Madriani - 02 - Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  Thornton tells us how investigators learned to probe for the sick underbelly, to slip the subtle questions without asking: “Did your friend ever pull the wings off some living bird? Fricassee the neighbor’s dog on the run with flaming gasoline for a frolic?” “The sharp investigator, the best cop for this sort of work,” says Thornton, “is the good-old-buddy just indulging in confidences about youthful pranks.”

  I look at the jury as they study each other. The message: beware of Joe-six-pack with a badge.

  “After two days of questioning by nine different officers, a miniature census,” says Thornton, “one suspect drew a crowd of investigators. Nine hours later he confessed to all five murders,” he tells us. “When done right, and if you are lucky, that’s how it works.”

  I look over at the jury. Thornton has achieved critical mass for an expert, he has laid the groundwork, established the practice of profiling as something higher on the plain of science than astrology, more credible than reading tea leaves.

  I round the last curve and chase for home, the core issue.

  “Dr. Thornton, have you had occasion at our request to study those crimes, those series of murders commonly known in the area as the Putah Creek killings?”

  “I have,” he says.

  “So as to avoid any confusion among the jury, would you tell us which crimes you have studied in this regard? The names of the victims?” I say.

  Thornton wants to look at his records and notes to refresh his recollection. He identifies three separate sets of murders as having been referred to him by the Davenport County Sheriff’s Department, the two sets of student killings and the later murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield.

  “And with regard to these murders, were you asked to prepare personality profiles regarding the perpetrator or perpetrators of those crimes?”

  “I was.”

  I make clear that in doing this Thornton has not had access to Andre Iganovich, no interviews, opportunities for observation, something Chambers would no doubt pursue if he were here on cross-examination. It is the principal weakness of this test run, that no adversary is present. So I play devil’s advocate.

  “And applying your expertise as a licensed and trained psychologist, your experience in years of personality profiling, have you formed any opinion regarding a personality profile of the perpetrator in these cases?”

  “I have,” he says.

  “Could you share that opinion with us?”

  He’s looking at his notes. “With regard to the murders of Julie Park and Jonathan Snider, the first of the student victims, and Sharon Collins and Rodney Slate, the last two college victims, it is my opinion that they were killed by the same person.

  “With regard to the murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield, it is my opinion, based on scientific evidence, that these victims were killed by a different person or persons, not the murderer of the four earlier college students.”

  I wait for a moment, allow this to settle on the jury. It is the zenith of my case on this point. All that is left now is to backfill with the rationale, the reasoning that supports the good doctor’s views.

  “And how did you come to this conclusion?” I ask him.

  “While there are a number of factors,” he says, “the one overriding and principal element would be the facial mutilation of the victim Karen Scofield. From the pathology report, her left eye was removed from her head after death.

  “Studies tell us,” says Thornton, “that facial disfigurement is performed in these cases for a single reason: because the killer and the victim were personally acquainted. In the usual case the closer the relationship, the more severe the facial mutilation. Here, with the removal of an eye, I would venture that the murderer knew the victim well.”

  He tells us that the symbolic message in all of this is unavoidable: remove the organ of sight, and in the subconscious mind the killer remains hidden from, undisclosed to, his victim.

  To demonstrate this fact to the jury he uses one of the photographs, a color picture of Karen Scofield’s head as it lay on the coroner’s slab.

  “The killer used some violence to remove this eye,” he says. He points to three deep slashes, one nearly cutting through the brow on the top, and two more deep into the cheek under the eye. “Not exactly surgical precision,” he says. “He was probably in a panic, a frenzy when he did this.”

  “And your opinion regarding the earlier victims, the students?”

  “That the killer and these victims were strangers. There was no facial mutilation as to any of the earlier victims.”

  “Is it not possible,” I say, “that the same killer might have murdered all of them, that he didn’t know the students, but did know Karen Scofield?” A little counter advocacy here. A show of fairness, exposing a potential softness to our case.

  “From case studies, I would say only the most remote of possibilities,” he says. “Highly unlikely.” The true scientist, Thornton abhors the notion of absolutes. It is one of the things that breeds believability.

  “There is a general pattern to serial murders,” he says. “There are killers who know their victims, who select them from a pool of acquaintances. There are other pattern killers who murder only strangers, victims of opportunity. As a general rule the two types or categories of killers do not cross over. We know from studying past cases that generally they will not kill some acquaintances, and some strangers.”

  This apparently is the linchpin, the keystone of his opinion that there were two killers: Karen Scofield’s missing eye. While there are other factors, this one element is so persuasive in Thornton’s mind that it tends to override everything else.

  “Were there other factors, doctor? Any other reason to suspect a separate murderer in the Scofield cases?”

  “Yes,” he says. “The age discrepancy between the Scofields and the students. While not unheard of, this is unusual in pattern murders,” says Thornton.

  “Also the tools of death,” he says. “The killer would usually not change rope or stakes if he had an ample supply, which according to the police report the suspect Iganovich had in his vehicle. These are generally part of the ritual,” says Thornton. “And these murders are ritual slayings,” he says, “make no mistake about that. The arrangement of the articles of clothing in an arc about the head of each victim, the use of undergarments to cover the face of the female victims, all point to a liturgical crime,” he says.

  I look at him, a question mark.

  “Ritual murder,” he says for clarity.

  “No,” he says. “In my opinion, there is no question. The Scofields were not killed by the same perpetrator who murdered the four college students.”

  “Can you explain the similarities in the crimes, the use of stakes and similar cord?”

  “A crude attempt to mimic.” He looks straight at the jury with this, the polished performance of one who is no novice on the stand. “What you would commonly call a copycat,” he tells them.

  “And your conclusions as stated here,” I say, “these are based on your review of the evidence, your considered professional opinion as an expert in personality profiling?”

  “Absolutely,” he says.

  I look at my shadow jury, wondering whether I have made my case, whether I have driven a factual wedge between these crimes. Based on theory and conjecture, the food of academic opinion, there is nothing more I can give them. All that would remain, the only recourse if this fails, is to dredge up the killer of Abbott and Karen Scofield, and to lay bare his motive before them.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Good to see you again, and congratulations,” he says. Don Esterhauss is chairman of the Davenport County Board of Supervisors.

  His words of cheer are for the indictments returned yesterday against Andre Iganovich, four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, the killings of the college students. This is front-page news around the state this morning. Iganovich is now bound over for trial in the superior court.
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br />   Esterhauss is all smiles as we shake hands over fluted linen napkins at Sibble’s, a block from the capitol on the other side of the river. He has asked for this meeting, a social gathering according to Emil Johnson who set it up, so that Esterhauss and a few others can get to know me a little better.

  As I scan the players here, I begin to suspect that I’ve been ambushed, that there is something bigger on their agenda.

  Emil is already seated on the other side, landlocked behind the large round table of the built-in booth.

  He’s munching on a bread stick loaded with enough butter to fill a farmer’s churn. His napkin, tucked in at the top of his shirt, fans out over the meandering foothills of his sunken chest and expanding gut, which is pressed against the table. Emil is fighting a one-man war against anorexia, and he is winning hands down.

  “Counselor.” He nods but does not offer his hand or try to get up.

  There’s a woman sliding out from behind the booth to join Esterhauss. She looks vaguely familiar, all smiles and pearl-white teeth.

  “Have you met Davenport’s mayor?” Esterhauss is doing the honors. “Janice Shaw, Paul Madriani.”

  She is the familiar face. To date I’ve not met her. My dealings have all been with the county, but I have seen her at functions, the last time at Feretti’s funeral.

  Blond, in her early thirties, not unattractive, she has the features and build of a pixy gone solemn, little freckles around a turned-up nose. Her hair is clipped at the shoulders, curled at the ends and flipped under. Today she is wearing a power suit, blue pin stripes with enough padding in the shoulders to stop a bullet.

  She is all smiles, felicitations on the results from the grand jury.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” she says. “The county’s fortunate to have your services. A major coup for the board.”

  Esterhauss shines.

  Her idea of good fortune, it seems, is my subsidizing the county budget, holding at bay Nikki, who may lynch me if she does not leave me.

  Seated at the other end of the curve is George Cayhill, the assistant dean for student affairs from the university. Cayhill and I met at the victims’ meeting weeks earlier. He extends a hand, a cordial welcome, then he returns to his menu like a man who knows business is about to be done here.

  The timing of this meeting seems a bit fortuitous. I had tried to beg off, to postpone it for a few days. But Emil was insistent. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that tomorrow I am planning to make a clean breast of it, finally going public with information on the Scofield case, official confirmation that we are in fact looking for another killer. Since the first revelation in the papers, it has been no secret. The papers are black with headlines, the tube ablaze with speculation. There is little sense in attempting to stonewall it longer. I have told Claude to schedule an early morning press conference for the announcement. And I suspect he has told Emil.

  Shaw possesses the charm of a good politician. She is talking in my ear, a flowing river of sincerity, broader than the Mississippi—and about as deep as Sarah’s wading pool. For the moment she’s grasping my hand like a coveted prize, smiling, with a gaze that has locked on me like some radar-guided weapons system.

  “Please sit down,” she says. She slides back behind the table and motions me to follow. I am now trapped around the curve of the table, caught between Shaw and Esterhauss.

  “A drink?” she says. The waiter, sensing commotion, an opportunity for new commerce, has made his way to our table. They already have cocktails lined up in front of them. I’ve been invited to this party a half hour late, maybe so the other guests could get their signals straight.

  “A glass of white wine,” I say. The waiter starts to hand me the wine list. “Your house label,” I tell him.

  “And fill this.” Emil hands the guy the empty linen-draped basket. Bread crumbs, a neat little column, like the bodies at Gettysburg, litter the table all the way to Emil’s place setting. If he keeps this up, we will need the “jaws-of-life” to extract him from behind the table when we’re done.

  “Things seem to be moving very quickly,” says Esterhauss. He’s talking about the indictments. “The board is very pleased.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I tell him. “Now if we can only satisfy a jury.”

  “Indeed,” he says. Esterhauss is toying with his drink, something in a short tumbler. He is a tall, lean man, in his mid forties. Long wisps of hair, brown turning gray, are carefully combed to cover the thinning retreat on his crown, something that is growing like the polar hole in the ozone, and from all appearances, dreaded nearly as much by its owner.

  Esterhauss operates the local hardware store. He is well spoken, and proper in his demeanor, a product of the university. A graduate with a degree in history, he lowered his expectations after school, the price of living in a quixotic college community with its limited horizons for those beyond academia. Like many of the aging hippies-turned-merchants in places like Berkeley, he is now commercially dug in for the duration, selling shovels and rakes in Davenport. But he has made the most of it, living the vicarious life of the statesman through local politics.

  “How long before the actual trial starts?” he asks me.

  “It’s always hard to say,” I tell him. “The art of any good defense is the stall.”

  “I hope he can’t delay too long.”

  “I wish you were the judge hearing his motions,” I say.

  He laughs.

  “You know the defense attorney, this man Chambers?” he asks.

  “I do.”

  “Is he good?”

  I nod. “He’s aggressive. Unpredictable. Knows his way around a courtroom.”

  “Once it gets started, I suppose what—a few weeks?” It is a dozen questions. This guy should do depositions. Esterhauss is trying to find out how long the actual trial will take. Pretty soon he’ll have his abacus out on the table, sliding little beads, calculating the cost to the county.

  “Adrian Chambers knows all the organ stops of delay,” I tell him. “It is a tune he plays without much effort.” I tell him that it’s not possible for me to make a reasonable guess on the length of the trial until we are closer, until I know how many witnesses he is likely to call, the various theories of defense.

  I could make him gag on lunch, tell him the truth, that it is likely that we will all be off enjoying the fruits of an ill-gotten retirement before this thing is cleanly in the can, before all of the criminal appeals are exhausted.

  “They say he may be incompetent to stand trial,” says Cayhill.

  “They’ll try to ride that horse,” I tell him. “The first move Chambers is likely to try will be to have his man sent to a state mental hospital, for a long stretch of treatment or, failing that, psychiatric evaluation.”

  I hear a heavy sigh from Esterhauss, like he sees this thing dragging out, somewhere over the horizon, more little beads on the deficit side of the county’s ledger.

  “Come on, fellas, give the man a break. Let him look at his menu, order some lunch.” Shaw is playing the maternal guardian. In what is quickly shaping up as a routine of “good cop–bad cop,” I get the clear impression she is not destined to be the one who will hit me with the sand-loaded sap. I’m still trying to figure who at this table is her equal, to play the heavy.

  We order. I search for the Australian lobster—“market price.” As I am the guest, this will put a little stress on their government per diem. It is part of my cost for what I sense is shaping up as an in-house mugging.

  We sip our drinks and munch on. We are halfway between the salad and the entrée.

  “How long do you think before the rest of the indictments are brought?” says Esterhauss.

  I look over at him, a question mark.

  “Before they indict this fellow on the Scofield murders?” he says. He’s talking about Andre Iganovich.

  I am jarred. I study them for a moment, Cayhill and Shaw. They are pictures of innocence. But I think it i
s all a little too pat.

  I look at Emil. He’s busy ladling soup over the void as if he hasn’t heard this.

  I am supposed to think that he has not told them we have no intention of charging the Russian with the Scofield killings. I begin to smile. They are playing this little farce for shock value, making me out as the heavy, the carrier of bad tidings, so that when they hear the facts, faced with their fury I will backpedal, consider the options, which I am sure they have by now well honed.

  “You haven’t been following the papers,” I tell him. “There are problems with the evidence, major inconsistencies. I’m surprised you missed this.”

  “We saw the stories,” says Esterhauss, “but I didn’t give it much credence.”

  “So I guess this is gonna slow you down a little,” says Cayhill, “before you can indict him on the later crimes?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s gonna stop me.”

  He looks at me, big round eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not going to indict Andre Iganovich for the murders of Abbott and Karen Scofield.”

  “My God, why not?” he says. His tone conveys volumes, the point being that if only I could massage this evidence a little, all the rough edges would drop off. Surely there must be some way I can make the facts fit the case.

  “Why?” says Shaw.

  “A simple reason,” I tell her. “He didn’t commit the crimes.”

  There follows the clink of silverware laid on china, in unison, like the sound of a well-trained chain gang breaking rock. Suddenly eight eyes are on me, boring in.

  “You’re not serious?” Cayhill shakes his head. There’s a lot of scoffing going on around the table, like a choir chiming in for the chorus, looks of disbelief on their faces. Even Emil has been drafted for this part.

  “I’ll tell you,” he says, “I don’t agree with this. It’s not the conclusion of my office,” he says, “my people. They see a definite link. It’s the state. I never thought it was a good idea to get too close to that place.”