Conclusive Evidence

by Al Macy

  “No, it could be one of those wolf spiders. Maybe it’s already bitten us. We’d better go outside before I let go.”

  She’d tied her flaming hair back in a ponytail, exposing the delicate lines of her neck and a soft earlobe decorated with a shamrock earring.

  What the hell. I pulled her hand across my body, and her butt fell squarely into the center of my lap. She yelped with a non-prosecutorial squeal. The maneuver would have been perfectly executed had I not knocked my travel mug onto the floor. No worries; it didn’t leak.

  Finn started to get up. “I don’t think—”

  I held her in place. “No. Whatever you do, don’t get up. The venom will make the blood rush to the wound and you’ll pass out.”

  “If there’s any blood rushing somewhere, it’s not mine.”

  “Oh my God!” I whispered.

  She crossed her arms, staying where she was but twisting to look me in the eye. “Now what?”

  I pointed at her hair, a grimace of horror on my face. “Was it that color before the spider bit you?”

  Shaking her head, she yanked her fingers free, stood, then bent over and picked up my travel mug. I reached for it, but she pulled it away, a twinkle in her eyes. “I think you’ve already had too much caffeine.”

  She dropped into the armchair next to mine. “I swear, Garrett, this is a side of you I haven’t seen since—for a while.”

  I put my fingers on my wrist, as if checking my pulse. “Must be the venom.”

  Of course it wasn’t the imagined venom or the caffeine that was bumping my heart rate. It was suddenly seeing this exotic Miss Ireland as something other than opposing counsel. She wore a fuzzy cashmere sweater that matched her hair and emphasized her curves. When she was on my lap, her wool slacks had accentuated her soft yet firm derriere—she work out?—adding more beats per minute to my palpitations.

  “If you’re done embarrassing us in public, Mr. Goodlove, I’m going to grab a bite at the smokehouse.” She tilted her head toward the restaurant across the street. Her voice and manner revealed nothing but confidence. No hesitancy or sheepish smile. It was as if she’d casually mentioned that her car was blue. But she had a tell: A flush crept up her cheeks. She put her hand to her face.

  “Well, counselor,” I said, “I’ll have to think back to my ethics course. Dating opposing counsel. Hmm.”

  “Dating? Who said anything about dating? Ah, it’s because we” —bunny quotes— “held hands. That it?”

  I looked around with a confused frown. “Someone here was sitting in my lap. I thought it was you.”

  “Yeah, right. Ha ha.”

  “I thank you for your offer, Madam Prosecutor, but unfortunately I have other plans for dinner. Besides, I don’t want people to think that ‘Tickle my ear, and I’ll follow you anywhere’ works with me.”

  Her blush still in place, she said goodbye with a wink and a smile. I watched her through the window as she walked across the street but ducked my head down when she looked back. What was happening? A song ran through my mind, and I rubbed my forehead trying to place it. I hummed it. Ah, Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time.” Right, this was something that hadn’t happened for the longest time.

  * * *

  Louella knocked on the open door to my office and walked in. “Ready for your walk, boy?”

  “You’re not serious.” I was huddled with my laptop by the fire in my office. The ancient radiators were not cutting it on that stormy February day. The rain suddenly rattled against the window panes, and I pointed as if I’d planned that gust in order to make my point. “That’s bad, bad weather out there.”

  “No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.”

  “You’ve been reading the LL Bean catalog again.”

  “Come on, let’s go. It looks much worse from in here. We can get some oysters at Jack’s Seafood. Your treat.”

  Louella is what I call a walk-talker. She likes to walk while discussing things, unlike me. I made one more hopeful gesture toward the warm fire, but she didn’t go for it.

  I put on my Northface jacket, which counted as good clothing for my upper body, but my legs were protected by nothing more than business slacks. “Guess I should have worn my long johns today.”

  Looking at my legs, she shook her head. “Let’s stop by my house.”

  Her coat came down to her ankles. It was thick with a floral pattern on the outside, fur on the inside, and a hood. She pulled the drawstring on her hood, and we walked down The Pink Lady’s steps. That was the nickname for the Victorian building that housed my office.

  “Are you ready to be brought up to speed?” she asked.

  “Brr!”

  “Okay then. I’ve found that both Angelo Romero and Wenzel Rozetti, the crabber, have some connection with a telemarketing company called DialUSA. It’s out in Blue Lake.”

  “Big company?” A gust of rain-filled wind soaked my pants.

  “No, small.”

  “And Rozetti said he didn’t know Angelo, right?”

  “Yes. He’s probably telling the truth. Rozetti was just a lowly employee, like I was for two days.” She filled me in on her temporary job with DialUSA. “But I don’t know what Angelo’s connection was. He definitely didn’t just make phone calls. I think he was involved with their sketchy activities.”

  “Sketchy as in illegal?”

  “Pretty much.” She led me into her house. The place was neat, but the cigarette odor was overpowering. If I were king, I’d make them illegal. She stubbed out her current cancer stick in an ashtray and opened a heavy wood chest in the hall.

  A new smell, the odor of mothballs, made me feel as if we’d just been crop dusted. “Jeez, Louella. No one uses mothballs anymore. I feel like I’m at my grandmother’s house.”

  Without comment she rummaged around and pulled out a thick men’s coat. Wool? It made me think of 1930s mobsters in a Chicago winter. She held it up.

  “Now I know you’re joking,” I said.

  “It was my husband’s. Put it on. Let’s go. Here, put this on, too.” She handed me a yellow oilskin cap.

  “Were you married to Captain Ahab?”

  That got a tiny huff of a laugh from her as she lit up her next cigarette. I needed to get some fresh air, so I humored her, shaking the coat to try to eliminate some of the pesticide odor before putting my arms into the sleeves and shrugging it on.

  Back in the rain, I resumed our conversation. “Sketchy how?”

  “I think the telemarketing part is a front for criminal activity. We know Angelo seemed to be a slimy guy. Not on the up-and-up.”

  “Yeah. I’ve confirmed that with Carly.” I tightened the strap on the sailor hat. “Is it telephone fraud?”

  “Looks like it. I’m still pursuing it.”

  We came to the waterfront and started south on the cement boardwalk. Whitecaps filled the harbor, and no boats were out. The barks of sea lions drifted to us in the gusts, the rain making no difference to them.

  “That’s good,” I said. “If we can show that he was involved in criminal activity, especially organized crime, it will give the jury reasonable doubt as to who killed him.”

  “It’s looking a lot like organized crime. Let me tell you what happened a few nights ago.”

  We had arrived at Jack’s Seafood on the boardwalk. I started for the door, but Louella held me back.

  Despite the hundred-pound coat, I was cold. “Let’s go in, and you can tell me.”

  “Hold on. A few nights ago, I was putting groceries in my car. I was leaning into the trunk when a guy comes out of nowhere. I must be losing my touch; I didn’t see him come up to me. He said, ‘You better start minding your own business, grandma.’”

  “Shit. Louella!”

  “Don’t worry. I spun around and had my gun in his nose before he knew what hit him. I pushed it, and I think I cut a nostril open, then I stepped back. He turned and ran.”

  “You didn’t shoot.”

  “No. I co
uldn’t be sure of a proper backstop. I could have hit someone else.”

  “Once a cop …”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Did you notify the police?”

  She shrugged. “I decided not to. I doubt they could find him, but more importantly, it would tip our hand, right?”

  “Do you think this was related to Angelo?”

  “I hope so.” She led the way into the restaurant, and I followed. “Isn’t it nice when the bad guys tell you you’re on the right track?” That was one way of looking at it.

  The waitress sat us in a booth with a view of the harbor. The family in the neighboring booth moved to a different table. Their kid held his nose.

  “Sorry,” I called out. Louella and her stupid mothballs!

  “Garrett, you be careful with Finn, okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Louella put on her reading glasses and scanned the menu. “She’s sneaky. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw her. And you should know how far you can throw her.”

  “I’m losing the thread here, Lou.”

  She turned the page of the menu, not looking up. “You threw her into your lap, from what I heard, then did some major ogling of her ass. I think I’m going to have the shrimp cocktail.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jen stopped her pacing and stamped the floor so hard I thought she might injure her foot. “Damn it, Garrett, a jury consultant can make all the difference.”

  Jen and I were having our biggest disagreement yet. I sat in a maroon leather Queen Anne chair in her office, while she stomped around.

  “It works, maybe,” I said, “but at what cost?”

  “You’re worried about the cost? How much is your sister’s freedom worth to you?”

  I leaned forward, my muscles tensing. “That’s not a fair question. We have a limited amount we can spend. We’ve already blown through the rainy day fund. Carly is borrowing, and I’ve put a second mortgage on my house. I’ve had to pay top dollar for expert witnesses that Finn won’t tear apart: DNA, ocean current, eyewitness reliability—”

  “At least talk to the consultant.”

  “How much does she charge?”

  Jen dropped into the chair behind her desk and mumbled something.

  “Speak up.”

  “A hundred thousand.”

  “What would we get for that?”

  She pulled a pen from the jar and started tapping it on her blotter. “The basic juror ranking, and one mock trial. And a shadow jury.”

  The consultant would put together a test jury, like a focus group, and we could test our arguments, ask them if they were convincing. Then she’d put together a shadow jury that had a similar makeup to the one seated, and we could get their feedback along the way.

  “Right. I’ve used consultants in the past, and I haven’t been impressed.”

  “Yeah, well things are different now.” She leaned back in her chair and put her stockinged feet on the desk.

  “How?”

  “Two words: ‘social’ and ‘media.’”

  I opened my mouth then closed it. She was right. There was, in reality, no such thing as privacy in this modern world, and most people’s beliefs and biases could be uncovered with a few clicks.

  Jen saw her opening. “Let me show you the presentation video.”

  I got up and stood behind her as she brought up A3 Consulting’s website.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The video started with a slick logo, a professional drawing of two huge hands pulling jurors out of the jury box by the scruffs of their necks.

  I laughed. “Nice image.”

  Next, the firm’s head, Lana Thomas, stood in a courtroom, her arms crossed. She struck me as ultraserious and perhaps a little arrogant.

  “Trials can be won or lost even before the opening statements,” she said. “Our AI analysis of prospective jurors ranks them on a multidimensional matrix that is frighteningly accurate when it comes to predicting their reaction to your well-crafted arguments. With our mock trials, you can try out your narrative, improving your arguments and your communication based on the responses of the shadow jury. In litigation, the best narrative wins. The shadow juries can give you feedback along the way and allow you to make midcourse corrections.”

  We finished the smooth presentation, and Jen looked up at me.

  I leaned on her desk. “She’s good, I admit that.”

  “But?”

  “But I don’t agree that the best narrative wins. I give the jurors credit for deciding based on the facts, and if we present them well, we have a chance.”

  “You used to say that whichever lawyer they like better wins.”

  I bobbled my head side to side. “Well, that’s important, too. And that’s different from narrative, of course. Number one, facts. Number two, likability—we have to be more likable than Finn, which won’t be easy. A distant third is the narrative, the story we tell about how the facts string together.” I gestured to her computer screen. “That consultant doesn’t come off as very likable, by the way. Sure, the hundred K might give us a ten percent advantage, or it may not help at all.”

  She leaned back and took a deep breath. “Okay. You may be right.”

  I raised my eyebrows and made a rolling gesture with my hand.

  “What?” She smiled. “Sir?”

  “As …”

  She frowned and cocked her head.

  “As usual,” I said.

  She gave a laugh that lit up her face. “Very funny.”

  I gave her my hand and pulled her up into a hug. What prompted that? “Jen, I appreciate that you care so much, as if Carly were your sister, too. It’ll be fine. We’re going to win this thing.” Do I really believe that?

  * * *

  I needed a break from lawyering and decided to play private detective for a day. Why should Louella have all the fun? I checked with her to make sure we weren’t duplicating effort and then headed out to find out more about Angelo’s supposed tattoo.

  Carly had said that he was anti-tattoo, and she definitely hadn’t seen one on the back of his neck. But they’d been separated for a year before he died. I checked with some bartenders, and two confirmed that they’d seen the tattoo. Angelo was showing it off to everyone, apparently.

  I was astounded to find nine tattoo parlors in Redwood Point, and when I visited them, I was even more shocked at some of the things people had permanently inked onto their bodies. Each shop had a wall of photos. The most surprising was a woman’s arm tattooed with a naked girl being explicitly fondled by a skeleton in a black cloak. Another had a stamp image on her breast: USDA Inspected for Wholesomeness. The photo also revealed the breast implant scar, but I wasn’t judging.

  There were a lot of designs with nautical themes: orcas, jellyfish, dolphins, squids, and Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. No sharks.

  The fifth shop I visited looked like a cross between a barbershop and a hospital room, with gurneys instead of barber chairs. The walls were bloodred, the floor had a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, and the lights were dim.

  I spoke to a muscular woman with half her body, the right half, filled with ink. “Have you done any shark tattoos here?”

  “I don’t work here, friend.”

  A biker type came out of the back, drying his hands on a paper towel. “How can I help you?”

  “I’d like to find out whether you’ve done any shark tattoos recently.”

  “Hey, I don’t rat out anybody, man. You a cop?”

  I should have left this to Louella. I smiled. “There’s no ratting out involved, I promise you. I’m trying to find out what happened to someone. He had a new tattoo on the back of his neck. A shark with blood around it.” The tattoo information hadn’t gotten out into the news. I slipped him a twenty.

  “What’s this for?”

  “For your time.”

  “Nah. Keep it. Let me check with my partner. He did some
fish thing.” The biker guy went into the back and returned in less than a minute. “Nah, he did a pair of moray eels on a guy’s butt. They were coming out of a hole, if you get my drift.” He gave a hearty laugh, and the muscle woman joined in.

  “So, no sharks?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, thanks. Let me know if you hear about any shark tattoos.” I left my card and dropped the twenty into the tip jar on my way out.

  I checked every other parlor in town, although two had gone out of business. No luck. Back at the office, Jen suggested that maybe he went out of town to get it done.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Beats me, but if you want to be thorough …”

  “You’re suggesting a road trip?”

  She kept her deadpan expression but jiggled her eyebrows. “Overnight stay?”

  “If you think you can keep your hands off me.”

  She scoffed a little harder than I would have liked. We started Googling tattoo parlors in Redding. The phone rang.

  I answered. “Goodlove and Shek.”

  “Hey, man. That shark tattoo. I found out who did it.”

  Angelo had had it done at one of the parlors that had recently shut its doors. Jen and I went to the home of the woman who’d done the artwork, a short twenty-something with a buzz cut.

  “Yeah, I remember him.” She stood in her doorway and didn’t invite us in. “He said he didn’t care what the design was, he just wanted it to be recognizable.”

  “What do you think he meant?” I asked.

  “How the hell should I know? All I know is that he said he didn’t want some abstract shit. I said, ‘How about a tiger or a lion?’ He’s like, ‘How about a shark?’ And that’s what I did. By the way, the police called me right after the guy was croaked. Someone told them he had a tattoo, and they called all the parlors.”

  “And when did he get the tattoo?”

  “I remember because it was my birthday. November twenty-second.”

  Just a week and a half before he died.

  * * *

  Hiking in the redwoods, Carly and I took a lunch break. We climbed onto a log the size of a semitruck and pulled out Subway sandwiches and beer.