by Paul Levine
Charlie Riggs paused to relight his pipe, an academic's trick of buying time. "For a human being, there are far too many events and no way to record them objectively. Even with the weather, Jake, you would need to know everything, the size and location of every cloud, the measurement of every bird's flight, the beat of every butterfly's wings."
"Butterflies, too?"
"The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can set olf a tornado in Texas."
"Metaphorically speaking," I said.
"No. Literally. It's part of the basis for the new science called chaos."
"Butterflies and chaos?" I said doubtfully. "An infinitesimal action radically affects mammoth events."
Charlie Riggs smiled, the teacher happy when a slow student catches on. "That's right. Just like the poem:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
And so on."
"I remember," I told him. "The battle and then the kingdom. All lost."
"Indeed."
I looked out at the rainswept street. "Then I'd better find the damn nail."
Except for the spotlights and the gentle roar of the waterfall, the Corrigan house was dark and silent on its hill. The rain had stopped just east of the Turnpike. In Gables Estates, not a drop had fallen. We jogged around the lighted path to the cabana. The screen door was unlocked, lights on inside, but no Susan. I walked into the small bedroom. Pale blue shorts and a faded Northwestern T-shirt had been flung onto an unmade bed, running shoes and socks tossed into a corner. In the galley kitchen, the oven was on four-fifty, a frozen vegetable platter was defrosting on the counter. An open can of Diet Pepsi sat on the counter. Half-empty and still cool to the touch.
We hurried onto the patio. The Cory was tied to the dock, lines tight, cabins dark. The pool lights were on, blue water shimmering in the night air.
The pool.
I don't know why I ran. 1 don't know what I felt. I don't know how I knew, but I knew.
Susan Corrigan was floating near the far end, facedown, wearing a black racing suit. I ran along the side and dived in. The taste of salt water filled my mouth. In three strokes I was beside her. With one hand, I grabbed a shoulder and turned her over. In the eerie light reflected from the water, her face was an unearthly blue, her features plastic. Her eyes were open but lifeless.
I carried her up the steps, her head slumped limply on my shoulder. A thin layer of white foam covered her lips. I gently set her down on the pool deck, Charlie helping with his hands under her back. I tore off the goggles, and my left hand lifted her neck to clear the air passage. My right hand pinched her nostrils to keep the air from escaping. Then I took a deep breath and sealed my mouth over hers. I blew hard, emptying my lungs, filling hers. Several short bursts, then one breath every five seconds. I looked for signs of life and saw none. Her breathing might have been stopped for two minutes or two hours. I couldn't tell.
Charlie knelt alongside me, letting me know with his silence that I was doing the right thing. My movements were automatic. Acting without thinking, doing what could be done. A volcanic mixture of anger and desperation fueled me. "Don't die!" I shouted at her. "Don't you die on me."
I covered her cold lips again with my mouth. I blew into her mouth again and again, trying to infuse her with oxygen, to give her some of my life. I leaned my ear to her lips.
Nothing.
I tried to find a pulse.
Nothing.
I sat on my haunches, placed one hand on her chest, just above the sternum, and pushed down hard with the other hand, trying to kick-start the heart. I kept pushing, up-down, up-down.
Nothing.
My heart was hammering. Hers was still. I paused long enough to choke back the helplessness that rose inside me. Charlie had run inside the cabana to call Fire-Rescue. I prayed for any sign of life, for a spark I could light. Still nothing. I went back to the mouth-to-mouth but it didn't work, so again I worked on the chest. I pushed harder and two ribs cracked under my hands. It didn't matter. Dead women feel no pain.
When we both knew it was over, Charlie Riggs put an arm around me and guided me to a chaise lounge. He brought two blankets from the cabana, covered Susan with one and me with the other. A numbness hit me, nailing me to the spot.
My body unable to move, the mind took over, rocketing past a hundred scenes, a thousand regrets. I had never told her what she meant to me. Why hadn't I just said that I'd never met anyone like her, a woman who was smart and sassy and strong and who thought she loved me. And died thinking I was a macho jerk. Thinking right. Dying because of me.
The numbness turned to pain.
She had been right about everything and died without knowing it. She had fretted for me, big dumb lucky stiff me who goes into the swamp and comes out wet but whole. I could have told her how much I cared, could have looked into those dark eyes and said, "Susan Corrigan, I love you and cherish you and want to be with you, now and always." But I'd held it back. And now she would never know. A step too slow, Jake Lassiter, then and now.
Charlie Riggs found a switch and turned on a set of mercury vapor lamps. The patio was doused with a ghastly green light. He called Fire-Rescue again, this time canceling the ambulance, and asking for the police. While we waited, Charlie scoured the pool deck. He found her thick-lensed glasses on a table, neatly folded, waiting for her return. Those silly glasses. I turned them over in my hands, fondled them. Charlie started to say something about fingerprints, then backed away.
"I'll look around for evidence," he said. "You stay put."
Charlie examined a pink beach towel draped over a chair. He looked in the shrubs; he crawled on hands and knees around a fifty-yard perimeter; he reached into the skimmer of the pool and came up with a handful of dead leaves; and he sniffed and tasted the water from the pool.
I watched him, letting the sorrow build inside me. When two uniformed Coral Gables policemen arrived, Charlie Riggs gave them a step-by-step description, the time we arrived, our efforts to revive her, his inspection of the scene. I sat, still wet, still holding the glasses. Beginning to shiver.
"Is the ME sending someone?" Charlie asked.
The sergeant shook his head. "No sign of foul play. We try not to drag 'em out to the scene unless it's an apparent homicide."
"She didn't drown!" I heard myself shout across the patio. "She could swim the English Channel. I want an autopsy done, but only by Doc Riggs."
The sergeant looked at me, then asked his partner to check out the house. The younger cop shrugged and walked slowly toward the darkened fortress. No hurry, just a routine job, a drowning in a pool.
The sergeant sat down on the end of my chaise lounge. It creaked under his weight. He had a sunken chest, a beer belly, and was close to retirement. Coral Gables cops aren't the hard guys you find downtown. In the Gables, cops fish too many cats out of trees to get that cold-eyed look. Expensive cats and expensive trees.
The sergeant patted my leg through the blanket. "We take the body to the morgue. We gotta do that under section four-oh-six-point-one-one."
Charlie Riggs nodded. "Subsection one-ay-one. Then the ME determines whether to do the autopsy."
The sergeant looked back at me. "I've known Doc Riggs for twenty years, and we won't write it up, but if you want, why don't we let him have a quick look right here?"
My eyes pleaded with Charlie, and he said okay. The sergeant held a three-foot Kel-Lite and Charlie examined the body. He cupped his hands on her head, felt her skull and neck. He checked underneath her fingernails. He looked at her legs and arms.
The younger cop headed back to the patrol car to call in. The sergeant lit a cigarette and walked toward the dock to admire the Cory, maybe comparing it to a seventeen-foot Whaler he'd like to share with three other cops.
"Jake, I'm going to have to take off her swimsuit," Charlie Riggs said. I nodded and walked away.
Aft
er a few minutes, I heard him say, "No stab wounds, no bullet holes, no apparent loss of blood. No contusions or marks of any kind. No injection punctures. Not even an indication of a struggle."
The sergeant had come back from the dock. "A drowning, Doc. Just a drowning."
I turned around. "Charlie, please keep looking."
The other cop returned from the patrol car and told the sergeant they had to check out a ringing burglar alarm on Old Cutler Road.
"If it's the old Spanish house at seventy-three hundred, there's no hurry," the sergeant said. "Goes off every time the humidity's up, which is every week." In a few minutes, they would be roaming the suburbs, pulling over cars with missing taillights. Susan Corrigan would be just another statistic. Accidental death by drowning. Happens all the time.
The minutes dragged by. I watched the big house and concocted a vicious fantasy to vent my rage. Breaking down a door. Looking for them, the widow and the karate thug. Hurting them, killing them. Nice and slow.
Charlie motioned to me. "Jake, come here a second. My old eyes are failing."
The flashlight was shining on Susan's left shoulder. "Do you see any discoloration there?" he asked.
I shook my head wearily. "Maybe a faint pink. Maybe just skin color under the tan. Hard to tell."
"Hmmm," Charlie Riggs mumbled. He went into the cabana and came out with a plastic sandwich bag. Then, with a pocket knife, he cut a little square of skin from the shoulder and put it in the bag. Deep inside me, I felt every tiny slash.
"Jake, how about here on the leg?"
Same thing. A little pinkness, nothing more. I shrugged helplessly, and Charlie did some more slicing.
At the edge of the pool, the water rippled and slid under the lights. I remembered the breeze from the Gulf slapping palm fronds against Granny's little house, the sweetness of Susan under the quilt. I wanted a second chance, to tell her lat had stayed locked inside me. I stood and stared into the pool, motionless.
Charlie Riggs came over and gave me a fatherly hug. Then he looked down at the pool. "Salt water. You don't see many saltwater pools these days."
23
VOIR DIRE
"Mrs. Goldfarb, do you believe that old expression, where there's smoke, there's fire?"
Reba Goldfarb eyed me suspiciously from her perch in the front row of the jury box. She hadn't gotten settled yet, was still patting her ice-blue hair, locking it into a 1950s pompadour. She looked toward the judge for help, shrugged, and said, "Maybe there's fire, maybe just a teapot blowing its lid."
"Exactly," I said. "Things are not always as they seem. And just because Dr. Roger Salisbury is charged by the state with a crime doesn't mean he's guilty, does it?"
"Goodness no," she agreed, smiling, picking up the rhythm.
"And this indictment," I said, holding the blue-bordered document at arm's length as if it smelled of rotten eggs, "this piece of paper, this scrap, is not proof of guilt, has no more dignity than a grocery list-"
"Objection!" Abe Socolow was on his feet.
"Sustained," Judge Crane declared without emotion. "This is voir dire, not argument, Mr. Lassiter."
During trial I will argue over Good morning.
"Your Honor, I'll rephrase the question. Mrs. Goldfarb, do you recognize that Roger Salisbury, as he sits here today, is as innocent as a newborn child?"
Ignoring the concept of original sin.
She nodded.
"That he is cloaked with a presumption of innocence, that he does not have to prove anything, that the burden of proving his guilt is on the government?"
"I heard that before," she conceded, nodding again. She had seen enough television to know this stuff. My kind of juror, willing to believe that intrigue and incompetence frequently nail the wrong guy.
I liked her. Roger Salisbury liked her. She visited doctors regularly, an internist, a podiatrist, a chiropractor, and a dentist. She was Jewish, and defense lawyers from Clarence Darrow on down liked that. An old saw. Put Mediterranean types on your jury if you're defending. Jews and Italians are more sympathetic. Minorities, too. Blacks are suspicious of the police and will cut you a break in a close case. Hispanics used to fall into that group, but in these parts, they're the majority and may have lost the feel for the underdog. Keep
Germans, Poles, and Swedes off the panel. Too harsh and rigid.
Anyway, that's what the book says. But nearly every defense lawyer shakes his head over a black social worker or schoolteacher who ended up leading the posse for the state. And nearly every prosecutor remembers a Teutonic male who probably once wore a Luger but carried the banner for the defense in the jury room. Go figure.
I needed Reba Goldfarb. I had lost Deborah Grossman, Dominick Russo, and Philip Freidin. All three had said that they wouldn't vote for the death penalty under any circumstances. Socolow challenged them for cause, saving his precious peremptory challenges while I spent seven of mine getting rid of guys who had blood in their eyes.
It isn't fair. Talking about the penalty phase of the case before the trial begins. Mocking the presumption of innocence. But it's legal.
"Are you in favor of capital punishment?" Abe Socolow now asked Earl Pottenger, an airline mechanic.
"Yes sir!"
Hoo boy. This guy's ready to pull the switch. Ayatollah Pottenger. Socolow smiled and moved on to a heavyset black woman.
"Mrs. Dickson, if you find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and if the state convinces you that the crime is sufficiently heinous, could you recommend to Judge Crane that he impose the death penalty?"
"Ah don't rightly know," Clara Dickson said, squinting up at him.
"Do you have moral or religious objections to the death penalty?"
"It's against the preachin' ah believe in."
"Challenge for cause," Socolow said.
"Granted," Judge Crane ruled.
I stood. "Objection, Your Honor. Dr. Salisbury is being deprived of a jury of his peers. We won't have a cross section of the populace if the state systematically excludes those with moral or religious objections to the death penalty."
"Denied. The Supreme Court ruled on this in the Witt case. The state is entitled to a death-qualified jury."
I shot back. "What's Roger Salisbury entitled to, just death?"
Oh, that was dumb. Judge Crane's long, sad face sharpened and he motioned me to the bench with a tiny wave of his gavel. Socolow slid silently behind me, his invisible smile a knife in my back.
"Mr. Lassiter, I don't make the rules, I just apply them," the judge said. "Now, one more remark like that in the jury's presence and I'll hold you in contempt. Verste?"
"Understood, Your Honor."
We would have a bloodthirsty, gung-ho, hang-em-high jury because the law allowed it. But I wasn't doing Roger Salisbury any good whining about it. I would just try to keep some people on the panel who neither belonged to the National Rifle Association nor folded their bodies into tight balls when I asked my questions.
So here I was, bobbing and weaving, trying to seat twelve honest men and women without itchy trigger fingers. Not that I wanted to be picking a jury. I didn't want to be doing anything except feeling sorry for myself. The three weeks since her death had been a blur. Preparing for trial, arguing with Socolow, waiting for some word about Susan from Charlie Riggs. At night, when sleep came, it was filled with dreams. An expanse of water, iridescent blue, a calm seductive lagoon. But when I dived in, the water thickened into a gelatinous muck and 1 sank to the bottom, gasping for air. Anonymous hands rescued me and dragged me to the beach where a laughing Roger Salisbury bent over me, giant syringe in hand.
Waking at dawn, I drifted uneasily toward consciousness, vaguely aware of an undefined pain. As my eyes focused on the light, the pain took shape, a vision of Susan Corrigan. Pretty and smart and tough. And dead.
Charlie Riggs had pulled some strings, and the ME's office performed an autopsy. Salt water in the lungs. A pinkish foam in the airway. Absolute p
roof, Charlie said, that Susan was alive when she stepped into the pool. If she'd been killed and dumped there, the lungs wouldn't produce the foam. Death by drowning on the certificate. Nothing to dispute it.
It was murder, I told Abe Socolow. He didn't buy it, asked for proof. I told him about the cabana break-in, the theft of the drug, the widow clamoring for the videotape. Proof, he reminded me, consisted of witnesses and physical evidence. Then I told him of my run-in with Sergio and his pal with the baseball bat.
He laughed. "Ambush at Shark Valley. Sell it to Hollywood."
"Your star witness set me up."
"Not the way I heard it," Socolow said, poking a finger at me. "She says you tried to extort her. If she testifies, you play the tape. She doesn't testify, you give her the tape.
Gonna get your balls whacked, Jake, you don't watch out. Could bust you for obstruction right now."
But he wouldn't. Because I was his buddy, he said. He wanted a copy of the tape. Fine with me, I told him, because it's defense exhibit number one.
He laughed again. "What's its relevance, that Melanie Corrigan is a sword swallower?"
"Pure impeachment. Lying under oath. On deposition, she denied the affair with Roger."
He wasn't impressed. "Nice try. She denied banging the doc after her marriage to Corrigan. The videotape was premarriage, so no lie on deposition, no impeachment. I'm filing a motion in limine to keep it out."
Judge Crane reserved ruling on the motion. Said he wanted to see the videotape. A couple of times. So did the clerk, the bailiffs, the probation officers, and everybody else within ten blocks of the Justice Building.
Without the tape, what would I have? Charlie Riggs saying that Corrigan died of an aneurysm, not succinylcholine. But no suspect to feed to the jury in place of Roger Salisbury. It would come down to a swearing match, beautiful widow versus spurned lover. Who said what to whom? Where did the drug come from? Who did what in Philip Corrigan's hospital room? Would the jurors even listen to Charlie Rigg's technical explanation of a bursting aorta? Probably not. Not with a black valise, two hypodermics, and a deadly drug staring them in the face.
