“I’ll admit it defies common sense,” says Harry. “But then the man’s a little frizzy. University type. You know what I mean. A lot of aptitude and not much judgment.” Harry’s looking at me from the driver’s seat offering a sideways glance. “He’s stuck with the evidence, and so are we.”
“Still begs the question why the cops didn’t find his prints on the ties or the tool,” I say.
Harry has thought about this. “The ties were too small, too narrow to take an identifiable print,” he says. “And remember, they did find smudges.”
“And the tool?”
“He wore gloves?”
“Did you ever try to put one of those cable ties together wearing gloves?”
Harry shakes his head.
“I did. It’s not easy. If he took his gloves off to work the tie, why did he put them back on just to use the tool to tighten it?”
“He’s eccentric? I don’t know. It’s a hole we’re gonna have to plug,” says Harry.
“It’s possible he wiped the tool clean after he used it to kill Jordan. But if he did, if he thought about it enough to wipe off prints, why didn’t he go the extra step and just get rid of it? Drop it off some dock, or better yet put it in the bag with the body, weigh it down and deep-six the whole bundle?”
“Maybe he didn’t have time,” says Harry.
“Maybe he didn’t do it,” I say.
He smiles, never one to commit himself.
Before Tannery finished with Warnake on the stand, he had him testify regarding the tensioning tool found in Crone’s garage. But his strategy here was not to link Crone to the tool. Instead he wanted to shore up a weakness in his own case. Tannery couldn’t link the death tie to the tensioning tool found in the garage based on tool marks. He wanted to tell the jury why.
It seems whoever killed Jordan pulled so hard on the tool that the cable tie got twisted in the process, deforming the edges and stretching the nylon before it was cut. Successive tests performed by Warnake were unable to replicate the precise toolmarks left along the edge of the cut tie. Tannery explained this to the jury, distilling this imperfection from his own case before we could exploit it.
He left me only one thing to talk about on cross: the fact that the heavy-duty cable ties used in this case marked them as unique. His survey of manufacturers limited the number of producers of that particular tie to fewer than a half-dozen nationwide. Consequently, anyone who purchased these particular kinds of ties would be limited to those same sources.
My point: There was a good chance that anyone purchasing the ties in San Diego would likely obtain them from the same point of manufacture, with the same toolmarks as those found in Crone’s pocket. After I flogged him with this thought several times on the stand, Warnake finally threw up his hands and gave me the great concession-“Anything’s possible.” This was as good as it got, and according to Harry it wasn’t good enough.
“I was looking at their faces,” he tells me.
“Who?”
“The lawyer’s dozen. Who else? Jury in the panel,” he says. “And they weren’t buyin’ it. There was only one thing moved ’em,” says Harry. “Tannery’s question about the tie that killed Jordan. His inference that it came from the same package as the ones in Crone’s pocket.”
Harry is right. The judge may have kept Warnake from answering it, but the fact that the witness started to, and wanted to, was palpable in the courtroom. The jury could sense it.
“Tannery can take that to the bank,” says Harry.
I have a sinking feeling this morning as we trek to the genetics lab at the university for a meeting with Aaron Tash. We are being forced to spend valuable time trying to get inside our own case, to discover the facts that our client won’t tell us, mostly about relationships; and in particular the one between himself and Kalista Jordan.
University medical facilities abound in this county. There are two hospitals, both teaching institutions, and a list of research and graduate programs that would be the envy of any city in the country. But unlike the Salk Institute and Scripps, the University Genetics Center, known to all who frequent it merely as the Center, is not funded by any perpetual endowment or foundation. In fact, it exists in rented quarters, a four-story office complex just off campus, a measure of its precarious existence that is reviewed every year.
It is left to its own devices when it comes to funding. We are told that Crone has had run-ins with university administrators and a few regents who have tried to monitor his largely private fund-raising efforts. The fear is that because of the center’s ties, the university could get a public black eye if Crone were to take funds from the wrong people, entities that might be political lepers. Crone took offense at this questioning of his judgment. According to observers, Crone is jealous of his independence, the freedom to pursue research and its funding as he sees fit. This has been a continuing source of friction between Crone and the university. This may answer the question of why it was that Kalista Jordan received offers of employment with lavish salary increases from other universities while David Crone was passed over. He has a reputation for being difficult to deal with. There is even a rumor that some in the university hierarchy were eyeing her as a possible replacement to head up the center. We have done everything possible to hunt this story down and drive a stake through its heart. If true, it could supply a damaging motive for murder.
Harry parks on the street, at one of the two-hour meters. Whatever the reticent Dr. Tash has to tell us, it can no doubt be covered in that time.
Tash has been excluded from the courtroom since he appears on our witness list, and though we have interviewed him twice, Harry and I both sense that he is holding back. Getting information from Tash is like distilling water from an iceberg in a blizzard. He is cagey. Get your tongue too close and it may stick like a kid licking a water fountain in winter. If I were preparing him for a deposition, I would tell him only one thing: Act normal. As Crone’s number two, he is keeper of the office flame, the man to whom all secrets are most probably known.
We take the elevator to the fourth floor. When the doors open we are standing in a small reception area, nothing fancy, antiseptic white walls and an industrial carpet to absorb the sound of heels that would otherwise be clicking on concrete. There are six chairs, black plastic institutional seats with chrome arms and legs. These grace the otherwise-bare walls, three on each side of the room. A stack of old magazines, what look like science journals, is spread on a low table next to one of the empty chairs. Straight ahead is a desk, a clean surface with nothing behind it except an open door, hallway to the inner sanctum. There is no receptionist, simply the barricade offered by the desk. Harry’s first instinct is to go around it, just walk right in.
“You did make an appointment?” he says.
“On my calendar for ten o’clock.”
Harry glances at his watch. “On the dot.” He waltzes up to the desk. “Hello. Anybody home?” Harry knocks on the Formica surface.
Like a tomb, all I can hear is Harry’s echo. We wait a couple of seconds, and Harry does it again. Nothing.
“What say we go in?” he says.
Then, before we can move, there’s a slow shadow in the hall, followed an instant later by a tall, lean figure. Tash appears in the open doorway behind the desk. Slender and bald, he gives us an expressionless look from over the top of a file he is holding. I can’t tell whether he is expecting us, or has forgotten about the meeting. With Tash, you can never tell much, a stone face, expressions that never seem to change. You are left to wonder if it is academic reserve, or arrogance, or whether Harry is right and the two are the same.