by Lis Wiehl
“With all those bruises I can see why he might want to depart this life, but naked suicide is pretty unusual, especially in water. Sometimes people who have decided to kill themselves get naked because they don’t want to make a mess, but that’s usually when they’re using a gun or maybe a knife. Not the ocean. They’ll strip and get in a tub or shower with a weapon, but that’s just to contain the blood and such. I guess it’s possible he was worried his clothes would add buoyancy and interfere with him drowning.”
“And it’s hard to imagine this was any kind of an accident,” Charlie said. “Who’s going to go swimming naked this time of year?” He pulled up his coat collar and tried to turn his back to the wind.
Doug didn’t say anything, just nodded. He was still crouched down, lightly running his gloved hand back and forth over the man’s ribs. Charlie guessed he was checking for broken bones. Then he reached out to the thick dark hair, brushed it off the face. Charlie wished he hadn’t. The eyes were mostly gone, as were some bits of flesh.
“Do you think he was dead before he ended up in the water?”
Doug shrugged as he straightened up. “Probably. When I open him up, I’ll look for water in the lungs. Then we’ll know if it was a body dump or if it was the water that killed him.” He stopped, his gaze riveted on something. He lifted one of the dead man’s shoulders. “I think we just found our answer.”
Charlie saw what Doug had spotted: the small, perfectly round hole in the man’s upper back.
Charlie glanced from the wound to the hairless chest. As far as he could see, it was intact. “Where’s the exit wound?”
Doug bent closer. “I think we’re in luck, my friend. I think the bullet is still in there.” He squinted at the wound. “And I don’t see any muzzle print or laceration.”
“So he wasn’t shot at point-blank range?” Charlie had been wondering if they were looking at an execution.
“There’s no stippling, but that doesn’t mean much if he was originally wearing clothes.” Stippling, or gunshot residue, occurred when power particles bruised or burned the victim’s skin if the weapon had been discharged in close proximity. “But in my experience, people who are shot in the back are generally running away.”
But why? A payback? Maybe a lover’s quarrel? Or could the dead guy have been a kidnap victim? Was he a foreign national?
In his head, Charlie started making a to-do list. Get a dive team out in case the victim had been dumped in the water at this location and there was evidence on the floor of the Sound. Check missing person reports. Check with Harbor Patrol and the nearby marina to see if they had any reports of altercations in the past week or so. Check the shoreline in case the guy’s clothes or any other evidence turned up. Check parked cars to see if any had been in the same place for a week or more.
Doug sat back on his heels. “I think the clothes are gone to make it harder to figure out who he is. Or maybe they were worried about trace evidence. They could have been thinking of the Sound as a gigantic bathtub. That by the time someone found him, he would be washed clean.”
His gaze sharpened. “What’s that?” He picked up a limp hand by a couple of fingers. Three angry parallel lines braceleted the inside of the man’s right wrist. “Those look like burn marks.”
“So they hit him and then they held him down and burned him? They must have really wanted to know something.”
“I’ve seen marks like those before.” Doug blew air out of pursed lips. “Just can’t think of where.”
Maybe it was some kind of gang thing. Or a drug deal gone bad. Had the victim kept something he wasn’t supposed to keep and his killers had forced him to tell where it was?
What had the man’s killers wanted, Charlie wondered. And had they gotten it?
CHAPTER 13
Is there anything else you feel I should know about you?” the red-haired woman asked the young man seated in the back left-hand corner of the jury box. He was wearing a faded green flannel shirt that was probably older than either of them.
“There is one thing, yes.” For a second he pressed his lips together. “I am dying of cancer, so I might not be here for the whole trial.”
The eyes of the pretend lawyer as well as the other pretend jurors widened.
“Very good, Samantha,” Mia said. As Titus had the night before, she had given each of her students playing jurors an interesting fact to see if their classmates playing lawyers could suss them out during voir dire. “That question you asked is a great example of what some people call an oyster question. It’s called that because you have to shuck a bunch of oysters before you find a pearl, but when you do, it’s worth it. Some other oyster questions I like are, ‘Is there any other reason why you might not be a totally fair and impartial juror in a case like this?’ or ‘Is anyone thinking, “You know, if the lawyer had only asked me this question, he really would have found out something important about me”?’ ”
As the students scribbled down her examples or typed them into their laptops, Mia tried to think back to the questions she had asked the potential jurors for Dandan’s case. Was there anything she could have asked that would have revealed Warren’s true nature? She was sure he was the holdout. The only question was, which way was the rest of the jury lined up? Was it possible Warren had voted to convict and the rest of them had wanted to let Leacham go free?
Mia realized the students were waiting for her to continue speaking. Between worrying about the trial and her dad’s new friend, she was too easily distracted. She collected herself.
“I actually once got that answer Lincoln just gave from a prospective juror. Some of the other ones I’ve heard are, ‘I was once accused of murder and acquitted,’ and ‘A cop beat me up when I was in college and now I don’t believe any of them.’ And my personal favorite has to be, ‘We went out once in high school but you don’t remember me.’ ”
Everyone laughed. Mia joined in, a little painfully. At the time it had been humiliating, casting her in an unflattering light. She had gone on to lose that case, and part of her had always wondered if the jurors were punishing her.
“One way to encourage the jury to be honest is, if you can, to reveal something about yourself before you ask anyone else to. During my first trial I was so scared that my legs were actually shaking during voir dire. So I didn’t try to hide it. In fact, I told the jury pool something like, ‘I have to confess that my knees are knocking because this is my first trial. But it is important that justice be done. I promise to deliver the evidence if you promise to listen to it.’ ” She let the more pleasant memory push aside the old one. “And you know what? We won!”
Lincoln, the student who had pretended to have cancer, raised his hand. “So how often do people lie to you?”
Maybe Mia was getting jaded, because there were days she thought everyone lied, at least to a degree. “I think it’s pretty common. If people hold views they realize are not as popular, they’ll often minimize them, if not outright lie. And you can all probably guess that potential jurors will also lie to get off a jury. They’ll claim financial hardships or vacation plans that don’t really exist. There are even times when people will lie to get on a case, especially if it’s high profile. Take the Scott Peterson case, the one where the guy killed his pregnant wife and then stood in front of the TV cameras and begged for her safe return. Later, his attorney claimed that three people lied to get on that jury so they could try to turn their experiences into a book or at least media exposure. There are even times when people will try to get on the jury if they don’t like the law. Before pot was legalized here, we used to see that all the time with marijuana cases. Some jurors would vote ‘not guilty’ even if they believed the person had smoked pot, simply because they didn’t like the law.”
Her thoughts snagged on the idea. Could Warren have angled to get on the jury because he didn’t believe in the death penalty? But he had seemed equally checked out for both hers and Wheeler’s arguments.
“So what do y
ou do to make sure jurors are telling the truth?” another student asked.
Mia blew air out of pursed lips. “It’s a balancing act. You’ve got to dig for the truth, but at the same time you have to be careful not to get to the point where you offend or embarrass people. Remember that some of your challenges for cause will be denied, and those folks could end up on the jury. Even if they don’t, the other jurors are watching—and judging you. One way to help is to remember what Mr. Brown said last night. Ask lots of open-ended questions and don’t jump in too quickly after they answer. Sometimes they’ll add something that’s very revealing. But at the end of the day, you might just have to go with your gut.”
What had her gut told her about Warren? Nothing too bad. Compared to the people she had used up her preemptory challenges on, he hadn’t made much of an impression one way or another. Mia had actually been more worried about Jim, the accountant who was now the foreperson of the jury.
Maybe she should still be. Accountants, and other people whose jobs required analytical thinking, such as engineers and computer programmers, tended to be very precise about the law and the facts. At times they could demand an almost unattainable level of proof to convict.
After class ended, Eli stuck his head in the classroom. “Do you have a verdict yet?”
So much for trying not to obsess about it. “Not only do we not have a verdict, but the jurors sent out a note saying they were hung. Judge Ortega gave them every good argument for continuing, but I don’t know if it’s going to work.”
He grimaced. “All that work, and then you might just have to do it all over again.”
Mia took her coat down from the hook. “The whole time I was watching the students practice voir dire, I was asking myself if there was something I could have done to avoid this mess.”
“Sometimes it all seems nearly impossible.” Eli took her coat and held it open for her. “First you’re given just a couple of hours to decide if the people who got summoned are even capable of being unbiased. And then the jury system asks the resulting twelve people, these folks who are complete strangers, to decide the fate of a thirteenth. And then everyone wonders why it takes so long!”
“It’s not the easiest system.”
Eli sighed. “Sometimes every part of it seems pretty crazy. You know how big my caseload is right now? Close to three hundred.”
Mia’s mouth fell open. “That’s impossible! How do you manage it?”
“The short answer is that I don’t. The longer answer is that I sometimes worry I’ll die trying. I’ve got clients charged with everything from juvenile delinquency to first-degree murder.”
As they walked out to the parking lot, her phone buzzed. She checked the caller ID, knowing it was rude to do that in the middle of a conversation, but part of her always imagined it was Gabe facing some kind of emergency. And sometimes it was.
This time, however, it was Charlie. “Sorry,” she said to Eli as she stopped walking. “It’s Charlie Carlson.”
His expression altered ever so slightly. Mia liked both Charlie and Eli. As friends. She didn’t have time for anything more. At least that’s what she told herself.
She pressed the button to answer. “What’s up, Charlie?”
“Since I’m already at the office seeing if I can figure out who the floater was, I ran that Luciana for you.”
“And?” She held her breath.
“She’s forty-two. Born in El Salvador. Never married in the US. No criminal convictions. Valid Washington driver’s license. She’s lived in the same apartment for two years. And she’s got a T visa.”
The pieces clicked into place. “She was trafficked?” Mia felt her face get hot.
“It looks like she was freed from a brothel. She testified against her traffickers.”
“Oh.” For a second she imagined what it had been like for Luciana to see Mia’s stare, her judgment. She tried to line up the reality of what Charlie had just told her with the quiet woman who had taken small bites and avoided eye contact, as if she was hoping to be invisible. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“What was that about?” Eli asked after she hung up.
“Judge not lest ye be judged.” Mia put her phone away.
“Hmm?” He tilted his head.
“My dad took me out to lunch today. I thought it was going to be just us. But it turned out he wanted me to meet his new lady friend. She’s only a few years older than I am. She’s obviously from another country. I was worried he was being taken advantage of by some illegal alien scam artist. But it turns out she was brought here and forced into prostitution. Now she’s got a T visa.”
“I’ve had clients who have been brought to the States like that. They come here thinking they’re going to be working as maids or hostesses, and then they wind up in a cubicle servicing men ten hours a day.” Eli sighed. “It’s good that she’s found a way to reclaim her life. A lot of those women wind up too broken to go on.”
“I probably shouldn’t have stuck my nose in my dad’s business.” It was a painful admission.
Eli didn’t contradict her. “Your dad’s been around the block a time or two. He probably knows what he’s doing.”
She crossed her arms. “Love can blind you.” She thought of how Scott had lied and cheated and left her up to her neck in debt. “It can make you see only what you want to see.”
“You sound like my wife.” The words were out of Eli’s mouth before he could call them back. He hadn’t planned to say that. He hadn’t planned to say anything at all. “Lydia thought love was basically just some kind of bait and switch.”
Mia looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “Don’t you mean ex-wife?”
Heat climbed Eli’s neck. If only he could relive the last thirty seconds, suck the words back into his mouth. “Not quite, to be honest,” he said, knowing he hadn’t been honest for far too long. “Lydia just took off, and I don’t really know where she is. The last time I heard from her, she was in Vegas. Before that, Houston. And before that, I think it was St. Louis.”
Mia stood frozen. “So you’re not actually divorced?”
“No. Not really. Not yet.” He knew it didn’t count if it was only in his head. Only in his heart.
She took a step back from him and crossed her arms. “What about divorce by publication?”
Mia was talking about a procedure that had been drawn up for cases just like his. He would have to get permission from the court to publish a notice of the divorce in the newspaper. And to do that, he would have to show the judge that he had tried to find Lydia and tried hard. Asked her mother, her sister, her friends, the Portland middle school that had once employed her. Checked with the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission. Looked in online directories and phone books. Even prove that he had checked Facebook.
“I know I should.” But for reasons he couldn’t even articulate to himself, Eli hadn’t yet done any of those things. Shame? Guilt? Inertia? “I just haven’t yet. It’s really just more of a formality.”
“You know when a good time to tell me that would have been?” Mia demanded.
He held his breath, his heart beating in his ears. Was she going to say that a good time would have been before she had fallen in love with him?
“When?” he managed to ask.
“A long time ago!” And with that, Mia turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 14
THURSDAY
Charlie took another bite of his bear claw, savoring the sweetness of the icing, the flakiness of the pastry, and the crunch of the toasted almond slices.
He was sitting in the observation room that overlooked King County’s autopsy suite. Below him was the corpse of the runner who had been fished from Puget Sound, lying faceup on a stainless steel autopsy table. Under the bright lights, the body looked vulnerable and small. Gathered around the table were a pathology assistant, a photographer from the forensics division, and Doug Pietsch.
Now Doug looked up. “Seriously, Charlie?” His
surgical mask hid most of his expression, but Charlie could still see the raised eyebrows. “It’s not like this is a double feature.”
Charlie shrugged. “A guy’s gotta eat.” He took a sip of his twenty-four-ounce coffee, then raised it in Doug’s direction. “And drink.”
“You should just be glad you’re up there and not down here and that there’s a glass window between us. Because if you were down here you would be trying very hard to forget about the very concept of food. Being out of the water has not improved this guy’s condition any.”
“Don’t come crying to me.” Charlie spoke around another bite of pastry. “I’ve heard you say before that the smell of corpses is the smell of job security.”
The criminalist and the assistant tried to hide their smiles.
Doug was undaunted. “Maybe today I wouldn’t mind a little less job security. I’m just glad I printed him on scene. Time is definitely not improving things.”
Charlie felt a surge of hope. “So did you get a match on the prints?”
“No. I would have told you first thing. But at least I know I have them and they’re clear.” Doug cleared his throat and looked at his team. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”
He pressed a pedal on the floor and began to dictate into the transcribing machine. “The body is that of a somewhat undernourished Asian or Hispanic male who appears to be in his early twenties. Decedent was found unclothed. The body weighs a hundred twenty-nine pounds and measures sixty-four inches from crown to sole. The hair on the scalp is black and straight. The eye color is unknown; the eyes are mostly absent due to predation from fish or crabs.”
He peeled back what remained of the lips and peered into the mouth. “Both upper and lower teeth are natural. Several are missing, and there is evidence of untreated caries.” He tapped the pedal again to turn off the transcriber and then looked closer. “It looks like I might just owe you a beer.”
“What are you seeing?” Charlie asked.
“The upper incisors are shovel shaped, which means this guy’s Asian. But the thing is, Charlie, he’s got no dental work. Zero.” He looked up. “Do you know how unusual that is?”