The Jury

chapter thirteen

Crone is waiting for us at the jail. Harry called ahead to make sure the guards would deliver him to one of the attorney-client consulting cubicles over the dayroom where “the Professor” has been pumping iron and putting miles on the treadmill while we’ve been in court.

The news that Epperson served as a source of information for Kalista’s mother hit us out of the blue. Harry has tried and gotten nowhere with Epperson. Now we are faced with the prospect of hostile testimony, what we have feared from the former basketball star from the inception.

“What did Crone say when you gave him the news?”

“If he was surprised, he didn’t voice it,” says Harry.

“You think he knew?”

“If he didn’t, he’s the coolest character since James Dean. Didn’t seem to phase him in the least. Said he had absolute confidence in us.” Harry looks at me with a crooked grin.

“Maybe he didn’t know what else to say.”

“He could have shown a little fear,” says Harry. “That would be a nice change.”

“So the man’s got ice in his veins.”

“He’s a fucking snow cone. Which leaves us right where we started. Kalista Jordan being dead, anything she told her mother we can keep out. That’s hearsay,” says Harry. “But Epperson’s another matter. He’s alive and available. If Tannery puts him up on the stand and Epperson testifies that Crone was mixing some genetic stew with the entrails of wombats to come up with a new formula for African IQ, our closing argument is gonna resonate like the Nazi national anthem. It wouldn’t be a long leap for the jury to conclude that Kalista was killed because Crone found out she was about to go public on some hair-raising racial experiments. You’re going to find yourself defending the angel of death,” he tells me.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why would he hire her in the first place if he was working on something that was racially charged? Why take the chance?”

“Who’s he going to hire?” says Harry. “There’s not a lot of skinheads running around with Ph.D.s in whatever it was.”

“Molecular electronics,” I tell him.

“Whatever. Crone needed qualified researchers to get funding. And the presence of a minority or two didn’t hurt. He knew how to play the game. Maybe he didn’t have a choice. You have to remember Crone had to get the funding, the corporate grant, from that company.”

“Cybergenomics.”

“That’s the one. If he had to take Epperson to obtain a research grant, it could be he was induced to hire Kalista Jordan for the same reason. They knew each other before they went to work there. Epperson was still with the company when Kalista was hired. He didn’t come on board at the center until after,” says Harry. “What if they were working together to get information on Crone? If Kalista’s mother is telling the truth and she fired up her daughter with tales of activism from the days of yore, the daughter could have gone to Epperson, enlisted his help.”

“And you think they were out to set him up?”

“If the mother is to be believed. And if Epperson comes through for him on the stand, Tannery’s got a good chance of selling it to the jury.”

I think about this for a moment. “There’s something wrong, which doesn’t fit.”

“What is it?” says Harry.

“Why would a corporation like Cybergenomics touch anything like that? I mean if Crone was engaged in research with a social and political downside why would they get involved, sully their corporate image? I can’t imagine there would be that much money involved in it.”

Harry mulls this over for a moment, deep in thought as we walk through the courthouse lobby. “What if. .” He’s thinking out loud. “What if their funding was for something else? What if Crone was working on the racial stuff on the side? Something the company didn’t know about? If news of it got out, think what would happen to his funding.”

“Dry up overnight,” I say.

“It could be worse than that,” says Harry. “If Crone was diverting funds for something else, playing hide-and-seek with grant money, you’re talking some nasty criminal shit. Now there’s something to kill for.”

Harry and I suffer the same thought instantly. We utter the words in unison: “A financial audit.”

We turn to look at each other, stopped dead in our tracks. Anybody watching us from the top of the escalator, looking down, might half expect by body language alone to see some luminescent green light flicker on behind our eyes.

“Was there one?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

Then I remember I had some of the documents, working papers on the early grant request for the Huntington’s study on the children.

“That would give us something to start with. The project number and the name they used for the principal research. It was on the grant request.”

“What do we know about the funding?” I ask Harry.

“Squat,” he says. Suddenly the sickening thought: We’ve been looking in all the wrong places.

I think maybe I might have filed the grant request in one of the cabinets back in the office, but then I realize where I left them. They were copies only, and when we finished with them I left them with Doris Boyd.

I tell Harry I’ll call her in the morning. He can stop by and pick them up. “That’ll give you a start, anyway. Tell us where to begin looking.”

“If that’s it,” says Harry, “Crone would be under a legal hammer.”

“Like a moth under a mallet.”

“He could have been personally liable for the funds,” says Harry.

“That’s if they were feeling charitable. Didn’t nail him criminally for diversion, embezzlement,” I say.

“That wouldn’t look too good on his resume next time he goes out fund hunting. And it’s tough to get a grant when you’re in the joint,” says Harry. Though I suspect Harry has known a few clients who have done it.

“You think this is what Jordan and Epperson were doing, chasing the money trail?”

“I don’t know.” Harry doesn’t want to think about it. “Maybe we’re just worried about nothing,” he says. “I mean, we can’t connect all the dots.”

“Let’s just hope Tannery can’t. I don’t need any more surprises. Find out everything you can about any audits. Track the trail of the grant money, especially anything coming in from Cybergenomics.”

Harry makes notes as we walk, then clicks the top of his pen and sticks it back in his vest pocket. “If there’s anything there, I hope you have an answer for them.”

“Me?” I look at him as we stride across the lobby. I’m half a step behind.

“You’re the one Crone has all this confidence in,” he says.

“What about you? You’re the one who’s dreaming up all this shit to worry about.”

“That’s probably why he doesn’t have any confidence in me.” Harry smiles.

Walking fast, we’re at a near jog, down the front steps of the courthouse and around the corner toward the jail. Harry is out front, the two of us angling toward the curb. It’s like one of those surreal dreams. I’m listening to Harry talk, but my brain isn’t in it, as the tumblers of recognition turn, clicking into place.

It is almost by us before I realize. The driver could have turned around in the middle of the block, pulled a U-y, but he was already committed; it would have been too obvious. The best he can do is lift an elbow to shade his face as he glides past, headed for the larger herd of vehicles on Broadway. The elbow up was a good effort, except that I have seen the move too many times on the basketball court, and it’s hard to be inconspicuous when you’re seven feet two.

“You see that?” I say.

“What?” Harry looks up, at me, then at the sky-it’s a bird. . it’s a plane.

“The car,” I tell him. “That van.”

By the time he turns, the vehicle is at the corner sixty yards away.

“I didn’t see it.”

“Epperson was behind the wheel.”

Harry gives me a dull look, then finally stops to turn and get a fix. “What do you think he’s doing down here? A long way from work. And he’s excluded from the courtroom.”

“Yeah. I know.” But what is most troubling to me is the vehicle itself, the dark blue van with a sizeable dent in the left front fender, its parking light smashed on that side: the same van that was parked in front of my house last night.

– -

By the time we get to the jail, Crone is waiting, and Harry and I are in no mood for games. We are positioned on the other side of the thick glass that separates us from the jail holding area. Though we can hear every word and see each gesture, we can’t touch Crone, and Harry at this moment is ready to. There are no smiles from either side of the glass.

Crone is the picture of concern, as anxious as I have seen him from the start of the trial, though this isn’t saying much. What we are getting is mostly denials.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about. I had a lot of students over the years. I can’t remember them all.”

“She remembers you,” says Harry.

“I probably gave her a bad grade.”

Harry and I have decided not to mention Cybergenomics or questions regarding the grant until we know more. We confine ourselves to Epperson and Tanya Jordan’s testimony.

“The fact is, Bill and I had a good working relationship,” says Crone. “We got on well. I have nothing but wonderful things to say about him.”

“Let’s hope the feeling is mutual,” I say, “when they put him on the stand.”

“From what we’re hearing, I doubt it,” says Harry.

“There’s nothing that I know of. Believe me.”

“Where have we heard that before?” Harry is starting to get short with Crone. “We’re not interested in stories about collegial working relationships or academic mutual respect. What we want to know is whether you were working on anything with a racial edge.”

Crone looks at him over the top of his glasses. “We’re back to that.”

“We’ve never left that,” says Harry. “Apparently this good working relationship you had with Dr. Epperson included his disclosure of information to Kalista Jordan’s mother that involved some-how do I say it? — ‘socially divisive issues.’ ”

Crone looks at him from beyond the glass.

“Racial genetics,” says Harry. “And we’re not talking a cure for sickle-cell anemia. Tell us about this racial graying.”

Crone shakes his head. “There was a misunderstanding back then.”

“Back when?” says Harry.

“When I was at Michigan.”

“We’re not talking about Michigan. We’re talking about now.”

Crone actually looks mystified, as if he doesn’t understand. “What is she saying, that I’m doing it now?”

“That seems to be what she’s saying, and according to her, Epperson is prepared to substantiate it on the stand.”

“No,” says Crone. His eyes suddenly flash toward me. “Paul, you have to believe me. I don’t know what the woman is talking about.” He has both palms laid flat on the countertop in front of him, leaning toward the acrylic partition, staring intently into my eyes as if to emphasize the truth he is telling.

“Tell us about racial graying,” says Harry. He’s not about to be put off.

Crone is a bundle of frustration. Eyes darting, looking at everything but us. “Where do I start?”

“Try the beginning,” says Harry.

“Fine. Let’s go back to the beginning, back to the Middle Ages when there were dynastic wars, when armies fought under the banner of Christendom to blot religious differences from the map. They butchered in the name of God: a higher calling than what we are about to engage in if we continue heading in the direction we’re drifting.”

Suddenly his eyes are on us, cutting through me like twin lasers. “Do you have any idea how many people over the ages have lost their lives as a result of religious strife?”

No answer.

“You’re wondering what this has to do with genetics?”

“It crossed my mind,” says Harry.

“The sectarian wars of religion were merciful compared with the racial and ethnic conflicts that will engulf man if we don’t deal with them now. People could convert to new religions if presented with the sharp blade of a sword or the heat of the flames as an alternative. But how do you change the pigmentation of your skin, the shape of your nose, the texture of your hair?

“We are already engaged in the new Inquisition; if you don’t believe me, just look at the racial composition of our prisons. We are headed for the new Crusades and if you don’t buy that, witness what is happening in the Balkans.

“You know,” he says, “the great thinkers, the masters of intellect from the earliest writings, lectured on the equality of the species since long before Christ and yet we have lived through eons of slavery.

“Here in the Land of the Free it took seventy-five years, a Civil War and six hundred thousand dead before the preamble of Jefferson’s declaration became fact: that all men are created equal. And still there are those who don’t accept it.

“Yes, that’s what I was working on. Back in Michigan. I admit it.” He looks at Harry.

“You don’t get it?”

There is only the sound of silence from our side of the glass. Harry and I are now confronted with the thought, How do we put Crone on the stand to talk about this?

“No matter how well-intentioned, no matter how much we crave social justice,” he says, “we are never going to be color-blind. Face the fact. We are always going to be cognizant of those differences that mark us physically. And it’s not just racial,” says Crone. “In an age of scientific enlightenment and technological miracles, we judge our leaders on their physical stature and television presence and we select fools and the false priests of corruption to govern us. We embrace diversity but engage in white flight. We want to smile, hug minorities because it makes us feel good. We want to revel in those differences, and yet the very act, the recognition of difference, separates us. Yes, I was working toward erasing those differences. I don’t know that I am proud of that. The very endeavor is a damning admission that our species has failed in the one single act that should have come naturally: the act of accepting one another on faith. The knowledge that we all put our pants on the same way each morning, one leg at a time.

“It’s a subtle thing,” he says. “The recognition of difference. How do we tell the brain not to form a system of classification that is impressed on us daily by economics, by the neighborhoods in which we live, by the media in which we are immersed and that we seem to absorb almost by osmosis?”

He looks at me. “Tell me you have no twinge of anxiety when five or six young black men, or a group of macho Mexican teens, walk toward you on the sidewalk. Would you have the same fears if those kids were white?

“Would they feel compelled to engage in the secret rites of gang graffiti, or don gang garb, clothing that sets them apart? These are tribal instincts as old as man. Archeologists will tell you there is evidence of this on the steppes of Africa dating back nine millennia. But that’s where we’re headed,” says Crone, “back to the tribes, back to the darkness. What I hoped for was a way out.”

He looks at us, stone-cold from the other side of the glass. “I admit it was controversial. There is no so-called race gene,” he says. “We know that. It is much more subtle. There’s more genetic difference within racial groups than among them. We’re dealing with a hundred, maybe a thousand, genetic differences. Melanin for skin color, but even that is no indicator of race. Some might call it unethical to even be looking at this. But you tell me a better way to deal with the problem, and I’ll change my views.”

“How about leaving the decision to nature?” says Harry.

“That’s not going to cut it,” says Crone. “I’m afraid we don’t have a million years to allow evolution to take its course, to blur the distinctions and make us one family. We are very likely to destroy one another in that time. Racial strife is going to devour us.”

“I like the way I look,” says Harry. “I wouldn’t want you screwing with it.”

“Future generations,” says Crone. “If it worked, it would only work on them.”

“Maybe they’d like to be the product of nature, too,” I say.

“Nice thought,” he says, “but it doesn’t address the problem. As a matter of science, as a genetic factor, race doesn’t exist; it is purely a social concept. Wouldn’t it be nice if society caught up with science? Maybe the race could survive. I’m talking about the human race,” he says. “Instead of filling census forms with meaningless data regarding race and ethnic origins, we should be moving away from that. All we are doing is further ingraining racial stereotypes.”

He considers for a moment, looks at me, pondering how to get through.

“Let me give you an example. You’re a pilot in a small plane. You take off and within minutes you find yourself engulfed in clouds. You look out through the windows and all you see is white. You trust your eyes to tell you which way is up. You rely on your inner ear. Two minutes later you fly the plane into the ground. Why? Because your eyes and your inner ear deceived you. That’s how it is with race. We’re trusting our perceptions and ignoring the science. Look at the instruments of science and they will tell you there is no genetic difference, no such thing as racial markers. But people believe what they see. So how do you deal with that?”

I have no answer for him.

“People are so stupid,” he says. “It’s like when you ask someone what it takes to be great, the first and most fundamental element of making a mark on human history, they always think about it, though they never think long enough, and then they start rattling off the characteristics of the great, whittling down the list, looking for that one essential common ingredient. They talk about persistence and brilliance, education and eloquence, natural talent and acquired skills; some of them even come close and mention luck. But they never get it right. They always miss the most essential and obvious element of them all. And it’s so simple.

“In order to be great, in fact in order to achieve anything in this life, first rule-you have to survive.” He smiles. “Bet you didn’t get it.”

He knows by my look I didn’t.

“And yet we all take it for granted. Do any of us know? Do we have any idea how many Einsteins or Picassos there might have been but for the fact that they didn’t survive to realize the promise of their greatness? How many Churchills or Roosevelts died in their infancy because of disease, war or famine? We’ll never know. The world will never know who they were. They never made it into the history books because of the simple fact that they failed the first test of greatness. They didn’t survive long enough. And that’s where we’re headed as a species,” he says. “In the race for greatness in the cosmos. Other beings on other planets will never know we existed, because unless we solve the problems here, we’ll never survive long enough.

“Do you know that in the last five months, since I’ve been in here, I’ve been recruited, at least two dozen times, by Nordic Pride, the Caucasian gang that provides protection?”

What he is telling me I have already heard from jailers whom I know. Places of incarceration are the modern equivalent of the state of nature. You band together or you die.

“It’s a caste system constructed on color: brown, black and white. So far, I’ve refrained,” he says. “How much longer I can afford this luxury I’m not sure. If I’m convicted and end up at San Quentin or Folsom, I’m going to have to stop thinking about it and act. My time for commitment will have arrived,” he says. “I will have to join the tribe, or die. You can take it on faith,” he says, “that I am a survivor.”

These are no longer academic questions for Crone. I can tell that he has considered them at night in the dark on his bunk.

For a moment there is just silence. Then he looks at us. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“What?” asks Harry.

“That the petri dish growing the culture for modern American society is not the schools, or the corporations or even the family. It’s the prisons.” He laughs a little at the thought.

“Make no mistake,” he says, “the tribes that are growing there aren’t going to stay there. We can’t lock them up fast enough or hold them long enough to isolate the problems and to fix them. We’d better do something, and do it quickly.”

“And that’s what you were doing,” says Harry. “Dealing with the problem.”

“Trying to. At least coming up with an option,” says Crone. “In Michigan.”

“We’re back to that,” says Harry.

“Because it’s the truth. My views have not changed,” says Crone. “But I was not engaged in racial genetic research at the center. That is a fact. If you don’t believe me, bring Bill Epperson into the courtroom. I’m sure he’ll tell you that I wasn’t working on anything of the kind.”

“We won’t have to bring him in,” says Harry. “The prosecution is taking care of that.”

“Then talk to Bill if you don’t believe me.”

“We’ve tried,” I tell him. “He doesn’t want to talk to us.” Harry had followed up on a meeting with Epperson after our encounter in the elevator. Harry got nowhere. Epperson declined to give him a statement signed under oath and said he couldn’t discuss the matter further. He asked Harry to leave.

“I don’t understand.”

“That makes three of us,” says Harry.

“Why wouldn’t he talk to you? I know Kalista’s death hit him hard. They were close. But I don’t think Bill believes I had anything to do with it. In fact, I know he doesn’t. He told me so.”

“When was that?”

Crone thinks for a moment. “A week or so before they arrested me. We were talking in my office. Everybody at the center knew the police were nosing around, that I was a suspect. They let the word out, tried to destroy my reputation. I think they wanted to see if I would run.”

“And what did you say to Epperson?”

“I told him I didn’t know why the police kept questioning me.”

“And what did he say?”

“He couldn’t figure it out either. He said he couldn’t think why anyone would want to hurt Kalista. He said he knew that we’d had some disagreements, but that he was certain I had nothing to do with her death. He didn’t hold me responsible. I know he didn’t. And believe me, if he had any suspicions he would never have talked to me.”

“Why not?”

Crone suddenly looks away as if maybe he’s crossed the line, said something he shouldn’t have.

“Listen,” I tell him. “If you’re holding something back, now’s not the time. We can’t represent a client who is holding out.”

“It’s not something that’s important,” says Crone.

“Let me decide that,” I tell him.

He thinks about how he’s going to say it, tries to measure his words, then just blurts it out: “Epperson was in love.”

I don’t say anything, but he knows the question.

“With Kalista,” he says.

“Next you’re going to tell me the feelings weren’t mutual?”

He seesaws his head back and forth on his shoulders as if he’d rather not say, then does. “She liked him. They were friends.”

“But nothing more.”

Crone shakes his head.

“And Epperson was looking for more?”

“He wanted to marry her.”

“Did he ever ask her?” says Harry. Something we might confront Epperson with on the stand.

Crone now gets out of the chair on the other side of the glass. He is in a small, enclosed cubicle, the guard on the other side of a closed door. I can see the uniform through the acrylic partition that separates us and the glass in the door over Crone’s shoulder.

“Don’t talk with your back to us,” says Harry. “They can read lips.”

Crone turns around. “He’d tried to give her an engagement ring.”

“Epperson?” I say.

He nods.

“She turned him down.”

“When?” asks Harry.

“About three weeks before she disappeared.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” I say.

“Because it had nothing to do with her murder.”

“How do you know that?” asks Harry. “It seems to me only two people could be as certain about that as you seem to be: Epperson if he didn’t kill her, and if he didn’t whoever did.”

Crone ignores him. “Kalista took her troubles to a friend, an older woman at the center; the friend came to me. She told me Kalista didn’t want to ruin a good friendship with Epperson.”

“When?” I ask.

“A few days after he tried to give her the ring.”

“Who was the intermediary?” asks Harry. “The older woman?”

“Carol Hodges.”

Hodges has already taken the stand in the state’s case. She was one of the witnesses to the argument between Crone and Jordan in the faculty dining room the night Jordan disappeared.

“She was close to Kalista. She thought maybe I could help.”

“How could you have helped?” I ask. “You and Jordan were at war. She’d taken the working papers from your office. She’d filed a sexual harassment complaint against you.”

“At the time, Hodges didn’t know that.”

“Hodges thought I could talk to Bill, try to make him understand that she simply didn’t love him, but that she wanted him as a friend. I did what I could.”

“You talked to Epperson?” I ask.

He nods.

“Where did he buy the ring?” asks Harry.

“What?”

“The engagement ring.” Harry has a notepad open on the counter in front of him, pen at the ready.

“I don’t know. Why is it important?”

“Did he show it to you?”

“No.”

Nothing we can check out. No evidence with which to confront Epperson on the stand. With Kalista Jordan dead, anything Hodges has to say on this point is hearsay.

“Did Epperson ever talk to anybody else at the center, maybe somebody he might have confided in?”

“Some of the younger staff,” says Crone, “a few of the younger guys ran together, partied.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us sooner?” I ask.

“Because I was sure he didn’t kill her. He was in love with her.”

“Yes, and she’d rejected him,” says Harry.

“He didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?”

All we get is a shrug and a stare from the other side of the acrylic.

Harry wants to talk outside, where Crone can’t hear. He tugs me by one arm. I tell Crone to sit tight. Harry and I step outside and close the door on our side of the cubicle, and stand there to make sure that the guard doesn’t take Crone away.

“Question is,” says Harry, “do we talk to Epperson now or hit him on the stand?”

“We have nothing to hit him with. You think you can run down the ring?” I ask.

“If it exists.”

“You don’t believe him.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Gotta admit it’s pretty far fetched, this woman coming to him to do his impression of Cyrano. How many jewelers do you think there are in San Diego?” he asks.

“I’d start in La Jolla, out near the center, work my way this way. Try the places around where Epperson lives.”

Harry nods, a sour look on his face. This is a thankless task. He now has a full plate, following the audit trail for Crone’s research and delving into Epperson’s love life.

“We have an approximate date for the purchase of the ring. Besides, maybe there were other people at the center who saw it. He may have shown it around. Young man in love,” I tell him.

“Yeah. Just my line of work.” I can tell what Harry is thinking: Crone sending him out chasing geese.

We step back inside. Crone has calmed down enough to sit, waiting for us at the acrylic partition.

“If we wanted to talk to Epperson,” I say, “how would we go about it?”

Crone thinks about this for a moment. “Aaron, I suppose. I could have Dr. Tash call him.”

“It would have to be voluntary. Epperson’s conversation with us. No inducements,” I tell him. “If he doesn’t want to talk, he has to be told that he is free to decline.”

“Understood.”

There is no doubt that if we talk to Epperson, Tannery will find out, and will explore the conversation with Epperson on the stand. Anything that looks like duress would cut against us.

“Do you want me to call him? Aaron, I mean.”

I nod.

Crone picks up the jailhouse phone and waits for the operator to answer. “Bill’s the only one who can set this straight. I don’t understand why he won’t talk to you.”

“He’s been told by prosecutors to stay clear,” says Harry.

“Can they do that?”

“They can tell him he doesn’t have to talk to us if he doesn’t want to. If they wink and nod in all the right places, most witnesses get the message. Don’t complicate your life if you don’t have to. The rest is up to him,” says Harry.

“Then maybe he just doesn’t want to get involved.”

“He is now,” I tell him.

“Well, absolutely. And he’s going to have to tell the truth.”

“Yeah, that’s what we need. Some truth telling,” says Harry.

Crone takes this as the shot it is intended to be, but doesn’t respond.

“I need to have a call placed.” The operator is on the line. “No, it’s a local area code. Yes, it’s at the request of my lawyer. He’s here. You want to talk to him?”

The jail operator must have said no because Crone doesn’t ask me to pick up the receiver on my side.

At this moment he is all energy and enthusiasm, finally something he can do in his own defense. He gives the operator the telephone number from memory, Tash’s office number at the center.

“Don’t say anything else, just tell him to contact Epperson and have Epperson call my office,” I tell him.

Crone nods, winks from beyond the glass, circled finger and thumb like he understands.

We can hear half of the conversation, Crone breathing into the phone from the mike set in the thick acrylic that separates us.

“Aaron, David here. We have a problem.” Just like that. Crone says it as if he’s never left the office, like it’s something they can handle in a midmorning staff meeting. “Can you get ahold of Bill Epperson for me, and have him call somebody?”

“No. No. It’s nothing having to do with the project. It’s the case. There’s some mix-up,” he says. “Nothing serious.”

I’m beginning to grimace on the other side of the glass.

“Seems a witness is saying some things. .”

I tap on the partition with my pen, shaking my head as Crone looks at me. He nods like he understands, then looks away.

“Some garbage about our work,” he says.

Now I’m tapping with my knuckles, waving him off with my hand. Finger slicing across my throat like a knife as if to cut him off. He turns sideways in the chair so that I can no longer make eye contact.

“Nothing to worry about,” he says. “Bill can straighten it all out.”

I’m hitting the acrylic hard enough to break a regular window.

Crone gives me another bull’s-eye, this time blind, not looking at me, with finger and thumb.

“It’s that same old crap,” he says, “from back in the seventies. Yeah.”

Tash is commiserating on the other end of the line.

“Yes. The whole thing raising its head again. You get tired of people misconstruing your work,” he says. “Especially now. They’re saying I’m doing things when I’m not.”

“What’s that?”

“Yeah, it has to do with the same charges.”

I can only imagine what Tash is saying on the other end, hoping and praying that the operator is not recording it on Tannery’s orders.

“Let me check.” Crone cups his hand over the mouthpiece, and turns to look at me. He can see the fire in my eyes, but he ignores this.

“Aaron would like to know if he can come by.”

“What? Now?”

“Tomorrow morning. He’s got some numbers he wants me to look at. Maybe about nine one of you could be here?”

Harry and I look at him dazed, being from another planet.

“He is helping us get to Bill,” he says.

Harry sits in stunned silence, neither of us able to come up with the words before Crone is turned sideways again, and back to Tash on the phone.

“Good. Yeah, that’s fine. Nine o’clock,” he says. “No, it’s not something I can get into, at least not on the phone.” Like he’s going to discuss what happened in court behind closed doors with Tash. I decide I’d better be here.

Crone turns to wink at me, a look from furrowed eyebrows, a sly smile as if to say he understands the delicate situation here, the risks of tampering with a witness.

“Tell him it’s purely voluntary, but that I’d appreciate it if he’d contact my lawyers, in the interest of fairness.” He gives Tash my phone number to pass along. Then he hangs up.

He turns. Big smile. “You guys don’t mind, do you?”