“This is possible,” he says. “It would depend on a number of factors, the amount of oil or grease on the weapon that might hold the hair.”
“But in your opinion there is no way this hair could have casually found its way into the weapon?” Nelson goes back to safe ground.
“No.”
“Thank you.”
Nelson has done all the damage he can with this witness. Fearful of asking one question too many, turning the tide, he takes his seat.
I get up, a legal pad in hand, a few dozen questions. Without much pain I get Johnson to repeat his concession, made during the preliminary hearing. He tells the jury that hair, unlike a fingerprint, does not possess a sufficient number of unique individual characteristics to be linked positively to any given individual, or to exclude all other individuals as the possible source.
He concedes that he cannot say with absolute certainty that this sample of hair belonged to Talia.
I cut him off before he can repeat his opinion as to microscopic similarities. He clearly would like to reinforce this with the jury.
“Officer Johnson, can you tell us what kind of condition this strand of hair was in, the one found in the shotgun?”
He looks at me, confused.
“I mean, was it fragmented, was the end split, was it all in one piece?”
“It was in good condition.” He says this as if to assure me that he had a fine specimen to examine, and there is no basis to impugn the quality of evidence here.
“It wasn’t broken or fragmented?”
“No.”
“In fact wouldn’t you say that this strand of hair was in exceptionally good condition given the apparent trauma it had suffered, being caught in the mechanism of this weapon and presumably jerked out?”
“It was in good condition.” He sticks to the original answer, unsure where I’m taking him.
There is, it seems, a cycle of life for hair as there is for humans. Harry and I have been busy researching follicles. As with many things in science, this cycle is classified into stages. In the last, or telogen phase, before hair falls out, it is fully mature and is anchored in the hair follicle only by the club at its root end, like a ball and socket Below this club new anagen hair is already starting to form. When the old hair falls out, new hair begins to replace it, and the cycle starts again, though not for Harry, who says his follicles have shot their wad.
I take Johnson on a verbal tour. He agrees that this little scenario is gospel in the life of a human hair.
“Officer Johnson, can you tell us, did the hair specimen found in the locking mechanism of the shotgun include that portion known as the ‘telogen root’?” This is the club end of the hair.
He asks for the photograph again and studies it. The root is there, big as life.
“It did,” he says.
“This telogen root, was it fully intact?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it unusual to find the telogen root of a hair that has presumably been pulled forcibly, as this one was, from the head?”
“It could happen,” he says.
“That’s not my question. I asked you if it was unusual to find the telogen root still attached to a hair which was forcibly pulled from the head?”
“I suppose,” he says. A grudging admission. “Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be more likely that this root would come out of its own accord, perhaps on a comb or brush as it neared the end of its life cycle, but that a strand of hair that was jerked from the head would more likely be fragmented, broken off?”
He makes a few faces, a mental trip looking for exceptions to this norm.
“Yes,” he says, “that would be usual.”
“Isn’t it more likely that if this hair had in fact been caught in the weapon, and forcibly pulled from the head of Talia Potter, that it would have been fragmented, broken off somewhere above the root?”
“Possible,” he says.
“I’m not asking you if it’s possible; I’m asking you if it is not in fact more likely.”
“I don’t know,” he says. A little evasion.
“Is it not possible, Officer Johnson, that if someone wanted the police, or this jury, to believe that Talia Potter had fired that shotgun on the day that Ben Potter was killed, that person might very well have obtained a hair sample, from a brush or a comb belonging to the defendant, and placed it in the weapon?”
He makes a face like this is pure fantasy.
“Isn’t it possible, Officer Johnson?”
“Possible,” he says.
“From your own testimony, officer, isn’t this theory, that someone might have planted that hair on that gun, isn’t this theory in fact more consistent with the physical evidence discovered at the scene, than the theory advanced by the state, that the hair was caught in the gun and pulled out?”
He stops dead on this. “I don’t understand the question,” he says. Johnson’s looking for signals from Nelson.
I get my body between them.
“Isn’t it more consistent, Officer Johnson, based on this single strand of hair and considering its condition and the presence of the telogen root, to believe that someone might have planted that hair as opposed to having it pulled from the head of the defendant? It’s that simple.”
“I don’t know that I can make that conclusion.”
“But you can sit here and draw the conclusion-make the quantum leap-that this strand of hair was caught in the breech and pulled from the head of the defendant when she supposedly used the shotgun to kill her husband?”
To this Johnson offers no response. I play the odds with him.
“Officer Johnson, if I were to reach up right now and pluck a single strand of hair from my head, would you expect that hair to have the telogen root attached when you examined it under the microscope?”
He’s looking at me, no response.
“Officer, if you want, we can bring our own expert, a physician if you like, to obtain the answer to this question.”
“No,” he says. “I wouldn’t expect the root to be attached.”
“Why is that?”
“Because in most cases the hair would fragment, it would break off above the root.”
“Thank you.”
Johnson starts to get up.
“I’m not finished.”
He settles back in the chair.
“In your earlier testimony, officer, you stated that this strand of hair was lodged in the locking breech of this firearm. Is that correct?”
He makes a face, close enough. “Yes.”
“Do you want to look at the picture again, to refresh your recollection?”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Would you look at the picture, Officer Johnson?”
He studies it again.
“Was any portion of the hair actually in the breech of the firearm, from your observations when you removed it?”
“Yes,” he says. This is hard to deny, it is there in living color, an inch and a half of hair littering the open breech.
“So a portion of this strand would have been in the area directly behind or around the cartridge, in the breech?”
He nods, emitting more of an educated grunt than a response, the sign of a witness keeping his options open.
“When you examined the gun, were there cartridges in both barrels?”
“There was one fired cartridge. The other barrel was empty. At that range, in the mouth,” he says, “you only need one.”
There are a few morbid chuckles from the audience.
“So the shotgun apparently had not been unloaded after it was fired?”
“No,” he says.
“We’ve already established that this strand of hair was in good condition. I take it then that there was no singeing of this hair, no scorching, that it was not burned at any point?”
He looks again at the photograph, the pristine strand of hair, magnified a hundred times, almost translucent in its sheen on the page.
“No,” he says.
“There was no evidence of scorching or burning?”
“No.”
I can see from his eyes that he now senses where I am going.
“You’ve established earlier that you are qualified as a firearms expert. Based on your expertise, isn’t it true that when a shotgun is discharged it emits super-heated gases, and that these gases would flood the breech of the weapon?”
There’s a long sigh. “That’s true.”
“Then, Officer Johnson, how do you explain the lack of burning or singeing on that sample of hair?”
There is a long pause, the kind that catches a juror’s attention.
“I don’t know,” he says. He seems clearly puzzled by this, probably angry with himself that he has not considered it before.
“Isn’t one possible explanation that perhaps the hair wasn’t there when the weapon was fired, but was placed there later?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re the expert, officer, isn’t that one possible explanation?”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s possible.”
“Thank you.” Now I am finished.
I’m ecstatic, trying to hold myself on the floor as I return to the counsel table. Harry is struggling to hold back a moonbeam smile.
Talia has already failed, clutching my arm as I get to the chair.
Nelson is getting hammered; he cannot leave it like this. He knows that unless the momentum shifts he may not weather a motion to dismiss at the close of his case in chief. There’s a heady conference at the prosecution table, Meeks and Nelson.
“Redirect?” says Acosta.
Nelson gets up and approaches the witness box.
“Officer Johnson, according to your testimony only one chamber of the shotgun was found to be loaded, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then isn’t it possible that the strand of hair in question might have found its way into the empty chamber, and that this might explain why it was not singed or scorched?”
Johnson looks pained, as if under the burden of one who has just seen a friend fall.
“I don’t think so,” he says.
There is the stark expression of certain trouble in Nelson’s eyes. In desperation he has violated the cardinal rule: Never ask a question unless you know the answer. But it is too late to stop. The jury is waiting for the follow-up.
“Why not?” he says.
“The shotgun in question was an over-and-under, two barrels one on top of the other, not a side-by-side double barrel. It was the top chamber that was fired.”
Nelson’s dilemma is painfully obvious to anyone who has been following this little exchange. The strand of hair could not have reached the empty bottom chamber without a portion of it passing through the hot chamber on top. They cannot explain why this hair is not singed, fried like some crisp Chinese noodle.
CHAPTER 31
The phone is ringing. Saturday morning, rolling alone in the sheets. I’m in a half-daze as the cheerless gray dawn creeps through the white gauze that Nikki called drapes and hung on our bedroom window.
I reach for the receiver in a stupor, wiping sleep from my eyes.
“Hello,” I say.
“Have you seen the paper?” A female voice, hostile and cold, like a debt collector with her fangs in some deadbeat. It’s Nikki.
“What time is it?”
“After nine,” she says. “Have you seen today’s paper?”
“No.”
“You’d better take a look,” she says. Then she hangs up, hard in my ear.
I roll over and replace the phone on the cradle.
Saturday morning, gimme a break. Groaning, I start to get up.
Before I can find my slippers, it’s the doorbell. The cheap Westminster chimes, sans a few of the tones. Something else that needs repair.
There are a lot of foul words as I make my way down the hall, fastening my robe around me, barefoot, to the front door, stepping on dirty underwear and abandoned shoes. Wash day, I think. I check the peephole before opening, a little caution, a criminal lawyer’s due.
George Cooper, his head a distorted oval with a pointy hat, stands in a light drizzle on the stoop. I turn the bolt and open.
“Coop, sonofabitch,” I say. A counterfeit smile on my face like I’m happy to see him at this hour on a Saturday morning.
“A bad time?” he says. “I can come back.”
I’m yawning, stretching in his face. “Don’t be silly,” I say. I’m out on the step with him now, looking for the morning paper. It’s nowhere in sight. Wet and raining-chances are the boy threw it in the bushes again. Whenever it is wet and raining, he does this. I’ve been charitable, not complaining, assuming that the little plastic wrapper spoils his aim.
“I thought you might want this,” he says. Coop’s packing a large envelope under his arm inside his raincoat, sheltered from the elements. He squeezes it open like some fish’s mouth. There are scraps of paper inside, the size of ticker tape in a parade. I had hoped for a little more organization.
“For the taxes?” I say.
He nods.
I turn, heading for the kitchen.
“Come on,” I tell him, “close the door.”
Coop knows he’s not supposed to be here. A key witness for the prosecution. If Nelson knew, he would have Coop’s ass. We’ve had to suspend our infrequent lunches, meetings two or three times a month at a Mexican restaurant we call the ‘57 Chevy, Naugahyde booths carved with knives and stained by hot sauce and melted cheese.
I remind him of this, the fact that we are not meeting.
He agrees. A social call, he insists. “A trial doesn’t suspend the First Amendment, does it?” he says. “Freedom of association?”
I tell him that these are lofty notions, unfamiliar to Armando Acosta, whose ancestors perfected the thumb screw and found use for molten lead in the human ear.
Despite his protestations of basic rights, Coop is sufficiently sensitive that he comes here, to my house, a place where people won’t see us.
“Coffee?” I ask.
“Not if you have to make it.” After getting me out of bed, he’s too polite to put me to any trouble.
“Believe me, I have to make it.” In the kitchen, under the flat fluorescent light, my face is a forest of black stubble.
“Doin’ the midnight oil?” he says.
“Harry wanted to celebrate,” I tell him. “He’s feeling good about the trial.”
We finished the week on a high note. Nelson put on his ballistics expert. The witness confirmed that tests on the little handgun found at Talia’s were inconclusive in any match to the jacket fragment found in Ben. The state was forced to do this, to prevent us from scoring points on this issue in our case for the defense. It would not look good to hide this from the jury.
The best Nelson could do with his army of ballistics experts was to let the jury know that such a gun was available to the defendant. His problem with this is that there are enough guns in this city capable of having fired the bullet and fragment to arm the foreign legion, a point we hammered home on cross.
After court, Harry and I trekked to the Cloakroom, where we ended up under a table come closing hour. I don’t know that it was so much a celebration as just letting off some steam. Both of us had been on the wagon since the trial started.
“I take it things are going well, then?”
Coop’s been cloistered from the trial, locked out. Percipient witnesses and experts are excluded from the courtroom by order of the judge. This to keep them from contaminating each other with their testimony. In the stress of a trial, suggestion is a powerful force.
I let him know that it’s going better than we have any right to expect, but no details, nothing that might compromise me, give him an edge when we have to confront each other in court.
It is clear that Coop is not comfortable with this thought, the fact that we must do battle before judge and jury. He t
ells me that friends who do this risk chilling their relationship.
“It’s professional,” I tell him. “You do your job; I do mine. When it’s over, we forget about it. Simple as that.”
He makes a face at this, like he’s heard this from friends before. This morning Coop seems morose, out of sorts. I attribute this to the reason for his visit, Sharon’s probate.
He has a rolled-up newspaper stuffed in the pocket of his raincoat. I motion toward it. This looks better than crawling around in a wet juniper.
“Today’s paper?” I’m thinking about Nikki’s phone call.
“The shopping news,” he says. He’s got the envelope on the countertop now.
I will have to go on safari after all, in the bushes.
I’m filling the little paper filter with ground coffee. Black and muddy, Jo Ann Campanelli’s own recipe.
“I think I’ve got everything,” he says. Coop’s opening the envelope. It’s filled to overflowing with receipts, the papers for Peggie Conrad to finish Sharon’s final tax return.
“Anything new in the investigation?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. Coop is curt. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but the message is clear. The forensics man loaned to him by the cops to comb Sharon’s car has struck out. This means the case is at a dead end. The average taxpayer would never believe the number of unsolved cases plaguing most police departments in this country. Sharon’s driver, by all accounts, may skate.
“The other thing,” he says, “the claim check. I looked. No sign of it. So I called the hardware store. An old toaster. Sharon must have dropped it off for repairs. Don’t worry about it.” Coop already has too many pieces of Sharon around him, reminding him of this pain. I take him at his word.
The Mr. Coffee is making noxious sounds, the little port at the top gagging on the glue that’s dripping into the carafe.
Coop’s mucking around in the kitchen now, looking for some little tidbit, something to chew on. He breaks off an edge of bread from the end piece of a stale loaf on the counter and starts to gnaw.
“Tell me about the case,” he says, “your little victories?”
I look at him askance.
“Why don’t you ask me what I intend to do when Nelson puts you up?” I say.
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