Wild Justice (10 page)

23 Martin Breach was hunkered down over a slab of ribs when Art Prochaska walked into the restaurant. He motioned Prochaska into a chair with a hand stained with barbecue sauce. You want a plate? Breach asked. His mouth was stuffed with meat, and the question was barely intelligible. Yeah. Breach waved. A waiter appeared immediately. The deluxe combo and another pitcher of beer, Breach said. The waiter scurried away. So? Breach asked. Cardoni is out. Good work. I was worried that puke would cut a deal with the DA if he went down. Breach ripped a chunk of meat off a long bone. A sloppy scarlet ring of sauce circled Breach s mouth. Now I want my money. Put Eugene and Ed Gordon on Cardoni. The first chance they get, I want him snatched. Prochaska nodded. Breach handed Prochaska a fat rib. The enforcer started to protest, but Breach insisted. Take it, Arty. I ll get one of yours when your order comes. Breach wiped his face with a napkin, then reached for another rib. I want Cardoni in good enough condition to chat, he told Prochaska between bites. No brain damage. Tell the two of em. If Cardoni is too fucked up to tell me where my money is, I ll take it out on them.

24 There was a message from Herb Cross on the answering machine when Frank and Amanda arrived home from Cedar City. Frank shucked his jacket and tie, fixed himself a glass of scotch and dialed a number in Vermont. What s up? Frank asked when he was connected to Cross s hotel room. I may be on to something. Oh? Frank listened quietly while Herb told him what he had learned during his meeting with James Knoll. It doesn t sound like there s anything we can use, Frank said when Herb was through. Evidence that Dr. Castle shot an abusive husband in self-defense when she was in her teens isn t going to be admissible to prove that she kidnapped and tortured people. I d agree if that was all I found. Gil Manning was insured for one hundred thousand dollars. When the police cleared Castle, the insurance company paid off. She used the money to pay her tuition at Dartmouth. In her senior year she married a wealthy classmate, and they moved to Denver after graduation. Eight months later Castle s husband was dead. You re shitting me. It was a one-car accident. He was heavily intoxicated. He was also heavily insured and he had a fat trust fund. Castle inherited the money from the trust fund and she received the insurance money. Now that is interesting. I phoned the dead husband s parents in Chicago. They swear that their son was never more than a social drinker. They pressed for an investigation, but the cops told them that they were satisfied that their son s death was an accident. Castle s in-laws think that Justine was a gold digger. They were opposed to the marriage. Was there any evidence of foul play? I haven t looked into the accident yet. Do you want me to go to Denver? No, come home. I think I m on to something with this, Frank. I think we should pursue it. That s not necessary. I won the motion to suppress. Cardoni is free and it s unlikely he ll be prosecuted. What! How did that happen? If you ve got a few minutes, I ll tell you.

25 Granite cherubs and gargoyles peered down on passersby from the ornate stone scrollwork that graced the fae of the Stockman Building, a fourteen-story edifice that had been erected in the center of downtown Portland shortly after World War I. The law firm of Jaffe, Katz, Lehane and Brindisi leased the eighth floor. Frank Jaffe s spacious corner office was decorated with antiques. He sat behind a partner s desk that he had picked up for a song at an auction. Currier and Ives prints graced one wall, and a nineteenth-century oil of the Columbia Gorge, which Frank had discovered at another auction, hung across from him over a comfortable sofa. The only jarring note was the computer monitor that sat on the edge of Frank s desk. Vincent Cardoni showed no interest in the dr of Frank s office. The physician s attention was riveted on his attorney, and he shifted anxiously as Frank explained Fred Scofield s latest legal maneuver. So you re saying we have to go back to court? Yes. Judge Brody has set the hearing for next Wednesday. What kind of bullshit is this? We won, didn t we? Scofield moved to reopen the motion to suppress. He has a new theory, inevitable discovery. What s that mean? It comes out of Nix v. Williams, a United States Supreme Court opinion. Around Christmas of 1968 a ten-year-old girl disappeared from a YMCA building in Des Moines, Iowa. Shortly after she disappeared, Robert Anthony Williams was seen leaving the YMCA carrying a large bundle wrapped in a blanket. A young boy who helped Williams open his car door saw two skinny white legs under the blanket. The next day Williams s car was found a hundred and sixty miles east of Des Moines in Davenport, Iowa. Later clothing belonging to the child and a blanket similar to the one Williams carried from the Y were found in a rest stop between Des Moines and Davenport. The police concluded that Williams had left the girl s body between Des Moines and the rest stop. The police used two hundred volunteers to conduct a large-scale search in an attempt to find the body of the victim. Meanwhile, Williams surrendered to the police in Davenport and contacted an attorney in Des Moines. Two Des Moines detectives drove to Davenport, picked up Williams and drove him back to Des Moines. During the trip, one of the detectives told Williams that snow might cover the little girl, making it impossible to find her body. Then he said that the girl s parents were entitled to a Christian burial for the little girl who had been snatched away from them on Christmas Eve. Later in the ride, Williams told the detectives how to find the body. Before trial, Williams s attorney moved to suppress evidence of the condition of the body on the ground that its discovery was the fruit of Williams s statements and those statements were the product of an interrogation that was illegal because it had been conducted out of the presence of his attorney. I m not going to bore you with all the in and outs of the appeals that eventually brought the case to the United States Supreme Court twice. What you need to know is that the justices adopted the inevitable-discovery rule. They concluded that the evidence supported a finding that the search party would inevitably have discovered the body of the little girl even if Williams had not led the police to it. Then the Court ruled that evidence that would normally be excluded because of police misconduct is still admissible if it would have been discovered inevitably. How does that help Scofield? The cabin is on private land, but the graveyard is on a trail that goes through national forest land. Scofield is arguing that the graveyard was so obvious that Vasquez, a hiker, a forest ranger, somebody would inevitably have discovered it, giving a judge grounds to issue a search warrant for the cabin. Cardoni laughed. That s bullshit. Vasquez never went back there and there wasn t anyone near the cabin until Vasquez called the cops. You re right, Vince. The argument is total horseshit, but Brody might jump on this with both feet. There s an election coming up. Word is that Brody is going to run for one more term, then retire. If he lost the election, he would be humiliated. Granting Scofield s motion would get him off the hook for the most unpopular decision that he s ever made. Most Milton County voters don t understand the subtleties of search-and-seizure law. All they know is that Brody let you out and that the cops think you re Jack the Ripper s meaner cousin. Even if that tub of lard does rule for Scofield, you d win on appeal, wouldn t you? I m pretty sure I would. The problem is that Brody will put you back in jail pending trial. Cardoni s toe tapped rapidly. I pay you to anticipate things like this. Well, I didn t. Hell, Vince, there s no way I could. Cardoni glared at Frank. He was rigid with anger. I am not going back to jail because some fat-ass judge wants to win an election. Either you handle this or I will.

26 Eugene Pritchard and Ed Gordon were intelligent muscle whom Martin Breach used when more than simple violence was needed. Pritchard had been a professional fighter with a decent record until he was busted smuggling cocaine into the country after a fight in Mexico. Gordon was an ex-marine. He had been dishonorably discharged for assaulting an officer. At eight o clock on the day that Frank Jaffe told Cardoni about Scofield s motion to reopen, Pritchard and Gordon were debating the pros and cons of a home invasion when Cardoni s car drove out of his garage. They followed without lights until Cardoni turned onto a major thoroughfare. Then they stayed a few cars behind the doctor and tried to guess where he was headed. After a while it got confusing. Cardoni seemed to be wandering aimlessly. He cruised the streets of downtown Portland for a while, then headed out of town along Burnside. Several miles later Cardoni turned onto Skyline Boulevard and followed it past the cemetery until he reached a bumpy dirt track that ended abruptly at Forest Park, a vast wooded area. Gordon turned off the headlights and followed at a safe distance. Cardoni got out of his car and started off along a narrow trail. What s he doing out here? Pritchard asked. Maybe he s got a few more bodies stashed in the woods. Pritchard shook his head. He is one sick fuck. Don t make disparaging remarks about someone who s making our job so easy. We ll take him here. It s isolated and there are no witnesses. Pritchard grabbed a flashlight and they set off after Cardoni. The Wildwood Trail runs for more than twenty miles through Portland s park system. The part of this trail Cardoni was walking led into the deep central section of Forest Park, far from roads or houses. Even though Pritchard was in the middle of a big city, he felt that he was standing in the dark heart of an unexplored jungle. Gordon had hiked and camped in the army, but Pritchard was a city boy who preferred watching TV and drinking in bars to trekking through the forest primeval. He definitely did not like wandering through the woods in the dark. Following the faint glow of the doctor s flashlight was easy, and Pritchard kept his off. The rotting corpse of a tree felled by the violent storms of winter blocked part of the trail, and Gordon tripped over a root. He swore under his breath and squinted, trying to make out the floor of the forest in the dark. Pritchard turned his head and told his partner to shut up and watch where he was going. When he looked forward he could not find Cardoni s light. The men froze. The only sounds they heard were the swish of tree branches and the scratch of tiny claws in the underbrush. Then Pritchard heard a crack, a grunt and a second sharp blow. He spun toward the sound and turned on his flashlight. Gordon was down and blood was pooling under him. Pritchard felt for a pulse. Gordon was breathing, but he was not moving. It s spooky in the woods at night. Cardoni was behind him. Pritchard pulled his gun and spun around. Do you feel like Hansel and Gretel all alone in the forest of the wicked witch? You can stop with the games, Pritchard said, fighting hard to keep the fear out of his voice. You re the one who s been playing hide-and-seek all week, or didn t you think I d notice? Cardoni answered from a new location. Pritchard had not heard him move. He aimed his flashlight at Cardoni s voice. The beam cut between a western hemlock and a red cedar, but it did not find the surgeon. Let s cut the shit, Pritchard shouted into the darkness. He waited for an answer, but none came. Pritchard turned slowly in a circle, pointing his gun and the flashlight at the trees. A twig snapped and he almost fired. Two tree limbs rubbed together and he jumped sideways off the trail. That s enough, goddamn it. Get out here, Pritchard yelled, but he heard only the sound of his own labored breathing. He began backing down the trail toward the car, shifting the gun back and forth across the path every time he heard a sound. The muscles in his shoulders and arms ached from tension. His heel caught on a tree root. Pritchard flailed his arms to arrest his fall, and the gun flew from his hand. He landed hard on the packed earth and rolled toward the gun. He expected to feel a knife blade slice into his body or a club smash across his back as he groped for his weapon, but the only sounds he heard were those he made. Pritchard could not find the gun, and he was too vulnerable on his hands and knees. He got to his feet and spun in place, keeping the flashlight in front of him to use as a weapon. Something hard smashed into Pritchard s right kneecap. His leg gave out and toppled sideways. As he fell, Cardoni broke his right shoulder. Pritchard s eyes squeezed shut involuntarily from the intense pain and he almost blacked out. When he opened them Cardoni was standing over him, tapping a tire iron against the palm of his hand. Hi, the surgeon said. How you doing? Pritchard was in too much pain to answer. Cardoni added to his pain by breaking his left kneecap. Rule number one: Remove your opponent s legs. Cardoni walked around Pritchard slowly. He was sprawled on his back, gritting his teeth and fighting to stay conscious. A blow to the kneecap ranks as one of life s most painful experiences. It rivals a thrust to the genital area. Shall we make a comparison test? Cardoni s foot flashed. Boxers are used to pain, but this was pain on a new level. Pritchard made no effort to stifle his scream. I bet that smarts. In fact, I know it does. Doctors know every place on the human body that can cause suffering. Pritchard wanted to say something brave in response to Cardoni s taunts, but he was weak with fear. If Cardoni wanted to inflict more pain, he knew he would be helpless to stop him. Do you know where you are, little man? When Pritchard did not answer, Cardoni gave his right kneecap a casual tap. Pritchard arched his back as if electricity had shot through him. You re in the House of Pain, and I run the establishment. There s one rule in the House of Pain: Anything I say goes. Disobedience is punished swiftly. Now, here s my first question. It s an easy one. What s your name? Fuck you Pritchard started, but the sentence was cut short by a scream when Cardoni gripped his left wrist and extended his arm out at an awkward angle, forcing Pritchard to roll onto his injured knees. The hand is a marvelous creation designed by God to do the most wonderful things, Cardoni said. I use my hand to wield instruments that save lives. I bet you use yours to pick your nose and beat off. Pritchard tried to struggle, but Cardoni brought him to heel with a small amount of pressure on his wrist. Then the surgeon gripped the man s index finger tightly. He tried to resist, but Cardoni had no trouble prying it out straight. There are twenty-seven bones in the hand. That gives me twenty-seven opportunities to inflict excruciating pain on you. Cardoni tightened his grip on Pritchard s index finger. The bones of the fingers and thumb are called phalanges. A single phalange is the length of bone from one knuckle to the next. There are three phalanges in your index finger. Cardoni bent the index finger backward. All of them are going to be broken if you don t become more cooperative. Pritchard screamed. Now, what is your name? Even a moron like you should be able to answer that question. Cardoni applied pressure. Gene, Gene Pritchard, he gasped. Good boy. Pritchard lunged suddenly. Cardoni backed away and jerked hard on his wrist. Pritchard s feet splayed out and he howled like a dog. Cardoni snapped Pritchard s index finger. As the bone cracked, the man sagged, almost passing out. The next time you decide to pick on someone, make sure you re man enough for the job, Cardoni said as he pried Pritchard s pinkie away from his fist. Now, Gene, who sent you to follow me? Pritchard hesitated for a second and paid for it. The last time he remembered crying was when he was eight. Tears trickled down his cheeks. Martin Breach, Pritchard gasped without having to be asked again. That s a very good boy. And what does Martin want you to do besides tail me? We re . . . supposed to . . . bring you . . . to him. Dead or alive? Alive, in good condition. Why? The money he paid for the heart. He wants it back. Cardoni studied Pritchard for what seemed like an eternity to the crippled enforcer. Then he released Pritchard s hand, backed into the shadows and disappeared without another word.