"I don't know what I believe anymore. Gotta admit it's pretty far fetched, this woman coming to him to do his impression of Cyrano. How many jewelers do you think there are in San Diego?" he asks.

"I'd start in La Jolla, out near the center, work my way this way. Try the places around where Epperson lives."

Harry nods, a sour look on his face. This is a thankless task. He now has a full plate, following the audit trail for Crone's research and delving into Epperson's love life.

"We have an approximate date for the purchase of the ring. Besides, maybe there were other people at the center who saw it. He may have shown it around. Young man in love," I tell him.

"Yeah. Just my line of work." I can tell what Harry is thinking: Crone sending him out chasing geese.

We step back inside. Crone has calmed down enough to sit, waiting for us at the acrylic part.i.tion.

"If we wanted to talk to Epperson," I say, "how would we go about it?"

Crone thinks about this for a moment. "Aaron, I suppose. I could have Dr. Tash call him."

"It would have to be voluntary. Epperson's conversation with us. No inducements," I tell him. "If he doesn't want to talk, he has to be told that he is free to decline."

"Understood."

There is no doubt that if we talk to Epperson, Tannery will find out, and will explore the conversation with Epperson on the stand. Anything that looks like duress would cut against us.

"Do you want me to call him? Aaron, I mean."

I nod.

Crone picks up the jailhouse phone and waits for the operator to answer. "Bill's the only one who can set this straight. I don't understand why he won't talk to you."

"He's been told by prosecutors to stay clear," says Harry.

"Can they do that?"

"They can tell him he doesn't have to talk to us if he doesn't want to. If they wink and nod in all the right places, most witnesses get the message. Don't complicate your life if you don't have to. The rest is up to him," says Harry.

"Then maybe he just doesn't want to get involved."

"He is now," I tell him.

"Well, absolutely. And he's going to have to tell the truth."

"Yeah, that's what we need. Some truth telling," says Harry.

Crone takes this as the shot it is intended to be, but doesn't respond.

"I need to have a call placed." The operator is on the line. "No, it's a local area code. Yes, it's at the request of my lawyer. He's here. You want to talk to him?"

The jail operator must have said no because Crone doesn't ask me to pick up the receiver on my side.

At this moment he is all energy and enthusiasm, finally something he can do in his own defense. He gives the operator the telephone number from memory, Tash's office number at the center.

"Don't say anything else, just tell him to contact Epperson and have Epperson call my office," I tell him.

Crone nods, winks from beyond the gla.s.s, circled finger and thumb like he understands.

We can hear half of the conversation, Crone breathing into the phone from the mike set in the thick acrylic that separates us.

"Aaron, David here. We have a problem." Just like that. Crone says it as if he's never left the office, like it's something they can handle in a midmorning staff meeting. "Can you get ahold of Bill Epperson for me, and have him call somebody?"

"No. No. It's nothing having to do with the project. It's the case. There's some mix-up," he says. "Nothing serious."

I'm beginning to grimace on the other side of the gla.s.s.

"Seems a witness is saying some things . . ."

I tap on the part.i.tion with my pen, shaking my head as Crone looks at me. He nods like he understands, then looks away.

"Some garbage about our work," he says.

Now I'm tapping with my knuckles, waving him off with my hand. Finger slicing across my throat like a knife as if to cut him off. He turns sideways in the chair so that I can no longer make eye contact.

"Nothing to worry about," he says. "Bill can straighten it all out."

I'm hitting the acrylic hard enough to break a regular window.

Crone gives me another bull's-eye, this time blind, not looking at me, with finger and thumb.

"It's that same old c.r.a.p," he says, "from back in the seventies. Yeah."

Tash is commiserating on the other end of the line.

"Yes. The whole thing raising its head again. You get tired of people misconstruing your work," he says. "Especially now. They're saying I'm doing things when I'm not."

"What's that?"

"Yeah, it has to do with the same charges."

I can only imagine what Tash is saying on the other end, hoping and praying that the operator is not recording it on Tannery's orders.

"Let me check." Crone cups his hand over the mouthpiece, and turns to look at me. He can see the fire in my eyes, but he ignores this.

"Aaron would like to know if he can come by."

"What? Now?"

"Tomorrow morning. He's got some numbers he wants me to look at. Maybe about nine one of you could be here?"

Harry and I look at him dazed, being from another planet.

"He is helping us get to Bill," he says.

Harry sits in stunned silence, neither of us able to come up with the words before Crone is turned sideways again, and back to Tash on the phone.

"Good. Yeah, that's fine. Nine o'clock," he says. "No, it's not something I can get into, at least not on the phone." Like he's going to discuss what happened in court behind closed doors with Tash. I decide I'd better be here.

Crone turns to wink at me, a look from furrowed eyebrows, a sly smile as if to say he understands the delicate situation here, the risks of tampering with a witness.

"Tell him it's purely voluntary, but that I'd appreciate it if he'd contact my lawyers, in the interest of fairness." He gives Tash my phone number to pa.s.s along. Then he hangs up.

He turns. Big smile. "You guys don't mind, do you?"

chapter.

fourteen.

you get the feeling we're being used?" asks Harry.

Several months behind bars and on matters of common sense David Crone still lives in a criminally artless other world. It causes me to wonder what confidences he may be sharing with his cellmate at night. The gangs may have his attention, but nothing else seems to make a dent.

By nine the next morning I was back at the jail, this time to watch Crone and Tash flash pages with numbers back and forth. The only reason I did this was to ensure that they didn't discuss matters relating to Kalista Jordan or Tanya's testimony, for which Tash has no privilege. This mime act of number crunching took almost forty minutes. Tash would hold up a work sheet against the part.i.tion while Crone jotted numbers on a piece of paper with a dull pencil on the other side. Crone would then hold up his penciled sheet while Tash made adjustments on the original. It was Greek to me, though the guard behind Crone outside the door seemed to take particular interest in the doings. At one point he called in a supervisor who observed the antics for a moment through the window. Seeing that legal counsel was present, the supervisor, a sergeant, chose not to interfere. But I can imagine Tash on the stand being pressed by Tannery to explain what was happening. I raised the question myself, posed it to Tash as we left the jail.

All he would say was "Genetics. The project."

"That's c.r.a.p," says Harry. "I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of this hiding behind the high-tech veil. It's like the holy of holies. Only the lawyers can't go inside. How do we know what they're doing?" he asks. "It's a convenient cover, if you ask me. They don't want to talk about their work, and yet everything always seems to come back to that. Now we have the victim's mother telling the court they're involved in collecting data with a racial tinge. And still Crone won't tell us what's going on. We need to draw a line in the sand. They don't tell us, we withdraw."

"It's a nice thought, but Coats isn't likely to let us out at this late date," I tell him.

We are camped in the office, another late nighter. Epperson is up tomorrow, Tannery's offer of proof and still I have nothing to talk to him about. If our message to Epperson from Tash got through, it has borne no fruit. I have called the answering service to make sure they put any calls through and will have them forwarded to the house when we leave here.

"I told you he wasn't gonna call," says Harry. "What did Tash say?"

"Says he talked to him. That Epperson told him he would make an effort to call us."

"What does that mean? Makes it sound like it's a marathon to push the b.u.t.tons on the phone," says Harry. "I'm telling you he's not gonna call."

I look at my watch. It's almost eleven P.M. Harry is probably right.

"So much for Crone's high regard and good working relations," he tells me.

Harry spent the morning and afternoon chasing geese, trying to get a lead on the engagement ring Epperson supposedly bought for Kalista Jordan, and running down audit trails at the university on Crone's research.

"Let's start with the ring," he says, "since that's gonna be a short discussion. Came up with nothing."

This is a long shot. With no drawing, no picture and no description, we might as well be looking for the Holy Grail.

"If I have to deal with one more jeweler trying to peddle me a watch. . . . They all wanna know the same thing: why some old fart is asking questions about an engagement ring."

"I understand," I tell him. "It's not like old farts never get married. Right?"

He looks at me sideways. "Right. It's just you get tired, everybody putting you in pigeonholes all the time." Harry hates to be old, white and male. For Harry, it was hard enough being young. But then I have a feeling Harry was old even when he was young.

"The world is always making a.s.sumptions," he says. "Don't you get tired of it?" Harry doesn't wait for me to answer.

"p.i.s.ses me off," he says. He's had a bad day. A lot of shoe leather left on the street, so that his shoes are now sitting in the middle of my desk on top of a stack of papers, as he lets off steam rubbing one foot crossed over his knee.

"So what are you telling them, these shop owners?" I ask.

"That we're trying to verify an insurance claim. I describe Epperson. That seems to do it."

"And how are you describing him? Tall? Dark?"

"Yeah," says Harry. "A detailed description is always best."

"And of course you're telling them this is a man with a Ph.D.?"

"I think I may have left that part out," he says.

I raise an eyebrow.

"You let their imaginations fill in the blanks."

"With a.s.sumptions," I say.

"Yeah. Well."

I can imagine that the vision these shop owners have of Epperson after Harry's visit is something from a mug shot. G.o.d help the man if he tries to buy more jewelry in any of these places. They'll be calling out the SWAT team.

"Spent a lot of time, came up with nothing," says Harry. "Squat. Nada. Of course, I only covered half of La Jolla. You have any idea how many jewelry stores there are in that town? And that's just the ones selling new stuff. I haven't even started with the antique spots, the f.u.c.king boutiques and galleries for the artsy set. I have a call in to get some help from one of the P.I. firms downtown. They'll have a couple of investigators for us by tomorrow."

"Good. How about the audit? You picked up the file, the papers from Doris Boyd?"

"Yeah. I went by. She couldn't find them, but she turned the place upside down. She finally located them."

"Where were they?"

"Seems her husband had looked at 'em last. He put the file in a drawer in a cabinet in the dining room. Good place to keep papers, huh? It got sorta touchy," says Harry. "Doris wanted to know if maybe the grant application for the daughter was up and running again. I had to burst her bubble, tell her no, that we needed the doc.u.ments in Crone's case. Nothing like opening old wounds," says Harry.

"Still, with their file I was able to track the stuff at the university. Only problem, there was nothing there but another dry hole," he says. "If there was an audit, I couldn't find it. They do a financial a.n.a.lysis every year for the budget, but that's it. No certification by an accounting firm, and no audit trail of where last year's money went. Everything I was able to get is there in front of you." He gestures toward the pile of papers he has planted on my desk, under his shoes.