Star Witness

by Lia Matera

Overview

A plucky lawyer’s out of her element when she investigates a suspicious death that’s out of this world in this mystery by the author of Last Chants.

Overworked San Francisco attorney Willa Jansson’s ready to go on her three-week vacation and relax on the beach in Mexico. But before she can leave the office, she gets a phone call from a friend whom she owes a favor . . .

Willa heads to Santa Cruz to take on what at first sounds like a vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run case. Alan Miller’s Fiat fell on top of Francis Addenaur’s Buick in a field of Brussels sprouts. The problem is the Fiat left no tracks in the field and Miller wasn’t in his car. He says he was abducted by aliens

As Willa begins examining crop circles and subpoenaing UFO experts, she realizes this case could ruin her career. But with an angry widow packing heat and mysterious black helicopters circling the sky, discovering the truth feels like a matter of life or death . . .

“Matera’s latest mystery is a hoot. It will drive the Pentagon non-UFO believers crazy and probably end up being the inspiration for an X-Files episode. . . . This fast-moving tale is peppered with eccentric characters, snappy dialogue and a creative plot.” —San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

“Matera has proved more than once that she is the master when it comes to dabbling in Northern California flakiness for her mystery plots. This time she focuses on alien abduction. . . . Matera cleverly walks the line here between milking the material for humor and taking it all too seriously. . . . Mystery fans can’t fail to be entertained.” —San Jose Mercury News

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504066693
Publisher:	MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Series:	The Willa Jansson Mysteries , #6
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lia Matera is the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Award–nominated author of nine novels. A graduate of UC Hastings College of the Law, where she was editor in chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Matera was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School before becoming a full-time writer of legal mysteries. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.
 

Read an Excerpt

Inherit the Wind when I got the phone call.

Inherit the Wind is a fictionalized account of the Scopes, "monkey trial," where Clarence Darrow -- perhaps the last lawyer in America to be admired and respected -- defended a teacher charged with the crime of explaining evolution to his 1920s high school class. Darrow lost the case despite some heavy oratory. That's because there's no defense against orthodoxy; by definition, too many people believe in it.

Today, evolution is part of our orthodoxy. But I managed to find out the hard way what its modern equivalent is. I managed to find the one idea that, despite volumes of supporting evidence and testimony, even a modern-day Darrow couldn't comfortably advocate. And unfortunately, I'm no orator; natural selection bred that quality out of lawyers to make room for creative billing.

I'd been perfecting my double-billing skills for the last year, working for a firm specializing in high tech, especially multimedia law. The job sounded hip; that's why I took it (and also because I'd been unemployed for the previous half year). But to the low woman on the totem pole it meant a lot of copyright-infringement, unfair-competition, and breach-of-contract suits. It meant way too much time in conference rooms with techie lawyers.

These shouldn't be confused with stereotypical nerds of either the geek or cyberpunk variety. Lawyers have huge, spun-glass egos, so having the best equipment (computer equipment, that is) isn't just a way of mainlining more data, it's a way of putting their claw marks higher up the tree. And with plenty of money to waste, lawyers can afford a little bark under their nails.

After almost a year of hearing three lawyers, two paralegals, and four secretaries lust after technology that was "almost there" -- that is, almost equal to their transcendental or business purposes -- I was sick to death of computers. Even my stereo seemed offensively digital. All I wanted to do was get away, go someplace where suits weren't required and hardware wasn't deified. I was longing for the tech-free simplicity of my hippie youth; I was looking for one of those cabin-with-no-phone kinds of vacations. Instead, I got the call from Fred Hershey.

I was comfortably cocooned in bed watching Inherit the Wind when the phone rang. In the ordinary course of things, I'd have let my answering machine pick up. But in my hooray-I'm-free-for-three-weeks bliss, I'd unplugged it.

So along about the sixth or seventh ring, I became groggily concerned. What if my father was sick? What if my mother, the world's oldest Yippie, had broken her vow to stop getting herself arrested?

I staggered out of bed, cursing my inconvenient Ludditism, and picked up.

Fred Hershey said, "Willa Jansson, time for you to return the favor you owe me."

I would later learn that Fred can be pathologically blunt, an odd trait in a psychiatrist, and one that natural selection will, perhaps, eventually eliminate from the breed. This night, it surprised me. I'd spent only a few hours with Fred last year, just long enough for his brother, my old boyfriend, to put me deeply into Fred's debt.

I said, "Who is this?" But I suppose I knew. Being generally cranky and antisocial, there are few people to whom I owe phone calls, much less favors.

"Fred Hershey. I need you to come down to Santa Cruz first thing tomorrow morning."

"I'm leaving to go on vacation."

"Perfect. You'll enjoy the weather here."

Fred's brother, Edward, had driven me crazy years ago when we lived together. And he'd made himself a pain in the butt several times since. Now it seemed to be Fred's turn. I could only wish their mother hadn't spared the rod.

On the other hand, Fred and Edward had helped me hide out a friend. But for them, he'd be in prison now. I might be there, too.

"Willa, listen. A patient of mine is about to be arrested for vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run. I need you to represent him."

"I'm a business lawyer," I protested. In the five years since graduating from law school, I'd also been a labor lawyer, a corporate lawyer, and a federal judge's clerk. Lest Fred think me versatile, I added, "And I'm on vacation."

"You're the only lawyer I know who's crazy enough to take this case."

"Thanks a -- "

"And you're the only one who owes me a favor."

The evening chill penetrated my sweat clothes. I hugged myself. I remembered Fred in therapist mode, his voice as modulated and mellow as an FM deejay's. I'd also seen him under stress, swearing and barking out cross orders. But I hadn't spent enough time with him to recall the details of his face; I kept visualizing Edward's, which engendered a Pavlovian impulse to bicker.

"Why don't you get him a local lawyer, a criminal lawyer? That's what he needs, not a -- "

"I'll explain when you get here. Can you make it by lunchtime?"

"Who did your patient hit?" I could just see myself representing some jerk who'd sped off after mowing down a nun.

"They say his car went over a cliff and landed on the highway."

"What do you mean, 'They say'? Did it or didn't it?"

"It landed on top of another car, yes. The driver was crushed."

"And your patient drove away?"

"No. He wasn't in the car."

"So who was driving?"

"No one."

"It went over by itself? He didn't set the hand brake?"

Fred didn't answer immediately. "It's a lot more complicated than that, I'm afraid. But I think you should hear it from Miller."

"Miller being the guy who wasn't in the car when it killed someone?" Shades of Stephen King's Christine.

"Yes."

"Where does he say he was? Does he have an alibi?"

"That's the part that gets a little sticky. That's why I need YOU."

Why oh why didn't I ignore the ringing phone? Why didn't I leave for vacation just a half day sooner?

There was no getting around it; I did owe Fred Hershey a favor, a great big one.

"Yeah, okay, I can be there by lunchtime."

I went back to watching Inherit the Wind, little realizing I was about to be transformed from a thirty-seven-year-old, slightly graying, too-short blonde with an uninspiring résumé. I was about to hobble a strange, modern mile in Clarence Darrow's shoes: Willa Jansson, heretic lawyer, counsel for the infidel.

Copyright © 1997 by Lia Matera

Interviews

While I was researching the origins and effects of myths for my previous novel, Last Chants, I became interested in our fastest-growing oral tradition, UFOs and alien abduction. On the theory that skepticism should be at least as much trouble as gullibility, I began looking into some recent sightings and abduction claims. So in Star Witness, attorney Willa Jansson is convinced her new client is innocent of steering his car off an embankment and onto the car below, killing its driver. But Willa dreads becoming a laughingstock by offering her client's 'alibi,' recovered under hypnosis -- that he wasn't in his car at the time because he'd been abducted by an alien spacecraft!

—Lia Matera

Editorial Reviews

San Francisco lawyer Willa Jansson has had her share of odd clients, but none so unusual as her latest, whose defense in a manslaughter case is UFO abduction. Matera knows her way around a courtroom, and she is just as adept at crafting an unpredictable tale.

—Dick Lochte

bn.com

In the wackiest of a lively series (Last Chants, 1996), plucky San Francisco lawyer Willa Jansson defends a man who says he was in a spaceship when his car fell on top of a Buick, killing the driver, Francis Addenauer. Alan Miller tells this story after having been put under hypnosis by psychiatrist Fred Hershey. At Fred's request, Willa returns to Santa Cruz to represent Alan, who's as embarrassed as she by his outrageous recovered memory. Skeptical but indefatigable, Willa finds four quarrelsome UFO experts to testify for Alan. Meanwhile, Alan and his support team are being harassed by Addenauer's grieving widow, Betty. Matera is skilled at creating singularly offbeat characters and hurling them into multilayered plots that play out on the fringes of popular culture. Here, exploring the many facets of Ufology, from crop circles to government cover-ups, she shows how tales of alien contact ("our fastest-growing oral tradition") foster sinister interpretations of ordinary events. It's the weirdest defense Willa's ever mounted, and in the end, readers, like Willa, will wonder where Alan really was that night. (June) FYI: Includes a UFO bibliography and videographys.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the latest Willa Jansson mystery from Matera (Last Chants, LJ 6/1/96), the Scopes Monkey trial and the trial of O.J. Simpson haunt San Francisco business lawyer Willa when she unwisely takes on a vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run case in nearby Santa Cruz. Her client's alibi: he was being abducted by aliens. Willa doesn't know what or whom to believe following a series of unexplained events, including crop circles, assassination attempts, and black-helicopter sightings, to name a few. Matera offers a fast-paced narrative stuffed with incident and characters. She has done her UFO homework and depicts the subculture of ture believers sympathetically. Willa's four expert witnesses present some current perspectives on UFOstheir bickering is both informative and funnyand Matera resists pat answers. The complex plot sometimes borders on the incoherent, however, featuring many red herrings and some undeveloped story lines, and not all members of the unpredictable cast are well integrated into the novel. Following the story, Matera offers an extensive bibliography and a video list. For general readers.Linda Lee Landrigan, N.Y.

Library Journal

Say this for Willa Jansson (Last Chants, 1996, etc.): She doesn't shrink from the big cases. This time she's down in Santa Cruz, repaying a favor to psychiatrist Fred Hershey by defending his client, mushroom expert Alan Miller, on charges of hit-and- run and vehicular manslaughter after his Fiat landed in a field of brussels sprouts on top of Francis Addenaur's Buick, crushing Addenaur to death. Res ipsa loquitur, says smug ADA Patrick Tober—the thing speaks for itself. Even though Miller wasn't found in the Fiat, it's full of his prints, and no one else's, and he's admitted driving it only an hour or two before the accident. Under hypnosis, though, Miller has given Hershey the wildest alibi imaginable: He was abducted by aliens who dropped the Fiat (which left no tracks through the brussels sprouts) on top of the Buick. When a hitchhiker Miller picked up earlier that evening tells an equally bizarre story about her own close encounter, it's off to the races for Willa, who ends up examining crop circles that may have been made by alien spacecraft, subpoenaing UFOlogists who keep bickering among themselves, keeping Miller away from Addenaur's grieving, well-armed widow, and sweating to protect her real-world job back in San Francisco.

All right, the conclusion doesn't live up to Matera's bold, witty challenge to the most rational foundations of the mystery genre, but what could? Willa's sixth still supports her remarkable claim to have "helped make Santa Cruz a flakier place."

Kirkus Reviews