‘I suppose,’ he says. Ranklin is more grudging on this, not sure exactly what he is giving up.
‘You don’t have any personal knowledge that Laurel Vega actually killed Melanie Vega, do you?’ I clarify it for him.
‘Oh. No,’ he says, happier with the inference this conveys.
‘And you didn’t bring any charges against either woman as a result of the events you witnessed in the corridor, did you, officer?’
‘Well… no.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was a judgment call,’ he says.
‘It was over as quickly as it started? Nobody was hurt?’ I say.
‘That’s right.’
I leave it alone. Push some more and he may tell me that in fact it was a mistake in judgment, that on reflection he should have taken Laurel into custody. The subtle suggestion will not be lost on the jury — that if he had, a murder might have been prevented.
‘Fine. Let’s talk about what happened after this altercation was over. Do you remember what you said to me at the scene?’
Ranklin makes a face. Looks at me. ‘Can’t say that I do.’
‘Do you remember suggesting something to me?’
He thinks for a moment. Draws a blank. ‘No.’
On cross I can lead. I make the most of it and end up testifying.
‘Don’t you remember telling me that I might want to take my client to the lawyers’ conference area so that she could compose herself?’
Cassidy’s about to rise and object.
‘Oh, yeah. I remember that.’
‘Before we left, before I took the defendant and left the corridor, do you recall what happened?’
‘It’s been a long time,’ he says.
Not so long, however, that he doesn’t remember a death threat that never took place.
‘Do you remember picking up a woman’s purse from the floor? People helping to gather the items that had fallen and been kicked around on the floor?’
‘Oh, that,’ he says. ‘I remember a handkerchief. I tried to give it to one of them, but she said it didn’t belong to her.’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Maybe we could take a second look at the tape, officer.’
I ask Woodruff’s bailiff to roll out the monitor and hit the lights. Ranklin comes off the stand so he can see better. The judge comes down from the bench. The bailiff starts to rewind the tape, and I stop him.
‘Pick it up from right there,’ I tell him.
‘But the altercation’s back further,’ he says.
‘That’s all right. Run it from there.’
Woodruff’s bailiff makes a face, like it’s your show. When the picture comes up, we are all gathered in a tight cluster in the center of the courthouse corridor, Laurel and Melanie, Jack between them, and myself tugging on Laurel’s arm. Ranklin is holding the hanky that Melanie has just rejected. Somebody hands him the purse with the broken strap, and he puts the handkerchief in it.
‘There’s the handkerchief,’ he says.
‘I see it.’
People are passing items to Ranklin. He’s not looking, but taking them in his hands, talking to me, eyeing Laurel and dropping the items into the purse. A couple of seconds later he hands this to Laurel and we turn and walk away.
‘Could you rewind it and then play it back in slow motion?’
‘Whatever.’ The bailiff punches buttons on the remote. He starts to play forward. Melanie brushing the handkerchief off Jack’s pants. Ranklin picking it up. Somebody handing him the purse.
‘Go slow.’
‘There — I think she just called her a bitch.’ Ranklin’s trying to read lips. ‘Can’t make out the rest,’ he says.
‘Stop. Right there. Back it up a few frames,’ I tell the bailiff.
He plays it back and puts it in freeze-frame.
‘Officer Ranklin — what is that in your right hand?’
He strains to look. ‘Something somebody handed me off the floor,’ he says. ‘From one of the purses.’
‘Can you tell me what it is?’ I ask.
Only Ranklin would not comprehend the significance of this, because he’s been sequestered outside of the courtroom, as a witness, told not to read any accounts of the trial.
‘It looks like a woman’s gold compact,’ he says.
The expression on Jimmy Lama’s face is worth a year’s income. It is the sick image of defeat pumped from the stomach of victory. Lama’s eyes are wide with denial, his palms upturned, offering gestures of bewilderment to Cassidy.
On the screen is an image worth a thousand explanations and lame accountings — the bailiff handing Laurel her purse, and in it, Melanie Vega’s gold compact.
Chapter 26
This afternoon it is nearly five when I get back to the office. There are messages, a pile of pink slips littering my desk.
I do telephone triage, and a phone message from Clem Olsen comes up on top. I dial and I get the Wolfman. He has some information, the print from Kathy Merlow’s tube of paint which I gave him at the reunion. But as usual Clem doesn’t want to talk on the phone.
The Brass Ring is one of those haunts of cops and lawyers, a block from the courthouse. It is to the legal profession what Geneva is to the U.N. — a place where warring sides can sit and talk. When I arrive there are maybe a dozen people inside, a few cops, a small cluster of deputy D.A.s at the bar, with a couple of public defenders exchanging stories of courthouse comedy and lore, slamming a dice cup for drinks.
Little snippets of the points I scored this afternoon in Laurel’s case have filtered here among those who follow such things. One of the P.D.s reaches out and slaps my back as I walk by, offers a good word, and encouragement to stick my pike further into the belly of the beast tomorrow.
In the chess match that is a trial, Morgan Cassidy has traded a knight for one of our pawns. In return for some veiled and foggy threats of death, she has now lost one of two pieces of hard physical evidence purporting to link Laurel to the scene of the crime: Melanie’s gold compact. The other, the bathroom rug, relies solely on Jack’s testimony for its proof — his word against Laurel’s that the rug was in Melanie’s bathroom the night of the murder.
Cassidy’s case begins to look more problematic with each passing day, and a few things become clear. Jimmy Lama’s early investigation is what is steering their theory, and I am beginning to get the feeling that Lama is taking Morgan for a ride. I think Jimmy’s chronic myopia has settled like the black Plague over them. It is a matter of Lama immersed in a vendetta.
It takes all my faculty for fantasy to imagine Lama’s passion to nail Laurel once he found out that I was related. For Jimmy this could only have fallen under the category of a magnificent obsession. As a cop assessing evidence, it has glazed his powers of perception. Once Lama knew of the relation between Laurel and me, there was only one suspect, one theory. Cassidy is now faced with hard facts which do not square with their early assumptions. All the ways a theory can go sour on you.
I would pay for status as a fly on their wall to hear the dressing-down Cassidy will give him for failing to review the courthouse tape to its end. If there is anything to aversion therapy, Lama will never leave a theater again before the credits finish rolling and the screen goes dark.
The dice cup is being slammed on the bar, a bang and the roar of voices as one of them is stuck with a round of drinks. As I look up I see Clem coming through the door. He swings between some tables, shakes a few hands, a couple of cops off the day shift. I hear the Wolfman, gravel in his throat, then bits and pieces of some off-color joke in a Mexican dialect, followed by a lot of laughter. This is Clem the politician. Next week he may be working Community Relations and telling these same guys that positive racial attitudes all start at home with an open mind and a clear conscience. Clem is the only man I know who could sit through five days of sexual sensitivity training and cop a feel from the female instructor as his graduation prize.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he says. ‘Hope you haven’t been here long.’