Silent Witness by Michael Norman Page B

communicating with someone on the outside. He could only be doing that through letters, phone calls, or during non-contact visits. Besides his attorney, Bradshaw’s only visitors were members of his immediate family. Surveillance carried out by prison staff hadn’t turned up anything suspicious regarding family members. If the illegal communication wasn’t occurring through family contact then the only person left was his lawyer, Gordon Dixon. And by law, Dixon’s access had been completely unmonitored—at least until now.
    I was cloistered in a closet-like office in the prison’s administration building wearing a head-set and listening to a lot of line static. I was surrounded by telephone company equipment and sophisticated hi-tech gadgetry designed to eavesdrop on telephone calls and monitor conversations between inmates and their visitors.
    When Dixon and Bradshaw picked up their respective phones, the static gave way to absolute clarity. The first thing one of them said in a barely audible whisper was, “Not here.” They exchanged greetings and made small talk until Dixon turned the conversation to a strategy discussion for the preliminary hearing scheduled for later in the day.
    After Dixon left Uintah 1, I caught up with Jerry Branch in his office. Branch had observed the visit through one-way glass and saw something that confirmed my suspicions. As the two men stared at each other through the glass partition and reached for the phones, Dixon made a sweeping motion with his left hand, brushing his index finger across his lips in a gesture meant to say, keep quiet. That must have occurred just before I heard somebody whisper, “not here.”
    The entire conversation took less than fifteen minutes, and yet I’d learned something important. There was something Dixon didn’t want to discuss with Walter Bradshaw over the prison phones, but what was it?

Chapter Ten
    The other message had been from Kate. She wanted me to meet her at the home of Arnold Ginsberg for what would be a follow-up interview with the victim’s live-in partner, Rodney Plow. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I think she wanted me along to provide my impressions of the bereaved partner. Clearly, something about Plow’s demeanor during his first interview had made Kate uncomfortable.
    Ginsberg lived in an older, but exclusive neighborhood, high on Salt Lake City’s east bench off Wasatch Boulevard, between Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. The directions Kate had provided carried me up the side of the mountain along roads that snaked back-and-forth like switch-back trails. Eventually, I topped out on Ridge View Drive and realized that I could climb no higher. Ginsberg’s home had been carved out of the side of the mountain. It was located on the eastside of Ridge View and commanded striking views of the entire Salt Lake valley and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west.
    Kate was parked in front of the house when I arrived. According to Kate, Plow had been so emotionally distraught upon learning of Ginsberg’s death that she hadn’t been able to conduct a particularly thorough interview. She hoped to finish the interview today. From the street, we walked up a steep, narrow asphalt driveway that lead to a triple car garage. Looking back, I said, “Gorgeous views up here, but how would you like to try to get down that driveway in a blizzard?”
    â€œIt looks a bit intimidating. If you didn’t have a four-wheel drive vehicle, you’d be screwed.”
    â€œYou might be screwed even with four-wheel drive. If you slid down the driveway and couldn’t get control when you hit the street, you might end up in the living room of that house across the street.”
    Rodney Plow wasn’t what I expected. He was tall, tanned, slim, and looked twenty years younger than Ginsberg. He walked us through the foyer into the living room where we were introduced to a friend,