Play Dead ac-6

by David Rosenfelt

  Hawpe next calls Dr. Susan Coakley, professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University. Dr. Coakley might be called a physical therapist for animals, and teaches the practice of physical rehabilitation through exercise. A lot of that is “water therapy” whereby the dogs swim under controlled conditions in a university pool constructed for that purpose.

  Her basic testimony is that she believes it to be possible that a young, healthy golden retriever could have made the swim from the boat to shore that night. She does not claim to know it for a certainty but is quite adamant in considering it quite conceivable.

  She reminds me of a few professors I had in law school. They considered their opinions to be incontrovertible fact and wore their arrogance proudly on their sleeves. I never got a chance to knock them down a peg, which is why I’m so looking forward to this cross-examination.

  In truth, I need to go after her very hard, since if she cannot be shaken, then our “Reggie turned up alive” advantage no longer carries much weight.

  “Dr. Coakley, when did you conduct your physical examination of Reggie?” Unless she’s the lowlife that broke into my house and kidnapped Reggie, I know that the answer to this question is “never.”

  “I did not conduct an examination.”

  “Pardon me?” I ask, betraying my surprise. Oh, the shock of it all.

  “I did not conduct an examination on this particular dog.”

  “Were you prevented from doing so?”

  “No, it wasn’t necessary for what I was called upon to do.”

  “I see. So you merely went over his medical records, X-rays, that kind of thing?”

  “No, I did not have access to them,” she says.

  “You were denied that access?”

  “No, the records were not necessary for my work.”

  “So the health of a dog is not relevant in determining if that dog could swim four miles in the ocean in a major storm?”

  “I was operating under the assumption that he was healthy.”

  “So if he were not healthy, that might change your opinion?” I ask.

  “It might, depending on what was wrong with him.”

  “If I told you he had a badly broken leg that was repaired by inserting a metal plate and that he was taking a drug called Rimadyl for the resulting arthritic pain, would that be significant to you?” I’m shading the truth a little here. Reggie is on that medication now; he was not on it then.

  But Hawpe does not object, and Dr. Coakley answers, “I would have to examine the records.”

  “You mean the records that weren’t necessary for your work?”

  Hawpe objects that I’m being argumentative, and Judge Gordon sustains.

  I move on. “Do you have any personal knowledge of a dog swimming four miles in the ocean during a substantial storm?”

  “No, I don’t,” she says, trying to control her annoyance. “But I believe it is within their capability, depending on the circumstances.”

  “What is the furthest you have personally seen a dog swim in the ocean in the midst of this kind of storm?”

  “I have never seen it personally, but it would not be necessary for me to do so.”

  “Could a dog do it while carrying a radar antenna on his back?” I ask.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, it was nighttime, and even though there may be lights in the specially constructed swimming pool that you use for your therapy, there aren’t any in the Atlantic Ocean. How would Reggie have known where to swim?”

  I think I see a quick flash of panic in Dr. Coakley’s eyes. She should just deflect the question as not something covered in her work, but she doesn’t. “Perhaps there was enough moonlight.”

  “Dr. Coakley, I don’t know how much time you spend outside, but have you ever seen a major summer storm? Are you aware that there are a lot of clouds involved?”

  Judge Gordon admonishes me for being argumentative even before Hawpe has a chance to object. I let Dr. Coakley off the stand, a little less arrogant than when she took it.

  The day’s last witness is Craig Langel, the man who reported seeing a stray dog matching Reggie’s description very late on the night of the murder.

  In the hands of Hawpe on direct examination, he comes across as a decent citizen who is telling the truth about what he saw that night. Perhaps trying to make up for the Dr. Coakley debacle, Hawpe nurtures the witness, taking almost an hour to bring out what he could have gotten in ten minutes.

  The jury has to be bored and wanting to adjourn for the day, so I don’t want to prolong matters. “Mr. Langel, you’ve testified that you saw a dog, possibly a golden retriever, running stray near the harbor that night?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “He appeared very wet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it unusual for a stray dog to get wet in the middle of a rainstorm?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, sir.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  * * * * *

  KEVIN CALLS WITH the news that they got plenty of latent fingerprints at the cabin.

  Our expert, George Feder, will eliminate those that turn out to match Richard or Karen, and hopefully that will leave many of Stacy’s prints. I’ll then give one of those to Pete, who will run it through the system. Unfortunately, not nearly everyone in the country has their fingerprints in the national database, so there’s a pretty good chance we won’t get a match.

  Even so, I’m putting a lot of stock in this process, because tomorrow Hawpe is going to conclude his case, and I haven’t made a serious dent in it. This looks like a classic domestic murder-suicide, and when the jury starts to deliberate, that’s what they’re going to see.

  I can talk all I want about campene and a golden retriever who survived, but it won’t cut to what the jury will see as the core truth. They will see that Richard and Stacy were out there alone, she wound up dead in the water, and he wound up unconscious from an overdose.

  It’s unfortunately an easy call, no matter what the wise-ass defense attorney says.

  Kevin says that Karen has something else to tell me, and he puts her on the phone so that she can do so directly. “Andy, I think someone has been in the cabin.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, sometime since I was there last.”

  Karen has told me that she has not been to the cabin since the murder, so that doesn’t narrow it down much. But she’s also said that no one had a key.

  “Was there any sign of forced entry?” I ask. “A broken lock or window?”

  “No,” she says, “but I’m sure there were things missing. Mostly some of Stacy’s stuff.”

  This is potentially very interesting. If Stacy represented a danger to someone, it could have been because of something in her possession. After her death, they may well have gone looking for it in the cabin, a natural hiding place.

  Unfortunately, although it’s interesting, all I can do is put it in the bag with the other information I don’t know what to do with. At this point the bag is bursting at the seams.

  Kevin comes over for an evening strategy session. We prepare for Hawpe’s final witnesses, but they are not of great consequence. All he’ll be doing is smoothing out the rough spots; he’s already made his point.

  Instead we focus on our own case. We’ll once again establish that Reggie is Richard’s dog, and that he survived that night. We’ll also bring in Dr. King, who will present his version of the events of that night, as well as his contention that Richard did not take the Amenipam orally.

  But the more I think about it, the more I feel we should focus on Stacy’s faked identity. Even not knowing who she really is, the deception increases our chances of raising reasonable doubt. If we match her fingerprint, then everything changes, for better or worse, depending on that identity.

  Kevin agrees with my assessment, though we both realize we’re in an uncomfortable position. Much of our preparation depends
on that fingerprint, and all we can do is wait.

  Feder meets us in the morning before court begins, with a copy of what he is sure is Stacy’s print. There were many just like it in the cabin, and a particular concentration of them on the pots and pans. He has also come up with a couple of other prints that do not match Richard or Karen, and he’s brought them as well.

  To save us time, Feder agrees to bring the prints to Pete Stanton, since they have worked together many times in the past. Kevin and I head into court, where Hawpe proceeds to do us a favor by making his final four witnesses last all day. We will not have to start our case until tomorrow, and the delay works to our advantage.

  Kevin brings a criminologist named Jeffrey Blalock to our evening meeting. He was formerly a detective in Bergen County, specializing in identity theft and computer crime. With the explosion of illegal activity in those areas, he left the force to set up a private consulting practice, and is now recognized as a leading expert in the field.

  Blalock will be the witness through whom we’ll make our claim that Stacy’s background is fake, and he has spent the past couple of days going over the information Sam has gotten, as well as the documents Kevin brought back from Minnesota.

  I usually like to spend far more time prepping witnesses as crucial as Blalock, but things are moving too fast to allow that. As I start to talk with him, I harbor a secret fear that he’s going to say we’re crazy, that Stacy Harriman is in reality Stacy Harriman.

  He doesn’t. “Stacy Harriman never existed. She was created out of whole cloth.”

  “How would this woman manage to do something like that?” I ask.

  He smiles. “She wouldn’t. This is WITSEC.”

  “They deny it.”

  “Under oath?” he asks.

  “No, but to a court.”

  “Let me put it this way…,” he says, and then points to my desk. “What is that?”

  “My desk,” I say.

  “If I tell you that’s not your desk, are you going to believe me?”

  “Of course not.”

  He nods. “Right, because you know better.” He holds up the folder of documents relating to Stacy. “These are as clear to me as that desk is to you. This is WITSEC, no matter what they told that judge.”

  As much as I’m surprised that their attorney, Alice Massengale, would lie in court, what Blalock is saying instinctively feels right. Of course, there is always the possibility that Massengale herself was not told the truth and was representing to the court what she thought was accurate information.

  I call Cindy Spodek at her Boston office. I don’t want to involve her in the case any more than I have, because it seems to have caused her a problem with her FBI bosses. But this WITSEC confusion is bugging me, and I’m hoping Cindy’s experience can help debug me.

  I explain to her the situation and what transpired in court, and she listens without interrupting. When I finish, she says, “It sounds like WITSEC, Andy. I don’t know how else these things could have been fabricated so completely.”

  “But their lawyer denied it in court, even though she didn’t have to answer at all. She could have appealed the court’s order to death.”

  “Who was the attorney?”

  “Alice Massengale.”

  “It was Alice?” she asks, her surprise evident. “Then you’ve got a problem.”

  “Why? You know her?”

  “I do. I worked with her a few times when I was based down there. There is no way she would knowingly lie in court. Absolutely no way.”

  For all Cindy’s certainty, she is making an educated guess about Massengale’s veracity. I’m inclined to go along with it because Cindy is a very good judge of people, and because it seems more likely that a good attorney would not intentionally and directly lie to a judge.

  I head home and call Laurie before going to bed-or, more accurately, from bed. As always, she wants to be brought up to date on the case, and I do so. It actually helps me to verbalize it to her; it seems to clear my mind.

  She also doesn’t believe that Massengale would lie to the judge, both because it seems unlikely on its face and because she trusts Cindy’s judgment. Nevertheless, for now I’m going to operate on the assumption that Stacy was in WITSEC; I just wish I could get it in front of the jury.

  Laurie gives me a brief pep talk in honor of our starting the defense case tomorrow. She knows I’m not content with what we’ve got, and she wants to make sure that my concern doesn’t impede my effectiveness. It won’t, but I appreciate her effort.

  Just before we’re getting off the phone, I say, “How was your day?”

  She laughs a short laugh and says, “It was fine, Andy. My day was fine.”

  “What was that laugh for? You don’t think I care how your day was?”

  “Andy, go to sleep. My day was fine, but you’re in the middle of a trial. It’s your days that are important right now.”

  After we hang up, I use up my yearly fifteen minutes of introspection to examine my feelings about Laurie’s day. I love her deeply, and if something extraordinary happened today, or if she needed me for something, I would be very interested and unquestionably there for her.

  But the truth is, if she had an ordinary day as chief of police in Findlay, Wisconsin, then I pretty much don’t give a shit about it.

  I’m not sure what that says about me, but it can’t be good. Next year at introspection time, I’ll try and figure it out.

  * * * * *

  “WE’VE GOT TWO matches,” are the first words Pete Stanton says when I answer my cell phone.

  He’s reached me less than five minutes before my going into court for the morning session, and he’s talking about the results from running the fingerprints through the national registry.

  I’m actually a little nervous at finally finding out Stacy Harriman’s real identity. Based on my inability to correctly predict anything about this case, I’m afraid it’s going to be Margaret Thatcher or Paris Hilton. “Who was she?” I ask.

  “Her name was Diana Carmichael, thirty-four years old when she died.”

  “Why were her prints in the system?”

  “She was in the Army,” he says, providing me a bit of a jolt in the process. I don’t yet know how that piece of information fits, but I’d bet anything that it does.

  “Pete, I’m late to get into court, so…”

  “Okay, but I said we’ve got two matches. There’s also one from one of the other prints, and you’ll like this one even more.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Anthony Banks.”

  Lieutenant Anthony Banks. Deceased husband of Donna Banks, wealthy volunteer worker living in Sunset Towers in Fort Lee, and the recipient of the mysterious twenty-two thousand a month from Yasir Hamadi.

  Lieutenant Anthony Banks, who, long after his death, seems to have managed to rummage through Stacy Harriman’s things in the cabin, leaving his fingerprints in the process. Just as Archie Durelle, the man he died with, showed up to shoot at me on the highway.

  We’ve got ourselves a group of dead guys who really get around.

  “I’m going to have Kevin call you and get the details, okay, Pete?”

  He’s fine with that and also tells me he’s making progress on checking into whether the type and amount of cargo coming through Franklin’s customs office has significantly changed since his death.

  “We’re going to be meeting at my house tonight. Why don’t you stop by?” I say.

  “You mean that? So I’m on the team now?” he asks, sarcasm starting to return.

  “Well, not the first team. But a damned good backup.”

  “Is that right? Well, how about if you kiss my-”

  “Thanks, Pete. Gotta go,” I say, and hang up, temporarily depriving him of the last word. As soon as I’m off, I bring Kevin up to date. I want him to call Pete and then take the information and see what Captain Reid at Fort Monmouth can add to it.

  I reach the defense table moments before the j
udge enters, and Richard seems a little agitated at my uncharacteristically late arrival.

  “Something wrong?” he whispers.

  “Do you know the name Diana Carmichael?”

  He thinks for a moment. “No. Should I?”

  “You were engaged to her.”

  It is an unfair thing to do to him, since I don’t have time to explain it fully right now. During the morning break I’ll do so.

  It’s a strange feeling to be opening the defense case in front of the jury while the real action is going on outside, between Kevin, Pete, and Captain Reid. But that’s what I have to do, and I start by calling Dr. Ruff, Reggie’s veterinarian.

  Kevin has had a chance to prep her on her testimony, and she’s more decisive than during the hearing. She presents a compelling case that the Reggie she recently examined is, in fact, the dog that Richard owned and took on his boat those years ago.

  Hawpe makes little effort to challenge her, and he concludes by stipulating that she is correct, that Reggie survived.

  Next up for our side is Dr. Harold Simmons, a blood spatter expert. The fact that there is so much blood getting spattered in this country that we need experts on it is a rather negative commentary on our society, but Dr. Simmons is very good at what he does.

  Dr. Simmons’s contention is that the blood spatter on the boat was of a type and in a location so as to render it very likely that it was deliberately placed there. I ask very general questions and let him run with them, and he does so quite well.

  Hawpe has some success in his cross-examination, focusing on the fact that it was raining that night and everything was wet. It could have washed away some of the blood and altered the spatter of what remained. Dr. Simmons gives ground very grudgingly, but Hawpe makes some points.

  During the lunch break, I return a message from Kevin, telling me what he’s learned. Diana Carmichael was in fact in the Army, stationed in Afghanistan and working for what was called the Afghani/American Provisional Authority. It was the operation hastily set up immediately after the fall of the Taliban to provide much-needed money for reconstruction.