Monday 9/1
BECAUSE HE COULD NEVER SIT STILL, BEAR CUNNINGHAM SPRANG UP and shook hands with Nina at the door. He hadn’t changed at all over the years. He would be a thousand times happier jumping up and down in a hallway than being in a meeting. This was a real problem for an attorney who spent much of every day impaled in a chair dealing with people and their troubles, taking meetings, attending hearings. She could almost see his muscles fighting to escape his skin.
If you wanted to talk to Bear, you walked with him, or you ran with him at noon, or you biked ten miles home with him. You caught him on the fly. He handled the personal injury cases and the business matters. Bear was a smart, cheerful, happily married man, the backbone of the firm by now, she guessed, with Klaus getting older.
The meeting must have started without her, maybe because she wasn’t a full-fledged member of the firm and didn’t need to know about other cases. Seated in the leather chair by the fireplace which had never, to Nina’s knowledge, held a fire, was Sean Eubanks. Nina shook hands with him. “Nice to meet you.”
“Delighted.” Sean had been with the firm only a year and had the harried look of the one who usually gets the last-minute court appearances. Klaus had told Nina that he was a Yale Law grad who shared Klaus’s passion for the underdog. The youngest lawyer in the office, he was barely thirty and often said he would rather be surfing. His style was classic California lawyer-casual chic, windblown and tanned, friendly on the surface, with the requisite killer instinct lurking below like that big mean fish all lawyers got tired of hearing about. With a special interest in fathers’ rights and gay rights in custody cases, he handled family law cases for the firm.
Nina found a spot on the ancient couch along the window. Adjusting his specs from behind his desk, Klaus said, “I realize that I have not reported on the status of this case for some time, so I am kicking two dogs with one foot. The trial date is September fifteenth.”
“That’s only two weeks away,” Alan Turk said. “Even if you’re fully prepared, Klaus, Nina will have a hard time catching up.” Alan sat next to Nina on the couch, holding his coffee, one leg hooked over the other, slightly cross-eyed behind his glasses and blue tie. His hair had thinned badly, and his back seemed to have bowed as he moved through his fifties. He had given her his usual nod, as if she hadn’t been away eight years, and Nina had nodded back.
During her time as a law clerk, she had enjoyed working with Alan. He was methodical, organized, and never lost his temper. “Anal Alan,” Bear had once called him in a conversation with Nina, showing the litigator’s distaste for the lawyer who sits back at the office generating and responding to the details of law practice.
But as the trusts, wills, and estates man, with a certification in tax law, Alan had always brought in a steady high flow of income to the firm. Without it, Bear couldn’t fly his more risky PI’s and Klaus couldn’t pursue his endless appeals. Alan was currently a bachelor who owned a 2001 metallic blue Ferrari, which, word had it, had cost almost two hundred thousand dollars. The firm building, in line with the rustic ambience of Carmel, had only a one-car garage on the street. Alan kept the Ferrari there under security far superior to the systems for the rest of the building. He also owned two other rare automobiles. Nina didn’t keep track of what kind.
Klaus, Bear, and Alan had all helped Nina get started in law. Even now, she sometimes dreamed of this office with its lamps and photos and books, and the old man sitting behind his desk with the little smile. To be here again, her eyes falling upon Klaus’s favorite Meissen figurine on the mantel, was disconcerting, yet felt as comfortable as a trip back to the old homestead.
“Of course we’re fully prepared.” Bear continued to champion Klaus, as he always had. “Nina, have you had a chance to review the files?”
“I’m doing that today. I met the client this morning.”
“How’d that go?”
“He told me his story. Really, there wasn’t enough time to form an opinion of his chances.” Bear, Alan, and Sean shot smiles around that landed eventually on her. They seemed to know a few things she didn’t. Perfectly natural. “I have the general outline,” she went on. “I’m sure I can take the second chair, help with the cross-exams and-”
“Do brilliant work,” Klaus said.
“Work hard, anyway,” Nina said. She sat up straight, trying to look like the kind of person who wouldn’t let anything get by her.
Klaus smiled and nodded, his white goatee jabbing the air. Seeing him the previous week for the first time in years, Nina had been amazed at how little he had changed. Perhaps after seventy there is a long, placid evening for some people during which they finally take on their real form and stick with it. He still had the twinkly eyes, sparse white hair on his head-which, as he didn’t like the cold ocean air, was often covered with an archaic homburg-a black suit, a red tie, and on court days a flower in the buttonhole, tucked in no doubt by his devoted wife, Anna. The only difference Nina saw was that he seemed to be a couple of inches shorter now that he had reached his early eighties.
Klaus had always taken the criminal cases and the appeals. His national reputation dated back from his noisy, contentious teaching days at the University of Chicago and at UC Berkeley. He and his wife, Anna, had come to the United States just before the Second World War from somewhere they refused to talk about in Europe, somewhere German-speaking, Austria, maybe. That one of them was Jewish was all Klaus would ever say, and it had given Nina enough to reconstruct a basic history. Klaus had helped defend Angela Davis and had been a friend of Henry Miller and Linus Pauling in their Big Sur days.
“Our client,” Klaus said, “as you will remember, is Stefan Wyatt, a young man in a hell of a pickle. He has not been able to make the high bail and has therefore been in jail for four months. Though I tried to talk him out of it, he was adamant. He wanted a quick court date. He wants out of jail.”
“Short amount of time to prepare for a murder case,” Sean said.
“An innocent young man is in jail,” Klaus said. “Technically, he has a right to a trial within sixty days.”
Nina listened, more interested than the others. Any new details to come today were helpful to her. Klaus had told her that he required her assistance and that he assumed she would fly to his side, which she had. He blew off her objections like dandelions. She would play a small role as backup. He had everything worked out, he had assured her.
Klaus had always kept his cases close, maybe because he was the only criminal lawyer at the firm and nobody else could give him much help with strategy. Bear appeared for him now and then in Law and Motion hearings, but he didn’t like criminal defense.
“Why was he arrested?” Sean asked. “There was something strange about that.” He furrowed his brows, then snapped his fingers. “Bones tucked into the back seat of his car, right?”
“Precisely.” Klaus nodded. “And those bones will be key to helping us explain Mr. Wyatt’s presence in the graveyard that night. But what concerns us most is the second body the police found in the grave Mr. Wyatt is accused of robbing, the body of a woman, Christina Zhukovsky.”
Sean’s blond head bobbed up and down. “I remember now, he was stopped because he had a taillight out. And then the cop saw a skeleton flopping around in the back seat. Wyatt sounds like one of those guys who can’t jaywalk without stepping in front of a patrol car.”
“At least he didn’t talk to the police,” Alan said. He tapped his fingers on the leather. His nails were manicured to soft pink curves, perfect as shells shaped by a century’s tides. Obsessiveness was a good trait in a tax lawyer, Nina reflected. Alan was well known locally as an exacting collector of very rare, small fine-arts objects and sculpture. His office, which displayed only a small but spectacular grouping of jade netsuke, had the organizational rigor of a military locker room.
Years before, Nina had gone to Alan’s house for an office celebration and marveled at the elegance of the decor. He pressed a tiny bronze sculpture of a dancer into her hands to appreciate, and told her everything about it for the next twenty minutes. His love of beauty spilled over into the kind of women he married, another form of collecting, Nina thought, but you didn’t get to keep all the women.
“Stefan Wyatt has had experience with law enforcement,” Klaus said. “He doesn’t trust the police, and was wise enough to say nothing and to call us immediately.”
“Do we admit the grave robbery?” Sean asked. He didn’t ask whether the client had confessed to Klaus. That would be bad form, since they were closing in on a trial at which they would claim the client was innocent no matter what he had told his lawyer in the cloister of their confidential relationship.
“Yes. There is a complication, however. Mr. Wyatt found a medal in the grave and put it in his pocket. The value of the medal makes the charge grand theft, a felony.”
“Sounds pretty minor, in the context of the murder charge.”
“Ah, but it is not minor, Mr. Eubanks. The young man has a record. Two previous felony convictions. Violent felonies, and he did time for both. The first was for throwing a brick at a police officer at a demonstration. He was convicted of assault and served four months in the county jail. He had just turned eighteen.”
“That was bad luck,” Bear said. “The birthday, I mean. If he’d been seventeen…”
Klaus went on, “While still on probation, at the age of nineteen, he struck another young man with his fist at a neighborhood party. Both young men had been drinking. Unfortunately, the boy he struck fell against the curb and suffered a skull fracture. Mr. Wyatt pled guilty to assault again and was sent back to jail, for eight months this time.”
“This is one bad-luck kid,” Sean said.
“His victims were the ones with the bad luck,” Alan said. “Let’s not forget them. Sounds like you’ve got a client that deserves to go down.”
Klaus found the comment unworthy of a reply. “Mr. Wyatt was released after five years’ probation and he has kept himself employed and clean,” he concluded. Nina made a note to herself to go into those priors in more detail with Stefan.
“Which makes a conviction for the medal a third-strike conviction, even if he’s acquitted of the murder,” Bear said. “Mandatory twenty-five years to life, under California law.”
“Do we have the resources to handle a murder trial with a Three Strikes complication?” Sean asked. Bear frowned at him, which Nina interpreted to mean, Don’t question the old man’s judgment, you barking young pup.
“Nina and I will handle it,” Klaus said dismissively. You could view Klaus as laudably confident or you could view him, as Sean probably did at that moment, as arrogant.
“We are being paid-how?” Alan reverted to his usual motif, money, using a finger and thumb to neaten the crease in his trouser leg.
“We accepted a ten-thousand-dollar retainer and five thousand dollars as an advance against expenses. We are taking payments from Mr. Wyatt’s mother as further fees are incurred. It’s hard for her. She had to get a loan. His brother, Gabriel Wyatt, is helping. He was Mr. Turk’s client at one point and remembered us fondly enough to refer his brother to us when he was arrested,” Klaus said.
“I was called over to the jail right after Wyatt’s arrest,” Alan explained to the rest of them, apparently not pleased at the memory. “Klaus was down with the flu and you were in depositions in L.A., remember, Bear, and Sean had a trial the next day. I lined things up for Klaus to see him. I only had a consult with his brother, Gabe, so I was surprised when the family called me, but I guess I was the only lawyer they knew. Gabe has a job, but I’m also guessing that you’re not charging him full freight. Am I right, Klaus?”
“You are right, Mr. Turk,” Klaus said, unperturbed. “We are charging fifty percent of our usual hourly rate, plus actual expenses.”
“Just so everybody’s straight on this. At the moment overhead’s running sixty-five percent.” Alan glanced at Nina.
Kachung. Overhead. Negative balance sheet.
“Is the D.A. offering any kind of plea bargain? Do we really have to try this one?” Sean asked.
“Any felony conviction runs a risk of a Three Strikes enhancement, so we cannot bargain,” Klaus said. “The trial will take no more than a month by my estimate. We have had a good year, gentlemen. You all received ample year-end bonuses. Now we give back by helping this young man.”
Alan said in ungentlemanly fashion, “I referred him to you because I felt obligated, but I never understood why you took this case in the first place, Klaus. We’re mixed up in something-unsavory. There’s no new law to be made, no real money in it for the firm, no noble point to his crimes.”
Klaus stared at Alan, lips turned down, as if generally unhappy with his attitude toward their client. “Alleged crimes,” he corrected softly. “Yes, Mr. Turk, your objections from the start have been noted. However, I did not found this law firm forty years ago to make money. I founded it to seek justice and make law.”
“Oh, please,” Alan said, rolling his eyes. “The jails are full of guys just like him, probably a hell of a lot more worthy.”
“I am shocked at you, Mr. Turk,” Klaus said. “Mr. Wyatt’s brother was your client, and he needs help.”
Silence fell.
Bear said, “Give it a rest, Alan. You have enough money for a thousand years from your parents. The client’s family is paying most of the freight. Let’s get on with practicing law.”
“Somebody has to pay the secretaries,” Alan said, but without heat. He had decided not to take Bear on.
“It’s good to have you on board,” Sean told Nina.
“Thanks. I’m sure we’ll do fine,” Nina said briskly. “You’ll be seeing a couple of new faces around the office besides me. Sandy Whitefeather, my secretary from Tahoe, has come down to assist me. You’ll pass her in the hall. You might want to take the initiative with her and introduce yourself. She’s a very capable person but, uh, a little shy.”
“I ran into her this morning,” Sean said. “Shy might not be the right word for her. She’s-prepossessing. From the Washoe tribe, she said?”
“Right. Descended from the first inhabitants of Tahoe. Good people.”
“Big money in casinos these days,” Alan said.
“The Washoe have chosen a different way. Ask her about it. That, she’ll talk about.”
The meeting had settled back down, to Nina’s relief.
“You all know Paul van Wagoner, I think. He’ll be taking over as our investigator. And we’re bringing in Dr. Ginger Hirabayashi as our forensic pathologist.” Nina knew Ginger well and had made the suggestion to Klaus. Although he seemed satisfied with the work that had been done already, she had been relieved to discover that he was willing to go further based on her recommendations.
Klaus broke a smile and pushed his chair back. “And I am happy to repeat that we now have on board this lovely young lady, prepared to stagger us with her energy and legal skill. She will be the saving grace of this unfortunate young man. Let us have lunch and celebrate, eh?”
And so, although time was tight and Nina knew she should work through lunch, they all piled out the door, Nina in the place of honor, walking alongside Klaus at his sedate pace into Carmel’s tangy ocean air. They made their way through the tourists to the Alpine Bistro. Klaus went through the door into the heavenly smells waiting inside. As Nina prepared to follow, Bear pulled her aside onto the flower-filled veranda.
“I’m glad you’re back, Nina, really happy. Let us know what we can do to help. Anything.” The weather-beaten lines of his face shaped a wholehearted smile. “Klaus needs the help.”
Through the window, she saw Klaus sit down in the place where he had eaten lunch for forty years. The waitress and the manager stood by, ready to attend him. He caught her looking his way and grinned so widely she could see his gums, as pink as a baby’s.
The meeting had disturbed her. It felt as if the other lawyers were indulging Klaus with this case. They hadn’t even tried to quiz him about strategy and defenses, questions she would have expected. Why were they all so worried?
Walking into the restaurant she received another unearned smile from Sean Eubanks. He was much too glad to meet her, she thought, sitting down beside him. He acted as if her presence relieved him of a burden. Only Alan, chewing sullenly on a carrot, was a relief from otherwise unalloyed delight.
What had she gotten herself into?
“You’re a champ for dropping everything to see me,” Nina said to Ginger when Nina finally got back at three. “Sorry I’m late. Lunch ran long.”
“I enjoyed the ride,” Ginger said. She gave Nina a warm hug, which Nina, surprised, returned. “Sandy and I have been catching up.” Encased in soft black leather from head to boot, she smelled of spicy perfume. Her black hair, tipped with white, spiked out like a sunburst, and she seemed to have a couple of new piercings in her ears. She was forty-five and looked a lot younger. She ran her own business now, after a long stint with the state lab in Sacramento, and was one of the top pathologists on blood evidence questions in California, much in demand by both defense and prosecution as an expert witness.
“Thanks for coming all the way down from Sacramento. I know how busy you always are, and I think you know I appreciate it. How are you?” she asked as Ginger took her seat. “It’s been a while.”
“Good work, bad affair, new girlfriend, bought a glam condo near Oldtown Sac since we last worked together,” she said. “You?”
“Left Tahoe, came here with Paul, so old new love,” Nina said, attempting the same game and giving up. “Let’s just say, after the court case in San Francisco in which my own State Bar tried to take me out and failed, I have been rethinking my life. I’m living too near my father, mostly at odds with him whenever we get together, getting together with Paul, and getting on Bob’s case. He’s mighty intense these days.”
Ginger spotted Nina’s ring. She took Nina’s hand into her own. “Wow. Fabulous! Art Deco, I do believe.” She lifted Nina’s hand up and down, as if weighing it. “Heavy commitment, this dazzler.” Letting go, she looked into Nina’s eyes, questioningly. “You’re going to marry van Wagoner and stay here? You won’t be going back to Tahoe?”
“I’m trying out the ring for size. Any words of wisdom?”
“He’s a pig,” Ginger said, “but you know that, and we love him in spite of his flaws.”
Nina smiled.
“You’re not imagining you’ll reform him, are you?”
“Not really. No.”
“He’s a macho control freak.”
“That’s a little harsh. Anyway, so am I.”
Ginger thought about that. “True. So I don’t know where that leaves you.”
“Making progress?”
“Right. Well, we’re not going to resolve your life or mine, but maybe we can make some headway on this case.”
They got down to it.
“What I’m seeing,” Ginger said a half hour later, after examining some of the documents the D.A.’s office had provided them, “is that the victim apparently was killed in the kitchen of her apartment in Monterey on Friday night, April eleventh. That’s what-nearly five months ago? It’s a strangulation. Hands-on, no evidence of a cord or anything like that. There were small signs of a possible struggle-some broken glass. Some of the glass had blood on it.”
“Right,” Nina said. “And as you can see, it appears from this report that all of the blood samples found at the crime scene have been identified as Stefan Wyatt’s.”
“Not good. The blood seems to have been reasonably fresh. The amounts were small for a decent analysis, so that’s an area we might challenge.”
“Does the state lab work look like it will stand up?”
Ginger shook her head. “Too soon to draw conclusions for you, Nina. Did you request samples for independent analysis?”
“You can pick them up this afternoon in Salinas.”
“Well, you never know. Maybe they don’t know what they’re doing. Although Dr. Susan Misumi’s supervising, and she’s no slouch.”
“You know Monterey’s assistant medical examiner?”
“Known her for years. We attend the same conferences, and we’re both Asian females in a world of white, whiskery faces. We have some things in common.”
Nina nodded. “Here’s another tricky aspect of this case,” she said. “I told you Stefan Wyatt took bones from the same grave where the victim, Christina Zhukovsky, was found? The bones of her father, a man named Constantin Zhukovsky?”
“Yeah, what’s that about?”
“Wyatt says he was hired to dig them up. While he was digging, he found the second body, of the victim, in the grave.”
“Sounds like a setup.”
“I think so, too. The guy who Wyatt claims hired him is a professor at CSUMB named Alex Zhukovsky. And get this, Ginger-he’s Constantin Zhukovsky’s son and Christina’s brother. He denies he hired Wyatt or had any knowledge about any of it.”
“Could he have tipped off the police to do a traffic stop on Wyatt?”
“Good question, but there’s no evidence the police were tipped. They stopped Stefan for a silly but legitimate traffic infraction. Anyway, I want you to examine the bones of Constantin Zhukovsky as well as the blood found in Christina Zhukovsky’s apartment. Meanwhile, Paul will be interviewing Alex Zhukovsky.”
Ginger, surprised, said, “Hasn’t anyone talked to Zhukovsky before? If Wyatt is innocent, Zhukovsky must be the killer.”
“He’s been interviewed before, but barely.”
“Where are the bones now?”
“They’re still in a morgue locker at Natividad Hospital in Salinas, but Alex Zhukovsky recently demanded their return for cremation. The police are inclined to turn them over to him. The bones don’t directly relate to the charges, except as proof that Stefan robbed the grave. And, privately, between you and me, he did. They have plenty of proof, but they didn’t even charge him for that crime.”
“Why do we want the bones, if the prosecution isn’t even bothering to test them?”
“Because Alex Zhukovsky wanted them.” Nina propped one of her small, chain-bedecked, pointy-toed shoes on her desk, and wound a finger through her hair. She felt the groove between her eyebrows digging inward, toward unsettling thoughts.
“What kind of tests are we after, with regard to the bones?” Ginger asked.
Nina bit her lip. “I’m counting on you to help me with that question.”
“At least a genetic profile, then, if possible,” Ginger said, making a note. “I’ll look for poison, anomalies, strange diseases, anything that pops up. That okay?”
“If Zhukovsky wanted those bones for a reason, and you can find it by examining them, I know you’ll find it.”
“So we’ll grab a couple of bones for me before he burns them. A femur. The pelvis. Big bones, okay? Those are both impressive enough to be fair bets for DNA even after all this time.”
Nina made notes. “You’ll get them. But we have to work fast.”
Sandy knocked and brought in coffee for both of them. “I thought you deserved better than that ancient coffeepot in the back room, so I went to the coffee place on Ocean,” she said.
“You are the best,” Ginger told her as she went out again to answer a ringing phone.
Nina leaned back, forcing herself to relax. Her body felt constricted in several places by an invisible but robust nylon rope. She couldn’t quite believe how much work lay ahead.
After a minute, Ginger picked up a file and went on, “Okay, I know what to do on the blood and the bones. Now, let’s talk about the murder itself. I’ve just skimmed the autopsy report, but it’s a clear strangulation death. Have you looked at a domestic violence angle?”
“Christina wasn’t married, and Klaus’s investigator hasn’t identified a significant other, but we’ll be looking into that. Any thoughts?”
“Strangulation is statistically suggestive of a male killing a female. I mean, someone who goes for the throat is usually passionately angry and you have to be strong to maintain the sustained force necessary to kill.”
Nina nodded. “It’s a kind of horrible intimacy.” Ginger raised her eyebrows, and Nina went on, “In answer to your next question, Stefan Wyatt swears he never knew Christina Zhukovsky. Never saw her, never met her, never heard of her.”
“Is he violent?”
Nina said slowly, “He does have a couple of violent priors. I plan to talk to him about them. As far as I know now, he was young, drunk, stupid. Things got out of hand. He really isn’t a violent type.”
“Oh, really.”
“No women, no strangling.”
“Still.”
“I know. It’s possible the priors will come in during the first phase of trial when the jury is considering guilt or innocence. Klaus and I will fight that, of course.”
Ginger said, “I was hoping I’d meet Mr. Pohlmann today. He’s in charge of the case, isn’t he? The four months of investigating and pretrial work so far?”
“He’s in charge of the case.”
Ginger didn’t follow up on that, but her perplexed expression told Nina she was as concerned as Nina about the sparseness of the investigative files. “Okay, back to the body.” She gave the autopsy report back to Nina and pointed to one paragraph. “Christina was small. It’s possible that a woman strangled her. Too bad there’s no sign of drugs. Almost anyone can strangle someone who is already unconscious. Not too much strength needed, you see?”
Nina sighed. “There’s so much we don’t know.”
“I don’t see anything about skin cell samples from the neck. Were they taken?”
“Actually, I think I have another sheet on that.” Nina gave it to her. “Klaus did make sure samples were saved, but they didn’t find any skin cells from Stefan.”
Ginger moved on to the police report with its series of crimescene photos, looking at the black-and-white photos of Christina’s body for a long time. “The jury will react to these. Her face didn’t hold up well. The plastic bags make the crime seem really depraved.”
They both thought about that. Nina looked through the photos for the third or fourth time. Christina Zhukovsky’s body had been photographed in various stages as it was removed from the bags. There were close-ups of her neck and face from the morgue. They hadn’t closed her eyes first.
If Nina let herself really look at that tragic, distorted face, cut off from the world after only four decades in it, she would not be able to sleep at night. She concentrated on the bruising on the neck, then covered the photos.
“Okay, blood, bones, and body. You got it,” Ginger said. “Pass me copies of whatever you have. I’ve got to stop in Salinas by five and get back to Sacramento.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Out in the fog, Ginger packed her zippy yellow Porsche with the files and got behind the wheel.
“Good luck,” Nina said.
“Luck is roulette,” said Ginger. “This is poker.”