Supreme Justice

Chapter Thirty-seven

Max Dietz had no idea why Jack Stamm had summoned him to his office, but he began to feel uneasy when he found Monte Pike and the district attorney waiting for him, looking like mourners at a funeral.

“What’s up, Jack?” Dietz asked as he took a seat.

“Monte has just given me some disturbing information.”

“Oh?” Dietz said, turning his head toward his fellow prosecutor.

“What do you know about a ship named the China Sea?” Stamm asked.

“Oh, that,” Dietz answered, smiling to mask the fear that washed over him like a red tide. Dietz didn’t know what Pike and Stamm knew, so he held his tongue, hoping one of them would fill the void with information he could use to figure out a cover story.

“Did a police officer from Shelby visit you while Sarah Woodruff was awaiting trial under the first indictment?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you, Max?” Stamm asked.

“I don’t remember everything,” Dietz hedged. “It was a few months ago.”

“Why don’t you tell us what you do remember.”

Dietz felt sick. “What’s this all about, Jack? Why the third degree?”

“Mary Garrett met with Monte earlier today and told him about a discussion she had with Tom Oswald, the policeman you met with about Sarah Woodruff’s case. Mary was upset. She thought you’d breached your duty to tell her about exculpatory evidence that you had a duty to disclose under Brady v. Maryland.”

“Over that ship? What did it have to do with Woodruff?”

“Well, there were the fingerprints,” Stamm said. “Monte told you about them, didn’t he?”

This was all Pike’s doing, Dietz told himself. The little prick had gone running to Stamm to build up brownie points and to sabotage Dietz’s career. Dietz was fuming inside, but he knew he was doomed if he showed any weakness.

Dietz smiled and shook his head. “Monte was all excited about some prints from Woodruff’s condo. I remember that.”

“Do you remember telling Monte to forget about the prints, that you didn’t want him pursuing them?”

“Sure. They had nothing to do with our case. Pursuing them would be a waste of valuable time. Pike had no idea who made them or when they were made, and they matched some case in Shelby. Our case had nothing to do with Shelby.”

“Until Officer Oswald visited you,” Stamm said. “He’s a police officer in Shelby. Didn’t he tell you that the print he lifted came from a hatch on the ship covering a shipment of hashish?”

“Hold up, Jack. Oswald said he thought it was hashish, but there were never any tests done on the stuff in the hold. And we didn’t know that the print was Finley’s. No one could ID it on either end.”

“The prints were compared to Finley’s prints this afternoon and they match,” Stamm said.

“I didn’t know that then.”

“But you did know that the night watchman saw a man run from a ship where five dead men were found and drive toward Portland, possibly followed by another car. And this was about when Finley would have had to leave the ship if he was going to arrive at Woodruff’s house when he did.”

“Jack, this is speculation. We had nothing then that would have proved the guy who fled from the ship was Finley. No one had a match for those prints.”

“Sarah Woodruff contended that men broke into her house, fought with Finley, and kidnapped him. That fits the information Oswald gave you.”

“Only if we knew it was Finley who ran from the ship, and I didn’t. Look, Jack, Garrett would have had the jury running around in circles if she introduced evidence of drug dealers and terrorists and God knows what else, which is exactly what would have happened if I had told her about the ship.”

Dietz could see the disappointment on Stamm’s face. “You’re better than this, Max. We all want to win, but prosecutors have a higher duty, and that is to seek justice. Justice is never served if an innocent person is convicted.”

“I honestly believed Woodruff was guilty. I know I was wrong, now. But I believed it then. And giving Garrett this incendiary information…”

“Evidence of innocence is always incendiary, Max.”

“I didn’t see the evidence pointing toward innocence. I thought it was about an incident that had nothing to do with Sarah Woodruff. It was a judgment call.”

“Then you showed poor judgment.”

“Where is this going, Jack?”

“I’m not certain. I want to give this matter serious thought. Why don’t you do the same, and I’ll get back to you.”

“OK, but I didn’t do anything wrong here.”

Dietz left with his head held high, but his shoulders sagged as soon as the door to Stamm’s office closed behind him. He felt dizzy, sick. Everything had gone downhill for him since Woodruff’s first case had been dismissed, and his career was going to come to a crashing halt if something good didn’t happen fast.

It was almost four, and Dietz couldn’t concentrate, so he left the courthouse. When he got home, he shed his jacket and tie and fixed himself a stiff drink. What had he done to deserve this kind of treatment? Nothing, he told himself. It was Pike. The suck-up had run to Stamm as soon as Garrett complained. Pike was trying to destroy him. Would Garrett file an ethics complaint with the bar? Would Stamm sack him? What if he was out in the street in disgrace? What would he do then? Dietz slumped forward and held his head in his hands. He’d talked to several people about the China Sea, and no one had gotten back to him. It looked like the ship was not only a dead end, but he might end up going down with it.