The Attorney (29 page)

"I think so. Not from the samples themselves, but from the cigars. The distinctive torpedo shape, the oily texture of the wrapper, particularly on the unsmoked cigar, but also on the remnant ..."

"You're talking about the cigar stub? The one found at the crime scene?"

"Yes. I would say that they are both the same. Premium cigars.

Perhaps the best in the world. There's no doubt in my mind," says Bowler, "they're Montecristo A's. Both of them"

chapter twenty-three.

"it could Be worse," says Harry. "they could have DNA from Jonah's saliva on the stub." It's not that I don't have faith in my client's protests of innocence, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once. The gods of forensics may have favored us at least a little. The business end of the smoked cigar was contaminated by the victim's blood at the scene, enough that they couldn't do DNA.

We are also guessing that one of the paramedics early on the scene may have stepped on it before the techs got there. Ryan has been unable to produce evidence of teeth impressions, though he tried. The crime lab looked and came back with nothing definitive.

One of their theories is that the killer stepped on it to put it out.

"Doesn't make sense," says Harry. "That means the killer tracked in the blood. Nobody's gonna do that on purpose. Not to put out a cigar."

"That assumes the blood was there at the time." Harry looks at me.

"She may have been bleeding. Maybe the pool hadn't caught up with the cigar when he dropped it."

"You think she was still alive?"

"It's a possibility." Harry says the DNA could have been exculpatory, showing that somebody else smoked the cigar.

"Or a train wreck," I say. There's no telling what a jury will do with evidence of probabilities on the scale of DNA. Glaze their eyes over for three days with the science of the helix, and you may find them flipping coins in the jury room.

The strain of the trial is beginning to show on Jonah. The first few days, when the state's case stumbled, fits and starts, he seemed to take refuge. Then Ryan got back on track with the evidence of the cigars. The resilience ran out of Jonah like a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

Tonight he is showing more than his age.

We have called in the doctor. Jonah telling us there's nothing wrong, but his hands occasionally clutching gently at his chest, rubbing his left shoulder, are telling us something else.

Harry's worried about him. The doctor has assured us they'll hold him for observation overnight in the county's hospital prison ward where they can monitor and control his medications.

Right now Harry and I have other problems. Jason Crow didn't show up at the courthouse today. By seven-thirty. Harry and I are doing the honors.

He drives. I navigate. Up the hill toward Crow's apartment.

"I thought he might do this. Parolee, par for the course," I tell Harry.

It's why Harry prepared the subpoena a week ahead of our case. To give us time to run him down in case he rabbited. Now if we're lucky we have time to find him, instill the fear of God, even if His chief archangel.

Murphy, isn't with us. I tried to call Murph, had him paged, but no luck.

When we get to Crow's apartment I have Harry drive around the block, checking the lights, what I remember to be Crow's flat, side and back.

It looks like it's dark, though a faint light can be seen coming from a small window a little higher than the others on the wall; I'm guessing a bathroom.

"If that's his apartment, looks like he's out," says Harry.

"If he is, he's either on foot or somebody else is driving." Harry looks at me.

"The gray Datsun back there. On the left. It's Crow's car.

Murphy traced the plates to find him." I have Harry park the car in the front, a space at the curb where we have a good view of the front porch and the door, Crow's car down the street. From here Harry can see and not be seen, not from Crow's apartment upstairs anyway.

"I want you to stay here."

"Why?"

"To watch his car, and the front door. I'll ring the bell, slip around the back. If he's there, my guess is that's where he's gonna come out.

On the run," I tell him. "Especially after the way Murphy nailed him the other day. He'll head for his car." I'm not about to try to jump him, get into it with him a la Murphy. I leave that to the process servers and Pis.

"If he gets to his car, you pick me up out on the street. There." I point to a place where I'll be. "Keep your lights out. We'll follow him to see where he goes. Once he settles we'll get a bench warrant, let the cops pick him up." Crow has already violated the subpoena.

I'm pretty sure I can convince Peltro to have him held pending his testimony. He's a key witness for our case, with a considerable record.

Harry sits tight. I head for the front door. Up the stairs. I don't have to hunt for the right button. I see the clean piece of paper with his name on it and press the button next to it. The sound of the buzzer upstairs. I hit it twice quickly and back down the stairs, along the other side of his building away from his windows.

There's a walkway leading to the backyard, broken concrete with weeds growing up out of the cracks. A few seconds and I'm in the backyard.

Here there are some bushes struggling for survival among the weeds, shadows thrown by a good-sized avocado tree. I step back into the darkness and wait. I can see Crow's apartment, at least the back window.

Still no lights. The stairs on this side of the house are wood in need of repair, leaning slightly, what used to be white, now a kind of peeling gray.

If Crow comes this way, in a hurry, he's gonna make a lot of noise.

Plenty of time for me to get out front to Harry and the car.

I wait, look at my watch. Thirty seconds since I hit the buzzer, and nothing.

There's no way he could have seen me. I step out of the darkness, head down the walkway toward the front. A few feet past the fence, through a low three-foot gate, and Harry sees me. He's a silhouette in the car. He shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head. No action out front.

I know the front door is locked, so I head toward the back stairs. I climb them quietly, two at a time, taking the wooden railing, avoiding the splinters, both hands, to the landing at the top.

There's no light here, just a weather-beaten wooden door, single pane of glass on top. Inside through the glass I can see the corridor dimly lit, one door on the right, an apartment belonging to somebody else on the other side.

I try the outside door. It's unlocked. I step inside, close it behind me. Never having come this way, I'm not exactly sure where the door to Crow's room is. I'm thinking down the hall and around the corner to the left. I tiptoe, lightly as I can, not letting my heels hit the threadbare carpet.

Sounds of a television waft up from somewhere in the distance, muted by walls and closed doors, game show noise, banter and applause, nothing I can make out. Then I realize the channel's in Spanish.

I make my way to the corner and peek around the edge of the wall. Crow's door is about fifteen feet down the hall. I'm wondering whether I should just knock. There's no way out, unless he decides to take a window, use some sheets, or has one of those rope ladders they use for fires, which I doubt. The last time I was here he wasn't prepared for much of anything, least of all Murphy.

If he comes out another way Harry's gonna see him, though it would take me a few seconds to get to the street.

I work my way to the door, stop and put an ear to it. The noise from the television somewhere downstairs is making it difficult to hear.

jfantastico! excelente! Applause and tinny music, a brass horn picks up the beat.

I press my head a little closer to the door, and as I do my shoulder rubs against it. There's a click, and the door opens, not a crack or a sliver, but slowly, everything but squeaking hinges. It rolls with gravity to the lowest point, until I find myself standing, centered in the open frame, backlit by the light in the hall. It's too late to move.

All I can do is hope Crow isn't inside with a gun pointed in my direction.

There's no movement inside, the room shielded in darkness, and no sound.

It looks as though Crow took a stroll. Probably ran to get beer, and didn't catch the latch on the way out.

I can't see much of the apartment, only with the light from the hall and what is directly in front of the door. I step inside and close it.

Now the only light is what filters in from one of the windows, a streetlamp half a block down, and a splinter of illumination from under a door off to my left. I'm guessing a night-light in the bathroom, what I could see from the small window outside.

I don't have a flashlight, and I don't dare turn on the lights. If Crow's out walking and comes back, he'll see the windows lit up and disappear.

I check the door, to make sure it's locked behind me. It's a tricky latch, what you get in a flophouse. I have to jiggle the knob a bit to get it to snap into place. I can feel with my hands the twist of a deadbolt above the knob. For some reason, Crow didn't use it.

I have a feeling he didn't go far.

I turn a hundred and eighty degrees, shuffle away from the door, hands out in front of me, blind man, trying to give my eyes time to adjust.

Part of the room I can make out. The folding card table under the window. I kick something on the floor. It skids across the uncarpeted surface. The tinny sound as it hits the cardtable leg gives it away; an empty beer can. For a moment I just stand in one place, trying to get my bearings.

Off to my right would be the sleeper sofa, opened out so that it takes up a good part of the room. I can't see this, just make out one edge, the bottom corner of the bed, what looks like a rumpled blanket in the shadows. I take a wide berth to my left to avoid tripping over the bed.

My best shot is the bathroom door. If I open it, the night-light inside should give me enough to see. I shuffle toward the shaft of dim light escaping from under the crack. Kick a cardboard plate from a tv dinner.

Finally I reach the door, find the knob and turn it, and open the door.

Inside it's not brightly lit, but I can see. A shower curtain is drawn around the tub, pushed out at the tap end by something inside, dark, pushing out the curtain in this area.

I study it for a second, small dark form, size of a cat, dark shadows through the translucent curtain.

I step inside, take the curtain, throw it back sliding on its rings.

Jason Crow is stretched out in the tub, his unblinking eyes looking straight at me, not moving when I do. His feet still wrapped in their Reeboks are propped up on the tap-end edge of the tub, heels down, toes up. His head is against the other.

Crow's right hand is drawn across his upper body reaching for something, but not quite making it. A syringe stuck in his left forearm, plunger fully depressed, a short bungee cord, hooks on each end, lying in the bottom of the tub, just beneath his left arm.

I move to the head of the tub, try his neck, the pumped-out trail of the carotid below his left ear. The few random hairs of a beard still on his chin. There's no pulse, and the skin is cool.

I rise slowly, standing straight, staring down at the lifeless form in the tub. There is no doubt that Jason Crow was part of this worlds underbelly. From everything I'd seen and read, he'd drifted in that direction most of his adult life. Nothing in his sorry existence could be said to be a part of any design, certainly not his own.

Still, I can't help but wonder that only hours earlier he had stumbled out of his bed, looked out the window, taking in the sunshine beyond the salt-filmed pane of glass as his day began, never entertaining a clue that this would be his last.

I turn from the tub and catch my own face in the mirror over the sink.

It is tired, looking like it belongs to someone I don't know.

I am long past a five o'clock shadow. Dark hair mussed, and eyes with pouches under them, abysses of stress and sleep deprivation.

Jonah's in the hospital, and I'm now back to square one. I no longer have a witness to connect Jessica to the Mexican drug dealer Ontaveroz.

My theory of defense is evaporating like spit on a hot sidewalk.

There's a strong urge to splash a little water on my face as I lean over the sink, but I suppress it. This is now a crime scene, and my fingerprints are already far too prominent.

My first thought: Call Floyd Avery. Maybe he can cut some slack with the city PD. Otherwise I'm going to be answering questions all night, with a court call at nine in the morning.

I detach my gaze from the mirror, turn to leave the bathroom.

That's when I see him. Shaft of light from the open door that was behind me. Sprawled on the foldout bed, staring open-eyed at the ceiling, the hilt and handle of a Bowie knife the size of a meat cleaver sticking out of his chest--Joaquin Murphy. crow could never have GOTTEN the better of Him, of that I am convinced. But I don't share this with the cops. I am sitting on a small wooden bench out on the front porch.

There are cops out front stringing yellow tape on sticks at the edge of the strip of lawn, mostly weeds, that borders the sidewalk in front of the house.

A van. Channel 2, has just pulled up, getting their satellite antenna up.

Avery and Harry standing close by along with some detective from city homicide. They are crowded under one of the naked lightbulbs on the front porch, close enough to converse with me, but give me some distance.

"This was a friend? This guy Murphy?" says the detective.

"He was an investigator. We hired him a couple of months ago," says Harry.

"In what capacity? What was the nature of the work?"

"That's privileged," I cut in.

The cop finally turns to look at me, sitting on the bench.

"And what brought you over here?" He's got his notebook open, looking at me.

When I don't answer, "Is that privileged too?" Avery whispers in his ear, the guy comes back to me. "You the lawyer in the Suade thing? Saw it on TV," he says. "Is that what this was about?"