"The same kind?"

"Probably lighter weight. They wouldn't be that strong."

"Fine. So there's a lot of reasons people might keep cable ties on hand that have nothing to do with murder?"

"I suppose."

"And also the tools to tighten them?"

"Yeah."

"I mean, isn't it possible that a homeowner might keep ties like this, and a tensioning tool like that one in front of you, at home to tie up old newspapers, or bundle up trash, or to gather branches after pruning a tree?"

"I suppose."

"I mean, are we all to a.s.sume that everybody who purchases cable ties intends to use them to strangle somebody?"

There is actually some giggling in the jury box with this question.

De Angelo doesn't respond.

"Maybe we should license them like firearms," I say.

"Objection." Tannery's on his feet.

"Sustained. Mr. Madriani."

"Sorry, Your Honor."

"Then it's entirely possible that Dr. Crone had the tensioning tool in his house and the ties in his pocket for just such a legitimate purpose? To tie up newspapers, or bundle trash?"

"If you say so."

"I'm asking you."

"I suppose."

"That's all."

"Redirect," says the judge.

Tannery is on his feet before I can get out of the way. I seem to have provoked some ire. If he has a weakness, it is a fuse that is a little short for the courtroom.

"Lieutenant, can you tell the jury when you found the cable ties in the pocket of the sport coat belonging to the defendant? The precise date?" he says.

"It was April fifteenth." This is on the tip of de Angelo's tongue.

"That was two days after the victim's body was found on the beach. Is that correct?"

"That's right."

"And the tensioning tool that you found in the defendant's garage. Was it in plain view?"

"No."

"I mean, was it hanging on a hook over the workbench with the other tools?"

"No. It wasn't."

"Did it appear to you that this tool was being concealed, hidden from view?"

"Objection."

"Overruled," says Coats.

"It did. It looked like somebody had pushed the tool to the back of the shelf under the workbench, and placed this piece of carpet over the top of it so you couldn't see it."

This begs the question why someone who has used a tool and cable ties to commit a cold, calculated murder would keep such evidence in his garage and in the pocket of his favorite sport coat in the closet. But these are questions better posed to the jury in our closing than to de Angelo on the stand, who no doubt would lecture me on the stupid things that perpetrators do, even perps who are highly educated.

chapter.

seven.

william Epperson is the mystery man in our case. Tonight Harry and I are pondering our notes on this particular enigma. Everything we know about the man is spread out on a dimly lit table in the lounge of the Brigantine. This has become our after-hours conference room, a short walk from the office, down the jungle path.

It is after ten, and the dinner crowd has long since departed. Harry is nursing a scotch and soda. I am doing soda straight up, avoiding a buzz in the morning when I have to be in court. The era of the hard-drinking trial lawyer is in decline. An older generation, with blown kidneys and liver failure, have imparted their message. The final nail was pounded into that particular coffin by the state bar that now appoints guardians to take over the practice of anybody who comes to court gla.s.sy-eyed, with an odor of alcohol on his breath. So I walk the straight and narrow for my own sake as well as for Sarah's. You think about things when you're a single parent.

"So when do you think they'll put him up?" says Harry. He's talking about Epperson on the stand.

"Not yet. It's too early."

We know almost nothing about him, so we have some ground to make up.

"According to the bits and pieces," says Harry, "he's the closest thing Kalista Jordan had to a friend in the lab. Stood by her during her travails with Crone, at least according to the others. And, besides the killer, he was one of the last people to see her alive."

This gets my attention. I look at him.

"The argument that night in the faculty dining room, Jordan and Crone," he says.

"Did Epperson weigh in?"

"Not exactly, though according to one version he put himself between the two of them for a moment and tried to get her to leave. One thing's for sure," says Harry. "He's the closest thing to a witness as to what was said."

"And he won't talk to us?"

Harry shakes his head. Usual criminal process does not permit us to depose him, to take a statement under penalty of perjury outside of the courtroom.

"What do we know about him?"

"Not a lot. He doesn't seem to cultivate people at work. Except for Jordan, that is."

"Was that platonic?" I ask him.

Harry gives me a "Who knows?" "They coulda been hitting the sheets. But if so, neither of 'em kissed and talked. I couldn't get any of the other people at the lab to even speculate. When I asked, it was like I was spreading bad rumors.

"n.o.body seems to know him that well. An enigma," says Harry. "According to the lab techs, he was a big question mark at work. Didn't say much. Kept to himself." Harry's reading from notes now.

"Did Crone hire him?"

"That's not exactly clear," says Harry. "Some in the lab think that it may have been Jordan herself who brought him in."

What is troubling here is that there are no statements to the cops as to what Epperson may have told them. At least nothing they've disclosed. Which means they debriefed him verbally and kept it to themselves. There is no doubt a reason for this.

Harry has tried twice to talk to Epperson and twice has gotten the door slammed in his face.

Harry looks through his notes, takes a sip of scotch. "Twenty-eight years old. He appears to have yanked real hard on his bootstraps to get out of Detroit. Went to inner-city schools, never got in any trouble. Seems to have been able to jump well," says Harry.

I look at him, puzzled.

"Full scholarship to Stanford to play basketball," says Harry. "According to the press reports, the kid was a high-school prodigy. Lew Alcindor on his way to becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."

"Really?"

"At seven foot six, it's either that or get a job changing bulbs on streetlamps. Unfortunately for him, the basketball thing didn't work out."

"Why not?"

Harry reading from his notes. "They call it cardiac arrhythmia. Real common, I guess, in the very tall. According to the stories, they're doing some studies on it, particularly African-Americans over six feet. Enlarged hearts," he says. "Epperson has a b.u.m ticker. He couldn't fulfill the terms of the scholarship, so they cut him loose. But that wasn't the end of it. Seems the kid's pretty resilient and very bright. He didn't get the athletic thing, but they ended up awarding him an academic scholarship, and it wasn't for P.E. or communications," says Harry.

"What?"

"Math and science. Crushes every myth," says Harry. "Kid goes to an inner-city school where he's gotta dodge gunfights in the halls and find an outhouse cuz the urinals are all cracked, and he still gets straight A's. He does it again at Stanford. Straight A's for four years in the engineering department. Graduates near the top of his cla.s.s, and nearly gets trampled in the recruiting stampede that follows. Every company on the Fortune Five Hundred and a dozen universities all bidding for his services. One thing's real clear." Harry takes a sip of scotch. "The kid's not going back to Detroit."

He flips a few pages, finds his place. "After that, Epperson spends a year working for this corporation. Place called . . . Cyber-genom, genam, genomics." He looks at me.

I shrug.

"According to what I could find out, they're not on the Internet. At least Cybergenomics Incorporated, is not. Gotta be some high-tech thing with a name like that. Anyway, a year later Epperson ends up going to work for Crone at the lab. That's it as far as his resume goes."

"Is there any indication that he might have known Jordan before he went to work there?"

"Get to that in a minute," says Harry. "What's interesting is that I asked Crone that very question. He told me he didn't think so. What's more, neither Epperson nor Jordan has a background in medicine, life sciences or genetics, and yet they're working at this genetics lab. She's into this thing called molecular electronics. His specialty is nanorobotics."

"What's that?"

"Field of engineering," says Harry. "Involves small robots. We're talking microscopic here. Riverdancers doing their fling on the head of a pin."

"What are these robots used for?"

"Got me. I'm told one application could be medicine."

"Well, there you go. There's the link," I say.

"Right."

"And what does Crone say?"

"What he always says. Fell back on the old 'My lips are sealed' c.r.a.p. Like the highest calling of the scientist is to keep his mouth shut. They ought to put this a.s.shole in charge of Los Alamos. He gets my vote. With a client like Crone, who needs a prosecutor? He'll screw himself to the wall before he's finished, and us, too. He's already doing a good job of it." Harry on a roll.

"What are the other people at the lab saying?"

"The same sorry mantra. Almost makes you think somebody got to them," he says.

"Does, doesn't it?"

"The only thing they would say was in reference to some old sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage. Ever see it?"

I shake my head. "Must have missed that one."

"They shoot this miniature submarine up some guy's nose or something. Inject it through a needle. Inside are people all shrunk down," says Harry.

"I knew I missed it for a reason."

"Anyway the plotline . . ." Harry ignores me. "They're going on a voyage through this guy's body to cure some disease or other. If I could remember what he was dying of, I could replace Siskel and Ebert."

"Siskel's dead," I tell him.

"Yeah, well, this tiny sub. It seems we're there."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this nanorobotics s.h.i.t."

"Shrinking people?"

"No. I don't think so. Just the submarine," says Harry.