The Judge

by Steve Martini

  He laughs at this.

  “Of course your client is prepared to take the stand? To deny all of this?” Now he’s fishing.

  “I’ll let you know if and when we decide.”

  “What kind of witness do you think he will make?” he says. “Honestly?”

  “That’s the kind,” I say. “Honest.”

  He smiles, comes up empty. He expected no more. This has the feel of small talk, leading to something bigger.

  “You don’t really believe this stuff about the cops?” he says.

  I give him my best expression of disbelief. “No. Gus Lano’s an archangel.”

  “Well, I grant you the union,” he says. “I’m no defender of organized labor.”

  I can believe that.

  “But you’re reaching,” he says.

  “At least you hope I am,” I tell him.

  I get a quizzical look from him.

  “Do you know something you haven’t told us?” He stops walking and looks at me dead in the eye.

  Now he wants to know what we are thinking.

  “If you do, you should tell me,” he says. “It might make a difference.”

  Yeah. He would take the information, put a point on it like a pike, and jam it up my ass.

  Before I can respond he looks over his shoulder at Lenore.

  “Does she know something?” he says. “I know she was there that night. Her fingerprint on the door,” he says. “I’m not interested in making trouble for her. I know she doesn’t believe that. But you should. If she knows something. . .”

  He leaves the thought dangling and gives me what I can only describe as the big eye, waiting for a reply. When it doesn’t come, he tries another tack.

  “We could handle it in private,” he says. “No need for any trouble,” he tells me. For a moment I think perhaps he actually believes Lenore had something to do with Hall’s death.

  “You just want the truth,” I tell him.

  “Just the truth.” He seems to lean toward me as he says this.

  I make a face, but say nothing.

  “If she’s withholding something.” He pauses for an instant, as if perhaps he is waiting to see if I get his drift, but he’s a cipher. He can tell by my expression that I don’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about.

  “She hasn’t said anything to you?”

  I shake my head.

  This seems to be a major letdown for him.

  “She may have gotten information from Hall,” he says. “It is possible that if she knows something we don’t, that we could have made a mistake.”

  As if somebody freeze-dried my blood, I am stunned by this admission. I begin to laugh, the best I can do, a mocking effort at humor.

  “You’re telling me you made a mistake? What kind of mistake?” I ask him.

  His arm is back to my shoulder, a tight grip, and we are walking again. He’s shushing me with a finger to his lips. Drawing me farther away, toward the quiet corner.

  “I didn’t say we made a mistake. I said it was possible to make a mistake if we don’t have all the facts. I just need to know if there is something she’s hiding.”

  A prosecutor, trying my client for his life, halfway through his case, telling me that maybe he’s made a mistake, and I’m supposed to whisper.

  I stop and turn, unhook his arm from my shoulder.

  “You talked to Hall,” I tell him. “You tell me. What did she say?”

  “What you heard in court,” he says.

  “Your witness Frost?”

  He nods.

  I laugh at this.

  “That’s the problem,” he says. “Perhaps Hall was willing to be more candid with a woman,” he says. “Talk to her.” He wags his head toward Lenore. “She’ll tell you if she knows something. No matter what you think, I’m not looking for political points on this one.”

  He is the soul of sincerity. I might trust him from here to the punch bowl.

  “It’s possible that we can deal on this,” he says. “Just talk to me.” There is an earnestness in his voice, his final word almost pleading, as he turns, bids a bitter farewell to Lenore from a safe distance, beyond the flinging range of cocktail sauce. Then Kline strides off to join his wife on the other side of the room.

  It hits me in this instant as he walks away, the magnitude of this revelation. There is something missing in the equation of Brittany Hall, something lurking that he senses but does not know, a missing element to the prosecution’s case, and Kline believes that Lenore has it.

  CHAPTER 23

  TODAY KLINE IS USING THE STATE’S TRACE EVIDENCE expert to further reinforce the view that Hall did not have sex, either consensual or forced, before she was killed. For some reason unknown to us, he anticipates this will be our theory, that some lover killed her. He wants to dispel any thought of this in order to focus attention on what he claims is the true motive for this crime, the silencing of a judicial witness.

  Kline seems a growing presence in the courtroom, even if he knows that the strength of today’s evidence is too general—common hairs and threads—to be overwhelming. It is still one piece that fits in his puzzle.

  Today he has Harold Stinegold, the state’s foremost expert on hair and fibers, a career civil servant of the State Department of Justice, on the stand. If it fits under a microscope, Stinegold has probably looked at it.

  He testifies that fingernail clippings and scrapings from Hall show no foreign tissue, and that pubic combings of the victim confirm there was no evidence of foreign hair, which would be present if there had been sexual intercourse.

  Stinegold is a man in his early sixties, affable and confident. I have had him in court on several occasions, and have found that he is exceedingly conservative. He will not usually stretch the evidence.

  Kline uses high drama, having Stinegold remove the blanket with its blotches of dried blood from a paper evidence bag, cutting the seal open on the stand. He does the same with a second, smaller bag containing hair, and a third with fibers.

  “Can you tell us about these?” says Kline. “How were they collected and analyzed?”

  “The hair and fibers were lifted off the surface of the blanket by use of cellophane tape, as you might lift lint from a suit. They were transferred to a slide and first examined under a microscope.”

  “Let’s stick with the carpet fibers first,” he says. “Were you checking these against samplers taken from another source?”

  “Yes. Carpet fibers from the defendant’s county-assigned vehicle.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I looked first to determine if there were comparisons of color and diameter. I found that there were.”

  “What did you do then?” says Kline.

  “A more detailed examination,” says the witness, “for other morphological features.”

  “What do you mean, morphological?”

  “Form and structure,” says Stinegold. “In particular, I was looking for striations on the surface of the fibers or pitting with delustering particles. Principally titanium dioxide,” he says. “These are sometimes added in the manufacturing process with synthetics to reduce the amount of shine.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I observed the presence of similar delustering particles both on the carpet fibers from the defendant’s vehicle, and the fibers retrieved from the blanket used to wrap the victim’s body.”

  “You considered this to be a significant point of comparison?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I examined for color,” says Stinegold. “Color would be the most important differential.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because most colors are com
posed of a mixture of dyes to obtain a desired shade. Finding the same dye composition would be a significant marker. It would be a unique distinguishing characteristic,” says Stinegold.

  “And how would this be done?” says Kline.

  “With the use of a microspectrophotometer.” Stinegold has to spell it for the court reporter.

  “It’s a kind of microscope that compares colors of fibers through their spectral patterns. Without getting too technical, different fibers not only have different colors, but they emit differing light refractions, which can be measured with the proper equipment.”

  “And you did this?” says Kline.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “That the fibers found in the defendant’s vehicle, his county-assigned sedan, were identical in form, color, and composition to the fibers found on the blanket used to wrap the victim’s body.”

  Kline takes him through the specifics, that there are five different types of nylon used in such manufacture, one of these being what is known as “nylon 11.” In this case it is finished with a pigment that is ocean blue in color. These are two points of comparison—the type of nylon and a dye lot—that the witness says match the fibers on the blanket with those found in Acosta’s car.

  “In your professional opinion, would you consider such a comparison significant?” Kline tries to close the door.

  “Objection. Vague,” I say.

  “Sustained. Rephrase the question,” says Radovich.

  The issue here is how significant. Kline does a little circle in front of the stand, thinking before he rephrases.

  “If you examined those carpet fibers and compared them to another sample taken randomly from another carpet, in your professional opinion, would you expect to find a match similar to what you found here?”

  I raise the same objection, but this time Radovich overrules it.

  “No.”

  “If you compared it to ten other random samples would you expect a match?”

  “No.”

  “A hundred?”

  “Not likely.”

  “A thousand?” says Kline.

  “The type of nylon perhaps,” says Stinegold. “But the color pigment, particularly the dye lot, would set it apart. I would call it a more significant characteristic.”

  “Not responsive to the question,” I object.

  “Overruled.”

  “So in your opinion this is significant?”

  “Yes. Unique to that dye lot. The manufacturer seldom if ever mixes two dye lots resulting in precisely the same pigmentation.”

  “So that would be a unique characteristic of these fibers?”

  “I would say so. Yes.”

  Kline then turns his attention to the hair, which Stinegold identifies as animal in origin.

  He goes into some detail on the myriad of distinctions between human and animal hair, the color banding that is distinctive in animal hair, while human hair is uniform in color throughout the shaft.

  “The medulla at the center of the hair of a human is amorphous in appearance, seldom more than a third the width of the entire hair shaft,” says Stinegold, “whereas in animals it is much wider and can consume nearly all of the shaft. Also, the outer cuticular surface varies markedly between humans and animals, the difference being quite apparent.”

  “So there’s no question in your mind that the hairs collected from the surface of the blanket used to wrap the body of Brittany Hall were animal in origin?”

  “None whatever,” says Stinegold.

  “Could you determine what kind of animal?”

  “That was more difficult,” he says. “But through process of elimination I was ultimately able to determine that the hairs in question were equine.”

  It is clear from the looks in the box that the jury had suspected a dog or cat. Kline plays along with this and in feigned surprise gives the witness arched eyebrows, a silent question.

  “Horse hair,” says Stinegold in reply. “Probably sloughed off during shedding. There was a considerable amount of it.”

  “Do you have an opinion as to how this hair came to be deposited on the blanket?”

  “Probably a secondary transfer,” says Stinegold.

  Prodded by Kline, the witness explains.

  “In general terms, what this means is that the blanket itself did not come in contact with a horse. Instead it is likely that someone else got the hair on their clothing and either carried it to the blanket or perhaps to their residence, where it got on other things, furniture, bedding. The blanket could have become impregnated with the hair there, or it is even possible that the killer picked it up on his own clothing at that point, and by rubbing the blanket against his clothing while wrapping the body, may have left the hair on the surface of the blanket.”

  This is a necessary mechanism for the state to show since they now know that Acosta never went near the stable. That was Lili’s province. She is particularly concerned by this, and as the trail of the hair is developed, I can see her physically recoil in the row directly behind her husband, just beyond the railing. She gives me a look, a pained expression.

  “This is possible?” asks Kline. “This secondary transfer?”

  “Oh, yes. Hair of that kind, in the quantities that I’m talking about, when a horse is shedding, is extremely pervasive. You couldn’t help but to track it into your home. Even if you brushed yourself off carefully, I would think that I could find significant traces of it where you lived.”

  “Even if the person changed their clothing after riding or leaving the stables?” says Kline.

  “It’s possible,” says Stinegold. “It’s likely that they would carry some of it in their own hair, or on some rougher surfaces of the skin. It’s very difficult to get rid of.”

  “That leads us to the next question,” says Kline. “Did you in fact find traces of horse hair that matched the hair removed from the blanket used to wrap the body of Ms. Hall?”

  “I did.”

  “And where did you find these?”

  “Three locations,” he says. “In the apartment of the decedent, Brittany Hall. In the residence of the defendant, Armando Acosta. And from the trunk in the defendant’s county-assigned vehicle as well as the passenger compartment of that car.”

  Kline plays this for effect, a proper period of silence to accent the significance of this finding, before he anticipates our attack. He has Stinegold explain that the hair came from a stable frequented by the defendant’s wife, and that it was possible that it was picked up by the defendant on his clothes. He then concedes that hair is not one of those elements of physical evidence that is conclusive in its provenance. It is not like fingerprints, to be matched, in this case, to a specific horse.

  “Still,” says Kline, “based on your scientific knowledge and experience, were you able to form any conclusions regarding the hair found on the subject blanket, and that found in the defendant’s residence and his vehicle?”

  “In my professional opinion,” says Stinegold, “the specimens of hair taken from the blanket matched in all microscopic characteristics, color, texture, structural surfaces, and thickness the samples of hair combed from various items of furniture and carpeting at the defendant’s home and his vehicle.”

  “In your professional opinion were they the same?”

  “In my professional opinion they were,” says Stinegold.

  Hair and fibers may not be definitive elements like fingerprints, but at this moment it seems to produce a quantum shift of momentum in the jury box that is nearly palpable. It is something you gain from experience in a courtroom, the perception that if you are to survive, particular evidence demands a response.

  There are several things that are not helpful to the state regarding trace evidence,
and Kline has made the mistake of trying to ignore them, so on cross examination I start with these. The first is the metallurgy report.

  “Mr. Stinegold, did you not find microscopic scrapings of precious metal on the edge of the coffee table in Brittany Hall’s apartment, near the point where the victim’s head made impact?”

  “There were some,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you talk about these during your direct examination by Mr. Kline?”

  “I wasn’t asked,” he says.

  “Fine. Then perhaps I should ask now. Were these significant?” If he says “yes” it compounds his avoidance of the issue on direct, so Stinegold says, “No.”

  “The scrapings, in your opinion, weren’t significant?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “We examined them and determined that they were probably old, something that could have been deposited on the table months before the murder.” He spouts some garbage about the bloodstains being on top of the metal, which he quickly abandons when pressed.

  “Can you tell the jury what these scrapings were composed of?”

  “Traces of gold, twenty-four karat, with some alloys.”

  “Something from a piece of jewelry, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” he says.

  “But not significant?”

  “Not in my view,” he says.

  “Then perhaps you can explain to the jury why you examined every piece of gold jewelry belonging to my client?”

  “Just to be thorough,” he says.

  “Just to be thorough?” I ask.

  “Right.”

  “And in being thorough did you take microscopic scrapings of each piece of my client’s jewelry for comparison with the scrapings found on that table?”

  Stinegold nearly pouts. “What we could find.”

  “Move to strike as not responsive. Stinegold would have the jury believe that Acosta discarded the incriminating piece, when there is no evidence of this.”

  Radovich sustains my motion.

  “Did you or did you not take microscopic scrapings from each piece of my client’s jewelry for comparison with the scrapings found on that table?”