At this moment, behind his desk, Strout’s normally unflappable Southern style was being put to the test. Drysdale had decided he wanted to be sure he had Strout’s support in calling the homicide of Sal Russo a murder, and he’d enlisted Glitsky to come down as moral support.
‘Now, Art, that’s just simply not going to happen. I am not about to change an opinion without different evidence, and to be honest with you, I’m just a bit offended that you thought I might.’
But Drysdale had his game face on. Dean Powell – the attorney general – had told him what he wanted in the best of all worlds, and if it were gettable, Drysdale was going to get it. Strout’s feelings would heal. ‘You’ve already called it a homicide, John-’
Strout was holding a hand up. ‘Well, that’s just plum inaccurate, Art. I did not say it was a homicide. I called it a suicide equivocal/homicide, which is not the same thing. It means I can’t say for sure that Russo didn’t kill himself.’
‘Mr Powell thinks that’s splitting hairs.’
Strout removed his wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘Well, Mr Powell can hire himself another pathologist and get himself another opinion, but he’s already got mine, and it’s stayin’ the way it is.‘
Glitsky thought he would try to calm the waters. ‘You know Art doesn’t mean to insult you, John. He’s asking if there’s anywhere this can bend, that’s all. Okay, it could have been suicide – we accept that-’
‘Well, thank you all to hell, Lieutenant.’
Glitsky ignored him. ‘But isn’t there anything that militates against it? Makes it a little more likely somebody killed him?’
‘The bump, for example.’ Drysdale had studied the autopsy report carefully. He had years of experience, and to him it read like a murder. Someone had whacked Sal to knock him out, then administered the fatal dose of morphine. It was open and shut.
Unfortunately, other scenarios were possible. Maybe not as probable, but medically feasible. It made him short tempered.
Strout kept his glasses off, but sat back in his chair, elbows on its arms. ‘The bump was caused, as I mentioned, by a blow to the head, which is not inconsistent with the deceased banging it on the table as he fell down.’
Drysdale didn’t buy that at all. ‘That would have meant he fell backwards, John. How could he fall backwards unless somebody pushed him? There was no hair on the table. He didn’t hit the table. He got hit by the whiskey bottle.’
Strout made a gesture at Glitsky, who reluctantly spoke up. ‘The bump didn’t even bleed, Art. It’s not inconsistent that it didn’t take any hair-’
Betrayed by his ally, Drysdale bit out the words. ‘Not inconsistent, not inconsistent! You fellas got a tape loop going down here?’
Strout impatiently explained some more. ‘There was sufficient edema – which, as both of you know, is swelling – to allow for the flow of blood for a half hour or more.’ He turned his palms up. ‘He was alive, Art. The blow to the head didn’t kill him. I can’t even say for sure it knocked him out. If it did, it wasn’t for more than a few seconds.’
‘Long enough to give him the shot.’
Strout shrugged. ‘I can’t say. Maybe.’
Drysdale’s face had gone red, and he sat back in his chair, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled at his tie. In his own office he let off tension by juggling baseballs, but there wasn’t anything to juggle here except hand grenades, and he wasn’t going to go grabbing at them. For all he knew, they were live.
There was a short silence, broken by the screech of rubber and colliding metal on the freeway outside Strout’s window. All the men got up to gawk. The coroner raised the blinds. They couldn’t see the freeway through the fog, and it was less than fifty yards away.
They all stayed standing by the window. Nothing had been said, but the anger, somehow, had dissipated.
‘Y’all just plain aren’t gonna prove it couldn’t have been suicide,’ Strout began. ‘I’ve heard you say it a hundred times, Abe. You can’t prove a negative. It might be y’all want to concentrate on why it could have been a homicide.’
‘I’m listening,’ Drysdale said.
Strout ticked off reasons on his fingers. ‘One, he’d never used the site before, the inside of his wrist. Two, his blood alcohol was point one oh – pretty drunk – hittin’ the vein on the first try was dang good shootin‘. Three, the needle wasn’t in him. It was sitting on the table there. Isn’t that right, Abe?’
Glitsky nodded in agreement and Drysdale asked what the last fact meant.
‘It means Sal Russo shot himself up and remained conscious long enough to withdraw the needle. Except you got eight or more milligrams of morphine goin’ IV, on top of a point one oh alcohol, most people, time they got the plunger all the way down, they’re at least in shock. The needle might fall out when consciousness went, but it don’t get itself put neatly back on the table. The cap doesn’t get itself put back on the syringe, that’s for damn sure.‘
Drysdale chewed on it for a moment. ‘If I’m on a jury, those three taken together, that’s beyond reasonable doubt.’
‘I don’t know,’ Strout replied, true to form. ‘It might be, but it don’t have to be, which is what I said all along.’
11
The photographer had left to develop his film. Fearing they’d be interrupted if they stayed on Edgewood, Graham and Michael Cerrone had spent the afternoon and evening at Modena, an upscale Italian deli on Clement Street, sharing two bottles of ten-year-old Gold Label Ruffino Chianti. Now they were no longer strangers. In seven hours Cerrone felt he’d captured the soul of his subject on tape.
Cerrone had come out to California with high expectations – a cover, after all, was not a daily occurrence, even for a senior editor. But the interview had exceeded his hopes by far, both in scope and in human drama.
The story had everything: Russo’s background as a bonus athlete cut down in his prime by injury, a brilliant law student, a clerkship with a federal judge. Then chucking it all to give his dream one last try, only to fail again; and only, in turn, to have that noble effort ostracize him from the legal community. And now there was the fallout from the murder charge that had been summarily dropped: even his part-time employer wouldn’t keep Graham on.
But Cerrone thought the personal side was even more compelling. Although it was nowhere on the public record, he learned that privately Gil Soma wanted Graham’s head on a platter. The state prosecutor had been Graham’s office mate at the federal courthouse. Graham had told him that in Soma’s eyes he was far worse than a mere murderer – he was a traitor, to be hunted and brought down.
On the other side was the picture of a talented and sensitive hero, reconciling, after years, with his father, who then became terminally ill. Graham had confided to Cerrone that over the past two difficult years, his father had been the only person who’d accepted him, who loved him. The only person keeping Graham from being utterly alone.
Of course he’d taken care of him. Though he didn’t admit to knowing the source of the morphine, he had often given him his shots.
Cerrone fell short of getting the coup, the confession, but what he had was almost better – it played into his ‘hook’ perfectly. The issue of the week was going to be assisted suicide – the agony of the decisions confronting everyone stepping through this emotional minefield. Cerrone would write his story so that the conclusion was obvious.
Graham had done the right thing. His father wanted to end his life, but he needed support, someone to hold his hand; at the last moment he was afraid of being alone. He would choose his own time, but Graham, his dutiful, perhaps prodigal, son, would help him if need be.