by David Staats
Walking up the aisle to leave when the presentation was over, Dure’s attention was absorbed by the movements of the feet of the people ahead of him. He reached the top of the incline and were near to the exit. “Walter!” called a male voice. It was Raymond Easey.
“Raymond.” Dure gave him a bland acknowledgment.
“Too bad about your being out of the health club case,” said Easey. “We’ll miss you at trial.”
The interests of Easey’s client and Dure’s former clients were not strictly adverse, so Easey’s comments might have been sincere. Dure sighed. “If you win your case, my former clients also win,” he said. “So, good luck.”
Easey nodded and they parted.
Outside, Dure paused at the top of the steps, perhaps uncertain as to where to go or what to do, and for a time observed the people exiting the Science Center. He skipped down the steps, crossed the street, and walked up Church Street, slowly, because his mind was not on his walking. He was reviewing the people and things he had just seen at the Science Center. The encounter with Easey had brought the death of Richard Hargrave back to mind. This annoyed him. The case was over as far as he was concerned. As he ambled up Church Street, the fading twilight of the late summer evening gave him a sense of privacy and anonymity. He held his arms behind his back, grasping one wrist with the other hand, strolling along as if he were the stereotypical absent-minded professor pondering a problem in physics. Of a sudden he brought his arms forward, over his head, and swung them down in front of him, as a way of chasing from his mind the ugly image from the photograph of Hargrave’s corpse in the sauna. He put his hands in his pockets and continued to saunter up the slight incline of Church Street, towards his office.
Streetlights flickered on, although due to budget shortfalls, only every other light was lit. Long stretches of near total darkness separated uncertain circles of light dappled with the shadows from mature trees. Now and then an incredibly loud cicada shrilled. As he was passing a house, from the front porch of which came a soft murmur of conversation, he stopped dead, and withdrawing his right hand from his pocket snapped his fingers. “The candle!” he exclaimed.
A soft “shhhh!” came from the porch and the murmuring stopped.
He had just seen a candle extinguished at the science show. A candle is a metaphor for life. He remembered a line from some trashy novel he had once read: “And the candle by which she had been reading that book that is filled with anxiety, deceit, sorrow, and evil, flared up with a brighter flame than ever before, lighted up everything for her that had previously been in darkness, flickered, dimmed, and went out forever.” A life can be extinguished the same way a candle can.
Dure turned on his heel and began to walk back towards the campus, briskly now. The library would still be open. Having gone some forty paces, he stopped, spun on his heel, and began walking to his office again. The internet would be easier and quicker than the library. As he passed the house in front of which he had snapped his fingers, murmuring stopped again.
Once in his office, he got on the internet and quickly found the following information: Nitrogen is 78% of the atmosphere. It is invisible and odorless. It is not poisonous. Although nitrogen is not poisonous, it is dangerous in an enclosed space because a person breathing only nitrogen would become unconscious from lack of oxygen in a matter of seconds, just as an atmosphere of pure nitrogen would snuff out a candle. Once unconscious, a person continuing to breath pure nitrogen would die in a matter of minutes.
To confirm his suspicion, he did some more research and some calculations. When nitrogen gas is super-cooled to minus 320 degrees, it condenses into a liquid. When liquid nitrogen warms up and changes back into gas form, it expands at a ratio of 1:695 at room temperature. The champagne bucket found in the sauna had a capacity of just over six quarts. Six quarts of liquid nitrogen would expand to 4170 quarts of nitrogen gas. At the temperature of a sauna, 190 degrees, it would quickly expand to an even larger volume.
He got up from his desk and went to the file room. He brought back two large redwells from the file on the case and dug through them until he found the dimensions of the sauna. Multiplying these out and rounding, he found that the volume of the sauna was approximately 161,000 cubic inches. Next, he compared 4170 quarts to 161,000 cubic inches. Using conversion factors he found on the internet, he found that 4170 quarts was 139 cubic feet; and 161,000 cubic inches was 93 cubic feet. Six quarts of liquid nitrogen was more than enough to completely fill the small sauna. It was in fact about 50% overkill. This implied that really only four quarts of liquid nitrogen would have been necessary to kill Richard Hargrave in that sauna.
Dure leaned back in his chair and surveyed the swamp of papers he had spread out over his desk. If he had now figured out how the murder was done, he still did not know who had done it. But wait! Why had the medical examiner given his opinion that Hargrave had died from a heart attack? After another fifteen minutes on the internet, Dure had his answer: suffocation by nitrogen mimics the indicia of a heart attack. It is almost impossible to diagnose postmortem without environmental clues of nitrogen gas in the surroundings where the victim died.
Big deal. He felt satisfaction in having solved a puzzle, but he was out of the case. If MacCreedy didn’t want his help, let her eat cake. He put the file back together, put it back in its file cabinet, and drove home. But the case would not leave him alone. It was as if his mind, feeling euphoric at having solved one difficult puzzle, craved more of the same effect, like a crossword fanatic craving the next puzzle. Who, among those present on that Friday in the health club, had had access to liquid nitrogen? It was obviously available from the science labs at the university. Mortimer Golden worked at the university Technology Licensing Office – which was right across the street from the science center – as did Hargrave himself. Incredibly, the problem of murder or suicide resurfaced. Could Golden have murdered Hargrave – to get promoted? – or did Hargrave commit suicide in a fiendishly clever manner? But a chance at promotion seemed too slender a motive; and he was convinced that Hargrave’s mental state had been inconsistent with suicide. The pesky case had managed in only a few minutes to convert his euphoria at having solved a difficult puzzle into the frustration of another mystery. Finally, to clear his mind, he put on one of his favorites, the Cavatina from Opus 130. Then he listened to some Bach. He went to bed in a somber mood.
Chapter 16. MacCreedy puts Dure in a tight corner
Now and again as he went about his other work, Dure would wonder what was happening with the health club case. It was like the ghost limb that amputees often feel after their real arm is gone. It struck him as odd that no lawyer had called him to ask for the file. However, it was no longer a matter he was entitled to be concerned about. Fortunately, he now had time to get caught up on billing and on some other cases.
Two days before trial was to begin, about three in the afternoon, Elizabeth MacCreedy came into the office without an appointment. When Kara informed him, Dure sighed heavily, but agreed to see her.
Before even sitting down she began. “I apologize for what I said. I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please take me back.”
“Trial starts in forty hours,” said Dure.
“Please.”
He showed no sign of gloating or vindication, but stared at his desktop with a glum expression. “You needn’t plead. I don’t really see that I have a choice. You can’t go to trial without a lawyer. But I’m mad, and I want you to know that you have hurt your chances. I cannot make up the preparation I would have done over the past weeks. And I’m mad because I hate to lose a case, hate it.” His lips were compressed and his hazel eyes blazed. He called Kara in and dictated a new retainer agreement that spelled out clearly MacCreedy’s responsibility for the mess her case was in. Efficient Kara brought the typed version back in six minutes. As soon as MacCreedy signed it, Dure said, “Go away. I have work to do.”
After she left, Dure made a series of notes on his legal pad. By a conservati
ve estimate, he had some fifty to sixty hours of work to do, and if he skipped all meals and all sleep, forty hours to do it in. But he could not skip all meals and all sleep and still turn in a creditable performance on the opening day of trial. Moreover, he did not yet have sufficient evidence to prove the version of events which he was convinced had actually occurred. However, he did have a trial strategy: he would do nothing to oppose Fidelicity’s suicide theory, and depending on how the evidence developed, might even support it, because a verdict of suicide would win the case for his client. At the same time, he would keep an eye out for an opportunity to expose the murder and the murderer.
Any reasonable lawyer would have found Dure’s stern words to Ms. MacCreedy more than justified, and would not fault Dure if he lost the case. But losing would not be a satisfactory outcome to Dure. With grim determination he took up his phone and tapped the icon next to one of the names in his contacts list.
* * *
I had just gotten started. I had found a good place at an empty table in the library reading room; I had spread out my notebook, my writing tablet and my casebook, and was just beginning to read my Evidence assignment. I had set my phone on vibrate, and it began to do so, making a buzzing noise against the top of the table. Caller ID said “Law Office of Wa.” I wasn’t going to take any calls, but then the thought occurred to me that it could be Mr. Dure’s office calling. Maybe I had forgotten something. I decided to take the call.
“Christine? Walter Dure here.”
“Mr. Dure!” I whispered. “Just a minute.” As I was limping my way out to the lobby I whispered into the phone. “I’m in the library and can’t talk, but I’m on my way out. Just a minute.” … “Hello, Mr. Dure,” I said once I was through the door.
“Ms. MacCreedy has re-hired me, at the last minute. I could not turn her down because she would have lost her case essentially by default – she could not find another lawyer to represent her. But it means that I’m in the soup, having to go to trial on inadequate preparation. I could use some help and am prepared to pay you well, double what I paid you over the summer. Can you cut classes and come up to Canterbury for the trial, be here tomorrow?”
“Oh, wow!” I said. “I think I’d really like to … but, I don’t know ….”
“Look, here’s the reality of law school. After the first year, the second and third years are anti-climactic. It’s just a slog. And it doesn’t matter, per se, whether you go to class, because the final exam is all that counts for your grade. I suggest you’ll get more of an education working on this trial than you will by sitting through those classes. In fact, I knew of students who attended hardly any classes, made lots of money working for firms downtown, and then crammed at the end of the semester using commercial outlines. Never even opened their casebook and got good grades.”
I thought, those must have been the smart kids and I was not sure that I was smart enough to do that. “Did you do that?” I asked him.
“No, no I didn’t. But I think if I had known then what I know now, I would have. So I am offering you the wisdom of my experience. I’m not suggesting you cut all your classes. You’ll probably miss no more than eight days of school, counting tomorrow as a day of preparation. My guess is the trial will last four or five days, and obviously a weekend will intervene. And if you talk to practicing lawyers, you’ll find that’s it’s getting harder and harder to get actual trial experience. Trials are so expensive that nearly every cases settles. Judges and clients want cases to settle. I know ‘trial lawyers’ who haven’t tried a case to verdict in ten years. So, if I may say so, this is a real opportunity for you.”
It sounded good. The money sounded good. I thought I had identified among my classmates some who had a kind of aggressiveness that I kind of envied, the ones who seemed like they were natural-born lawyers and who would do something like go to work downtown and cut most of their classes and then ace their exams anyway. And I wished I could be like that. I didn’t think I ever could be, but here was a chance … “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. See you tomorrow morning.”
“Okay …” I said.
“And Ms. Bonneville … thank you.”
* * *
I got back to Canterbury late on the night of the same day that Mr. Dure had called me. The next morning was a Wednesday. The weather was cool for early September and threatened rain. I got to Mr. Dure’s office at eight o’clock, just at the same time as Kara. It was nice to see her again. She held the door for me and said the same thing to me. “Christine! It’s nice to see you again.”
Mr. Dure must have heard us, because he came out into the reception area before we had even got to our desks.
“Come on into my office,” he said. He seemed impatient and there was a kind of jumpiness or hyper state about him which I hadn’t see before. Kara winked at me (he couldn’t see it, because she was bending down to put her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk) and said, “We’ll be right there, Walter.” He turned and went back to his office.
When the three of us had assembled in his office, he gave us instructions. He spoke rapidly, with excitement in his voice. “We’ve got twenty-six hours ‘til trial starts, and we’ve got lots to do. We need an original and four copies of all exhibits. They have to be marked and listed in a table of contents. Let’s hope the copy machine doesn’t break down.
“We’re going to do okay. We’re in a really strange situation.” He laughed as he said it. “For us, a finding of homicide will be a gold medal. Suicide will be a silver medal, and death by natural causes will be a bronze. The only way we lose is if the jury finds death by our client’s negligence. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’re going to get a silver at the worst, but let’s go for the gold!” He said all of this rapidly, and, whereas I was used to him being glum and sober, now he could not stop smiling. I really was wondering what was going on with him.
Even though I had been away from the office for just two weeks, I wondered if there had been new developments in the case, especially about the idea that Mr. Hargrave had been really murdered, especially since Mr. Dure had said that would be a gold medal. I wanted to ask a question about that without seeming to challenge him. For some reason, without meaning to, I struck a pose, putting my right hand up to the side of my face, like a movie actress where she has a scene of puzzlement. “So the idea of a murder is still alive?” I said.
“I have figured out how it was done,” he said. “That champagne bucket that was found in the sauna – it must have been full of liquid nitrogen. As it vaporized – which it would do quickly in that intense heat – it made Hargrave fall unconscious for lack of oxygen, and a few more minutes without oxygen killed him. That bucket full of liquid nitrogen would have been more than enough to completely fill the sauna and suffocate the man. Now, I don’t yet know for sure who did it, but we have a limited circle of suspects, and if we can work it right, we might be able to unmask the murderer at trial. That would be a coup!”
He seemed excited at the prospect. But as I thought about this information, a shock slowly formed in my mind and it grew. “Oh my God,” I blurted. “Blake Culler!”
Mr. Dure looked at me questioningly.
“Have you ever been in the Great Catch Sports Bar?” I asked.
“It’s not one of my purlieus.”
“I was there one night with a couple of my friends. They serve liquid nitrogen. It was even Blake Culler who served it! – I’m pretty sure.”
“They serve liquid nitrogen?” Mr. Dure looked at me skeptically.
“It’s a thing,” I said. I calmed down. “They put it in mixed drinks to make them what they call ‘smoky.’ The liquid nitrogen boils off and it looks like smoke coming out of the drink. It’s a fad right now. One of my friends had a drink like that.”
I could tell I had Mr. Dure’s attention. “When was this?” he asked.
“It was about in the middle of July,” I said.
“And the time
we’re concerned about is the beginning of July, the third.” He seemed to be musing out loud. “If they had liquid nitrogen in the middle of the month, they probably also had it at the beginning of the month. I suppose we’ll have to check.” He addressed me directly. “This may be significant,” he said. “Thank you, Ms. Bonneville.”
To Kara he said, “Please get me Kurt on the line.”
Chapter 17. Trial
It was the morning of the first day of my first trial. I was really excited for lots of reasons. Including that I was expecting to see, sometime during the next three days, Mr. Dure force a confession from the witness stand. My Criminal Law professor told our class that that never happens in real life, the Perry Mason-style cross-examination that makes a witness break down and confess to murder. But I knew that Mr. Dure had done just that in the Houlihan case (reported in The Case of the Missing Department Head, which I had read) and I was looking forward to seeing it in this case and observing close and in person how it was done.
The modern, low-ceilinged courtroom was not the way a courtroom should be. The pastel green commercial carpeting should have been bare wood floors, worn into a rut underneath the swing gate that led from the spectators’ area to the well of the court, and with one particular floorboard somewhere that would creak when somebody stepped on it. The bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling should have been warm incandescent lights mounted on the walls, with maybe one large fixture with lots of bulbs in it suspended from a high ceiling. Despite the disappointing décor, there was the tense, electrical feel in the air which I had expected.
The well of the court was crowded. Because there were three parties, the plaintiff, the defendant, and the intervening life insurance company, they had brought an extra counsel’s table into the well of the court. The way they were arranged was that two counsel tables were at right angles to the jury box, that is parallel to the bench, and the third table, which was our table, had to be turned sideways to fit. To fit the third table, the other tables had to be shoved down, so that Mr. Wakefield’s table was really close to the jury box. So we were parallel to the jury box, and we faced the jury, but were the furthest away from them. Mr. Wakefield’s table was the closest to the jury, but he faced the bench. Mr. Easey and Mr. Wright occupied the table in the middle. And every table was covered with papers and files and books and laptop computers and we all had bankers’ boxes of documents on the floor.
