Compelling Evidence Read online

  “How’s it going with you? The solo practice and all?”

  I make a face. “Enjoying it enough. Now ask me if I’m making any money.”

  “Money’s not everything.” He smiles.

  “This from a man with a fat county pension.”

  “You could’ve stayed there. Didn’t have to go chasing the rainbow,” he says.

  “Hmm. Not a very happy place right now. Not from what I hear.”

  “Maybe a little more political than when I was there.”

  “Now who’s minimizing things?” I say.

  He laughs. “No worse than some firms I could mention.”

  There’s an instant of uncomfortable silence as he eyes me, looking for some sign, a hint of willingness to talk, some revelation as to the causes for my departure from the firm. He comes up empty.

  “One of life’s true tragedies,” says Jennings. “Ben Potter. Guy had a veritable flair for success. Would’ve put this town on the national map, his appointment to the court.”

  “I suppose.” National life goes on. The papers had it that morning. The President had made another nomination to the court. The administration’s playing it coy, refusing to confirm that it had ever offered the position to Ben.

  I try to kill the subject with silence. Jennings has never blessed my move to the firm. Like Plato, he defines ultimate justice as each man’s finding his proper niche in life. And from the beginning, he never believed that I would fit in with Potter, Skarpellos.

  “It’s hard to figure,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why anybody would want to kill him.”

  I look at Sam Jennings, this paragon of sober intelligence, in stony silence. I know his words are not the product of some wit that has missed its mark.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “People in Nelson’s shop tell me they’re getting vibes, something strange about the whole thing from the cops. Not the usual stuff following a suicide.”

  “Like what?”

  “Seems Potter’s office and an elevator down the hall have been taped off for more than a week now. Forensics has been camped there.”

  “Probably just being careful,” I say. “The feds are involved.”

  “You think that’s it, a little bureaucratic rivalry?”

  I make a face, like “Who knows?”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. Jennings has a shit-eating grin. The kind that says he has inside information.

  “The service elevator on Potter’s floor.” He looks at me to make sure I’m following his drift. “It’s been sealed by the cops and out of commission for almost a week. The janitors and delivery people are raising hell, I’m told. I think the cops are reading more than tea leaves or the entrails of a goat.”

  I make another face. I’m waiting for the punch line. It wouldn’t be the first time Capitol City’s finest have wasted taxpayers’ dollars shadow-boxing with illusions.

  “If Potter killed himself in his office, I can understand combing his desk, vacuuming his carpet. But why the elevator?”

  I give him my best you-tell-me expression.

  “Conventional wisdom has it,” he says, “he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t die in the office.”

  “That’s where they found the body.” I bite my tongue, on the verge of disclosing part of my conversation with George Cooper outside of the Emerald Tower that night.

  “Word is,” he says, “cops found traces of blood and hair in that service elevator. It appears that if he shot himself, somebody took the time to move the body after the event.”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Not from Duane Nelson,” he says. His smile is all teeth. Jennings is not revealing his source. Clearly this is a matter of someone’s survival. Leaks from a prosecutor’s office in a case like this are sure career killers.

  CHAPTER

  9

  TO find George Cooper on this Monday morning I have to crawl like a mole under the dismal seven-story county jail. Built to house a thousand trusties and inmates, it now overflows with 2,500, the best of whom are furloughed during the day on work-release programs and pressed like dehydrated fruit back into overcrowded cells at night. The metal monolith is a monument to the bankruptcy of modern government. The building’s facade presents the incongruous appearance of cheerful orange metal panels more appropriate to a day-care center. The roof is enclosed behind Cyclone fencing topped by razor-sharp rolls of concertina wire, sealing off the sky-high exercise yard and preventing possible escape.

  Given the office’s low status on the law enforcement pecking order, it’s the best the county coroner can do. Stiffs don’t rate high as a voting constituency with the county supes at budget time. So in a cavern originally designed for parking under the jail, Cooper and his seven companions toil beneath the ground in the blistering heat of summer and through the dank oppression of winter’s tule fog.

  He sits staring at me. Fluids of unknown human origin streak his neoprene apron, for by nine in the morning he’s been hard at it for more than an hour. Genuine concern registers in his eyes, for George Cooper doesn’t like to say no to a friend.

  “I’d like to help you out, Paul. I think you know that. But on this thing Nelson’s got the lid on—tight as a drum.” George Cooper speaks with a slow Southern drawl, the kind that pulls every vowel in the alphabet over his tongue like cold syrup.

  By all accounts, George Saroyan Cooper, “Coop” to anyone who has known him for more than a week, is a handsome man. A shock of coal-black hair parted neatly on the left, tempered with specks of gray at the temples, outlines the fine features of his face—a gentle well-proportioned nose slightly upturned at the tip, deep-set brown eyes, and thin lips curled in a chronic grin convey the good nature of the man. His teeth are pearl-white and evenly spaced, set off by a rich and carefully groomed black mustache, itself peppered with faint wisps of gray where it joins laugh lines at the corners of his mouth.

  He’s carrying several glass slides in his hand and slips one of them under a stereoscope on the table next to the counter. “I’ve told ’em to bag the hands,” he says. “Always bag the hands.”

  I smile at him, oblivious to his latest frustration.

  “N-o-o-o-o,” he says. “They roll the cadavers into this place with the hands hanging free, out off the side of the gurney, like the guy’s gotta scratch an itch or somethin’.” He squints into the microscope. He’s talking to himself now, his back to me.

  Coop hails from South Carolina, an old Charleston family, of which he’s the black sheep. It wasn’t that Cooper failed to live up to his parents’ expectations. His father and grandfather had been physicians before him. But they tended to the living.

  I’ve known George Cooper for seven years. It seems like longer. He possesses the easy nature of the South, a slow, genteel charm. I would guess that if you asked twelve people who knew him to identify their best friend, each in his own turn would name George Cooper. He has worked his magic on me as well, for if asked, I would make it a baker’s dozen.

  And yet behind all of the warmth, the hardy good nature, there is the shadow of some baleful quality that sets Coop apart from others in my circle of friendship. The casual acquaintance might credit this ominous phantom to Coop’s occupation, and in a way that would be right. But it’s not the morbid nature of his work that accounts for this schism of demeanor. It’s grounded in the fact that Coop is driven to pursue the pathology of death with a missionary’s zeal. The dead speak to George Cooper. He’s their interpreter, the translator of organic missives from beyond the grave. And to George Cooper, it’s a holy calling.

  I lobby him, cajole him for information about Potter’s death. He listens. Like a banker hit for a loan, taciturn. He turns from the microscope, rests his buttocks against the edge of an empty gurney pressed against the wall.

  “How’s your little girl?” he asks.

  Dealing with Coop
can be frustrating.

  “She’s fine.”

  “I remember Sharon at that age,” he says. “She loved the job, you know. I guess I never thanked you.”

  I shake my head but say nothing. In the pit of my stomach I feel a knot beginning to grow. With Ben’s death I wonder what will happen to the law school’s largess, “The Sharon Cooper Trust.” No doubt it will now be dwarfed by another in the name of “Benjamin G. Potter.”

  “She would have been a good lawyer,” I say.

  He nods. There’s a glaze of water over his eyes. He wipes them with his sleeve. I don’t tell about the limited progress I’ve made on Sharon’s probate. I’ve struck out with Feinberg. After listening to his spiel at the University Club, I approached him cautiously and told him my tale of woe. He declined to take the case—“Too busy,” he said. So I’m back to square one. But it’s my one consolation with Coop: He doesn’t press. Patience is a Southern virtue.

  “I’m lookin’ for other leads,” he says, “in Sharon’s death.”

  The accident remains an open matter with the police. Sharon’s car had been involved in a single-vehicle accident, careening off the road into a tree. But evidence at the scene revealed that she had not been driving at the time. Coop is on his own quest to find the driver.

  “Did you know she wasn’t killed by the impact?” he says.

  I shake my head. I’m not interested in feeding this conversation.

  “She would have survived. I know it,” he says. “The fire killed her. Whoever was in the car could have saved her.”

  “You don’t know that, Coop. Let the cops handle it.”

  ‘They’re not doing too well right now. They have virtually no leads. I figure anyone walking on that levee road, twenty miles from town, would be seen by someone. Don’t you think?”

  I nod to humor him.

  My first meeting with Coop came during the prosecution of a manslaughter case, a slam-dunk for the state on which I was putting the final touches. The defendant was a small-time pimp charged with dealing drugs to one of his hookers, who had OD’ed. Coop had already appeared and been cross-examined. But the defense now recalled him, a desperate last-minute fishing expedition. He was ordered to appear and to produce his working papers.

  When Coop arrived at the courthouse, I could sense that beneath the thin veneer of professionalism he was seething. The subpoena had been delivered that morning, followed closely by a telephone call from Andy Shea, a fire-breathing counsel for the defense, and mouthpiece of the month among petty junkies and drug dealers. Shea, as was his custom, had bullied and berated half the coroner’s staff over the telephone in an effort to coerce compliance with the subpoena he hadn’t served on time.

  In the period of three minutes as I counseled Cooper outside the courtroom, I observed a bizarre metamorphosis overtake the man. As I raced against the clock to explore the legal issues embraced by the subpoena, Coop appeared distracted. Then a strange calm came over him. I was gripped by a gnawing fear that fate had delivered to me the scourge of every trial lawyer—a witness who could not be controlled.

  Inside, Cooper took the stand. He seated himself two feet below Merriam Watkins, judge of the superior court. Shea arrogantly demanded Cooper’s working papers. The coroner reached into the manila envelope he was carrying and handed a disheveled pile of documents to the lawyer.

  He apologized for the disorganized state of the papers. He was solicitous. He did everything but rise from his chair and bow from the waist.

  Shea took the stack and, shaking his head with disgust, retreated to the counsel table to place the prize in some usable order.

  Coop turned his soulful eyes toward Judge Watkins, pumped up a little Southern humility, and apologized for failing to make copies for the court. He offered an explanation to the judge, his way of making small talk. Shea was too busy shuffling pages to take heed of the colloquy at the bench.

  With no objection from Shea, Coop was free to ramble on. A rakish grin grew under his dark mustache and just as quickly disappeared behind a blanket of courtly charm.

  He told the judge how the subpoena had been served at eight o’clock that morning and how five minutes later Mr. Shea had telephoned the office. With the mention of his name, the defense attorney looked up from the table for the first time—it was too late. Coop was on a roll.

  He told about Shea’s insistence, and asked if he could quote the lawyer. By this time the judge’s expression was a quizzical mask. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Mr. Shea said, and I quote: ‘If you don’t have your fuckin’ ass in court by nine o’clock this morning, you’d better be packing a toothbrush, cuz I’ll have your worthless, worm-eaten dick jailed for contempt.’ ”

  Two jurors, women in their sixties, nearly slid out of their chairs. The only thing matching the blush on Watkins’s face were Shea’s ears, which were a perfect hue of crimson as he sat slack-jawed at the counsel table while Cooper drove the sword all the way home.

  “Your Honor, I’m at a loss to explain where Mr. Shea learned his anatomy, but I don’t think that’s any way for an officer of the court to talk to the public servants of this county—do you?”

  Watkins stammered, covered a cough with her hand, and after several seconds finally issued what would have to pass for a judicious comment.

  “I think Mr. Shea is properly rebuked,” she said.

  “If you say so, Your Honor.” Coop grinned broadly at Shea. The attorney sat like some miser, hoarding a ream of paper that may as well have been confetti, for the good it would do his client.

  At Shea’s insistence the court later instructed the jury to disregard Coop’s testimony concerning Shea’s own out-of-court blunder. But as Cooper remarked under his breath as he exited the courtroom, “Only when pigs can fly.”

  An intern, a young kid in a white smock, has entered the room with us. He hands Coop a clipboard with several forms. Coop quickly scrawls his signature at the bottom of the appropriate form and delivers the clipboard and papers back to the assistant, who leaves the room.

  “So what gives with Potter?” I ask.

  “You know better than that. I can’t tell you anything. I told you more than I should have that night outside his office. I may come to regret it.”

  I am a bit stung by his rebuke, the hint that he may not be able to trust my discretion. Still I press.

  “I understand your situation. Coop. It’s just that I hear things. People tell me that the DA’s investigators have been questioning everybody in sight at Potter, Skarpellos. Forensics has been over the place with white gloves a dozen times.”

  “I hope they did better than this lot.” He taps the slides in his hand. “Victim looks like he’s been plowing the back forty with his fingernails.”

  “What the hell’s going on, Coop?” I get more serious, my tone insistent.

  “If Nelson ever found out we talked outside Potter’s office that night, he’d peel the skin off my dick with a dull knife. You didn’t tell anybody you were coming to see me?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “Thank God for little favors,” he says.

  He walks to a Bunsen burner on a table a few feet away. A thick black goo is bubbling in a clear glass container over an open flame. Coop lifts the large glass beaker and swirls the vile substance a bit, replacing it over the burner.

  I can see that he’s troubled. I tell him about my conversation with Jennings, the fact that people in the DA’s office are themselves talking. I hope that this revelation will ease his concerns for professional discretion. But whoever cautioned that secrets are like sharp tools to be kept from the clutches of children and fools was not writing of George Cooper, for he’s no child and certainly no fool.

  Coop looks at me with a soulful grin, the kind that says “If they’re talking—then it’s their sorry collective asses in the flames.”

  “Who did the autopsy?” I ask.

  I don’t have to wait for a reply. The fact that
Coop performed it is written in his eyes.

  “I just can’t believe he killed himself. He was my friend, Coop, and I want to know what happened.”

  There’s a long sigh. “Where are you going with this information?” he asks.

  “To my grave. You have my word on it, Coop. Not a soul will hear it from me.” I take my most sacred oath and affix it like a death mask to my expression. I raise my right hand. “I swear, not a word.”

  I can see skepticism in his eyes, the disbelief of any who have toiled in the bureaucracy and who have heard such assurances before, from cops and reporters, from shattered families anxious to hear consoling words that their son or daughter did not OD on drugs.

  “We’re not finished yet. Still analyzing a lot of it. But if I had to take bets, I wouldn’t book any of my hard-earned cash on suicide.”

  At this point there’s a lot of awkward posturing. Coop wrinkles his nose and begins to peel the surgical gloves from his hands, the first sign that our conversation may be extended.

  “I want you to understand I can’t discuss the particulars.”

  “Agreed.” Concessions are easy when you have nothing to bargain with.

  “In hypothetical terms?”

  “Hypothetical, absolutely.”

  “Do you know anything about postmortem blood distribution?”

  I shrug.

  “The human body’s got a pretty reliable hydraulic reaction to death. The pump stops, and roughly four quarts of blood settle to the lowest point. In an hour, maybe two, the blood coagulates. Gets trapped in the tissues, the vessels at the lowest point. Gravity takes hold.” He says it matter-of-factly, like the law of physics it is.

  “The lividity table,” he says. “You remember, it hasn’t been that long since you prosecuted a case.”

  I nod.

  I see where he’s taking me. We’re about to play the favorite game of the expert witness. In legal parlance it’s called “opinion”—an exception to the general rule of evidence that witnesses may not speculate, but can testify only about events that they have actually observed, and of which they have firsthand knowledge. The law, like most social institutions, has fashioned special rules for special people. Doctors and other experts are allowed to apply their professional expertise to draw broad conclusions from hypothetical situations. A veteran of a thousand trials, Coop is skilled at this diversion from truth-seeking—he’s a master of the game in the swearing contest among experts.