  He slumps back into his seat, muttering to himself a few profanities. I think I hear a quiet racial slur. He looks at Sahdalgi. Geddes’s legs are splayed wide, his chair tilted back resting against the concrete wall behind him, the look of some surly adolescent.