Undue Influence (26 page)

His gun isn’t drawn, but he’s holding it inside his coat by the grip.

Dana and I have been told to stay at the foot of the steps.

“
FBI
. Open the door.”

No answer.

He pounds one more time and waits just a few seconds. He tries the doorknob. It’s locked. He motions to the other agents. They take the battering ram, a four-inch-diameter metal pipe loaded with concrete, and swing it between them. The forces of momentum send the door flying in an arc on its hinges, splintered wood and broken metal at the lock. Caught up in the rhythm of the chase, Dana and I move to the top of the steps.

Opolo looks at us. “Stay here.”

He and another of the agents are inside, guns drawn.

“
FBI
. Federal agents. If you’re in here, let’s hear it.” They’re moving through the rooms, flipping on lights. Through a window on the porch I can see them edging for angles with drawn pistols in doorways. A few seconds later one of the cops comes through from the back of the house.

“Nobody,” he says. A lot of frenetic movement as they hit the last few cubbyholes where anyone could hide. Opolo waves us in, holstering his pistol.

“If they were here, they’re gone,” he says. “And it looks like they left in a hurry.” My worst fear.

He leads us into the kitchen. One of the cops has turned off the burner on the stove. A pan of rice is burned to a crisp, long grains charred the dark color of some exotic African ant. One of the agents comes down the hall. “I don’t get it. If they left, why didn’t they take their clothes?” I look at him.

“Closet’s full,” he says. “Their bags are on a shelf, up in the closet, empty.”

“I may have the answer.” A voice from the other room, deeper in the house, down the hall. We move toward the sound. One of the cops is in the doorway to a small room at the end of the hall, the door half open. He steps aside and lets us through, Opolo first, followed by Dana and myself. I hear the guy whispering to the other cops outside. “No bodies,” he says, “but lots of blood.” The room is streaked with it, what forensics would call spatter evidence, on the walls and the ceiling. The bed has a dark pool at the low point where the mattress is worn in the middle. This has yet to congeal, though most of it has soaked into the mattress. At the foot of the bed is a single item of clothing, stained with blood. One of the arms is ripped, jagged tears in the upper back, like maybe it has been punctured by a knife or some other sharp implement. It is a coat of many colors. Besides the brown hue of drying blood there are specks of pastel and dried blue acrylic on the silk kimono, the duster worn for painting this afternoon by Kathy Merlow. It was only by my plea of ignorance to things domestic in the law that I was allowed to remain on the spectators’ side of the bar in Laurel’s brawl with Jack over custody. This morning I find myself in the unenviable position of being dragged to the other side and up onto the witness stand. The veins in my eyes look like threads of red dye that someone spilled into egg whites. I’ve been back three days from the islands, but with little time to sleep. Harry and I have been burning the oil trying to piece together a defense. It is a patch quilt of theories, what we know from my conversation with Marcie Reed, and what I can surmise from the facts as we know them. This without the critical information that might have been obtained from George or Kathy Merlow.

According to the
FBI
, their best guess is that the Merlows are now serving as fish food, somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific. I have been given little information other than this. For two days Dana has been grilling me on my meeting with Kathy Merlow.

Over coffee and at lunch she has been relentless, going over every aspect of my recollection of the brief conversation. The
FBI
has interviewed me, obtained descriptions, and had me look through endless mug shots on the off-chance of finding the courier who delivered the letter bomb. On all counts we have struck out. Dana was not so much angry when I told of my foray to the little cemetery near Hana, as probing for an opening, something to get her teeth into on the bombing, some lead. This crime now looms big in Capital City as details have been made known in the press. She demanded to know what Kathy Merlow had told me, and at first seemed skeptical when I told her that she never had time to tell me anything. On matters pertaining to her office, Dana is dogged. Yesterday she had a long telephone conversation with Jessie Opolo in Hawaii. She now seems more convinced than I that Jack is at the root of Melanie’s murder, and that the bombing and the fate of the Merlows are the tangled result of some witless crime, a daisy chain of inept violence, what some people do when confronted by panic. She seems so convinced of this that I wonder if Dana knows something that I do not. “Raise your right hand.”

“Do you solemnly swear… ?”

We do the routine and I take the stand.

Alex Hastings is on the bench, the judge of mangled marriages.

Jack’s lawyer, Daryl Westaby, is eyeing me with beady dark pupils. He is an out-of-towner from the Bay Area, a major hired gun, one of the legal thugs of family law who can transform the most rational parties to a divorce into a raging funeral pyre of domestic animosity. At this moment Jack is at the counsel table, whispering in his lawyer’s ear, pouring verbal venom like liquid nitrogen into Westaby, about to light the fuse and send him my way. Laurel is not here for these proceedings, but she is represented. Harry is at the counsel table. The only man in Capital City who knows less about family law than myself. Still, if Harry doesn’t know the law, he has a willing fist to pound on the table and the wits to drop sand in the gears at the appropriate time. I am subpoenaed here this morning because Danny and Julie Vega have disappeared, gone, kaput, vanished. They left with only a note to Jack telling him that they would not return until this mess over custody between their parents was finished. Between the lines Danny made it clear that he would not live with his father. I have no idea where they have gone. My only complicity in this is that somehow Danny’s Vespa, with its locked wooden box on the back, has been left in my garage. It is a sore point since Sarah asks me about Danny each time she sees this, and has been playing, sitting up on its seat at every opportunity.

Hastings is concerned. His initial order for temporary custody seemed the only rational recourse, given that Laurel is in jail. Today the judge seems shaken by the disappearance of the kids. Jack is frantic, not so much out of worry, as with knowledge that, somehow from her cell, Laurel has engineered this. Jack has spent a million dollars in legal and expert-witness fees to screw her, and Laurel has, with a quarter and a phone call, creamed him. If I had to venture a guess, which I am not required to do here under oath, it is that the kids are probably playing in the snow visions of Laurel’s friend in Michigan, the one she told me about when she called on the phone that day from Reno. I should have seen it coming Danny’s visit to his mother at the jail that day, the last time I saw him, coming as it did on the heels of my refusal to help her. I suspect that it was there that Danny got his marching orders from Mom. “State your name for the record, please?”

“Paul Madriani.”

We go through the basics. Westaby establishes my relationship to Laurel, family and legal, that I was married to her sister and represent Laurel in a murder case. He draws the details of this out, quotable items of presumed bias for the press, who Westaby has invited, a half dozen reporters, getting color and background for the murder trial. If nothing else, Jack knows this may poison the jury pool a little more. If he keeps it up we may be pushing for a change of venue, though I have my reasons for avoiding this. “You’re aware, are you not, that the legal custody of these children has been granted to their father, Jack Vega?”

“I wasn’t served with a copy of the order, but I’m aware of it.”

“You do not represent Laurel Vega in the child-custody proceedings, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever represented her in those proceedings?” Westaby’s skirting the question of attorney-client privilege.

“No.”

He smiles. Closing the net.

“Mr. Madriani, do you know where Danny and Julie Vega are?”

“I do not.”

“You have no idea?”

“I don’t know where they are.” I don’t give him a direct reply to his question. Instead I dodge it with another answer. Perjury is a crime constructed around specific words. The games lawyers play. Westaby thinking for a moment, should he follow through? L Harry waiting, primed with an objection that the question calls for speculation. Westaby thinks better of it.

“Have you discussed the matter with Laurel Vega?”

“What matter is that?”

“Where the children are?”

“No.”

And I don’t intend to. But I don’t say this.

“You’re not interested? This is your niece and nephew we’re talking about. You’re not concerned for their welfare?” Hemming me in. Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.

“Objection. Irrelevant. The issue is whether the witness knows where the children are. He’s answered that.” Harry and his sand machine. “I’ll allow the question.” Hastings is worried about the kids. A good judge.

“Certainly I’m concerned about them,” I say.

“But you won’t tell us where they are?”

“Objection. Argumentative. Assumes facts not in evidence. The witness has already stated that he doesn’t know where they are.”

“Sustained.”

“Have you ever had conversations with Laurel Vega concerning these custody proceedings and the children?”

“Ever is a long time.” Harry is getting into the spirit of things, figuring out that Family Law is, after all, a lot like crime. In the end it all comes down to kicking ass in a courtroom. “Maybe counsel could put his objections in a proper form,” says Westaby.

“Fine. The question is overly vague as to time.” Harry would rather put the point of his shoe up Westaby’s ass. “Why don’t you try at least limiting it to a specific century,” he says. Westaby and Harry are into it.

“Hold on.” Hastings from the bench. He repeats this two more times without effect and finally hammers his gavel on wood. Harry wants to know what Westaby was doing during Evidence in law school. “Obviously it was over your head,” he says. The parting shot. This draws furrowed eyebrows from the judge, like two furry mice kissing on his forehead.

Hastings is a gentlemen’s judge, not someone used to the likes of Harry in court. For the moment the two are quiet, looking up at the bench.

“Mr. Hinds, if you have an objection you will address it to the bench.

Do you understand?” Harry nods.

“I don’t want to see your head, I want to hear your voice,” says Hastings. “Yes, your honor.”

“And you, Mr. Westaby you will allow the court to rule on any objection.

That includes any questions as to form. Is that understood?”

“Absolutely, your honor.”

A lot of nodding from the lawyers. Harry does something that looks like a curtsy to the bench. Hinds has an attitude when it comes to judges.

Always on a thin edge. “Now, is there an objection?”

“Vague as to time,” says Harry.

“I’ve forgotten what the question was,” says Hastings. He has the court reporter read it back. “Sustained. Would you like to restate the question, counsel?”

Westaby regroups.

“During the last month,” he says, “have you discussed with Laurel Vega any matters, any matters at all, pertaining to this custody proceeding?”

“I’m going to object to that, your honor.” Harry’s up again.

“On what grounds?” Westaby’s into him before the judge can move.

“Mr. Westaby ” Hastings has his gavel halfway off the bench.

“On grounds that any conversations regarding these custody proceedings are now intimately connected with the criminal case involving Mrs. Vega.

As such we would contend that communications between Mr. Madriani and Mrs. Vega are protected by the attorney-client privilege.” There’s stirring in the press rows.

“That’s garbage,” says Westaby. “There’s no attorney-client relationship. How are they connected?”

“We don’t have to disclose that,” says Harry. “To compel an answer to the question would be to force the defense in a capital case to disclose vital information concerning its strategy.”

“And we’re just supposed to take your word for it?” says Westaby.

“I’d appreciate it,” says Harry.

“Well I’m not prepared ”

Hastings cuts him off. “You’re telling this court that issues regarding these proceedings, the custody of the Vega children, bear directly on Laurel Vega’s criminal defense?”

“I am, your honor.”

“I’d like to hear it from Mr. Madriani,” says Hastings. “That’s correct, your honor.”

Harry and I are talking about the theory that Jack cooked up the custody petition as part of a scheme, coupled with Melanie’s murder, when he found out she was having an affair with another man. And now he is using his children and the demise of his wife to dodge doing time on the federal corruption sting, a conviction that Hastings knows nothing about. I wonder what he would say if he knew that Jack could be headed for a federal penitentiary. No doubt the kids would be wards of the court. “I don’t believe this, your honor. A smokescreen,” says Westaby.

He’s in Jack’s ear at the counsel table. We clearly have Vega’s attention. He’s looking at me, eager eyes, wondering where we’re headed, what I know. “I used a chartered gamblers’ special,” she says, “and a bus to get them there.” This is Laurel’s explanation of what she was doing in Reno the night Melanie Vega was murdered. “I had to get them away.” She’s talking about the children, Danny and Julie. “They couldn’t deal with that house any longer, or with their father.” I think she is coloring it, in shades of her hatred for Jack.

“And don’t try looking for the kids. You’ll never find them.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it.”

This morning Laurel is a new woman, bright-eyed and intense when I visit her in the glass-walled cubicle of the county jail. Harry has carried out his threat made some weeks ago: the news article about the sale of the Justice Department computers and the compromised federal witnesses. He has given copies of this thing to one of his clients downstairs. It has made its way like some political tract onto the bulletin board of the dayroom on each floor of the jail, a kind of cryptic warning to those who would trust the state and might be tempted to snitch on their compatriots. As Harry says, “If necessity is the mother of invention, government is the father of fuckups.” There are no rings of fatigue under Laurel’s eyes. She talks of the impending trial as if it is something to savor, like whatever doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger. A lot of bravado now that her kids are beyond Jack’s reach. What a good vendetta will do for the spirit. This is the story that I am to sell to a jury as to Laurel’s whereabouts on the night of the murder the image of a woman trekking over the mountains to obtain plane tickets to spirit her children away from their father while the question of custody is pending before a court. That she sees nothing wrong in this illustrates the poverty of judgment that settles like ground fog in a bitter divorce. Morgan Cassidy would no doubt remind the jury that it is inspired by the same venom that leads to murder. “We weren’t going to win the custody case,” she says. “I had to do something. I won’t say where they are.” She is adamant on this. I don’t tell her, but I have no desire to know, particularly after my last curtain call from Jack and his lawyer. For the moment I am off the hook while Harry and Westaby brief points and authorities on the law of attorney-client privilege. “They are safe and well cared for.” Laurel giving me assurances about her kids. “I’ll tell the judge. He’ll be relieved.”