“I hate to ask, Charlie, but I can’t walk, my feet are burning up. Will you get me a quick fix?”
“Sure. How’d the affidavit go?”
“Three hours with a sixty-nine-year-old woman dying of cancer, she’s wandering in and out of morphine city the whole time, while I’m trying to get a sane statement out of her. Think about the possibilities.”
“Will the affidavit hold up?”
“She’ll be dead before we ever get to court. It’ll be okay as a posthumous admission.”
“I mean, you know, slipping in and out of this narcotic-induced coma …”
“Don’t put it that way, that’s inflammatory. She was napping and I had to wait until she woke up to talk to her. Don’t be telling people the woman was in a dope-induced stupor.”
“I was thinking devil’s advocate.”
“Yeah, sure. You were bugging me, Charlie. Anyway, her doctor was witnessing most of the time, he’ll testify she was lucid—when I needed her to be lucid. It’s all corroborative, no big thing. But it was a bitch.”
Charlie made her a cup of hot beef bouillon and brought it back to her. “When you finish that, the old man wants to see you.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, Janie, he doesn’t confide in me. He comes down and says to me, ‘Tell Venable to come in to my office the minute she gets back, okay?’ and I say, ‘Yeah, sure.’ That was the total conversation. I figure after being out in that weather you need a bouillon fix before you face the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
“Thanks, Charlie, what would I do without you?”
“You’re gonna find out soon enough,” he said, and left the room.
She slouched over her desk, rubbing one foot with the other, and unwound as she drank the warm soup. Then she smoked a cigarette. And finally she sighed, “Shit,” and taking her shoes in hand, she limped down the hall toward Jack’s office.
The blinds were pulled down over the windows in the glass-enclosed office, which usually meant Yancey was hard at work perfecting his putt. She knocked and walked in. Surprise. Pillsbury Doughboy was sitting behind his desk, stripped to his shirtsleeves, reading a slender file. He kept reading as he waved her in. Yancey was an unctuous, smooth-talking con man with wavy white hair and a perpetual smile. He had been a dark horse candidate for D.A. eight years before, supported halfheartedly by the Democrats, who didn’t think he could win. But Yancey, who turned out to be the ultimate bureaucrat, had capitalized on his soapy charm and a natural talent for speaking, and overcame a prosaic legal background to win. Once in office he had become the perfect man for the job, pliable as putty in the hands of the kingmakers and shakers of the state.
Jane Venable had no respect for Yancey as an administrator but liked him personally. What wasn’t to like? His popularity had grown through the years even though he was not a litigator and never had been. He had no stomach for the rigors of courtroom battle, and years of plea-bargaining had left him a talker rather than a fighter. Instead, Yancey had surrounded himself with a small cadre of tough prosecutors who made him look good. And since Venable was the best of the bunch, she had pretty much called the shots for the six years she had been assistant D.A. It had been an acceptable compromise until recently. As long as he had Venable, Silverman and Torres to keep him afloat, Yancey was in the driver’s seat. But Torres had left earlier that year and Vail had destroyed Silverman. A month ago, Venable also had decided to escape the crumbling empire, seduced by the promise of a comer office on the twenty-eighth floor, a six-figure salary and a senior partnership in one of the city’s platinum law firms.
Most of the rest of Yancey’s bunch didn’t know a writ from a birthday card, so he was in trouble and looking at another election eighteen months hence. But if he was worried about his future, he didn’t act like it. He was his usual smiling self. He waved to a chair and Venable sat down across from him, crossed one leg over the other and massaged an aching foot with her hands.
“Listen, so you’ll know,” she said, “I just spent the morning in a hospice talking to a dying woman, it’s about twenty degrees outside, the city’s turned into an ice skating rink, and my feet are killing me. I’m not in a real good mood so whatever’s on your mind better be good news.”
“Oh … well, maybe we can wait until later when you—”
“No, no, Jack. Don’t give me that. You started, you can’t stop now.”
“I really didn’t start yet.”
“Of course you did, when you invited me down here for this intimate little chat, so just spit it out. What’s on your mind?”
“A little favor.”
Venable eyed Yancey suspiciously. After six years, she knew him too well.
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think what?”
“I don’t think I’m granting any favors today.”
“I haven’t said anything yet!”
“I know, but I don’t really have to hear any more to know the answer is no. You know why? Because I don’t trust you, Jack. You’d lie to yourself if it was expedient. So whatever you’re going to ask, if it requires this little sit-down, the answer is definitely no. N-fucking-O. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. I’m out of here in twenty-eight days and I have a lot of cleaning up to do.”
“It’s the case of a lifetime.”
“Case? Case! I don’t have time for any case. In twenty-nine days I will be in my own comer office on the twenty-eighth floor, making a vast sum of money as a partner in—”
“I’ve already talked to Warren.”
“Warren? You talked to Warren Langton? About what?”
“Just listen to me. I’ll farm off all your other cases. Forget them. I want you to concentrate on just one thing until you leave.”
“Which is?”
“The Rushman case.”
“The Rushman case? What Rushman case?”
“You haven’t read the morning papers?”
“I saw about two minutes on TV. Rushman murdered, suspect in tow.”
“It’s yours. It’s your only problem. Get it done and you leave with my blessing.”
“Archbishop Rushman. You’re giving me the Rushman … damn it, I have a job to go to in less than a month! That thing could go on forever. For Christ sake, the poor man just got done in last night. He hasn’t even been buried and you’ve got me in court already.”
“This case is going to trial as fast as the judge can get it on the calendar. Everybody wants it over and done with.”
She jumped angrily to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she bellowed. “I can’t do it. You can’t do it to me. I’m on notice. You’ve got me for twenty-eight more days, period. Then I am out of here, Jack.”
“Look, Blanding, Langton, et cetera, et cetera, will eat this up. You go in a hero. Lots of publicity for the firm… national publicity.… This is a headline maker, Janie. Hell, I thought you’d be delighted.”
“I don’t have time!”
“Sure you do, Janie—”
“And lay off that Janie soft talk.”
“Warren and I are in perfect agreement. This case is too important for you to pass up. You don’t start with them until it’s done.”
“God damn you! Did it occur to anyone to talk to me about this? It’s my career you’re screwing around with.”
“You’re mine until the jury brings in the guilty verdict, my dear. May as well get used to it.”
“You did this to get even with me for leaving.”
“Look, it’s open and shut—we just can’t afford to take any chances. We cannot screw this one up in any way, shape or form.” He paused for a minute, then added, “And I did it, as you tenderly put it, because you’re the best prosecutor I’ve got … and I wanna be damn sure we gift wrap this little son of a bitch up and strap him in the hot spot, understand? Hell, you ought to be flattered I picked you for the job.”
“Flattered hell, you don’t have anybody else. Thanks forever, Jack.
All I know about Archbishop Rushman is the two minutes I saw on Channel Four this morning.”
“We’ve got the suspect cold. But you know how the public can be. They want blood. An eye for an eye, so to speak.” He chuckled at the cruel joke, although Venable was not yet aware that the archbishop’s eyes had been plucked out during the attack.
“Ah hell,” said Venable, “he’ll probably plead guilty anyway.”
“Won’t happen. The public wants this guy charbroiled. We won’t buy a plea. He burns no matter what.”
“If his lawyer decides to plead him there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Sure there is. Our stand is, he goes to the chair, period. If his lawyer pleads him guilty, we still want the max. Unless his counsel’s a devout idiot, he’ll go to the wall with us. He’s got nothing to lose.”
“Does he have a lawyer yet?”
“I don’t know. Shoat’s appointing one.”
“Is Shoat hearing the case?”
“Probably. There’s going to be a lot of ink in this so he’ll probably run with it. Look, everybody wants it to be over as soon as possible. The hearing’s tomorrow, I’d say we go to trial in sixty days. So you lose what? A month before you move? Here, read this.”
He slid the afternoon paper across the desk to her and she reluctantly sat down and read the story.
A nineteen-year-old ex-resident of Savior House and one of Archbishop Rushman’s favorite “rehabs” was arrested early today and charged with the mutilation murder of the Catholic prelate, police reports said.
Police named Aaron Stampler, of a Region Street address, as the “Butcherboy,” which police have nicknamed the brutal killer. Police said he will be charged with premeditated murder.
An unnamed source in the police department reported that Archbishop Rushman, known as the Saint of Lakeview Drive, was “sliced up like a piece of meat” with his own carving knife in the bedroom of the rectory at St. Catherine’s Cathedral. According to Lt. Abel Stenner, the murder occurred about 10 P.M. Monday. Stenner declined further comment.
“In 20 years on the force I never seen anything like it,” the source told a Times reporter. “It was horrifying and disgusting …”
The rest of the story was mostly a bio of the victim. She threw the paper back across the desk.
“Is it really as cut-and-dried as it sounds? I mean, if it’s that easy there’s no glory in it. Jack, I could be construed as a bully before it’s over.”
“There’s plenty of juice there, darlin’. Besides, this crazy kid claims he’s innocent.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you had him cold.”
“We do, but he still says he didn’t do it.”
“What’s happened so far?”
“Stenner and his team have been on it since last night. Ask him, he’s on his way up. Then make up your mind.”
Venable had always found Stenner a very uncomfortable man to be around. He was a great cop, but working with him was like working with a robot.
“He gives me the chills,” she said. “I mean, he’s a nice man and all but… he gives me the chills.”
“He’s the best damn cop in the city.”
“I don’t care. I like people with a little blood in their veins.”
“Here he comes now.”
The stem-faced Stenner tapped on the door, then strode into the room carrying a cheap imitation-leather briefcase. He nodded to Yancey and Venable and, adjusting his wire-rim glasses, got straight to business. He put the case on the corner of Yancey’s desk and snapped it open.
“I have copies of the initial report and a follow-up—more detailed—which I did,” he started off, taking each folder out as he spoke about it. “First draft of the forensic findings, which is fairly basic; we really need to wait for the final on that, which should be Friday, maybe Monday … a sketch of the scene and the grounds around it … a mug shot of the alleged, Aaron Stampler, white, male, nineteen. Stampler was close to the victim and lived at Savior House until just before Christmas, when he got a one-bedroom with kitchen and bath at 2175 Region Street. A sixteen-year-old named Linda Shrieber also left Savior House at the same time and moved in with him. Apparently she moved out on him about two weeks ago. We haven’t turned her up yet, but I don’t believe she’s on the run, we just haven’t connected.… I have preliminary interviews with several of the residents at the House who know Stampler—nothing significant there, so far.… Also fingerprint samples from the scene and a match with the accused and footprint matches. I also have two and a half hours of taped recordings of our interviews with him.”
Finally he took a brown manila envelope out of the case. “These are the pictures. Be prepared, they’re not very pretty. Oh yes, the autopsy is due in about an hour.”
“You’ve been very busy in the last”—Venable looked at her watch—“fourteen hours,” she said.
“I was told this is P.O.,” Stenner said.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think the boy did it. He’s very scared, making up things, but… one of us will break him down. Only a matter of time. We’ve got more physical evidence than we usually gather in a month. The weapon, prints, footprints, the bishop’s ring—”
“The bishop’s ring?”
“He was wearing the bishop’s ring.”
“You think robbery was the motive?”
Stenner pondered that for several seconds. “No.”
“Oh?”
“Not the way he did it. I don’t like to speculate …”
“Oh, go ahead just this once. Speculate.”
“I’d say it was some kind of … religious motive. Maybe this boy, Stampler, is mixed up in Satanism or some kind of cult. It has that feel to it. You’ll understand when you look at the shots. Incidentally, we haven’t released any of this information so far. I’m holding on to the reports so they don’t leak out.”
“Good idea,” Venable said, and turned to Yancey. “So what’s the problem here, Jack? Sounds like even you could win this one.”
“Cute.” Yancey chuckled. “I want a star. I want fireworks. I want you to go in and overwhelm the jury with facts. Treat it like the Priority One it is, not like an open-and-shut case. When this kid burns I want his mother—if he has one—to be out there cheering the executioner.”
“Well, I congratulate you on what you’ve done so far,” Venable said to Stenner. “But then we’ve come to expect that of you, Abel. The price you pay for being the best. Everybody expects the impossible.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to keep giving it to you.”
“Modest, too,” she said, sweetly, after he left the room.
The phone rang and Yancey snatched it up. “Yeah, this is Jack … you’re kidding! Well I’ll be damned, maybe there is justice in the world after all… Oh yeah, I think Jane’s going to handle the case for the city.”
She shook her head frantically and stood up.
“Thanks for calling,” Yancey said, and hung up.
“You’re so damned sure of yourself,” she snapped. “I’m not sure I want to be a part of this Circus Maximus.”
“You’re not worried, are you?” he said, playing against her vanity. He got up, got his putter and tapped some balls out on the carpet.
“Come on, Jack, that’s beneath even you. From the way it sounds, we could sleep through this one and win.”
He practiced a few long putts, sending the balls into a waste-basket which, for that purpose, lay on its side in the corner.
“Might be a little tougher than that,” he said.
“Why the sudden change of heart?”
“Because I just found out who’s representing the Stampler kid.”
“Really? Surprise me.”
“I probably will.” He looked up from his putter. “Martin Vail.”
She was stunned by the news. “Martin Vail?” she echoed.
“That was the good judge who just ca
lled.”
“And Vail took the case?”
“I don’t think he had a lot of choice. He could hardly plead poverty after the Pinero settlement.”
“So he got stuck with it,” she said.
“That would be my appraisal.”
She had only faced Vail twice in court. The first time the jury had emerged after two days of sequester and announced it was hopelessly deadlocked. The case went into mistrial. Two years later it died of attrition; a natural demise, one that could be blamed on the system, and so it ended in a draw, nobody got hurt.
The second trial was a disaster.
For three months, the county’s elite Narcotics Enforcement Unit had been running a track on a Colombian named Raul Castillo, one of the city’s main suppliers of cocaine. A dozen cops had taken part in the investigation. They had wire taps, film, photographs, paper trails, UC buys and witnesses who had turned on Castillo to protect their own hides.
Their star witness was Miko Rodriquez, a boyhood friend of Castillo turned undercover cop. He had infiltrated the gang, providing the strings that tied one piece of evidence to the next, helped to close the loopholes and enabled Venable to develop a powerful case against Castillo. She made only one mistake—she fell in love with Miko. Like most lovers, she trusted him, confided in him and, nestled in his arms in the sanctity of the bed they shared, she revealed to him the most damaging threads of her case. Finally the trap was sprung. Castillo was brought to heel.
All of her other assets faded into the woodwork when Venable hit the courtroom. This was her element, the perfect showcase for her brains, beauty and elan, a chance to put everything to work at once. She was a tiger shark, possibly the best litigator the D.A.’s office ever had. Quick, immaculately prepared, deadly, always the predator waiting for her opponent to make a slip before slamming in for the kill. Venable was the ultimate jugular artist. There was no margin for error when doing battle with her.
She was just like Vail—no prisoners.
Vail became her opponent and eventually her worst nightmare.
The trial had lasted six weeks. In the beginning it had been a toe-to-toe brawl. A few rounds went to her, a few rounds to Vail. Then it began to unravel. Vail destroyed the credibility of her witnesses, branded the cops as corrupt liars and perjurers. Wire taps were thrown out of court, one drug buy after another was quashed because of entrapment, witnesses failed to appear, Vail discredited photographs as immaterial and inconsequential, and slowly turned her carefully constructed case into a jumble of non sequiturs. In the end only Miko Rodriguez remained to sew together the tattered rags of her case.