would do it.
'If it makes a difference, I already know, but I need confirmation.'
That one always worked on my junkie drug informants, and it was enough
at least to get him to stop walking. 'Clarissa was biased on the
appeal. She ruled for Gunderson as a favor of some kind. That's why
she recused herself from a case filed by Grice Constuction. Grice was
complaining about unfairness in the urban rehabilitation project, and
Clarissa knew from personal experience that at least one company was
getting preferential treatment.'
Still nothing. If the push didn't do it, maybe a shove would.
'I can have a grand jury subpoena at your house this evening, but I
really don't think that's going to be necessary.'
I pictured him imagining the scene at home tonight if I followed
through on my threat and his wife were to learn that it was
preventable.
'All you need is confirmation?'
'Yep.' I couldn't believe I was actually going to get it.
And, sure enough, I didn't. 'Well, too bad,' he said. 'I can't
confirm something so completely ridiculous. She may have talked to
Coakley about the case, but you are entirely off base. My God, what
you're suggesting is offensive.'
See how that works? In the course of denying the part of my theory
that surprised him, he had confirmed the rest of it.
'But she did talk to Coakley about the Gunderson case. Why?'
He looked at his watch, looked at me, then rolled his eyes. 'Coakley
can be nuts about privilege for reasons I don't always understand. But
you're right. She came to me first. She said she had something she
needed to talk to me about. She'd ruled on a case a few months earlier
without realizing that the claimant had donated money to her husband's
hospital wing. If she'd known about the potential conflict at the time
the case was assigned to her, she should've recused herself. I told
her to talk to Coakley to see if he wanted to reopen the case. I won't
tell you that part of the conversation, since he thinks it's
privileged, but, let's just say that the Gunderson case wasn't
reopened, and Clarissa recused herself from the Grice matter because of
the potential appearance of a conflict.'
'I get the impression that you don't share Coakley's concerns about
privilege.'
Loutrell shrugged. 'Dennis is Dennis. He sees potential city
liability around every corner, but he's well-intentioned. I actually
considered calling you last week about this. The media were
insinuating that something was going on between Clarissa and T. J.
Caffrey which I know nothing about, by the way and for some reason the
conversation with Clarissa stuck in my mind.'
'I'm missing the connection,' I said.
He shook his head quickly as if to shake the suggestion away. 'Not a
connection, really. It was just that Clarissa seemed so serious about
the matter when she raised it with us, particularly when she was
talking about how important the hospital wing was to her husband. She
seemed unreasonably upset by the situation, considering how innocuous
it was. I think my imagination got the best of me, and I started
wondering if maybe the entire situation had something to do with the
state of her marriage. By the time Coakley spelled out his bogus
privilege concerns, it just didn't seem like anything worth bothering
you about.'
People don't realize that a criminal case is rarely built on a single
piece of evidence, relying instead on tens and hundreds of clues in
context, each by itself insignificant. Too many helpful witnesses show
up late in the game, because they didn't want to bother the police with
insignificant information. In the meantime, the wackos flood the phone
lines with visions and premonitions.
Clarissa may not have given Coakley and Loutrell a full blown
admission, but at least I was on the right track.
From City Hall, I made a stealth pop into my office to grab copies of
the Gunderson case file, the information Jessica Walters had copied for
me detailing Max Grice's complaints, and the financial records for the
hospital wing. Within thirty minutes, I had gathered everything I
needed for my research and was nestled back in my home office and ready
to start filling in the missing pieces.
Based on Jessica's notes about Max Grice, he wasn't a happy camper. At
the heart of his discontent was a woman named Jane Wessler, city
licensing official for the Office of Landmarks Preservation at City
Hall. Three years ago, as a nod to preservationists, the office had
designated an area surrounding the train station an historic district,
seeking to protect the small neighborhood from the
warehouse-to-luxury-loft conversions that marked the nearby and rapidly
expanding Pearl District. As a result of the designation, the Railroad
District, located at the eastern edge of trendy northwest Portland,
still remains an enclave for starving artists, aging hippies, and other
