Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  “No, a common loop,” says Claude.

  “And the knot used to tie the cord, any difference between the two knots?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Well, you’re the investigating officer, if there was a difference in the knots you’d be aware of it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, is there a difference?”

  “No, it’s a common knot. If I were to tie ten, I’d probably tie nine like that myself.”

  “But there’s no difference?” says Adrian, coming back to the point at hand.

  “No. There’s no difference.”

  “Besides the knots and the way the victims were tied off on the ground, was there any difference in the position of the victims on the ground as between the college students and the Scofield victims?”

  Claude thinks for a moment. “No appreciable difference.”

  “Was there any difference?”

  “No.” A grudging admission.

  “The metal stake that was used to kill each of the six victims, the students and the Scofields, was there any difference in the positioning of this stake in the bodies, generally?”

  “Objection. The witness is not a medical expert.” I’m up trying to give Claude a little close cover.

  “I’m not asking for medical expertise,” says Chambers. He turns on me. “I assume the witness knows the difference between the head on the human anatomy, and the abdomen. Were all of the stakes driven into the abdomen in generally the same location, at roughly the same angle?”

  “The witness may answer,” says Ingel.

  Chambers smiles at me, tight, intense.

  “Yes.” No more from Claude but the bare essentials.

  He takes Claude over the falls on the arrangement of clothing, in an arc over the heads of all six victims, and draws a quick concession that there was no marked difference in the arrangement of these items in the Scofield cases from the others.

  Chambers moves away from the stand, a few steps.

  “Now the facial disfigurement,” he says. “You make a big thing of the facial disfigurement of Karen Scofield.”

  “I guess I’m funny that way,” says Claude. “To me, tearing an eye from the head of a human being is a big thing.”

  Ingel looks at him sharply, but says nothing.

  “You know what I mean,” says Chambers. “Is it really that significant in terms of distinguishing one of these killings from the others?”

  “According to some people,” says Claude. “The psychiatrists and psychologists who study such things.”

  “Oh, so then you’re relying on the advice of others in this.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you yourself wouldn’t know whether such facial disfigurement is significant, a basis to distinguish these crimes?”

  “Not really.”

  Adrian seems happy with this.

  “And of course,” he says, “if the facial disfigurement were incidental to the crime, an unintended consequence of other violence, it might take on less significance, perhaps no significance at all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it possible that this injury could have happened during the physical altercation prior to death, perhaps when the victim was being initially attacked or restrained, that it was not specifically intended?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well surely, lieutenant, during your years as a law enforcement officer you’ve seen injuries arising from assaults, physical altercations between people? Haven’t you ever seen an injury to the eye occasioned during such an altercation?”

  “I suppose,” he says.

  “And if a perpetrator of a crime attacked six separate people assaulting each of them, and in one case he just happened to injure an eye, perhaps take an eye out during the altercation, would you attribute any particular significance to that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If it was unintended?” he says. “I mean if you knew it was unintended, you wouldn’t go running off and assume that because of the eye injury, that this crime necessarily was committed by a different perpetrator?”

  “Not if I knew it was an unintended injury.”

  “Then it would really be insignificant, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  “Lieutenant Dusalt, do you know whether the loss of Karen Scofield’s eye was intentional or unintentional?”

  Claude looks at me.

  “I’m going to object to that,” I say. “Calls for medical expertise.”

  “No. No,” says Chambers. “I’m not asking him for any opinion on his part. I want to know whether he has any facts, knows of any information from whatever source, that would inform him as to whether the eye of Karen Scofield was removed intentionally or was the result of some unintentional act.”

  “The witness will answer the question,” says Ingel.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you do not know whether it was the result of an intentional act?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t know whether it’s really significant or not, do you?”

  The many faces of pain from Claude on the stand. It is the problem with logic, how it has a way of coming around and biting you in the butt.

  “Well?” says Chambers.

  “No,” says Claude. “I don’t know for certain whether it’s significant.”

  “Well, we can disregard that then, can’t we?”

  Nothing but stone silence and deadly looks from Claude.

  Like pulling a set of rear molars, Adrian has dragged him this far.

  “Let’s talk,” he says, “about the cord used to tie the victims and the metal stakes. Let’s take the cord first,” he says. Adrian looks at me as he says this.

  “This is pretty common stuff, isn’t it? I mean you or I could go out and purchase a similar type of cord in a dozen different stores in this town today if we wanted to, couldn’t we?”

  “I haven’t counted the stores that sell it.”

  “But it’s not just sold in one store?”

  “No.”

  “This is what we commonly refer to as clothesline cord, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve heard it called that.”

  “It’s made up of interior filaments and covered with a white plastic sheathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the metal tent stakes, these were common metal stakes, L-shaped, with a point at one end, what I would find if I went into a store that sold hiking gear, back-packing equipment?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Now you testified,” says Adrian, “that one of the factors that caused you to change your theory that it was a single common murderer who killed all of the victims, including the Scofields, was the fact that different cord and stakes were used in the Scofield case from the other murders?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How did these differ?”

  “They were made by different manufacturers.”

  “And you could tell this when you looked at them?”

  “No. I was advised by our lab.”

  Adrian gives him a questioning look.

  “The State Crime Lab,” says Claude.

  I could object on grounds of hearsay, but what is coming in here is doing us no harm. It will only serve to reinforce what Sellig will tell the jury later.

  “So the cord used in the student murders was all made by the same company, and the same is true about the stakes. Whereas the cord used to tie down the Scofield victims was made by another manufacturer, as were the stakes?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “There was nothing else, no other characteristic ot
her than the point of manufacture that served to distinguish these items one from the other?”

  Claude looks at me, a dilemma. He would, of course, like to tell the jury that all of the pieces of cord used in the student murders came from a common length, the balance of which was found in the defendant’s van, but he has a problem. Without the missing piece we cannot say this.

  I’m out of my chair. “Your honor, may we approach the bench?”

  Ingel waves us on.

  Adrian and I huddle with the judge.

  Ingel is being scrupulous here. He cannot allow the state to put testimony on the record concerning evidence we may not be able to produce. Adrian of course knows this, and has struck early to force the issue, to exploit this weakness in our case.

  “Your honor, Mr. Chambers knows we have not had time to find the missing piece of cord. He knows there is a common link for all of these pieces. He’s trying to put the issue before the jury before we can locate it.”

  Chambers looks at me. “You lost the cord,” he says.

  I ignore him, appeal to the judge. “But the witness can’t answer the question truthfully,” I say.

  Ingel puts a little pressure on Chambers, subtle hints that maybe he could withdraw this line of questioning, reserve it for a later witness, perhaps Sellig.

  “It’s a fair question,” says Adrian. “Nothing improper,” he says. “It is one thing to ask the court to give some leeway, another to ask me to lay down and roll over.”

  Ingel looks at me. “Does your witness have the missing piece of cord?”

  “You know he doesn’t, your honor.”

  “Then the truthful answer to the question is no.” He cuts me off before I can say more, puts an end to the little sidebar. We retreat.

  Chambers has the question read to the witness by the court reporter.

  Claude sits composed in the box. While we have been talking he has been thinking.

  “The answer to your questions is yes,” he says, “there was another characteristic difference in these items,” he says.

  Ingel nearly tears his head off, turning to look at the witness, ready to come out of his chair at the mention of the cord.

  “The metal stakes,” says Claude, “the ones used to kill the students were each sharpened to a point, probably on a grinding wheel. The ones used to kill the Scofields were not.”

  Adrian looks at him, dead in the eyes.

  “I was thinking about the cord,” he says. “Were there any other differences, other than the common manufacturer, that would distinguish the cord in the student cases from the Scofield cord?”

  Claude bites his lip.

  “Answer the question,” says Ingel.

  “Not at this time,” he says.

  “Yes or no?” says Adrian. “Were there any other . . .”

  “No.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chambers moves away from the witness stand, takes a few seconds to regroup, and then comes back at Claude.

  “Now, Lieutenant Dusalt, isn’t it possible under the circumstances that you describe that a single killer could have murdered all six of the victims in question, the students as well as the Scofields, and simply used different cord and metal stakes for the last two murders, the Scofields?”

  “Possible,” he says.

  “I mean these items are readily available to anyone who wants to purchase them at a number of stores, are they not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you did purchase them, there’s no absolute assurance that they would be of the same manufacture as the original cord and stakes used in the first four murders, is there?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “As long as we’re supposing,” says Adrian, “let’s suppose that whoever killed the students discarded his supply of cord and stakes after the second set of murders. Threw them away,” he says, “maybe dumped them in a trash can, or better yet, tossed them through an open window of a vehicle in a public garage, some stranger’s vehicle, to get rid of them,” he says. “Suppose this had happened. Wouldn’t it be necessary for this person to obtain other cord and stakes?”

  I’m about to come up and object when Claude answers.

  “Unless he had access to the vehicle where they were dumped,” says Claude. “Then I would think he would go back and get them.”

  “Oh, but let’s suppose that he didn’t have access to such a vehicle. Then he’d have to get new cord, new stakes, wouldn’t he?”

  “Objection, calls for speculation on the part of the witness.”

  “Sustained.”

  Claude does not answer. He does not have to. The picture painted by Adrian for the jury is clear, bold and blunt, all the finesse of a crayon wielded by a child. Still, it is effective, like any good defense, simple and consistent.

  “Lieutenant Dusalt, you talked earlier about the defendant’s van, found in the public garage on the university campus. You’re aware that at the time the van was discovered by authorities that a rear window on the passenger side of that vehicle was broken, smashed out?”

  “I am.”

  “During the course of your investigation did you, your department, or the prosecutor form any theories as to how that window came to be broken?”

  It is the problem when you follow a lead, search for evidence and come up empty. This is now pointed out to the jury.

  “For a while we thought that perhaps the window had been broken as an act of random vandalism.” Claude does his best to make this sound as if we abandoned this theory. It doesn’t work.

  “Did you conduct an investigation on the basis of that theory? Did you search for such a vandal?”

  “We did.”

  “And were you successful in finding that person, the person responsible for breaking the window of the van?”

  “No.”

  “I have nothing further of this witness,” he says.

  From beyond the interpreter I can see a big smile, broken pickets and a lot of yellow to the gums, Andre Iganovich looking my way.

  I look over at Lenore, at the sinking feeling written on the wrinkles of her brow. Many more days like this and Adrian will not need much for his case-in-chief. A few carefully crafted lies could break our back.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  We are minutes from the start of this morning’s session, Lenore and I, busy at counsel table arranging the documents, and items of physical evidence needed for today’s witness, Dr. Lloyd Tolar, our pathologist. He is outside in the hall, sequestered from the courtroom, going over his notes. We have decided that Lenore will take this witness on the stand. She may possess powers of persuasion and suggestion with this witness which I lack. At trial you learn to use every advantage.

  Lenore is oblivious to the defense lawyers, the interpreter and Andre Iganovich at the other table. She is focused on the task at hand. The only one who pays much attention to us is the Russian, from whom we draw unremitting icy stares. It seems he has not picked up on the proper etiquette for these proceedings, the quiet and polite contempt that passes for professionalism among adversaries in court. He seems not to fathom why, in these moments when we are here alone in the courtroom, his representatives do not cross the gulf between tables and bludgeon us.

  The guards are outside in the hall by the rear entrance, two bulls who look as if they would rather eat iron than pump it.

  Claude comes into the empty courtroom and through the railing. Today he will join us at the counsel table. Under the law of this state each side has a right to designate a chief investigator to join them, somebody who can whisper in your ear critical little details of the case at opportune times.

  This morning he appears agitated, slides into the empty chair next to me and tells me he has some news.

  “A couple
of items,” he says. This is all done in low tones, under his breath.

  First he has checked with the Davenport Police Department. It seems the department subscribes to the Criminal Law Reporter, the publication clipped to make the threatening letter sent to my house. He tells me they throw out old editions as they are updated, a ready source for the print used in the note.

  “Guess where they keep them, the old editions?” he says.

  “Tell me.”

  “In the basement at City Hall,” he says. “The same place our friend Jess Amara burned all of Scofield’s old notes.”

  Clearly his suspicions are heightened.

  “But that’s not all,” he says. Claude is leaning into my ear now so that even Lenore does not hear what comes next.

  “The title search,” he says, “the one you asked for on the property where we found the Scofields’ bodies. It’s not done, but some interesting information.”

  The owner, whom they have yet to identify because of what appear to be a series of bogus strawman transfers, was bankrolled by foreign money, he tells me.

  “A bank in Tokyo,” says Claude. “A consortium of Japanese investors.” With this I get heavily arched eyebrows from Claude. Jess Amara’s little sideline business, the Asian trading company.

  I had not pursued this earlier, but it is a curious point. The bodies of the four students were staked out on public lands, open and unfenced. But the Scofields were killed on private property, fenced, if you could call it that, and posted against trespassers. It struck me that perhaps the Scofield killer had used this property because it was familiar. Maybe it was a place where he would feel comfortable, where he knew he would not be disturbed.

  Claude asks me what I want to do about all this.

  I tell him to finish the title search, to get the results to me as soon as possible.

  “Should I put a tail on him?” He’s talking about Amara.

  “He’d know it in a minute,” I say, “and lose them in two.”

  Claude ponders this for a moment, then concludes that I am right. He may not respect the man, but suspects as do I that he is competent at his job and would know if he were being followed.

  Claude tells me they should have all the information from the title search by the end of the day, first thing in the morning at the latest.