by The Hearing
“No, sir, I couldn’t.” Then she volunteered her first sentence. “That was the impression I had from the beginning.”
He had to remain in court, but he wasn’t doing his client any good with inept questioning of his own witnesses. With the myriad of details he’d been trying to absorb over the past week, to say nothing of his immediate concern over Glitsky, he’d overlooked at least one other very much more obvious and ominous interpretation of the facts.
At the beginning of it all, Glitsky had put the bug in his ear about Elaine’s killer breaking her fall and he’d come to accept it as the truth. And Torrey had just killed him on it. He had to be more careful, but he wasn’t sure that he had it in him.
Again he stood. Again he called a witness. “Daniel Medrano.” This time he wondered if he should pass the questioning off to Freeman, but before he’d made any conscious decision, he was moving toward the witness box.
“Officer Medrano, you and your partner were the first unit on the scene, were you not?”
The policeman could have been Stalin’s twin—the square and swarthy face, the heavy black mustache. He appeared nervous on the stand, possibly because of his inclusion as a defense witness. Hardy knew from his earlier interview with him that this was the most notorious crime he had worked in his years as a cop. But there was no help for that.
“Yes, we were.”
“Can you tell the court exactly what you saw?”
“Sure. My partner, Officer Petrie, and I were cruising downtown and we came upon a figure hunched over another one in Maiden Lane. We hit him with our searchlight, and a man turned and began to run. I was on the passenger side and got out, identified myself as a police officer and took off in pursuit.”
“Go on.”
“He had maybe ten yards on me, but it was pretty dark, and he ran into a fire hydrant and went sprawling and I was able to apprehend him and put on handcuffs.”
“And do you recognize the man you caught that night in this courtroom?”
“Yes. The defendant Cole Burgess, over there.”
“All right. Now, Officer Medrano, in the course of this chase, did you hear anything unusual?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you please tell the court what that was?”
“Well . . .” This was the part Medrano hated. It disagreed with his partner’s report (although not his testimony, since Torrey had neglected to ask him about it), but to his credit he delivered it straight. “There was a gunshot about when the suspect went down. Then I heard the gun clatter on the street, and I eventually saw it and brought it back with me.”
“Are you saying the defendant shot at you?”
“No, I don’t think so. He didn’t stop or turn. He was just running and hit the hydrant and went sailing and the gun went off, like, when he hit the ground.”
“Are you certain it was a gunshot, and not a car backfiring or something like that?”
“It was a gunshot. I saw the flash. I even heard the ricochet. It was a gunshot,” he repeated.
“All right, Officer Medrano. Thank you.”
For some reason that Hardy couldn’t fathom, Pratt rose this time for the prosecution’s cross-examination.
“A couple of small clarifications, Officer,” she began gently, with a welcoming smile. “You and your partner, Officer Petrie, discussed this gunshot, didn’t you?”
“He didn’t hear it. He was in the—”
Pratt held up a hand, stopping him. “You discussed it?”
“Yes.”
“And he said he didn’t hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” Another smile. “Now. When you came upon the defendant hovering over the body in the alley, did you see him reach to pick up anything in the street?”
Medrano was back visualizing the moment. “No.”
“You don’t remember him reaching down into the gutter and picking up any object. Say, the gun, for example?”
“No.”
“So he must have been holding the gun already, isn’t that so?”
“He must have. Then he just stood up and started running.”
Hardy spoke up. “Objection. Speculation. Calls for a conclusion.”
The Cadaver sustained him, struck the answer.
Pratt went sailing right along. “Did the defendant run well?”
A genial grunt. Medrano was back testifying for the right side, and he was much more comfortable. “Way better than me.”
“In fact, Officer Medrano, was the defendant pulling away from you when he ran into the fire hydrant?”
“Yes. He was fast.”
“He wasn’t staggering or lurching or anything like that then?”
“No. The guy was a bullet.”
“A bullet. Thank you, Officer. No further questions.”
Jeff Elliot had been working without any merit raise for the past three years, and he decided this was as good a time as any to demand one. He and his editor were already discussing things, and he thought he might be back at work as early as next week. In the meantime, though, the Examiner had delighted and surprised him by making him an offer to bring “CityTalk” to them. The Democrat notwithstanding, the Examiner was the Chronicle’s afternoon competitor, and Jeff thought a guest column or two in it would dramatically enhance his negotiations with the Chronicle.
Besides, Hardy and Freeman had handed him the column at lunch. Now, midafternoon on Wednesday, he was in the reporters’ lounge on the third floor of the Hall of Justice, typing on a manual from the notes he’d taken a couple of hours before. The Examiner was paying him a full week’s wages for the one column. He was smiling as he wrote.
CityTalk
By Jeffrey Elliot
In the interests of full disclosure, I hereby reveal that lawyer Dismas Hardy is a personal acquaintance of mine, even a friend. Currently he is defending my brother-in-law, Cole Burgess, in a preliminary hearing in Department 20 of Municipal Court. Cole is charged with the murder of Elaine Wager. The prosecution is being handled by the district attorney herself, Sharron Pratt, and by her chief assistant and majordomo, Gabriel Torrey. Mr. Hardy is one of the sources of some of the information contained in this column.
When he is not personally trying murder cases, Mr. Torrey’s day-to-day work involves overseeing the flow of civil and criminal cases brought through the district attorney’s office before the courts. In this role, he is in a unique position to assign cases to the courts’ calendars, to settle disputes without reference to the courts, and to either dismiss criminal cases outright (for any number of reasons, including lack of evidence, police misconduct, inability to locate witnesses, etc.), or to negotiate plea bargains. His word is law to every D.A. in the office, except Sharron Pratt.
This reporter has learned of at least two instances where a criminal case has been brought by Ms. Pratt’s office against an individual who was also being sued in a civil matter. In both cases, Mr. Torrey offered to broker a deal whereby the district attorney would drop the criminal charges in exchange for a large dollar settlement in the civil matter. The attorney handling the civil matters in both cases is Dash Logan, one of the city’s more colorful and controversial figures.
(Regular readers of this column in the Chronicle might remember the story of Mr. Logan’s brief arrest last year after a short car chase that ensued after his car ran a red light, narrowly missing two pedestrians in front of the Virgin Records building on Market. The district attorney declined to press charges related to this incident for two reasons: the brakes in Mr. Logan’s car appeared to have been tampered with—he apparently could not have stopped if he wanted to; and the blood-alcohol report was mislaid.)
Today’s column will describe the first of these cases. Tomorrow’s will deal with the second case, and a set of circumstances startlingly similar to the first.
Rich McNeil is a sixty-four-year-old vice president of Terranew Industries here in town. He owns a six-story apartment building on the . . .
&nbs
p; The open hallway outside the courtroom. Hardy double-timing to the phones. He had to find out. A young Asian man, vaguely familiar, tapping him on the shoulder. “Paul Thieu,” he said, extending a hand. “Homicide.”
It had been an excruciating fifteen minutes since Hill had adjourned court for the day. Hardy felt the heat in his face and knew that his blood pressure was off the charts, the endless minutiae made unbearable by his haste to get away. But he had had to stay around to give his client encouragement, instruct his troops. Freeman, Jody, Jeff Elliot.
He’d finally closed his briefcase, made excuses. He really had to go. Now.
And now this. He steeled himself to ask. “Have you heard from Glitsky?”
A nod. “I know where he is. They took him back to St. Mary’s, even though it was farther away. They wanted him to have the same doctor.”
“Any word beyond that?”
“The hospital couldn’t tell me anything. I called the ambulance company—I called all the ambulance companies ’til I got the right one. He was alive when he hit the ER.”
“Thanks.” Hardy was moving again.
“Mr. Hardy!” Thieu closed the gap between them. “I had lunch with Abe today,” he said quietly. “I’d be grateful if you could go with me out to my car in the back.” He read Hardy’s reluctance, his impatience. “Abe thought it might be important, and he’s not going anywhere, you know.”
The simple truth of it hit him. “You’re right.”
“This way.”
They took the inside steps to the back door, walked the long corridor that took them by the jail and Dr. Strout’s office, got to a beat-up old orange Datsun in the lot. Thieu looked around—they were the only people back here. He went to the passenger door and opened it up. “Hop in,” he said.
Hardy did as he was told. Thieu was on the driver’s side and started the engine. “If your car’s around here, I’ll take you to it.” In the still-warm gathering dusk, they pulled out of the lot.
Thieu reached into his jacket and pulled out a few pages, folded into thirds. He handed them to Hardy.
“What are these?”
“Glitsky asked for them. It’s the lab and crime scene report on the Cullen Alsop overdose. I’m afraid there’s no smoking gun, though, at least not one that I see. But he wanted to go through it with a comb.”
“Glitsky wanted these? Turn left up here. What for?”
Thieu hung the turn, glanced across the seat. “I’m not sure. Maybe he thought Visser would have left some trace, maybe a print, I don’t know. But no such luck.”
Hardy sat up. The jolt felt almost like electricity. “Visser? Gene Visser?”
“Yeah.”
“What about him?”
Another glance, maybe to see if Hardy was teasing him. But Paul recognized genuine intensity when he saw it, and he thought maybe Hardy’s look at the moment could penetrate steel. “You don’t know any of this?”
“I know Gene Visser,” Hardy said, “but I don’t know what he’s got to do with Cullen Alsop.”
Paul Thieu put his foot on the brake. “We’ve got to pull over a minute,” he said. “Have a little talk.”
34
“Dressler’s syndrome,” Abe explained. “It’s like a heart attack, only better, in the sense that it’s not a heart attack.”
“A lot better,” Treya agreed. “Way, way better.”
It was now just after six-thirty at night, and they were gathered around the kitchen table back at Glitsky’s place. Raney and Orel were doing homework in front of the television set in the back room, and the laugh track filtered up to the kitchen.
When Hardy had finished with Thieu, his mind reeling with the possibilities, and finally got back to his car, he made it out to St. Mary’s in twenty minutes only to find that Glitsky had been examined by Dr. Campion, given a few tests and then, after a couple of hours, released.
Hardy had called Frannie from the hospital and she told him that she’d heard from Abe and he was all right. He’d gone home. Even though it was Date Night, Hardy drove straight there and found Glitsky sitting up. Dressed. Finishing dinner. Hardy wanted to punch his lights out for all the worry he’d put him through. “I called,” Glitsky said. “I left messages everywhere.”
He was fine. His doctor told him that there was probably some inflammation in the membrane near the area of his heart attack, that was all. Dressler’s syndrome, which mimicked the symptoms of a heart attack, was not uncommon in patients who’d had a real one. Glitsky was taking some new medication for it now, and the worrisome chest pain should be completely gone in a couple of days.
Meanwhile, the connections in this case had started to present themselves and a sense of urgency hung in the room. Hardy handed over Thieu’s lab reports to Glitsky, saying, “You know those chemists who used to predict that an element should exist because it fit the theory? And then they find it? That’s what I’m feeling like around this.”
“With Visser?”
“No. With Dash Logan.”
Abe and Treya exchanged looks. “I give up,” Abe said.
Tightly wound, Hardy had been standing all this time. Now he pulled a chair around and straddled it backwards. “In one way, this ties up the whole package,” he said. “This puts Visser with Torrey with Logan. They’re all together.”
Glitsky was half reading excerpts of the lab stuff, and now he abandoned them and sat back in his chair. “All together in what?”
Hardy, eyes alight with his enthusiasm, ran down the list of his suspicions. Torrey, Logan and Visser constituted a triumvirate that were working together to settle cases by coercion. Certainly, they had all figured overtly in Hardy’s dealings with Rich McNeil. Hardy wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn, and he intended to put one of the musketeers on it tomorrow, that the private investigator who’d dug up the alleged dirt on Gina Roake’s client Abby Oberlin had been Visser as well. That case was Logan’s, too—he was acting on behalf of Abby’s brother on the will contest. And then Torrey comes up with a settlement offer on that. “Now finally we get Visser with Cullen Alsop.”
“Okay, that’s Visser, but I’m missing something,” Treya said. “How is Logan with Cullen, then?”
A smile of triumph. “He was at Jupiter, drinking with Visser, when Cullen picked up his payment.”
“The bag of heroin?” Glitsky said.
“Exactly. This all fits, Abe. They’re together in this. They’ve got to be.”
Glitsky the cop clucked, unconvinced. “That old ‘got to be.’ You’d be surprised how often it doesn’t. Are you saying you think one of these clowns killed Cullen?”
“Visser supplied him with uncut smack. He used it. He died. I’d call that killing him.”
“But why would they do that?” Treya asked.
“Because Torrey had fed him a false story about Elaine’s murder weapon. My own belief is that Cullen never even had possession of the gun, much less gave it to Cole. But Torrey needed that fact. Then Cullen got greedy, or stupid, or they suddenly realized that as a witness, the kid was going to suck. He’d crack under any kind of vigorous cross. Maybe he’d sell them out as easily as he sold out Cole. Or maybe Torrey set up Cullen as a witness without telling Visser. And Visser vetoed the plan by helping Cullen OD. So, totally unreliable junkie, completely expendable, adios.”
Glitsky remained skeptical, to say the least. “You’re saying the chief assistant district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco had him killed?”
“Somebody did.”
“Lord. Creativity thrives here in the new millennium.” Glitsky’s arms were crossed, the scar tight through his lips. “And the proof of any of this is . . . ?”
Hardy acknowledged the problem with a nod. “It’s out there somewhere. We just haven’t found it.”
Abe flicked the lab report. “Well, it’s not here. Not that I see. No sign that Visser was even there.”
“Except for what Falk saw.”
“Which was nothing. I ask
ed. Falk saw Cullen go to the bathroom at Jupiter and then Visser go into the same bathroom, which, last time I checked, was legal.”
“But,” Treya interjected, “then why were you going to see Visser this afternoon, Abe? You must have thought something similar.”
Glitsky answered gently. “I wanted to ask him about Ridley, that’s all.”
But Hardy couldn’t let it go. “This would be the same Ridley who told me that wherever he was going on that last night, it was on this? Those were his words, ‘on this.’ On Cullen and, therefore, on Elaine.”
“And it might have been, that last visit. But we don’t know that was Visser either, do we?”
Hardy’s face was set. “It’s got to be.”
“That’s where we started here, Diz. Got to be, got to be. When the fact is it doesn’t have to be at all. Listen,” he continued, “it’s not like I don’t think it’s well argued and provocative, but I haven’t even caught a whiff of one piece of evidence.”
A long silence settled, everyone in their thoughts. Finally, Treya broke it. “I’ve got a question, Diz.”
Hardy looked into her face. “Six one, one eighty-three.”
“A silly little grin coursing the features of his copper-lined face,” Glitsky added. He covered her hand on the table with his own. “Never tell this guy you got a question. He always does that.”
“Not always,” Hardy argued. “Sometimes I say, ‘I’ve got an answer,’ and then you go, ‘What is it?’ and I say, ‘Babe Ruth, 1927,’ or ‘The circumference divided by the diameter.’ Something like that.”
“It’s really fun,” Abe said in a monotone. “You’d be surprised.”
“I bet I would,” Treya replied. “That, for example, just now, was more fun than I’ve had all day.”
“See what I mean?” Glitsky asked. “It’s always like that. It never ends.”
“Okay,” Hardy relented. “What’s the real question?”
