Supreme Justice

Chapter Twenty-eight

The Woodruff trial was a week away, and Max Dietz was worried. He’d convinced himself that he was prosecuting Sarah because she was a murderer and not because she’d refused to go out with him and had gone behind his back to Jack Stamm in the drug case. Now he was beginning to wonder if indicting Woodruff so quickly had been a mistake.

Dietz’s first problem arose the moment Woodruff hired the Troll. That was Dietz’s pet name for Mary Garrett, whom he hated. Garrett was abrasive and pushy and showed Dietz no respect. Worse still, the Troll had beaten him in court the last two times they’d faced off.

Then there was the evidence. A key to the state’s case was Woodruff’s denial that she’d fired her gun, but Mary Garrett’s witness list included the physician who’d treated the defendant at the hospital and Dr. Peter Wu. Dietz had never heard of Dr. Wu, so he gave Claire Bonner the job of briefing him on the witness. It turned out that Wu was a world-renowned neurologist who had written and lectured extensively on memory loss due to trauma.

A knock on his door brought the deputy DA out of his depressing reverie. Monte Pike walked in without waiting for an invitation.

“Guess what?” Pike asked.

“I don’t have time for guessing games,” Dietz snapped.

Pike grinned. “I got a match to one of the unknown prints from Woodruff’s condo.”

“What? I thought I told you to forget about the prints.”

“Oh,” Pike said, his features an advertisement for innocence. “I guess I misunderstood you. Anyway, I ran the prints through AFIS again and got a hit for a case in Shelby.”

“ Shelby? That little town on the Columbia River?”

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck does Shelby have to do with a murder in Portland?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t followed up yet.”

“Well, don’t. Is that a clear enough instruction?”

“But this is Brady material, Max. It’s exculpatory evidence. The Supremes say we have to turn it over to Garrett.”

“Bullshit! What’s exculpatory about some prints connected to a case in Shelby, Oregon?”

“Woodruff claims there were people other than her and Finley in her house that night, the kidnappers. This is proof someone else was there.”

“No it’s not. You can’t date prints. Everybody knows that. Who the fuck knows when they were placed in the house? They could be from a previous owner. Forget about those prints, Monte. I don’t want to hear about them again.”

Pike knew it would be useless to argue with Dietz, so he went back to his office. It was almost lunchtime. He rounded up his usual lunch crew and tried to lose himself in Trailblazer sports babble for an hour, but he couldn’t forget about the fingerprint. Max Dietz was an ass, but he was also Pike’s boss, and he’d ordered him to forget about the print. But Pike was more than a lowly deputy DA. All attorneys were officers of the court and bound by ethical rules. If the fingerprint was Brady material-evidence that could conceivably be used to clear a defendant-a district attorney had an absolute duty to disclose the exculpatory evidence to the defense. Dietz was ordering him to act illegally and unethically. As Pike saw it, he had a duty to his office but a higher duty to the court. The question was how to act in an ethical manner and still stay employed.

“Shelby Police Department?” a woman answered seconds after Pike dialed.

“I’m calling from the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office about a case you’re handling that may have a connection to one of ours.”

“What is the title of our case?” the woman asked.

“I’m not certain, but we found prints at a Portland crime scene, ran them through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and got a hit referencing a Shelby case.”

“Hold, please, and I’ll try to find someone to help you.”

Pike thought about hanging up before it was too late. No one had his name yet. But there was a click on the line before he could make up his mind.

“This is Tom Oswald. Who’s this?”

“Monte Pike. I’m a deputy DA in Multnomah County. We found a bunch of prints at a crime scene we couldn’t identify, so I ran them through AFIS and got a hit on one that referenced the Shelby PD.”

There was dead air for a moment. Then Oswald asked, “Do you have our case name, Mr. Pike?”

“No.”

“Do you know what type of case we’re handling where this guy is involved?”

“Sorry.”

“When was the print put into the system?” Oswald asked.

Pike gave him the date. There was silence for a moment while Oswald tried to remember when he’d scanned the print from the China Sea into AFIS.

“The only thing I can do is have you send me the print, and I’ll try to figure out the case it belongs to. It might take a while. Give me your number, and I’ll call you if I come up with something.”

Pike gave him his extension.

“What’s the name of your case?” Oswald asked.

“State v. Sarah Woodruff.”

“Isn’t that the cop who’s charged with murder? The one where there’s no body?”

“Yeah.”

“And this print came up in connection with it?”

“The print was found in her condo. It could be nothing. You can’t date prints. I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends.”

“Yeah, OK. Get the print to me. I’ll give you a call if anything pops up.”

Pike hung up, but Oswald held the phone for a few seconds, his mind on the problem the call presented. He’d been furious with the way the feds had treated the Shelby police force, and he’d put the latent fingerprint into AFIS in a fit of pique. When he’d calmed down, Oswald had thought about what he’d done. The chief had told him to back off, and so had the government of the United States of America. If he told Pike about the China Sea, there could be consequences for his career, but a fellow police officer was in trouble, and the information might help her. Should he sit on what he knew or call Pike? Oswald decided the best thing to do was to think. A day or so wouldn’t make any difference.