Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  Bragg seemed stuck with his own thoughts. A heavy silence settled between them. The screen showed the photograph of Stapleton’s ungainly corpse, twisted and awkward-painful, even to look at.

  It has started, Dart realized.

  He felt a surge of panic as Bragg said, “I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but I’m going to try the software out on the Nesbit jump-the Ice Man.”

  Dart was thinking that both Zeller and Kowalski closely matched the physical requirements that Bragg had put forth. Zeller was right around six feet, barrel-chested, built like a pickup truck, not a sedan. He had lost a considerable amount of weight after Lucky’s murder-but not his strength, Dartelli thought.

  “Why bother?” Dart asked, thinking: He knows!

  “It would be an interesting test of the software, wouldn’t it?” Bragg asked rhetorically.

  “I suppose,” Dartelli answered, trying to sound bored.

  “That one never cleared,” Bragg reminded.

  “True.” Dart was wishing the man would leave it alone, and yet he, too, wondered what the software would reveal. “I’d be interested in the results.”

  The lab man typed instructions into the keyboard and the white mannequin representing David Stapleton once again came out of the window in a dive. He floated, twisted, and he fell, connecting sharply with the cement tub before being thrown to the sidewalk. Dartelli felt the collision in his bones. “The software is on trial with us. I need to test the modeling,” Bragg said. “This could work well for me.”

  “I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it,” Dartelli cautioned the man. “Rankin would not exactly welcome pulling that particular case back out of the uncleareds.”

  “Agreed,” Bragg said, knowing the political sensitivity of the case, and no doubt recalling the battering the department had taken from the press. “But it could be done quietly-strictly to test the software.”

  Dartelli felt sick. What if the software suggested that the Ice Man had not jumped? he wondered.

  “I’ll give it a try,” Bragg said.

  Dartelli said carefully, “And for now, maybe we keep it our little secret.”

  Teddy Bragg nodded, and as his fingers danced, the animated David Stapleton was thrown from the window once again, catapulted to his contorted death five stories below.

  CHAPTER 5

  Abby Lang’s Sex Crimes office was as dismal as the rest of Jennings Road. It was hard to improve upon linoleum and acoustical tile, although she had given it her best. She had hung a few pieces of artwork on the cinder block walls, had a vase of dried flowers on her desk, and there was classical music playing softly from the boom box. An adagio for strings. She, like Dart, had a personal computer on her desk; there were only a few detectives who went to this expense.

  “Sit,” she said as he entered. “And shut the door.”

  Dart obeyed. It was in his Wood.

  “Check that out,” she said, indicating the Gerald Lawrence file. Dart had worried that this might be about Lawrence; he had come armed with a number of arguments, but he suddenly forgot most of them. She said, “Page numbers of Kowalski’s log.” She added, “The thing is, he didn’t need to include his log, but he was trying to save himself the paperwork. You ask me: He put his foot in it. There are pages missing.”

  Dart spotted what she was talking about. Kowalski had merely admitted photocopies of his field notes as some of his case material. On the actual report it read: See attached.

  “But it’s typed up,” Dart pointed out to her, finding himself in the awkward position of defending Roman Kowalski. “What’s the point of typing up your field notes instead of just typing up the report?”

  “It’s OCR-optical character recognition,” she reminded. “Everyone’s using it to cheat on their reports.”

  Dart was familiar with the scanning software that could turn handwriting into printed text, but this was first that he heard of this particular application. “A shortcut,” he said.

  “Exactly. It’s not why the department invested in OCR, but it’s probably the most popular use at the moment.”

  It made a world of sense to Dart: keep legible field notes, scan them into the computer, edit them on the word processor, and submit them as your report-thus avoiding the tedious duplication that writing up a report typically required. It made him question his own practices.

  Following her suggestion, Dart checked the page numbers of the typewritten field notes and discovered a gap between pages three and five. “Four is missing,” he observed. Abby said nothing, continuing to type on her terminal. Dart checked through the rest of the report in case page four had merely been placed out of chronological order. Page four did not exist.

  Dart said, “So he didn’t have any use for whatever was on page four. That’s hardly significant.” Dart rarely used even a third of his own notes.

  “Oh, yeah? Take a look at this,” she suggested, scooting her chair back from the screen. “To use the OCR software, you have to scan the material first, right? And the only scanner we have is in Records-and that’s a PC, it’s not one of the networked terminals.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The scanner takes the handwritten notes and turns them into a graphic. The graphic is read by the OCR software and turned into text that can be read by a word processor.” Dart didn’t need an education on OCR. Abby clearly sensed this. She said, “It creates the files in its own directory. What Kowalski does is go down there, create the file, and print it up. He doesn’t move the file; he doesn’t erase it.”

  “You’re saying that you lifted his original file?” Dart inquired, impressed.

  “Voila!” she said, pointing to the screen. “Kowalski’s scanned Gerald Lawrence notes.”

  She had copied the file to disk and had moved it to her own PC. Industrious of her, he thought, realizing he would have to watch out for her.

  Dart read the screen. Recognizing the kind of notes that had been taken, he realized immediately that Kowalski had interviewed a witness to the Gerald Lawrence suicide. Quotation marks peppered the page.

  Dart’s first instinct was to believe the witness had proven a washout, as so many did. It would explain perfectly why Kowalski had not bothered to include the text of the questioning. Dart snagged the file-Kowalski’s official investigative report-from Abby’s desk. Procedure required the investigating officer to list the name, or names, of each and every witness to the crime, including those deemed useless. Dart could find no reference to any witness.

  “Her name is Lewellan Page,” Abby announced.

  Dart read quickly down the screen. He didn’t like being behind Abby on this. Reading, he protested, “She’s twelve years old, Abby!” greatly relieved. “No wonder he didn’t bother listing her.”

  “But he interviewed her, Joe,” she reminded. “He’s required to list her.” She hesitated and asked, “So why did he leave her out? What did she see?”

  “Abby,” he cautioned, “it’s speculation.” But for the second time the hopeful thought nagged at him: Is Kowalski involved in this?

  She advanced the screen to the bottom of the page. Her finger pointed out a sentence. Dart read:

  “I seen a white man. A big white man. He gone on upstairs and …”

  “The next page is missing,” she informed him.

  Dart reread the material several times. Ohmy-god, he thought. A white man.

  “I want to talk to her, Joe. I want to know what it is-who it is-that she saw.”

  “Can you find her?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But if I do, I want you there.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jackson Browne’s music played in the background. He sounded lonely. So was Dart. Ginny wouldn’t agree to meet him at his apartment, and he had no desire to chance an encounter with some boyfriend of hers. So it was to be neutral ground-Smitty’s Bar, a place neither of them haunted, not that Dart haunted any bar. He was more a library man, though loath to admit it.

  It was a yupp
ie bar, with dark wood furniture, white linen, and an island bar that dominated the entrance. It catered to an insurance clientele, white men and women in their thirties wearing dark suits, drinking light beer, and making conversation in the most animated voices they could muster.

  Aside from the core downtown, with its gleaming skyscrapers, the only place a bar like this could exist was West Hartford and the valley. Whites, a minority in this city, had to pick their watering holes carefully.

  Jackson Browne sang that he would do anything, from flying airplanes to walking on the wings. Dart had felt like that once with her. And maybe, just maybe, she had felt that way with him. But it had failed. Dissolved like a figure walking into a thick fog. He had watched it recede, had reached for it, called out to it, and cried when it had vanished, for such things can never come back-at least that was what she had said.

  Ginny Rice turned a couple of heads when she entered, not so much for her looks as her presence-she commanded attention. He thought of her affectionately, though he hoped she wouldn’t sense this, and he feared that she might because for her he was an easy read. She wore blue jeans, a brown bomber jacket zipped halfway to counter the air-conditioning, a teal blue stone-washed silk shirt and the diamond and gold heart necklace that he had given her on an insignificant anniversary. This outfit alone set her apart from the nearly uniform crowd, just as Dartelli’s khakis and blue blazer had differentiated him. She had cut her dark brown hair short, well off her shoulders. She had a perfect nose, small lips and eyes the color of the shirt. A matching pair of gold studs occupied her left ear-nothing in her right. That was Ginny: always something just a tad different. Tomboy. Fantastic athlete. Yet dignified and graceful when she wanted to be. She was somebody else’s now-he had heard the rumors. He swallowed dryly, attempting to clear his voice, wondering once again why he had allowed it to happen.

  “Hey, Dart,” she said, pulling the chair out for herself. If he had stood, if he had helped her with the chair she would have been angry at him, so he fought the urge and just sat there. Use of his abbreviated last name was not a formality; she had always called him this. He thought of himself as Joe Dart most of the time, thanks to her. She unzipped the bomber jacket. A couple of the guys were still looking-Ginny knew this, but she was accustomed to it and accepted it as flattery. She wiggled a smile onto her face, like an actor practicing in a mirror. His heart banged in his chest. Let go, he told himself.

  He had been told that time heals all wounds, but if that were the case, then time was moving awfully slowly and the wounds still felt raw. And seeing her-the freshness, the comfort with which she carried herself, her apparent happiness-was salt in those wounds. Dart was still back on the time line somewhere. He felt adrift. He had lost Zeller and Ginny in the same two-month period. He had not yet recovered.

  Jackson Browne was plaintive-he had messed up a relationship. You and me both, pal, Dart thought.

  “You look good,” she lied. She ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks with a twist from a woman who had looked good to Dart a few minutes earlier.

  He thanked her and returned the compliment, and she managed that same fake smile again, and his heart stung. She didn’t want to be here; she had better things to do. He could have died at that moment.

  Shut up, Jackson, Dart thought. He didn’t want to hear about someone else’s pain, he had enough of his own. Bad idea, coming here, he realized. He looked around and his eye found the door.

  “I saw you on television,” she said. “I thought you’d regained some of the weight, but I guess it’s true what they say about the camera adding ten pounds.”

  “I’m okay,” he said, but they both knew.

  “Good.” The Dewars arrived and she insisted on paying. She had to stretch to reach into her front pocket and Dart realized her every little movement thrilled him, and he hated himself all the more.

  “How’s Mac?” she asked.

  “Great.” Together they had recovered the Labrador from the animal shelter the weekend before they had broken up. He and Ginny used to visit the pound every Saturday morning. One of the rituals of the relationship. Twelve years old, arthritic, mostly deaf, the dog had been found hiding under a porch, stabbed eighteen times with a knife. No longer had a voice box-when he tried to bark he sounded either like a balloon losing air, or gears grinding, depending on his message. He owned a serious limp, very few teeth, and the sweetest disposition on God’s green earth. The attendant at the pound had named him Mac the Knife, and it seemed appropriate enough, and Dart had kept the name and the dog. Ginny loved Mac too, though she tried not to show it; she was private with her pain. Private with her pleasure too. Dart called out and ordered a vodka-he needed something stronger than the beer that was now empty in front of him.

  The waitress didn’t like being yelled at from across the room. Ginny didn’t like it either. Dart felt like shit.

  “So?” she asked, her patience wearing thin, the conversation running out of easy topics.

  “I feel a little foolish asking this,” he admitted.

  A patronizing grin.

  He wished there were a way to start all over. This conversation, this relationship-everything.

  “I need your help,” he told her.

  This seemed a great relief to her. Perhaps she had feared another reconciliation attempt, the tears, the pain, the impossibility. She sampled the Scotch, smacked her lips, and set down the glass carefully onto the coaster.

  “Professional?” She gloated. Her work had, in large part, been responsible for the demise of their relationship, and here was Dart on bended knee asking for her talents. The irony was not lost on either of them.

  He nodded. Where was that vodka? “Yes. Information,” he said.

  She waited him out. He didn’t like that.

  “Insurance records. Medical insurance,” he said softly. “Do you have access to that?”

  “You know better than that, Dartelli.”

  Her job, which lacked a specific title but fell vaguely under computer programming, gave her access to everything to do with the major insurance companies, and what she didn’t have legally, she had anyway-at her probation hearing the judge had called her “a wizard.” The paper had called her “a hacker.” Dart had called her “Babe,” but usually only after making love, and certainly never around friends. Had she not repeatedly broken the law, he realized that they still might be together. Or was it that she was caught at it? Dart wondered. The department forbade an officer from consorting with a convicted felon, although they had once discussed how there were ways around such restrictions. He knew that even now she spent her evenings behind that screen invading networks, accessing files to which she had no legal right. With her it was an addiction-it rated right up there with sex. She was good at both.

  She was the only person he knew that had been offered more jobs, more money, after being busted and placed on probation. The calls had flooded in. It was as if, by being caught, she had earned her degree. The FBI had been quoted saying, “She knows more about computers than Bill Gates.” It had ended up an endorsement of sorts. She was earning three or four times Dart’s paycheck. Fine with him if she paid. She got four weeks’ vacation and an expense account. He had heard that she was driving a Lexus. He wondered what the judge would think of that.

  She asked, “What specifically do you need?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Well, that clarifies it.” One of her complaints with him had been what she perceived as his reluctance to state his position-she had called him wishy-washy, slippery, and dishonest. It brought back bad memories.

  Bad idea, he thought for the second time.

  “I’ve lost track of a possible witness-the girlfriend of our suicide, our jumper. She lived with him, we think. But we can’t pick up a paper trail-an address, a phone number. Insurance records were suggested as a way of tracking her down.” He paused, studying her. “And while you’re at it …,” he added, awaiting a grin from her, “I thought I might t
ry the suicide too-see if he was facing a fatal disease, or something like that, some reason to explain the jump.”

  “The almighty Bud Gorman let you down?” she sniped. Over the course of their relationship, Ginny had repeatedly offered to supply the financial information that Gorman provided Dart, but the detective had steadfastly refused because technically it fell under criminal activity. His willingness to break the law using Gorman but not her had been a perpetual sore spot.

  He shrugged. “The guy’s name is David Stapleton. If we’ve got it right, his woman is called Priscilla Cole.” He passed her the names on a blank piece of notepaper.

  She didn’t so much as glance at the names; her eyes were locked onto his. She held the gaze for an interminable amount of time. Without looking, she reached out, found the Scotch, and drained it. He refused to break eye contact; he could be as obstinate as she. He had spent years lost in those eyes. He felt a little drunk.

  “I miss you,” she said softly. Was she making it up?

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “It’s not serious … What I’m in now … It’s a filler, something to take up the time, warm up the nights, give the weekends meaning.” She reached for the drink again but realized it was empty. He felt like offering her his. “You could use someone,” she encouraged.

  “That’s the thing,” Dart offered. “It would be using, I think.”

  “That’s okay, as long as it’s clear.”

  “No. Not for me it isn’t.”

  Her eyes grew sad, but she never broke their eye contact.

  “Want another?” she asked. He wasn’t sure what she meant-another chance, another drink? He nodded.

  She raised her hand, flexed her wrist, and pointed at the table. She never took her eyes off him. Never confirmed that the order had been received. But the drinks arrived minutes later, and Dart thought how typical this was of her. In control. In command. He started feeling angry with her; he wasn’t sure where that came from.