Compelling Evidence m-1 Page 9

  “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 kn
ow 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.

  “A man who dies seated in a chair-unless he’s strapped to a spaceship on the way to the moon-ya gotta expect the body fluids to settle in the lower extremities, at very least in the buttocks and posterior of the upper thighs.” He makes the last word sound like it has a dozen i’s in it. “So …” Coop pauses to strike a match to his pipe. The flame flickers out and he takes another, strikes it, and cups the bowl with his hands. The odor of tobacco, a special aromatic blend, mixes with the smell of formaldehyde.

  “So …” He takes several shallow draws on the pipe. “When you find such a body, seated in a desk chair with what’s left of the head tilted back against the headrest, but lividity shows all the fluids have settled evenly along the posterior portion of the upper torso and legs-somethin’s wrong. The man died layin’ down, and from all appearances stayed flat on his back for some time after death.”

  “Potter was moved after he died?”

  Coop nods, dropping the charade of hypotheticals. “It gets less abstract from here on.”

  “Whadda you mean?”

  Coop returns to the Bunsen burner and examines the vile black fluid that now produces a froth on the surface as it boils. A sickly white foam leaches from this substance to float on the surface. He lifts the beaker with a long set of tongs, turns toward me. “Coffee?” he asks.

  I shake my head, still looking at the stuff. Coop continues with his scenario.

  “Whoever did it never heard of forensic science. Either that or they weren’t terribly concerned about details.”

  The expression on my face is a neon question mark.

  “It wasn’t well planned,” says Coop. “I mean, we walk into this guy’s office and find him reclining in a slick leather executive desk chair with the top of his head gone. There’s a twelve-gauge over-and-under convincingly on the floor by the chair, one round gone.

  “There were no prints on the gun,” he says. “Whoever dropped it there wiped it clean-not just their own prints but Potter’s too. I can tell ya, a man who’s about to do himself sweats like hell. Unless he’s the coolest thing since Newman, he’s gonna leave little tracks all over the gun. But not Potter.”

  I’ve seen massive head shots before. From Coop’s description I can conjure up the image-what remained of the countenance I had known as Ben Potter.

  “Then we find traces of blood-B-negative, same type as Potter’s-in a freight elevator down the hall. Not a lot but enough. Whoever moved him used that elevator.”

  “Who owns the piece?”

  “Potter. Used it for hunting. Gun’s an Italian make, heavy thing with lots of tooling-and expensive.”

  “Where did he keep it, the gun?”

  “Wife says it was usually in a locked case in Potter’s study at their house.”

  He takes a coffee mug from the shelf, the pipe clinched tightly in his teeth, and pours himself a little of the thick brew. The stuff flows like Arabian crude. He replaces the beaker over the burner and takes the pipe from his mouth-brier in one hand and what passes for coffee in the other.

  “So they’re operating on the theory it was a homicide?”

  Coop makes a face of indifference, tilts his head back, and expels three perfectly formed smoke rings toward the ceiling. He smiles. The Southern warmth breaches the professional veneer, if only for an instant.

  “That’s where the smart money is.” He pauses for an instant and takes a sip from the mug. I wait to see if he has to chew the stuff.

  “There is another school-another theory,” he says.

  I look at him, waiting for this latest.

  “That Potter died in some compromising situation, either by his own hand-maybe an accident, somebody else pulled the trigger? Maybe a little passion, another woman involved-who knows? So you got a prominent lawyer, partner in a powerful law firm. There are reputations to protect. There might be a lot of people who would move quickly to cover that kind of embarrassment.”

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “I’d be lookin’ for a killer.” He says it like the second theory is just a big red herring.

  “Why?”

  “Whoever it was went to a lot of trouble to put him in the law office-took some real chances. Would have been a lot easier, and in the end more plausible, if they’d taken him out into a field somewhere, dressed him in hunting togs and left him there alone on the ground.” He winks. “Victim of a hunting accident. Still wouldn’t of worked, you understand. I’d have sniffed it out.” He smiles. “But it’s gotta be a better cover if all you’re worried about is a little embarrassment. No, whoever put him in that office was tryin’ to cover their own tracks. And”-he pauses for an instant-“maybe start the cops thinkin’ about somebody else, a little misdirection.”

  “Have the cops narrowed it to any suspects?”

  “They haven’t talked to you yet?” he says. Suddenly there’s a broad grin on his face. Then he chastises. “You know better than to ask that. If they had, I couldn’t tell ya.” He chuckles to himself as he turns and pulls a clean pair of surgical gloves from the drawer behind him.

  Coop arches an eyebrow and winks. The pipe again clinched tightly in his teeth, the mug on the shelf behind him, he snaps the glove on his left hand. He turns and walks toward the door. He’s made his last statement on the matter, at least for the moment. But his parting expression conveys volumes, for if I place any confidence in the professional acumen of George Cooper, and I most assuredly do, the last scintilla of doubt has now been purged from my mind. I now know that Ben Potter was murdered.

  CHAPTER 10

  It’s just before nine-thirty on Tuesday morning. I’ve returned from court to find a stack of telephone messages in the center of my desk, a pile of grief. A client wants a continuance; Nikki has called and wants to know if I will be by to see Sarah this weekend; the DA won’t deal on a plea in a small drug case. Tucked in the stack of slips is a note that Tony Skarpellos has called. He wants a meeting-his office, two this afternoon. Curiosity gets the better of me.

  This afternoon there’s an alien air about the offices of Potter, Skarpellos, more formal, subdued. I attribute it to a proper demonstration of mourning for the founding partner.

  Before I left the firm, the offices of P amp;S were always a familiar place. I would breeze past the receptionist stationed like a concierge at the ornate mahogany counter outside the elevator, past Ben’s office and the inner reception area held by his secretary, to my digs down the hall.

  The firm occupies three floors of the Emerald Tower, the most prestigious commercial address in Capitol County. Caught up in financial scandals for more than three years during its construction, the building is a mammoth curved monolith, its translucent green-tinted windows rising toward the clouds on a site beside the broad meandering river at the west end of the Capitol Mall. It’s become
the architectural and political counterbalance to the state capitol building situated at the opposite end of the mall. While the capitol houses two branches of the state legislature, the Emerald Tower has become the bastion of the legislature’s “third house,” an army of lobbyists who regularly ply their trade seeking favor with legislative committees and government agencies. Potter, Skarpellos is the first law firm of any consequence to venture into the building. I have, on more than one occasion, weighed the relevance of this location and its significance on the future direction of the firm.

  As I approach the receptionist-her name is Barbara-I smile. It’s a grin of familiarity. Today it’s met by cool efficiency.

  Her greeting is stiff, her smile plastic. The seeds of insecurity have begun to germinate among the staff. Corporate transitions in modern America, from the multinational down to the corner shoe store, now resemble a changing of the guard after a coup in a banana republic. The firm’s employees have begun to dwell on their own personal fates. The king is dead, but the dust of uncertainty that clouds the fortunes of those affected has not yet settled. Barbara offers me a seat in the reception area and assures me that she will inform Florence that I have arrived.

  In the far corner of the reception area are two deep-cushioned sofas that spread like twin dark clouds across the broad expanse of wall. Here the visitor feels the need to check his briefcase in favor of a machete and pith helmet. The furnishings are lost in a jungle of ficus, philodendrons, ferns, and rubber plants, all rooted in hip-high planter boxes. A faint odor of moist earth permeates the area. I decline a seat on the sofa and instead muse about the spacious reception room, examining the rich wall hangings and two modern ceramics set on pedestals near the center of the room. They are new, since I left P amp;S, the usual symbols of commercial affluence used to set the stage for what routinely follows in the private inner chambers of any large firm. They are employed like some artistic emetic to lubricate and ease the disgorging of substantial fees by clients who at times might wonder if they are receiving full value for their money.