Insider Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  Carvelli then testified that he was the one that took the items to a local laboratory for analysis. This was all done to establish a secure chain of evidence to preclude the prosecution from claiming it was tampered with.

  Krain almost lost it during his cross-examination. He raised hell about Carvelli crossing a crime scene tape and gathering evidence. Using this, he tried to have Carvelli’s testimony thrown out.

  Judge Williams almost casually overruled him. The judge made the obvious point that the police had every opportunity to do the same thing. He also ruled the defense has a right to examine the crime scene for exculpatory evidence.

  When the judge finally excused him, Carvelli wasted no time in beating a hasty retreat. Judge Williams looked at the clock then motioned for the lawyers to come up to the bench. He turned on the white noise when they arrived.

  “How much time will you need for your next witness?” the judge asked Marc.

  Marc looked at the clock and said, “I can finish before lunch, your Honor.”

  “Who are you putting on the stand?” Krain arrogantly asked.

  “You’ll see,” Marc replied.

  “Your Honor,” Krain said to Judge Williams, “I saw a man in the hall before court. His name is Jordan Fisk. He’s a chemist at the U. I believe he’s going to testify about the coffee that was taken from the crime scene and…”

  “Is that correct?” Williams asked Marc.

  “Yes, your Honor,” Marc answered.

  “Good. Let’s get him in here. I want to hear what he found,” Williams said.

  “Your Honor!” Krain burst out.

  “Relax, Jerry. Let’s see what he has to say, then we’ll deal with your objection.”

  Dr. Jordan Fisk was a very highly respected chemist who was a professor at the University of Minnesota. He was also a partner in an independent research lab. He had been given the sample of Brooke’s coffee to analyze. Dr. Fisk and his partner were both almost professional witnesses.

  He took the stand and gave his name and profession. Jordan Fisk made a very different impression than the stereotype of a chemistry professor. He was a tall, dignified man who had that handsome older man look about him. It did not hurt the image that he favored expensive, Brooks Brother’s suits.

  Marc started out by going over Fisk’s curriculum vitae to establish him as an expert. Ten minutes in, Krain stood and stipulated to the witness’s qualifications. Ignoring him, Marc finished going through them anyway for the record.

  Following a few preliminary questions about how the coffee to be analyzed was sent to him, and the process he used, Marc moved into his findings.

  “There was a significant dosage of a street derivative of Flunitrazepam in the coffee provided to me for analysis, Defense Exhibit One,” he testified.

  “What is Flunitrazepam, Doctor?”

  “It is more commonly known as roofies. It’s also called the date rape drug. It will cause a person to lose control of themselves and will put them into a state of unconsciousness. This particular batch is a compound we are seeing more of colloquially called Roofie Express. It works very fast and is also metabolized very fast by the liver.”

  “Was there enough in the coffee sample to work on an adult?” Marc asked.

  “Extrapolating the amount in the sample to what was in the cup that was consumed, whoever drank it would have been knocked out in one to two minutes,” Fisk answered.

  “How long would she have been out?” Marc asked.

  “At least an hour, maybe two.”

  “Would she have a…”

  “Objection to counsel’s use of the pronoun ‘she’,” Krain said.

  “Overruled,” Williams quickly said.

  “Would she have a memory loss, a blackout during that time?”

  “Absolutely,” Fisk answered.

  “How long would it take for the body to metabolize the drug so there would be no trace of it in the blood or urine?”

  “Hard to say positively. It depends on the person. With this amount, it could be as little as three hours but at most, five. Probably around four hours.”

  “Doctor, if someone was given this amount of the drug, would she have been able to go into another room, stab someone…”

  “Objection. Goes beyond his expertise. Speculative,” Krain said.

  “Sustained,” Williams ruled.

  “May I approach the witness?” Marc asked.

  “Yes.”

  Marc stood and handed a three-page document to Krain. He walked up to the witness box to Dr. Fisk. He had Fisk identify the document, marked Defense Exhibit Four, as his report. Marc moved to have it admitted and gave a copy to Judge Williams.

  “I have nothing further,” Marc declared.

  Before asking any questions, Krain stood and said, “Your Honor, we ask the witnesses testimony be stricken, and Defense Four be set aside. We have had no notice of any of this nor have we had an opportunity to question the witness or have lab tests done ourselves.”

  Marc, who was still on his feet, said, “Your Honor, they had every opportunity to do these things while they conducted their thorough investigation.”

  “He has a point, Mr. Krain,” Judge Williams said, “Doctor Fisk, how long would it take a qualified lab to test what remains of the coffee and get results?”

  “A few hours, your Honor, if they prioritize it,” Fisk replied.

  Judge Williams looked at Krain and said, “I’ll give you forty-eight hours. Until noon on Thursday. I’m not going to let you drag this out. Do you have questions for this witness?”

  “Not at this time,” Krain said. “But if our lab results are different, I will ask the court to reconvene to admit testimony about it and we may want to put Dr. Fisk back on the stand at that time.”

  “Mr. Kadella?” Williams asked.

  “The defense has no objection, your Honor. We are confident of the analysis as long as the prosecution uses an unbiased lab,” Marc said.

  “Your Honor!” Krain yelled.

  “Stop,” Williams said. He excused Dr. Fisk, looked at the clock and broke for lunch.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  While the gallery was emptying for the lunch break, Tony Carvelli re-entered the courtroom and walked up the center aisle against the stream. He passed through the gate and went to the defense table.

  “Hi, Tony,” Brooke said with a big smile.

  “Hey, kid,” Carvelli replied. “How are you holding up?”

  “Okay. I think it’s going pretty well,” she replied.

  “Look at this,” Marc told Carvelli. He was referring to a photo displayed on Jeff Modell’s laptop. It was a good picture of the man in the back of the room.

  “You know him?” Marc asked.

  Carvelli stared at the screen for several seconds then said, “He looks familiar, but I can’t place him. Why?”

  “He’s been sitting in back by the door. He doesn’t look like the usual court watcher crowd and he’s certainly not media.”

  “Jeff, email that photo to me,” Carvelli said. To Marc, he said, “I’ll send it to Paul and I think I’ll send it to an MPD detective I know in their Intelligence Unit. Maybe he’ll know him.”

  Aidan answered the phone call he had been expecting by asking, “What do you have?”

  “They found the drug we used on the girl. There was enough left over in her cup on her desk. They got some doctor guy to test it, and he testified about it. So what do you want me to do?” Richie asked him.

  Despite the cool weather, Richie was outside in front of the government center. He was a little shook up about Dr. Fisk’s testimony and desperately needed a cigarette. There was silence from Aidan for several seconds while Richie walked around smoking.

  “You still there?” he asked Aidan.

  “Do nothing. Go back in and just do what you’ve been doing. Watch the trial. I’ll talk to the boss.”

  At the same time, Gerald Krain and Gabe Hunt had retreated upstairs to Krain’s office. Hunt had f
ollowed him in and barely closed the door when the volcano went off.

  “Jesus H. goddamn Christ!” Krain bellowed. “How could you miss the coffee sitting on her desk? What kind of clusterfuck investigation…”

  “It was the crime scene guys who…”

  “Shut up! I don’t want to hear any excuses,” Krain yelled.

  Krain turned away from the detective, stepped up to the window and stared at U.S. Bank stadium a half mile to the East. While he did this, Hunt stood silently waiting for another ass-chewing. With twenty-seven years on the job, Hunt was calculating his pension trying to decide if he should tell Krain where he could shove it.

  Hunt heard the prosecutor deeply inhale then, while still looking out the window, calmly say, “It’s a probable cause hearing.” Krain turned around to face Hunt and continued, “I still think we’ll survive that.”

  Krain took the chair behind his desk. Hunt sat down in one of the client chairs. “But we have a lot of work to do before trial. Fortunately, we’ll know what they will be counting on to create reasonable doubt at trial. Before then, we’ll have to be able to refute every bit of it.”

  “You think the judge will find probable cause?” a relieved Hunt asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty low bar. But you’re going to have to tighten up your investigation. The good news is, I think, they didn’t find any of this drug in her system.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if they had her tested, whoever did the testing would have been first on the witness stand. That’s why they had their expert make a big deal about how long this stuff stays in the body.”

  “Makes sense,” Hunt agreed.

  There was a knock on the door, and Krain’s secretary came in. She was carrying two box lunches and two bottles of water.

  Although the door to Cal’s home office was open, Aidan lightly rapped on the door’s trim anyway. Cal looked up from the papers he was going through and said, “Must be bad news. That’s the only time you knock. What is it?”

  Aidan had entered the office and was taking a seat in front of the desk. “It’s like we thought. They found roofies in the coffee that we missed on the girl’s desk.”

  “Shit,” Cal quietly said leaning back in his chair.

  “But they got no way to tie it to us,” Aidan said.

  “The other secretary, Lucy,” Cal said.

  “She doesn’t know dick,” Aidan said.

  “See to it,” Cal said.

  “That’s not gonna look good, boss,” Aidan said.

  Cal thought about it for a moment, then said, “You’re right. It would be as bad as popping the lawyer. Goddamnit!”

  “Before the trial, we can arrange an accident. Once the publicity dies down,” Aidan replied.

  “Yeah,” Cal agreed. “That’s probably the thing to do.”

  “You decided what to do with Maddy?” Aidan asked.

  “Nothing, right now. We’ll string her along for a while. Besides, you read the stuff on the internet about her. She’s not to be taken lightly,” Cal said.

  Aidan smiled a sinister smile and said, “I can handle a girl.”

  “The defense calls Lucy Gibson, your Honor,” Marc said to start the afternoon session.

  The exit doors opened and Carvelli escorted Lucy Gibson up the aisle and through the gate. Tony took one of the chairs in front of the bar behind the defense table. Lucy was reminded by Judge Williams she was still under oath and took the stand again.

  “During your testimony for the prosecution,” Marc said starting out very friendly, mildly, to put her at ease, “Mr. Krain made a big deal about how Brooke Hartley felt about Brody Knutson.”

  “Objection to the characterization of a big deal,” Krain stood and said.

  “Overruled,” Judge Williams quickly said.

  “Isn’t it true that you felt the same way about your former boss?” Marc asked.

  “Um, yeah, I guess,” Lucy said very quietly.

  “I’m sorry, was that a ‘yes’?” Marc asked. “I didn’t hear your answer.”

  “Yes,” she said loud and clear.

  “He made the same kind of comments toward you that you told the court he did at Brooke Hartley about how you dressed, how you looked, your perfume, things like that did he not?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Did it make you uncomfortable?”

  “A lot, yes.”

  “Did you ever think about murdering him?”

  “Objection!” Krain bellowed.

  Williams thought about it for a couple of seconds then said, “No, I’ll allow it. Overruled. You may answer, Ms. Gibson.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Did you ever hear Brooke say ‘I’d like to kill that old so and so’?”

  “Objection, hearsay,” Krain said.

  “If Ms. Hartley ever said such a thing, it would certainly be a statement against interest hearsay exception,” Marc said.

  “Overruled.”

  “No, no, of course not. She didn’t like it, but she never said anything like that.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the H.R. people and file a complaint for sexual harassment?”

  “Mr. Knutson was very powerful at the firm. Other girls had complained and they were moved. I liked the job and the pay was good. Besides, it wasn’t that bad. Mostly just comments he made. Things like that.”

  “Do you know if Brooke felt the same way?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Sure, we talked about it a lot. Mr. Knutson was, well, a harmless maybe even lonely man. We put up with it.”

  “In fact, virtually every woman at Everson, Reed felt the same way, didn’t they?”

  “The ones that I knew, yes.”

  “The morning you arrived at the office, the day Mr. Knutson was killed, your testimony was: you hung up your coat, placed your purse on your desk and immediately went into the break room. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You were going to get a cup of coffee, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was but…”

  “Let me ask the questions, please,” Marc politely said. “We’ll get there.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said, a touch embarrassed.

  “Instead, you found the coffee pot sitting on the counter empty and rinsed out, correct?”

  “Yes,” Lucy agreed.

  “And this surprised you didn’t it, because you knew Brooke had set up the timer on the coffee maker to brew a fresh pot in the morning, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Did you look in the container on the coffee maker where the coffee grounds are put and the water runs through to make coffee?”

  Lucy visibly sat up and had a look of fresh remembrance on her face. “Yes, I did and it was empty. And the wastebasket was empty. What happened to…”

  “The used coffee grounds that you saw Brooke set up the night before,” Marc said completing her thought.

  “Objection,” Krain weakly said.

  “Sustained. Let the witness answer,” Judge Williams said.

  “Ms. Gibson, did Mr. Knutson have a cleaning service to clean his personal office?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Who cleaned it?”

  “That was part of our duties, mine and Brooke, Ms. Hartley. Mr. Knutson did not want any strangers in his office snooping around. He was a pretty neat person so it wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Did you ever handle the letter opener, State’s Exhibit A?” Marc asked.

  “When we were cleaning up, sure. It was on his desk and we normally picked it up and moved it. He loved that letter opener,” she answered.

  “Did you ever see Mr. Knutson handling the letter opener?”

  “He was always playing with it especially when he was on the phone.”

  “Did you clean up Mr. Knutson’s office the night before his death?”

  “Yes, we vacuumed and dusted and straightened everything up
for him.”

  “Do you recall if either of you wiped the handle of the letter opener clean?”

  “No, I don’t think we ever did that.”

  At that moment, a court deputy came in through the door behind the bench. She silently handed Judge Williams a folded piece of paper. The judge opened it, read the note, frowned and nodded to the woman who gave it to him.

  “Something’s come up,” Williams said looking at Marc. “Let’s take a fifteen-minute break. Off the record,” he said to the court reporter.

  “A phone call on another case I need to take,” he said to Marc and Krain.

  “How did you know about the coffee grounds?” Carvelli quietly asked Marc while the courtroom emptied. “Even I didn’t notice that.”

  “I didn’t know,” Marc answered. “In fact, I hadn’t even thought of it until right now. I just took a chance and asked her about it. It seemed like a sensible thing. Besides, if she said, ‘no, I didn’t check for the coffee grounds’; I would have just let it go and moved on.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  It was closer to a half hour before Judge Williams was back on the bench. He told Marc to proceed and Marc nodded at Jeff. Jeff clicked a couple of keys on the laptop and a photo of a serious looking man appeared on the TV screens. When the man’s picture appeared, Marc noticed Lucy’s eyes widen and a worried look came over her.

  “Ms. Gibson,” Marc began, “on the courtroom monitors is a picture of a man. Reminding you that you are under oath, I ask you, do you recognize this man?”

  Hesitantly, Lucy nervously said, “Yes.”

  “And what is his name?”

  “Um, Bret Holston,” Lucy answered.

  “And who is he to you?”

  “He’s a man I’ve been seeing socially.”

  “You’re dating him?” Marc asked.

  “Well, sort of, a little, I guess,” she said.

  Marc held up a sheet of paper with several columns of print on it. “I have here your phone records for the past two months. What would you say if I told you it shows you called him seventy-two times, and he called you over fifty times during that period?”