Thirteen_The serial killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury

by Steve Cavanagh

  That brought me to the last male, Alec Wynn. The outdoorsman with a gun collection. The one Arnold had seen with a hateful expression that he’d attempted to hide. Wynn sat with his back straight. Hands on his lap. Attentive. Ready to do his duty.

  I figured him for the alpha. I’d have to watch this guy closely.

  Pryor had called medical examiner Sharon Morgan. A blond lady in a fitted, black suit. She was in her fifties, but had retained her youthful looks. More importantly, she was usually right on the money when it came to her testimony. She’d been at the crime scene, and she’d carried out the autopsies and found the dollar bill in Carl’s mouth. Pryor took the jury through her credentials. Then the wounds, and the autopsies. The ME confirmed causes of death for each. Carl from a skull fracture and traumatic brain injury.

  “And in relation to the female victim, were you able to establish a cause of death?” asked Pryor.

  “Yes. The cluster of stab wounds to the chest area were the obvious source of trauma. I was able to establish the stab wound just below the left breast severed a major vein. The heart continued pumping and this created a vacuum. Air was sucked into the vein, traveled quickly to the heart and created a vapor lock which ceased blood flow causing major cardiac arrest. Death would have occurred in seconds,” said Morgan.

  “Does this explain why there were no defensive wounds on the victim?” said Pryor.

  He was leading Morgan, but I didn’t object. Pryor was trying to repair some of the damage I’d done yesterday in an attempt to prove both victims had been murdered in bed together.

  I watched Wynn nodding. The prosecution were gaining points with Morgan. Pryor brought up a post-mortem photo of Ariella’s chest. What looked like five gunshots to the untrained eye. Oval fissures in her chest.

  “You’ve had time to examine the knife recovered from the defendant’s home. What can you tell us about this knife and the wounds suffered by Ariella Bloom?”

  “The wounds were inflicted by a single-bladed knife. Not double-edged. In this case, a flat edge to the bottom of the wound pattern indicated a single-edged weapon. The knife I examined is consistent with this wound pattern. A double-edged weapon would have created a diamond-like fissure. The knife is also consistent with wound depth.”

  Pryor sat down. I had three questions.

  One would leave my theory of two separate attacks beyond question. The other questions would open the door for my closing speech – and Dollar Bill’s involvement. When I’d been over the case yesterday, I’d seen more evidence that linked these murders to Bill. Now it was time to give some of that away.

  The ME sat patiently awaiting my first question. She wouldn’t allow herself to be drawn into theories. She was a pro when it came to testifying in court. I was relying on it.

  “Doctor Morgan, you’ve already testified that there were five stab wounds to the victim’s chest. These are spread out. As you can see from the photograph there is a single wound to the center of the chest between each breast, two parallel wounds below each breast, and a further two wounds below each stab wound on either side of the chest. The five stab wounds make up, perfectly, the five points of a star, is that correct?”

  Morgan examined the photograph again.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I changed the photograph on the screen to the unfolded dollar bill retrieved from Carl.

  “You pulled the dollar bill from Carl Tozer’s mouth. When you examined that bill, after photographing it, there were some markings on the great seal on the reverse of the bill. An arrow, an olive leaf and what else had been marked?”

  She looked at the blown-up photo on screen.

  “The star,” she said.

  Two female jurors, Betsy and Rita, seemed to lean forward. I would let it play on their imaginations for now.

  “One more thing. The fatal wound to Carl Tozer’s skull was due to blunt force trauma, as you’ve described. When that wound was inflicted, at the point of impact, it would have created a loud noise, isn’t that right?”

  “Almost certainly,” said Morgan.

  I returned to the defense table. I was looking for the photograph of the victims lying in the bed beside each other. I hadn’t planned on another question, but something that had been working away in the back of my mind seemed to step forward. The photo filled my laptop screen. There it was. It would make no sense to the jury right now. In fact, it would confuse them. Pryor too. I decided it was worth the risk.

  “One last thing, Doctor Morgan,” I said, bringing up the photographs of the victims in bed on the court screen.

  “You’ve testified that death would’ve been almost instant for both victims. Ariella Bloom has her hands by her sides, lying on her back. Carl Tozer is on his side, facing her, curled up, almost in the shape of a swan. Is it possible that the murderer may have posed these victims immediately after death?”

  She looked at the photographs. “I think it’s possible,” she said.

  “Looking at the victims here, Carl Tozer’s body is the shape of a swan, or it could be the number two?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ariella, the number one?”

  “Possibly,” she said.

  I’d known it. I just hadn’t seen it until now. Dollar Bill had one more trial to complete. Ariella Bloom, Carl Tozer and Bobby Solomon would be his twelfth star. He’d lain out the bodies to look like the number twelve.

  Twelve trials. Twelve innocent people. I had to stop this guy before there was a thirteenth.

  I glanced toward the rear of the courtroom. Half a dozen FBI agents stood at the back. Delaney in the center. She shook her head. No one had tried to leave. Not yet. The doors of the courtroom opened and Harper came in with a small man in a gray suit. He spoke to Delaney. Harper came around the right side of the courtroom, then sat down at the defense table. She took a bundle of pages from her bag, placed them in front of me, and whispered, “You were right.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  He kept a careful watch on his fellow juror’s reactions. They bought the ME’s evidence. Lapped it up. Only a few seemed interested in Flynn. Kane stiffened when Flynn talked about the dollar bill. The markings. He fought down his excitement, never letting it show in his face.

  After all these years, was it possible that someone had stumbled upon his mission?

  The position of the victims. Flynn knew. He’d seen Kane’s hand in those deaths. In all the murders that Kane had committed, he’d resisted posing most of them. This one was special. Bobby was a star. Kane had reached the apex of his abilities, and he’d needed a challenge. Someone untouchable. A movie star.

  If only she hadn’t died so quickly, thought Kane.

  The first stroke of the knife had woken her, and cut the light from her eyes a second later. His star. Kane’s knife marked that star on her body. The kill needed something else, it had been over much too quickly, much too easily. She had looked peaceful, lying in the bed, arms by her sides. He had hauled the man upstairs. The bag over Carl’s head, pulled taut around his neck, had formed a seal which meant no blood spatter in the house, just as Flynn had said. He had removed the bag after he placed Carl on the bed. Then, retrieved the bat from the hallway, placed the bat in the bag and smeared blood on it, and thrown the bat in the corner of the bedroom.

  Twelve was an important landmark. He’d tucked Carl’s legs beneath him, adjusted his position to take on the numeral 2. Of course, the thought had only occurred to him after he’d killed Ariella. He was so close to completing his mission. Part of Kane wanted someone to know. To understand. He saw Flynn looking at the woman at the back of the courtroom. And the other men standing around.

  FBI.

  Kane licked his lips.

  Finally, the chase was on. But they had a long way to go to finding Kane. The feds were watching the crowd, not the jury.

  Kane checked his watch. Took a deep breath to calm himself.

  They would have discovered the body by now. The one he’d left for the
m last night after he’d paid a visit to Manuel.

  It was starting again, for the last time.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Pryor’s next move was to nail Bobby to the DA’s timeline, and expose him as a liar. He called the neighbor, Ken Eigerson. Ken was mid-forties, he wore a double-breasted suit that hid his gut, and a comb-over that failed to hide his bald head. One out of two ain’t bad. Eigerson confirmed he worked on Wall Street, and he always made it home by nine p.m. on Thursdays. His wife taught Extreme Yoga on Thursday nights and he needed to get home as the babysitter, Connie, had to leave at nine to make her bus home.

  “What did you see after you got out of your car?” said Pryor.

  “I saw Robert Solomon. Plain as anything. I locked the car, and was walking toward my home when I heard footsteps on my left. I looked and he was there. I’d never spoken to him before. Seen him once or twice, you know, coming and going. I waved, said, ‘Hi.’ He waved back and that was it. I went home. The kids were asleep, and Connie, the sitter, left for the night.”

  “Are you sure it was him?” said Pryor.

  “One hundred per cent. He’s famous. I’ve seen him in a movie.”

  “And how is it you’re sure it was nine p.m. when you got home,” said Pryor.

  “I left my desk at the office at eight thirty. Got my car, and when I parked I looked at the time on the dash. I’d been a little late the week before. Got home around ten after nine. Connie wasn’t happy. She said she would miss her bus so I gave her fifty bucks for cab fare. You know how hard it is to get a good sitter? I made sure to be home on time. And I was. Right on the button.”

  “One last time, Mr. Eigerson. Because this sure is important. I want you to understand the gravity of what you’re saying. The defendant says he got home at midnight. Either he’s lying, or you’re lying. If you’re the least bit confused about anything, now’s the time to tell this jury. So I’m going to ask you again. Are you sure you saw Robert Solomon go into his house at nine p.m. on the night of the murders?” said Pryor.

  Eigerson turned toward the jury this time, looked straight at them and said, confidently, “I am sure. I saw him. It was nine p.m. I’d swear on my kids’ lives.”

  “Your witness,” said Pryor, pleased with himself. He turned away from the judge and the witness, and walked back to the prosecution table.

  I got up fast, ignoring the barking pain in my side, grabbed Pryor by the arm before he got to his seat and said, “Wait there, Mr. Pryor, if you will.” He tried to turn and look at the judge but I squeezed his arm. He stopped, gritted his teeth at me. Before he could raise an objection, or pull away, I pulled the trigger.

  “Mr. Eigerson, you’ve been talking to Mr. Pryor for almost a half-hour. He stood around ten feet from you, and he was in your line of vision the whole time. Tell me, what color tie is Mr. Pryor wearing?” I said.

  Pryor tutted. Still I didn’t let him turn. He had his back to the witness stand.

  “Red, I think,” said Eigerson.

  I let Pryor’s arm go. He narrowed his eyes, and buttoned his jacket over his pink tie before he sat down at the prosecution table.

  “Oh,” said Eigerson. “I thought it was red. My mistake.”

  “Cheap. Real cheap,” said Pryor.

  I turned to the prosecutor and said, “I didn’t ask how much the tie cost, but if you paid more than a buck fifty you were ripped off.”

  A ripple of laughter went through the room.

  “Mr. Eigerson, you saw the man on your street for what? Two, maybe three seconds?”

  “About that, yeah.”

  “How far away were you?”

  “Twenty feet, maybe a little more,” he said.

  “So it could have been thirty feet?”

  He thought about it.

  “Maybe not as much as that. Maybe twenty-five, give or take.”

  “It was dark?”

  “Yes,” said Eigerson.

  “The man you saw wore dark sunglasses and he had his hood pulled up. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, but it was him.”

  “It was him because he wore the same kind of clothes as Robert Solomon wears, and walked toward his house, isn’t that right?”

  “It was him,” said Eigerson.

  “So, from twenty-five feet away, in the dark, you saw a man with a hood pulled up over his head, wearing dark sunglasses. That’s what you actually saw, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. And it was …”

  “It was a man who walked toward the house Robert Solomon lives in. That’s why you thought it was the defendant. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Eigerson said nothing. He was searching for the right answer.

  “It could have been anyone, couldn’t it? You didn’t actually see much of his face?”

  “I didn’t see much of his face, but I know it was him,” said Eigerson, defiantly.

  As I asked my last question, I turned toward the jury.

  “Was he wearing a tie?” I said.

  The jury laughed. Everyone apart from Alec Wynn.

  Eigerson didn’t answer.

  “No re-direct. The People call Todd Kinney,” said Pryor.

  Eigerson left the stand with his head bowed. Pryor didn’t care. This was his style. Most prosecutors would’ve spent the entire morning with Eigerson. Not Pryor. He threw out witnesses like fastballs. And if the jury didn’t like one witness, there would be another one straight after. It was a risky tactic. Quick volleys of testimony. On one hand, it kept things simple – made the trial move fast and ensured the jury stayed on its toes.

  Kinney was a surprisingly young man. He wore a white shirt and tie, blue jeans and blue blazer, all of which looked to be at least two sizes too small. Even the tie didn’t reach his waist. He was young. A hipster. Guy was wasted as a tech. He would’ve been great undercover.

  Pryor was on his feet. His right foot tapping on the floor. I was getting to him. His shirt collar strained at his neck. I decided to increase the pressure.

  On my way back to my table I stopped and whispered in Pryor’s ear.

  “Sorry about the tie. That was a cheap shot.”

  I heard Kinney approaching.

  “It’s not going to save your client. And if you ever touch me again I’ll break your goddamn face,” said Pryor, with a smile for the judge.

  “I promise, I won’t touch you again,” I said, and backed away from Pryor, straight into the path of Kinney. He stumbled and I steadied him.

  “Whoa, sorry about that,” I said.

  Kinney didn’t reply. Just shook his head and made his way to the witness stand. I took my seat at the defense table and let Pryor do his thing. After Kinney had been sworn in, Pryor took him through his qualifications and experience as forensic tech and DNA profiler. It didn’t take long and I let it play out. I was waiting for Pryor to get to the juice.

  “You examined this dollar bill found in the mouth of Carl Tozer?” said Pryor, bringing up a picture of the butterfly fold.

  “I did. It was preserved by the medical examiner. Initially, I tested for fingerprints. A good thumbprint had been retrieved and I swept the print surface area for DNA. I also took samples from the surface area around the print and over the remainder of the bill.”

  “What was the outcome of the fingerprint analysis?”

  “A comparison fingerprint set had been retrieved from the defendant. The defendant’s right thumbprint formed a full, twelve-point friction ridge match for the print taken from the dollar bill.”

  Pryor watched the jury as Kinney gave his answer. Some got it. Some didn’t.

  “What do you mean by full, twelve-point fingerprint match?” asked Pryor.

  Kinney leaned into the question, but kept the science low-brow.

  “Each human being on the planet carries a unique set of fingerprints. A fingerprint is the pattern made by the friction ridges on the surface of the skin. Our system tests these ridges, and reads them at twelve strategic points. It is generally accep
ted scientific fact that a twelve-point match means the prints are identical,” said Kinney, slowly, keeping the jury in view as he spoke.

  “Is it possible this print could’ve been a false identification?” asked Pryor. He was closing off my lines of attack, one by one.

  “No. Impossible. I ran the tests myself. Plus, the DNA swabbed from the fingerprint area proved to be the defendant’s DNA,” said Kinney.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Again, I ran the tests personally. I obtained a swab of DNA from inside the defendant’s cheek. This was tested and we were able to extract a full DNA profile. This profile was, to a mathematical probability of one billion, the same DNA profile extracted from the bill.”

  Kinney was a good scientist. He was just poor at explaining it to jurors.

  “What do you mean by mathematical probability of one billion?”

  “It means that the DNA on the bill matched the defendant, and if we tested a billion other people, we might get one other match for the DNA on the dollar.”

  “So, is it likely that the DNA on the dollar is the defendant’s DNA?”

  He didn’t need time to think this one over, either. The answer sounded clear and unequivocal.

  “I can say with a very high degree of certainty, that the DNA on the dollar belongs to the defendant.”

  “Thank you, please wait there. Mr. Flynn might have some questions,” said Pryor.

  I did have questions. A lot of them. Not many I could ask Kinney, though. I glanced over at Bobby. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck. Rudy had told him about this evidence, but hearing it in a courtroom in front of twelve people who are there to judge you is devastating. I poured him some more water. His hand shook as he brought the glass to his mouth. Bobby knew the power of Kinney’s testimony. He was an actor, he felt the shift in the crowd. No two ways about it, Kinney’s testimony hurt Bobby real bad. I’d been brought into this case to tear witnesses like Kinney apart. I knew, right from the start, we didn’t have enough evidence to challenge this. The case all came down to this witness.