The Jury Master (22 page)

“Oh, my God! You scared me.”

The janitor stood in the lobby, cleaning an ashtray and looking nonplussed. “Sorry,” he said. He pulled the garbage can to the side to allow her to pass.

Tina punched in the access code on the keypad mounted to the wall, just below the gold-embossed sign indicating “The Law Offices of Foster & Bane,” and pulled open the door. She stepped into the darkened reception area, lit by a single overhead security light and the green glow of an exit sign above the double doors, and walked in sporadic light down the hall to David’s office. She found his briefcase exactly where he had left it, picked it up, noticed the corner of a burnt-orange envelope protruding from the pocket, and wondered what it could possibly be.

A telephone rang down the hallway. She wondered who else would be working on a Saturday night. No wonder so many were divorced. She walked back down the hall and was about to turn the corner back to the reception area when she noticed the red light on her telephone blinking, indicating that she had a message. Given that she had worked until nearly ten Friday night, the message was unlikely to be business related. She could think of only two people who might know she was at the office late on a Saturday night: her mother . . . and David. She stepped into the cubicle and punched in the number for the systemwide voice mail, then her password. The computerized voice advised that she had two messages. The first message had been sent roughly twenty minutes earlier.

“Tina? Tina, are you there?”

She felt a rush of adrenaline at the sound of his voice, but the message ended abruptly. She quickly pressed “pound” to retrieve the second message, delivered four minutes after the first.

“Tina. It’s David. I just spoke to your mother. Are you there?” He swore as if to himself. “Damn it. Tina, I got your message.”

She could tell from the static that he was calling from his cell phone. He sounded out of breath, as if he was running.

“Forget about my briefcase. Do
not
get my briefcase. Leave it where it is. If you are there and you get this, just leave it and get out of the building. Damn.”

His words hit her like a punch to the gut. She held the phone a moment, suddenly uncertain what to do, hung up, and quickly dialed the number from memory. It rang once before he answered.

“David.”

“Tina, where are you?”

“I’m at the office—”

“Get out! Do you understand me? Get out as quickly as you can.”

“What—” She heard the wheels of the janitor’s cart on the marble floor in the lobby. Smoking was not allowed in the building. There was no reason for the janitor to be cleaning an ashtray by the elevator.

“Tina? Tina!”

She thought of Melda Demanjuk. Then she thought of Emily Scott.

H
E MOVED QUICKLY
through the carport, using the cars for cover and watching the parking lot through the windows. His Jeep was out of the question; the police were sitting on it. Melda’s 1969 Barracuda was his only other option; Sloane kept a spare key for her. If he could get to it and get the engine to start, he had a chance. Melda had rarely driven after her husband died, and the car sat unused for long periods.

He had contemplated simply rushing out of his apartment to the two officers waiting in front of his building, but dismissed the idea. They were looking for an escapee from a psychiatric department who was armed and presumed dangerous. Under those circumstances, it was unlikely they’d believe Sloane’s premonition that a woman in a downtown San Francisco high-rise was in danger, or even give him the time to explain it. He’d tried to reach the detective, Frank Gordon, at the Ingleside station, but he had not answered and the exchange wasn’t about to give Sloane Gordon’s home telephone number. They said they’d do their best to get him a message, but he couldn’t count on the detective getting to the building before him.

He slid between the wall and the car and popped the lock. The driver’s-side door groaned like a steamer trunk being opened after years sitting unused in an attic. He squeezed in, pushing back the driver’s seat while watching the rearview and side mirrors, but did not see the officers. The car had the musty smell of an old person’s closet, poorly camouflaged by a pine-scented air freshener that had long since lost its usefulness. The car was spotless—not a crack in the cherry-red seats or dashboard. Sloane hoped the engine was in as good shape. He was about to find out. He inserted the key, crossed his fingers, and turned the ignition. The engine strained, a hyena laughing. He played with the pedal, trying to coax the engine to kick over, but sensed the power in the battery quickly fading and turned it off. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, he forced himself to count to ten. Then he kicked the gas pedal once to set the automatic choke and turned the key again. This time the engine whined and sputtered hopeful chokes of exhaust. He pushed it, working the pedal, urging it.

“Come on. Come on, kick over.”

The car sputtered and spit like a drowned person coming back to life.

Then it died.

“Damn.”
He turned off the key, waiting, searching the parking lot in the mirrors, fighting the urge to rush, hoping there was enough juice left in the battery. He counted again but this time only reached five before he turned the key. The engine gave a quick burst of life and backfired—a shotgun blast that echoed loudly beneath the carport. Sloane heard voices, and the two officers appeared in the rearview mirror. All they had to do was follow the plume of smoke from the Barracuda’s exhaust pipe.

Sloane closed his eyes. “Okay, Melda, if you’re up there and you’re still taking care of me, kick this son of a gun over.”

He pumped the accelerator once, turned the key. The engine strained, sputtered, fired again. He played with the pedal, revving it, fighting to keep it from dying. A carbon-gray cloud obscured the view out the back window. He kept the rpm high, dropped the shifter into reverse, took his foot off the brake, and hoped the two officers standing somewhere in the smoke got the hell out of the way.

39

P
ETER HO’S NAVY-BLUE
Chevy Blazer, with
JEFFERSON COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER
stenciled in white on the door panel, sat parked in the street at the brick walkway to Tom Molia’s colonial-style house. Located at the end of a cul-de-sac, the pale yellow house had blue shutters framing dormer windows. Roses and azaleas bloomed in the garden, and the lawn was mostly green but for patches of brown where the portable sprinkler didn’t reach. Molia stopped the Chevy to consider his suburban neighborhood of green lawns, mature trees, and three-bedroom houses aglow beneath perfectly linear streetlamps and an assortment of porch lights. It was the type of house, in the type of neighborhood, that Bert Cooperman had always talked about owning.

Not anymore.

Molia had personally delivered the news to Cooperman’s family. He had knocked on doors before, but nothing compared to this. Debbie Cooperman broke down the moment she saw him. She knew. The family knew. They were all there. Waiting. Hoping against hope. Cooperman’s infant son cried in his mother’s arms. He had the right.

J. Rayburn Franklin reasoned that the accident explained why Cooperman had just disappeared, why the young officer hadn’t radioed when he arrived at the site, why the park police did not find him waiting when they arrived. Coop had never made it. His car had skidded around the turn and plunged down the ravine into the Shenandoah. It was a logical explanation.

Except that Tom Molia wasn’t buying it. Not any of it.

Bert Cooperman didn’t misjudge a turn he had made hundreds of times in his life. He didn’t miscalculate his speed because of fatigue. Somebody wanted it to look that way. Somebody wanted it to look like an accident, as if a tired young officer in a rush to get to where he was going had made a fatal error in judgment. They had done a pretty good job, too. They covered the physical evidence all the way to erasing the cruiser’s tire tread at the bluff. They weren’t run-of-the-mill, amateur killers. They were good. Real good.

But they didn’t know Bert Cooperman the way Tom Molia did.

They didn’t know that Coop was a country boy who had hunted the West Virginia mountains and fished its streams since he was old enough to sit on his father’s lap and see over the top of the steering wheel. They didn’t know what it was like to be a young police officer at the end of a shift, rolling to your first dead body. Cooperman would not have been tired. He would not have felt fatigued. He would have been wide-awake.

Molia parked in the street and pushed open the car door, trudging up the walkway and stopping to pick up his son’s bike. He leaned the handlebars against the porch railing, but it pitched to the side and fell. He left it. He pulled open the screen door to the whir of an oscillating fan—they didn’t like to use the air-conditioning at night because it was expensive and made the air stale. Peter Ho sat on the couch next to Maggie. She wore shorts and his Charles Town Police Department softball T-shirt and had pulled back her red hair into a ponytail. She had never looked more beautiful. His daughter, Beth, lay on the oval throw rug, trying to read a book while T.J., still in his Little League uniform, pressed the end of Ho’s stethoscope against her head. She swatted at him like a bothersome fly, which only encouraged him.

Maggie got up from the couch and hugged Tom. “You okay?”

He fought back the tears that had flowed freely in Debbie Cooperman’s living room.

Maggie stepped back. “Anything more?”

He shook his head and doubted there would be. The official report would conclude that Bert Cooperman’s death had been a tragic accident. There was no physical evidence to refute it.

“I’ll make you something to eat,” Maggie said.

“I’m not hungry, thanks.” He looked down at his children, who were now staring up at him, sensing that this had not been a routine day. Then he hugged them fiercely, pulling them both to him. When he let go, Maggie stepped in.

“Okay, come on, kids. It’s bedtime.” She ushered the children out of the room, Molia kissing each on the top of the head as they walked past. Maggie took the stethoscope from T.J. and handed it back to Ho. “Nice to talk with you, Peter.”

Ho smiled, but it was halfhearted. “You, too, Maggie. Liza’s been meaning to call you about the church retreat. Things have been hectic.”

“I know the feeling. You sure you don’t want to stay and have something to eat? It’s no problem.”

“I better not. I’m afraid I’ve ruined a few dinners this week. I’ll be getting home in a minute. We won’t be long.” Ho waited for Maggie to leave the room, then turned to Molia. “A lot of bruises on the body. A contusion at the back of his head that likely knocked him out.”

Molia had called Ho from the accident site and met him at his office with Cooperman’s body. He left two armed police officers at the building while he went to deliver the news to Cooperman’s family. “Can you—”

“Can I tell you whether the bruises were caused by the accident or a blunt trauma before it?” Ho shook his head in frustration. “I’m sorry, Tom. I wish I could, but at the speed he was traveling and the likely impact with the water . . . He would have been thrown around the car considerably. I’d be guessing. He had a linear skull fracture indicating impact with the windshield. He also had a basal skull fracture.” Ho put his hand at the base of his skull. “I might not have even found it under ordinary circumstances, given the linear fracture.”

Molia slumped onto the couch and rubbed his face. “And a basal skull fracture is consistent with someone hitting him in the back of the head with a blunt object like the butt of a rifle before they dumped him inside his car and pushed it over the edge.”

Ho let the comment pass. “He had a subdural hematoma, also indicating a blunt trauma before he died. The problem, Tom, is that I can’t differentiate what was caused from the accident and what might have occurred before it, though I’m pretty certain something did.”

Molia gave him a look.

Ho picked up a manila envelope from the couch and tossed it onto his lap. “John Dunbar. The lab owed me a favor.”

“John Dunbar?”

Ho pointed to the envelope. “Joe Branick. I asked them to push it without drawing attention to it.”

Molia studied Ho’s face. “He didn’t kill himself either, did he?”

Ho shook his head. “Also inconclusive. But also a pretty damn good bet.”

Molia opened the package and pulled out photographs and a ballistics test. “In your medical opinion?”

“In my medical opinion I’d say the percentages are better that he did not.”

Molia studied the report. “Ballistics match.”

“No bullet, Tom. The powder burns on the hand and skull match. Same gun. Specific pattern of powder burns on the scalp, head, and face indicates a single shot fired at very close range. There was trauma to the tissue at the temple, hemorrhaging—”

“Which indicates the muzzle of the gun was either pressed directly against the flesh or very close to it.”

“Exactly, and the trajectory of the bullet through the skull is consistent with the reflex action one would expect to find in a self-inflicted wound. The bullet entered the temple and exited the rear, top portion of the skull.” He pointed to the envelope. “You’ll find some beautiful photographs in there, which I would suggest you commit to memory, then bury in your backyard.”

Molia stood to look at the photos. He thought better when he paced. “Blood test turn up something?”

“Nothing. No sign of any needle marks on the body indicating a chemical injection. I assume his lab work will also reveal no sign of any heavy metals, toxic substances, therapeutic drugs, or narcotics in the blood or urine. But that will take a couple weeks.”

“Then how can you be so sure it wasn’t a suicide?”

Ho chugged his beer, wincing; his eyes watered from the carbonation. He pushed his hair back from his forehead, staring at the floor as if re-creating the events. “I’m about ready to wrap this thing up, put the body back in the locker, call and tell you your instincts and a quarter will buy you a cup of coffee. Then I notice a cut across the back of the hand, just above the knuckle of the middle finger. There’s a beautiful picture.” Ho retrieved the envelope and flipped through the photographs to a blowup of Joe Branick’s hand. “You see?”