‘And besides,’ I tell Harry, ‘we have problems because the witness is not on our list. He could be excluded on those grounds alone.’
The state has an absolute right to check him out, to ensure that he’s not a ringer, someone with a criminal record, maybe a penchant for lying on the stand, to make certain that he was not on ice, doing time in some human warehouse when he claims to have seen these revelations across the river.
Harry says this is no problem. ‘They complain, we offer them time to check the guy out? In the meantime we tap-dance with a few other witnesses. Continue to beat out the theme that Jack did it.’
‘Why?’ I say.
‘Who knows? Fucker’s crazy,’ he says. ‘Not the first time some pol went ‘round the bend.’
‘You forget,’ I tell him, ‘that the witness is probably lying. That he probably never saw Jack with anybody in a bar. You don’t think Cassidy’s going to figure this out?’
‘You forget,’ says Harry, ‘who is offering this guy up to us. The fucking federal government,’ he says. The glee in Harry’s eyes as he says this is something to behold. ‘Stop and think for a minute,’ he says. ‘You don’t actually believe they’re stupid enough to produce somebody who isn’t absolutely bulletproof? If the feds do it, Lama could check the guy seven ways to Sunday and come up empty. They’ll probably make him an archbishop or something,’ says Harry.
He talks as if the government operates a referral service for such things, like a nurses’ registry; perjured testimony with references.
‘Take my word,’ says Harry. ‘There are two things the federal government does welclass="underline" print money and make up false identities,’ he says.
His words freeze me in place like a naked Eskimo in an arctic blast. My eyes at this moment are two big round O’s.
‘What is it?’ he says.
‘Something we didn’t see. Something you just said.’
‘What?’
‘Identities,’ I say.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Merlows. We’ve been asking ourselves from the beginning, what was it that George or Kathy Merlow saw that night?’
‘So they caught a glimpse,’ says Harry. ‘Somebody doing Melanie. Unless you think we can get Chuckles to let us conduct a séance in open court, they’re beyond the pale,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s concentrate on the other figment,’ says Harry, ‘the one that breathes when he lies.’ He’s talking about Dana’s witness.
‘How can we be so sure they saw something?’ I tell him. ‘What if they didn’t see anything?’
‘Then somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill them for nothing.’ Harry’s not tracking.
‘Maybe it’s not what they saw,’ I tell him, ‘but who, or more precisely, what they are.’
He’s giving me a lot of dense looks.
Before Harry can move, I’m out of my chair and down the hall, in the direction of his office, Harry like a shadow.
‘Where are you going?’
As I open the door, it is clear that Harry’s office is a place waiting for a fire.
There are piles of yellowing newsprint on the floor, clipped-up papers, and leftover scraps, mixed in with briefs and research notes for cases Harry is working on. There are snippets of news stories, articles nailed to the walls with a million pushpins. These range from cartoons to banner headlines, all the stuff that fuels Harry’s engine of political paranoia.
I start pitching paper.
‘Wait a minute. What are you doing?’ Harry is incensed, as if somehow there is a chemical equilibrium to this, some order to the stew of litter that I am upsetting.
Halfway between an ancient issue of The New Republic and a molding jelly sandwich I find what I am looking for. Saffron with age and brittle, it carries a dateline from Lexington, Kentucky. I hand it to Harry and let him read.
He barely has time to finish the first graph when it hits him.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You don’t think …?’
‘One way to find out,’ I tell him. ‘Do you want to make the call or should I?’
Chapter 30
My opening statement to the jury is brief, and probably obscure. It is not the blistering assault on Jack that I have honed to a bristling point for the past month.
‘In a few moments,’ I tell them, ‘you are going to hear testimony and see evidence that for some of you may cause considerable dismay. For others,’ I say, ‘it will merely serve to confirm your darkest suspicions about the nature of man and his institutions of justice. This evidence,’ I tell them, ‘has come into my possession only within the last thirty-six hours, and in many ways it comes as more of a shock to me than it may to all of you.’
Thirty seconds after I call her name, Dana Colby walks through the courtroom door and up the center aisle. She is calm, almost serene, in a dark blue suit, the kind a prosecutor would wear to court, and heels that click on the marble floor.
She walks past me as if I am not here, not a look or whisper of recognition, her stone-cold gaze straight ahead up at the bench.
Laurel is at the table with Harry, asking him questions, why I am putting Dana up. We have not had time to bring her current, and until this evidence is in, I have no idea as to its impact on the jury or the judge.
There is a flurry of activity at Cassidy’s counsel table. Among other things, she and Lama are checking our witness list to ensure that Dana’s name appears. What was originally intended as chaff on our own list was seen by them as just that. They had forgotten that Dana’s name was there. Now they are surprised when she actually appears and takes the stand.
She is sworn and sits, her gaze fixed on the middle distance somewhere at the back of the courtroom. The only hint of any anxiety some mild thumping with two fingers of one hand on the arm of her chair.
She refuses to make eye contact with me, as I have refused to take her calls or see her for two days now, since having her served with the subpoena to appear here. I think she knows, or has possibly guessed what we have.
Dana tried to camp in my office this morning to catch me, a meeting I wished to avoid, so Harry and I stayed away, prepping for court at a coffee shop two blocks down the street until moments before we arrived here.
‘State your name for the record?’ says the clerk.
‘Danielle Elizabeth Colby.’
I had not known her first name was Danielle until this moment. Perhaps a measure of just how little I know about this woman.
I move dead center in front of the witness box where she can no longer ignore me, and standing here, we finally confront each other.
‘Ms. Colby, would you tell the court what you do for a living?’
‘I’m a Deputy United States Attorney.’ There is a deadpan to her voice, emotionless, as if something has been drained from the woman I thought I knew. There is more than a little pain in this exercise for me.
‘Chief Deputy in your office for the Eastern District of this state, is that not so?’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘In a word, you are a federal prosecutor, aren’t you?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
I am leading her shamelessly, but all of this is harmless and Cassidy is anxious to have me get to the point. I think perhaps Morgan has not picked up on the friction between us, and believes that we are working in tandem to do a number on her case.
‘Ms. Colby, who were George and Kathy Merlow?’
With the mention of their names she stiffens, like someone has shot a mild jolt of electricity through her chair.
‘They were neighbors of the victim in this case, Melanie Vega,’ she says. ‘They lived in the house directly next door.’
This is not what I am looking for. Dana is adroit. She manages to avoid the question, so I am left to use this to spin a little silk and crawl further out into the web.
‘And to your knowledge did they reside there, in that house next door, on the night that Melanie Vega was murdered?’