Marital Privilege

by Greg Sisk

  Candace looked up at Burton. Her face was expressionless.

  “If I may say so,” Burton observed, “you don’t seem as shocked as I thought you might be.”

  “No,” she acceded in a flat tone. “I’m just numb. Nothing shocks me anymore.”

  “You’ve been coming to this same conclusion on your own, haven’t you?”

  “No,” she said, but her voice wavered.

  “You really think your husband is still innocent? Even after I’ve told you we found his fingerprint on the murder weapon and at the crime scene?”

  “I didn’t say that. I honestly don’t know what to think.”

  “Something has caused you to have doubts.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “For other reasons?”

  “Yes.”

  “Based on things we don’t yet know about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ready to tell us now?”

  “Are you sure it’s Bill’s fingerprint?”

  “Well, it’s only a partial print and there are limited points of comparison with the exemplar print we took from Mr. Klein when he was booked at the jail.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we were only able to lift a partial latent print from the tiny piece of duct tape we found. As I understand it, the fingerprint experts believe they can declare a match with between eight and twelve points of comparison—you know, studying the ridge patterns in the print. Even with the print on the duct tape being less than a full print, the experts regard what they’ve seen as a match.

  “I’m sure that a good defense attorney, and I know that Mr. Klein has hired a good one in Mr. Dietrich, will try to discredit the validity of the fingerprint match.”

  Burton looked directly at Candace and waited for her eyes to meet his. “Mrs. Klein, you know I’ve been pretty straight with you. I have to say to you now, that while I’ve had my own doubts, I’m having a harder time avoiding the worst conclusion here. When you put this fingerprint evidence together with everything else, it’s pretty hard to give any further benefit of the doubt to Mr. Klein.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” acknowledged Candace. “I’m not saying I’ve come to the point where you are, but I do understand your position.”

  “So are you at least ready to talk with us, now?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “This man tried to kill you!”

  “That’s what you say. And Sherburne’s trying to kill him!”

  “Well, maybe we can do something about that . . . arrive at some kind of arrangement.”

  • • •

  “So there you have it, Mr. Sherburne,” Lieutenant Ed Burton said. United States Attorney Robby Sherburne, Burton, Alex Kramer of the ATF, and Candace Klein were sitting at a conference table in the United States Attorney’s office. “If you agree not to seek the death penalty, Mrs. Klein will testify before the grand jury—and at trial. She’s not going to say she thinks her husband’s guilty, but she’s willing to obey the judge’s order, respond to the subpoena, and tell what she knows. While she has been careful in what she’s said to me, I’m given to understand she may know or have heard from Mr. Klein more about his handling of the explosives at the construction site and something more about the insurance policy on her life.”

  “All right,” Sherburne said. “We’ll go forward with that understanding.”

  He could promise her anything today, Sherburne mused. It’s not like this would be binding on him, like some kind of contract. If the public later called for the death penalty when they got to a conviction, he’d put it back on the table, protesting that he couldn’t ignore the public demand. By then, he’d have the testimony from Mrs. Klein he needed.

  Sherburne started to rise from his chair. “Thank you very much, everyone.”

  “Not quite so easy,” replied Burton. “We want it in writing, with your signature on it. In fact, I’m going to take a video on my cell phone of you making that very promise to Mrs. Klein. And I’m telling you right now, if you squelch on the deal, I’ll be sharing that video—and maybe some additional tidbits about how you have handled this case—with every reporter who’ll listen.”

  “So you’d destroy both of our careers?” Sherburne retorted, as he sank back down into his chair.

  “Then I guess, for both our sakes, you’d better keep up your end of the bargain,” replied Burton in a steely voice.

  “And one thing more,” said Candace. “Bill remains on release and is not to be taken into custody . . . at least until after the trial.”

  Now Burton looked surprised. “But, Mrs. Klein, this man tried to kill you. I honestly do think he killed your boy. We have to take him into custody.”

  Candace was not moved. “No, I still am not convinced. I’m willing now to do the legal thing—the right thing, I hope—and testify, as Judge Williamson ordered. But I’m not yet ready to condemn my husband.

  “If the jury convicts him after a fair trial and based on all the evidence, I’ll . . . I’ll have to come to terms with that. But I’m not going to let him be hauled off to jail before he even gets a chance to make his defense. No, Bill remains on release . . . or no deal.”

  Damn it, Sherburne thought. He knew he was trapped. Even with the new fingerprint evidence, he wasn’t absolutely certain he could move the grand jury to an indictment. And, even if he got an indictment, a conviction was no sure thing. Testimony by Mrs. Klein could be the key.

  Without being able to impose the death penalty on a child-killer, as he had promised the public, he well knew that he was kissing goodbye to any chance of becoming governor. But, then, his political career was already in shambles after the courtroom debacle. He probably could not resuscitate a viable gubernatorial candidacy, even with a conviction and capital punishment.

  And, for Sherburne, it was no longer just about the fading dream of ascending to higher office. His current job was now at risk as well. Whether he was able to secure a death penalty wasn’t his most pressing concern any longer. If he failed even to get an indictment or lost the case at trial, he was in serious danger of being fired by the president and attorney general. With Mrs. Klein’s reluctant help, he might salvage his tenure as United States Attorney, followed by a lucrative investiture in a major law firm down the line.

  “Do we have a deal, Mr. Sherburne?” asked Candace.

  “Yeah,” he replied resentfully. “Yeah, you got a deal.”

  • • •

  When Candace returned to the condominium after her meeting with Burton, Kramer, and Sherburne, she dreaded the inevitable encounter with Bill. She thought she was doing the right thing. She didn’t know what else to do at this point except tell the truth. But she still felt like a traitor. And she knew Bill could only see it as a personal betrayal. And who could blame him?

  Burton insisted on escorting her back to the condominium building. He became agitated when she refused to allow him to accompany her into the elevator up to the twelfth floor, where their apartment was. He told her he would remain in the lobby until he had heard from her that she was all right in the condo.

  Candace realized that, perhaps oddly, perhaps foolishly, she wasn’t afraid of physical harm. She still could not imagine Bill would hurt her. Even now, with all that had happened and all that she had learned, she could not picture him as the perpetrator of this violence against his own family. She had doubts, to be sure, but they had not coalesced into full-blown suspicion of outright guilt. To be honest to herself, she felt scattered and unsteady, not really sure what she thought any more.

  When she came into the apartment, Bill was standing in the hallway to the bedroom. She had insisted that the United States Attorney’s office immediately inform Andrew Dietrich she would testify. And, of course, she expected Dietrich would pr
omptly contact Bill. Her expectations obviously had been met.

  “Candace,” Bill asked, “how could you ever believe I could do something like this?”

  “I don’t,” Candace replied. “I don’t believe it.”

  Bill looked at her expectantly and waited.

  “But I don’t not believe it anymore either,” she said with defeat. “I just don’t know what to believe. And I’ve learned I can’t trust you. So I have to trust myself and tell the truth. It’s my duty to the law . . . and to myself.”

  Bill said defiantly, “I never lied to you, Candace. I may not have told you everything, but I never lied.”

  She suddenly became aware that he was no longer calling her “Candy.” She tried to remember when this transition had occurred. She sighed. Even though she had come to find the diminutive nickname irritating, she curiously felt a sense of loss with its suspension. It was but one more step along an increasingly long path away from each other.

  In a sad voice she returned, “Keeping secrets is lying, especially in a marriage.”

  Bill shot back: “Then you’re a liar too, Candace.”

  She felt like she had been slapped in the face. And what’s worse, she felt that she deserved it.

  “You’re right. You’re right. But my fingerprint was not found on the murder weapon!”

  Bill stood quietly, looking deflated. “I don’t know how to account for that. I do know how that looks. Maybe, somebody else . . .”

  He was still again for a longer period. Then, in a barely audible whisper, he said, “It wasn’t me.”

  A solitary tear leaked out of Candace’s right eye.

  “Bill, maybe I did lie. I lied to you about the insurance policy by not telling you what I was doing. I lied to you by never speaking up to you about what has been going on between us for too long. By avoiding the difficult truth, by letting things drift along, I wasn’t honest with you or with me. I should have trusted you enough, trusted our marriage enough, to insist we talk about my father and your job with him. I know I’ve lost your confidence as well. Maybe that’s one more reason I have to tell the truth now. I can’t continue with lies, hidden secrets, false impressions, deception.”

  She tasted salt as the lone tear reached her upper lip. “I have to tell the truth now,” she continued. “I don’t know what will happen. Jesus said, ‘The truth shall set you free.’ I have to get free, Bill. I have to tell the truth.”

  “You do know what will happen,” Bill said regretfully, but without any apparent rancor. “The simple fact you’re testifying will destroy me in front of the jury.”

  “That’s not what I intend, Bill,” Candace assured him. “I have no intention of condemning you. But I have to do the right thing. I tried to tell you this before, but you didn’t want to listen. I know I should have pushed harder. As difficult as it is for both of us, I have to do it now. I have to be a faithful witness.”

  “If you really still believed I was innocent, Candace, you wouldn’t testify. You’d keep my confidence. You’d protect my secrets. You wouldn’t let people think I was the murderer of our own child.”

  Candace said nothing. She had no answer.

  Bill peered at her closely with sad eyes. And then he began to move from the hallway toward the door.

  Only as he turned from the hallway did Candace see that a wheeled suitcase was trailing behind him.

  When Bill reached the door, he paused and, without looking back, said, “I’m still free . . . for now . . . and I guess I have you to thank for that. Andy Dietrich has found a cheap place for me to stay until the trial. After the trial, I expect the government will give me another place to stay.”

  And he was gone.

  Candace sank on to the sofa and wiped away the trace on her cheek of that single tear. She had no more to give.

  Chapter 15

  [FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE TRAGEDY]

  On the northeastern bend of central Minneapolis bounded by the Mississippi River, two monumental civic buildings dominate the city landscape—one gargantuan and medieval in character and the other glistening and contemporary in style.

  Occupying an entire city block on the southwest side of South Fourth Street, the Municipal Building is most likely to be called “City Hall” by Minneapolis locals, although it contains offices for both city and county government. The exterior of the building was completed in 1895, on the site of the first schoolhouse west of the Mississippi River.

  This colossal structure was assembled with russet-colored granite blocks, many weighing more than twenty tons. These massive rectangles of stone were quarried in Ortonville near the South Dakota border and carried to Minneapolis by horse-drawn wagons. The Romanesque architecture of arches, columns, and cylindrical spires brings to mind an impenetrable fortress from J.R.R. Tolkien’s realm in Lord of the Rings.

  Ascending over the green copper roof of the Municipal Building is one of the world’s tallest bell towers, displaying a clock face larger than London’s famous “Big Ben” and a minute hand that is fourteen feet in length. The tower also houses fifteen chiming bells, ranging from hundreds to thousands of pounds of cast iron.

  Immediately to the northeast across South Fourth Street rises the United States Courthouse, a sleek, modern skyscraper of steel and glass that was completed in 1997. Federal courtrooms and judges’ chambers are arranged inside the fifteen-story tower, which extends upward from a rectangular six-story block of administrative offices.

  On the east side, the building is an escalating vertical expanse of glass. With a convex framework, narrower at the bottom and curving outward with the rise of each story, the eastern face of the building appears to be slowly toppling toward the Mississippi River a couple blocks away.

  The west side of the courthouse is fronted by an expansive sea of concrete dotted with an archipelago of greenery. Designed to simulate glacial deposits left during the last ice age, the emerald islands form oblong hummocks embedded into the man-made moraine plain.

  Each day for nearly two weeks in mid-October, Candace Klein navigated around the artificial glacial drumlins on her way into the United States Courthouse. The trial of United States v. William Klein unfolded over nine court days in the tenth floor courtroom of United States District Judge Sally Williamson. Although Candace’s personal participation as a witness occupied but part of a single day of the trial, she faithfully attended every court session, from early morning to late afternoon.

  Longtime court observers and self-appointed legal experts from the local law schools proclaimed that the outcome had been assured even before the jury had been seated. Given that these confident prognostications were shared only after the jury verdict had been announced, the percipience of these pundits might be impugned. Still, even Candace—as cheerlessly and intimately familiar with the matter being examined in court as anyone could be—found the proceedings to be peculiarly anticlimactic.

  • • •

  The prosecution began its case with forensic scientists from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who described the timed TNT-fueled explosive that had destroyed the Klein vehicle and killed James Daniel. They explained their findings that, based on the composition of the TNT, the materials used in the device could be traced to a particular manufacturer which had sold the product to a couple dozen construction companies. One of those commercial purchasers of the explosives was Insignia Construction, where William Klein was employed as an engineer and supervisor.

  Lieutenant Ed Burton of the Eden Prairie police department outlined the investigation from his arrival on the scene on the first day to his partner’s eleventh-hour discovery of the tiny fragment of duct tape spewed into the air by the blast of the car bomb and lodged high above in the nearby oak tree. A federal crime lab scientist confirmed that the latent partial fingerprint was a match to Klein.

&nbs
p; George Peterson testified about William Klein’s access to TNT at the construction company, as well as the process for using and logging explosives. Peterson identified Klein on the fast-food restaurant’s security video as one of the persons appearing alone next to the van with the explosives at the construction site.

  • • •

  The most anticipated event, of course, was the appearance by Candace Klein—although the basic contours of her testimony had already been revealed when she had appeared earlier before the grand jury, which then had returned an indictment against William Klein. Without adornment, commentary, or conspicuous emotion, Candace described what she had seen and heard, including what she had learned from her husband.

  Despite clumsy attempts by Assistant United States Attorney Aaron Isaacs to elicit an opinion from Candace as to her husband’s guilt, and aside from the unnecessary objections interposed to such questions by the defense, Candace declined to impart any private impressions. She carefully narrated what had happened factually and described conversations with thoroughness, but did so dispassionately and without personal color.

  Through an arduous exercise of self-control, Candace largely succeeded in draining any feeling from her voice (other than a slight quaver which only she could detect) and wiping any expression from her face. To maintain the necessary grip on herself when she was on the witness stand, she tightened her abdomen so firmly that afterward she felt as though she had done hundreds of crunches at the health club. Carefully hiding her exhaustion until the adjournment by Judge Williamson of that day’s session, Candace went directly home and straight to bed. (But she rose early again the next morning, for her daily pilgrimage to the courthouse for the continuing proceedings.)

  Two of the conversational topics with her husband that Candace related on the witness stand unfolded as both the prosecution and defense had anticipated. The third, which proved to be the most emotionally devastating, had not been expected by either side or by Candace.