I pick it up. “Hello. Law office.”
“Is Harry Hinds there?”
I don’t recognize the voice on the other end, but it’s not Epperson.
“Who’s calling?”
“Max Sheen.”
“Just a second.” I start to hand the phone to Harry.
“What did you mean, ‘too bad there was no federal money’?”
“Who is it?” he says.
I hold the phone back.
“If there were federal funds, it’s more likely there would have been an audit at some point.”
“Ah.”
“Who is it?” he asks.
“The press calling. Your friend Sheen.” I hand him the phone.
Harry takes it. “Hello.”
I continue looking through the stack of papers on my desk, part of the original grant proposal. There are entire lines of typed print blocked out by black marker. Classified material. No doubt information subject to protection as trade secrets. Arriving at conclusions is going to be like putting a jigsaw puzzle together without all the pieces.
“Why? What’s happening?” asks Harry. There’s a tone of urgency to his voice that causes me to look up.
“What is it?” I ask.
He shakes his head at me. Doesn’t answer.
“When?”
“Are you sure?”
“What’s happening?” I ask.
Harry cups his hand over the mouthpiece to the receiver.
“Epperson is dead.”
IN THIS ANCIENT INDIAN VILLAGE OF COSOY
DISCOVERED AND NAMED SAN MIGUEL BY CABRILLO IN 1542
VISITED AND CHRISTENED SAN DIEGO DE ALCALA
BY VIZCAINO IN 1602
HERE THE FIRST CITIZEN
FRAY JUNIPERO SERRA
PLANTED CIVILIZATION IN CALIFORNIA
HERE HE FIRST RAISED THE CROSS-HERE BEGAN
THE FIRST MISSION
HERE FOUNDED THE FIRST TOWN, SAN DIEGO, JULY 16, 1769
The original native inhabitants of the place might quibble over how well those seeds of civilization took, especially if they could see the macabre scene here tonight.
William Epperson’s body twists in the dark, damp air of early morning, suspended from a rope around his neck that is looped over the horizontal beam of the massive brick cross that forms the monument.
The bronze plaque with its words to the friar rests embedded in the white plaster covering the base beneath the giant cross that stands thirty feet high, faced with red brick.
By the time Harry and I arrive, the medical examiner’s office is setting up a ladder, an extension affair lent to them by the fire department that is on the scene with two of its trucks and several big portable lights.
Even from a distance, I can see Epperson’s body. Harry and I park at the top of the hill on the street near the colonnade. We slipped in this way to avoid the emergency lights all along the road down below. We drove up past Old Town and came in through the park at the top of the hill. It takes us five minutes to hike down, avoiding the roots of eucalyptus trees and the depressions in the ground obscured by the angle of the bright lights aimed up from the cross and shining in our eyes from below.
Both Harry and I come out of the woods with one arm up to shade our eyes from the light.
As we get closer, I can see the rope and crude noose, rough hemp, and hear it strain under the weight and over the hush of voices, as Epperson twists slowy in the still, damp air and the evidence techs work beneath him around the base.
He is clothed in a white dress shirt and suit pants, one shoe on, the other lying on the ground, as if shot by gravity from his foot when the body stopped at the end of the rope. The line suspending him is tied off around the bottom of the brick cross, just above the rectangular base with its plaque.
A painter’s ladder, which looks to be ten or twelve feet in length, is tipped over, lying on its side near the path that fronts the monument.
It is a picture worth a thousand words, all of them screaming one thing-suicide, all of it bathed in bright floodlights with the SID, the Scientific Investigation Division, crime-scene folks, working it and looking for a different message.
One of them is examining the soil near the foot of the base, casting light at different angles over the ground, looking for impressions, footprints, though I doubt they will find much. The compacted river-bottom sand is as hard as concrete.
Several cops are working farther up the hill. They have laid out police lines of yellow tape from tree to tree. One of the uniforms stops us as we approach the tape.
It takes a couple of minutes to explain why we are here, the dead man being a witness in a case we are trying. He takes my business card. This seems to work its way from hand to hand up the hierarchy, until it gets to somebody in a suit farther down the hill. If the man is impressed, he doesn’t show it. Gives us a look, then back to the card. Words exchanged with one of the uniformed officers that I cannot hear.
We cool our heels.
Harry nudges me in the ribs with an elbow. When I look over, he nods, off in the direction of the parking lot down below toward the museum that sits on the opposite hill.
The lot is crowded with police cruisers, emergency vehicles with strobes flashing, blue, red and amber, enough color to spike blood pressure even if it isn’t in a rearview mirror.
Getting out of one of the cars is Evan Tannery. He stops to talk to the brass clustered in the parking lot, spending most of his time and attention on an older guy, gray hair, in a uniform. He seems to be in charge. Tannery is pumping him for information. They huddle for several seconds, the cop motioning with his arm up toward the hill behind us.
Until that moment I hadn’t seen it. Parked in the shadows under a eucalyptus on a narrow service road leading up the hill toward the cross is the dark blue van I’d seen Epperson driving earlier that day. The cops have staked it off with yellow tape and one of the fingerprint guys is giving it a going-over with dust on the driver’s-side door handle and window, spreading the graphite liberally with a brush and blowing every few seconds searching for latents.
They’ve got a problem, and somebody knows it. A key witness in a felony murder is dead, and the cops are telling themselves this is no suicide.
“You Madriani?”
I am interrupted by the detective holding my business card. He has come up the hill behind us and is now looking at Harry and me like something the cat dragged in, interlopers.
“I’m Madriani. This is my partner, Harry Hinds.”
“I understand you knew this man?” He squares off in front of me, legs spread, and gestures toward the dangling body with his head. The coroner’s guys have finally got their ladder up, and two of the firemen are giving them a hand, lifting the load so that they can sever the rope near the base and lower the body. They will cut this to avoid screwing with the knot, hoping that the fashion in which it is tied will tell them something about whoever tied it.
“We weren’t well acquainted,” I tell him. “I talked to him once, about a week ago. I was scheduled to cross-examine him in court.”
“Looks like that show’s off,” he says. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“We were alerted by a phone call,” says Harry. “He’s right over there. You want to talk to him?” Harry has spotted Max Sheen in the distance, reporters in a flock, Sheen trying to work his way toward us around the police tape. The last thing the cops want, a conversation with counsel close to microphones, on camera, or anywhere near the pad-and-pencil crowd.
“Why don’t you come this way,” he says. Open sesame. We are through the police line.
chapter fifteen
It’s Saturday morning, and we are all in the dark regarding Epperson. Coats’s courtroom went dark on Friday. With Epperson dead, Tannery had no one to talk to. The offer of proof is now in suspense while he scrambles trying to figure what to do next.