Supreme Justice (17 page)

When Daphne Haggard opened her front door, she was assaulted by the scent of herbs and spices. Her husband was sweet, considerate, and great in bed, but she always told her friends that Brett had seduced her with his mastery of their kitchen. Daphne liked to think that she was considerate and good in the sack, but it was no secret that she couldn’t cook worth a damn. Brett’s passion was food and his flexible hours as an academic let him practice his hobby frequently. Daphne never knew what culinary delight awaited her on her return home. The divine aromas drew Daphne into the kitchen. Brett had his back to her, and she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Out, woman,” he growled. “Can’t you see I’m working?”

“What am I smelling?” she moaned.

“I’ve conjured up a golden oldie,” Brett said. “Chicken Marbella. You’re smelling oregano, prunes, garlic. It’s been marinating in the fridge all night.”

“It looks heavenly, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Brett looked over his shoulder. “What happened to lunch?”

“A traffic fatality on Wentworth Road just as I was headed to Elsie’s Café. I’m starving.”

“Hang in for another twenty minutes. It’ll be worth it,” Brett assured her.

Daphne was about to answer him when the cell phone she used for police business rang. She tugged it out of her jacket pocket and walked into the living room, grateful for anything that would distract her from her growling stomach.

“Detective Haggard,” she answered.

“Amal Shastri here, calling from the Orthosure offices in Omaha.”

A friend of Daphne’s at Princeton had been an upper-class Indian, and Shastri’s clipped British accent made her think of him.

“Thank you for returning my call, Dr. Shastri,” Daphne said.

“I was at a conference in New York City,” the president of Orthosure said. “I have just returned today, or I would have gotten back to you sooner. I was intrigued. Your message states that you are a homicide detective?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m with the Inverness Police Department in Wisconsin, and I was hoping you could help me solve a mystery.”

“That sounds exciting. How can I do that?”

“Inverness is a college town in the northern part of the state. The area surrounding the campus is heavily forested. A few weeks ago, a student came across the remains of a human thigh.”

“My goodness.”

“She was pretty shaken up.”

“I would imagine.”

“We were set to search for other body parts when bad weather moved in. I didn’t have much hope once the storm passed, but we got lucky and found the other thigh. The medical examiner X-rayed it. The victim’s leg had been broken at some point and there was an orthopedic appliance—a stainless steel rod—that had been inserted to stabilize the fracture. When we examined the rod, we found Orthosure’s maker’s mark and a serial number. If I give you the number, could you identify the patient?”

“I couldn’t, but the surgeon who inserted the rod should be able to.”

“How can we find him?”

“Our records will tell me what hospital ordered the appliance. Part of the serial number tells us the year in which it was shipped. The hospital can give you the names of the orthopedic surgeons who operated in the given year. You’d have to interview them, but there should be a sticker from the rod with the serial number attached to the surgeon’s notes. It would be in the patient’s file.”

“That’s great.”

“What is the serial number?” Shastri asked.

“05-8L9765G.”

“OK, well that narrows it down. The 05 means 2005, so you have your year. I’ll have my secretary call you with the name of the hospital.”

Daphne thanked Shastri for his help and hung up. Then she smiled. Shastri was right, solving mysteries was exciting. It beat the hell out of rousting drunks and dealing with domestic disputes. And they had a grade A, first-class mystery on their hands in little Inverness. It also looked like she would be a step closer to figuring out the victim’s identity any day now.
Take that, Jessica Fletcher
, Daphne thought.
Ace detective Daphne Haggard is hot on the trail in
The Case of Severed Thigh.

Officer Earl Moffit had been a character witness for Sarah Woodruff during the penalty phase of her trial, and Mary Garrett had recommended him as a person to talk to for background. When Dana walked into the Starbucks on Pioneer Square, she spotted a man in jeans and a jacket with a Seattle Mariners logo, nursing a caffe latte at a corner table. The man looked to be in his early thirties. He had blue eyes, shaggy black hair, and a rangy, athletic build and matched Mary Garrett’s description. The latte was the only thing that made Dana hesitate. On the East Coast, cops fueled their engines with harsh black coffee, and Dana had a hard time accepting the fact that cops in this land of Starbucks sipped these frothy drinks.

“Officer Moffit?” Dana asked.

When the man nodded, Dana took the seat opposite him.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” she said.

“Mary vouched for you. She’s one of the few defense attorneys whose word I’ll trust.”

“I know what you mean,” Dana said. “I was a cop in D.C.”

“Mary told me you’re a reporter. Why’d you leave the force?”

That was the question she dreaded. “On-the-job injury,” Dana said, giving Moffit the bland answer that usually satisfied anyone who asked why she wasn’t a cop anymore.

“You were Sarah’s partner?” Dana continued, hoping to head off further inquiry about her reasons for leaving the police force.

Moffit nodded. “For three years.”

“You must have gotten along well.”

“We did. Sarah was aiming at detective, but she was good on the street. She handled tense situations well and could be tough when she had to be.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Sure,” Moffit said. Then he laughed. “We get this domestic violence call and pull up to this bungalow that hasn’t seen a paint job since the Flood, with a yard that’s like a zoo for weeds. We hear the screams as soon as we get out of the car. I knock and announce that we’re cops, but the screaming doesn’t stop, so we try the door. It’s unlocked.

“When we get inside, this woman who looks like she weighs three hundred pounds is cursing a blue streak in Spanish—none of which I understand—at this guy with blood streaming from his nose and a gash under his eye. The guy is covered with tattoos and wearing a wife-beater undershirt.

“Now the guy isn’t that big, but he looks like he pumps iron, and he’s really irate. Right away I figure him for the abuser, and I wedge myself between the two of them with my back to the woman. I’m pushing the guy away when I hear movement behind me. The guy gets a horrified expression on his face and starts screaming in Spanish. Sarah translated it for me when we were done with the call. The guy was screaming, ‘Look out.’ Then I hear a crack like a board breaking and the guy drives right through me. I grab him, and we’re rolling on the floor, so I can’t see what’s happening.

“So this was the day I learned to forget about stereotypes. The woman was the abuser. She beat up her husband regularly. But when I went for him, she got protective and went for me with a carving knife. The crack was her wrist breaking where Sarah hit it with the handle of her gun. And the next crack was the woman’s knee giving way. Sarah’s real good at self-defense. In addition to the woman, I’ve seen her take down men who outweighed her by a lot.”

“She sounds like someone you’d want watching your back,” Dana said.

“Definitely.”

“She also sounds like someone who would be capable of murder.”

Moffit took a sip of his drink and mulled over Dana’s comment. When he answered, he looked very serious.

“Sarah could do that, but I don’t think she did.”

“Tell me a little about her personality.”

“Sarah’s very tough, driven, and she likes a challenge. She skydives, she climbs mountains.”

“She’s a risk taker?”

“Yeah, but she’s not crazy. She got me up Mount Hood the first year we worked together, and she took all of the safety precautions.”

“Did she take risks on the street?”

“No. I would have asked for another partner if I thought she was a cowboy. But she liked the action. I can handle it OK, but I wouldn’t be sorry if I never ran into another bad situation. I think she preferred tense situations.”

“So she was a good cop?” Dana asked.

Moffit took another long drink of coffee. “Yeah, overall. She cut corners on occasion, but I always felt comfortable riding with her.”

“Did she ever do anything illegal?”

“You’re asking me if she was dirty?” Moffit sounded offended.

“I’m just asking.”

“No, she was straight. I never saw her do anything crooked.”

“Did Sarah ever talk about John Finley?”

Moffit nodded. “When he first moved to Portland.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me about meeting him after she climbed that mountain in South America and how he showed up.”

“Mary tried to get evidence that would prove John Finley was a government agent. Did she ever say anything about that?”

“Not to me.”

“I think I’ve exhausted my questions. Do you want to tell me anything else?”

“Only that I don’t think she did it. Everything I know points toward spooks. Finley sounds like he was into mysteries we average folks don’t deal with.”

The Willamette Valley Correctional Facility for Women had been selected by the Oregon Department of Corrections to house female death-row prisoners. Sarah Woodruff had the dubious honor of being the institution’s first and only death-row resident. A chain-link fence topped by barbed wire surrounded the low-slung, pastel yellow buildings. A service road circled the prison, and the land on the other side of the road had been ground down and stripped away. Anyone escaping would be visible to the guards until they made it to the evergreens that grew half a mile beyond the fence. In the distance were low green hills and a vast blue sky.

Dana was expected. After she signed in and passed through the metal detector, a guard led her down the prison corridors to the noncontact visiting room, where she waited for the institution’s most famous inmate. Fifteen minutes later, a thick metal door opened on the other side of the bulletproof glass, and Sarah Woodruff shuffled in dressed in a baggy jumpsuit and wearing manacles. Her complexion was pasty, a result of the starchy institutional food and lack of sunlight, but the former policewoman held her head high despite her depressing situation. Dana was pleased to see that the prisoner had maintained her dignity.

Woodruff eyed Dana warily while the guard took off her chains. When the guard left, she sat in an orange molded plastic chair and picked up the receiver that was affixed to the wall.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Dana said into an identical receiver.

“You’re a reporter, right?”

Dana nodded.

“And you’re here to do a story about my case?”

“Yes. We think we can stir up support for your cause by letting our readers know how the government kept you from getting a fair trial.”

“You might make some money off the papers you sell, too,” Sarah said.

“There’s that, too. Even reporters have to eat.”

“I hope exploiting me helps fatten you up, Miss Cutler.”

Dana found it interesting that Sarah had made no effort to mask her cynicism, even though Mary Garrett must have told her that Dana was there to help. It was a good sign that Woodruff was not trying to manipulate her. She looked straight through the glass and locked her eyes on Woodruff’s.

“Selling papers does put food on my plate. That doesn’t mean I don’t think you were fucked over. I’m in this for the money
and
because I think you got a raw deal.”

“Mary said you were a detective with the D.C. police. What did you work?”

“Vice and Narcotics. Now I’m an investigative reporter. You use a lot of the same skills. The big difference is that I can’t use a rubber hose to get people to talk to me.”

Sarah didn’t smile at the joke. “I wanted to be a detective,” she said. “That dream ended the minute I was arrested.”

Dana leaned forward. “We want to help you get your life back on track, and the first step is a new trial. There are so many unanswered questions in your case. Especially those involving the intelligence agencies. Hopefully, Ms. Garrett will get answers to them if the Supreme Court sends your case back on the national-security issue.”

“That’s where I was really screwed,” Woodruff said, her anger barely contained. “The government shut us down. They raised that state-secrets bullshit, and I never had a chance.”

“Why do you think the government worked so hard to keep the truth from coming out.”

Sarah laughed bitterly. “That’s easy. Can you imagine the uproar if the public found out its government was dealing drugs? Someone somewhere is scared to death of what would happen if the truth about the
China Sea
came out. I’m certain that John was killed by the CIA because he could prove hashish was smuggled in on the
China Sea
.”

“Before I ask you about the facts of your case, I’d like to talk a little about your childhood and how you ended up on the police force.”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m writing an article that I’m hoping will help you get a new trial, so I’ve got to make our readers see you as a real person.”

“I’d rather not talk about my past. Can’t you get all that from Mary? She had me write an autobiography for the sentencing phase of my trial.”

“I need to hear it from you—how
you
see your life, not how an expert witness dissected it. All our readers know about you now is that you’re a convicted killer.”

“Nothing I tell you is going to endear me to them. My early life wasn’t pretty. I was lucky to escape from it in one piece.”

“There was testimony about abuse during the sentencing hearing.”

“Yeah, well, those were some of my earliest memories of dear old Dad, may he rot in hell.”

“How long did it go on?”

“Until he died, which fortunately was when I was nine. He was a trucker. There was a big pileup on an icy road in Montana. I hear he burned to death. I hope it’s true.”

Woodruff paused and caught her breath. Dana waited before asking about Sarah’s mother.

“Living with that bastard took its toll. He beat her when he was home. She was a dishrag. She never protected me, even when I told her what was going on. She screamed at me, accused me of lying. She was drunk most of the time, and she’d drink enough to pass out when he was home so she could claim she didn’t know what was happening. I got out of there as soon as I could.”

Dana consulted her notes. “You ran away several times.”

“They’d bring me back, and I’d plot my next exit. When I turned sixteen, I took off for good. I’d heard Oregon was a good place to go, and that’s how I ended up here. I lied about my age. That was easy. I always looked older than I was. Got a job waitressing and soon found out that waiting tables was not what I wanted to do all my life. So I got a GED, worked my way through community college, scholarship to Portland State, and on to the police academy.”

“Do you ever talk to your mom?” Dana asked.

“She died. I found out about that by chance. After I left, I never called, and to the best of my knowledge, she never tried to contact me.”

“What made you choose law enforcement as a career?”

“It gave me a chance to arrest scumbags like my father,” Sarah answered without hesitation.

Dana couldn’t help admiring Woodruff’s strength. She was impressed by Sarah’s ability to hold herself together through the isolation and despair she must be experiencing on death row, and she was starting to like the woman. But before she got carried away, Dana reminded herself that with the right circumstances, even women of good character could kill.

Dana spent twenty more minutes on background before asking Sarah her first question about the incident that had put her on death row.

“I’ve read the transcript of your first trial, and I’ve got a pretty good grasp of what happened the first time you were accused of killing John Finley. I’d like you to tell me what happened the night he was really killed.”

“Yeah, well, that was interesting. It was a repeat performance. I was sleeping, and a noise woke me. I got my gun and went downstairs, and there was John, looking guilty as hell. I wanted to kill him. I really did, because of everything he’d put me through.”

“Did you?” Dana asked.

“No, I did not,” Woodruff answered without flinching. “John was alive when he left my house.”

“Did he tell you why he broke in?”

“Yes. He told me everything.”

“Why?”

Woodruff smiled. “When I came downstairs, I was furious. I fired a shot into the floor. He could see how mad I was, and he was desperate to talk me out of shooting him, so he spewed out his story to distract me and to convince me that he had no choice when he let me go to trial.”

“Why did he return to your house? He had to know you wouldn’t be very happy to see him.”

“He was on the run, and he needed the passports and phony ID in his duffel bag.”

“The one that was found with his body?”

Woodruff nodded. “He’d stashed it at my house the night he was kidnapped. I didn’t know the damn thing was there until he told me.”

“What was his version of what happened on the
China Sea
?”

“John was the ship’s captain. He was using a false name, and the crew knew him as Orrin Hadley. John told me that the
China
Sea
rendezvoused with a freighter that sailed from Karachi, Pakistan, with a load of hashish. The Pakistanis transferred the load to the
China Sea
midocean. The hashish was supposed to be off-loaded at the dock in Shelby where the ship had been moored.

“The evening he was kidnapped, a crew member named Steve Talbot killed all of the other crew members and tried to kill John. John got lucky and killed Talbot in a gunfight. He assumed that Talbot was after the hashish and figured out that he couldn’t be acting alone because there was too much of it for one man to get off the ship. He knew he had to get away before Talbot’s accomplices arrived. He took the duffel bag with him when he escaped.”

“Why did he stash it in your house in the first place?”

“John was wounded in the gunfight on the ship, and he had to get help. He drove to my condo because I was the only person he felt he could turn to. He was hoping I would help him and keep my mouth shut, for old times’ sake.”

“You said that John was on the run the evening he was really murdered,” Woodruff said.

Sarah nodded.

“Who was he running from?”

“I never found out.”

“What happened when he got to your condo on the evening he was kidnapped? I’m talking about the first time.”

“He’d lived with me and still had a key. He hid the duffel bag as soon as he got inside. Then he started for the stairs. He was going to my bedroom to wake me so I could help him with his wound. He was halfway to the stairs when two men broke in and attacked him. That’s when I came down and was knocked unconscious.

“John told me he was locked in the trunk of a car and driven to the place where the men planned to kill him. He was pulled out of the trunk and forced onto his knees. John was certain he was going to die. Then the man who was behind him collapsed and knocked John to the ground. As he was falling, he saw the other man’s head explode. Moments later, several men appeared and removed his restraints. They were CIA operatives. John told me that the smuggling operation was run by the CIA.”

“How did the CIA know where the kidnappers had taken Finley?”

“The Agency had the
China Sea
under surveillance as soon as it docked, but the men who were watching didn’t realize what had happened on the ship. When they heard shots and saw John drive off, they followed John to my house. Then they heard more shots and saw the kidnappers leave with John. They followed and rescued him. John was driven to a safe house where his wounds were treated. When he recovered, he helped set up the sale of the hashish.”

“Did John tell you who his kidnappers were working for?” Dana asked.

“He thought that Steve Talbot was dealing with a Mexican drug cartel and probably didn’t realize that the CIA was behind the smuggling operation. The people that tried to kill John were part of this cartel.”

“Why did John wait so long to come forward?”

“Everything that happened on the
China Sea
was hushed up so the people who were going to buy the hashish from John wouldn’t know about the killings on the ship and the cartel’s attempt to steal the goods. John was undercover during my arrest and most of my trial. He told me he would have come forward, but he couldn’t risk blowing his cover. He said he insisted on clearing me as soon as the deal was complete.”

“Your neighbor told the police that she heard a loud argument the night Finley died. Did you argue?” Dana asked.

Woodruff nodded. “At one point, we were yelling at each other.”

“You told everyone that you fired one shot into the floor before you realized that John was the person who’d broken in.”

“That’s right.”

“Your neighbor thought she heard two shots.”

“She was mistaken. One bullet was dug out of the floor in the entryway. I didn’t fire again.”

“How do you explain the coincidence of the murder weapon being a gun that was connected to one of your cases?”

Woodruff looked directly at Dana. “Remember who you’re dealing with. The people who want this hushed up control the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. If they wanted me to be the fall guy for John’s murder, how difficult do you think it would be for them to steal a gun from the police property room?”

“I see your point. Did Mary tell you about the men who were found on the logging trail?”

“Yes. Mary showed me autopsy and crime-scene photographs. I only saw the man in the leather jacket briefly before I was knocked unconscious, and my memory of the fight is hazy, but one of the men could be the man who was fighting with John.”

“There were rumors that the drug dealers were after a quarter-million dollars that Finley was using to finance the smuggling operation. Did John talk about that?”

Woodruff’s brow furrowed. Then she shook her head. “Mary mentioned it to me, but John never did. If he had that much money, he wouldn’t want anyone to know about it, would he? I guess it could have been in the duffel bag. I never saw inside it. And he was pretty shaken when he was telling me what happened. I’d caught him breaking in, and I’d fired a shot into the floor. He had to be worried that I was going to kill him, because he could see how angry I was. John blurted out everything he told me. It wasn’t orderly, the way I just said it. He was just saying things as quickly as he could think of them to convince me to let him go.”

“Do you think he made up what he told you because he was desperate? Could the CIA story have been an invention?”

“If it was, who killed him?”

“What if the smuggling operation was John’s idea or the idea of someone he worked with who had no connection to American intelligence?”

“You’re forgetting the men from Homeland Security who made the
China Sea
and the hashish disappear.”

“They may have pretended to be from Homeland Security so no one would question them when they took the hashish away. We could just be dealing with two different gangs of dope dealers.”