“Two things thing went wrong with Quinn’s plan,” the doctor continued. “Howard Lumbrowski and James Dewitt. His son was arrested for the arson murder of the ‘mother.’ The son carried the last name of this surrogate mother, not his own. His adopted name was Steven Miller.”
Dewitt didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
“When I had him as a patient—Quinn that is—he was depressed and suicidal. This, following his son’s death. After all, Detective, he was the one responsible for the crimes, not his son. The guilt proved too much for him to bear. He had lost the only thing dear to him—a result of his own failed plan. While institutionalized, he tried three times to kill himself. Then one day, his suicidal tendencies evaporated. I understand now that that timing coincides with the transfer of Harvey Collette. That I didn’t know about at the time. As a professional, all that I saw was a remarkable change in the man. He wanted to live again. His suicidal tendencies vanished. I allowed myself to believe I had had some professional effect on him. I believed the medication had pulled him out of the depression.
“But there’s another possibility. Hindsight is often a psychiatrist’s best friend. Let’s suppose that Michael Quinn was kept alive by one thought: avenging his son’s death. Let’s say Harvey Collette gave him an inspired thought. Revenge is powerful motivation, certainly capable of effecting his sudden reversal, diminishing his suicidal tendencies. He would be after two people: Howard Lumbrowski for his incompetence in arresting the wrong person, and you for shooting his son. Actually three people, for there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s after himself. He is still suicidal. All that this fantasy would do is delay his acceptance of his responsibility for his son’s death.”
“Are you telling me he killed the first two, Osbourne and McDuff, for no reason at all?”
“No reason? Those are your words. Michael Quinn is a complex individual, capable of intricate planning. Premeditation is an understatement: A trapper must be prepared for any eventuality, especially catching the wrong animal. Who’s to say? You see? You can’t second-guess a Michael Quinn. If I’m right, if it is the thought of revenge that’s keeping him alive; then there’s no predicting him. He could change tactics—even change personalities—at any time. You understand that if I’m right, then you’re next, Detective. You are the last step. And the closer he gets to that step, the more risks he can take. Mind you, all of this is only speculation on my part. Call it an educated guess.”
Dewitt said nothing. He sat absolutely still. Fear built up in him like water behind a dam. Finally he nodded, stood, shook the man’s hand, and left the office in silence.
4
Dewitt was in a commuter plane at the exact hour Michael Quinn was charged with the murder of Howard Lumbrowski. Clare O’Daly’s laboratory findings, which linked the hair sample from Quinn’s dog with hairs found at all three crime scenes, passed immediately from the desk of Karl Capp to that of District Attorney Bill Saffeleti. Saffeleti, citing these laboratory tests and the room key found inside Lumbrowski, bowed to considerable public pressure and delivered up a suspect. By California law, Quinn’s preliminary hearing had to be held within his first fourteen days of incarceration. Although there were dozens of ways around such laws, Saffeleti felt it important to move quickly with Quinn—win the right to try him while the severity of his crimes was still fresh in the court’s mind—and then spend months preparing a stronger case, one that didn’t rely on dog hairs. He believed the key their best piece of evidence: Why would Lumbrowski have swallowed the key unless it was meant as a clue? The trace evidence in the first two murders was supportive but far too circumstantial—too forensically technical—for Saffeleti to go after more than the one conviction. If they won Lumbrowski, they would be back for more, like kids after birthday cake.
Dewitt drank steadily from six o’clock until eleven, when both he and Clarence were forced to accept a ride out to the valley from Clare O’Daly, who had been talked into joining them late but drank lightly, unable to find a comfortable spot alongside two drunken best friends. She delivered Dewitt to his doorstep, helped him inside and into bed, but refused his invitations. He was asleep within minutes of his deposit, and Clare safely on her way home.
10
THE PREPARATION
1
On Thursday, January nineteenth, Dewitt awakened at nine o’clock and went immediately back to bed. By noon, he had showered and put away two cups of coffee. He spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening alone, working at the kitchen table on what seemed like endless paperwork. The system needed some way around all of this paperwork. Perhaps computers were the answer, or new legislation, or deeper pockets, but something had to be done. There were too few cops to have them spending a third of their time filling out triplicate forms.
Thursday evening, Saffeleti’s deputy DA called to inform Dewitt that Quinn’s preliminary hearing had been set for Thursday the twenty-sixth. At seven o’clock, Dewitt called Emmy at his mother’s house in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and told her to come home. He picked her up at the airport the following afternoon, and by that evening, the phone was ringing off the wall again. Life was back to normal. He felt good.
***
The next few days found him shuttling between his office, the Salinas lab, and the Monterey County Courthouse as the diligent DA quizzed him and Clare like high school students preparing for SATs. Saffeleti was clearly uncomfortable with the nature of the evidence and the relative inexperience of his two star witnesses in their present positions. As they drew closer to Tuesday, Dewitt realized Saffelti did not consider this an ironclad case, and Dewitt once again gained a keen appreciation for the difference in attitude concerning forensic evidence between those in the field and laymen. Ironically, it was easier to sell technical evidence to a naive jury than to a seasoned judge—and the preliminary hearing would be heard by a judge—Judge Alberto Danieli, a stickler for procedure, and a man who kept a tight rein on his courtroom.
Sunday evening, Dewitt was asked to meet the DA on a street corner in Monterey, an improbable meeting place. The moist air smelled sweet with salt, and though chilly, Dewitt wore a sweater under his wool sports coat and was comfortable. Saffeleti surprised Dewitt with a knock on the driver’s window of the idling Zephyr, a jerk of his coiffed head, and the blunt two-word statement, “Let’s walk.”
“What’s up?” Dewitt asked after they had covered several blocks in silence.
“Didn’t want to make this official. You got that? Far as I’m concerned, if anyone ever asks about this meeting—which they had better not—we ran into each other on the street. Got it?” he added rhetorically.
“Why the cloak and dagger?”
“Got it?” Saffeleti seemed an improbable public servant. With his Italian coloring and GQ wardrobe, he looked as if he had stepped off the set of a soap opera.
“Got it.”
“I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
“Meaning?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Speak English, Bill.”
“Don’t start with me, James. I’m in no mood.”
“You want to talk about moods? Every time I bring your people some evidence, they make me write the whole thing out like a friggin’ book report or something. It might help, Bill, if your people could read a forensic report; they come in handy in police investigations, in case no one in your department noticed.”
“Some of my people are new.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I need to know what’s going on,” Saffeleti repeated in a more cordial tone.
“I caught that the first time around. Going on, as in?”
“In my line of work, as in yours, I’m sure you develop a certain feel for a case. Perhaps it’s something a person tells you directly, perhaps something that comes to you indirectly, even something that isn’t said, or an attitude in your opponent that isn’t present. I don’t mean to imply I run my cases based on feelings… certainly n
ot. Call it a sixth sense, if you want. I have it, James. It’s why I win five times as many cases as I lose. Sure, some of this job is picking the right cases, but what the hell governs that? A sixth sense for the ones you can win.” They rounded a corner. Saffeleti was leading, though Dewitt recognized in the DA’s hesitations at intersections that there was no destination to this walk. The District Attorney was merely buying time. Vamping. “The reason you’ve been asked to write out what all your forensic reports mean, James, is that I felt it important to see this case on paper… to allow my people to see it on paper. These damn prelims are rugged on a case like this: very little time to prepare and if we screw up, we have to refile and try again or abandon the case completely. That means everyone has to know what the hell is going on. Judges have seen hundreds of forensics reports. It doesn’t mean they understand them any more than I do, or my clerks do. But it might help if we put together a brief, summarizing what those reports tell us, connecting one piece of evidence to the next, showing the court how the hell you went from a dead body in a parking lot with a couple rug fibers to Room Twelve of that motel.” They paused at a crossing and waited out the light. Saffeleti continued once they crossed the street.
“My biggest concern is that we’ve apparently lost any chance at connecting Quinn to Miller. What Christiansen told you will be considered hearsay. If a record of birth exists, my people can’t find it. Ten to one, Quinn’s wife gave birth to the kid in her own home. It was the sixties, don’t forget. People weren’t exactly eager to follow standard procedures like applying for a birth certificate. Hell, Quinn wasn’t even filing taxes then. We can’t even show he was claiming two dependents. We’ll still try the Christiansen testimony—at least plant a seed in Danieli’s ear—but he’s required to rule against such evidence. There’s still a chance we may be able to track down a midwife or some other witness, but not by the prelim. That’ll have to wait for the trial.”
“But to make it to trial, we have to win the prelim,” Dewitt spoke, regretting the comment. Of course the District Attorney was aware of this.
Saffeleti was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, he seemed to be attempting to contain his anger. “So here we are less than a week before the hearing.”
There was such a long pause, Dewitt added, “Here we are.”
“And along comes a little birdie that whispers a few things into my ear and makes me crap fireballs.”
“What kind of ‘little birdie’?”
“Fucking Tweety-Pie, Dewitt! What the fuck does it matter?”
“It matters.”
“It doesn’t matter. What the little birdie says is what matters, and what I hear is that the defense has ordered DNA typing on those dog hairs. Even worse, I hear that Ramirez’s computers kicked a name on that roll of masking tape found in Lumbrowski’s car and that it has caused the convening of a special grand jury. That means secrecy, and I gotta wonder why.”
“I don’t see the problem with the DNA testing. You’ll recall that both Clare and I thought it was the thing to do. But you were right… it’s expensive and dog hair has never been used in court. If they’re lucky, they’ll just end up doing our work for us, proving what they never wanted to find out. How did they afford it, if we couldn’t?”
“No idea.”
“Who’s defense using?”
“Hart Laboratories.”
“Well, there you go,” Dewitt said. “Hart knows what he’s doing. Next legislature, we may vote on a DNA base for felons, much as we have ALPS now. Can you imagine what the contract will be worth? Running DNA fingerprints on every convicted felon in the state? Jesus! He’s probably offered this work for free. This is a high-profile case. He knows the value of publicity. If Hart Labs is associated with DNA fingerprinting, then they become a contender for at least part of that contract. One thing about Dr. Frederick Hart: He knows where the money is.”
“I don’t like the idea of an independent going over all our evidence. How good are our people, anyway?”
“I don’t get it, Bill. Why so uptight? I thought you said Sibel was the perfect PD to go up against on this prelim. You implied he would basically give us the prelim and concentrate on the trial itself… try to beat us in the trial. How many PDs fight very hard at a prelim, anyway, especially when they’re up against the District Attorney himself?”
“Sibel? Where the hell have you been, Dewitt? Sibel broke his jaw in a racquetball game yesterday afternoon… wired the trap shut for six weeks. Sibel’s sucking dinner through a straw. It’s not Sibel we’re up against, it’s that cunt Layya Moaning. And she’s exactly the kind of bitch to come after us hard at the prelim… knock us down before we get a full head of steam going. And the thing about Lay-ya is, she’s one hell of an attorney. She’s been blowing us out of the water lately. I don’t like her, Dewitt. She’s beaten both of my assistants in cases we should have won easily. Sibel would have been one thing; why he had to pick this week to go play fuckin’ racquetball I’ll never know.”
“It’s worse than you think,” Dewitt said.
“How’s that?”
“Mahoney and I don’t exactly get along.”
“Meaning?”
“She made a play for me during the Wood interview, and I passed. Worse than that. I called her on her whole act. I’m trying to get Wood to talk; she’s trying to flash me cleavage. I was in no mood.”
“Oh, perfect!” Saffeleti groaned.
“What about this grand jury thing? You want me to call Ramirez? We’re friends.”
“Okay, James, I owe you this. This is hearsay, but it’s reliable hearsay.” He hesitated. “Word is that a search warrant was issued for your place not two hours ago.”
“My place? On what authority?”
“AG’s office, from what I hear.”
“The grand jury?”
“Rumors, James. The town’s full of them.”
“The Attorney General’s office issues a search warrant for my place and you talk about rumors? What the hell’s going on?”
“A rumor is all it is. Town’s full of them on a case like this.”
“No, people don’t start rumors like that. The AG’s office would have to have damn good justification to obtain a search warrant. You’re the lawyer. Wouldn’t they?”
“I’m assuming your relationship with Lumbrowski has come into question. They’ve called for an investigation. I doubt they have much. Election years are full of this shit.”
Dewitt wanted to tell the man about his brawl in the front seat of the Mustang, but he was afraid to, was afraid it might panic Saffeleti into withdrawing the charges. No one had seen them fight outside; mention of it would only confuse matters. Dewitt had intentionally left it out of his report. Why? he would be asked. Because it would only confuse things, he would answer. He felt guilt at having manipulated the system in the same way people like Lumbrowski had. Extenuating circumstances: He knew all the terms. He had cut deals with Jessie Osbourne, had withheld information that he deemed unimportant. He withered with the thought. Was he just another Howard Lumbrowski, in khakis and a bow tie? He felt tempted to lie. He heard himself say, “Once Lumbrowski had the car fixed, I lost any evidentiary proof that I had reason to be there in the first place. It would have made my going after him look personal.”
Saffeleti stopped. “What are you talking ‘bout?”
“The night at The Horseshoe?” Dewitt said.
“We’ve been over that. You had words, so what?”
“We had words inside the bar. Outside, we had a fight. Lumbrowski found me taking an inventory in his car and he started swinging.”
“Jesus Christ! You never reported this?”
“I would have had to charge him with assault and that seemed stupid at the time. It would have confused things.”
Saffeleti searched Dewitt’s eyes. He tugged on his crisp tie, stretching for air. He nodded.
Dewitt felt relief. Saffeleti believed him. He was obviously irritated that Dewitt ha
dn’t told him of the fight, but he apparently understood.
“It does confuse things,” Saffeleti said.
“They probably turned up some evidence in the car,” the detective pointed out. “They’re looking for more at my house.” Dewitt could hear Saffeleti thinking; they were still eye-to-eye.
“Yeah. They’ll use Hart—he’s their expert witness—to try and get at you. But he writes textbooks. I can handle Hart. Believe it or not, James, this is good: This tells me how she’s coming after us. What could they have against you?”
“A latent print maybe. Nothing to speak of. I was only inside the car a few seconds.”
“No more surprises?” Saffeleti asked.
“I sure as hell hope not, Bill.”
“I can handle this,” the attorney assured him. “We’re all right.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Dress up for your court appearance, James. The tenured professor look we don’t need.” He patted Dewitt on the arm, turned, and walked away.
When Dewitt returned home, he discovered a search warrant tacked to his front door. It had been conducted by the M.C.S.O. by authority of the Attorney General’s office. He felt violated. He felt betrayed by his own people. He worried. No more surprises? What the hell were they after? His job? His reputation?
He and Emmy went out for a burger, though the conversation dwindled to nothing and they rode home in silence.
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