Herman’s helpers, the PI’s he hired in D.C., got the nugget. One of them was sent by Herman to check Ginnis’s house in Chevy Chase. He rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. He talked to a few of the neighbors. One of them, a woman, a neighbor next door, told him that Maggie and Art went where they always went when they needed a rest, down to the islands. She said she’d gotten a postcard from them and that Arthur was coming along well, recovering from his surgery, though they were not quite ready to return home yet.
The investigator thought about asking to see the postcard, but he figured the woman might feel that this was a little too intrusive. She might go back into her house and close the door. So he simply asked, “What island?”
Ask for the time and some people will tell you how to build a clock. She explained that their old house, the one the Ginnises owned on St. Croix, a really cute little place, stone and old timbers, right on the beach-she knew this because she and her husband had been there two years ago for a short visit-was damaged in a hurricane last year. Since their place was under repair, the neighbor told the investigator, Maggie and Art had rented a place, on the island of Curaçao.
Harry and I come to the corner where we part company. We stop for a moment to talk.
“Are you going back to the office?” I ask.
He nods grimly. Harry has yet to comb through all the items Tuchio dropped on us that first day of trial. The paralegals have prioritized them the best they can, and Harry is just now finally approaching the bottom of the pile.
It seems that lately Harry and I are doing an increasing amount of our conferencing out on the street, in the halls at the courthouse, on the run, or on the phone late at night. Harry is growing bags under his eyes. I’m afraid to look in a mirror.
The opening of our case in chief is still over the horizon. If I had to guess, I would say a week, maybe ten days off. The few witnesses we have lined up are no problem. They’re either experts who are being paid or cooperative local witnesses who’ve agreed to testify and are already under subpoena.
But even with this, what we have lined up, the evidence at hand, our case in total would have to be drawn out to last much beyond two days. You can only go so many rounds beating up Detrick before the judge rings the bell. By the time we get started, Tuchio will have gathered with his forensics wizards so that he can skate on ice around the inconsistencies in his own case. The absence of little bloody prints on the tray and tablecloth will be tucked neatly into some variation on the theme of his theory, how Carl did the deed. This, along with what we already know based on discovery-that the state’s most damaging evidence is yet to come-has me deeply concerned.
“If we’re to have any kind of a case,” I tell Harry, “we need a centerpiece.”
Harry knows what I’m talking about. Some lawyers call it “the golden idol.”
In every case you look for something to fix the attention of jurors. If they can’t actually see it or touch it, they must, at a minimum, be able to hear about it. It can be virtually anything-another possible perpetrator, a business dealing that offers the prospect of an alternative motive to the one your client had, the hint of a love tryst out on the margins along with the rumor that it went bad. It helps if you can believe in this, though it is not entirely essential. Depending on the candlepower and its mesmerizing qualities, this, the golden idol, is used to dazzle the jury, while the defense flies figure eights over the box, dusting them with the magic powder of reasonable doubt.
Harry and I stand on the corner and talk, toting heavy briefcases that hit us about the knees every few seconds like the gongs in cathedral bells. We dance all around it without actually saying the words: “the letter.”
Given what we know-the information from Bonguard and Trisha Scott, the e-mails from Scarborough to Ginnis requesting the “original,” and the rectangular shadow in leather, the item missing from the scene-you might think that the gods had reached down to give us precisely what we needed, an idol of platinum with a nuclear-powered laser light. But there is a problem.
Without hard evidence, someone who actually saw the Jefferson Letter or the copy in Scarborough’s possession and who can testify to its existence, or better yet its contents and potential value, we have nothing.
Everything-the conversations with Bonguard, the agent, and Trisha Scott, both of whom claim they never saw the letter, as well as the e-mail missives between Scarborough and Ginnis’s office-it’s all hearsay. In a word, all inadmissible. As far as the law is concerned, without a solid evidentiary foundation, the Jefferson Letter becomes the product of pure speculation. Bottom line, we cannot mention it in court, not in the presence of the jury.
“So what we do have,” says Harry, “is a pregnant question. We have a shadow in blood on a leather portfolio and a concession from one of Tuchio’s witnesses that something is missing from the crime scene. It’s a start,” says Harry. “At least we have their attention. You can bet that the jury is wondering what the item was.”
“Yes, but without more we can’t connect the dots for them, and if there’s anything worse than no play at all, it’s one that has no second act. If the jury goes in to deliberate and we haven’t told them what that item was that’s now missing, they’re going to wonder why. Of course, we know the answer: because the court wouldn’t allow us to tell them. But they don’t know that.”
“So other than sign language, how do we give them the answer?” says Harry.
“As far as we know, there are only four possible sources for information to lay a foundation for the letter.”
“Ginnis, Bonguard, Scott…and who’s the fourth?” says Harry.
“Scarborough’s editor. I can’t remember his name.”
“James Aubrey.” Harry’s magnetic brain. “Herman talked to Aubrey and got the same business you did from Bonguard and Scott. He heard about the letter, but he never saw it. Strange how everybody went blind whenever the letter came out,” says Harry.
“It’s human nature,” I tell him. “If one of the goals in life is to stay free of entanglements with the law, it is often best to be blind,” I tell him.
“So you think they’re lying?”
“I can tell you that Trisha Scott didn’t want to testify.”
“And she lied about Jefferson’s letter,” says Harry. “Remember? First she told you she knew nothing about it. Then she recanted over dinner later and told you another lie.”
Harry’s right. According to Scott, Ginnis couldn’t be involved, because he hated Scarborough. Not enough to kill him, mind you, but on a professional level. The only problem is that all this ill will did not run deep enough to prevent the two men from exchanging e-mails, even if Ginnis refrained from pushing the “send” key on the computer with his own finger.
“Maybe it’s not a question of who lied as much as who told the biggest lie. The whopper,” I tell him.
Harry puts his briefcase down on the sidewalk and looks at me, a question mark.
“Bonguard.”
You would have to be Snow White to buy into the fable that the agent had tried to run past Sarah and me in New York.
“Claimed he knew nothing about the particulars of a letter that according to his own words on Leno’s show would have been the basis of another zillion-dollar book, if only the golden author hadn’t been killed.”
“I’ve been thinking about him since we saw the tape.” Harry smiles.
“On top of that, Bonguard was superglued to his client on a book tour that rivaled Sherman’s March to the Sea. This included the burning of Atlanta in miniature, according to the newspapers,” I tell him, “with torched cars, broken windows, and flaming trash cans through…what? Six states and thirteen cities? The fact that he knew about the letter, enough to attribute its origins to Jefferson, and given what he told Leno, has to make you wonder-if he didn’t know what was in it, he must have been burning with curiosity.”