Double Tap

by Steve Martini

  It’s like playing lawyer’s dozen. It takes a full round of objections and argument at the bench, but I finally smoke Templeton out.

  The judge has heard enough. He puts his hands up. “I’m going to allow the witness to answer the question,” he says.

  I whisper to Harry as we head back to the table. “You know anything about this?”

  “There was nothing in the pathology report,” says Harry. Now it is clear why Templeton’s expert in ballistics who is outside in the hall, waiting to be called, has reduced nothing to writing by way of a report. He is getting ready to slip a second sword into us.

  Back on his step-stool stump, Templeton has his medical witness put a lance in our side by noting the similarity of the bullets used to kill Chapman to others he has seen during his time in the military. It is what he calls a composite bullet, frangible ammunition composed of polymers and a special bonding agent designed to fragment on contact with harder substances such as bone. According to the witness, this is why the second round disintegrated just after it penetrated Chapman’s skull and why the entry hole is somewhat larger than the entry wound from the first lead bullet.

  When Templeton tries to venture further into bullet design, I object. The judge sustains the objection, putting an end to it. “Let’s move on, Mr. Templeton, it’s getting late.”

  “Just a few more questions of this witness, Your Honor. Let’s concentrate on this second bullet for the moment,” he says. “Were you able to determine the point of entry of this bullet into the victim’s skull?”

  “I was.”

  “And what was that location?”

  “The second round fired penetrated the skull just to the left of the anterior midline of the skull, approximately eight centimeters above the victim’s left eye.”

  “Here in the left forehead?” Templeton points with the forefinger of his left hand to his own head.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Let the record reflect that the witness has confirmed the location of this entry wound consistent with an area just above the prosecutor’s left eye,” says Gilcrest. “And, Mr. Templeton, if you don’t want this court to shoot you, please allow the witness to provide the gestures as to physical description.”

  “Sorry, Your Honor.” Templeton is right back to the witness. “Can you tell us approximately how far the entry wound from this second shot was to the entry wound from the first bullet?”

  “The second bullet …”

  “Let’s be clear for the jury. This is the frangible bullet you’re talking about? The second bullet?”

  “That’s correct. That bullet made a somewhat larger hole, approximately sixteen point three millimeters from the center point of contact of the first bullet. The bullet that I described as largely intact and composed of a lead alloy.”

  “Could you give that to us in inches for the jury,” says Templeton, “so that they can have some point of reference?”

  “The two entry wounds to the victim’s head were a little more than six-tenths of an inch apart in terms of distance,” says Rubin.

  “That’s close as bullet wounds go, I take it?”

  “That’s very close, particularly when you consider that the impact of the first bullet proceeded to spin the victim around as it hit her.”

  “You know this to be the case?”

  “Yes.” As if on cue, the shoeless photo is back up on the screen. Rubin points to the photograph of the high heel standing upright on the floor in the entry, its toe pointing away from the body lying on the floor, as conclusive evidence of this. “Upon impact the first bullet would have jerked the mass of the head in a twisting motion to the right. The body of the victim would have followed.”

  “So, based on this evidence that the second round struck the victim before she could fall or be spun around, would it be safe to assume that the two shots in question were fired in very rapid succession?” Templeton asks.

  The witness is already nodding his head. “The two shots would have had to have been fired within a millisecond of each other. As fast as a healthy human hand and index finger could pull the trigger two times.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  By the time Templeton is finished with the witness, there isn’t much I can do to repair the damage. I go through the autopsy report item by item until I finally get to the point where I ask Rubin why he failed to include any mention of the frangible bullet in his written report.

  He blushes a little and finally says, “I guess at the time I didn’t see it as particularly important.”

  I could go after him on grounds that at some point he knew that the defendant who had been charged with the crime had a military background and that the murder weapon belonged to him. To do this, however, would merely reinforce Templeton’s case. Instead I ask a different question.

  “Dr. Rubin, do you have any idea why the killer in this case, the person who murdered Madelyn Chapman—whoever it is—would choose to use two different kinds of bullets when shooting her?”

  Rubin looks at me from the stand as if he has never really thought about this. He shakes his head. “No. I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Templeton is shrewd. Timing is everything in a trial. He has knocked us off balance with the evidence of the frangible bullet.

  The two clips from the murder weapon that were found inside Chapman’s house were both empty. If they were originally loaded with frangible rounds, whoever shot Chapman took the time to discard all of the ammunition, making it impossible for us to be on the lookout for the distinctive bullets.

  Ruiz has admitted to Harry and me that at one time he did have frangible rounds, issued by the Army for use in a special indoor military range. But he doesn’t remember whether any of these remained in the clips that were packed away with the gun. According to Emiliano, he used spare clips when he and Chapman last used the Mark 23 pistol at the range, when he was showing Madelyn how to shoot. He left the bag with the two original clips at her house and never looked at them again.

  Whoever set Ruiz up has done a masterful job, not only with the evidence, but anticipating the direction from which problems might come at trial. So far they have left us in the dark.

  Templeton decides that, with the defense on its heels, this is the time to expose the weak underbelly of his case, to the extent that he has one, and get it behind him.

  This morning they bring in the gun and its canvas case, along with the two empty clips and the silencer discovered on the rocks over the ocean.

  Templeton has his principal evidence tech, Mitchell Perryman, up on the stand. Perryman is the man who headed up the team that marked, identified, and gathered all the physical evidence at the scene. He is a veteran, sixteen years with county law enforcement, and a student of endless courses in evidence gathering from the FBI as well as the state crime lab. But his department has had its problems in the last two years: first a scandal involving errors in the chains of custody in a string of felony cases in which one of Perryman’s colleagues was caught falsifying internal records; then four months ago another of Perryman’s associates was caught in misstatements under oath on the stand, which defense counsel called perjury and which is now on appeal in a major white-collar prosecution. All of this has left the people in Perryman’s office feeling tainted, demoralized, and gun-shy on the stand.

  “Let’s start with the firearm,” says Templeton. “The HK Mark Twenty-three forty-five-caliber semiautomatic pistol.” This has already been removed from its paper evidence bag and identified as the weapon found in Chapman’s backyard the night of the murder.

  “You supervised the photographing and collection of this weapon, did you not?”

  “I did,” says Perryman. The witness has already identified an array of photographs, and they now appear up on the visualizer in order for the jury to see.

  The gun itself is photographed lying on its side on top of a small mound of what appears to be dark potti
ng soil heaped up like a soft mesa around the base of a rosebush. A ruler for scale appears just beyond the edge of the lawn along the bottom of the photo.

  “Did you find the firearm yourself at the location photographed?”

  “No. One of the first officers on the scene checked the yard to make sure that no one was there. He observed the firearm at that time but did not touch it or approach it. He kept it under visual observation until evidence technicians from our office arrived on the scene. That’s when I first observed it.”

  “And was it still in the position and as we see it here in the photograph when you first observed it?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “What about the silencer?” says Templeton. “Where was that found?”

  The silencer, manufactured by a company in Vero Beach, Florida, that specializes in sound suppression for firearms, is a cylindrical tube about eight inches long. Its exterior is made of dull blued gunmetal with small round dimples lining the outside.

  “That was discovered by one of the evidence technicians outside the rear seawall of the victim’s residence on the rocks overlooking the beach,” says Perryman.

  “And you observed this before it was touched by any of the attending officers or your own staff?”

  “I did.”

  “And did you have it photographed?”

  “Yes.” Perryman identifies the photograph, a picture of the silencer lying on its side on the rocks perhaps ten feet from the edge where they drop off into the surf. Both the firearm and the silencer are neatly laid out on a small table in front of the jury box where jurors can observe them without touching them.

  “Did you or your staff find any loaded cartridges at the scene: unfired bullets either of the caliber of the subject weapon or any other firearm?”

  “No, we did not.”

  “No loaded cartridges either inside or outside the house?”

  “None that we found. And we looked thoroughly, including the use of metal detectors and the use of dogs trained to detect the odor of accelerants, including gunpowder.”

  “Were there any fired or spent cartridges either inside or outside of the victim’s house?”

  “None that we found,” says Perryman. “Again, we checked using canines attached to the bomb-detection unit.”

  This is a mystery: why, with only two rounds fired, the police found two empty pistol clips belonging to the handgun and no spent cartridge casings.

  “And the police canine units came up with nothing?”

  “Not exactly,” says Perryman. “They found no spent cartridges. They did detect traces of expended accelerants along the railing on the second-floor landing above the entry area of the house and on top of one of the glass display cabinets just beneath that area.”

  “When you say expended accelerants, could you explain for the jury what you mean?” says Templeton.

  “One of the dogs found traces of a substance including particulates of nitrate that were probably dislodged from the inside of a spent cartridge casing when it bounced on the top of the cabinet beneath the railing. Swabs were taken which later tested positive for concentrations of nitrates, both burned and unburned. These were found to be consistent with the discharge of smokeless gunpowder.”

  “I see,” says Templeton. “Did you form any conclusions as to what had happened at those locations as a result of these findings?”

  “I did.”

  “And what were those conclusions?”

  “That a firearm was most likely discharged in the area along the railing at the second-floor landing and that the nitrates discharged by this action settled along the railing and top of the display cabinet beneath it.”

  “I see. Were you able to determine whether the shots that killed Madelyn Chapman were fired from that location?”

  “It is my opinion that they were. We checked all other areas in the house that would have a clear and unimpeded line of fire to the location where the body was found in the entry hall. None of those locations came up positive for traces of nitrates.”

  “So by process of elimination you concluded that the shots that killed Madelyn Chapman were fired from the area of the second-floor landing above the entry?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Templeton has the witness identify photographs of this area, several shots looking up from the vicinity around the front door as well, as three photos, one with the crosshairs of a sight superimposed on the lens, aimed down at the floor of the entry hall in the area where Chapman’s body was found. A chalk outline of her body drawn on the floor is still visible in the three pictures. These go up on the visualizer for the jury.

  “Now let me ask you,” says Templeton, “did you measure the distance from the railing in the area where you detected traces of nitrates to the location where the victim’s body was found, on the floor of the entry?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did you determine that distance to be?”

  Perryman doesn’t even bother to refer to his notes. He has memorized this, one of the key elements of their case along with the rapidity of the two shots, the distance to the target.

  “Twenty-one feet four inches, if you take into account the height of the victim when she was standing and the fact that the gun would most likely have been held at arm’s length in a two-handed firing stance and slightly out over the railing.”

  “Over twenty feet?” says Templeton.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Two shots, both of which according to evidence already introduced were tightly grouped within slightly more than half an inch, and both of which struck the victim in the head?”

  “As I understand it,” says Perryman.

  “That’s some shooting,” says Templeton.

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Templeton, let’s allow the witnesses to testify. Keep your comments to yourself. The jury will disregard the statement made by the prosecutor.”

  “Sorry, Your Honor.” Templeton gives the judge one of his harmless smiles, open palms out and extended like a miniature Jolson.

  He then moves on to defuse one of the problem areas of his case. Templeton covers the Orb at the Edge, which is still missing. “Did you find any remnants of this, the glass art object that we know the victim purchased the day that she was killed?”

  “No. But we did find the cardboard box and pieces of tape and packing materials. It appears that she had just finished unpacking this in the kitchen, a short time before she was killed.”

  An earlier witness has already identified these materials. The merchant who sold her the art glass told the jury that the materials were gathered from the storeroom at the back of his shop and used to pack the glass before it was loaded into the front seat of Chapman’s car.

  “So the killer could have taken the item?” says Templeton.

  “I don’t know. All I can say is that we didn’t find it at the scene.”

  “And I assume that anyone who took it would probably want to dispose of it as quickly as possible.”

  “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

  “Mr. Templeton. Please,” says Gilcrest.

  “Allow me to rephrase it, Your Honor.” Having made his point, Templeton proceeds to make it again. “Let me ask you, have you seen pictures of the art object in question, what are called catalog photos?”

  “I have,” says Perryman.

  “Was it your understanding, based solely on your investigation, that the glass art item known as the Orb at the Edge was unique, a one-of-a-kind item?”

  “Objection. Calls for speculation. The witness is not an art expert.”

  Gilcrest weighs this for a moment. “I’ll allow the witness to answer based solely on his understanding of what he discovered during the course of his investigation.”

  “From everything I learned during the course of the investigation,” the witness says, treading carefully, “it was unique. A one-of-a-kind item, as you say, and expensive.”

  �
��So, based on this, if this item—once owned by the victim Madelyn Chapman and in her possession on the day that she was murdered—were suddenly to be found in the possession of another person, as an expert witness in the field of criminalistics and forensic evidence, I assume you would consider this to be incriminating evidence?”

  “You bet. Absolutely.”

  “And let me ask you this, based solely on your expertise and your experience in the field of evidence: Have you ever seen situations in which an accused criminal perpetrator or a suspect was motivated to dispose of physical evidence when that evidence might link them to a crime?”

  “Yes, I have seen such situations,” says Perryman.

  With a crayon, Templeton draws a picture of the obvious for the jury.

  “Even an item of evidence that might have substantial monetary value?” Templeton asks.

  “Yes. I have seen and am familiar with cases in which expensive evidence has been disposed of because it might link a suspect to a crime.”

  Obvious as it may be, it is nonetheless effective. In closing, he can now argue that theft of the Orb was never the motive for the murder: that Ruiz took it no doubt to throw the cops off his scent to make it look like Chapman’s murder was a killing during the course of robbery. The state will argue that after the murder Ruiz had to get rid of it, since the art glass would have linked him beyond question to the homicide.

  “During the course of your investigation, you were inside the victim’s house for a considerable period of time, were you not?” says Templeton.

  “That’s correct.”

  “And during that time, did you have an opportunity to observe and to inventory all of the items of expensive artwork that were present there?”

  “I did.”

  During the course of your investigation, did you determine whether any other items of glass art were missing from the victim’s residence besides the item known as the Orb at the Edge?”

  “We were able to determine that there were no other missing items. The victim maintained a very active and up-to-date schedule of insurance on the items displayed in her home. She had a separate schedule for the items at her office. All of the items listed were still present following her death.”