by Sydney Bauer
‘Nora,’ he went on, looking at his savvy personal secretary with a smile, ‘do you think you could ring Joe and see if he can find out what sort of security system the Logans have installed? It is bound to be linked to their telephone line so he might even be able to get the info from his telephony company.’
‘Of course, lad,’ said Nora, already on her feet and leaving the room.
‘I’m slipping her my card before I leave,’ said Barbara when Nora was out of earshot. ‘She ever gets tired of you lot, then I’ll employ her in a heartbeat.’
‘Not a chance,’ said David, stealing a glance at Arthur. And Arthur smiled.
‘Okay,’ said Sara, still pacing near the whiteboard and rubbing the small of her back as she moved. ‘What about the hat stand in the kitchen?’
‘No idea,’ said Barbara. ‘This one feels like the odd man out and could well mean nothing. Perhaps she is just missing her mother – and expressing how things would have to change now that she is gone.’
But Sara frowned. ‘I see what you mean, but she seemed to make such a point of it.’
‘We need to think on that one a little longer,’ said Arthur.
They all nodded.
‘Do you think she mentioned the necklace because she was angry that her father was giving Katherine de Castro a gift?’ continued Arthur after a beat.
‘No,’ said Sara. ‘There was no anger there. I actually get the sense Chelsea likes de Castro.’
‘I agree,’ said David. ‘Both kids seem comfortable in her company. She has been kind to them and I honestly don’t think de Castro has any idea what the hell her bastard business partner is up to.’
‘Do you think there is a chance that this de Castro and Logan could be romantically involved?’ asked Barbara.
David looked to Sara who was already shaking her head.
‘I just don’t see it,’ said Sara. ‘De Castro is kind of a loner and Logan is . . . well, he strikes me as the type who likes to possess a woman.’
‘But his late wife,’ countered Barbara, turning towards David. ‘You described her as a strong, independent woman. There are men who target “A” type personalities with the specific desire to quash their individuality. It is part of their MO. They actually get off on watching a strong, beautiful woman wither.’
David could feel the blood rising in his temples, realising that was exactly what had happened to his once free-spirited friend. He leaned across the coffee table, wanting, willing himself to see something that might give them a shred of evidence that what they were speculating on was true. He picked up the necklace receipt and studied it word for word, seeing nothing but the obvious until . . .
‘Well, I’ll be,’ he said at last.
‘What, David?’ asked Sara, moving around the coffee table to look over David’s shoulder. ‘What do you see?’
‘This was never about the necklace, Sara – but more about the receipt.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Barbara.
‘This record of purchase,’ said David, holding up the computer print-out in his hand. ‘It says Logan ordered this necklace and had it engraved over a week ago, or more specifically, three days before his wife’s murder.’
‘Then there is no way it was bought as a thank you gift,’ said Sara. ‘Unless he knew what was going to happen in advance.’
Arthur nodded. ‘It appears the man has a new target in his sights.’
‘My God,’ said Barbara. ‘This is worse than I thought.’
A little over an hour later they decided to call it a night, Barbara explaining her brain was fried and suggesting she take the night to go through J.T.’s interview tape before sharing her views on it in the morning. And despite his growing determination to unravel the intricate maze of deception Jeffrey Logan had constructed, David was grateful for the break.
‘I called Joe while you were in the shower,’ he said, after he and Sara had gotten home, heated up some leftovers for dinner and washed the day’s troubles from their skin. He shifted himself on their living room sofa, and lifted the back of her old college T-shirt so that he might rub some massage oil into her back.
‘Ouch!’ said Sara, arching at his touch.
‘Sorry,’ he said, shaking his head, feeling guilty for drawing her into this case in the first place. ‘You shouldn’t be working so late. You need to rest.’
‘Don’t start, David,’ she said, determined to dismiss him. ‘I’m fine. What did Joe say?’
David knew there was no point in arguing. ‘I briefed him on your conversation with Chelsea – and Barbara’s take on it all. I told him we’d be going over J.T.’s interview tomorrow.’
‘Any news on the gun guy?’
‘No. Joe called the Nevada DMV to do a check on the name Jason Nagle, and put the name through some federal and state crime lab computers, but came up blank.’
‘And the Logans’ alarm system?’ she asked.
‘Joe said he has seen alarms like the one Nora described before. He said he remembers something about them being used on a trial basis in some police community in Vermont – something about parolees and curfews and keeping inmates at home between certain hours and so forth.’
‘Will the telephony company have a record of it?’
‘Not necessarily, especially if Logan does the monitoring himself.’
Sara nodded, her shoulders shifting as she thought of the next question on her list. ‘Why doesn’t Joe just ring this Blackmore and put pressure on him to release Nagle’s details?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Because he doesn’t want Blackmore to tip off Nagle to our suspicions.’
‘But this Nagle could well have nothing to do with this case – bar the fact he may have sold his gun to Logan or . . . I mean, it is not like the guy knew what he was going to do with it.’
‘True, but if it is the same rifle, and this Blackmore keeps swearing to Rigotti that it is, we need to find out how it got registered under Stephanie’s name – and ended up in Massachusetts with a purchase permit that originated in Maine. Joe contacted the Bangor-based company again, by the way, and they are triple-checking their documentation in relation to the purchase.’
Sara nodded again. ‘Can Joe sit in on Barbara’s briefing tomorrow morning?’ she asked.
‘No, he says he is expecting Martinelli to front with the forensics report first thing,’ said David, referring to Boston PD’s Crime Lab Unit chief, Dan Martinelli.
‘God, I almost forgot,’ said Sara. ‘The analysis is due in tomorrow – along with the autopsy report and . . . this case is barely four days old and already I feel like we’ve been working on it for centuries.’
‘That’s because you’re overdoing it.’
‘No,’ Sara replied calmly. ‘It’s because Stephanie meant something to you and in a way this case started the day that you met her and she became your friend.’
David wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight, grateful for her willingness to understand.
‘You do know though, David,’ she said, twisting in his arms so that she might look him in the eye, ‘that this can’t go on forever.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean is . . .’ she hesitated, as if deciding how to word what she was about to say. ‘At some point, we are going to have to acknowledge that it was most likely J.T. who pulled that trigger.’
David had filled his workmates in on Joe’s information regarding the boy’s shoulder – but like Joe, they all agreed that it was not enough.
‘I am not saying that if he did shoot his mom that Logan didn’t put him up to it, but tomorrow’s reports will be damaging and we are going to have to come up with a defence that will give him his best chance to . . .’
David realised what she was trying to say, and as much as he did not want to hear it, he knew that she was right. Sooner or later they were going to have to weigh up the time it was already taking to try to lay blame on the father against the time they needed to prepare a dec
ent defence for his son. The forensics were indisputable and in the end they may be forced to forgo the wild goose chases so that they might prioritise J.T.’s chance at survival.
‘You think if we can’t nail Logan that we will be forced to go with self-defence?’ And he could tell by the look in Sara’s pale blue eyes that she understood how hard this was for him.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Logan is a very clever man, David, and if it comes to the point where we decide we don’t have what it takes to prove our suspicions, we are going to have to do whatever we can to reduce J.T.’s sentence – to get him some help.’
‘You’re saying we may need to concede that he was the victim of emotional abuse – and killed his mother out of . . .’
‘Fear . . . a need to escape,’ she finished for him. ‘Yes.’
‘And we would use Logan’s tape.’
‘I am sorry, David.’
He nodded.
‘It’s the last of our last resorts,’ she stressed, reaching up to place her hands on his face. ‘And I am sure that we can do this, David – that you can bring him down. But in the end you are going to have to decide what Stephanie would have wanted you to do. And, without having even met her, my best guess is, that’s to do whatever it takes . . . to save her son.’
30
Moments later, not more than two miles across town, an exhausted Tony Bishop was packing up for the night, contemplating the meeting with his ADA girlfriend tomorrow morning and what it might mean for everyone concerned. They had not made plans to see each other tonight which, under the circumstances, was probably for the best given they were in the middle of a ‘situation’ that could have huge implications for Tony in more ways than one.
He knew he had done the right thing by calling her, and after thinking of little else all afternoon, was relieved by the knowledge that, despite the fact that he could not discuss any of this with his good friend David Cavanaugh, in many ways the turn of events might eventually work in DC’s favour, given he had stopped representing the father and was currently acting on behalf of the son. And this, in the very least, eased Tony’s concerns somewhat, given David was the type of guy who never put his job before their friendship, a loyal mate who, no matter what, had always tried to . . .
But then the telephone rang, causing a contemplative Tony to jump, and wonder who the hell would be calling at a little after nine at night.
‘Bishop,’ said Tony.
‘Mr Bishop, my name is Doctor Jeffrey Logan.’
And in that moment Tony knew that this was not going to be so easy after all.
‘Do you have a moment?’ the doctor asked, his tone all matter-of-fact.
‘I . . . well . . .’
‘Good, because you see this is in regard to my two children – and I need your urgent advice.’
31
‘Twenty thousand dollars,’ said Detective Frank McKay, as he took a seat on the couch across from the desk in Lieutenant Joe Mannix’s glass-walled Boston Police Headquarters office. Joe’s office was bigger than most at the modern One Schroeder Plaza complex in Boston’s central Roxbury. The décor was lean and functional and consisted of one two-seater couch, two visitors’ chairs, a couple of gunmetal grey filing cabinets and a birch laminate desk which Joe often used to perch on whenever a visitor wandered into his ‘high traffic’ hub.
‘What?’ asked Mannix, not knowing where the hell this one was going.
‘Twenty thousand dollars, Chief,’ repeated Frank, who leaned towards the corner of Joe’s desk to hand his boss a coffee. ‘I heard on the news that was what someone was willing to pay for Gerry Cheevers’ mask.’
Gerry Cheevers, Boston Bruins, 1960s . . . Joe vaguely remembered the story about the hockey goalie’s mask – and the way he used to paint fake black stitches on it every time he got hit by a puck. His point was to show how effectively the record-making goalie had defended for his team, taking hit after hit before allowing a single shot to make it past his posts.
‘This going somewhere, Frank?’ asked Joe, knowing exactly what Frank was doing – retrieving some ridiculously obscure fact from his ‘encyclopedia of trivia’ mind so as to ease the anxiety and bide the time until the autopsy notes from the ME’s office and those all-important forensic and physical evidence reports from their own Crime Lab Unit finally came in.
Frank’s ponderings drove Joe crazy, but he also knew that at the basis of every odd anecdote and sweeping generalisation there was always a message, an understanding, an ounce of wisdom that, more often than not, Joe found strangely comforting.
‘That twenty grand,’ Joe went on. ‘Are you suggesting it is a bargain, or a rip-off or . . . ?’
‘Not sure, Chief,’ said Frank, and Joe wondered if there was a point to this one after all. ‘But they showed a picture of the mask – which Cheevers refuses to sell, by the way, given it has pride of place on his grandson’s bedroom wall – and by the time Cheevers retired it was covered in these stitches, see, like the puck had found every available place to smack one on his kisser.’
‘Then I guess he was lucky he wore that mask, Frank.’
‘Sure,’ said Frank, who was now dropping the fourth satchel of sugar into his extra milky coffee. ‘And even luckier that as an NHL goalie, the mask did not look crazy out of place.’
Joe nodded, thinking that he finally knew where this one might be going.
‘The thing is, Chief,’ Frank went on, ‘that unlike hockey goalies, for most people – people like Jeffrey Logan, say – the masks they wear cannot be so obvious. Oh, they’re there all right, covering their real faces which are scheming and plotting underneath the façade, but the good news is, because their masks are invisible they leave themselves vulnerable to . . .’
‘A potential smack in the kisser,’ finished Joe.
‘As long as someone is clever enough to find his mark.’
Joe nodded as they sat in silence for a while.
‘Think we can do that, Frank?’ Joe asked after a time.
‘I think the bastard is so arrogant that there’s a chance he won’t see us coming.’
‘Then I have tabs on the slapshot that nails him, Frank.’
‘Unless I smack the punk first.’
Seconds later, Joe saw Dan Martinelli enter from the far end of the room. Martinelli was the head of Boston PD’s Crime Lab Unit and one of the most respected forensics experts in the city. Joe knew for a fact that head-hunters for the FBI’s famous lab in Quantico had tried to poach him several times, but Martinelli was as loyal as he was talented, and for that, Joe was grateful.
‘Hey,’ said Joe, rising from his desk to greet the short, stocky Italian–American.
‘Chief,’ said Martinelli. ‘Frank,’ he added, as he entered the office proper and shook Frank’s hand. ‘Well, here it is,’ he said, holding up the report and cutting straight to the chase. ‘The detail is in the paperwork but if you want a quick run-down I’d be happy to . . .’
‘Please,’ said Joe, signalling for Martinelli to take a seat. ‘Tell us what you got?’
And the answer was – a lot. Martinelli started with the BPA or bloodstain pattern analysis.
‘All in all we studied three major types of bloodstains,’ Martinelli began. ‘Passive – meaning the blood that had dripped on the floor underneath the victim, transferred – referring to the stains incurred when one bloody surface came in contact with a secondary surface, and projected – referring to the bloodstains created when the victim was subjected to the force of the rifle’s ammunition.’
That was Martinelli, thought Joe, Mr Efficiency to a T.
‘DNA tests on the passive stains confirmed them as blood belonging to the victim – type O negative with stain patterns consistent with drainage from the open gunshot wound. Basically Ms Tyler’s entire blood volume – about four litres or so – exited the body via the nine-inch wide exit hole, which is not unusual given her mediastinum or central chest cavity, which carries all the major blood vessels, was
virtually destroyed by the path of the bullet.
‘Transferred stains were minimal, but we did find some on Doctor Jeffrey Logan’s shirt and upper trousers, indicating they were a result of contact with another item of fabric. The pattern suggests that some of the stains on the original fabric had not yet dried and as such were transferred onto the secondary fabric.’
‘The original fabric being J.T. Logan’s T-shirt,’ interrupted Frank.
‘Exactly,’ confirmed Martinelli. ‘At some point the father must have come in contact with the boy, perhaps grabbed him and pulled him from the room.’
Joe nodded, knowing Martinelli was confirming everything they originally assumed.
‘As for those projected stains . . .’ Martinelli took a breath as if this part of the report was the most difficult to communicate. ‘Obviously, given the nature of the weapon used, our analysis shows they were HVIS or high velocity impact spatter.’
Joe and Frank knew that, contrary to what the name suggested, low, medium and high impact spatter do not refer to the velocity of the blood droplets as they flew through the air, but to the amount of energy transferred onto the blood to create the stains. In other words, Martinelli was confirming that the myriad of stains across the kitchen behind Stephanie Logan and the lesser degree of spatter in front of her – on J.T.’s shirt, the kitchen table, chairs and so forth – were the result of an extremely fast and powerful force impacting on the victim, in this case a bullet travelling at 2650 feet per second and generating nearly 8100 foot-pounds of energy.
‘The stains behind the victim were extensive, the result of the “explosive” nature of the weaponry which produced a one-inch wound on entry and a nine-inch exit wound at the rear.
‘The spatter patterns in front of the victim were much smaller – around a millimetre in diameter, giving them that mist-like appearance,’ Martinelli went on. ‘They were mostly tear-shaped, which helped us determine the point of origin and angle of impact.’