Prime Witness

Chapter Thirty-four

I hear tapping on the glass, my office door, a figure through the translucence on which Mario’s name is still stenciled in gold letters, reversed like an image in a mirror.

“Come in.”

A dense expression invades my face as I see who it is.

“You got a minute?” It’s Adrian Chambers, a wrinkled suit, collar button open, the knot on his tie four inches down.

I look at him, wonder what he’s doing here. I suppose he can read this thought on my face.

“Dusalt told me you might be here,” he says. “I ran into him in the parking lot at the PD, twenty minutes ago. Headin’ someplace.”

Claude’s running late for the airport. Denny in a cold sweat caught the afternoon flight. Dusalt should have picked him up, and his surly cargo, at the airport ten minutes ago.

“I’m working on jury instructions,” I tell him. What he should be doing. We have a meeting in an hour.

He rolls his eyes. “The sonofabitch is obsessive, isn’t he?” he says. He’s talking about Ingel and his penchant for early jury instructions.

“You got a couple of minutes?” he says. “I’d like to talk.”

I look at my watch. “Not much time,” I say. I’m trying to get rid of him.

I am glad that Claude is not bringing Coltrane back here. A chance meeting with Adrian and our case might suddenly take a turn for the worse, though this is hard to imagine. Chambers has the olfactory senses of a bloodhound. A meeting with someone, Coltrane, he’s not seen before, in the middle of our case, and he would smell weighty consequence all over the man.

“It’ll just take a second,” he says.

I give him a look of annoyance, as if to say “if we must.”

“Come in.”

He drops his briefcase, reaches in his pocket and comes out with a pack of cigarettes. He offers me one. I decline. Adrian looks tired and drawn. Out of practice for five years, and older, I think maybe he’s forgotten the sapping mental and physical strain that is a major felony trial. Those on the nether side of fifty tell me that you begin to see this as the work of the young, like thirty-year-olds dragging their haunches across Astroturf in the NFL.

I motion to one of the client chairs. He sits.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been hearing things,” he says. “Talk.” He lights up. There’s the flare of spent tobacco from the tip. He’s talking, choppy words, as he strips little pieces of the raw unburnt stuff, using his teeth and one finger, from the tip of his tongue.

“It’s a small town. The bar’s a tight group, whether here or in Capital City,” he says. There is no real direct eye contact here. Instead he is looking around the office, at the pictures on the wall, the windows, anything but me. He is a map of simmering indifference, Adrian’s image of cool.

“Word is, that you believe I took this case as some kind of vendetta, that it’s personal, between you and me,” he says. He is not smiling as he says this, not that I much care.

“I hear that you’ve been saying that I took this case for one reason, to break your back.” Now he looks at me, for the first time I get the force of full eye contact.

I have said this to a few people, Claude and Harry, one or two others, intimates whom I trusted to keep a confidence. Now I feel like a fool, betrayed by my own predilection to talk, not because my assumption is wrong, but because it is coming back to me in my own words.

I smile at him, nearly laugh. “Well, Adrian, you gotta admit, there’s no love lost,” I say.

“We’ve had our differences,” he says. That he can call five years without a license to practice law “a difference” is a measure of Adrian’s powers of reduction.

“So what do you want?” I say. I’m growing restive with this conversation.

“I thought it was time that we cleared the air,” he says. “I wanted you to know that for my part this is no vendetta. I did not take this case because you’re involved. You’re not that important to me. I am not that obsessive.”

“This sounds like a conversation you should be having with your analyst,” I tell him. For Adrian this is a major disrobing of the soul, an unnatural act for the lawyer as renegade.

“Fine,” he says, “you wanna keep the bad blood flowing, then it’s on you, not me. Don’t go telling people that I’m engaged in some crusade of vengeance, when it’s you who won’t let it go.”

This stops me in my tracks for a moment, this man whom I despise sitting before me analyzing my thoughts-not because he is doing it, but because he is so right. I will not let it go.

“I took no personal pleasure,” he says, “in what happened today.” He’s talking about the disemboweling of Dr. Tolar. “I did what I had to, advocated for my client. You forget I’ve been sandbagged myself.” Adrian is talking about his bout with perjury, the fable-as-evidence that got him disbarred.

Then it hits me, like a thunderbolt. He’s putting me in his own shoes. He thinks I knew Tolar would lie when I put him up. He talks, and it becomes clear that this is his basis for détente. In Adrian’s mind we now have something in common, his image of me as the fallen angel.

I look at him, about to toss him from the office.

“Ingel threatened to go to the bar, didn’t he? Fucking judges,” he says. “A robe and a pension for life and they forget what it is to scrape for a living.”

Before I can say anything he’s telling me how he found out about Tolar and his failure to perform the Scofield autopsies. Curiosity silences me, bottles my anger for the moment.

“A lotta luck,” he says. “Another client, a civil matter.” He’s smiling at his good fortune.

“The kid works as a lab tech over at the medical school. Word gets around,” he says. “Tolar’s a schmuck. A six-figure income and tenure, he figures the world owes him based on his IQ.”

Adrian looks. No ashtray. He taps the ash on the carpet and steps on it with his foot.

“Once I found out, the evidence was easy to get,” he says. “How often do you listen to tapes of an autopsy prepping for a case? What lawyer has time? But there were nuggets in there I did not expect.”

It is like Adrian, talking to my placid, painted smile, a discussion of worthless confidences, trading on secrets no longer of value, shopping for a little good will.

Then he says: “I will tell you, that the knife wounds, the fact that they died somewhere else came as a real surprise.”

Adrian’s talking about the Scofields. He must have thought an oracle had intervened to send him copies of the Scofield autopsy tapes. These no doubt filled in all the blanks. Cryptic references to “sharp-edged lacerations at the point of entry wounds,” these in the written reports, on tape became stab wounds caused by a knife before introduction of the metal stakes. Naked, unembellished observations in the written report about the limited volume of blood at the scene, on tape seemingly drew conclusions: that the Scofields were killed elsewhere and moved to the creek.

That we finessed some of these findings and conclusions to keep him in the dark is a nuance Adrian can appreciate. “All’s fair,” he says.

“Glad you feel that way. Now as I’ve said I’ve got some work to do.”

“That’s only part of what I came to talk to you about. I’m looking at things. The jury is not exactly what we would have hoped for. From our side, Ingel’s voir dire”-he’s talking about the judge’s questioning of prospective jurors-“left a lot to be desired. And you,” he says, “your case is flying like some wounded duck.”

“Thank you for the appraisal, but I’ll wait for the jury’s verdict if you don’t mind.”

He puts up a hand and smiles. “No offense,” he says. “It’s what happens in trials. Things we can’t control.”

Given his creative approach to evidence, I’m surprised that Adrian would concede the possibility.

“I know,” he says, “there could be some rocky places for our side from here to the end. The stuff in the van, the broken window-who knows what a jury will make of it all? That’s why I’m here. My client is nervous. He’s dreaming about death at night.”

He does not make clear whether these visions are of the Russian’s own demise or of some bloody bodies on the Putah Creek.

“You understand,” he says, “that I don’t necessarily agree with this. But he wants me to take one more shot, to get the charges reduced.”

I can’t help myself. “You wanna plead?” I am more than a little surprised that, given the state of our case, he would even broach the subject at this point.

His look at me is almost whimsical.

“Not the same deal, you understand. Your case is not what it was when we started. Major holes in your theory,” he says. “It’s why I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Then it hits me. This man indeed does have crystal balls. Somehow he knows. Someplace he has heard. The leaks continue. Someone has told him that we have the prime witness. The confirmation. At this moment, Adrian Chambers may not know his name, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that Cleo Coltrane will finger his client for the murder of Abbott and Karen Scofield.

“Why so generous?” I say. “It would seem to cut against the grain of nature.”

He makes a face, like these things can happen.

“Second degree, terms to run concurrent, fifteen to life,” he says. “Same deal, we package ’em all. The six,” he says. “No loose ends.”

“And he’d be out in nine,” I say.

Adrian gestures with one hand, a little swivel at the wrist, like whatever happens.

“It’s a certain result for both of us,” he says. “The judge, I think, will go for it.”

He is probably right, Ingel at this moment is not exactly a well of confidence overflowing with faith in my abilities. With Acosta no doubt heckling him from the wings, the Prussian might do anything at this point to avoid an acquittal, or worse, a dismissal of the case by his own hand, for lack of evidence.

Adrian studies my expression like a rug merchant looking for a sale.

Before I can answer, the phone rings, the back line, the one not available to the general public.

“A second,” I say, telling Adrian to be patient.

He waves me on with his cigaretted hand, like go ahead.

I reach over and grab the receiver. It’s Claude.

“Guess who’s looking for you?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Adrian.”

“I know.”

“He’s there. You can’t talk?”

“Right. Where are you?” I ask.

“We got a problem,” he says.

“No Denny,” I say. I’m watching what I say in front of Adrian.

“No, he’s here all right, with Coltrane.”

I can hear the hum of human traffic and a PA system in the background. Claude’s at the airport.

“Problem is Coltrane won’t talk to anybody but you. He says he made the deal with you. If you’re not there, he wants to see a lawyer.”

This is a major problem for us. If Cleo Coltrane gets legal counsel, the first advice he will receive is to say nothing. It will take a week, maybe a month to negotiate the thicket with a lawyer, concessions on the federal charges. By then my case against Iganovich will be history.

I give a deep sigh. Ingel will kill me. Probably issue a bench warrant for my arrest, but I will have to send Lenore in my stead to talk about jury instructions at four o’clock.

“I’ll be there,” I tell Claude. “Tell him I’ll be there.” I take down the information from Claude, on the little calendar, the one propped up this way so Chambers can’t see. I write “Coltrane” across from the time. Claude estimates four-fifteen. I will have to make myself scarce so Ingel can’t find me.

“Where?” I ask Claude.

“Interrogation room four, ground floor of the jail,” he says.

I write this down next to Coltrane’s name.

“What’s Chambers want?” says Claude.

“Not now,” I say. “We can talk later. See you in a few minutes.”

Claude hangs up.

I look at Adrian again, seated in the chair, seemingly aloof, like he’s doing me some favor, indifferent as he plumbs my being for some answer, a sure result against the vagaries of a jury.

“A problem?” he says.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

He smiles.

“No deal,” I tell him.

Suddenly his leg is off the other, beady little slits for eyes.

“Why not? Your case is in the shit can,” he says.

“Like I said, Adrian. I’d rather take my chances with a jury.”

There are a lot of expletives here, Adrian’s voice running the range to the soprano. I can see the shadowed forms of secretaries outside my door standing idly, listening to this tirade overflow in my office.

He finishes, his face flushed.

I look at him. “Nothing personal, Adrian.” This seems to send him ballistic.

“Fine. It’s your funeral,” he says. “See you in court.”

He slams the door going out, nearly breaking the glass.

I pick up the phone and hit the intercom button.

Lenore answers after one ring. Before she can say anything, I start.

“Listen, I’ve got a problem. You’re gonna have to take the meeting with Ingel and Adrian alone.”

We are standing in a dimly lit little room, not much larger than a closet, Claude and I, looking through a one-way mirror into an interrogation room at the county jail. For the moment it is empty. Denny Henderson is bringing Coltrane up now.

I’ve told Claude about Adrian’s eleventh-hour deal. His suspicious mind is like my own. He believes that Adrian is anxious to cut a quick deal, before this witness can bury his case, place Iganovich at the scene of the Scofield murders and end Chambers’s hopes of fixing doubt in the jury’s mind. How he got news of the witness neither of us can guess. “Maybe the man’s clairvoyant,” says Claude.

I make a face. With Adrian one never knows.

Denny taps on the door to our cubicle as he passes by, the signal that Coltrane is here, to keep our voices down.

I am holding the evening paper, the afternoon edition from Capital City. I pulled it from a rack on the way over here. It is already ablaze with unflattering headlines, the debacle with Tolar on the stand. On the front page is a three-column picture, Iganovich a beaming smile, flanked by his two lawyers. This was taken by one enterprising photographer who slipped into the courtroom in the seconds following adjournment, after Ingel left the bench and before the deputies hauled the Russian back to his cell.

Just then the door to the interrogation room opens. A man enters followed by Denny.

“Sit down there,” says Henderson. He points to a chair behind the steel table bolted to the floor, then leaves the room.

Noise, the shuffling of shoes on linoleum over concrete is piped in through the tinny little speaker screwed to the wall above our heads.

Cleo Coltrane has one of those faces that defies estimations of age. He is medium height, a complexion like chewed rawhide and body to match, wiry and a little bowlegged in worn jeans and cowboy boots. Shots of disheveled dirty blond hair rise from a wild cowlick on the back of his head like the crown on Lady Liberty.

His shirt is a size too big, with imitation pearl snap buttons and a lot of stitching. It hangs on his upper frame looking like a flag in dead air. For all of the wary voice over the phone, his appearance here in this bleak room under harsh light has a certain frontier innocence about it, the artless countenance of the common man.

Seated at the end of a small table he looks around at nothing in particular, though he glances hard-eyed at the mirror where we stand several times, like he suspects that maybe someone is back here.

A second later Henderson joins us in the cubicle. Off a hot plane, no shower since yesterday. I am glad that I will not be staying in here with Denny.

“Wish us luck,” I say. Henderson will watch from here, keeping notes of anything we might miss. It would not do to have too many people crowding around Coltrane if we want him to talk.

Dusalt and I head out. Seconds later we enter the interrogation room.

Coltrane is out of his chair, up on his feet as we enter. He is gangly, some nervous gestures with his hands, like he doesn’t know what to do with these. I get a kind of shy smile one might see from a stranger on the Montana prairie.

“Mr. Coltrane,” I say. “I’m Paul Madriani. We spoke on the phone.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. A guileless grin. He shakes my hand, a grip like a warmed and raspy vise. But there is no venom or animus apparent in the man. If he suffers from anxiety, it dances to the tune of a different drummer, not the rhythm I was beating to him over the phone.

I introduce Claude. Dusalt gives him his best cop’s look, a death mask of menace, a nod and no handshake.

“Sit down,” I tell him. “Go ahead. Relax. We just want to talk for awhile. Cup a coffee?” I say.

“Sure.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Just sugar,” he says.

Claude does the duty, tells the guard outside to relay the message to bring some coffee.

“You wanna smoke, go ahead,” I say.

He shakes his head.

Claude and I remain standing, Dusalt with his back leaning against the wall behind me as I do the talking.

“Mr. Coltrane, we’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

He points with his finger to his chest, like surely you don’t mean me.

“Yes,” I say. “You. We didn’t know your name. But we’ve been looking for you. As I’m sure by now you’re aware, we have a series of murders in this county, brutal crimes that have taken the lives of four college students, a distinguished member of the university faculty and his former wife. We are currently in trial on some of those charges. And we believe we have the killer.”

He looks at me from sheepish eyes.

“We also believe that you witnessed two of these murders, or at least saw the bodies being staked out on the ground, from a blind in the trees along the Putah Creek?”

He’s shaking his head. “No,” he says. “Not me. Musta been somebody else.”

I look at him a benign smile, the kind I reserve for Sarah when she tells me the dirty little handprints by the light switch in the kitchen are not hers.

“It’s what I told you over the phone,” I say. “Whoever did this. Whoever committed these murders, particularly the last one, pretty soon, that person is going to know there was a witness. He’s going to be looking for you the same way we were. It would be best, a whole lot better for you, if we catch up with him, before he catches up with you.”

I can see Coltrane’s Adam’s apple take a deep bob with this thought. He has been in trouble before, but the expression in his eyes makes me think that this is the deepest it has ever gotten.

“Can I chew?” he says.

I look at him.

He scoots forward in the chair and tugs a little round canister from his hind pants pocket. He looks like he’s going to offer me some.

I wave him off with one hand and glance at Claude. He’s rolling his eyes as if to say “we got a real winner here.”

“We know what you were involved in,” I tell him. “We know about the falcons, we have physical evidence. You might say we’ve almost become experts on birds of prey in the last few months.”

“That so?” he says. “What was I involved in?”

“We know,” I say, “that in the past you’ve possessed and trained great horned owls. They tell us, the people who know about such things, that this bird is a natural enemy of the peregrine falcon. A lot of these falcons were killed near the site of the last murder.”

He looks at me but says nothing.

“We’ve found feathers belonging to a great horned owl in the bird blind. The one up in the trees,” I say.

The first art of interrogation, to make him think we know a lot more than we do.

“We know you have a record,” Claude chimes in. “Federal violations on which you did time. We are not interested in those,” he says. “We are interested in murder.”

“I didn’t murder nobody,” says Coltrane, calm, collected. He’s packing what looks like black tar between his cheek and gum, a wad the size of a walnut.

Claude makes a face, like maybe he doesn’t believe him.

“Listen, am I under arrest?” he says.

“No. No. I told you you’re not under arrest.” My biggest fear now is that he will get smart, and either ask to leave or demand to see an attorney if we say no.

“But you think I did some crime?”

I make a face. “Maybe. We don’t enforce the federal law here,” I say. “That’s for the federal government to do. Now we could help them out, give them some of our evidence, and see what they want to do with it.”

For the first time he chooses to look the other way, not at me.

“There’s a lotta horned owls,” he says.

“I wouldn’t know,” I tell him. “All I know is that the folks down in San Diego, the Wild Animal Park. They say you own one. What’s his name again?”

He looks at me, but doesn’t volunteer.

I look at Claude.

“Harvey,” says Dusalt.

“Harvey.” I pause for a second. “Like the rabbit.” The people where he worked told us this is how he came up with the name. “You picked the name?” I say.

He nods.

Harvey is now in the hands of animal control down in San Diego. He was found on property outside of town rented by Coltrane, where he kept two horses, near a trailer in which he lived. The authorities took the animals to protect them while their owner was otherwise detained. In reality they are waiting for nature to take its course, for the bird to drop a few of its feathers in the cage where they have it confined. They cannot pluck these without a search warrant. But evidence dropped into their hands by the forces of nature. That is something else.

The coffee arrives. Coltrane stirs a little sugar into the cup while we watch him. We pass the time, idle chitchat to put him back on an even keel. I drop the rolled newspaper which I am still carrying onto the table in front of him.

“Had time to see the paper today?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Go ahead and read,” I say. “Lieutenant Dusalt and I have something we have to discuss, outside,” I say. “We’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

Claude and I step outside and close the door.

“He listens well,” says Claude. “Problem is he doesn’t talk much.”

“A good listener is usually thinking about something else,” I say. “In this case I think Mr. Coltrane is thinking about the jam he’s in.”

Claude and I are doing a quick two-step around the corner to the little observation cubicle where Denny is waiting. We step inside and close the door.

Coltrane’s still sitting at the table, reading.

“What’s he doing?” says Claude.

“Like he’s starved for news,” says Henderson. “The story at the top of page one.”

“Has he looked at the picture?” I ask.

“He keeps going back to it,” he says. “A little reading, then back to the picture.”

I see him do this as Denny’s talking.

We give him a few minutes. He’s searching for the jump on the story, the inside pages. The man should take remedial reading lessons. Sarah could teach him speed. Three times he closes the paper, turns away from the inside pages, to look at the picture on page one, and then goes back to the inside. Finally we give him enough time. He’s out of his chair walking around, stretching his legs.

“Let’s not let him get too relaxed,” says Claude. We head back in.

Back inside we have a little more idle chitchat. I tell him about a woman in my office, a good looker, a lawyer named Lenore.

“Must be nice for you,” he says.

“Ms. Goya used to work for the United States Attorney’s Office in Southern California.”

He stops smiling, like maybe he’s not interested in meeting any of her old friends from the office. It is how progress is made, little threats, some more subtle than others.

He’s back in his chair now.

Claude takes the lead this time, a no-frills approach to questioning, like an inquisition on the cheap.

“You can stash the cowboy homilies act,” says Dusalt. “I lost interest when Will Rogers died.”

Their eyes lock on each other. Coltrane doesn’t appear particularly concerned.

“We got your spotting scope.” Claude is leaning across the table now into Cleo’s face. “The one you left behind up in the blind, remember? We’ve been running traces on it,” he says. “Not very many made like that. Pretty expensive,” he says, “for a cheap fuck like you.”

If this is getting to him, it doesn’t show.

Claude raises his voice a notch, a few more expletives. Then he comes back down to a more normal tone.

“Tight jeans you got there,” he says. “A good tush.”

Coltrane looks at him, not certain whether he should be offended.

“Ever see what people in prison for a few years can do to loosen up a pair of tight buns like that?” says Claude. “They’re real adept at it. And they seem to enjoy their work.”

Coltrane chews on the lump in his cheek, unmoved, like they’d have to catch him first.

“Six people are dead and you’re busy covering for their killer. You can jack these good people around,” says Claude, looking at me, “but I’ll see to it that your ass is put in the federal slammer so fast you won’t believe it,” he says. “Now I wanna know what you saw, and I wanna know it now.”

Coltrane looks down at the newspaper, something to divert his eyes from Claude, a silent variation on the word “no.”

Dusalt sweeps the paper off the table with the back of his hand, sending it sailing halfway across the room.

Coltrane stiffens, pushes back in his chair, away from Claude as far as he can get, rigid like a head case subjected to shock therapy. He can’t be sure how far Claude will go. His eyes come to me again, a sign that we have bonded. He would much rather talk to me than Claude. With me he gets coffee with sugar.

“The scope,” says Claude, “we got a fingerprint off the scope.” This is a lie of misdirection. We did get a print, smudged and unusable.

“We’re waiting for yours to be sent up by wire now,” he says. In fact this can be done instantaneously by computer link now, a fact that Coltrane probably doesn’t know, and intended to sweat him.

Claude tells him if he cuts a deal now before we match the prints it will go easier, we will help him with the federal violations, put in a good word, that he cooperated.

This does not seem to move the man much. He shows the kind of confidence that grows when you know you wore gloves. I have suspected from the beginning that with only a single smudged thumb print on the scope that maybe this belongs to the evidence tech, the one sent up to flop around on the perch the day I first met Claude.

Dusalt tries a few more pitches, variations on the common theme. Each of them fails to move Coltrane. Dusalt’s powers of persuasion exhausted, Coltrane has taken Claude’s worst punch and is still psychically on his feet.

Claude gives me a little glance, like maybe he should get a rubber hose. We take a break. Coltrane wants to hit the head. We send him with a guard.

Outside in the hall we cluster near an open window at the fire escape for some fresh air, Denny, Dusalt and I.

I’ve tried to reach Nikki up in Coloma three times in the last two hours. She has still not returned. I am beginning to get worried.

“Any ideas?” I ask Claude.

He is wrung out.

The sun is down much earlier these days. I can see dusk closing on the horizon, through the wire mesh. One would wonder what good the fire escape would be, sealed off like this.

I look at my watch, a quarter to seven. Lenore should be deep into it with Ingel and Chambers by now, trench warfare over terms of the jury charge in Ingel’s chambers at the courthouse. With the details to cover, this could go till well after nine.

“What do you want to do?” says Claude. He wants to know how late I want to go.

“A while longer,” I say. “Then we’ll give it a rest. Put him up in a hotel and go at it tomorrow, after court,” I say.

“Sooner or later,” says Claude, “he’s gonna want it to stop. Ask to go free or to see a lawyer.”

“I’ll show him a lawyer,” I say. “Somebody at the U.S. Justice Department.” The message is clear. Cleo Coltrane is not leaving this town unless he tells us what he knows.

In the distance I hear the click of heels on terrazzo, coming this way. A second later Betty, one of the senior secretaries from the office, comes wheeling around the corner.

“Mr. Madriani. We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“What is it?”

“Judge Ingel’s called from the courthouse. He was quite insistent, wanted to know why you weren’t at the meeting. He was very angry,” she says. This is how Betty describes the Prussian.

I can imagine. “How did you find me?” I say. I have specifically avoided telling anyone where I was. I had a feeling this would happen.

“It wasn’t easy,” she says. A little exasperation. “He wanted to talk to a lawyer. The judge.”

“Let me guess?” I say. “Roland.”

She nods. “He took the call, and a lot of abuse from the judge.” She says this like I should be grateful to Roland.

“What did Overroy tell him?”

“He looked in your office, saw the note and told the judge you were over here meeting with someone named Coltrane.”

Mental expletives fill my brain. Ingel will no doubt repeat this to Chambers while venting his spleen in his office. Adrian is not stupid. I have missed a command performance at the courthouse to talk to somebody at the county jail. My missing witness. Adrian will be ranting about Fisher’s discovery order, my failure to disclose that we now have our prime witness. I can feel another hiding coming from the judge, and Adrian helping me off with my shirt. Having shafted his settlement offer, he will no doubt take glee in this one.

I’m shaking my head, wishing I were up with Nikki at this moment, breathing mountain air, anywhere but here.

“They did seem angry,” says Betty.

“They.”

“Mr. Chambers called five minutes ago, a few minutes after the judge. He said the bailiff and clerk had left to go home, but that the courtroom door would be left open for you.”

I raise an eyebrow. Adrian’s taking charge. He is probably walking all over Lenore by now, jamming instructions down her throat. If I don’t get there soon, he’ll be wearing Ingel’s black robes.

“They expect you to be there,” she says.

“Wonderful.” I roll my eyes, thank Betty and tell her to go home. Why kill the messenger?

“Get him back in here,” I tell Claude. I’m talking about Coltrane. “Pull him off the john if you have to.”

One more shot, then I’m going to have to go over to the court. Maybe I can bring them a present, a little hard evidence identifying the Scofield killer. It may be my only chance to mollify the Prussian.

Inside, Coltrane looks at me, like it must be my turn again.

“Cleo. Can I call you Cleo?” I ask.

He nods.

I’m holding a large manilla folder in my hand as I approach him. From this I pull an eight-by-ten color glossy photo and slide it on the table in front of Coltrane.

“Do you know this woman?” I say.

He looks hard, at the dead head of Karen Scofield, then swallows. The brown hues of congealed blood and the empty eye socket stare back at him from the table.

He shakes his head.

“You didn’t know her, but you’ve seen her before, haven’t you, Cleo? On the creek that night?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve never seen her.”

“These marks.” I point with a finger to her brow and cheek. “You know how they were made, don’t you, Cleo?”

He shakes his head.

It is something that has burdened this case from the beginning, the profile experts and their theories of facial disfigurement, the violence to Karen Scofield’s face, the missing eye. It had troubled me for weeks, until yesterday when it finally struck me in the quiet of my office, in the dead of evening, working alone, the pincher marks, the deep wounds on the brow and cheek of Karen Scofield.

“Let me tell you how they happened,” I say. “They were made by the talons of a large bird,” I tell him. “A bird of prey. They were made by your bird, Cleo. They were made by Harvey.”

He’s shaking his head, his eyes closed, all the motions of denial, but not a word is passing from his lips.

This morning I had Claude wire a copy of this photo to William Rattigan at the World Center for Birds of Prey. He has told me what none of the shrinks or pathologists could, that Karen Scofield’s eye was not removed by the killer at all, but was gouged from her head by the razor-sharp talons of a giant bird of prey.

I give him a moment, the photo lying on the table before him.

“It’s been a long day.” I soften my voice. “And I’m getting a little tired. So I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen to you. And you can believe that this is gospel.”

There is no sense in drawing this out any longer.

“Have you ever heard,” I say, “of DNA?”

“I’ve heard of it,” he says.

“It has to do with genetics,” I tell him. “Chromosomes, the basic building blocks of life that make each of us different. You have different chromosomes than I do, different from Lieutenant Dusalt here.”

Coltrane looks at Claude and I think is pleased by this thought.

“Your chromosomes are specific to you,” I say, “and they can be traced from hair and blood-even your saliva,” I tell him.

He stops chewing for the moment. Dense thoughts. Did he spit up in the perch? From the look in his eye, he cannot be sure.

“With a little of your saliva, and a drop of your blood we would be able to determine whether these each came from you, to the exclusion of nearly everyone else on earth,” I say.

As I say this I am reaching into my pant pocket.

He looks at me wondering, I think, whether I’m about to produce something sharp, a needle for blood.

Instead, when my hand comes out it’s holding a single small feather, delicate and gossamer under the florid lights, which I pinch from its point between finger and thumb, and twirl in a slow revolution.

“Cleo, we can get the blood later,” I say, “because Harvey has chromosomes too.”

From the look in his eye one can tell that my words, the soft drama of the quill, something from a pigeon in the plaza on the way over here, has struck a deep responsive chord with Cleo, like the impact of a laser-guided bomb-he and Harvey are trapped, birds of a feather.

He is swallowing a lot of air now. Looks to me, then to Claude.

“You can do that?” he says. He’s talking about DNA.

“We can do that,” I say. “And if we have to, you are going down for the hard fall.” There’s an edge to my voice now. I’m tired of screwing around.

His Adam’s apple is going up and down, dunking like a doughnut, his eyes making the rounds in this room, to Claude, then back to me.

“The minimum, they tell me, for what you’ve done is three years,” I say. “The parole board will not look kindly on the fact that you refused to help us catch a killer.

“Cleo-” I lean down into his face-“you can believe me when I tell you that if you don’t help us, you will do more than three years.” My tone carries the authority of Yahweh carving the Commandments on tablets of stone.

He looks at me, big round eyes. A time for silent thought. Seconds go by as Coltrane weighs this. He is teetering on the verge. His jaw slacks a little.

Just then the door behind me opens. I turn.

It’s Denny Henderson.

If looks could kill, Henderson would need the services of an undertaker at this moment.

Coltrane’s trance is broken, the momentum stopped.

I look back to Henderson. “What the hell is it?”

“I thought you’d want to see this,” he says. He hands me a slip of paper. I look at it. A name or other written on what looks like the torn corner of a yellow page from a phone book.

“What’s this?”

“The name of the property owner. Along the Putah Creek,” he says. “Where the doer did the Scofields.”

I look down at the ragged-edged little corner in my hand, the note handed to me by Denny.

The cold acid of alarm spreads through me an instant before full comprehension. It was there before me all the time. I can feel the blood drain from my face, settle like lead in the pit of my stomach, more fear here than anger. I look up at Claude.

“What is it?” he says.

I crumple the note in my hand, reach over and grab Coltrane by the collar of his shirt. It is pure adrenaline that hoists him out of the chair, throws him with his back against the table. A pained expression as the corner catches a kidney, the small of his back.

“Tell me about the man on the creek,” I say. “Now.” I make this single word sound as if it has a dozen W’s.

Coltrane is bug-eyed. This is a whole new side of me he has never seen.

Claude and Denny are on me from behind grabbing my arms, trying to keep them from Cleo’s throat. It is the thing about an adrenaline rush. It would take an army at this moment.

Cleo is gasping, struggling with his hands. Nodding like if I’ll let him, he’ll talk.

“OK,” he says. “Get offa me. I’ll tell you. Tell. .” he says. Cleo’s face is flushed. His body shaking as I finally loosen my grip.

Self-conscious, I straighten his collar a little, pat the front of his shirt, help him back down into his seat. Claude and Denny slowly ease their grip on me, but stay close, in case I should suffer a relapse.

I move around them, pick up the newspaper, which Claude scattered to the floor earlier in our session. I lay this on the table before Coltrane, front page up, and slap my palm hard on the picture.

“Now identify the man you saw on the Putah Creek that night,” I say, “the one with the two bodies on the ground.”

He flinches once, then stops. He looks up at me one last time, the futile thought written in his eyes that maybe in this last moment I will lift this cup from his lips. He sees the answer carved in my unremitting gaze as I fix my eyes on the picture before him.

Then in the most deliberate of moves, quick and sure, Cleo Coltrane points with a gnarled outstretched index finger, to a single image, a face burned into the newsprint on the table before him.

In this instant of revelation wild thoughts flood my mind, images of flashing metal stakes driven through soft flesh, the hellish visage that was the end of Abbott and Karen Scofield-the night they were murdered by Adrian Chambers.