mean.'
Johnson looked down at his fingers for a moment and then finally he looked her straight in the eye and said, 'Mrs Stoddard, I have to interrupt these proceedings at this point and advise you that you have the right to remain silent. If you say anything more, it can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. You are entitled to an attorney. If you do not have one or - '
She cut him off. 'I killed him,' she said without emotion and without changing her expression.
Johnson and Irving were struck dumb by the admission.
'Excuse me?' Johnson said after a few seconds.
'I killed him,' she repeated without emotion.
'Christ!' Irving muttered.
'Mrs Stoddard,' Shock Johnson said firmly but quietly, 'you understand, don't you, that you are entitled to have a lawyer present now?'
She looked back and forth at them.
'I don't understand anything anymore,' she said mournfully.
The felony and misdemeanour history of the county was stored in canyons of documents in an enormous warehouse that covered a square block near the criminal courts building. Row after row and tier upon tier of trial transcripts, bound between uniform brown covers, filled the enormous warehouse with faded and fading files. Many more had been misplaced, lost, destroyed, or misfiled; simply transposing the numbers in the index could send a record into file oblivion. Physical evidence was harder to come by. Returned to owners, lost, or destroyed, it was hardly worth the effort to track it down. St Claire signed in and quickly found the registration number of the trial transcript: 'Case Number 83-45976432, the State versus Aaron Stampler. Murder in the first degree. Martin Vail for defence. Jane Venable for prosecution.' He was pointed down through the narrow passageways. Dust seemed to be suspended in shafts of lights from skylights. It took fifteen minutes before he found a cardbox box with STAMPLER, A. 83-45976432 scrawled on the side with a Magic Marker. He carried the box containing the transcript, three volumes of it, to a steel-framed table in the centre of the place and sat down to study Vail's most famous case.
Something had triggered St Claire's phenomenal memory, but he had yet to finger exactly what was gnawing at him: an abstract memory just beyond his grasp. But in that box St Claire was certain he would find what he was looking for, just as he now knew it would have nothing to do with the bodies in the landfill.
He started reading through the first volume but realized quickly that he would have to categorize the material in some way. He leafed through the jury selection and the mundane business of preparing the court for the trial; scanned ahead, looking for key words, piecing together bits and pieces of testimony; and made numerous trips to the copy machine. Then he began his own peculiar version of link analysis, categorizing them and working through the trial in logical rather than chronological order.
But St Claire was also interested in how Vail had conducted a defence that almost everyone believed was hopeless. And also the adversarial cross-examination of Stenner, who was the homicide detective in charge of the investigation. The fireworks began in the opening minutes of the trial.
That started what St Claire realized was ultimately a battle of titans - Venable versus Vail - both at the top of their game, both keen strategists and intractable jugular artists. Venable's opening statement to the jury was short, to the point, and almost arrogantly confident. Obviously, she figured the case was in the bag.
