“Your secret is safe.” She paused. “You don’t think…”
“What? The e-mailer?”
She nodded. Another e-mail had come in a couple of days earlier, more of the same. We had not heard back from Fronteratta yet.
“It crossed my mind,” I said. “We have exactly nothing to go on. Aren’t you glad you got to know me?”
“It’s the highlight of my life,” she said. “If you don’t count the Ice Capades.”
I nodded.
“About the e-mails,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about one of them. The one that said I was ‘not OK.’ ”
“With hell to pay.”
“Right. What if the OK doesn’t mean okay, but instead means Oklahoma?”
“I’ll call Sid and see what he thinks.”
“Cool.”
I smiled. “And I want your permission to do something.”
She folded her arms and waited.
I said, “If we ever catch up with this guy, I want to do a law of club and fang on him. Give me your blessing.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan. That’s not my law.”
“I have time to convince you.”
“Don’t try,” she said.
I didn’t. We leaned against my car until Father Bob picked us up. I had him drive us to Casa Medina on Sherman Way. There we feasted on chile rellenos and carnitas.
It was almost normal. Almost. Because normal is not a word that applies to you when you’re in trial.
As we were all about to find out.
99
THE NEXT MORNING, early, Fred was indeed friendly and tired me up. I had wheels in time to get downtown.
In court, Deputy Medical Examiner Lyle Schneuder took the stand.
He was in his late thirties, maybe older. Thin, gaunt in the face, with an oblong head and severely receding hairline. Would have made a good Ichabod Crane.
Radavich walked him through his quals. He’d been with the office for four years after leaving a medical practice in the East and a brief stint in a lab in Phoenix. He was therefore still on the “way up” as far as being an expert witness.
Which was going to be my opportunity. The key to being a good expert wit is being able to hang your ego on a hook outside the courtroom door. And then be able to communicate in layman’s terms so the jury can understand.
Some experts try hard to show that they know more than anybody and speak a language only they can understand. And that they have stepped down off of Mount Olympus to put us poor mortals straight.
Experts want to make a name for themselves, because they get paid to testify and can start showing up on TV when high-profile cases hit the news.
It seemed to me that Schneuder was this kind of expert.
Radavich asked, “Now, Doctor, please summarize for the jury the condition of the victim at the time of death with regard to alcohol.”
“The victim had a blood alcohol content between .08 and .09 at the time of the autopsy.”
“And what do you conclude about the victim’s condition at time of death?”
“Calculations relating to retrograde extrapolation lead me to conclude that his blood alcohol content at the time of death was somewhere around .18.”
“And .18 in layman’s terms means very drunk, does it not?”
“Oh, yes. You would have been definitely out of it, to use layman’s terms.” Schneuder smiled at the jury, but none of them smiled back.
“Would you say, in your opinion, that in his condition he was more or less likely to be able to struggle with an intruder?”
I objected, saying this was pure speculation, and there was no foundation for rendering an opinion, as the good doctor did not know anything about Carl or his capacity to hold drink. The judge overruled me and the questioning went on.
“I would say,” Schneuder opined, “that he would have been susceptible to being manipulated. Especially if he trusted whoever did the manipulation.”
“Turning now to the finding of gunshot residue on the back of the victim’s right hand, tell us what you found.”
“We found antimony, which is an element in the primer mix of gunpowder. But there was something very strange about this.”
“And what was that?”
“Rather than stippling, which is the normal pattern, this gunshot residue appeared to be wiped on the back of the hand.”
“What led you to that conclusion?”
“When I looked closely at the pattern, there were streaks rather than spots, in several of the areas of the hand that I examined.”
“And the victim, being dead, could not have done that to himself, correct?”
“In my experience, dead people cannot do much of anything for themselves.” He smiled again at the jury. The jury looked back at him with stone faces. I was glad about this. They didn’t much like him.
No doubt sensing this, Radavich sat down.
I got up.
100
“GOOD MORNING, DOCTOR,” I said.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Is alcohol a stimulant or a depressant?”
“It’s a depressant, of course.”
“Meaning that people who are drunk get depressed, right?”
“Not all the time.”
“A good deal of the time, wouldn’t you say?”
“That all depends on what you mean by a good deal of the time.”
“More than half?”
“I suppose.”
“Suppose?” I said. “You mean you don’t have an opinion about that?”
Little flickers of annoyance skipped out of Schneuder’s eyes. “I would say yes. Most of the time. But sometimes people get happy when they drink. It depends on the person.”
“You would have to know about that person, his history and so forth, correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you know anything about the history of the victim, Carl Richess, in this case?”
“I was not provided that information.”
“So your answer is no?”
“I was not provided that information. That’s my answer.”
“So you don’t know what the effect of so much alcohol was on the victim, do you?”
“As I say, I couldn’t know that.”
“In fact, Carl Richess could have been severely depressed, could he not?”
“It’s possible.”
“Indeed, it’s likely, isn’t it? Based upon your agreement with me that in most cases alcohol operates as a depressant?”
“I can’t say one way or the other.”
Perfect. When an expert equivocates that way, he undercuts his credibility with the jury. So I shrugged at him, leaving a little nonverbal jab in the air.
“Let’s talk about this smear theory of yours,” I said. I dragged out the words so it was moistened with disdain. Whenever the jurors thought of smear theory, I wanted them to hear my voice. “It is your theory, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“By the way, what texts are you relying upon for the smear theory?”
“This is a theory I have reached on my own.”
“You mean you haven’t done any experiments, and published your results in a peer-reviewed journal?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you have pulled the smear theory out of thin air?”
“Of course not. It is based on my training and experience.”
“But without reliance on any text or journal, or special training, correct?”
“Of course I am familiar with Friedman and Lyle. I believe that would back me up in this.”
“What edition would that be?”
“I think it’s the fourth edition.”
“You think or you know?”
“I would have to check. But it’s the latest edition. I get it every time it is updated. It’s the standard work in the field.”
“May I have a moment, Your Honor?”
“Yes,” Hughes said.
I went over to the co
unsel table and whispered to Sister Mary, “Take a walk to the County Law Library and see if they have a copy of this Friedman and Lyle book.” I took out my wallet and gave her my Bar card.
It must have looked like I was giving her cash to go buy lunch.
Sister Mary got up and walked out of the courtroom. Whenever a nun walks out of a courtroom, or into one for that matter, people stop and watch.
When the doors closed, I returned to the witness.
“Dr. Schneuder, when Mr. Radavich was going over your CV with you, he mentioned that you spent two years in a private crime lab in Phoenix, is that right?”
“Correct.”
“And that you left to come work for Los Angeles County?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you make at the lab in Phoenix?”
“Objection,” Radavich said. “Relevance.”
“Give me a couple of questions, Your Honor. It goes to credibility.”
“Make it fast, Mr. Buchanan,” said the judge.
“How much?” I asked Schneuder.
“A little over one hundred thousand, the last year.”
“What about now? What’s your salary?”
“Less than that.” He smiled.
“How much less?”
“I make a little over sixty thousand.”
“Quite a pay cut. Did something happen back in Phoenix we need to know about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did you get canned? Excuse me—fired?”
“No.”
“Contract not renewed?”
“We reached a mutual agreement. I wanted to come out to Los Angeles, and work with the best.”
“That was your sole motivation?”
“Of course.”
“Isn’t it true that the L.A. County crime labs are horribly underfunded, compared to private outfits?”
“There are some budgetary restraints.”
“Which means our labs, as earnest as they are, are not the best.”
“I think they’re quality,” Schneuder said.
I looked at the clock. “Your Honor, if we could take our lunch break a little early, I think I can finish up with this witness in another hour.”
“Any objection, Mr. Radavich?” said Hughes.
“No objection.”
“Then we’ll come back here at two o’clock.”
He admonished the jury not to talk, yadda yadda, and we were off.
101
I DECIDED TO splurge with Sister Mary again, and took her to Subway for lunch.
Over our BMTs and chips we looked at the fifth edition of Friedman and Lyle, Forensic Detection, scanning the index for anything related to smearing gunshot residue. That was a little tough, considering all the academic verbiage we had to go through.
We took turns. One looked while the other ate, then back again.
I found a section on potential compromises to residue evidence, but nothing about intentional planting or smearing.
“You going to call him on it?” Sister Mary said.
“It’s tricky,” I said. “Most experts know enough about the material to dodge and weave. But I may give it a whirl. The jury could be impressed with my research.”
“Your research? Who walked to the library?”
“Okay, our research,” I said. “Speaking of which, have you been watching the jury?”
She nodded as she took a bite of her sub. She put a finger in the air to indicate a pause, chewed. Then said, “Number seven has been taking a lot of notes.”
Number seven was a retired pipe fitter from Baldwin Park.
“I think he’s pulling for us,” I said. “One working stiff to another.”
“And, I might add, number three seems rather smitten with you.”
That would be the elementary school teacher from Los Feliz. Single. Blond.
“I can’t turn off my natural charm,” I said. “It just seeps out.”
“I’m tempted to say, try to put a cork in it. Shouldn’t this be about the facts, and the truth?”
“My naïve little friend, every trial lawyer in the world wants to charm the jury. You need every advantage you can get. You need to build up even the little things. It’s called the art of persuasion. You remember your Greek rhetoric, don’t you?”
“I must have missed that class.”
“Ethos, pathos, and logos,” I said.
“Weren’t they the Three Musketeers?” she said.
“Character, feeling, and reason,” I said. “All three are needed for persuasion.”
“I’m not persuaded.”
“Just keep hanging with me, and you will be.”
I smiled, but as I did she looked away. I thought there was a moment of sadness in her face then. I didn’t say anything about it.
She turned back. “One more thing. I did a little Googling while I was waiting for the book. I Googled Schneuder.”
“And I know how painful that can be.”
She ignored me. “There wasn’t a whole lot on him, but I did find something interesting. An article in one of those free weeklies, out of Phoenix. He was mentioned in a story about a local writer who wants to re-open the Robert Blake case. So I Googled the writer. His name’s Troy Cameron.”
“Sounds like some beefcake from the fifties. Tab Hunter. Dash Riprock.”
“He seems to be a Phoenix gadfly. Always in the face of the local politicians. But he apparently has a true-crime book to his credit. Might be self-published.”
“Troy Cameron, huh?”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“Maybe make our boy sweat a little,” I said. “Let’s try.”
102
BACK IN COURT at two, I faced Schneuder. “Doctor, when we left off you had mentioned reliance on a text by Friedman and Lyle. That would be Forensic Detection, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Fourth edition, I believe you said.”
“That’s right.”
I went to the counsel table. Sister Mary handed me the book. I took it and placed it on the rail of the witness stand. “Showing you now a book, Dr. Schneuder. Can you read the title for us?”
“Forensic Detection.”
“What edition?”
He looked a little closer. “Fifth.”
“That would be the most up-to-date version, would it not?”
“I believe so.” His eyes flashed.
“The one you said you referred to was the fourth, wasn’t it?”
“I might have been mistaken.”
“Your whole testimony might be mistaken.”
Radavich said, “Objection.”
“Sustained. Next question, Mr. Buchanan.”
“Why don’t you find the section in the book that backs up the smear theory,” I said.
He blinked once, but I thought it was audible. Clack.
“That would take awhile,” he said. “I mean, I’d have to research it a little.”
My point was made. I took the book. “I’ll withdraw the request at this time,” I said. “Let me ask if you know Troy Cameron.”
Schneuder’s Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times. “I know him, yes.”
“He’s a writer of some kind, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Now was time to take a stab. “Isn’t it true that you’re writing a book with him?”
Schneuder said, “There’s no law against that.”
Defensive. This was great. “And that book is about the Robert Blake murder trial, isn’t it?”
“I’d rather not say…”
Better still.
“… because it’s still in the writing stage.”
“It might have been nice for the jury to know this before you started your testimony,” I said.
Objection. Sustained.
I left it at that. In cross, you don’t want to ask one question too many, giving the wit a chance to eel out of a corner. I’d caught the doc hiding a little factoid about his book-
writing career, which confirmed my theory that he was a celebrity wannabe. The jurors wouldn’t like that. They want experts to be objective and up front.
103
RADAVICH WANTED SOME questions on re-direct.
“Did you find any fingerprints on the gun, People’s Exhibit Six?”
“We did find the victim’s prints on the butt and barrel of the gun, yes.”
“Was there anything strange about that?”
“Not really. But there was something strange about the print on the trigger.”
“Explain that, please.”
“Well, it was smudged, but we did manage to indentify it as a partial. It matched the victim’s right index finger, between the first and second joints.”
“In other words, you’re not talking about the pad of the finger, what we normally associate with fingerprinting.”
“That’s right. This was the area between the first and second joints, where one would come in contact with the trigger when firing a gun.”
“And what did you find strange about that?”
“It’s simple. If someone places the barrel of a gun in the mouth, the trigger would be pushed with the thumb, not pulled with the finger.”
“No more questions.”
“Re-cross?” Judge Hughes said.
This was not good for me, and there was nothing I could say to make it good, so I said, “No further questions,” and tried to look like Phil Ivey holding aces. No expression one way or the other.
Radavich put on a couple of witnesses—guys who testified about overhearing Eric and Carl having a heated argument in a bar the night before the killing. They did not testify about the content of the argument, so my cross was only one question to each: “You do not know what this alleged argument was about, do you?”
No and no.
104
ALL IN ALL, it hadn’t been a bad day in court, and I was feeling guilty about Subway.
So I insisted on taking Sister Mary to dinner at Little Luigi’s, an Italian place the legal community frequents, a short drive from the courthouse. When I was with Gunther, McDonough I used to go there whenever I had a matter downtown.
So it wasn’t a surprise to be greeted at the front by Luigi himself, a well-girthed, old-school Sicilian.
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