The Judge

CHAPTER 8

The most noticeable aspect of Coleman Kline are his piercing blue eyes. This morning they drill holes in me, like the twin beams of an industrial laser. I’m sitting in one of the client chairs on the other side of his desk.

There is some taking of stock here, as we size each other up across a million miles of marble. The rose-hued surface of his desk is as barren and cold as the moons of Jupiter. There is not an item on it but for Kline’s folded hands, an ominous image.

His office has a sterile quality about it: two corner walls of windows without any coverings, their interior counterparts stark white and decorated by a single small mural, an abstract akin to a Rorschach blotch in color.

“You are a friend of Lenore Goya,” he says. There is no accusation in his words, merely a statement of fact.

“Lenore and I have known each other for a while,” I tell him.

“You should take care not to get drawn into a case out of spite,” he says. “Particularly someone else’s.”

I question him with my eyes.

“It’s no secret that Lenore harbors ill will toward me. Perhaps this is her motivation for representing Acosta?” There is a little uptilt to the end of this sentence, so that it is an open question.

“I hadn’t heard.” Dissembling is a lie only if the other party is deceived. Kline and I both know the truth. He smiles, tight-lipped and straight, a pained expression as if he’d hoped this opening might be more fortuitous, something built on candor.

“Malice can lead one astray,” he says. “To take a case for the wrong reasons would be a mistake.”

“Sort of like mixing business and pleasure?” I say.

The thought is not lost on him, though he does not smile. The original tight-ass.

“Are you of record in the case?” he asks me.

Lenore made the appearance for arraignment with Acosta, and a quick pitch for bail, which was summarily denied. I tell him this.

“Then you might wish to reconsider your role in this matter.”

“Whether it’s me or someone else, the judge is likely to obtain vigorous representation,” I tell him. “It’s that kind of case.”

“What kind?”

“High profile,” I say. The media circus is already convening. There has been talk of television coverage. A judge charged with first-degree murder does not occur every day.

He mulls over the term “high profile.” A judicious look. “I suppose. Though it’s a shame.”

“What’s that?”

“The sort of stuff that seems to rivet public attention these days.”

“What? Sexual scandal and a fallen judge?” I say.

“Precisely.” Life among the tabloids. He is offended.

“Age-old story,” I tell him.

He gives me a look.

“David and Bathsheba,” I say.

“Armando Acosta is not exactly a man of biblical proportions,” he tells me.

Finally, a point on which we agree.

“This is all very good,” he says. “But you asked for this meeting. I assume you have some purpose?”

“Bail,” I tell him. “I thought perhaps we could work out an accommodation. Avoid a contentious argument in court.”

I can tell by his look he is not surprised. Still he gives me all the arguments.

“It’s a capital offense, Counselor. Special circumstances. The murder of a witness in another criminal case,” he says.

“The court has discretion,” I tell him.

“And has chosen not to exercise it.”

“You mean the arraignment?”

He nods.

“A summary argument,” I tell him. “There was no real evidence presented.”

He spins in his chair, and takes a book off the credenza from a stack neatly lined between two bookends behind him. A quick glance in the index, and he pages with one thumb.

“I quote,” he says. “Penal Code, Section twelve seventy point five: A defendant charged with a capital offense punishable by death cannot be admitted to bail when the proof of his guilt is evident or the presumption of guilt is great.” He slaps the book closed.

“It’s not,” I tell him.

“How do you know until you’ve seen the evidence?” he says.

He has me on that. The fruits of our first motions for discovery have been received only this morning and are sitting on my desk awaiting review.

“Irrespective of your feelings toward Mr. Acosta, he is a man with considerable contacts in the community, no evidence of flight, even with the swirling rumors in the press. He has a family, a reputation. .”

“Yes. I give you his reputation,” says Kline. Touché.

“You don’t really think he’s going to run?” I say.

“It’s been known to happen. But let’s set all of that aside for the moment, my feelings about your client, whether the court would even accept an argument for bail even if we did acquiesce. Let’s set all of that aside. Just for the moment,” he says.

There is something coming. The odor of sinister thoughts. He studies me like an insect under glass.

“You talked a moment ago,” he says, “about an accommodation.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You said perhaps we could come to some accommodations.” His eyes get round and inquisitive.

“A manner of speech,” I tell him.

“Ah. Then you’re not offering anything in return?”

We are down to it. Ali Baba’s nickel and dime, Coleman Kline’s Casbah of justice.

“Just checking. Wanted to make sure I understood,” he says.

“What can we offer? Certainly he’s not going to cop a plea.”

He shakes his head, makes gestures with his palms open and down low, just off the surface of the desk, evidence that this is the farthest thought from his mind.

“Still.” He speaks before his hands have even hit the desk. “Your client has not been very cooperative,” says Kline. “He did refuse to talk to the police when they tried to interview him.”

“Well. We apologize for the insult,” I tell him. “But I’m sure the cops weren’t stunned by his silence.”

“Perhaps not. But you’d think an innocent man would be anxious to clear himself as a suspect.”

“Oh. So you think he can be cleared?”

“He might have been if he’d talked to us. How can we know all the facts when your man won’t cooperate?”

“I hope you took pains to explain that to the grand jury,” I tell him.

This draws his eyes into little slits. “It’s not I who is sitting here asking for bail,” he says.

“Good point,” I tell him. “And what exactly was it, what kind of information did the police want that might have cleared my client?” I ask.

He finally eases back in his chair, the fingers of both hands steepled under his chin.

“For starters,” he says, “information as to where he was at the time that Brittany Hall was killed.”

He wants to know if we have an alibi. To tell him that we do not would be to give aid and comfort. It is the one thing he cannot get in discovery, anything that is testimonial from our client. Kline has more brass than I would have credited.

“To know that,” I tell him, “we’d have to know the exact time of death.”

“Ah,” he says, smiling. “There’s the rub,” he says.

“How so?”

“For the moment we are able to fix that only within broad parameters.”

“How broad?” I say.

“Within a six-hour period.”

“That’s not broad,” I tell him. “That’s the cosmos.”

“We’re working on it,” he tells me.

I’ll bet. Unless Hall was seen alive by a witness or spoke to someone within a short period before her body was discovered, time of death is a matter of conjecture upon which medical evidence is a vast swearing contest, their experts versus ours.

“Still,” he says, “I would assume that if you had an ironclad alibi you would have given it to us by now?”

This is a fair assumption, but he would rather be certain.

“As the first syllable suggests,” I tell him, “assumptions have a funny way of biting the holder in the ass.”

Absent an alibi, the next best ploy is to keep Kline guessing. Investigators who are trying to exclude an alibi don’t have time to do other damage.

“It seems there is no basis for accommodation,” he says. There is no anger here, just a statement of brutal fact.

“A capital case, we must assume your client to be a flight risk. Certainly a risk to public safety,” he says. “I could not in good conscience agree to bail.”

I start to talk, but he cuts me off.

“It’s been nice,” he tells me. He’s on his feet, walking me to the door.

“You really should reconsider your position in the case,” he says. “At least inform yourself as to Ms. Goya’s motives.”

Suddenly I find his hand inside of mine, bidding me farewell, smoother than I could have imagined. His office door closes and actually hits me in the ass. I am left with the certain assessment that Coleman Kline is not the lawyer simpleton I’d been led to expect.

“The man is angry because his ego has gotten him in over his head,” she says. This is Lenore’s answer to Kline’s assertion of a vendetta.

Tonight she stands in the doorway to my kitchen, the tips of her thick dark hair grazing her shoulders, the whites of her eyes flashing in contrast to her tawny complexion. Her hands are on her hips. Lenore cuts a formidable and enticing figure when she is angry.

“Think about it,” she says. “He was willing to take on Acosta on the misdemeanor because it was low risk, high theater,” she says. “A judge on the hook. Now he has to do the murder case or lose face in the office.”

Lenore tells me that at least three of Kline’s senior deputies, people who were there before the change of regime, are entertaining thoughts of challenging him in the next election. These are civil servants whose job protection carries more armor than a medieval knight. Backing away on the murder case, handing it to subordinates to try, would be an admission by Kline that he is not up to the job.

She retreats far enough into the kitchen to grab the pot of coffee off the counter and is back in the dining room offering refills.

“Besides,” she says, “Kline would say anything to undercut me.”

None of this, of course, answers the charge that her representation of Acosta is motivated by all the wrong instincts. Acosta’s case is taking on all the signs of a feudal bloodletting.

Tonight we are assembled around the table in my dining room, a working dinner which we have just finished, Lenore, Harry, and I. We are sampling liqueurs with coffee. Harry wants to know if he gets paid even if he can’t remember details tomorrow. He has given up the coffee and is now alternating straight shots of creme de menthe and Kahlúa from his cup.

Sarah is playing with Lenore’s two daughters, ages eleven and ten, older girls whom she idolizes. She has reached the age at which her entire lexicon is reduced to a single word: “Cool.” The kids have disappeared into Sarah’s upstairs bedroom as if they had died and gone to heaven, the only evidence of their existence the occasional thumping of feet and laughter overhead.

Since my wife, Nikki, died of cancer nearly two years ago I have tried to spend as much time as possible with Sarah, dividing my life between my daughter and that jealous mistress that is the law. It has not been easy. There have been crying jags and shouting, not all of these emanating from Sarah.

As a father in Nikki’s parental wake it was always easy to be the good cop. Nikki was the law under our roof. She loved our daughter very much. It was out of that love that she held to standards while I became the perennial soft touch. Now I must wear both hats, partier and disciplinarian, and Sarah’s take on the latter is that her mother would always and invariably have cut more slack. I have a whole new respect for single parents and the forces that play on them.

Before us on the dining table are stacks of manila folders, legal files with labels and burgeoning stacks of paper. Harry has spent the afternoon organizing and digesting the first bits of discovery from Acosta’s case, mostly police reports and preliminary notes from their investigation. The first thing I notice is that some of these are authored by another client, Tony Arguillo.

“Worried about a conflict?” says Harry.

It is an issue, a cardinal rule in the law that an attorney may not represent two clients with adverse interests. The fear here is that Tony, should he become a witness against Acosta, might be victimized on the stand by me should I possess confidential information derived in my role as Tony’s lawyer: something to discredit him on the stand, knowledge of a crime or other misdeed. It is one reason that criminal lawyers do not make a habit of representing peace officers.

“Has Tony told you anything that might compromise him?” says Lenore.

“If he did I couldn’t tell you,” I say. In point of fact he has not. I am probably the only person in whom he has not confided.

Lenore guesses that this is only a potential problem. “We can avoid it by finding other counsel for Tony. A substitution,” she says. “Besides, his part in the grand jury probe is over.”

The fact that she knows he has testified is itself a violation of confidence.

“Arguillo is not paying anything. Acosta is,” says Harry, ever the pragmatist. “Facts of life. I’ll draw up a consent for substitution of counsel. I know some schmuck who will take his case.” What Harry means is some other schmuck.

“As long as we’re cleaning skirts,” I say, “what about yours?” I’m looking at Lenore.

“What?” she says. “I didn’t represent Tony.”

“No, but you talked to Hall.”

“You mean the interview in the office?”

“Right.”

“She wasn’t a client.”

“True,” I say. “But you were privy to information held by the state in its case against Acosta.”

“That was prostitution. This is murder. Different case,” she says.

“You don’t think Kline will tie the two together? It’s all motive,” I say. “The prostitution sting led to the murder. That’s the state’s motive.”

“All the same, we’ll acquire everything they have in discovery. Where’s the harm?”

“Except for attorney work product,” I tell her, “your own notes.”

“There was nothing there of any substance. I was never privy to the state’s strategy in the case. You think Kline would have taken me into his confidence?”

“You can be sure he’ll raise it.”

“Yeah, along with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. That doesn’t mean it’s relevant.”

“Just a warning,” I tell her.

“Worry about it when we get there,” she says. Lenore is not the kind to get ulcers borrowing future problems. Not like me.

“So what have we got?” I ask Harry.

He’s rummaging through papers, mostly his notes on a yellow legal pad.

“Two crime scenes,” he says. “The alley where they found the body, and her apartment. That’s where they think the murder occurred. They dusted her place for prints. No report yet. Let’s hope the Coconut had the good taste to wear gloves,” says Harry.

Lenore gives him a look, exasperated. The thought is well taken. If we’re going to take the man’s money, we should at least make a show of innocence.

“Bad form,” says Harry.

We move on.

“Hair and fibers,” he says. “Hair is coarse and reddish brown. Not human, according to their report. It was found in the girl’s apartment, and on the blanket in which the victim was wrapped. Armando was probably shedding. Full moon,” says Harry.

“Shit,” says Lenore.

“There are children present,” he says.

“I know. I’m looking at one of them.” Lenore fixes Harry with a steely gaze and moves the bottle of Kahlúa away from him. As she does this she has to lean over the table, and I catch Harry taking a peek.

The association of Madriani, Hinds, and Goya may have some rough sailing ahead.

“Maybe Hall owned a cat or a dog?” says Lenore.

“Not according to the neighbors,” says Harry. “They’ve never seen an animal in the place.”

“She was wrapped in a blanket?” I ask. Back to basics.

“We’ll get to that,” he says. “Also some blue carpet fibers found on the blanket. Unknown origin.”

“What color was the carpet in her apartment?” I am hoping that Lenore has the presence of mind not to answer this. Harry doesn’t know about our little jaunt to Hall’s apartment that night. We have treated this on a need-to-know basis. Harry doesn’t need to know.

“Bzzzzz,” Harry. Sound effects like a quiz show, the problem with meetings outside the office over drinks and dinner.

“The answer is mauve,” he says. “There’s no lab report yet, but my guess is the fibers are some cheap nylon. I think they’re assuming some trunk fur here,” says Harry. “From the perp’s vehicle.”

“Do we know the color of the carpet in Acosta’s car?” asks Lenore. “The one they impounded.”

Harry shakes his head.

“Make a note to ask Acosta,” she says.

“What am I, the fucking secretary?”

Lenore reaches over and grabs the other bottle. Harry cops another peek, a man with a death wish. He must like what he sees. He makes the note and goes to the next item.

“They also found a broken pair of reading glasses, bent frames. At the girl’s apartment,” he says. “Wire rims. Half frames. One lens was cracked, like maybe somebody stepped on it.”

“Did Hall wear glasses?” I ask.

The thought is piercing, that the killer dropped a pair of glasses.

“Not when she read her statement in my office that afternoon,” says Lenore. “I suppose she could have been wearing contacts. Kept the glasses in her purse.”

“Does the police report say whether they were men’s or women’s?” I ask.

“Lemme see.” Harry roots through one of the piles of paper, like a guinea pig eating yesterday’s Tribune on the bottom of his cage.

“Not it. No.” Another page goes flying. “Here it is.”

He reads silently for a moment.

“No. Just says, ‘Identified for photographs and directed Forensics to gather one pair of broken spectacles found on the living room floor of the victim’s apartment. Appear to be reading glasses. Spectacles evidenced bent metal frame and one broken lens. Possibly damaged during struggle with assailant.’” Harry shrugs. “That’s it.”

This becomes a showstopper as we consider the possibilities, and avoid conjecture on the one that could be most damaging.

“Could be nothing,” says Lenore.

Harry and I are both looking at her, but it is Harry who says it.

“Acosta wears cheaters.”

There is a moment of sober silence as we consider the ramifications.

“We can’t assume that our client is telling us the truth,” he says. “One thing is certain. The cops will be checking Acosta’s prescription to see if it’s a match.”

The glasses are one of those pieces of evidence that as a prosecutor you love. If they’re a match to Acosta the cops will play it to the hilt. If they are not they will try to bury them, some incidental left in her apartment by anyone, swept onto the floor in the melee with the killer, while we argue to a deaf jury that they are exculpatory evidence, left there by the real killer.

“Just to be safe,” I say, “let’s get Acosta’s prescription.”

“Maybe his wife has it,” says Harry, “or can steer us to his optometrist.”

“We can ask him if he is missing any glasses tomorrow,” says Lenore. “We’ll see him at the jail.”

“Like I say. His wife should know who his optometrist is.” On such matters Harry does not trust clients. It is the nature of his practice, and perhaps in this case Harry’s take on the character of our client.

For the moment we pass this.

“Anything else from the girl’s apartment?” I ask.

“Forensics found some trace evidence, microscopic shavings of heavy metals. . ” Harry’s thumbing through the notes trying to find it.

“Here it is. Little bit of gold on the edge of the metal coffee table,” he says. “Trace amounts.”

“Where do they think it came from?” says Lenore.

“According to the report, speculation is that it might have scraped off of some jewelry worn by the perp. A watch, a bracelet, something like that,” says Harry. He gives us a big shrug with his shoulders.

As he does this, Lenore is looking at me, both of us with the same thought. There is no mention of the little gold item we glimpsed that night, the shiny object buried in the potting soil on the floor of Hall’s apartment. What it was and how it got there we are now left to wonder, along with an even bigger question: What happened to it?

“Not much beyond that,” says Harry. “Preliminary notes. Blood found, no typing as yet. Murder weapon is believed to be a blunt object, based on the massive head wound. Not found at the scene.”

Lenore and I exchange a knowing glance. We had both assumed that the girl struck her head on the metal corner of the tabletop during a fall. Now we are confronted with suspicions that it may have been more than this.

“Anything on the condition of the body?” says Lenore.

This sends Harry scurrying for other notes. He finds what he’s looking for.

“Her attire didn’t leave much to the imagination. A pair of white nylon panties, and a cotton top. That and the blanket the killer wrapped her in,” he says. “Oh. And there was a large bath towel wrapped around her head.”

I look at Lenore.

“Probably to keep blood off the interior of the killer’s car,” she says.

“You’d think the blanket would have done that,” I say.

She gives me a shrug.

“The report notes some bruising on the victim’s throat. Probably the result of the violent confrontation leading to death, according to the cops,” says Harry.

“Did they do a rape kit exam?” says Lenore.

Harry looks for the report, finds it, and pages down with one finger. Flips the page.

“Yeah. Here it is. According to the report, pathologist did it, but no findings.”

“What does that mean, negative result?” I ask.

“Not necessarily. Standard instructions from our office,” says Lenore, “was not to disclose anything except the essentials in the early reports. They’ll tell you they did the report, but not what they found.”

“I thought it was supposed to be a search for justice,” says Harry.

“That’s what we want the information for,” she says. “Just us.”

There is a long history of mandatory discovery in this state, something that used to be a one-way street with the prosecution disgorging all of its information to the defense. But the worm has now turned, and recent laws demand reciprocal discovery. The cops are experts at hide-the-ball, something we are still learning.

“Semen in the victim would be critical evidence,” I say. “Especially if the perpetrator was a secretor.” This could lead to a blood typing, or more to the point, a DNA match.

But Harry is troubled by some other obvious point, something that Lenore and I discussed that night after leaving Hall’s apartment.

“Why would the killer move the body? Seems an inordinate risk,” he says.

There is no rational answer to this. But then homicide is not a rational act. That those who perpetrate it might act illogically is the rule rather than the exception. It is why so many are caught.

Harry doesn’t buy this.

“The glasses I can understand,” he says. “People panic, drop things. Their business card at the scene,” says Harry. “But take a dead body and move it. I could understand if the place belonged to the killer. Move the body. Mop up the blood. But it’s her apartment There’s no evidence that she lived there with anyone except her child. At least the reports don’t disclose any roommates.”

It is one of those imponderables. Lenore shakes her head.

“What if somebody else moved the body?” I say.

“That’s crazy,” she tells me. “Makes no sense. Why would anybody do it?”

I scrunch up my face, a concession that I do not have a better answer. I make a mental note to see if somehow we can work this crazy act, the movement of the body, into our defense.

“Let’s talk about the child,” I say.

“Little girl,” says Harry. “Five or six.” He can’t remember so he paws through the pile of paper. “Here it is. Five years old,” he says. “Name is Kimberly.”

“Where was she that night?” I ask.

“She was there,” says Harry.

Lenore’s gaze meets mine like metal drawn to a magnet. This is the first time we have heard this. The little girl has not been mentioned in the news accounts; apparently she’s being shielded by the cops.

By this point I’m stammering. “Did she see anything?”

“The notes aren’t clear,” says Harry.

“Where was she in the apartment?” She wasn’t in her bed when I looked, but I can’t tell Harry this.

“Cops found her in a closet. In the hallway,” he says. “Huddled up in the shadows.”

The door that was open a crack, that I peered through.

Lenore has the look of cold sweat as her eyes lock on mine.

“We have to find out what she saw. Get a specific order for discovery,” I tell him. “We need to nail it down early.”

“What about the witnesses?” says Lenore. “Any of the neighbors see or hear anything?”

“A statement from one upstairs neighbor,” he says. “She heard something that could have been a scream about seven-thirty.”

“It could fix the time of death,” I say. “See how this fits in our case.”

“Anything else?” Lenore means witnesses.

“Not that night,” says Harry.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“One of the neighbors said she heard a lot of arguing from Hall’s apartment a couple of weeks before. Lotta noise. Angry words. A male voice,” says Harry. “Next day, Hall comes out of her place with a shiner.”

“Any clue as to the male voice?”

Harry shakes his head. “If the cops know, it ain’t in their report.”

“Check with the neighbor,” I tell him. “What about the guys who found the body? In the alley?”

“Transients, all three. Names we have. Addresses?” He gives a shrug. “Sixteen hundred Dumpster Manor,” he tells me.

“How do we find them if we want to take a statement?”

“Good point,” says Harry. “Knock on the lid?”

“Any driver’s license numbers?”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Fine. What do they say in the report?”

Harry makes a big goose egg with his fingers.

“No statements?”

“Nada. Just their names and a note by the first officer on the scene that they found the body in the Dumpster.”

Harry looks at me. We are thinking the same thing, that this leaves a lot of room for creative investigation. Without a clear statement by these witnesses, they are open to suggestion, the subtle, and not so subtle, shading of recollections. If the witnesses have criminal records they may be subject to pressure by the cops to embellish their testimony, to suggestions of things they did not actually see, such as the car that dropped the body or the person who was driving it.

“We need a specific motion, filed tomorrow morning,” I tell Harry, “demanding all written statements from their witnesses and specifically the three named individuals. You know they would have taken statements,” I tell him.

“They probably have the witnesses on tap.” Harry means in jail.

“You guys are cynical,” says Lenore.

“What? This from lady ‘just us’?” says Harry. “You wanna bet they don’t have ’em on ice? Some trumped-up charge? Vagrancy. Or maybe some interstate federal rap, like defecating in a trash bin. The cops know if they let ’em go, they’ll take the next coal car to Poughkeepsie.”

“Find out,” I say, “if they have them. If so, I want an interview so we can take our own statement.”

Harry makes a note.

“While we’re at it, get the transcripts of all computer transmissions from the patrol cars that night and any copies of radio transmissions. Also subpoena the victim’s telephone records for the last ninety days. Let’s see who she was talking to.”

The kids are getting restless, noisy footfalls on the stairs and a lot of giggling. We are about to lose all semblance of calm.

“Anything else in their notes or reports?” I ask.

“Just one item,” he says. “The police are assuming that she knew her killer.”

“How so?”

“No signs of forced entry,” says Harry. “According to their reports she must have unlocked the door for him. The cops had to find the landlord to get in.”

I give him a dense look, just as Sarah reaches me, hugs around the neck and wet kisses. My dining table is suddenly transformed into the center of merriment, like a Maypole in spring, three little dancing girls circling and singing.

Lenore grabs the hand of one of her daughters and joins in a chorus:

I sit there with a dumb look on my face. Though I cannot see it, my expression at this moment must be one of a kid sucker-punched somewhere in the lower regions. I watch Lenore skipping around the table and wonder why, when we had gained such fortuitous entry, she would bother to lock Brittany Hall’s apartment door on the night of our visit?