"Yes,"
"I assume you were broke when you left prison?"
"You assume right."
"Have you gotten a job yet?"
"No."
"Any savings?"
"No."
"Did someone hire you to blow up Justice Griffen and frame Mrs. Griffen for the murder?"
Deems laughed. "That's nonsense."
"Then how do you explain this?" Reynolds said as he withdrew a sheaf of papers from the envelope and handed them to Charlie Deems. Deems completely lost his cool and his mouth gaped open. He looked at the bank records, then at Reynolds.
"What the hell is this?"
"A bank account at Washington Mutual in your name with a hundred thousand dollars in it."
"I don't know anything about this," Deems shouted.
"I see. Then I have no further questions."
"Any redirect, Mr. Geddes?" Judge Baldwin asked.
"May I have a moment, Your Honor?"
Baldwin nodded and Geddes continued the intense conversation he had been having with Neil Christenson since Matthew Reynolds announced the contents of the manila envelope. After a moment, Geddes stood. He had learned how to look composed in the worst situations from years of courtroom combat and he appeared to be unconcerned about the destruction of his key witness.
"Nothing further," Geddes said. "And the state rests."
"I imagine you have some motions, Mr. Reynolds?" Judge Baldwin said.
"Yes, sir."
"How many witnesses do you have?" the judge asked Matthew.
"Twenty-seven."
"Can you put any of them on this afternoon?"
"I'd prefer to start tomorrow."
"Why don't we take our morning recess now. I'll send the jury home. We can take up your motions after the recess, then take witnesses in the ' morning.
The jurors filed out. As soon as the judge left the bench, Charlie Deems left the witness box. Chuck Geddes and Nell Christenson hustled Deems out of the courtroom and up the stairs to the sixth floor.
"Where did you get that money?" Geddes demanded as soon as they were in his office.
"That's not my account," Deems said.
"It's in your name."
"But I don't know anything about it. That fucker Reynolds set me up."
"And I suppose he took the pictures of the shed, too?"
"I don't know anything about those pictures. There was dynamite in the shed when I was at the cabin."
Geddes swiveled his chair toward the window. The picture of the shed and the bank account were devastating. There had to be an explanation.
He hoped it did not have something to do with being duped by Charlie Deems.
"Wait outside," Geddes told Deems. Deems seemed only too happy to leave the room.
"What the fuck is happening, Neil?" the prosecutor demanded when they were alone.
"Either Deems was paid off to pin Justice Griffen's murder on Abbie Griffen or someone set him up."
"Damn it. Reynolds is making me look like a fool."
"What do you want to do with Deems?"
"Keep him at the farm until we figure out what's going on. If that son of a bitch lied to me, I'll have his balls."
Raoul Otero was staring at the gray roiling clouds and sheets of rain that obscured the view from his penthouse apartment in downtown Portland when Bobby Cruz sat down across from him. Raoul's mood was as black as the weather and the fifth of scotch he'd been working on all afternoon had only stoked his rage.
"You want some?" Otero asked, holding up the bottle.
"No, gracias," Cruz answered politely. Otero was not surprised. Except for violence, Bobby Cruz had novices. "Well?"
"It don' look good, Raoul. Deems testified for the DA."
Otero stared at the Willamette River. No ships were moving on its turbulent waters. It was so dark the cars crossing the Hawthorne Bridge were using their headlights even though it was only four o'clock.
"Why is Charlie doing this? He beat his case. The cops don't have no leverage on him."
"What I think is, he's doin' it to get even with the Griffen woman for putting him on the row."
Raoul nodded in agreement. "That piece of shit was always big on revenge. Remember how happy he was when I let him do Shoe?"
"Yea," Raoul. He could barely contain his joy. Our problem is that Griffen isn't the only one Charlie's mad at."
"How can he be stupid enough to talk to the cops about me?"
Raoul asked incredulously.
"Charlie isn't stupid, but he's mean. He's also loco. Charlie does what Charlii wants to do. That's why I told you not to have no dealings with him in the first place. Remember I said you can't control Charlie, because Charlie is always out of control?"
"And you were right. Jos called from Tijuana while you were at the courthouse. The feds busted the two border guards we had on the payroll. Charlie knew about them, just like he knew about Lee Terrace and the rest area on I-5."
"There's only one thing to do," Cruz said calmly.
Otero knocked down what was left of the scotch in his glass.
He did not like being in this position, but that fuck Deems had put him in it. Killing someone always hurt business, because the cops had to work hard on a murder case. Still, normally the risk was small with someone like Charlie, because the cops wouldn't spend too much time looking into the murder of a dealer who'd offed a kid. But "normally" might not apply anymore. Charlie was on the side of the angels. The cops were going to work overtime if someone took out the key witness in the murder of a Supreme Court justice. But that shit-for-brains, loco son of a bitch gave him no choice.
"Do you know where the cops have Charlie?"
"They're hiding him at a farmhouse. I followed them from the courthouse."
"Can you do it?"
"It won't be easy. He has two cops guarding him."
"You need help?"
Cruz smiled. "No, gracias. I think I will handle this myself."
Raoul nodded. A red mist clouded his eyes. He wanted to smash something. He wanted to smash Charlie Deems. If the situation wasn't desperate, if they had not lost three shipments already, he would wait and personally carve up Charlie Deems like a fucking turkey. But there would be no more shipments until Charlie was dead, so he would have to let Bobby Cruz have the honor.
Neil Christenson arrived home at ten o'clock Monday night, after spending all evening listening to Chuck Geddes scream at Charlie Deems.
Christenson changed into jeans and an OSU sweatshirt, then he settled into his favorite armchair and tried to get into a sitcom his wife, Robin, was watching.
At a commercial, Christenson went into the kitchen to fix himself a Snack and Robin put on some water for tea. It was quiet in the house because the kids were asleep. "Are you okay?" Robin asked.
"I'm just tired, but I'm thankful for a chance to forget about the Griffen case for a few hours."
Robin gave him a sympathetic smile. "Is it that bad?"
"Worse. Geddes has been driving me crazy ever since Reynolds took apart Deems this morning."
Robin put her arms around her husband and gave him a compassionate kiss.
"The trial will be over soon," she said. "Maybe we can get away for a few days."
Christenson held his wife and kissed the top of her head.
"What did you have in mind?"
"I don't know," she answered coyly. "Maybe we could shack up in a motel on the coast for a weekend. Mom can watch the kids."
Christenson froze. "That's it," he muttered to himself.
Robin pulled back and looked at her husband. He was staring into space.
Christenson gave her a tremendous hug and kissed her on the cheek.
"I've got to go," he said.
"What? You just got home."
"It was the receipts, Robin. You're a lifesaver."
"What did I do?"
"You may have won the Griffen case."
Christenson walked back into the living room
and put on his shoes.
"You're not going out?"
"I'm sorry. I have to check something to see if I'm right. If I don't do it now, I won't be able to sleep."
Robin sighed. She had been married to Neil for twelve years and she was used to his odd hours.
As he laced up his shoes, Christenson thought about the afternoon he had watched Tracy Cavanaugh and Barry Frame sift through the state's evidence. He had never figured out what piece of evidence had intrigued Tracy so much that she had felt it necessary to hide it from his view.
Now he thought he knew what she had been looking at. Some of the credit card receipts in the box of evidence from the bottom right drawer in Justice Griffen's den had been from the Overlook Motel. Christenson knew that motel. Three years ago, there had been a murder there and he had visited it during the investigation. The Overlook was a dive.
What was a Supreme Court justice doing there on three occasions? Robin had given him the answer. He was shacking up. But with who? Geddes's guess was Laura Rizzatti, and Christenson was going to see if Geddes was right.
Charlie Deems paced back and forth across his small bedroom on the second floor of the farmhouse. The rain had trapped him inside and he was going stir crazy.
Not even the game shows made this dump bearable anymore. To make matters worse, that asshole Geddes and his flunky Christenson had grilled him all evening.
"Why wasn't there dynamite in the photo of the shed? Where did the money in the bank account come from? Did he kill Justice Griffen and frame Abigail Griffen?" And on and on, over and over again.
Deems was certain he knew what had happened, but he wasn't going to tell Geddes. What he was going to do was take care of this himself. He'd been set up by that bitch Griffen. How else could Reynolds have made a fool out of him? According to Geddes, the whole case was in the toilet and that smirking whore was going to walk. Well, she might walk away from this case, but she was never going to walk away from Charlie Deems.
When he was through with her, Abigail Griffen was going to wish she had been convicted and sentenced to death, because what he had planned for her would make dying seem like a fucking picnic.
Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
"As ," our first witness Matthew said on Tuesday morning, "the defense calls Tracy Cavanaugh."
Tracy could not remember being this nervous since the finals of the NCAA cross-country championships. She knew that she was only a chain-of-custody witness, but being under oath was nerve-racking.
"his. Cavanaugh, what is your profession?"
"I'm an attorney, Mr. Reynolds."
"What is your current position?"
"I'm an attorney in your office."
"Have you assisted me in defending Mrs. Griffen since she retained my firm?"
"Yes, sir."
"On September thirteenth, did I ask you to do something?"
"Yes."
"Please tell the jury what I asked you to do."
"You asked me to go to Mrs. Griffen's home and pick up a Pentax camera and film from her."
"Where was the film?"
"In the camera."
"What did you do with the film?"
"It was late evening when I picked up the camera, so I waited until morning and took it to FotoFast, a commercial developer.
The clerk took the film out of the camera and signed a receipt stating that he had done so. Then I brought you the camera."
Matthew handed Tracy a slip of paper. "Is this the receipt you received from the clerk?"
"Yes, sir."
"Later, did you go to FotoFast to pick up the developed film?"
"Yes. And I had the clerk sign a second statement."
Reynolds picked up the envelope with the photographs and Abbie's camera and walked over to Tracy.
"I am handing you what has been marked as Defense Exhibit 222. Is this the camera you picked up from Mrs. Griffen?"
"Yes," Tracy said after examining the small black Pentax.
"I hand you Defense Exhibit 223. Is this the envelope you picked up from FotoFast?"
"Yes."
"Did you give this envelope to me?"
"Yes."
"Did you review the photographs?"
"No, sir."
"Thank you."
Tracy handed the envelope back to Reynolds. As she did, she noticed that the photographs Matthew had shown to Deems were still on the ledge in the witness box where witnesses place exhibits they are viewing. She picked them up and gave them to Reynolds to put with the other photographs.
Just before Reynolds took the photo of the shed from her, Tracy frowned.
She was certain there was something odd about the picture, but she could not figure out what it was in the brief moment she had to view the photograph.
"Nothing further," Reynolds said as he placed the photographs in the envelope and walked to his seat. "Mr. Geddes?"
Tracy looked at the prosecutor. He was sitting alone this morning and Tracy wondered why Neil Christenson was missing.
"No questions," Geddes said, and Tracy was relieved to return to her seat at counsel table.
"The defense calls Dr. Alexander Shirov," Matthew said.
Tracy wanted to look at the photograph of the shed, but Reynolds had placed the envelope with the pictures under a stack of exhibits by the time she was back at the counsel table.
When Dr. Shirov entered the courtroom, Tracy turned to look at him. She had questioned Reynolds about the identity of his expert and the results of the tests on the metal strips, because she was dying to know what he could possibly do about this seemingly incontrovertible evidence, but Reynolds just smiled and declined to name his witness or discuss the results.
Dr. Shirov walked with a slight limp and carried his notes in both hands. He was tall and heavy, a man in his mid-fifties with a slight paunch, salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard. He looked relaxed when he took the oath and he smiled warmly at the jury when he took his seat in the witness box.
"What is your profession?" Matthew Reynolds asked.
"I'm a professor of chemistry at Reed College in Portland."
"Do you hold any other positions at Reed?"
"Yes. I'm also the director of the nuclear reactor facility."
"What does that job entail?"
"I'm responsible for the maintenance, operation and use of the research reactor and its licensing."
"What is your educational background?"
"I obtained a BS in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. In 1970, I received a doctor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a specialty in the area of nuclear chemistry."
"Do you have any special expertise in the use of neutron activation analysis?"
"I do."
"Would you please explain neutron activation analysis to the jury?"
"Certainly," Dr. Shirov said, turning toward the jury box. His smile was light and easy and his thick glasses magnified the St. Nick's twinkle in his blue eyes. Some of the jurors smiled back.
"If we take a sample of any material and place it in a source of neutronsatomic particlesthe material will absorb the neutrons and become radioactive. There are ninety-two basic elements and fourteen man-made elements. More than fifty of the basic elements emit gamma rays when they become radioactive.
We have instruments that measure how many gamma rays are given off by the material and their specific energy.
"A nuclear reactor is a source of neutrons. If I have material I want to analyze, I place it in the reactor. Once the substance is radioactive it is removed from the reactor and taken to a gamma ray analyzer, a machine that detects gamma rays and measures their energy.
The information obtained from the analyzer is printed on a magnetic disk and stored so we can analyze the data and determine what elements are present and how much of each element is present."
"Dr. Shirov," Matthew said, "if you were asked to compare two items which appeared to come from the same source, what co
uld you tell about their similarities and differences by using neutron activation analysis?"
"I could tell a great deal. You see, materials in nature contain traces of other materials. Sometimes there are large amounts of one material in the other, but other times there may only be a small amount. Neutron activation analysis is a very sensitive technique for determining the amount of minor elements that exist in a particular object.
"For example, if you filled a thimble with arsenic and thoroughly mixed it with four railroad tank cars of water, neutron activation analysis would be able to determine the amount of arsenic in a one-ounce sample of the water.
"Now, getting back to the comparison of our two samples, if the trace elements in the two are greatly different, it is possible to reach a conclusion with a high degree of certainty that they came from different sources.
"On the other hand, if we see no differences between the two samples, we can say that there is no scientific evidence to support an assertion that they are from different sources."
"Dr. Shirov, I'm handing you what has previously been marked as State's Exhibits 36 and 37. Do you recognize them?"
Dr. Shirov took from Reynolds Exhibit 36, the charred and twisted metal strip with the notch that had been part of the bomb that killed Justice Griffen, and Exhibit 37, the clean metal strip with the point that had been found in Abbie's garage.
"You brought these two items to the college this weekend."
"What did I tell you I needed to know?"
"You told me that you wanted to know if the two pieces of steel plate were attached at one time."
"What did you do to find out.")"
"There was no need to irradiate both exhibits in their entirety, so I took samples of each. This presented a small problem. How to cut a sample without contaminating it. Most of the usual ways of cutting steel involve the possibility of contamination. For example, the steel of'a hacksaw blade might transfer elements to the samples that would give off gamma rays when irradiated. I chose a silicon carbide saw because these elements do not give off gamma rays.
"You explained the importance of the two pieces of steel plate, so I took my samples from the middle of one side so as not to affect the end with the tool markings. I placed each exhibit in a vise and made a vee-notch cut that allowed me to obtain two one-hundred-milligram-size samples."
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