Double Tap by Steve Martini Page B

including their own mistakes. All I’m saying is that we can shower a good deal of doubt on who had this gun last.”
    “Yeah, but here the defendant kn—” I put up a hand and stop him before Harry can finish the thought: that it’s too much of a coincidence that Ruiz knew the victim, had stayed overnight in her house, and that his firearm was used to kill her.
    I look at Ruiz. “Let me ask you: Do you have any sense as to how often the Army might make mistakes in this area? Say somebody checks a gun back in and fails to sign off, or they lose a piece of paper. There are people in the military, I assume, who would know this, if in fact it’s a problem. We could put them on the stand.”
    What I am telling Ruiz is that there may be a way to put an evidentiary wedge, a slice of reasonable doubt, however slender, between him and the murder weapon, deceptive as this may be.
    I stop talking and all eyes are on him. Ruiz looks to Harry, then back at me. Finally he shakes his head. “I don’t get it. What’s the point?” he says. “The gun is mine.”
    It’s the thing about desperate defendants, especially those laboring under a psychic load of guilty knowledge with no one to share the burden. In such cases it’s the rare soul who won’t grab any straw in an effort to weave some gold. And I’ve never known one yet to ask questions about ethics in the process.
    “I think you understood it very well, Mr. Ruiz. It’s simple and it’s straightforward. It’s called the truth. It’s not the answer a lawyer might look for in court, but then, a smart lawyer would never put you on the stand and allow the question to be asked since he already knows, as I did, that any other answer would be a lie and would likely be exposed as one.”
    “So you’re testing me to see if I’ll tell you a lie?”
    “You have to excuse him,” says Harry. “He’s a lawyer.”
    “And you’re telling us that you didn’t kill Madelyn Chapman and you don’t know who did. Is that right?”
    Ruiz looks at me for a second, wondering, I’m sure, what part of the question is a trick. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. You don’t believe me, I guess I’m just going to have to go look for another—”
    “Relax, Sergeant. I believe you.”

CHAPTER SIX
    A t first glance the grounds of Isotenics, Inc., aka Software City, look like an Ivy League academy. However, once inside the gate, a closer inspection reveals something more akin to a military base.
    The outer-perimeter fence, constructed of ornamental iron for architectural effect, is at least eight feet high and decorated at the top of each picket with a fleur-de-lis, forked and needle sharp like the point of a pike. Anyone trying to climb this would require either the strength and agility of an Olympic gymnast or a ladder on each side. One slip and you would end up like a hot dog on a skewer.
    The front gate, with a guardhouse in the center, is manned by uniformed security backed up by surveillance cameras on poles set on high ground as I drive in.
    Beyond the gate, the blacktop lane winds through the hills and climbs in elevation toward the top of a ridge in the distance. On the way I pass clustered villages of redbrick buildings, commercial offices designed to approximate colonial New England with names posted on signs for various divisions of the company. The buildings, some with ivy climbing their walls, are erected in a rectangle around a green common, the irrigated and well-manicured lawn contrasting sharply with the dry grass of the California hillside. In places carefully engineered hedgerows covered with oleander and ficus have been used to conceal inner security fences, electrified chain link topped by tight coils of razor wire. None of this is unusual for a company whose principal client is the United States Defense Department. Marked private patrol units cruise the roads.
    The rolling hills, more than a thousand acres of brown grass parched tinder dry by