The manager of the Wells Fargo branch – a cooperative woman named Peggy Reygosa – was inclined to comply promptly with Hardy’s court order. She wasn’t about to let go of the originals, however, but arranged with the bank’s custodian to make copies for Hardy. Yes, of course she’d tell him to be extremely careful not to erase the originals until he’d checked over the copies.
In her corner cubicle Ms Reygosa assured Hardy that the front entrance to the bank, where the video camera was mounted, was the only way into and out of the building, even for employees. She called in her custodian and asked him to get to work copying the tapes right away. ‘But if you wanted to see when Mr Russo last accessed his box, you should also check the sign-in form. Nobody gets inside their box without signing in.’
‘Even if they have their own key?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It takes two keys – yours and ours – and your signature. The inspectors who were in on Tuesday, they’ve already made a copy of the sign-in sheet. Would you like to see it?’
Bleary eyed, feeling stupid and finessed – he really was out of practice – Hardy told the manager that it would be nice. She got up and returned a couple of minutes later.
It wasn’t much of a formal document, just an oversized page with the bank’s logo on the top, vertical lines intersecting the signature and date lines below, so that each signatory had an individual box. A bank officer had a stamp, which was initialed in the first box, then there was the date, then the signature, and finally the time.
Ms Reygosa came around to peruse the sheet over Hardy’s shoulder. On the line above Graham’s every box had been filled in. Hardy couldn’t make out the name – Ben something – but he’d accessed his box on 5/8, which was Thursday, at 4:40 P.M. A bank officer with the initials A.L. – ‘That’s Alison Li’ – had signed Ben in.
On Graham’s line, Li had initialed her stamp again, but beside that there was only a signature, no time or date. ‘How did this happen?’ Hardy asked. ‘What does this mean?’
It was evidently the first time that Ms Reygosa had studied the document. She straightened up, surprising Hardy by laying a hand on his shoulder, and told him she’d be right back.
While she was gone, he went back to the list. Below Graham, order had once again been restored. On 5/10 – Saturday, he realized – at nine-fifteen, a Pam Barr had signed in. In all there were eight lines below Graham’s through Tuesday night. But there were no names at all for Friday.
He put his hands to his eyes and rubbed them, wondering why nothing was easy. When he looked up again, Ms Reygosa was back with a diminutive, terrified young Asian woman. ‘Alison’ – the peppy friendliness had disappeared – ‘this is Mr Hardy, and I’d like you to explain to him how Mr Russo signed in for his safe deposit box without either a time or a date.’
Hardy smiled, trying to put her at ease, but it didn’t seem to work. She stared at the sheet for what seemed an eternity. ‘I remember this. I reminded him about the date and time.’
Hardy kept his voice neutral. ‘But you didn’t see him write them in?’
‘Obviously, no. As you can see, he didn’t.’ She threw a glance at Ms Reygosa, stammered to Hardy, ‘We stamp, you know, after we check the signature, then go into the room with the customer, with our key.’
‘And the customer writes the date and time?’
‘Sometimes. Sometimes I do it.’
‘But neither of you did on this occasion?’
She indicated the sheet. ‘As you see,’ she repeated. ‘Mr Russo, he was in a hurry. He signed and I remember I even said not to forget to put the time, and he smiled like he does, said he’d get it on the way out. He’d remember. But he didn’t, and I must have gotten busy, so I guess neither did I. It seemed like he was anxious to get inside, like he was nervous. He had a briefcase with him.’
I’d be nervous, too, Hardy thought, if I were carrying around fifty thousand dollars in cash. But Hardy had no desire to keep cross-examining the woman. He didn’t want to antagonize her, since if Graham did go to trial, which he considered all but certain, he would be questioning her then. ‘Do you remember what day this was, Ms Li, Thursday or Friday? You said it was near the end of the day. Do you remember the time?’
She was biting her lip, thinking hard. Finally, it seemed to come to her. ‘It was the afternoon. Thursday or Friday, though, I can’t be sure.’
Hardy pointed down at the sign-in document again. ‘Do you remember if it was right after this man, Ben somebody, came in? You signed him in, too, at twenty minutes to five.’
She pondered for another long moment. In his desperation Hardy gave her a hint. ‘No one else signed in on Friday. Mr Russo would have been the only one that day. Does that seem right?’
The poor woman was on the verge of tears. Another glance at her boss, Ms Reygosa, didn’t help. Alison was trying to give Hardy the information he wanted, give him the right answer, but she didn’t know exactly what it was.
Hardy pressed further. ‘You said you thought it was the afternoon, Alison. Did it feel like it was after three o’clock? Mr Russo went to work at three on Friday.’
Suddenly her face cleared, and she let out the deep breath she’d been all but holding for five minutes. ‘Oh, yes, then, it must have been Thursday afternoon. Thursday, I’m sure of it. Near the end of the day.’ She pointed down at the sheet. ‘Maybe we should write it in now that we know?’
Since the inspectors had already copied the original of this document, Hardy – gently – allowed as how that might not be an inspired idea. They should just leave it as it was.
Hardy’s errand at the bank had, he thought, been supremely worth it.
As it turned out, the Haight Street branch did erase their tapes on a ten-day cycle. Hardy got his copies and spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching television in his living room, the front door of the bank as people came and went. After getting his bearings he got so he could fast-forward until someone appeared in the doorway, stop the tape, determine it wasn’t Graham, and move on. In this way he got through viewing three days of the most boring video he’d ever watched in a little over five hours.
Perhaps it wasn’t conclusive, but at least once he’d seen his copies, he had a good argument that Graham Russo hadn’t entered this bank from the time of his father’s death on Friday until he was arrested on Wednesday morning. If a jury believed this, then it would indicate that Graham did not kill his father to get the money. He already had the money and the baseball cards before his father was dead.
During the same viewing period, Hardy’d had no trouble identifying Evans and Lanier when they’d come in to check the safe deposit box.
Glitsky, Assistant AG Art Drysdale, and San Francisco coroner John Strout sat around the latter’s desk in his office behind the morgue. All around them Strout’s collection of murder weapons under glass, from medieval torture devices to guns and knives, lent a humorous, macabre air to their surroundings, but the three men weren’t joking now. Between them they had assembled the foundations for hundreds of murder cases, and yet their respective roles were not necessarily complementary.
Glitsky and Drysdale – the cop and the prosecutor – viewed themselves as true allies. They found and interpreted evidence with the mutual goal of proving that a particular person had committed a crime. They did different work, but it was toward the same end.
Strout, on the other hand, jealously guarded his independence and his objectivity. He was a scientist. If his discoveries helped Glitsky and Drysdale – and they often did – then so be it. But he had no ax to grind. He did not consider himself a lawman, an officer of the court, anything like that. His job was to rule on cause of death. Speculation did not enter into it, nor did politics. If he didn’t know, he said he didn’t know, and vice versa.