Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  I smile my most condescending smile, and throw in a condescending slight head shake. It’s a difficult maneuver, which I learned in law school when I took Condescending Smile and Head Shake 101. Then I rephrase the question and Holland agrees that someone could have left without him seeing the person.

  “You said you had conversed with Mr. Haley on a couple of occasions. How did you come to do that?”

  “We were both walking our dogs.”

  “Mr. Haley had a dog?”

  “Yes. A French bulldog. He and my dog got along really well.”

  “Do you know his dog’s name?”

  He nods. “Truman.”

  “Did you see Truman that night? Was he in the back hallway?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear him barking?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  I’ve gotten in front of the jury that Haley had a dog, that the dog’s name was Truman, and that he wasn’t around after the murder.

  Just call me Clarence Darrow.

  We have no standing to get discovery information on the Christopher Tolbert murder.

  I just cannot announce a connection between the homeless man whose body turned up in Nash Park in Clifton to the James Haley murder in Paterson.

  The fact that Haley went to Tolbert’s funeral would clearly not be compelling enough to the court, and I can’t use the fact that Zip connected Chico Simmons to Tolbert’s death, nor can I use the apparent rash of similar killings around the country.

  That is why I am in the office of the Passaic County coroner, Janet Carlson. Janet is a friend, and without a doubt the best-looking coroner in the history of Earth. I know it’s sexist to say this, but if there was a “Miss Coroner” contest, she would have retired the trophy years ago.

  She is also extremely competent and an excellent witness. She will be testifying for the prosecution in our trial, and I am just glad that I won’t need to challenge her testimony, because as expert witnesses go, she is rock solid.

  I made the appointment through her assistant, and though Janet greets me warmly, she says, “You know I can’t talk about my testimony with you, Andy. Dylan would have a stroke.”

  “We certainly don’t want to do anything to harm Dylan,” I say. “But I’m actually here to talk about the Tolbert killing.”

  She thinks for a moment and then nods. “Nash Park? Why are you involved in that?”

  “You know me. I just love murders of all kinds.”

  She laughs. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything you can tell me.” The truth is that the autopsy results are not sealed; they are open to the public. All I’m asking for is an advance preview.

  She asks for the file to be sent to her. She didn’t do the autopsy herself; it was done by one of her assistants. Once she gets the file, she looks through it slowly and carefully. Janet does not talk about her work lightly or casually; whether on the stand or sitting in her office, she likes to be accurate.

  “Gunshot wound to the head was the cause of death, Andy. No bruises, scrapes, or signs of a fight. Death was about four hours before discovery and did not likely take place where the body was discovered.”

  “Did you run toxicology?”

  She looks at me with annoyance. “Of course.”

  “Drugs?”

  She looks at the report, probably for the first time. “No, all clean.” Then, after a few more moments of reading, “That’s strange.”

  “What is?” I ask, though I suspect she will tell me anyway.

  “There are traces of amephrotane; it’s a natural compound that is a component of a number of opioids.”

  “So it’s likely Tolbert was taking opioids?

  She shakes her head. “No. If he was, there would be other chemicals present. There’s no reason the amephrotane would outlast the others, so to speak.”

  “Is there any other way to ingest amephrotane?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s prevalent in certain types of green vegetables.”

  “Laurie must be loaded with the stuff. She’s one of those weirdos who cares about what they put into their bodies and think good health is important.”

  Janet doesn’t respond; she’s ignoring me even though I think I’m doing some damn good bantering. Instead she just keeps reading the report in front of her.

  So I give it another shot. “And then those people—I call them health-ites—it’s not enough that they’re healthy. They want everybody else to be healthy also. Talk about selfish.”

  Not a word out of her. I should be writing this stuff down to use in future bantering sessions with more receptive audiences. Possibly when the person I’m bantering with is not reading about a grisly death.

  “I’m going to have to talk to Charles about this,” she finally says.

  “Who is Charles?”

  “He did the autopsy; there’s an unusual aspect of it that I want to discuss with him, since he saw it firsthand.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are indications of emesis, internal and external. It was even on his clothing. Then there are signs of intense perspiration, enlarged tear ducts.”

  “Emesis?”

  “Vomiting,” she says.

  “Signs of stress?” I ask. “Maybe because he knew he was going to be killed?”

  She nods. “It’s possible. But it feels more like drug or alcohol withdrawal, yet the toxicology says otherwise. Very strange.”

  She promises to keep me posted if Charles has any further insight into the situation. Before I leave, I make her write out the word amephrotane.

  I head down to the office to pick up some more discovery documents that have come in, but on the way I call Laurie. I tell her about my meeting with Janet and ask if she will call Sergeant Rubin in Philadelphia.

  “Please ask him to check the toxicology reports on the homeless murder victims. I want to know if there were any drugs present, and I especially want to know if there is any trace of amephrotane.”

  “Can you spell it?” she asks.

  “Of course I can spell it.”

  Dylan’s next witness is Officer Patricia Jonas.

  Jonas has only been on the force for three years and likely has rarely testified in this kind of consequential case, but this is going to be an easy way for her to gain experience. She and her partner were the first officers on the scene, responding to Darryl Holland’s 911 call.

  She testifies to that effect, describing how they arrived on the scene, talked to Holland, and then quickly assessed the situation.

  “Mr. Haley was deceased when you arrived, is that correct?”

  “Without question. I reported in to Homicide and then called for an ambulance and the coroner, knowing it was the coroner that would unfortunately be needed.”

  “What did you do once you determined that Mr. Haley was deceased?”

  “We checked the rest of the house to confirm that the perpetrator was not still on the scene. Then we cordoned off the area and made sure that the neighbors, who had started to gather, were set back.”

  “The perpetrator was gone?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “Did you notice anything else unusual about the house as you looked through it?” Dylan asks.

  “It certainly appeared to have been ransacked.”

  “It looked like a robbery scene?” Dylan asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Could you determine if anything was missing?”

  She shakes her head. “That was not our role. We were simply there to secure the scene for the detectives.”

  My turn. “Officer Jonas, you said that the house looked as if it had been ransacked and that it seemed to be a robbery scene. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does a ransacked robbery scene look like?”

  “Things thrown around, drawers opened and dumped on the floor, things like that,” she says.

  “So if I we
nt home tonight and opened drawers, dumped things on the floor, that kind of thing, it might look like I had been robbed?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Even if I hadn’t been robbed?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The area where you found Mr. Haley’s body … was that a living area in the house?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Was there a television there? A couch? A table? Was that an area where a person might hang out?”

  She shakes her head. “No, it is basically a hallway.”

  “So it seems likely that he went down there because someone was coming in through the back door?”

  “I can’t know for sure.”

  “Can you think of another reason he might have been there?”

  “No. Not at the moment.”

  “There has been testimony that Mr. Haley owned a dog. Are you aware of that?”

  “I didn’t hear the testimony,” she says, “but I saw a dog’s water dish in the house.”

  “Did you see the dog while you were there?”

  “No.”

  “Did you look for him?”

  “No. I assumed he was either not there, or hiding. But I had other things I needed to do.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dylan calls Officer Jonas’s partner to the stand, for no other purpose than to basically repeat everything she just said. It doesn’t do us any additional damage, and even though I am able to once again get across the fact that Truman was nowhere to be found, it doesn’t help us much either.

  Dylan’s next witness is actually a bit of a surprise, though he was obviously on the witness list. It’s another neighbor of Haley’s, a longtime resident of the area named Jeff Traynor.

  He establishes that Traynor was also walking his dog that night; does no one in that neighborhood have cats? But Traynor was out front and claims to have seen Joey Gamble leave the house through the front door.

  “Wasn’t it dark that night?” Dylan asks.

  “I suppose it was, but there is a streetlight very close to that house, and there was a porch light on as well. I had no trouble seeing.”

  “And you’re sure it was Mr. Gamble?”

  “Positive. We even made eye contact; I got a very good look at him.”

  If I were Dylan, I would not have called Traynor to the stand. He doesn’t need him to establish Joey’s presence at the scene; he has fingerprint evidence to that effect. I think it’s overkill, and it establishes an opening for me.

  I could attack it by questioning whether Traynor can be sure of the identification; he saw him briefly, at night, etc. But then I’d be making the same mistake as Dylan. I’m going to admit Joey was there, so why try to cast doubt on a witness who saw him there?

  I start my questions off easy. “Mr. Traynor, was Mr. Gamble running when you saw him leave the house?”

  “No.”

  “Did he seem to be in a hurry?”

  “Not that I could tell.”

  “Did you see where he went after he left? Did he go to a car?”

  “I didn’t notice; I was heading back to my own house.”

  “But he definitely left through the front door?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You said that you made eye contact with him? So you believe he knew that you saw him?”

  “I certainly think so. We were within twenty feet of each other, and like I said, we looked right at each other.”

  “He made no effort to conceal his identity?” I ask. “Cover his face? Anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “And even though he knew that you saw him close up and could therefore identify him, he didn’t try to attack you?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Did he have a dog with him?” I ask.

  “No. I didn’t see a dog.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dylan did very little to hurt us today, but these are still just the prelims. There are other, more substantive witnesses coming later who are going to damage us badly, if not fatally. For the time being, all we will be able to do is play defense. But that won’t be enough, not by a long shot.

  If we’re going to win this thing, we are going to have to win on offense, by making an affirmative case that can sway the jury.

  Once I’m out of the courtroom, I check my cell phone and there’s a message from Laurie, asking me to call.

  “Rubin got back to me,” she says. “No drugs found in either of the two victims, but there were traces of amephrotane. He asked me what it meant. I didn’t know what to tell him, because I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “I don’t either, not yet. But I can spell it.”

  In addition to Janet’s analysis of the autopsy results and the present of amephrotane, we’re coming up with some interesting information regarding the murder of Christopher Tolbert.

  Laurie talked to the director of the homeless shelter where Tolbert often took his meals. No one had seen Tolbert for at least six days before his body was discovered.

  I ask Laurie to call Cindy Spodek to ask her if the autopsy results for the other homicides in other cities also show the presence of amephrotane.

  Of course, my delight at making progress on Tolbert’s murder is tempered somewhat by the fact that our client is on trial for the James Haley murder. The connection between our case and Tolbert has been tenuous from the beginning and remains so; at this point our chance of getting evidence about Tolbert admitted in our trial remains zero.

  Today is the last day that Dylan will be setting up his case before he calls in the big guns. Janet Carlson is his first witness, and she is here to say that the body with gunshot wounds in the back and head died from gunshot wounds to the back and head.

  Actually, that is not Dylan’s reason for having her here at all. He has chosen to use Janet’s appearance to introduce the crime scene photos. Of course, on an evidentiary level it’s unnecessary; the jury knows what happened to Haley and does not need to see photos of it.

  But it is a time-honored prosecutorial maneuver. Seeing the gory scene is designed to make the jury revolted and angry, and the only person available to them to take their anger out on is the defendant—in this case, Joey Gamble.

  I have no questions for Janet; what she said was self-evident and my not bothering to question her hopefully says to the jury that it is unimportant to the overall case. The jury knew Haley was murdered before she testified and they knew it after she testified. She did not in any way incriminate Joey.

  Next up is Joey’s sometime friend Archie Sandler. Sandler is dressed in a suit and tie, which is way too tight on him; I wouldn’t be surprised if it were one of Dylan’s. Sandler looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than in this courtroom.

  Dylan gets Sandler to say that Joey told him he was going to see James Haley that night. According to Sandler, Joey didn’t tell him why he was going. “Were people annoyed that Mr. Haley was in the neighborhood?”

  Sandler nods. “I guess so. Some guys were talking.”

  Dylan asks, “Was Mr. Gamble one of the people who was talking?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You and Mr. Gamble are good friends?” Dylan asks.

  “Yeah, I guess. We’re cool.”

  My first question for Sandler is, “Did Mr. Gamble tell you he was going to steal from Mr. Haley?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he was going to hurt Mr. Haley?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he was going to kill Mr. Haley?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you not to tell anyone he was going to Mr. Haley’s that night?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see Mr. Gamble at the bar later that night?”

  “Yeah, he was there.”

  “Did he act unusual in any way? Did he confide in you that something had happened?”

  “No.”

  I let Sandler off the stan
d and the judge sends us out to a late lunch. There will be a couple of additional witnesses afterward, one of whom will reconfirm Sandler’s testimony that Joey spoke to Haley on the Paterson streets the day of the murder. The other witness will simply say that Joey was expected to join his friends at a local bar that night, as he often did, but that he got there after the time of death that the coroner established.

  Tomorrow will be the detective in charge of the case and the forensic evidence. Or, as Dylan and everyone else would view it, the big guns.

  Mateo Rojas knew that including Paterson was a mistake in the first place.

  For one thing, its size alone should have disqualified it. It is a decent-sized city, the 174th largest in the US by population, but that should have been barely enough to get it into the third or fourth wave.

  The city also did not provide anyone who possessed the structure and maturity that the operation demanded. Chico Simmons commanded a loose and unfocused operation, held together by fear of his ruthlessness. Now he was being called on to run an enterprise that also required business competence, and he was simply not up to the task.

  Frank Silvio had wanted to include Paterson, and Rojas had gone along. Silvio was Rojas’s biggest mistake, and biggest surprise. There were five men under Rojas on that level, Silvio and four others. Rojas had handpicked all of them, and when this began, he would have said that Silvio was the best of the bunch.

  He was wrong.

  Silvio had made mistakes. Choosing Paterson and Chico was one of them, and George Adams was another. Those mistakes led to others and eventually had led to a situation that was unacceptable. A lawyer and his investigators were digging into the case, investigating Silvio and Chico and others. A trial was being conducted, which could only bring publicity and more unwanted attention.

  The operation was now in the end game, so Rojas had to adjust his risk assessments accordingly. The threat was now more in the post-operation phase; the danger was the possible discovery of those responsible by law enforcement.

  In other words, Rojas and his people were vulnerable.

  That was why Rojas had called this meeting between himself, Silvio, and Chico Simmons. They were to come with their suggestions for a way forward and were informed that final decisions would be made and then implementation would proceed. They were instructed to come alone, and not to share the outcome of the discussion with anyone.