Yakov noticed that in his stillness, Tomas was no longer struggling for breath. He didn’t have to wait for the doctor to check his pulse or put the stethoscope to Tomas’s ulcerated chest to know he was dead. He stood and slowly covered Tomas’s face with the bedsheet.
Tomas may not have understood entirely what he was doing, but Nitikin knew that his quick reactions and nimble fingers had averted a nuclear disaster that could have lit up the jungle and killed them all.
“Excuse me, but Mr. Hinds is on the phone with a client. If you’ll wait a moment-”
“Officer, if she gets in the way again, arrest her.”
Harry was on the phone, but he recognized the voice outside his office door. A second later it opened.
“Listen, I’m going to have to get back to you,” said Harry.
Before Harry could hang up the phone, Templeton was standing on the other side of his desk, backed up by a hefty sheriff’s deputy, muscle in a uniform, and one of the homicide detectives in Katia’s case. The detective had his arm in the air, holding a sheaf of folded papers as if it was a cocked pistol and the Dwarf was about to level the muzzle on Harry.
“We’re going to have to continue this later. I’ll call you. Yeah, yeah…call you this afternoon.” Harry hung up the phone.
The detective slapped the papers on the desk in front of him. “Consider yourself served.”
“What’s this about?”
“Search warrant,” said Templeton. “Bring some of those boxes in here!” he hollered to whoever was outside the door. Harry’s secretary, standing in the doorway, nearly got run over by the hand truck being pushed by one of the deputies, followed by another cop. The dolly was loaded with flattened cardboard boxes. They began unfolding and assembling the boxes on the floor, using packing tape and a tape gun to bind the bottoms.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is about?” By now Harry was standing behind the desk fumbling with the papers.
“Read the warrant,” said Templeton. “Sergeant, anything with the name Solaz on it, box it and seal it for review. If you have questions about anything, ask me. You!” He pointed to one of the other deputies. “Get some of those boxes and follow me.” Templeton headed out of the office.
Harry, who was still trying to read the documents, followed him out of the office and joined the parade headed down the hall. There were three more deputies outside in the reception area already boxing up files from the filing cabinets.
“Wait, wait wait. What are they doing?” said Harry. “They can’t reach in and take the files out of the cabinets.”
“You want us to roll the cabinets out and put them on the truck, that’s fine by me,” said Templeton, still walking.
“I’m going to have to ask you to have your staff leave the office until we’re done collecting everything. Then they can come back,” said Templeton.
“Why don’t you stop for a second so we can talk about this?” said Harry.
“Time for talk is over.” Templeton breezed through the open door of Paul’s office, reached up on the wall, and flipped the light switch. “You can start with the desk,” he told one of the cops. “No. No. On second thought I think I’d rather have Detective Howser do that. Gil, get every drawer. Clean it out. You guys can work on the file cabinets, here and the ones outside by the secretaries. And don’t forget the bookshelves. Those binders all contain documents. Box ’em up,” said Templeton. “Take ’em all.”
By now, Harry had devoured the few pages accompanying the search warrant. It had been signed by another judge, not Quinn.
“Wait a minute.” Harry saw one of the cops starting to grab binders off the shelves. “Those files have nothing to do with the Solaz case. The warrant is limited to Solaz.”
“In that event you’ll get ’em back,” said Templeton. “Procedure’s been set up for a review by a non-taint team and it’s been approved by the judge.”
“What the hell’s a non-taint team?” said Harry.
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve never had my office ransacked before.”
“Get those up there. The high ones.” Templeton had ignored him and had instead started directing one of the taller deputies, pointing to the top shelf, up near the ceiling, as if he was having the man sweep for cobwebs.
“A non-taint team involves another prosecutor from my office and a detective from homicide, not Detective Howser here, somebody else. They will make up the non-taint team. Neither of them is involved in any way in the Solaz case. They’ll look at everything we take and decide whether it’s within the scope of the warrant. If it’s not, you’ll get it back. I can’t say exactly when you’ll get it back.” Templeton quickly looked at Harry over his shoulder and winked at him.
“Those files contain privileged information, lawyer-client,” said Harry. “And the clients have nothing to do with Solaz.”
“The other prosecutor will decide if any privilege attaches to any of it, lawyer-client or otherwise. If it does, you’ll get that back too.”
“When, after your office copies it all?” said Harry.
“We represent law enforcement,” said Templeton. “I’m shocked.”
“Yeah, well you’re going to be spreading your shocked little body pretty thin when I drag you in front of half the judges downtown, demanding continuances and dismissals because you’re sitting on our files and peeking at our work product in their cases. And while you’re at it, you might wanna call the attorney general and tell him to expect an appeal on any case out of our office ending in a conviction in the next four or five years. If he’s lucky, there’ll simply be a blanket order of reversal on all of them. Save him time,” said Harry.
“Guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it. Officer, get…yeah, that’s it, grab that one up there.” Templeton continued to ignore him.
“So that’s your procedure? That’s it?” said Harry.
“You don’t like it, you can always go to court,” said Templeton.
“You bet I will.”
“But I’d have to warn you, the judge seemed very satisfied with the process.”
“I’m sure he was. After all, he used to work for the DA’s office,” said Harry. “Back then he could only dream about such things.”
“I didn’t know that.” Templeton smiled. “Anyway, the team will look at it and decide what is evidence and what is not.”
“Evidence of what?” There was a tone of hesitance as Harry said it.
“That’s right, I forgot. You don’t know. I’m sorry.” For the first time since entering the room, Templeton turned to look at him. “You might want to get on the phone and check with your partner to see if he wants to get outside counsel or whether maybe he wants you to represent him. I wouldn’t want to give you any advice on that. But if he wants you to represent him, we can save time and serve you with the other papers right now.”
Harry was almost afraid to ask. “What other papers?”
“Let’s see, there are warrants for arrest on two counts of first-degree murder, aiding and abetting, breaking and entering, grand larceny, and conspiracy to commit all of the above. Let me think. I don’t want to forget anything. We’re still weighing the issue of witness tampering, seeing as he was sitting on top of his codefendant and telling her what to say and what not to say.”
“He is her lawyer,” said Harry.
“Was,” said Templeton. “And I’m sure he wasn’t going to let that get in his way. And, of course, there is the bus thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Word on the street is, it was your client who was the target. They’re still counting bodies, but if it turns out that your partner was involved, you might want to tell him the stuff on the bus isn’t going to be covered by lawyer-client privilege. He can try to argue attorney work product, but I doubt if the judge will buy it.”