Probable Cause

by Ridley Pearson

  Probable Cause

  Ridley Pearson

  Copyright

  Probable Cause

  Copyright © 1990, 2014 by Ridley Pearson

  Cover art, special contents, and electronic edition © 2014 by RosettaBooks LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover jacket design by David Ter-Avanesyan/Ter33Design

  ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795339967

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1: TUESDAY, JANUARY 10

  2: WEDNESDAY

  3: THURSDAY

  4: FRIDAY

  5: SATURDAY

  6: SUNDAY

  7: MONDAY

  8: TUESDAY

  9: WEDNESDAY

  10: THE PREPARATION

  11: THE HEARING

  12: TRAPPER JOHN

  13: LAST CALL

  14: POINT LOBOS

  15: GRAND JURY

  16: EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  James Dewitt approached his family at the rear of the courtroom, where they stood by the doors. He carried a keen intensity, an overt intelligence, in his eyes. The straight slash of a mouth and small cleft in his chin were reminiscent of a midwestern farmer. The thinning rust brown hair, the somewhat pointed ears, and the perennially irreverent, almost irksome expression that seemed indelibly stamped into his features invited curiosity but warned of the unpredictable.

  You couldn’t eat Italian and make a seven o’clock movie unless you got an early start, and so here they were in the Monterey County Courthouse—all of his girls: his wife, Julia, and their two daughters, Emmy and Anna. With their shoulder-length blond hair and azure eyes, they looked so much alike, so beautiful, it was disarming—like an advertisement for Ivory soap.

  Just seeing Julia made him stronger. Even after two children, she maintained the body of a twenty-year-old: fluid lines, firm chest, tapered waist, and a smooth-complexioned face that appeared both innocent and wise. His queen! In their fifteen years of marriage, she had yet to miss greeting him following a court appearance. Always there to ask how it went. Always there to support him. Always understanding and comforting. Where she found her strength, he had no idea—certainly not from him, regardless of what she claimed. She was an iron woman, seldom complaining, inexhaustible, forgiving, and kind. He felt like an imposter being her husband. Who could honestly deserve her?

  Julia seldom brought the girls with her because preliminary hearings were often rough on the forensic investigator, and this one had been hell on Dewitt. He realized now that he never should have suggested the movie. This was a night for a few cocktails and a long sensual back rub. This was a night for forgetting.

  Dewitt seethed with anger, a rare emotion for him, and Julia could clearly sense it as he approached. Centered between them, she tugged the girls closer to her for security. Her girls were her world—moons to her planet.

  “James?”

  “Lumbrowski screwed me.” His voice was intense but discreetly low. Though behind him the judge had adjourned for the day, the principals were still milling around in front of the bench.

  “James!” she chided, cupping her hands over the outside ear of each of her girls. They had this rule about language around the children.

  Emmy, at thirteen, the older of the two, was the independent, rebellious child. She was a social butterfly, filled with boundless energy and given to spontaneous declarations of her opinion and taste. Julia battled with her to keep her well mannered, for these vocal eruptions could occur in any given social situation. She had entered her boy stage recently and considered Julia’s protectionism undeserved and misplaced. Mother and daughter had been at odds lately.

  Emmy pulled the hand away, her expression betraying her excitement. Emmy loved controversy. Anna, five years younger, didn’t seem to care.

  “First he fabricates evidence I can’t support. And then on cross, under oath, he claims I broke the chain of custody several times.” Federal and state laws required a “chain of custody” be maintained for all evidence. It amounted to a well-documented paper trail that helped ensure evidence could not be tampered with between crime scene, laboratory, evidence rooms, and a court of law. To his wife, Dewitt said, “He pissed the whole case away, Jules. What it comes down to is that he arrested the kid on a hunch—old-school police work—and then got too drunk to support it with any hard evidence. So he creates the evidence he needs. Left me in one hell of a spot, I’ll tell you that. It’s bullshit.” Emmy liked the swearing. She suppressed her grin.

  “James!”

  “Complete B.S. I warned Saffeleti right from the start we didn’t have a case against this kid. So I suppose I should be happy, right? But all that it means is that we refile and try again in a couple weeks. This was nothing but a waste of time. I can’t believe this sh—This kind of circus is bad for everyone involved. Lumbrowski’s high on something, I swear. He ends up just now shouting at this kid that he’s going to get the death penalty. The kid’s scared out of his mind.”

  Anna’s eyes looked beyond her father. She was their thoughtful child. The contemplator. Patient beyond reason. She was the amateur scientist who shared her father’s fascination with marine wildlife. The reader. She had an unusual preoccupation with classical music—Bach especially—and was content to sit alone in her room for hours on end with her books and Walkman, content in a private world into which she rarely offered any glimpse. Ironically, she was the child about whom her mother was most concerned, ironic because Dewitt knew Anna was fine. Anna reminded him of himself at the same age. Anna was going places. She was simply taking the time to prepare herself properly.

  Light seemed to flash inside Anna’s eyes as a commotion erupted at the front of the courtroom. The courtroom doors were open, a single film crew in waiting. The powerful camera light switched on, blinding Dewitt. Dewitt turned to see Detective Howard Lumbrowski, a big bear of a man, lunging across the defense table at young Steven Miller, the accused. Two bailiffs attempted unsuccessfully to intervene. Within seconds, it was an out-and-out brawl. Like a football player emerging from an attempted team tackle, the defendant squirted out of the pack and raced down the aisle toward Dewitt and his mesmerized family beyond.

  It wasn’t until the kid raised his hand threateningly that Dewitt saw the bloodied drinking glass. Its jagged mouth swept out at him as Miller charged. Dewitt ducked to avoid the swipe. He looked up to see Steven Miller straight-arm a stunned Anna, palm to her forehead, lifting her off her feet, her unprotected skull connecting sharply with the stone floor and cracking as it struck. Her blood ran immediately. Dewitt knelt over his daughter, his stomach hollow, his legs weak.

  Emmy, who had dived out of the way, crawled toward her father.

  At the sight of her fallen daughter, Julia screamed and flailed at Steven Miller. He cut her arm with the glass, pulled her into a headlock, and dragged her backward into the corridor. Howard Lumbrowski, his revolver brandished awkwardly before him, rushed past Dewitt. “Let her go,” Lumbrowski bellowed. Miller had cut him; there was an angry red gash below Lumbrowski’s eye.

  “Back off!” Dewitt called out, his fallen daughter’s situation worsening by the second, his wife bloody and caught by the throat. “Shut that off!” he hollered at the TV news pair. They went right on shooting. Where was everybody? This was happening much too fast despite the visual slow motion that seemed to draw out all movement. He glanced once again at Emmy, who was now standing terrified with her back against the cinder-block wall, eyes on her sister. Dewitt raised
his hand like a traffic cop: Don’t move, it said.

  Julia looked at her husband, and then at Anna. He had never witnessed such fear in his wife.

  Lumbrowski shouted more demands at Miller, waving his gun like a careless conductor’s uncontrolled baton. Miller screamed back at him, his words indistinguishable. Dewitt was a forensic criminalist, not a cop, but he was familiar enough with police procedure to know that Lumbrowski was handling this wrong.

  “Lumbrowski, back off,” Dewitt said in as even a tone as he could muster. “Give him some room.”

  “Drop it!” Miller concurred. He muscled Julia Dewitt into the hallway corner. Behind him was an enlarged photograph of a picture of Monterey in the late 1800s. He leaned against it.

  Where the hell were the other guards? The bright TV light cast harsh shadows. It made it feel as if the floor were moving under him.

  Lumbrowski threw the handgun to the floor. “Okay,” he conceded, “cool out!” It slid to within inches of Dewitt’s feet. Lumbrowski circled to his left now, forcing Miller to rotate to his right. With the movement, Miller exposed his body to Dewitt as he maintained his fixed attention on the cut detective, who continued his reckless advance.

  Lumbrowski glanced hotly at Dewitt: Shoot the bastard! his expression said. His toss of the gun had been deliberate. Dewitt looked down at it.

  “Stop!” Miller hollered at the detective, but Lumbrowski marched forward ominously.

  “Brow! Don’t crowd him!”

  Miller tugged Julia’s head back by the hair, stretching her throat, and placed the glass there in a final threat. Julia exploded into a frenzy—that was his Julia, ever the fighter. Dewitt heard a sickening, gut-wrenching gasp for air as the glass tore into her. Miller threw his hands into the air, a combined expression of surrender and satisfaction. The glass shattered on the stone floor, pieces showering out from where it fell. “I’m unarmed,” he announced proudly.

  Julia’s perfect body slumped forward and folded into a bloody heap at Miller’s feet, her throat deeply slashed.

  Dewitt dove for Lumbrowski’s weapon. In what seemed to him like one slow, smooth movement, he rose and fired at Miller, pulling the trigger repeatedly until the clap of gunfire ceased, the bittersweet smell of cordite enveloping him. Tears blurred his vision. Four rounds missed completely, but the remaining two drove Miller back against the wall. He was dead before he sagged to a sitting position on the floor.

  Julia died in the ambulance, her husband at her side.

  Anna, unresponsive, was rushed inside the hospital.

  1

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 10

  1

  “DBF at Scenic and Eighth,” announced the warm-toned voice of Virginia Fraizer, who acted as both receptionist and radio dispatcher. Dead body found. Down by the beach. They used telephones where dead bodies were concerned. Too many blood-and-guts freaks monitoring police bands to use the radios for something like this. Thank God for Ginny. She seemed to hold the department together.

  “I’m on my way,” Detective Sergeant James Dewitt replied, returning the receiver to the cradle of the bedside phone. DBF! Not a one-eighty-seven, thank God. That would be a homicide. Not after just two months on the force. Had to hurry. Outdoor crime scenes deteriorated quickly, and to make matters worse, it had been raining when he had awakened at 5:30. He knew the location: a turnout in the blacktop in the otherwise impossibly narrow scenic road that fronted Carmel’s beach. Enough room for three parked cars. A hit-and-run, maybe.

  Dead body found. One thing was certain: He was wide awake now.

  He was in his boxer underwear. He was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, waiting to wake up Emmy and get her ready for school. He looked in the mirror. He was anything but on his way.

  ***

  The body lay spread out on the pavement, posed inhumanly like a malfunctioning mannequin discarded on the showroom floor. Suicide, by the look of the car. A hose taped from the exhaust to the passenger window. Dewitt approached the body and stopped. Given the remarkable gift of life, he wondered how someone could choose death. Sight of the suicide made him angry and a thought flashed through his mind: If only this man’s unwanted life could be traded for Julia’s.

  It was a chilly January morning. Dewitt wore his brown wool sport coat—his only wool sport coat—a garment that begged for replacement. Its two black buttons drooped like the sad eyes of a basset hound. His identifying trademark remained his bow ties, a holdover from his fifteen years in forensics: In the lab, a bow tie stays out of your way. He wore green paisley today, a gift from Emmy. He removed his glasses, exhaled onto their lenses, and afforded them a long methodical polish. He returned them to the bridge of his nose, seating them in a permanently pink dent there. He stepped over the body and squatted by the man’s feet, taking one general all-encompassing look first, then focusing detail by detail, head to toe. James Dewitt still existed in the world of the microscopic particle. His eyes missed very little.

  He was unaccustomed to victims—especially dead ones. Having served as a man of evidence for so many years, he tended toward the material evidence first, which justified, at least in his mind, disregarding the body at present, turning away and focusing his attention on the vehicle. Technically, he was Detective Dewitt now. Detective Sergeant. But at a crime scene such as this, he instinctively reverted to his former self, a forensic investigator, a specialist dealing in the invisible world of trace evidence. His colleagues derisively referred to forensic criminalists as “nitpickers.” What did they know? Would your standard off-the-shelf detective have already noticed that there was no sand on the bottom of the decedent’s shoes, this despite a sugar-like coating covering the entire parking lot? And if no sand on the bottom of the shoes, then how had the decedent placed that hose in the passenger window?

  That was the beauty of hard evidence: It could either be explained or it couldn’t. Witnesses might offer a dozen different accounts of the same incident, but the hard evidence eventually told one, and only one, story.

  The car and the dead body would have to tell this story. Unlikely to have witnesses at this early hour. Dewitt carried surgical gloves and a Swiss Army knife in the right pocket of his sports coat; forceps, Baggies, small magnifying glass, and a Mag-Lite in his other. He snapped the pair of gloves on and called out to Patrolman Anderson, who was stringing the bright plastic POLICE LINE tape around the perimeter of the parking area, DO NOT CROSS, it warned. The wind changed and Dewitt could hear the comforting concussion of nearby surf more clearly, could smell the salt and the sap. The struggling Monterey pines with their wind-torn limbs and awkward weather-sculpted shapes leaned painfully toward shore.

  Anderson ashamedly confirmed that he had dragged the body from the car. Dewitt was going to have to call a meeting of Carmel’s twenty patrolmen and remind them of the responsibilities of the first officer, the first cop to arrive at a crime scene. The problem was not stupidity as much as unfamiliarity. Carmel saw few dead bodies in any given year. However, procedures were what kept investigations consistent, and the courts required consistency.

  Dewitt fished out the dead man’s wallet. California driver’s license. Name: John Galbraith Osbourne. Sacramento. The detective experienced a short flutter in his heart, like sudden indigestion. Third card down was the organ-donor card. Another flutter, this time more painful. The card contained an entry for the next of kin to be notified upon death: Jessica Joyce Osbourne. Everyone knew Jessie Osbourne, the fiercely outspoken Republican state representative. “Jammin’ Jessie” they had called her last year because she had played basketball with the statehouse boys for a charity function and had come out of the game at halftime with two points, two assists, and a bloody nose. At fifty-five, Osbourne still had the spunk of a young woman.

  Dewitt slipped the wallet into a Baggie and then removed his glasses again, polishing them slowly and then hooking them back around his ears, establishing them on his nose.

  He circled the Tercel once, eyes alert. Osbour
ne had done a neat job of it—but why here? The location of the crime scene itself was as much a piece of evidence as anything. Did he want to die with a nice view? Had there been any view an hour earlier, or had it been too dark? Why here?

  Rusty, his shepherd collie mutt, barked from the back of Dewitt’s unmarked police car, a Mercury Zephyr. Dewitt shouted a reprimand and the dog went silent.

  Dewitt knelt by the body again. Decent-looking guy except for his bluish gray skin. The headlights of the arriving coroner’s wagon swept the pavement as it descended the hill of Eighth. Three jewels sparkled in the light, drawing Dewitt’s attention. He duck-walked the short distance. Fresh motor oil by the look of it. It had been raining heavily when Dewitt had awakened at 5:30, yet this oil had not washed away. Was that possible in that strong a rain? Using his Swiss Army knife, he took a sample of some of the oil, sealed it in a Baggie, and then labeled it.

  “Was your radio car parked over here at any time?” he shouted over to Anderson.

  “No, sir,” Anderson replied as he finished with the crime-scene ribbon by tying it off to the bumper of his radio car.

  Dewitt carried what amounted to a portable crime lab in the trunk of the Zephyr. Besides the spare tire, the bulletproof police vest, and the first-aid kit, he kept two large black salesman bags back there. Between them, they carried every conceivable investigator’s tool. He retrieved his camera and photographed the oil and its relationship to the crime scene. Rusty protested from the backseat and had to be silenced again.

  “What’s up?” Anderson asked, joining him a moment later.

  Looking the young patrolman in the eye, Dewitt pointed his gloved finger at the dead man, John Osbourne. “He had a visitor,” he said.

  2

  Police Chief Clarence Hindeman’s office, the biggest in the building, was by no means large. The clock on the wall read 3:30. Dewitt had yet to eat lunch. Commander Karl Capp and James Dewitt sat in gunmetal gray steel chairs facing their superior, who presided from behind a large but nondescript matching steel desk, the window behind him looking out on Carmel’s picturesque storefronts.