Marlene zapped off the sound. Karp cleared his throat. He felt chilled.
“Well,” he said, “you’re not having much of a day.”
“No,” she said. “I sent Harry to straighten things out. Everybody was real nice to her, he said. I should have gone to see her, but I honestly didn’t have the energy. I’ll go see her tomorrow.” Her tone was dull, as if she were talking to herself.
“Straight self-defense,” Karp mused in a similar tone. “She got the gun away from him and shot him. That’s not the way it usually goes down.”
“No,” she said. All the warmth seemed to be leaking from the room. His arm felt like a dead log across her shoulders.
“She must be a lot tougher than she looks,” he said.
“Apparently.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess … I mean, it’s probably not a good idea for me to be personally involved in this one. Because of your connection with her. I’ll tell Roland to, ah, report directly to Jack on it. Not that I think there’ll be much to report. If it went down the way it looks.” A long pause. “Did it?”
“As far as I know,” she said tightly. Neither of them cared to look at the other. Marlene stood up abruptly. “I’m going to bed,” she said without invitation.
One of the advantages of the new live-in child-care arrangements chez Karp was that Karp could occasionally indulge his cowardice by slipping out of the house early. Normally the most uxorious and paternal of men, there were times when he did not want to engage in familial relationships, and this was one of them. For it was, in fact, a big day for Karp: in the morning Judge Marvin Peoples would entertain oral argument in re: the motions in Rohbling to suppress the confession and to suppress the critical evidence in Jonathan Rohbling’s little blue suitcase, and after that he would rule. In all likelihood, of course, Peoples had already made his decision, or ninety-one percent of it, but in a major case like this one, he would want both attorneys to stand up in front of him and whale away so that the issues would be apparent to the public. Or maybe he really did want explication of the arguments. God knew, they were tortuous enough. Karp had them packed into his head like a model made of bent Popsicle sticks. He felt as if his head was under tension from the inside, as if any emotional or mental shock would collapse the whole structure and leave him blithering before the bench.
Like, for example, the thought that his wife might have been involved in killing Rob Pruitt. He shook his head vigorously to bar the thought as he walked with characteristic long, stiff strides down Centre Street toward the courthouse. For this reason he had skulked from his home. He had not wanted to see Marlene, or to take the chance of seeing a lie written on her face.
Terrell Collins was there waiting in the bureau office, as tightly wound as his boss, dressed in his soberest suit and a faint cloud of Aramis. Karp smiled, invited him into his private office, and laid out the coffee and toasted bagels he had purchased for the two of them in the ground-floor snack bar.
They ate and drank, making desultory talk, listening to the outer office begin work. At five to nine, they walked to Part 46.
Ordinarily, motions are heard in nearly vacant courtrooms; oral argument is not a major spectator sport. With a case like Rohbling afoot, however, it was a different matter. The press was out in numbers, and Karp and Collins had to fight their way from the elevator to the door of the courtroom through a couple of TV crews and a crowd of journalists waving microphones and mini-recorders.
The courtroom itself was packed with people: the print press in rows, the families of the victims, their supporters from the black community, and the usual miscellany of legal geeks who showed up at every important trial.
Karp and Collins sat. Waley came in, looking like he had just spent a week at Gstaad; he nodded, they nodded back. In came Rohbling with his guard; a murmur from the gallery, suppressed hisses. Karp noted that his glasses were still smudged, and that he retained the air of bemused helplessness he had borne at the arraignment. In came Judge Peoples; all rose, all sat.
Marvin Peoples had a head like a cannonball, one covered in smooth morocco leather. He had a wife and three children, and it is possible that he smiled in their presence, but no one had ever seen him crack a grin on the bench. His voice was a bass rumble.
“We will begin with the motion to invalidate the confession in this case. Mr. Waley?”
Waley rose and, in his remarkable voice, began his brilliant exegesis of the law as it related to the legality of confessions. Karp slouched in his seat and took notes. You could always learn something, he thought.
After the hearing, Karp went right up to see the district attorney.
“There’s good news and bad news,” he said.
“So I gather,” said Keegan.
“You heard already?”
“I have sources, Butch. What happened?” Keegan was wearing his stone face.
Karp looked him in the eye. “You read the motions and the responses-what can I say? He bought Waley’s argument out of Moran v. Burbine. Confession not voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. Especially the knowing part. The mutt was under treatment and on a course of antipsychotics, had stopped taking them, hence nuts, hence not ‘knowing.’ He went with Smith v. Zant too. I think the clincher was that Rohbling asked for the pills and the cops denied him. The foul breath of Connelly compulsion there, I think. I was nervous about that myself.”
“And asking for the lawyer, that horseshit about the shrink?”
“Yeah, and that. Judge made a little law there-the operative fact is the understanding on the part of the police that the suspect is requesting counsel. That the person requested is not in fact counsel does not bear on the requirement to cease the interview. Then he bounced our point from Mosely-the resumption of questioning after the request for counsel was not about a crime different in time, place, and nature. ‘Ingenious, but not compelling, Mr. Karp,’ says His Honor. The critical word there is ‘and,’ according to Judge Peoples. The guy has a legal mind on him, I’ll give him that. Anyway, we lost the confessions.”
“But you still have Hughes,” said Keegan.
“Yeah, we still do. And we got the suitcase. The judge went down the line with the McBain argument. Suspect renounced the bag in front of the police and witnesses, therefore it was fair game.”
“That kid you didn’t want did a good job,” said Keegan, smiling for the first time.
Karp smiled too. “You want me to take down my pants, give you a better shot? Yeah, he did real good on the motion to suppress evidence response-first-class. I told him he was a credit to his race. When Peoples rolled our way on it, he nearly broke his jaw to keep from grinning, especially since the great white hope here got sunk on his motion. On the other hand, the law is a lot more clear on the suppression of evidence side-”