Kate was five seven, with a dark complexion, large brown eyes, and long, curly black hair that made her look faintly Middle Eastern. She usually dressed in jeans and man-tailored shirts that showed off her athletic figure. When Amanda returned from her meeting with Karl Burdett, she poked her head into Kate’s office. The investigator had her feet up on her desk and was immersed in a police report.
“How would you like to work on the case of the century?” Amanda asked casually.
Kate looked up, her expression blank. “I’ve gotta pass, Amanda.” She held up her police report. “I’ve pledged my life to helping a dipsomaniac insurance executive avoid conviction for his fourth DUI and I won’t rest until he’s back on the highway endangering the lives of all of Oregon’s citizens.”
“Gee, I hate to interfere with your mission, but I’m going to pull rank and insist you give my case priority.”
“Okay, if you insist. But you’ve got to square it with Ernie. This guy is repeat business and he refers a lot of his alcoholic buddies to the firm.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Kate put her feet on the floor and swiveled her chair in Amanda’s direction. “So, what’s this big case you want me to work on?”
Amanda told the investigator about her meeting at the airport with Martha Brice and the editor’s recent phone call. Kate knew about Charlie Marsh because of his book, but she only had vague memories of Sally Pope’s trial, so Amanda brought her up to speed on the old case.
“I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning to meet with Marsh,” Amanda said. “While I’m gone I’d like you to go through the file and start organizing it for trial. Burdett indicted Sally Pope on a conspiracy theory, so, to get a conviction, he had to prove that Marsh murdered Congressman Pope. That means he’ll be presenting many of the same witnesses he used in Pope’s trial. See if you can have a trial book ready by the time I get back.”
AS SOON AS Kate finished her work in the drunk-driving case, she carried a mug of coffee and her laptop into the conference room. She sighed when she saw the mass of materials piled high on the long table. Then she booted up her laptop and went to work.
Kate spent the first few hours typing a synopsis of the police, lab, and autopsy reports, witness statements, and trial testimony into her computer. Then she organized the digested materials into categories. When she was through, she went back to the reports and made a list of those that dealt with different time periods or subjects.
One category had to do with testimony concerning the murder weapon. The initial mention of the ivory-handled.357 Magnum was in a statement by Mickey Keys, who said he’d first seen the gun in Texas when Charlie was given the weapon as a gift. He told the police that Charlie played with the gun in his hotel room but never took it out, because he was on parole. The literary agent said that Delmar Epps, Charlie’s bodyguard, got a kick out of toting the weapon in public when he was guarding Charlie. Keys remembered seeing Epps with the gun in the limo on the way to the Westmont.
In Tony Rose’s report of his run-in with Charlie at the Dunthorpe seminar, Rose told the police that Epps had flashed the gun when the bodyguard was manhandling him. He remembered it because of the fancy grip.
When Kate put Rose’s report on top of a stack of items that were pertinent to the Dunthorpe seminar, a photograph caught her attention. She pulled it out of the center of the pile and studied it. The photo showed Charlie and his entourage as they were about to enter the mansion in Dunthorpe. Kate was glad she’d found it, because it put a face to the people about whom she’d been reading.
Charlie sported a great tan and looked like a poor man’s John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever in his white jacket, white slacks, and black silk shirt. Gold chains graced his neck and a gold Rolex encircled his wrist. His smile was warm and he appeared to be relaxed and in control. Standing to Charlie’s right was a grinning Mickey Keys. Keys wore a navy blue blazer, tan slacks, and an open-necked, emerald green sports shirt that went perfectly with his styled red hair.
Slightly behind Charlie was a massive black man with a shaved head, who Kate assumed was Delmar Epps. On Charlie’s left was a young woman who was looking up at Charlie with adoring eyes. Several things about her were odd. Her head was as devoid of hair as the guru’s bodyguard’s, and while everyone else in Charlie’s entourage was dressed in expensive, stylish togs, the girl was wearing a peasant dress and blouse. To Kate’s eye, the woman seemed out of place, like a gypsy who had wandered into a night club full of partying movie stars.
A thought occurred to Kate. Epps had testified that he’d left the.357 Magnum in the limo when he’d gotten out at the entrance to the Westmont on the night of the shooting, but no one had corroborated that assertion. What if Epps did have the gun when he left the limo but lied so no one would think he fired the fatal shot? If Epps was carrying the revolver when he left the limo, how could Marsh have gotten it?
Kate studied a photograph of the weapon. Then she went on the Internet and discovered that the Ruger weighed over two pounds. The gun also had a six-inch barrel, so it would be a bit unwieldy. Epps had been fighting with the security guards shortly before the fatal shot was fired. Kate remembered a witness testifying that Epps had knocked down a guard with a karate kick to the head. All that jumping around could have dislodged the gun if the heavy, cumbersome weapon was stuck in Epps’s waistband, and anyone in the crowd around the combatants could have picked it up.
Kate found a few photographs that showed both the area on the side of the turnaround where Epps had been fighting and the area between the turnaround and the pro shop where their client had been standing. There wasn’t that much space between the two positions. If the gun had dropped out and had been kicked back toward Marsh, he could have rushed forward and gotten it.
Kate tried to remember who had been with Marsh. Werner Rollins had testified that he’d joined Marsh and Gary Hass after he’d decked the guard with whom he’d been fighting. Epps said that he had moved back so he could protect Marsh. Rollins had testified that he saw Marsh fire the shot that killed Arnold Pope Jr.
If Epps and Rollins had lied to the police so they could cut deals, any of the other men standing with Marsh could have fired the shot.
CHAPTER 26
Amanda had returned to New York a few times since graduating from law school at NYU, and she had mixed feelings about the city. Manhattan was a wonderful place to visit. It had the best restaurants, great shopping, terrific museums, cutting-edge art, the theater, and a buzz in the air that let you know that big things were happening. But you didn’t go to the theater or eat at a four-star restaurant every night when you lived in the city. At heart, Amanda was an Oregon girl. After the initial excitement of a visit wore off, she would miss Portland with its easygoing pace, snow-capped mountains, and gentle, green hills. This, however, was her first day in New York in some time, and she found herself intrigued by the bustling crowds and longing for a real pastrami sandwich when the limo that had picked her up at the airport whisked her past the Carnegie Deli on the way to her meeting with her client.
World News was hiding Charlie Marsh in a corporate condo near Columbus Circle. The driver phoned ahead to alert Dennis Levy that Amanda was on her way. As she rode up in the elevator, Amanda wondered if the real Charlie Marsh would be anything like the Charlie Marsh of her imagination: a swashbuckling bandit who had dramatically cast away his penchant for violence so he could bring enlightenment to mankind. Many people who had been won over by his vivid transformation from evildoer to saint never believed he was guilty of the congressman’s murder. Amanda had been enthralled by his autobiography, but she’d learned enough about the failings of career criminals from her father to maintain a healthy skepticism about the guru’s claims.