Buried Evidence

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  The case in question was a slam dunk in Lily’s opinion. The defendant had been captured following a foot pursuit by one of Santa Barbara’s finest, the bloody knife still clutched in his hand. Boy, she thought, staring at the photo of the weapon. The idiot was lucky he hadn’t tripped and fallen on his own knife. Stupid criminals were a prosecutor’s delight. In addition, he had a prior conviction for an aggravated assault in Los Angeles. Next week she would meet with his public defender and offer him two years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea. Mervin Hatteras, or the “Bug,” as he was called, would jump on her offer in an instant. If not, he would be staring down six years for the aggravated term as to the stabbing, and another two years as an enhancement for what they called GBI, or great bodily injury. With this guy, throwing the dice would amount to placing four years of his life on the come line. As long as the knife didn’t mysteriously disappear from the property room, Lily wouldn’t lose any sleep over Hatteras. By this time next week another cell at the cramped Santa Barbara jail would be available, its former occupant en route to his new home at the California Department of Corrections.

  Outside of Middleton, the only additional case Lily was concerned with at that moment was a homicide at an upscale nursing home. The victim had been a healthy seventy-three-year-old woman until she was diagnosed as suffering from lung cancer. After treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, Cottage Hospital had transferred her to Viewpoint, a skilled nursing facility. The day after her son had started making the necessary arrangements for her release, having been told his mother’s cancer had been completely cured, the woman had died. If not for the son’s persistence, the cause of death would have been classified as natural causes. Because he insisted on an autopsy, the coroner had discovered that not only had the woman never had cancer, she had died from a dose of morphine strong enough to kill seven people. No one felt stronger regarding the treatment of the ill or elderly, but as far as Brennan’s decision to try the woman’s death as a homicide, Lily was not in agreement.

  First, the lab which had rendered the faulty diagnoses could not be held criminally liable. The woman’s son could file a civil lawsuit, however, and would more than likely win a sizable monetary award. Establishing the elements required to make his mother’s death a crime, particularly a homicide, would be next to impossible. These were the type of cases that ended up on a prosecutor’s desk because the district attorney was a politician and the victim’s son was what Lily classified as a door knocker, someone who kept at it until they got what they wanted. There was no notation inside the woman’s chart indicating that she had been given morphine in the days prior to her death, and the four nurses who had been on duty that day claimed they knew nothing about it. From the evidence, there was no doubt that the woman’s death had been caused by a series of tragic errors. For Lily to treat this as a homicide, the first step was to identify the suspect or suspects. Was she going to ask the court to issue an arrest warrant for the four nurses, along with the woman’s physician and all the other employees who had had contact with her the day of her death? What possible motive would the nurses have to intentionally take this woman’s life? Even the lab hadn’t been made aware of their mistake until the autopsy was performed.

  She set this file aside to discuss with Allan Brennan later in the week.

  Lily had just stepped out of the ladies’ room when Matt Kingsley cornered her. “Why did you ask Brennan to take me off the Middleton case? All I did was forget to make one lousy phone call.”

  “It was more than that,” she said. “You weren’t prepared. You thought you could wing it. Every time I told you to do something, you handed it off to someone else.”

  “You’re crazy,” he exploded, his blond hair tumbling onto his forehead. “People told me about you. I don’t know why I didn’t listen.”

  “Exactly what did they tell you?” Lily said, her hands closing into fists.

  “They said you left Ventura because you had some kind of mental breakdown. You were handling a big case.” He paused, searching his memory. “McDonald-Lopez… yeah, that was the name. The person I talked to said you got too involved and went off the deep end. I heard you were even nominated for a judgeship, but you were so out of it, you had to turn it down.”

  “I see,” she answered, her facial muscles twitching. “And did this person advise you of the details of the case you just mentioned?”

  “A young couple was murdered,” he told her. “A gang rape, right? The girl was mutilated. One of the gang members killed someone else as well. A prostitute, I believe.”

  Lily fixed him with a steely gaze. He was too smug, too confident. Inside, she was seething. She glanced down the corridor, seeing if anyone was around. Once she was certain they were alone, she continued, “How does the McDonald-Lopez homicide and this alleged breakdown I suffered relate to you and your job performance?”

  “I’m trying to remain detached,” Kingsley explained, adjusting his jacket on his shoulders. “When Brennan told me I was going to be working on the Middleton case, he called me into his office and had a long talk with me. He told me this was a job, not a crusade. He said I wouldn’t last if I became too sympathetic toward the victims. Brennan thinks that’s one of your only weaknesses. “

  “Let me ask you something,” Lily snarled. “Did this person who knows so much about me happen to mention what else occurred during the McDonald-Lopez trial?” Before he had a chance to respond, she impulsively stomped on his foot.

  “What the hell—” he said, wincing in pain. “You almost broke my toe.”

  “Since you’re determined to pry into my affairs,” she said, lowering her voice, “my daughter and I were raped. A man broke into my home and held a knife to my throat, then made me watch as he ravaged my child. She was only thirteen years old, Kingsley. My daughter’s in college now. Last night I had to spend almost an hour on the phone attempting to reassure her that the man who raped her wasn’t hiding outside in the bushes.”

  Kingsley was aghast. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t they apprehend the rapist?”

  “They caught him,” Lily said, clearing her throat. “Six months ago he was paroled.”

  The attorney leaned back against the wall, removing his shoe and massaging his toe.

  “If Brennan wants you to consider this as nothing more than a regular job,” she continued, “then tell him I said he should go fuck himself. And if he wants to get rid of me, I can have my office packed by tomorrow.”

  Lily marched past him. “Please,” Kingsley said, limping after her, “I was wrong to say those things. Brennan will fire me before he’ll let you go.”

  Once Lily reached her office, she tried to shut the door, but the young attorney edged inside. He pulled the door closed, then stood in front of it with his hands behind his back. “My ego was crushed when I heard you wanted me off the case,” he told her, breathing heavily. “Brennan didn’t say those things to me. I just made them up.”

  “Get out of my office,” she said, glowering at him. “Now you’re not only incompetent, you’ve just admitted that you’re a liar.” She paused, tapping her pen on her desk. “I guess when you look like a movie star, have a Harvard degree, and can buy and sell most of the people you work with, it’s hard to accept things not going your way.”

  “Listen,” he said, opening his briefcase and removing what appeared to be a photograph, “I think I’ve stumbled across something important. Whether you realize it or not, I’ve been putting in at least ten hours a day on the Middleton case. That’s in addition to my other case assignments.”

  Lily was standing behind her desk, annoyed that she had allowed him to irritate her. Even after six years of therapy, controlling her anger was still a problem. Her eyes roamed around the room. As far as the rape was concerned, he would have heard about it eventually. Most of the people in the office knew, they simply kept their mouths shut. Starting a war was foolish. She sat down, slipping on her reading glasses.

  “Oka
y,” Kingsley said, moving one of the chairs closer to her desk. “Middleton owned a chain of low-end furniture stores. The majority of his customers are Hispanic immigrants who work the fields in Camarillo, Oxnard, and the surrounding farming communities. Most of the people were unable to obtain credit. Middleton sells them cheap furnishings at inflated prices, forcing them to pay cash in weekly installments and refusing to allow them to pick up their merchandise until their bill is paid in full.”

  “I already know how he operates,” Lily said, examining the picture he had handed her. “What bearing does this have on the case?”

  “What you’re looking at is a photo I took of one of Middleton’s furniture warehouses in Van Nuys. Do you see what business is located next door?”

  “I don’t see the name,” she said. “All they have on the doors are numbers.”

  “I didn’t make the connection right away, either,” he said, his speech rapid-fire now. “Look at the trucks parked in front.”

  Lily saw a row of white vans. On the sides were large plastic bugs, and the words SOS PEST CONTROL. “Do they use—”

  Kingsley smiled. “Strychnine? You bet. They use it to poison gophers, mice, all kinds of things.”

  “Like a disabled daughter?”

  The smile slid off his face. “I had a friend of mine who lives in the San Fernando Valley drive over to SOS and pretend he was applying for a job. He said they had tons of that stuff inside their warehouse.”

  Lily came alive. “So this is where Middleton got the poison?”

  “It has to be,” the young attorney said, leaning forward. “We knew he was too smart to just stroll in somewhere and buy strychnine, particularly since he planned to use it to kill his daughter.”

  Lily’s opinion of the young attorney had skyrocketed. “What put you on to this?”

  “I decided to pay a visit to all of Middleton’s warehouse locations and see if I could come up with something we might have overlooked,” he explained. “When I discovered the pest-control company, I suspected Middleton might be on friendly terms with these people since they’d been in the same location for almost as long as he had. Since his friends said he was a hands-on type of businessman, it made sense that he would stop by his various warehouses from time to time, if for nothing more than to keep his employees on their toes. Then I took it a step further, deciding it was feasible that he might have walked next door to SOS. When no one was looking, he swiped a bottle of strychnine.”

  “You might be right,” she said, setting the photo aside. “We’re still not any closer than we were before, though. Showing that Middleton may have had access to strychnine isn’t going to make a major difference. We need concrete proof that he had the poison in his possession at the time of the crime.”

  Again, Kingsley reached into his briefcase. “On October 29, two days before Halloween, Henry Middleton made a trip to his Van Nuys warehouse. Because he had an audit pending, he decided to do a little housecleaning.”

  Lily leaned back in her chair, her hands behind her neck. “Elaborate, please.”

  “He fired three of his top people.”

  “How did you determine this?”

  “Well,” Kingsley said, fingering the paper, “since you think I’m such a lousy prosecutor, maybe I won’t tell you. Besides, my toe hurts like a bitch. I don’t think the board of supervisors would think very highly of you if they found out you were physically abusing your coworkers.”

  Lily blinked several times. Henry Middleton was the embodiment of evil. She was determined to see him behind bars. But kissing Kingsley’s ass was a big price to pay for a few morsels of information. For all she knew, the young attorney had nothing more than he had already shown her. Betsy’s face appeared in her mind, however, and she knew she couldn’t take a chance. “Do you think you can get me in trouble just because I accidentally stepped on your toe?” she told him. “If you want people to treat you like a professional, acting like a crybaby isn’t going to earn you any respect. Run to the board of supervisors with something as trivial as this, and I guarantee you’ll become the laughingstock of the agency.”

  “Touché,” he said, knowing they were wasting valuable time sparring with one another. Besides, if he went head to head with her, he had no doubt who would come out the victor. “Okay, here’s how I put it together. My father is pretty successful.” He paused, his cheeks turning a bright pink. “Of course, I’m not telling you something you don’t know, since you ridiculed me only five minutes ago for precisely the same reason.”

  “Go on,” Lily said, sitting at rapt attention.

  “I don’t intend to reveal any family secrets, but when my dad was audited a few years back, his tax attorney suggested that he might be better off without a few of his employees. Get the picture?”

  “I’m following you,” she said, snapping her chair back into an upright position. “You decided Middleton might have received the same kind of advice. Correct?”

  “Exactly,” he told her. “I contacted the state employment office and discovered that five of Middleton’s employees were terminated two days before the crime. One of these men was the person in charge of the Van Nuys warehouse. We have verification because this individual filed for unemployment benefits.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Mind if I use your phone?”

  Lily picked it up and turned it around to make it more convenient. “Be my guest.”

  Kingsley glanced at the paper in his hands, then punched in a phone number. A gruff male voice came out over the speaker phone. “Is this Mr. Nash?”

  “Maybe,” the man said. “Who wants to know?”

  “This is Matthew Kingsley with the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office,” he said, his tone crisp. “I spoke with you a few days ago about your termination from Middleton Furnishings. Do you remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “You were fired on October 29 of last year, is that correct?”

  “That’s the date,” Jake Nash told him. “I’ve been unemployed ever since.”

  “Was Mr. Middleton on the premises on that date, the day you were dismissed?”

  “He was there,” the man said. “In addition to my regular severance pay, he gave me an envelope containing five one-hundred-dollar bills. He said he was sorry, but business was bad and he had to cut back on his employees.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Not to talk to nobody,” Nash told him. “He said someone might come snooping around, asking lots of questions. Seems one of his competitors had put the Internal Revenue on his back. Guess they were trying to force him out of business, know what I mean?”

  “I certainly do, Mr. Nash.”

  “If I stayed loyal and didn’t talk to the tax people, Mr. Middleton promised he would hire me back once the dust settled. Then I read about the problem with his kid.”

  “Did Middleton ever attempt to rehire you?”

  “Nah,” Nash said. “I even had trouble collecting my unemployment.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Well,” he continued, “like I told you the other day, I had to resubmit my application three times. The unemployment people said there was no record that I had ever been employed at Middleton Furnishings. Since I kept my pay stubs, I was finally able to get things cleared up, but it was pretty strange. I worked there for over five years. You would have thought someone would have remembered me.”

  “On the day you were fired,” Kingsley asked, “did Middleton go next door to the exterminating company?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you certain?” the attorney continued. “When I ask you to testify in court, you’ll have to swear that what you’re telling me is the truth.”

  “I realize that,” Nash said. “I don’t lie, mister. If someone had come around asking me about Mr. Middleton’s business, I would have told them the truth too. Just ‘cause the boss gave me five hundred bucks don’t mean nothing. Jake Nash can’t be bought.”

  “When did
Mr. Middleton go next door?”

  “As soon as he got there,” he said. “That would have been around lunchtime, because I saw him talking to one of the guys who worked at SOS when I ducked out to pick up some sandwiches for my crew.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “Now that,” Nash said, “I can’t be entirely certain about. If my memory serves me correct, he was either talking to Danny Metz or Bob Sanders. Basically, he was just walking around. You know, looking things over, shooting the breeze.”

  Lily made the time-out sign with her hands. After Kingsley placed the call on hold, she said, “I’m impressed. You’ve established that Middleton had access to strychnine. This will help our case. Surely you realize by now that anyone can purchase strychnine. It still isn’t enough, don’t you see? We need someone who can testify that they saw Middleton take the poison from the exterminating company. What’s the story on the two men he just mentioned?”

  “Can I finish?” Kingsley asked, popping his knuckles.

  Lily swept her hand toward the phone.

  “Mr. Nash,” he said, after tapping back into the line, “when Henry Middleton gave you the envelope with the five hundred dollars in it, did something else occur that you considered peculiar?”

  “He had a bottle inside his jacket,” he said. “It fell out, and I bent over to pick it up. Before I could get my hands on it, Mr. Middleton kicked it away. Then he snatched it up and ran out to his car, all worked up, as if he was about to have a stroke or something.”

  Lily leapt to her feet, too excited to remain seated. Kingsley beamed in satisfaction. “Can you describe this bottle?”