Final Target

CHAPTER 56

W e’ve done everything we can,” Peterson said when he stopped by U.S. Attorney Willie Rose’s office at the end of the day. “We can’t find the grand jury leak.”

Rose wasn’t pleased. He could read the headlines before they’d been written: “Grand Jury Scandal Rocks Federal Court. U.S. Attorney’s Office Forced to Dismiss Two Hundred Indictments.”

Peterson sat down in a chair and passed a folder across Rose’s desk.

“These are Zink’s reports. The chief judge knew that Number Twenty-two’s cousin was Scuzzy Thomas. He put it in his jury questionnaire. In any case, we’ve followed him day and night. Work. Church. Soccer with the kids. We even checked his phone records going back five years. No contact at all with Scuzzy’s part of the family. But Zink will stay on him, just in case.”

“What about Number Six?”

“Nothing. The guy annoys people everywhere, not just U.S. Attorneys in the grand jury. He’s always calling the police on his neighbor, whose only crime is having a dog that does what everybody wants their dog to do: bark at strangers. The dispatchers cringe when they see his name and address pop up on the 911 screen.”

“What about the one the chief judge read the riot act to?”

“That’s Number Thirteen. Zink found out that he’s showed up at the arraignments of everybody this grand jury indicted. He really enjoys seeing people humiliated in public. Killing them would take the fun out of it.”

“So we’re at a dead end?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“Have you come up with any ideas that won’t force us to reindict two hundred defendants?”

Peterson came prepared to answer that question, but knew he had to give it in exactly the right manner. He propped his forearms on the armrests of his chair and steepled his hands.

“Let me put it this way. We have no proof there’s a leak from this grand jury. We have no proof there have been prior leaks from this grand jury. Everybody indicted by this grand jury deserved it. They’re all righteous cases. This grand jury worked long and hard. Very, very long and hard.”

Rose arched his eyebrows. “How long is very long?”

“Their term expires in ten days.”

“Tsk, tsk.” Rose smiled his understanding of what Peterson was trying to say, then pushed the unopened folder of Zink’s reports back across the desk. “What a shame to have labored so diligently on SatTek, then to run out of time.”

“That’s just what I thought.”

Rose leaned back in his chair, then gazed out toward the fog oozing into downtown San Francisco from the Pacific. There were other headlines he was worried about, ones generated by crime victims’ groups demanding to know when something would finally be done to punish the crooks behind SatTek.

He looked back at Peterson. “Suppose you got a new grand jury impaneled the moment the old one expires, then jammed them real hard, ten hours a day. How long would it take to get an indictment?”

Peterson was ready with that answer, too. “A week.”