Dante's Wood

by Lynne Raimondo

  While I was making myself ill with these thoughts, a figure pulled up by my side and asked, “Are you the shrink Hallie wanted to put on the stand?”

  I had no trouble identifying the speaker. It was Di Marco.

  We shook hands and introduced ourselves.

  “A paisan,” he said upon hearing my name.

  “Certo. E tu sei un bastardo.”

  Di Marco paused for a long moment. “Sorry. I don’t speak the lingo.”

  “I was remarking on what you did in there.”

  “Yeah, tough luck for the kid. So you’re a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s impressive. How’d you get through medical school?”

  “The usual way.”

  “Come on,” he said, giving me a nudge to the arm like we were old chums. “Don’t be so modest. I was watching you. You do pretty well for yourself. But I’m surprised you don’t have a dog. Or maybe you left it at home. It’s all right, you know, to bring them to court.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “No? How come?”

  “Canes are more macho.”

  Di Marco chuckled in his familiar way. “That’s a good one. But seriously, wouldn’t a dog be better? Then all you’d have to do is tell it where you wanted to go.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. And I don’t like dogs.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Well, if you don’t like dogs you should get one of those things I heard about on Rush Limbaugh the other day. Hey Hallie, what’s happening, gorgeous?”

  Hallie, who had just come up, said, “I see you two have met.”

  “Yeah. I was just telling il dottore here about something he should be interested in. Seems some MIT students have come up with a talking cane that can actually tell a blind man when he’s about to walk into a lamppost and whatnot.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t need your advice, Tony,” Hallie said.

  “On the contrary,” I said. “It’s a brilliant idea. Think of it—a cane that would stop me from walking into things. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one.”

  Di Marco said, “Keep an eye out . . .? Oh, I get it. Another joke. That’s a good one, too. It’s great how you people can keep your sense of humor.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t deserve any credit for that. It’s true, you know, what they say about blind people being cheerful. It’s because we can’t see all the ugly things you normal folks have to look at every day. Like retarded kids being sent to prison by shysters who should know better. I sure don’t miss reading the newspapers.”

  Di Marco’s tone became less pal-like. “Who is this guy?” he asked Hallie.

  “Someone who can outdo you in the put-down department, it seems,” she answered.

  “You’re wrong. We were just having a friendly chat, right Tony?” I gave his shoulder a tweak.

  “Sure,” Tony said, “and the river ain’t green on Saint Patrick’s Day.” He turned his attention back to Hallie. “So, baby, when do you want to do the prelim?”

  “After that stunt you pulled today, the sooner the better.”

  “Feeling good about your chances, huh?”

  Hallie said, “The kid’s innocent. You know it, the cops know it, and Judge Connor knows it too. But there was no way he was going to free my client after you reminded him that Election Day is just around the corner.”

  “I was only doing my job as a lowly civil servant.”

  “Lowlife is more like it.”

  “You would have done the same thing if you were still in the office. The retard confessed, didn’t he?”

  “When my expert gets through with that confession you won’t be able to wipe your snot with it.”

  “Who? This guy here?” Tony asked, referring to me.

  Some body language I couldn’t make out passed between them.

  Di Marco said, “Why not? If it was me, I’d use him. The sympathy factor might do you some good. How about it, Magoo?” he asked me. “Are you up for another round?”

  Hallie hesitated.

  I didn’t.

  “You’re on,” I said.

  Seven

  The preliminary hearing in State v. Dickerson took place on the last Friday in April, ironically also Good Friday. As Hallie had predicted, the State’s forensics people had been unable to link Charlie to any of the earlier killings, so the charge stood at a single count of second-degree murder in the death of Shannon Sparrow. The presiding judge, a woman named Christine La Font, had made it plain she wanted the hearing to be over by midafternoon, so we got down to business right away at 9:00 a.m. Though the hearing was on defense motion, technically the State had the burden of proving the confession was legally obtained, so Di Marco went first. Hallie had theorized he would keep his presentation light, relying principally on the testimony of O’Leary to introduce the videotape of Charlie’s confession and offering the State’s psychiatric expert only after seeing how well I held up on cross.

  At first, Hallie had been reluctant to use me, reminding me of what I’d first told her about not being a board-certified forensic psychiatrist.

  “You were the one who brought up lack of qualifications, remember?”

  “But, Hallie,” I said, “your guys checked it out. I don’t need the credential to act as a witness on Charlie’s behalf.”

  “True, and it’s always better when an expert doesn’t look like he does this for a living. I’m only worried that you’ve developed a personal interest in the case.”

  “Because I believe Charlie couldn’t have killed that woman?”

  “No, because you and Di Marco seem to have something to prove to each other. This shouldn’t be about showing who’s got the bigger cojones.”

  “I’m not that childish. OK, I admit I’m pissed off about what happened at the bail hearing. But only because it was so . . . unjust. I’m good at testifying, you said so yourself, and Charlie and I already have a rapport. I want the chance to help.”

  In the end, Hallie had been persuaded by Nate’s enthusiasm for the idea along with all the hard work I had put in reading every known article in the field about forced confessions.

  “You’re like an encyclopedia,” she complimented me.

  “You should have known me before,” I said.

  Together, we spent hours watching the videotape of Charlie’s interrogation, with me pausing the action whenever I needed Hallie to describe what was happening on screen. We also met with Charlie a number of times. Our meetings took place in a room that had once housed the prison library but was now nearly empty except for a few stacks of mildewed paperbacks. Charlie was homesick, but he liked the food and the amount of television he was allowed to watch in the ­protective-custody unit. Apart from not really comprehending what was happening to him, he displayed less anxiety than I’d feared and cooperated readily with our lengthy questioning sessions. Just as we were leaving him the day before the hearing he asked whether he had done anything wrong.

  “Not if everything you’ve told us so far is the truth,” Hallie answered.

  “I thought she was sleeping. I tried to wake her up. Mom says I have to be careful when I play with Scooby Doo and not be too rough.”

  Hallie hesitated a fraction before asking, “Were you too rough with Shannon?”

  “I don’t think so. I only pushed her, like this. Like when Dad is snoring in the morning and he’s being too loud. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  “Charlie, I’ve asked you this before, but I need to hear it again. Are you sure Shannon was already lying down when you found her?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you didn’t see the blood until you touched her.”

  “I don’t . . . no. It got all over me. I couldn’t wipe it off.”

  “Tell me again why you walked to school that morning.”

  “The bus didn’t come.”

  From Charlie’s account and the investigation conducted by ­Hallie
’s colleagues, we’d been able to piece together a rough chronology of his movements the morning Shannon died.

  Charlie was awakened at 7:00 a.m. by his after-school babysitter, who was staying overnight while Judith was away in Michigan. Nate was already in surgery and did not see his son that morning. Charlie had dressed and breakfasted on a bowl of Cheerios before being walked to his bus stop at Halsted and Fullerton, where the sitter left him to get to her other job. But the bus, due to arrive at 8:00 a.m., suffered a breakdown en route and a substitute didn’t arrive until 8:25. By then Charlie had grown anxious about being late for school and set out to walk the eight blocks to the New Horizons Center on his own, following the route the bus took every day. He and one of his instructors at the center had been practicing independent travel, and he wanted to show her how well he could do, as well as avoid going home to an empty house. Along the way he became confused and overshot the center’s entrance on Sheffield, ending up a block farther on, where he realized his mistake. Coming back he recognized the alley to the center’s rear and tried to get in the back door, which was locked. It was not long afterward that he noticed Shannon “sleeping” in the parking lot across the way and went over to wake her up.

  Di Marco was asking Detective O’Leary about this now.

  “Will you describe the position of the victim’s body when you first saw it?”

  “She was lying face up on the ground adjacent to the driver’s side of the car, here,” O’Leary said, evidently pointing at a diagram. “Her arms were splayed and one leg was bent at the knee. Blood had pooled on her chest and on the ground, here.”

  “And what appeared to be the cause of death?”

  “A single wound below the rib cage here, apparently made by a sharp blade. The wound was small with no jagged edges, from which we surmised that the instrument of death was slender and narrow, like a doctor’s scalpel.”

  “Were there any other wounds?”

  “Some faint bruising on the neck here and here, which may indicate that her assailant held her with one hand while he stabbed her with the other.”

  “I take it her assailant would have to be a strong person to have killed her in this fashion.”

  “Physically strong, yes.”

  “What about her personal possessions. Were any of them taken?”

  “None that we could ascertain.”

  “Did you draw any conclusions from that?”

  “Only that robbery wasn’t the motive.”

  Di Marco had moved on now to Charlie’s interrogation.

  “Did you personally undertake the questioning of the defendant?” he asked O’Leary.

  “No. One of my colleagues, Detective Yanowski, questioned the suspect, while I acted as an observer.”

  “Is that standard procedure?”

  “Yes, it’s required by department regulations.”

  “Was the defendant subjected to any form of punishment, threat, or physical intimidation at any time during the interview?”

  “No.”

  “The defense claims the defendant did not understand his rights. Was there any indication he failed to comprehend your questions?”

  “The suspect was asked repeatedly whether he understood what he was being asked and always replied in the affirmative. His answers can be observed on the DVD of the interview.”

  Di Marco then laid a foundation for its introduction, taking O’Leary through some recent history.

  Not long ago, in response to sensational charges of police torture and a change in state law, the Chicago Police Department had installed a “state of the art” recording system in thirty-seven interrogation rooms located throughout the city. Each of the rooms had a stationary camera bolted to the ceiling in a corner, and a microphone that could pick up sounds as low as a whisper. The recording equipment was controlled by a switch located in a box on the wall outside the room. O’Leary explained how he had turned the system on while Charlie was being led into the room, and told the court about the fail-safe that prevented it from being “accidentally” switched off during the interview. A digital clock kept continuous track of the time, and when the questioning was over, a backup copy of the recording was automatically sent to a CPU at department headquarters.

  “Are these your marks on the DVD recording of the interrogation?” Di Marco asked O’Leary.

  “Yes.”

  “And is the recording a fair and accurate depiction of the events that took place while the defendant was being questioned?”

  “It is.”

  On Di Marco’s motion, the DVD was admitted into evidence.

  Based on the excerpts Di Marco was now playing for the judge, there seemed little doubt that Charlie had admitted to killing Shannon.

  I listened to it all again with my eyes closed, as though I couldn’t bear to watch.

  Yanowski, the officer leading the interview, had started off light, with the offer of a can of Coke and a promise of frequent replacements. Every time Charlie agreed with something Yanowski said he was rewarded with smiles and urged to take another sip. Whenever Charlie said he didn’t know or forgot something, Yanowski grew stern and his tone demanding. Through a combination of vocabulary that was beyond Charlie’s understanding, ambiguous phrasing, and outright coaching, Yanowski quickly had Charlie “remembering” that Shannon had reprimanded him for knocking over a container of cleaning supplies in her classroom:

  “She called you stupid, didn’t she?”

  “I’m . . . I . . . I don’t remember.”

  “Come on, Charlie, of course you do. She said you were stupid and you got angry. You don’t like it when someone calls you stupid.”

  [Whining] “I’m not stupid.”

  “Sure you aren’t. That’s why you had to show her . . .”

  He soon had Charlie describing how the murder had taken place.

  “Your dad’s a surgeon, isn’t he? Operates on people. You try to be like him, don’t you?”

  “I like Dad.”

  “So you decided to operate on Shannon, isn’t that how it happened?”

  “She was sleeping.”

  “Sure she was. Just like your one of your dad’s patients. What did you use to operate on Shannon, Charlie? Was it something you brought from home?”

  “I’m not . . . I’m not allowed . . .”

  “But you do sometimes, don’t you? Play with your dad’s stuff?”

  “Mom said not to do it again. I might hurt myself.”

  “Where did you put the scalpel afterward, Charlie, after you operated on Shannon?”

  “I don’t remember. In the garbage. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “In a few minutes. Just tell me how you operated on Shannon and you can go . . .”

  And this:

  “She was very pretty, wasn’t she, Charlie?”

  “I liked her.”

  “Did you touch her, Charlie, afterwards?”

  “I wanted her to wake up.”

  “But she won’t wake up anymore, will she? You made sure of that.”

  [Mumbling]

  “What was that, Charlie? I didn’t catch it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did it. Can I go to the bathroom now?”

  It was, in every conceivable way, like taking candy from a baby.

  “Defense Counsel, call your first witness.”

  Hallie had finished her cross of O’Leary, quickly getting him to concede that the scalpel—or whatever had been used to kill Shannon—had never been found despite an all-out search of garbage cans and dumpsters in the vicinity, that there were no witnesses to Shannon’s killing, and that the police had made at best a half-hearted effort to follow up on other theories about Shannon’s death. O’Leary seemed uneasy with some of his answers but held his ground. It was now our turn.

  “The defense calls Mark Angelotti, MD.”

  The night before, we’d rehearsed getting me to the witness stand in a practice courtroom at Hallie’s law firm. When my name was called I stood and
navigated around the edge of counsel table. I walked five steps ahead to the lectern on my left, which I brushed with my hand as I went past, and proceeded another five to the raised area next to the bench. The room was very still as I made my way forward to the witness box, and my taps rang out like cannon fire. After I’d climbed in and located my seat, the court reporter asked me to state my name for the record, and the bailiff swore me in.

  Hallie began by taking me through my credentials, which went on for quite a while. Apparently this sort of bragging was standard courtroom procedure and forestalled objection to my qualifying as an expert. As we neared the end, I felt myself tense at what I knew was coming.

  “Dr. Angelotti. I see you use a white cane. Is that because you are blind?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Will you explain to the court what that means in practical terms.”

  “It means I have some limited perception of the things around me, but can’t see any detail, such as what a person looks like.”

  “Can you read?”

  “Not something that’s printed in ink, no.”

  Hallie had explained she wanted to get this out in the open before the prosecution had a chance to make a big deal of it.

  “And how does that affect your psychiatric practice?”

  “On the reading side, very little. I have a scanner and other devices for transcribing printed material into a Braille or audio format, and in the rare instances when they don’t work, my assistant reads to me.”

  “And in other aspects?”

  “Well, naturally, it is useful to be able to observe a patient’s body language during sessions, but I compensate by careful listening and other strategies, such as stopping and asking the patient to describe his posture and facial expression at various times. In many ways the patient’s own perception of what he or she is doing is as significant as the reality.”