“No. Of course-”
“Moo-oo-oo!” He laughed again, looking out the window.
Now did not seem the right time to share her fears. Besides, Klaus seemed spookily aware all of a sudden, as alert as ever. She said, “What exactly are you trying to advise me with regard to this case?”
“You cannot treat this case as an intellectual exercise. It is not. This tragic story holds great mystery and hidden truths we will discover, because our client didn’t kill the woman. Somebody else did. We will expose that person, Miss Reilly. That person and the motives behind this crime will leap from the shadows at us, and we will grab for them.”
She checked the street and pulled the car into traffic, enjoying the smooth hum of the engine and incredible receptivity of the steering. Klaus knew how to live, and had shown over and over he knew how to practice law. Nevertheless, she checked again for wayward cars once she got into the flow. She liked to know what was out there. She preferred her shadows mapped.
As she let Klaus out on the curb, he said, “You and I are privileged to be called to practice this great art.” And she thought, Forty more years? I’ll never make it.
Inside the courtroom, the bailiff called everyone to order just as Nina slipped into her chair. The jury members appeared to have enjoyed their midday repast in the back room. Stefan had spent the break fulminating about Erin. What did Nina think the jury thought so far? What would the newspapers say? How might Erin respond when she read the reports? As a witness, she couldn’t be in the courtroom during the trial, and she was continuing to refuse to see him. “I made the biggest mistake of my life, that night, didn’t I? I fucked up!”
Nina worked on him, trying to turn his thoughts to what was happening in the courtroom right now. “Don’t finger your tie,” she reminded him. “Keep your hands on the table, relaxed. Face the court. Look strong, but not conceited. Look at the jury.”
He tried. His tie drooped.
“Call Detective Kelsey Banta,” Jaime said. Detective Banta, who had been sitting right next to him, strode quickly, making short work of her journey to the witness box.
A well-respected cop, Kelsey Banta had worked herself up from her initial position as a receptionist into a job as one of only two homicide detectives. It had taken her almost twenty years. Five years before, her brother, a police officer in Campbell, California, had been killed while trying to prevent a bank robbery. Paul had told Nina that Banta had reacted badly, winding up in an alcohol rehab facility eighteen months ago. Since then, her record had stayed clean, though-no DUI’s or alcohol-related legal problems.
Busty and long-legged, she had black eyebrows, pink cheeks, deep-set blue eyes, and long bleached blonde hair pulled into a work-time ponytail in back. She wore black pants and a blazer with a lacy beige blouse beneath, one button more than appropriate slyly undone. She didn’t seem to have altered her usual style at all for her day in court. Maybe she had been in so many trials she had adopted this low-key uniform for them.
As Banta answered Jaime’s introductory questions in a cigarette voice, Nina wondered how well Paul knew her. He had been on the Monterey police force himself, working homicide detail, several years before.
Funny, when she was practicing law at Tahoe, she had never thought about the web of friends and acquaintances Paul would have down here on the Monterey Peninsula. He had been married twice when he was younger, and had always liked women. Right now, she could feel his presence behind her, comfortable in the familiar setting, lounging on an aisle seat so that he could leave when necessary.
Had he and Banta exchanged glances as she came into court? Nina hadn’t noticed.
Just as Klaus, who seemed to be snoozing at her left, had predicted, Jaime took the events of Banta’s long shift the night of April 12 through 13 in chronological order, starting with taking custody of Stefan Wyatt from Officer Millman at the station.
Trying to take the hint from Klaus’s instructions, Nina took no notes. Like most of the jurors, she just watched and listened. Immediately she realized that Kelsey Banta was a straight-shooter. Banta did not infer anything, but offered precise, probing analyses of the facts. She was a good witness with an excellent memory, who only occasionally refreshed her recollection from her report. Talking about booking Stefan on suspicion after a phone conversation with Jaime, whom she woke up at home, she described how the attorney from Klaus’s firm, Alan Turk, had come in for a brief conference with Stefan. He later left, with instructions to Stefan to exercise his right to remain silent.
Not very enlightening yet, but Nina did wonder what sort of legal problem had led Stefan’s brother, Gabe, to the firm and Alan. She wrote on her pad, “Talk to Alan Turk,” then sat back, folding her arms to listen some more. Banta was answering questions about the search of Stefan’s clothing on booking.
“Now, this medal you found on Stefan Wyatt…”
“I didn’t know what it was at the time,” Banta said.
Stefan folded his arms, whispering to Nina, “As if I did!”
“But the amount of dirt suggested it probably came out of the grave,” Banta continued. “I scraped off a sample for forensics. I could see the remains of a striped orange and black ribbon and a round metal thing about the size of a silver dollar. There was some engraving on it, but the inscription was in Cyrillic.”
“Cyrillic?”
“The Russian alphabet.”
“You can read it?”
“I studied Russian in high school. All the renegades from French did.” So she had a sense of humor and intelligence in addition to a knockout body, Nina thought. Ouch.
“What did the inscription say?”
“I only took two years, so I’m no expert, but I could tell from the words along with the image on the medal that it said something about Saint George. He’s slaying the dragon on the image there.”
“Go on.”
“I put the medal in a plastic bag and listed it. It went into the evidence locker with the clothes.”
“Did you then go out to El Encinal Cemetery?”
“Yes. We arrived at seven A.M., when it was getting light. Officer Graydon, the backhoe operator, and the groundskeeper from the cemetery were waiting outside the tape line Officer Graydon had set up. I pulled on my gloves and went in and looked down in the hole. The floodlights were bright. I clearly saw an arm sticking out of a trash bag.”
“What did you do then?” Jaime had a rhythm going with her; he must have taken her testimony dozens of times.
“I got on the ground on a tarp, reached in with scissors, and opened the bags. There were three layers of trash bag. I cut a slit maybe three feet long. There was a woman’s body in there.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We didn’t move her. She was cold. She had been dead for a while. I took photos and put a call in to the pathologist, Susan Misumi, and our forensics technician. While Dr. Misumi was en route we checked out the area. Officer Graydon pointed out some apparent footprints. We took casts.
“When Dr. Misumi arrived, she spent some time with the victim. She examined the remains in place, taking photos, then she had us remove the body for transport to the morgue at Natividad. By then the sun was well up and we turned off the lights.
“I had called Alex Zhukovsky again regarding opening up his father’s coffin. He gave his permission. The backhoe hit the top of the coffin at about eight A.M. and, with the assistance of Officer Martinez, I opened it.”
“And what, if anything, did you find?”