"Go get 'em, Tiger," he said. "And watch out for yourself."
Maybe grand jurors are a prosecutor's conspirators after all.
I had wasted no time getting the paperwork for the indictment to Alice
Gernstein. I thought I'd have to sneak it through while O'Donnell was
in court, but I got lucky. His legal assistant mentioned that
O'Donnell had left early to head down to his fishing cabin. The
superstar of office paralegals,
Alice had Derrick's warrant in the system by the following morning.
As it turned out, the rush hadn't done me a damn bit of good, because
three days later, Derringer still hadn't been picked up.
The plan was to find Derrick without tipping him off to the warrant.
Once he was in custody, I'd arraign him, confess my sins to Duncan, and
let the chips fall where they may. The arrest might force my boss and
the bureau to come up with a theory that explained all the evidence,
not just the evidence they liked.
I didn't say it was a great plan, just a plan.
The plan was looking even lamer now that I couldn't get even the first
step off the ground. I'd called in my markers with four different pals
in the Southeast district, but they hadn't seen Derringer at his house
or work all weekend.
At one point, I picked up the phone to call Chuck, but I quickly
replaced the handset. Since the showdown at my house, I must have done
this at least a dozen times.
Grace was always good at strengthening my resolve, so I asked her to
meet for lunch at a bistro that was halfway between the salon and the
courthouse. Once we'd placed our orders, I filled her in on my plan.
She wasn't pleased. "You realize, don't you, that you may very well
get fired over this."
It didn't sound like a question, but I answered anyway. "I sort of
figured that if Duncan tried to fire me, I'd use the grand jury
transcripts as leverage."
"And how, exactly, will the transcripts give you any leverage?" she
asked.
"The press looks at the JC-2 calendar every day to see who gets
arrested. When Derrick finally gets arrested, the media will start
asking questions, so Duncan will at least have to keep investigating
the Derringers and find out how they're involved with the Long Hauler.
If he tries to bury it and get rid of me, I could hint that I might
release the information presented to the grand jury."
We were momentarily distracted by the arrival of our food. Or, to be
more accurate, by the arrival of our extremely attractive waiter.
Apparently having sex on a semiregular basis over the last month had
altered my cognitive priorities.
"I thought grand jury proceedings were secret," Grace said, as we both
admired our waiter's extremely attractive departure.
"They are. Doesn't mean Duncan won't worry about the threat.
Prosecutors have been known to leak grand jury information when it
helps them. Look at Ken Starr," I said.
"So your big plan is a bluff?"
"I'm not sure about that, Grace," I said. "I think I'd actually do it
at this point. I mean, they convicted Landry and Taylor based mostly
on the fact that Landry knew things no one but the killer could know.
Now those same defendants are being released, and Frank got his case
dismissed, because the Long Hauler knows things no one else could know.
But it turns out that Frank had information too. How could he have
known Jamie Zimmerman's purse was stolen unless he was involved
somehow? And the Derringers' involvement in teen prostitution is just
too coincidental. I think Duncan will have to pursue it once I force
the issue with Derrick's arrest. If he tries to ignore it, I don't
have a problem with making sure that the press doesn't let him."
"And what does Chuck think about your plan?" she asked.
"He doesn't. I haven't told him."
She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me.
"Look, I realize that I might've had more pull with Griffith if I
hadn't been fooling around with Chuck." I paused. "To be honest,
Grace, I don't know what to think. I mean, I seriously doubt that
Chuck coerced a confession out of Margaret Landry, but what if he did?
That cocky independence of his could translate into some questionable
police tactics."
"Or he could be a perfectly honest cop, Sam. I thought it was that
cocky independence that appealed to you in the first place.
"No, I know. I just want to make sure that my judgment's clear on this
one."
"That's so unlike you, Sam. You're always so quick to say you're a
good judge of character. That every egg's good or bad, and you can
tell right off the bat."
"That is what I always say," I confirmed. "But what did Roger turn out
to be?"
"Well, blow me over. You're beginning to sound like someone who's
willing to accept some gray areas in her life."
I half smiled.
"And how's Lucky Chucky taking it?" she asked.
"He's not I mean, I haven't exactly explained it to him. In fact,
we're not actually speaking at the moment, I don't think. Which is a
bit inconvenient, because I want him to go pick up Derrick
Derringer."
There went that eyebrow again.
"And I miss him," I added.
Fifteen.
Before I left for the day, I checked in with my Southeast Precinct pals
to see if they'd had any luck, but there was still no sign of Derrick
Derringer. It's hard to arrest someone when you've asked the few
uniformed patrol officers working on it not to do anything that might
tip the suspect off, like knock on his door or ask for him at work.
I thought again about calling Chuck on my way home, but I held myself
back. I'd thought the evidence through backwards and forwards, but it
kept coming back to him. Either he'd coerced a confession out of
Margaret Landry, or somehow she'd managed to squeak through the
polygraph while someone else wrote letters to the Oregonian in an
attempt to exonerate her someone who had access to details about
unsolved crimes.
But something was bothering me about the letters too. It seemed
peculiar that the Long Hauler had confessed to every strangling case in
the Northwest Regional Cold Case Database that didn't involve DNA
evidence. Why did all the killings happen to occur in the handful of
states that cooperated in the database? And what were the odds that
every strangling without DNA in those states had been committed by the
Long Hauler? The perfect correlation struck me as odd. But every time
I felt like I was close to putting my finger on the missing piece, I'd
come back to the obvious: maybe Chuck just wasn't the person I thought
he was.
So I hadn't called him. I decided that if Derrick didn't get picked up