Ambulances passed me as I sat in my pickup on the muddy shoulder of The Miles Farm Road.
To say that I was suffering from shock or in a traumatic state would be an understatement.
The emergency vehicles had all loaded filled and zipped body bags in front of the farm house and crept slowly onto the farm road without emergency lights or sirens. And each of the three mordant vehicles moved almost indolently to the intersecting with numbered farm road and turned slowly toward the Interstate.
"Were they all dead?" I asked the state trooper standing near the open window of my pickup.
"Can't say," he answered laconically, his back tensing as he grew taller.
"The three in those ambulances were in body bags..." I persisted. "Weren't they?"
"Let's get my questions answered before we get to yours," the trooper answered. He smiled tactfully and leaned on the base of my driver's side window.
"My name is Steve Harvey," I said, "as it says on my driver's license." I paused and added, "And that's my correct address."
"Mr. Harvey, we are ten miles from town and about a hundred yards from a crime scene," he said with slow deliberation. "And we discovered you sitting here when we arrived."
We both glanced away for a moment before he finished with, "Do you want to tell me about it?"
"I am interested in the number of casualties in that farm house," I stated flatly, "because I am certain my wife is one of them."
"Go on," he prompted softly.
"I followed my wife out here about seven o'clock," I said. "She was stopped by two men who patted her down at the gated driveway and escorted her into the house."
"Why did your wife come here?" he asked in practiced conversation mode.
"I don't know."
"Why did you follow here?" the trooper asked, making notes in a leather bound book.
After hesitating and staring toward the flood lighted front yard of the farm house, I answered, "I had learned this afternoon that she was cheating."
"Do you have a weapon on your person or in your vehicle, sir?" he asked, continuing in the quiet, detached mode.
I shook my head "no" and he asked me if I would step out of the pickup. He employed the word "please."
As a man in a business suit approached, the trooper turned to him and gave a brief summary of my responses. The man in the suit studied my driver's license for a moment before motioning toward an unmarked vehicle near the intersection.
Within an hour I was sitting in a 12 by 12 interrogation room at the sheriff's office. But my interrogators were not local cops. I'm still not sure who they were.
Repeatedly I asked for information about my wife, and they ignored my questions until I refused to continue discussing my life with them.
"Everyone in that house was dead or dying, Mr. Harvey," the aggressive questioner finally declared. "Eleven dead or wounded were transported to either the medical examiners lab or the emergency room."
Turning to the woman who had appeared in the doorway, he asked if she could inquire about my wife's fate.
"I'll call the ER again," she said. "I know that three women and two men of the 11 victims were transported to various hospitals."
As the woman walked away, the senior cop turned to me once more. He wasn't pleased with my answers to his questions, though I had told him everything that I knew.
At the end of another 30-minute grilling, I relaxed and told them either to charge me or
I was walking out. Ridiculous, I know, but my ploy got results.
"I doubt that you will walk out, Mr. Harvey," the senior cope laughed. "But you can call your lawyer if you think that's necessary."
"I am my lawyer," I said wearily. "And after cooperating with you for five and half hours, I'm ready to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus."
They knew that they could not prevent my performing the necessary legal tasks to defend myself.
Though I did not practice criminal law, I was not unsophisticated in that particular vernacular of voodoo jurisprudence.
All of the interrogators left the room without further comment. It was 3:30 a.m., and I was feeling the first ravages of exhaustion.
Just after 4 a.m., the door opened, and I was relieved to see a friendly face. Jerry kinder was an Assistant District Attorney, the first and only home based authority I had seen all night. Though not golfing buddies, we were friendly acquaintances from as far back as college.
"Your wife was shot twice in the chest, Steve," the assistant DA said solemnly. "But according to the surgeons who worked on her at Municipal Hospital, the wounds are not life threatening."
"Could you give me a lift to the hospital?" I asked Jerry, moving toward the door.
Holding up his hand as a warning that I would not like what came next, he explained slowly and succinctly that Julia could see only her doctors and her attorney."
Julia was facing several federal and state indictments, but the shocker was Jerry's revelation that he would be filing murder charges against her.
Very soon I realized that Julia's predicament had drawn interest from the far corners of the earth, especially the cracks and crevices where heavy financial muscle resides. Lawyers representing umbrella investors, hedge funds and various venture capitalists crammed into almost every hotel room from San Francisco to Monterey.
It soon became common bar room and curb side chit chat that Julia and her lover, Jeffery Alexander were deeply into "Big Fecal Matter," as my friend Jenkins put it.
Jenks and my daughters, Julie and Helena, attended the trial with me every day and noted each condemning shred of testimony. As one hooded witness had said from the witness stand, "We were playing with stacked deck worth $400 million from which we could skim at least $100 million once the medical center began take shape. You see, the cap price being thrown about in the preliminaries was inflated by about 30 per cent."
For sure, my sweet Julia was playing in deep feces, and by the estimate of witnesses, Julia' vote on the board of directors of the hospital district would be worth $5 million. Jenks, a veteran professor of history, was a wealth of information and a fountain of expertise in explaining to a mediocre lawyer like me how anything in the world could command a price of $300 or $400 million.
Of even more brain busting significance to me was the question of how three community volunteers could so easily tap into the monstrous booty and become essential players in the monumental fraud.
Jenks devoted several hours during the trial to explaining the intricacies of financing such a bloated political monstrosity.
Once I understood the financing, Jenks began to lectures, over gallons of beer and tons of pizza, detailing how the scam worked. Jenks was more than a mentor during this period. I needed a reliable friend with his expertise if for no other reason than my sanity was threatened every day and night.
More than once during the frightening and condemning testimony of Julia's associates, Jenks insisted that sail with him a his girl friend on San Francisco Bay. I was both surprised and puzzled when I first boarded Jink's 50-foot sailing vessel. Luxury beyond my wildest imagination oozed from the ambiance of the spacious salon and the comforts of the six state rooms.
