Undue Influence

Chapter 6

This morning Harry and I are doing some cold canvassing. Wearing out shoe leather on the cul-de-sac where Melanie was murdered, a survey of the neighbors, anything they may have seen or heard that night. With the cops holding their witness statements for another day, we have no choice but to go door-to-door.

We have an uphill battle. Like Harry says, ‘Anyone who ever fended off a murder case knows that shit always flows downhill.’ We are busy digging up dirt to build a dam.

Two days ago the city’s mayor, Lama, and the Capital County DA, Duane Nelson, held a joint news conference on Laurel’s case. They cozied up to the camera lenses, basking in the glow of warm strobe lights like they were on some hot beach in Mexico. Nelson told the press he had a stone-solid case, then proceeded to give them no details.

Nelson is a good lawyer and a better politician. Even though he can’t stand Lama, having canned him once as a DA’s investigator, he bestowed undue praise on Jimmy for netting the defendant so quickly. The event was one of those law-enforcement love fests that politicians crave — victory wreaths all around — a conquest in the war on crime.

There was more than a little hypocrisy in this. The day before Nelson called me to ask for a continuance in Laurel’s entry of a plea. A reversal of roles. Prosecutors with a strong case are usually hell-bent for court. He gave me some babble about assigning the case to another deputy, some minor amendments to the indictment. My antenna is up. Something is wrong — hopefully with their case.

I gave him the delay and told him I would get a gag order if he didn’t quit with the press. He laughed, good-natured, and assured me he would not do it again.

Melanie’s murder has stirred particular anxieties in this city of political commerce, ‘Beltway West.’

Government is a growth industry here, and the thought that legislators and their families are not safe is bad for business. Important people can leave to go live in the foothills.

The responsible voices of leadership, the Chamber of Commerce and the City Council, have been busy building on the theme that this was not a random act of violence likely to be visited on another prince of politics.

Laurel’s arrest serves a useful purpose. The city is hard at work on the message that a vengeful former wife, no matter how much she is vilified in the press, is not Jack the Ripper. The Speaker of the Assembly can curl up in confidence with his concubines and sleep in peace.

I punch the bell and a woman comes to the door. A pleasant face, maybe sixty-five, white hair like the lady on candy boxes, but with more style.

‘Margaret Miller?’ I say. Harry’s gotten names where possible from voter records.

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Paul Madriani, this is Mr. Harry Hinds. We’d like to talk to you for a moment concerning the death of Mrs. Vega.’

The smile fades on Mrs. Miller’s face.

‘Are you with the police?’

‘We are lawyers, Mrs. Miller, hired to represent Laurel Vega. We’d like to talk to you if you have a moment.’

‘Oh.’ An expression like leprosy is now stalking her just beyond the screen door. There’s a lot of pained indecision. She would rather not, but doesn’t want to be unfair. It is what the criminal defense lawyer sees with the good citizen, the detached witness. I can tell by the way she studies us that Mrs. Miller is uncertain whether by merely entertaining us on her front porch she is now violating some criminal law.

‘I don’t know. I guess it would be okay. If it’s all right with the police,’ she says.

‘Last time I looked, they hadn’t repealed the First Amendment,’ says Harry.

She’s giving him an imperious look as I knee him, a good one, in the thigh.

Mrs. Miller gives me a smile. She unlatches the door and swings it open.

Like a brush salesman I am busy giving her a full complement of teeth, artless smiles, and assurances that the law permits her to talk with us.

Harry, properly rebuked, gives her a business card and a ration of happy horseshit. ‘It’s all part of the process of getting to the truth,’ he says, something Harry’s shown no interest in except for those few times in open court when it has reared up and kicked him in the ass.

From the look on Mrs. Miller’s face, it is against her better judgment, but she invites us in.

The Miller home is no hovel. Her living room has more bird’s eye maple than some palaces, enough antiques for a museum. It is festooned with trinkets from around the world, figurines carved of ivory, masks on the wall with the look of Polynesia. The lady, in her time, has the appearance of a global traveler. There is a picture propped on a table, of a man, she looks younger, his arm around her. They are in some far-off place, a lot of stone steps and jungle vines. There is no Mr. Miller. Or if there is, he does not vote. Harry’s guess, given to me on the street, is that the man has gone on to the great cul-de-sac in the sky.

She offers us the couch, then fidgets, not sure whether we’re the kind of guests to whom she should offer coffee. She finally decides that the right to talk does not include beverages.

‘Mrs. Miller, we have a number of questions we’d like to ask you.’ I make it sound like I’m working from a questionnaire, some marketing survey, all very clean and clinical, ‘just the facts, ma’am.’

‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ I say. Prerogatives in her own house. She could throw us both down the front stairs and we would have no recourse. Except for unusual circumstances, the law does not permit a criminal defendant to depose or otherwise take a sworn statement from a witness unless they agree to cooperate.

She sits on the edge of a chair, the last two inches supporting only her spine. Her posture conveys the thought that she doesn’t intend to stay this way for long.

‘Have you talked to the police about the events of that night?’

She nods.

‘Can I ask you how many times?’

She has to consider this for a moment. Bad news.

‘Three times. Once here. Twice at their office,’ she says.

‘The police station?’ I say.

She nods.

Only serious customers go there.

‘Did you call them?’

‘Oh, heavens no! They came here. Knocked on the door. Like you,’ she says. ‘The morning after she was …’ She reaches for the ‘M’ word, but can’t say it. Like perhaps this might be offensive to us.

‘The morning after she passed on,’ she says. Sweet and a little singsong, she makes it sound like some shifty-eyed embolism sneaked up and took Melanie in her sleep. We should wish for her on the jury.

‘Can you tell us what you told the police?’

‘I’m not sure I’m supposed to.’

‘Did the police tell you not to talk to us?’

She shakes her head.

‘That’s because under the law, they can’t. The police are forbidden to tell a witness not to cooperate with the defense in a criminal case. That’s the law,’ I say. It is also a quantum leap from the inference I would have her draw — that she must talk to us.

‘It’s how we get to the truth,’ I say. ‘Everybody talking to everybody else.’ I make it sound like a social tea. ‘I’m sure you’d like to cooperate?’

‘Oh. I don’t want to be uncooperative.’

‘Of course not. And we appreciate it. Now can you tell me, as well as you can, what you told the police?’ The devil at work.

‘I guess you want to know about the woman,’ she says.

‘The woman?’

‘The one who came to the house.’

‘You saw someone come to the Vega house the night of the murder?’

‘Yes.’

Harry and I look at each other. Bingo. The cops have a live one. The first neighbor who has seen a thing.

‘Can you tell us what time you saw this person come to the house?’

‘Actually I saw her twice,’ she says. ‘The first time about eight o’clock or thereabouts. A lot of noise. Arguing on the front porch,’ she tells us. From the way she says this the cops may not need a lip-reader to peruse Jack’s security tapes.

‘Were you able to identify this woman?’

With this she looks at me. ‘I think it was your client,’ she says. ‘They showed me a picture. Actually several pictures. I was able to pick her out. It was hard to miss her. She made so much noise and all.’

‘And did you see this woman leave?’

‘I did. A few minutes later.’

‘About what time was that?’

‘I think I told the police about eight-twenty. She got in her car and drove off. I may be wrong, about the time I mean. The police thought it was closer to eight-thirty. They’re probably right,’ she says.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I’m not very good on time,’ she says. And because they’re the police. She doesn’t say the latter, but I can tell from the look on her face, like every good citizen Mrs. Miller is anxious to defer to authority.

The next item I tread on carefully, not anxious to reinforce something that may not be helpful.

‘You say someone came to the house a second time that night. Was that later?’ I ask.

‘That’s correct.’

‘You saw this person?’

‘I did.’

‘And what time was this?’

‘About eleven o’clock. Maybe a few minutes after. I saw her out on the street.’

‘Did the person arrive in a car?’ I say.

‘You mean the second time?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I didn’t see a car.’

‘Did you see which direction she came from, the second time?’

‘No. She just seemed to be standing there, near the driveway at the front of the house. And she’d changed.’

‘Changed?’

‘Her clothes.’

‘What makes you think it was the same woman you saw earlier in the evening?’

‘The build. The way she walked. Her face,’ she finally says.

‘You saw her face?’

She nods, soberly, like she knows this is bad news for our side.

‘What was this woman wearing when you saw her the second time?’

‘Sort of a sweatshirt, with a hood. It looked like running clothes to me. Like perhaps she’d been out jogging or was getting ready to go.’

‘But you did see her face?’ says Harry.

‘Pretty well,’ she says.

‘Enough to identify her?’

She thinks for a moment. The ultimate issue. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure it was the same woman you saw earlier in the evening? The one on the Vegas’ porch who was making all the noise?’

‘Oh, yes. We’ve established that,’ she says.

‘We?’ I say.

‘The police and I.’ Jimmy Lama’s conquest. Mrs. Miller’s views are no doubt now cast in stone.

‘Have you signed a statement?’ I ask this in clinical terms, like no big deal. You can change it at will.

‘Last week,’ she says.

‘And they taped their conversation with you.’

She looks at me like she’s not sure. But, knowing Lama, this is a certainty.

‘The first time this woman came to the house, did you see the car she was driving?’ Harry is now double-teaming her.

‘Yes. It was green, large. A Pontiac, I believe.’

The lady has a good feel for cars. Laurel has a late-model metallic-green Pontiac.

‘But you never saw this car later that night?’ Harry looking for a point.

She looks at him grudgingly. ‘She could have parked it around the corner,’ she says. In the roll of good cop, bad cop, it is clear who is going to get the confidence of Mrs. Miller.

‘Still, you didn’t see it?’ I ask.

‘True.’

‘Had you ever seen that car in the neighborhood before?’

‘No.’

‘Had you ever seen the woman before? The one you identified for the police?’ I say.

‘Not that I can recall.’

‘But the second time you saw the figure’ — Harry’s not conceding it was Laurel — ‘the second time there was no car.’

‘I said I didn’t see a car.’

Harry’s just checking. Hostility rating high.

‘Did you think this was strange? No vehicle.’

She makes a face. ‘Lots of people run,’ she says.

We probe for openings, any concession she might be willing to throw our way.

‘Did you actually see this person, the second figure — did you actually see this person enter the Vega house?’

‘No. And I told the police that.’ She’s nodding to us, like isn’t that fair?

‘Thank you,’ says Harry. Now if she will only retract her identification of Laurel on that second trip, Harry would kiss her behind.

‘How well did you know Melanie Vega?’ I ask.

‘Not at all. We had nothing in common.’ There is no equivocation here, abrupt, like the two women lived on different planets. I get the sense that there is something of disapproval lurking just under the surface, like Mrs. Miller is just egging me to ask. She sits on it like a pincushion.

‘You never saw her in the yard, over the fence, maybe gardening?’

‘I don’t think she would have known a rose if it stuck her,’ she says. A lot of imperious looks. ‘If we passed we didn’t talk. She kept to herself — and her few friends,’ says Miller.

‘Friends?’

‘She had a few.’

‘Women in the neighborhood?’

‘They may have been from the neighborhood, but they weren’t women. At least not that I noticed.’

If we had tea and little sandwiches we’d be heading toward the lady’s dirt session.

She fumes about a little, searching for the words. Then she says: ‘Mrs. Vega had callers.’

I give her a look.

‘Mostly at night, when her husband was away.’ She looks at me, waiting to see if I will roll with her in this hay. But I am taking notes, the dispassionate clinician. She takes to the defense, like a gossip scorned.

‘Well, when men come at night they’re not usually selling vacuums. I told the police the same thing.’

She looks at Harry, who is smiling. I can tell his mind is back to Melanie and the thought that, in his words, ‘She was bobbing for apples.’

‘Well, I may be older, but I’ve been around.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ says Harry.

She’s not sure how to take this, but she lets it pass.

‘You told the police she had gentlemen callers?’ I say.

‘Absolutely. They wanted to know everything, so I told them.’ She gives me a solid nod, like done my duty.

A buzzer goes off somewhere, the clock on a kitchen stove.

‘Will this take much longer? I have some errands to run,’ she says.

‘A couple more questions,’ I tell her. I could ask her about the hood, how much of the woman’s face it covered. Just how well she could see that night. What the light on the street was like. A million questions to set up doubts. But if she is going to equivocate, I want it to be on the stand, in front of a jury. Probing these issues will only serve to prepare her, perhaps quicken images already planted in her mind by Lama and his minions. I want to keep her as much in the middle between our sides as possible, reinforce the view that the good witness does not belong to any camp. With Mrs. Miller it may be the best I can do, at least for the moment.

Harry grills her on a few more points, what she heard on the steps as the two women argued. Lama might have hoped for more on this. It seems all she got was a lot of shouting, with very few intelligible words, most of which she does not wish to repeat. ‘Foul language,’ she says. She could jail Laurel for this alone, I think.

‘Could we hurry this up?’ she says. ‘I have a phone call to make before I leave on my errands.’

I seize the opening, some time to prepare and another session.

‘If you’re in a hurry, maybe we could continue this at another time, more convenient.’

‘That would be better,’ she says. Like a patient out of the chair in some dental office, she is now all smiles.

‘When would be convenient?’ I ask.

‘Why don’t you call me?’ She gives us her number. Harry writes it down.

We head for the door. I can see large windows in the dining room. These look out directly onto Vega’s front porch. She would not need field glasses to see who was there.

‘One more question,’ says Harry. ‘That night, did you hear anything that might have sounded like a gunshot?’

She shakes her head, soberly, like she’s thought about it before, something on which she is adamant. The cops must have grilled her on this.

‘No gunshot?’ he says.

‘No.’

‘No popping sound?’

‘I know what a gun sounds like,’ she says.

Harry looks at me. We have already hit three of the five houses in the cul-de-sac. Mrs. Miller’s house is next door to the Vega residence. The Merlows live on the other side. Except for Kathy and George Merlow, who we will do next, and who I met that night, Miller is closer than any other house in the neighborhood. So far, the bathroom trashed, glass bottles thrown and smashed, a nine-millimeter round fired, and no one heard a sound that night.

‘You don’t suffer from any form of hearing impairment?’ Harry can’t resist.

She stops and looks at him. ‘No one has ever accused me of that.’ If we get her on the stand I will keep Harry outside.

I thank her, tell her I will call in the next day or so, and we are gone.

We’re down the steps, out on the sidewalk. Mrs. Miller’s front door nearly hit Harry in the ass on the way out.

‘Bad news for our side,’ he says. ‘We could have her eyes checked. Subpoena the records of her optician,’ he says. ‘A fucking jogging suit,’ he tells me. ‘She can see through a hood. Better eyes than Superman. Why the hell didn’t she just swallow the speeding bullet and save us all the trouble of a trial?’ Harry has a bad attitude with witnesses who are not helpful, particularly if he thinks they are embellishing what they saw for the benefit of the boys in blue.

This is clearly his thought with Mrs. Miller. ‘If it walks and it wears a badge,’ he says, ‘it’s right.’

Four down, one to go. We head for the Merlows’.

Their house has a deep setback, forty yards of grass and dying shrubs.

George Merlow lacks inclinations toward a green thumb. Or else his gardener’s been deported. The lawn hasn’t been mowed in a month. It’s covered by a carpet of leaves, and weeds sprout in the planter beds like tulips in Holland.

We head up the walkway through the front garden. The double front door is one of those arched affairs, something that looks like it belongs under a steeple, in a church. Except that stuck in the crack between the two doors is a single sheet of colored paper, a handbill that is weathered and brittle. An advertisement for a Halloween sale that ended three weeks ago.

There’s a newspaper, still wrapped in its rubber band. It’s been watered by the automatic sprinklers or the morning dew and left to dry in the sun. I have seen parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls in better shape. I roll the rubber band down and open it to the front page.

The lead story is about Melanie Vega:

LAWMAKER’S WIFE MURDERED IN EAST AREA

It has been here, forgotten under some bush, since the day after the murder.

I climb the steps and look through the glass on the door. It is leaded and beveled, a view like a kaleidoscope, glittering light with more angles than one of Harry’s clients. I pick a facet and look. Clear carpet as far as I can see. No furniture. Nothing on the walls.

I ring the bell. We wait patiently for the sound of footfalls. The only thing that arrives is a cat, calico and hungry. It bounds down from the railing on the porch and begins to make love to my leg.

‘Nobody home,’ says Harry.

We ring again. Same result.

It isn’t until I turn that I see it. At the far end of the porch, propped against a windowsill, a sign — ‘For Sale’ — a realtor’s logo emblazoned across the background. I walk the distance and look at it. Some agent’s name and number, home and office, dangle from a separate metal placard below the main sign. I take these down on the back of a business card and slip it in my pocket.

‘Moved,’ says Harry.

‘Looks like it,’ I say.

As I turn I can see directly into one of the windows that looks in from the porch. A bedroom, empty space. If you hollered it would echo. The only thing remaining is the curtain on one side of the window, like maybe whoever left did so in haste.

I head down the porch and around to the side of the house, Harry on my heels.

‘Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe they went into another house. Lot of confusion that night,’ says Harry.

‘No mistake,’ I tell him. ‘I watched them walk all the way down this driveway and disappear into the backyard.’

Some confusion. Harry tramps to the sidewalk and checks the street number painted on the curb against his copy of the voter rolls, the Merlows’ address. They don’t show up.

‘Good citizens,’ he says. Given Harry’s attitude toward government, I might question his criteria for demerit points in civics.

He pulls out a little cellular phone and flips open the mouthpiece. Harry and the electronic age. Some fool in a company has given him this thing to use for six months, part of a promotion. Harry has already dropped spaghetti sauce on the dialing pad, which he bitches is too small for his lumpy fingers.

Phone directory has no listing for the Merlows, new or old. He’s talking to himself as I head through the gate toward the backyard.

‘Nosy neighbors may call the cops.’ Harry’s worried.

‘We’re house shopping,’ I tell him.

I don’t have to worry about running into Jack. Since the murder he and the kids have moved into a condominium downtown, closer to the Capitol. Word is that Julie and Danny were spooked by the house. Danny would not stay here after he saw cops tramping through with questions, brushing fibers off the carpet of his dad’s bedroom. The condominium was a concession, part of the deal for temporary custody, to lure the kids back into Jack’s nest pending Laurel’s trial.

‘What are you looking for?’ says Harry.

‘I don’t know. Just something about them that night.’

Maybe it was Kathy Merlow, her wide-eyed preoccupation with the remains, wanting to know when the coroner would bring out the body. Perhaps it was her fragile condition, not so much physically ravaged as psychicly stressed. Whatever — Kathy Merlow had a look that night, an aspect that in twenty years of criminal law practice I have seen enough times to recognize. She wore it in her eyes, the stamp of someone who was witless with fear. Not some idle vague anxiety, but more specific, some reason to be afraid.

Harry humors me as we survey the yard.

The Merlows’ house, or what used to be, is one of those modern Victorians, a lot of gingerbread sold as style — half a million dollars of house on a million-dollar lot.

Like Harry said when he saw the neighborhood, ‘Area is everything.’

In the back there’s a pool and sport court, fenced in black chain-link, surrounded by faux gaslights like a London street, in the motif, so that in a fog you might have visions of Jack the Ripper.

‘These people live nice,’ says Harry. He’d like to know what George Merlow does for a living.

‘That may be our best chance to find him,’ I say. ‘His work.’ Though I don’t have a clue what it is. I try to remember the tenor of our conversation that night. But it wasn’t a meeting where small talk predominated. Kathy Merlow was too busy looking for bodies.

On the far side at the back of the house there’s a low deck. This leads to a small dining area off the kitchen. Harry tries the sliding door. It’s locked.

I look at him, raised eyebrows.

‘I just want to look,’ he says.

Upstairs there’s a balcony, turned spindles, and glossy white handrailings, what every little girl would like on her dollhouse. This runs the entire width of the house, to the second-story turret, where the balcony becomes a descending staircase, spiral and wrought-iron to the ground.

Harry and I climb. On the balcony, the slider between the large bay window and the stairs is locked. Harry has checked this. He’s now wiping little smudges from his fingers off the glass with the bottom of his coat.

I peer through a small window by the stairs. As vacant as below, a bedroom. My guess is the master. I can see a large adjoining bath.

The bay on the other side, closest to the Vega house, is a small den. A man’s room. A wet bar, brown wallpaper with ships. There’s a built-in entertainment center on the far wall, a cabinet with one door not closed. There’s a built-in desk in the bay of the window. Depressions in the carpet tell me that furniture was placed in front of this. My guess is a swivel desk chair, something to take advantage of the views from the window over the desk, that could be turned to the TV.

‘Nothing here,’ says Harry. ‘We can run ’em down from postal records.’ He’s thinking change of address.

I’m thinking three strikes and you’re out. Something in my bones tells me that George and Kathy Merlow will not be that easy to find.

We turn to leave, and I stop, dead in my tracks. Harry’s halfway to the stairs before he realizes I’m not behind him.

I’m looking from the balcony, the view from the bay window, Merlow’s study. Like a seat in the bleachers at Dodger Stadium, it looks down, over the fence, and directly into a large window in Jack Vega’s house. This is not just any window. It is one of those greenhouse affairs that could house a small family — a glass wall curving from roof to foundation, bigger than the bubble on a B-29.

Set in the window is a massive bathtub, Jacuzzi heaven, white porcelain on a platform of tile. Strands of yellow police tape bar the door to the bathroom. Something left in Jack’s wake of departure.

Harry’s finally joined me back at the railing, tracking on the view.

‘It’s still preserved,’ he says. ‘We oughta get a court order for Jack’s house.’ Harry wants a look at where it happened. Leaning against the railing, he looks over his shoulder at the gaping glass of what we must assume was George Merlow’s study.

‘And we need to find your friend George Merlow,’ he says.