Prime Witness by Steve Martini

Author:Steve Martini
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Detective, Mystery, Legal, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
Published: 1994-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

Lately I have been drawing subtle pressure from the county grandees to make a package deal of this prosecution, to charge all six of the murders to the Russian. It would be an easy thing to do. It would clean the plate, make a lot of friends for me in this county, among the city and university hierarchy.

But there is a problem. I harbor deep suspicions that Chambers is playing this hand with still one more trump card, something he is holding in reserve, until trial. I got a glimpse of it that day, outside the Russian’s apartment as the police searched inside. It was in the newspapers on the floor, outside in the hallway. Two of these were dated before the Scofield murders, a hint that the Russian was already gone.

It is something you develop in the practice of trial law, a sixth sense. Too often it comes as a prelude in the shadow of disaster, like a fly being swatted on glass.

We have not been able to establish on what date the Russian crossed over into Canada. But I suspect that Chambers can. If I am correct, he is waiting in the weeds, to spring this on me. If I charge his client with these last two murders, he will present a gold-plated alibi, ringing down the curtain of doubt on all of the charges. It is why it is so important that I make a plausible wedge that I can drive between the murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield and the student killings.

There’s a knock on my office door, knuckles rapping on glass. It opens. It’s Jane Rhodes, my secretary.

“Someone here to see you,” she says. She’s holding a business card in her hand, looking down, reading.

“A Mr. Golumbine,” she says. She steps in and drops the card on my desk.

DENNIS GOLUMBINE

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL

GOVERNMENT LAW SECTION

“Show him in,” I say. I have been waiting for this visit.

A second later, a guy whose age I would not guess, gaunt like some cadaver, thinning dark hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, is ushered into my office. He forces a smile, a thousand more creases in a face like a withered prune.

“Mr. Madriani,” he says. He extends a hand. We shake.

I look at his card. “Mr. Golumbine.”

“Bean,” he says. Pursed lips for precision. “It’s pronounced Golum—bean.”

“Have a seat,” I say. I gesture toward one of the client chairs on the other side of the desk. I can guess why he’s here. The seriousness of purpose is plastered on this countenance like a fresco on a Renaissance wall.

“What can I do for you?”

“We have a complaint,” he says. “Regarding your office, and I’ve been assigned to look into it.”

I give him a face, like is this so?

“Yes,” he says. He reaches down into a briefcase, a bell-shaped affair down by his feet, and comes up with a yellow notepad. “A complaint regarding the current prosecution of,” he looks at his notes, “Andre Iganovich I think is the defendant’s name.”

It has taken a

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