Death on a High Floor (35 page)

Jenna got quickly to the point, ignoring his comment about who was there. “Detective, did you at least seal the eighty-fifth floor?”

“Yes, Detective Apple did that, with yellow tape, shortly after we arrived.”

“Back when he was supposed to seal off the carpeted area with the supposed depression, too?”

I watched Benitez leap to his feet. His most animated move all morning. “Objection! Asked and answered, argumentative!”

Judge Gilmore looked more than annoyed. “Counsel, could we cut this out? You have already made the point. Sustained. Move on.” It was not lost on me that she was now calling Jenna “
Counsel
,” too.

“Detective,” Jenna said, “did you let
anyone
past the tape that was blocking entry to the eighty-fifth floor?” We had not discussed that issue. It was a shot in the dark, I knew.

It drew a blinding light. “Yes, I did. Three people as I recall.”

“Do you recall their names?”

He paused and thought a few seconds, as if searching his memory. “I believe they were Betty Menino, Susan Apacha, and Stewart Broder.”

“Who are they, if you know?”

“Ms. Menino is the office manager of the Los Angeles office of
Marbury Marfan
. She arrived and offered to go to her office and send an all-hands e-mail advising employees of the firm not to come in until after lunch. At my request, she agreed not to specify the reason, but simply to say there had been a building malfunction.”

I don’t know why, but that really cracked me up. Internally, of course. I couldn’t laugh out loud. Simon’s murder was a building malfunction! What a wonderful euphemism.

In turning my head to shield my barely contained laughter from the judge, I noticed that Oscar had already slipped into his seat at the back of the courtroom. I also saw the bailiff they called the “
Green Giant”
come in. We’d heard of him even over at the civil courthouse. He wasn’t so much tall as he was massively broad. A kind of horizontal giant, with hands the size of snowshoes. He was a free-floating bailiff who was dispatched to a courtroom when bad shit was going down. I looked around quickly for bad shit but didn’t see any.

Meanwhile, Jenna was continuing.

“The others you let through, detective, who were they, exactly?”

“Susan Apacha is the building’s security manager. She was informed of the situation by the building security guard and came to the eighty-fifth floor not long after 7:00 a.m.”

“Were you the one who gave each of them permission to cross the tape?”

“Yes, but not until I returned from an, um, other mission on a different floor.”

I noticed the awkwardness of his answer. I couldn’t tell if anyone in the Blob had. Spritz was obviously trying hard not to open up the subject of his meeting with me on the “different floor.” I couldn’t quite see why. I also noticed that Benitez, who really had been imitating a potted plant, was suddenly attentive. Was all of this as much a surprise to him as to me?

“Why did you permit Ms. Apacha to go back?”

“She wanted to see if any of the security devices on the floor had been tripped. She said she could not check them remotely.”

Security devices? I had never heard of those.

“What about Mr. Broder?”

I was keenly interested to hear the answer to this one.

“He said he was the deputy managing partner and urgently needed to send an e-mail to the firm’s other offices because otherwise they would—I think his words were ‘flip out’—when none of the firm’s phones were answered after 8:00 a.m. and no e-mails were opened or returned. Because by the time I spoke with him, I had ordered all of the firm’s floors sealed off. He explained that he was now in charge since the managing partner was the body on the floor.”

I was dumbfounded. So was Jenna, from what I could tell. I could see that she had momentarily gone to wherever she goes. Stock still, thinking hard. I knew what was going through her mind. Should she follow up? Should she let it be? Who in the room knew what? Would the leverage be greater—if there was any here—in private or here in public? She came back from wherever it was and went for it.

“Detective, has anyone informed you that, at that time, Stewart Broder was not any kind of managing partner of the firm, deputy or otherwise?”

“Recently, yes.”

“Who informed you of that?”

“The District Attorney.”

“Mr. Benitez?”

“No,
the
District Attorney.”

Jenna paused. “Did he . . .” I could see her change her mind and opt not to drill into the cover-up just yet. “Was Mr. Broder carrying a briefcase at the time he was permitted past the tape?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw several members of the Blob slip out the back door of the courtroom. I turned back to the action and noticed that Judge Gilmore was resting her head on a fisted hand, much like Rodin’s The
Thinker
.
But she wasn’t staring at the ground. Just staring at Spritz.

Spritz paused, apparently considering Jenna’s question, then reached out to take a sip from a glass of water. There is always a water pitcher and glass to the side of the witness box. To that moment, though, Spritz had not touched it. He sipped and then answered. “I don’t recall one way or the other whether he was carrying a briefcase.”

“Detective Spritz, in the police reports for that day, is there any mention of these three individuals being permitted past the tape?”

“Objection! No foundation, calls for speculation. The reports themselves are the best evidence of that. And, uh, calls for hearsay.” Benitez was trying a shotgun spray of objections, most of them well taken. In other settings, they might have worked. But judges have a lot of discretion in applying the rules of evidence.

“Overruled.” Judge Gilmore still held Spritz in an unblinking gaze. “You may answer.”

“No, nothing in the police reports about that that I’m aware of,” he said.

“Do you know why that might be?”

“I can only speak for my own report.”

“And?”

“I didn’t think it was important. Many things happen during the first hours of an investigation. You can’t mention each and every one of them. I’d have to mention letting officers use the restroom.”

He was trying to work himself up to be legitimately peeved at the question. I looked again at Judge Gilmore. Spritz’s tactic didn’t seem to be working. She hadn’t budged, and she still had him locked in an unwavering gaze.

Jenna stood stock still again. Then abruptly changed the subject entirely.

“Detective, why were you downtown at 6:00 a.m. the morning you received the call about the murder?”

“I live downtown.”

“Were you at your residence at the time?”

“No, I was having breakfast.”

“Where?”

“At the
DownUnder
.”

“Where is that, Detective?” Jenna, of course, knew damn well where it was.

“It’s about four blocks from the suspect building.”

“Do you eat there often?”

Benitez unpotted himself. “Objection. I don’t see the relevance of Detective Spritz’s breakfast routine.”

“Overruled.” There it was again. Discretion. For a lawyer, it could be the most beautiful thing in the courtroom if you were the beneficiary of it. Among the ugliest if you were instead its unwilling victim.

“No, I don’t.”

“Were you having breakfast by yourself that morning?” It was another shot in the dark.

“. . . Yes, by myself.”

I don’t know if anyone else saw it. After decades of questioning witnesses, in both trial and deposition, you gain a sixth sense that automatically detects the slightest pause or hesitation in an answer. The tiny hesitation that says, “I’m trying to think how to answer that question literally, instead of fully.”

Spritz’s microsecond of hesitation had been there. I would have staked my life on it. He was having breakfast by himself? What about the others who might have been having breakfast at nearby tables? Or people who were at his table, but weren’t there for breakfast but for something else? Or people who had been there earlier but had left? The possible number of tiny lies was endless. Why did he care?

Jenna was thinking, too. She walked to our table to take a sip of water. She needed the brief delay. She looked at me. I shrugged in the most minimal way I knew how. I had no guidance.

Judge Gilmore spoke. “Ms. James, I’m sorry to interrupt your cross-examination, but we’ve actually run past our morning break time. If we don’t break now, I can see we’ll be here till noon. That might work for a roomful of twenty-somethings.” She smiled a crooked smile. “Why don’t we take” . . . she looked at her watch . . . “thirty minutes, and then we’ll push the whole day after that. You can step down for now, Detective.”

I was pissed. There is nothing worse than having a good cross interrupted before it’s over. The witness gets to relax and, worse, go talk to his lawyer. Who’ll point out the problems and help the witness to find the solutions that lurk within him. Without being coached, of course. Spritz and Benitez would, I was sure, just take the elevator up to the DA’s office. In fact, Spritz was already walking, almost loping, down the aisle toward the doors.

Judge Gilmore spoke again. “Detective Spritz?”

He turned, surprised. “Yes, Your Honor?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would not speak to anyone during our break. I think that would be fair, don’t you?”

I’m sure Spritz thought it was anything but. “Of course, Your Honor, I’ll just go downstairs and grab a cup of coffee.”

“Thank you.”

I had thought the judge was done, but she wasn’t. “Counsel,” she said, addressing Benitez and Jenna, who were sitting at their respective tables, gathering some things up, “I’d like to see both of you in chambers for a few minutes. With Mr. Tarza.” She motioned with her head toward the court reporter. “You, too, Nancy.”

We rose and followed the judge through the back door of the courtroom, into the corridor that led to her chambers. The Green Giant came with us. So did Oscar.

The corridor behind the courtroom looked to me pretty much like the back corridors in any courthouse. Nondescript dull beige carpeting, walls that were once white, anonymous wooden doors leading off the corridor here and there. In a word, utilitarian.

Judge Gilmore turned to all of us and said, “I need a few minutes to make some arrangements before we can meet in chambers. In the meantime, each group can wait in one of our small conference rooms.” She pointed to one of the anonymous doors. “The defense can use this one here. Sorry there’s no water or coffee. I can’t spare staff to set it up right now. I’ll come back and get you when I’m ready.”

She turned and left with Benitez and his group, presumably leading them to a different conference room. We went into ours and looked around. The room was maybe twelve by twelve, with a very small metal conference table in the middle. There were four county-issue metal swivel chairs with cloth seats. Nothing else. No art, no sidetables, not even a pencil. We each took a seat.

Jenna began rocking back and forth in her chair, testing it to see if it would fall over backwards if she went too far. It didn’t, but it squeaked every time it moved. I wondered if she had picked up rocking from Oscar.

“Imagine,” Jenna said, “spending a whole day in this pit.”

“Forget it, Jenna,” Oscar said. “We have too much to talk about in the few minutes we’ve got before we go see the judge about whatever this is all about.”

“It’s about some kind of security breach,” Jenna said. “That’s what she told us at the bench conference. Were you already here when that happened?”

“I was just coming in. Did she say anything else?”

“Not really. She asked me if I’d be willing to delay crossing Spritz so she could deal with the problem right then, but I asked to at least begin the cross. I was feeling in the groove and felt like I might fall out of it if we took a break. Benitez, of course, was hot to stop on the spot. But Gilmore said okay, I could get started. You saw what happened next.”

“Yeah, and I liked what I saw,” Oscar said. “You’re good. You’ll make a great lawyer someday.”

“She already is a great lawyer,” I said.

They both looked at me. Up until then, I really hadn’t been in the room as far as they were concerned.

“Let’s leave the pointers I can give her till later,” Oscar said.

“I’ll enjoy getting them,” Jenna said.

Oscar changed the subject.

“I imagine you two are feeling pretty good about what just happened,” he said.

“I am,” Jenna said.

“Me, too,” I said. “She dismantled Spritz. Plus we learned some very interesting facts.”

Oscar was trying to rock without squeaking. Without much success. He addressed Jenna. “You did
start
to take him apart. But the two of you are suffering from TDE.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“Transient Defense Euphoria,” he said. “A tendency to think that just because you had a good moment or a good morning or a good day or whatever, you’re on your way to winning.”

“Well, aren’t we?” I asked.

“No,” Oscar said.

Jenna and I both began repeatedly squeaking our chairs. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was a kind of accompaniment to Oscar, who I sensed was about to commence a long soliloquy.

“Let’s suppose,” Oscar said, getting started, “that Jenna damaged Spritz so much they can’t put him on the stand at trial. So what? All they need him for is to prove ‘opportunity.’ To say, ‘Saw Tarza at the crime scene, standing over the body.’ At trial, they can get Apple to say it instead. After all, he saw the same thing.”

I heard Jenna sigh. Oscar was indeed launching into one of his “I know what I’m doing in criminal law and you two don’t” lectures.

“Even,” Oscar continued, “if Jenna does manage to eliminate Spritz this morning, the experts Benitez is gonna put on later today or tomorrow will kill us.”

“We’ll cream them, too,” I said.

“Robert, you really
don’t
get criminal law. For the DA to make probable cause in a prelim, his experts only have to be marginally credible. We’d have to destroy them completely to win, and we can’t.”

“I thought we had great counter-experts,” I said.

“We’ve got only one really great one,” Oscar said. “Our blood spatter guy, who’s going to say their guy is full of it about the blood on your shirt cuff. But we can’t put him on at the prelim. We need to guard his virginity for trial. Otherwise, we give the DA a dry run at discrediting him.”

“Oh,” I said. I was beginning to feel more downbeat.

Oscar continued to beat down. “And what the hell do you propose we do, Robert, about Benitez’s computer recovery expert? He’s gonna say that somebody deleted the e-mails between you and Simon about the coin. Then he’s gonna read the recovered e-mails out loud to establish motive. Who’s gonna say he’s wrong?”

“Maybe they’re fakes,” Jenna said.

“You’re not serious?” Oscar said.

“Well, no, I’m not,” she said. “But I thought a hint of humor might help you, Oscar. You are so damn fucking serious all the time.”

“Well,” he said, “try this on for added humor, Jenna. The DA’s elevator records expert will say the records prove that Robert was there at 4:30 a.m., which is one-and-a-half hours earlier than Robert told the police he arrived. So the DA’s going to say that he either never left or he left and came back after the elevator was unlocked. But either way, they’ll say, he lied about it. If that’s not the kiss of guilt, it’s sure as hell the kiss of probable cause.” He paused. “And, oh yeah, there’s Simon’s blood on Robert’s couch.”

“Okay, Oscar,” Jenna said. “We get it.”

I interrupted Jenna’s interruption. “Yeah, but I wasn’t there at 4:30 a.m.”

“Right,” Oscar said. “I know. Unfortunately, the only evidence we’ve got of that right now is your own testimony. But you can’t testify at a preliminary hearing. That’s suicide.” Then he took a breath and finished up. “So whatever our chances in front of a jury, our chances of actually winning this prelim are the same as finding a Christmas ham in your bathtub in August.”

Jenna tried a different way to change the subject. “I’ve never heard that one before,” she said. “It’s cute.”

“Something my third wife used to say,” Oscar said.

Jenna cocked her head, got that flirty look she sometimes gets, and leveled the look at Oscar. “How many wives have you had, Oscar? In all the hours we’ve spent together the last few weeks, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that.”

“Five. Would you like to be number six?”

“Dream on.”

“Well,” Oscar said, “it’s a moot point. It would create a conflict for us to marry before this case is over. Especially with you still being a distant suspect. So we’ll have to wait.” Jenna and Oscar were by then actually holding a stare with each other.

I found it hard to believe that this was happening. Right in front of my eyes. But, then, it had happened with Simon, basically right in front of my office. That must have started, I had recently figured out, when Jenna second-chaired the Quintus libel trial with Simon.

I put that thought aside and said, “Can we get back to discussing my case before the judge comes back? Please?”

Oscar broke his stare with Jenna. “Okay,” he said. “To sum up, Benitez will win this hearing, pretty much no matter what. But you’re right, Robert, that his case might not be the world’s strongest in front of a jury. That’s why the DA—Horace Krandall himself—cornered me in the hall this morning and, once again, brought up a plea bargain. He offered to let you plead to second degree murder.”

“Same answer as before,” I said.

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Oscar,” Jenna said, “remind Robert about the difference in the penalty for first degree versus second degree. He needs to focus on it without emotion. He used to be good at doing that. He even used to insist that his own clients do it.”

“With first degree,” Oscar said, “you get twenty-five years to life. With second, you get twenty to life. Possibility of parole in both. So with a plea to second, and counting good behavior and brownie points for doing things like working in the prison library, you could be out in twelve, maybe even ten.”

“And with first?” I asked.

“With first, you’ll be in there for at least fifteen. Minimum, you’ll be seventy-five when you get out. But the good news is that if they’re offering second, I bet we can get them down to manslaughter. In and out in five or six years.”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’m not pleading to anything.”

“Well, maybe,” Jenna said. “Even so, we ought to go back to the DA and—”

She never finished her thought because, after a perfunctory knock, Judge Gilmore opened the door and stuck her head in. “If you’ll follow me down to my chambers, we can talk.” We duly followed.