“You’re talking about the Justice Ginnis?” he says.
“Your Honor,” Harry wades in, “if you would just…if you would take just a couple of minutes to look at something.” Harry is feeling around in his briefcase.
“I have no time for this,” says Quinn.
Harry dances around the desk toward the judge’s desktop computer behind his chair.
Quinn is waving him off. “It’s not going to do you any good.”
I hand him a stapled sheaf of papers a quarter inch thick.
“What’s this?”
“That’s a transcript,” I tell him.
While he is talking to me, Harry is loading the DVD into the judge’s computer.
“A transcript of what?” Quinn looks at the pages now stuck in his hand.
“It’s a transcript, Your Honor, verbatim. The audio on what you’re about to see is not very good. But that”-Harry points to the stapled pages-“is word for word.”
“Word for word of what?” asks the judge again.
“This.” As Harry says it, the judge swings around in his chair to face the computer monitor.
“Where did you get that?” This is the first comment from Tuchio since we’ve entered the judge’s chambers.
That Tuchio by now would have seen the video of Ginnis and Scarborough played out over the table in the restaurant comes as no surprise. The evidence clerk would have made sure that a copy of the DVD was sent to his office the moment Jennifer left the property room. Unless I miss my bet, it is the reason that Tuchio wrapped his case and dropped the ball into our court so early. He knows there is something out there. He is gambling that we haven’t had time to find it. And as bets go, this is not a long shot. What surprises Tuchio is the transcript. There’s no way we could have sent the disk out to a lab and gotten a transcript back in the few days since Jennifer found it. For the moment I ignore his question.
For all of his hesitancy, Quinn is now turned in his chair with his back to us and seems riveted by the video the instant the familiar face appears on the screen. At first he tries to listen, and then he starts reading, turning pages.
“Your Honor, I’ve seen the video. It’s meaningless.” Tuchio is trying to draw Quinn’s attention away from the screen. “You can’t even understand what they’re saying. Some pieces of paper,” he says. “For all we know, it could be a grocery list.”
“Be quiet,” says Quinn.
If there is any group in society that is stratified, rigid, and tight, it is the American judiciary. Judges are ever conscious of those above and below them. The pecking order comes with the robe. If you want to catch a judge’s attention, show him someone higher on the food chain, in what appears to be, what may be, a compromising situation. It is human nature. He may not act, he may never say a word, but you can bet he’ll look.
Twenty-six minutes later, the computer monitor flickers. The video ends. When the judge finally swings around in his chair, it is not with the kind of vigor and dispatch you might expect if he were going to dismiss us outright. The chair turns slowly, like the grinding wheels of the master it serves. I get the first glimmer that maybe we’ve bought some time.
For a while he is silent, leaning forward, elbows on his desk, steepled fingers to his chin. “I take it it’s Scarborough on this side of the table?”
“Without question,” I tell him.
“You can’t see him,” says Tuchio.
“No, but you can hear his voice,” says Quinn. “This, ah…this item on the table,” he says. “It’s only a copy.”
“As far as we know, but that may not matter,” I tell him. “The words on the page, what it says, may have intrinsic value, not necessarily in dollars but to the person who took it.”
“You mean whoever killed Scarborough.”
“We know who killed Scarborough,” says Tuchio. “He’s in the lockup downstairs, on his way back to the jail as we speak. He-”
“Humor me, Mr. Tuchio.” The judge cuts him off.
“It may not be the letter itself,” I tell Quinn. “The original, I mean, but the message it delivers-or doesn’t deliver, if it’s destroyed or disappears.”
“What are you saying?” says Quinn.
“Scarborough ignited considerable racial unrest with the current book. According to Bonguard, he was planning on going nuclear in the next book with whatever was in that letter.”
“And you think a two-hundred-year-old letter could cause that kind of an uproar?” says Quinn.
“I don’t know. But we do know a few things. Scarborough had it in his possession when he met with Ginnis over the table in that restaurant. And you saw all the furtive expressions on the justice’s face and read the transcript.”
“I’d like to see that transcript,” says Tuchio.
“And the letter wasn’t found in the hotel room after Scarborough was killed, or in his Georgetown apartment. So where did it go?”
“The item on the leather portfolio,” says Quinn.
I give him a look like, Bingo. “You saw it come out of Scarborough’s pocket. Letter paper, folded in thirds. It matches the size of the shadow,” I tell him.
“Any piece of business correspondence folded for an envelope would fit the size and shape of that shadow,” says Tuchio. “Your Honor, we’ve been all over that video. The police have seen it and listened to it. I’ve seen it and listened to it.”
“I’m surprised you had the time,” says Harry. “Since the property room delivered it to you only two days ago, after we discovered it in the police evidence locker.”
Tuchio shakes this off. He doesn’t respond.
“Is that true?” says Quinn. “The police never saw this?” He waves the transcript at him. “You never saw this or the video before charging Arnsberg?”
“I still haven’t seen that, Your Honor.” Tuchio means the transcript. “I’d like to know where they got it, and for that matter whether it’s even reliable, because you can’t hear a damn thing on the video.”
“Where did you get it?” Quinn looks at me.
“We have a certified declaration,” says Harry.
As Harry is fishing this from his briefcase, I tell Quinn, “We got it from a man named Theodore Nons, Your Honor.”
“Teddy Nons.” Quinn looks at me with arched eyebrows. “I haven’t had Teddy Nons in my court since analog tapes went out.”
“Who is Teddy Nons?” says Tuchio. The judge hands him the transcript, and Tuchio starts scanning it, flipping pages.
“He’s a blind man, sightless since birth,” says the judge. “But he has an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing. He’s a qualified audio expert.”
“They say he can hear some things that dogs can’t even pick up.” Harry hands the declaration to the judge, who glances at it and sets it aside.
“Sounds like an urban legend.” Tuchio is still riffling through the transcript.
“No, you can take it to the bank,” says Quinn. “Teddy used to make the claim in newspaper ads in the local legal sheet advertising his services. Some lawyer challenged him in my courtroom, a demonstration on that very point. And Teddy beat the dog.”
Quinn is looking at the calendar on the blotter of his desk. He bites his upper lip, sucks some air through his teeth, as he dances a pencil over the blotter. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t do this, but it looks like you caught a little luck, Mr. Madriani.”
“How is that, Your Honor?”
“Monday is a holiday. Memorial Day.”
“Judge. Your Honor!”
“Relax, Mr. Tuchio. I know it gets confusing, but it’s not just about winning and losing. The world won’t come to an end if we give the defendant two more days. Today is Wednesday. The court will go dark Thursday and Friday,” says Quinn. “With the weekend and Monday, that gives you five days. Make good use of them. Come Tuesday morning you will be in my courtroom with your opening statement, ready to go. Is that understood?”