Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  ‘Objection. At this point we have only a dead body – no evidence of murder.’

  ‘Sustained. The reporter will strike the last part of the witness’s answer.’

  ‘Lieutenant, could you rephrase your last response?’

  ‘We think the bottles were busted when the perpetrator panicked.’ He spits the p’s of each word at me.

  ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘the bath towel was on the floor nice and neat, not disturbed or anything like it would have been if there’d been a fight.’ He looks at me like that’ll teach you to object.

  A cold and calculated shot from a distance is better for their case. It offers the jury some hint of premeditation and deliberation.

  ‘And there was no evidence that the body was moved after the shooting?’

  Shameless leading, but I let it go. Lama might put the shooter in another building with a scoped-sight if I push it.

  ‘That’s right. From what we could see, she was shot while lying in the tub.’

  ‘Did you find any fingerprints?’

  ‘No. That was real curious,’ he says.

  ‘Why do you say “curious”?’

  ‘’Cuz we dusted real good. And there were places you would expect to find some prints, especially for the victim.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  He shakes his head, lips turned down, an expression from the Old World. ‘We didn’t even find prints for the victim on the door to the bathroom or on the front of the tub. You’d expect porcelain would hold good prints,’ he says. ‘And how’s the lady going to get down into the tub without at least touching the outside edge?’ Jimmy looks at Cassidy like this is a riddle, playing it like high drama.

  ‘And what did you conclude from this?’

  ‘That the perpetrator.’ He looks at me. ‘That the perpetrator wiped the surfaces clean after he or she,’ he says, ‘shot the victim.’

  ‘To avoid detection?’ she says.

  ‘Sure. Why else?’

  ‘In your search of the scene did you find the murder weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No gun.’

  ‘Did you search the entire house?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And the area outside?’

  ‘Everything. Real thorough.’

  ‘And you found no murder weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you have occasion to talk to the victim’s husband, Mr. Vega, at the scene?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And did you ask him if there was a gun in the house? If he or his wife owned one?’

  ‘I did. And I was told that neither he nor his wife had ever owned a gun.’

  ‘What did you conclude from this?’

  ‘That whoever shot Mrs. Vega brought the weapon into the house and left with it when they were finished.’

  ‘So they came prepared to kill?’ she says.

  ‘Objection.’

  ‘Withdrawn,’ she says.

  Morgan looks at me a wan smile, like sure, just try to unring it.

  ‘Did you find anything else in the bathroom that morning?’

  ‘Yes. We found a single spent bullet cartridge, nine-millimeter.’

  Cassidy walks to the evidence cart, studies it for a second, and picks a single plastic bag off the cart.

  ‘May I approach, your honor?’

  Woodruff nods.

  ‘Lieutenant, I would ask you to look at the bullet cartridge in this envelope and ask if you can identify it.’

  He studies it for a second, looks at the notations on the label stuck on the bag. A nine-millimeter looks like any other.

  ‘That’s it. That’s the cartridge we found in the bathroom. That’s my mark on the evidence bag,’ he says.

  ‘And you bagged this yourself.’

  ‘One of the evidence techs,’ he says. ‘Under my direct supervision. But I marked the bag – there.’ He points with a thumbnail.

  ‘I would ask that this bullet be marked as People’s Exhibit One,’ says Cassidy.

  ‘Any objection?’ The judge looks at me.

  ‘No, your honor.’

  ‘Did you find anything else at the scene?’

  ‘Some fibers,’ he says.

  Cassidy’s back to the cart. She returns a second later, handing him another bag.

  ‘Those are the fibers. We found them on the floor near the base of the tub. Again I marked the bag to identify it,’ says Lama.

  This, the fiber evidence, is something new that they have developed, though from reading the lab report I think they are reaching.

  Cassidy has this marked for identification without objections. All the little pieces of her case. If she can build on them and show some incriminating link, some relevance connecting these pieces to the defendant and the crime, Cassidy will at the appropriate time try to move them into evidence, like a carefully thought-out chess match, each move calculated for effect.

  ‘Apart from the cartridge and the fibers already identified, did you find anything else that morning?’

  ‘We took into possession a copy of a videotape from a security camera situated on the front porch of the residence.’

  Cassidy retrieves a videocassette from the cart and approaches the witness. He identifies it from an evidence tag.

  ‘Detective, have you looked at the contents of this tape?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And can you tell the court what you saw?’

  ‘The tape is calibrated as to date and time, with those elements showing on the top right-hand corner of the picture as it appears on a videoscreen. The tape in question is a special slow-playing tape that lasts up to twelve hours. It’s not like the commercial stuff you use at home,’ he says. ‘So there’s a lotta stuff on it.’

  He verifies that the tape is dated the day Melanie Vega was killed, but that it stopped for reasons that he does not explain before the time of death.

  ‘We’re not interested in everything,’ says Cassidy. ‘Just the pertinent parts.’ What she means is anything that she can use to hang Laurel. ‘Can you tell the court what you saw on the tape?’

  ‘I’m going to object.’ I’m on my feet. ‘The best evidence is the tape itself. Why do we need the witness to characterize it?’

  ‘Your honor, we need to lay a foundation,’ says Cassidy.

  In order to put an item into evidence, it is necessary to lay a proper foundation. In the case of a physical object, this generally means some showing that it is relevant to the issues in dispute in the case. The tape would ordinarily be viewed by the jury at the time that it is admitted into evidence. It is my point that with regard to the tape Morgan has already laid a foundation.

  ‘For that purpose,’ says Woodruff, ‘I’ll give a little latitude. Do it quickly.’

  ‘Lieutenant, if you could just summarize what’s on the tape.’

  ‘Yes. At eight-seventeen P.M., on the night Melanie Vega was killed, a woman appears on the tape at the door of the victim’s residence.’

  ‘Can you identify that woman?’

  ‘It was the defendant – Laurel Vega.’

  With this Lama points at Laurel, sitting next to me. It takes him a second to point straight. That this is out of cadence with his words makes clear that this gesture was planted, something conceived in the mind of Cassidy or one of her assistants as a moment of drama, and badly played by Jimmy.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Is there any kind of soundtrack on the tape?’

  ‘Unfortunately no,’ he says.

  ‘Could you tell what the defendant was doing?’

  ‘There was a long and very heated argument–’

  ‘Objection.’

  ‘I don’t want to be hearing about any arguments on the tape,’ says Woodruff.

  I move to strike the witness’s answer, and Woodruff orders it.

  ‘How long did this conversation between the victim and defendant go on?’
/>
  Lama looks at his notes. ‘Four minutes and thirty-three seconds,’ he says.

  ‘And how did it conclude?’

  ‘The defendant smashed the videocamera with a flowerpot before–’

  ‘Objection, your honor.’

  Woodruff looks like he’s been shot with a cattle prod on the bench. Brushy eyebrows, all aimed at Cassidy.

  ‘That’s all. I don’t want to hear another word about the tape,’ he says. ‘You want it marked?’ Woodruff looks at her. Cassidy’s not winning any points with the judge. If we are lucky, we can bank these little moments of enmity toward the opposition, a credit to draw on in a tight moment on a motion or some future fray with Cassidy and her troops.

  The clerk does the deed, marking the tape as one of the People’s exhibits. Morgan looks at her notes. She’s covered all the critical points with the witness and is starting to reach into areas that are drawing my objections and Woodruff’s aggravation.

  ‘That’s all for this witness,’ she says.

  ‘Cross?’ says Woodruff.

  I stand and approach the witness box, maintaining an appropriate distance, Lama and I locking eyes, a little bit of moisture, pimples of sweat on his upper lip.

  ‘Lieutenant Lama. Is it fair to characterize you as part of the prosecutorial team in this case?’

  ‘I’m a police officer, nothing more, nothing less.’

  Lama is a lot less, but I won’t belabor the point here.

  ‘Isn’t it true that on this case you’re working with the deputy district attorney over there, Ms. Cassidy?’

  ‘That’s my job,’ he says.

  ‘So you’re part of her team?’

  ‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve talked to her about this case – I mean outside the courtroom. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve shared whatever information you have pertaining to this case with her? You’ve discussed the testimony that you planned to give here today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In fact, isn’t it true that in preparing to testify here today you’ve gone over your testimony with her in some detail? In fact rehearsed it?’

  ‘We talked about it.’

  ‘How many times?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Two, three?’ I play the numbers game.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘That many?’ I say.

  He gives me a look.

  ‘Isn’t it true that in preparing to appear here today you rehearsed your testimony with Ms. Cassidy, that you went over it in considerable detail a number of times to ensure that you would get it right?’

  Ordinarily I might not press this. But given Jimmy’s slamming in pretrial motions, it’s a safe bet that Morgan has had Lama closeted with one of the drones from her office for days, more dress rehearsals than a Broadway production.

  ‘We talked a few times.’ It’s all he will say.

  ‘You didn’t talk to us, did you?’

  ‘Whadda ya mean?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t sit down and talk to the defense attorneys – Mr. Hinds and myself – and tell us precisely what you were going to say here today, did you?’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ he says.

  ‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘Because it’s your job to convict the defendant, isn’t it?’

  I’m busy destroying the myth that cops are neutral, simple crime fighters with no ax to grind. The police mind-set in any investigation usually fixes quicker than mercury. Show them a suspect, sometimes with scant evidence, and they point with the relentless force of a compass to a magnet.

  ‘It’s my job to solve crimes,’ he says.

  Cape-and-blue-tights time. Lama as the masked avenger.

  ‘Oh – so you have no interest in convicting this defendant?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, you didn’t, did you?’

  I let the jury savor the point for a moment.

  ‘Can you tell us, Mr. Lama’ – somewhere along the way Jimmy’s lost his rank. Why cloak him with authority? – ‘was there an all-points bulletin issued for the arrest of a suspect on the night that Melanie Vega died?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who issued that APB?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And who was it issued for?’

  ‘Your client,’ he says. ‘Laurel Vega.’ Having screwed up so badly on the first effort, this time Jimmy doesn’t try to point, but merely gestures with his head in the casual direction of our table.

  ‘So you determined fairly early on that Laurel Vega was the principal suspect in the case?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How many years of experience do you have investigating crimes?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘And I guess after all that time you get a pretty good feel for this kind of thing? How to exercise judgment as to when to issue an APB? When to pick up a suspect?’

  ‘Lots of things come with experience,’ he says.

  ‘And this APB – did it identify the suspect as possibly armed and dangerous?’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘This means that police in apprehending the suspect would probably do so with drawn weapons?’

  ‘If they valued their lives,’ he says.

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because she was dangerous.’

  ‘And how did you form all of these opinions so quickly that evening? The opinion that Laurel Vega was the principal suspect and that she was armed and dangerous?’

  ‘The victim had been shot. We didn’t find the gun. We had to figure she had it on her.’

  ‘Very good, Mr. Lama. But how did you determine that Laurel Vega was the principal suspect?’

  ‘Well – we had the tape. The security tape,’ he says.

  ‘Oh. You were able to play the tape back that morning at the scene to review it?’

  I flip through some pages in my hand, a copy of the police report from that night.

  Lama suddenly becomes clairvoyant, sensing where I am headed, eyes like a rabid dog.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he says, ‘we didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘We didn’t view the tape that morning.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘The camera was broken,’ he says.

  ‘And without a functioning camera for this particular equipment, you couldn’t actually play the tape back, could you?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘We couldn’t.’

  I know this from reading the follow-up investigative reports. The cops weren’t able to review the security tape from the house for nearly five hours, until a vendor for the system supplied them with the necessary equipment. By that time the APB had been in effect for nearly four hours.

  ‘So you didn’t have the tape at the time the APB was issued. So what evidence did you rely on in issuing the bulletin for the arrest of Laurel Vega, the information that she was armed and dangerous?’

  ‘Well … her husband,’ he says.

  ‘You mean Jack Vega? Laurel Vega’s former husband?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And what did Mr. Vega tell you that caused you to issue the bulletin to arrest Laurel Vega?’

  ‘We asked him if he knew of anyone who might have wanted to kill his wife.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He gave us the name of Laurel Vega.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well … and some other things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘That Laurel Vega hated the victim. That she was jealous. You know,’ he says, ‘the stuff you expect in a divorce.’

  ‘Just the usual stuff?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

  ‘And did Mr. Vega tell you that he actually saw Laurel Vega commit this crime?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t home at the time.’

  ‘Well, did Mr. Vega tell you that he’d seen
Laurel Vega at his home that night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what we have here is Mr. Vega’s bald allegation, without any evidence to support it, that Laurel Vega hated his wife. Certainly enough to talk to the defendant. To question her,’ I say. ‘So the evidence for her arrest must have come when you went to question her?’ I say.

  ‘No.’ He says this through locked jaws, all the sound emanating down onto his chest.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No.’ Louder so the jury can hear it now.

  ‘I don’t understand, then. What evidence did you have for arresting Laurel Vega?’

  ‘We had a dead body,’ he says.

  I look at him, dead center in the box. ‘Are you telling this court that except for the unsupported suspicions of Jack Vega – bald allegations without any evidence – that you had no basis to issue the all-points bulletin that morning?’

  ‘She had a rug that came from the scene,’ he says.

  ‘She had a rug that you now claim came from the scene, but you didn’t even know that at the time of the APB.’

  He would jump on the horse of the eyewitness, Mrs. Miller, but that is now excluded evidence. If he mentions it, opens his mouth, any hint, I will have a mistrial in the flash of an eye.

  ‘We found a compact in her purse that belonged to the victim. Hell, she was in Reno, running from the scene, when they found her.’

  ‘After you arrested her,’ I tell him. ‘You found the compact days after you issued the all-points bulletin calling my client armed and dangerous, subjecting her to arrest at the point of loaded pistols. And you had no idea where she was when you issued the APB – did you?’

  ‘At the time she was our best suspect,’ he says. Righteous indignation on the stand.

  ‘To this day she remains your only suspect because you haven’t bothered to look for any others. Isn’t that true?’

  He looks at me, a tortured expression. Lama would like to answer but doesn’t know what to say. If he concedes the point, he’s damned; if he says this is not true, I will ask him what other suspects he’s pursued, what other leads he’s rooted out of the swill of his investigation. We both know the answer to that one.

  ‘All of the evidence points to your client,’ he says.

  ‘All of the evidence that you’ve produced,’ I tell him, ‘because you haven’t bothered to look for any evidence that would exonerate her, that might point to the real killer. Isn’t that true?’