Animal Instinct

by Rosenfelt, David

  “Somewhat … yes.” I can see Dylan trying not to cringe at this. He’s going to be pissed at Lillard for his honesty.

  “In the garbage bag, was there a signed note from Mr. Douglas saying, ‘Arrest me … I did it’?”

  Lillard smiles. “I didn’t see one.”

  Andy returns the smile. “So just to recap; please tell me if this accurately sums up the prosecution’s view of the situation. Mr. Douglas, smart cop that he was, did not commit the murder and then leave, taking his clothing, knife, and garbage bag with him. Instead, he committed the murder and then stayed there and called the police. He then left all of those items behind, where they could easily be found and traced back to him. Is that about right?”

  “I can’t speak for the prosecution.”

  “I think you already have. Thank you, Lieutenant. No further questions.”

  Andy was brilliant, and I tell him so when he comes back to the defense table.

  “Shucks,” he says, “enough about me.”

  What I don’t say is what he and I both know. The factual part of today’s testimony was squarely on Dylan’s side. Andy handled it as well as it could be handled, but the “How could the defendant be this stupid?” defense will rarely carry the day.

  We’re going to need something more.

  LAURIE answered the phone at 10:45 P.M.

  Taking the phone into the den where Andy was going over his case notes, she covered up the receiver. “It’s for you. He asked if this was the lawyer Andy Carpenter’s number. He sounds nervous … this is a strange one.”

  Andy picked up the phone on his desk. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Carpenter. My name is Harold Marshall. I have been following the trial.… I knew Gerald Kline. Well, let’s say I had dealings with him.”

  “How can I help you, Mr. Marshall?”

  “I want to help you, but I do not want my name used. Can I have your word on that?”

  “I would need to know what it is you have to say. But I would certainly make every effort.”

  “If you bring me into it or contact me in any way, I will deny everything.”

  “I think it would be best for you to say whatever it is you have to say. Then we can go from there.”

  There was a silence for a few moments, which became a few more. Andy believed the man was trying to decide whether to continue the conversation or abort.

  He continued, “I don’t think your client killed Gerald Kline. I wanted to kill him myself. I am not without resources.”

  Andy doesn’t say anything; if this guy was going to get to the point, it would have to be at his own pace, on his own terms.

  “Kline was blackmailing me; he had information.… I could have lost my family, my profession, everything I care about.”

  “Where did he get this information?”

  “I don’t know. I had never met him, never had any association with him. He just appeared one day, and everything changed.”

  “Did you pay him?”

  A long pause, then, “Fifty thousand dollars. But it wasn’t enough; it was never going to be enough. I was very happy when I read that he was dead. I expected someone else to take his place, but no one did.”

  “Did Mr. Kline mention anyone else, anyone he was working with?”

  “No. Never.”

  “This was brave of you to come forward.”

  “I’m not brave at all, and I’m not coming forward. Mr. Carpenter, this is the end of it. I just wanted you to know the truth; maybe you can do something with it.”

  “Can we meet? Maybe talk about this some more, while preserving your confidentiality?”

  “No. Good-bye. Good luck.” Click.

  As soon as Andy got off the phone, he told Laurie what transpired and then called Sam Willis and Corey Douglas. Andy gave Sam Harold Marshall’s name and phone number and asked him to check him out. Andy also asked Sam and Corey to come to his house for a 7:00 A.M. meeting before court, where Sam could share what he’d learned in the interim.

  When Andy got off, he asked, “What do you think?”

  “Hard to say. I don’t usually trust helpful information that comes out of nowhere,” Laurie said.

  “I don’t either, but this one sounded legit, and he sounded scared.”

  “Let’s see what Sam comes up with.”

  “HAROLD Marshall lives in Pittsburgh. He’s forty-eight years old, has been married for twenty-two years, and has two children, one sixteen and the other eleven. He went to Penn State undergrad and med school and is a pediatrician. House is worth $1.6 million, drives an Audi, and both kids are in private school. That’s all I’ve got so far,” Sam says.

  Andy turns to Laurie and me. “So, what do we think?”

  “My instinct is to be skeptical,” I say. “But if this person is not real, I don’t know what he could have to gain by coming forward.”

  “Maybe try and change our defense?” Laurie asks.

  Andy shakes his head. “He can’t do that. We don’t have a defense.”

  I laugh at that in the hope that Andy is joking. Then, “It does fit neatly. Anybody have a guess as to how many records companies like Ardmore have?”

  “How many people are there in the country?” Andy says. “Everybody has medical records, and almost all of them would be on file somewhere.”

  “So hundreds of millions. If the tiniest percentage are people with money who have blackmailable information in there, then the bad guys could make a fortune. It also fits with Lisa’s email about Rico, who we think is Richard Mahler. He’s dispensing this information to people who are doing the blackmailing and paying him a percentage.”

  I continue, “Kline was the recruiter. He was screening people that he thought could handle the assignments. It ties together.”

  “So why kill Kline?” Laurie asks.

  “Maybe he was turning on them. Just speculating, but it could have had to do with Lisa Yates’s death. Maybe that crossed a line in his mind, and maybe he did have something to show you that night that was a danger to Mahler and whoever else.”

  “So let’s say it’s real,” Andy says, “mainly because right now we don’t have a reason to think it isn’t. What do we do with it? And soon, because we’re running out of time.”

  “I think the key is Jason Musgrove. He has to be at the top of this chain, for a few reasons. One, he’s the CEO; unless his head is buried in the sand, then he should know what’s going on in his company. Two, he’s the one who depended on Kline to recommend personnel, most of whom they hired. Three, and most important, it’s Musgrove who fired Don Crystal and installed Mahler. That couldn’t be a coincidence; they had to have had this planned.”

  “So?” Laurie asks, obviously hoping that my rambling is leading to a potential course of action.

  “So we lean on Mahler to turn on Musgrove. We tell him about Marshall and we threaten to blow the lid on the whole thing in court. He wouldn’t know that Marshall won’t come forward. He would assume that if we know about Marshall, then Marshall clearly has made the decision to tell what he knows.”

  Everybody seems to agree that my plan is either a good idea or a bad idea; nobody knows. The other thing we agree on is that if we do confront Mahler, then Andy should be the one to do it.

  As I’m leaving, Andy says, “See you in court. Dylan should be done tomorrow or the next day, and then we’re up.”

  “I guess I should ask you now; are you going to put me on the stand?” I know that defense attorneys hate the idea of their clients testifying.

  “I might,” he says, surprising me. “Unless I can think of another way.”

  “Another way to do what?”

  “The problem we had at the beginning of the case is still the problem we have now. Your stuff … clothing, sneakers, knife … were found at the scene. We have no way to explain that, other than you.”

  “You think the jury will buy my saying I had an instinct my house was broken into, but I didn’t notice anything missing and didn�
�t bother to report it?”

  He frowns. “I doubt it, but we have nothing else. It is what it is. Juries can’t handle a vacuum; if we don’t fill it with an explanation, they’ll assume that none exists. They might reject ours, but at least it will be there for them to consider.”

  I turn to leave and then stop. “There’s one other thing.”

  “Not the money again?”

  “No, something more important. I want to ask you that, if this goes south, if you would take Simon.”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t mean take for your foundation to place in a home. I mean to take him to live out his life here, as a member of your family.”

  “I know what you meant. And the answer is ‘of course.’ But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

  “No?”

  “No. I think one way or another we are going to win this thing.”

  TODAY is science and forensics day.

  Dylan wants to tie me to the killing beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he also wants an excuse to show the crime scene photos on the big screen again. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a bloody one is worth half a million.

  He starts with Janet Carlson, the medical examiner, who testifies that Gerald Kline had his throat slashed and that he therefore bled to death. I know Janet well; I consider her a friend and have worked with her on a number of occasions. She’s an outstanding, highly trained medical examiner, but if she were a poorly trained plumbing-supply salesperson, she would still be able to tell that Gerald Kline had his throat slashed and he bled to death.

  Andy doesn’t question her assessment in his cross-examination; instead he asks her about her experience working with me when I was on the force. She has nothing but praise for my professionalism and says that when she heard I was arrested for the murder, her first reaction was that it couldn’t be true.

  “Is that still your reaction today?” Andy asks.

  “It is,” she says, before Dylan can object.

  The forensics specialist that Dylan calls is Sergeant Luis Claudio, a twenty-year veteran of the force. I worked with Luis a couple of times, but don’t really know him. His reputation is excellent.

  Dylan starts with the DNA and spends almost an hour getting Claudio to say that it is absolutely, positively my DNA on the clothing, along with Kline’s blood. Claudio quantifies the odds against it as one in a couple of quadrillion; at least that’s what I think he says. Anything over a gazillion and I tune out.

  I honestly don’t think there is a person on the planet who doesn’t believe that DNA is ridiculously accurate, so I don’t know why prosecutors spend so much time convincing juries of it. I can see the jurors’ eyes glazing over as the testimony drones on.

  More interesting to them is the blood. That my clothes are saturated with it is interesting to the jurors; they perk up when the subject is raised. Dylan gets Claudio to say that the blood would spurt from the neck wound, making it impossible for a person making the slashing motion to avoid getting it all over him. Because it was a clean cut, Claudio says, it would be even more likely to spurt.

  I can tell when Andy starts his cross that he sees potential for us in the blood testimony. “Sergeant Claudio, you testified that it would have been almost impossible for the slasher not to have gotten blood on him or her, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if the slashing had been done from behind?”

  “I was not presented with that hypothetical.”

  “Mr. Campbell told you that the slasher stood in front of the victim?”

  “That was my assumption.”

  “When did he tell you that? During your coaching session? Did he show you a video of the crime? Maybe we could all see it.”

  Claudio is annoyed. “I was not coached.”

  “Wonderful. So let’s start over. If the slasher came up behind the victim, grabbed him by the shoulder and slashed across the front, would the slasher’s clothes be covered in blood?”

  “That would be unlikely.”

  “Good. Please let me know if I say anything else that contradicts Mr. Campbell’s hypothetical.”

  Dylan objects that Andy is being badgering and argumentative, and since he is, Judge Wallace sustains.

  “You said that the blood on the knife found in the Dumpster was Mr. Kline’s. Was that the murder weapon?”

  “I can’t say that for sure.”

  “So it could have had the blood applied to it, then put in the garbage bag, without having been used to slash Mr. Kline?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You said it was a clean cut, do you remember saying that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you examine the knife?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a serrated-edged kitchen knife. Do they make clean cuts?”

  “They can.”

  “Isn’t a serrated edge like a saw, with a jagged blade? Isn’t the very purpose of it not to make clean cuts?”

  “I can’t speak to its purpose; I can only say that the wound could have been made by the knife we are talking about.”

  Andy finally lets Claudio off the stand, and Dylan calls Sergeant Stew Metosky, another forensics officer who had been on the scene.

  “Sergeant Metosky, you checked Mr. Kline’s house for fingerprints that night?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Well, obviously Mr. Kline’s were everywhere. There were also partial prints from three people that I could not identify, and then I found prints belonging to Mr. Douglas.”

  “Where were they?”

  “Well, there were some in the den, and then there were prints on the outside handle of the back door.”

  Dylan pretends to be surprised. “He came in through the back door?”

  “I have no idea, but he certainly touched the back doorknob.”

  Andy’s cross is quick and to the point. “Sergeant Metosky, you said it was on the outside doorknob of the back door. Was it also on the inside?”

  “No.”

  “Are you aware that there was testimony that the prosecution theory is that Mr. Douglas went out the back, put a garbage bag full of obvious clues in a nearby Dumpster, and then came back in?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he get out without touching the door?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Did you examine the knife for prints?”

  “Yes, there were none.”

  “Which means he filled the bag with clothes containing his own DNA, hoping it would never be found, but took the time to wipe off his prints?”

  Dylan objects and Wallace sustains, telling Sergeant Metosky that he doesn’t have to answer. I don’t think Andy cares; I think the point was to ask the question.

  He lets him off the stand, and we’re out of here for the day.

  Judge Wallace wishes the jury a nice weekend and tells them to be sure it doesn’t include media coverage of this trial.

  Monday starts our defense.

  ANDY has called Richard Mahler four times.

  Twice at his office and twice on his cell phone, which Sam tracked down. Sam also set up an app on Andy’s phone that would let him record calls that he made or that came in. New Jersey is a one-person-consent state, so he could record any conversation legally. Sam probably wasn’t used to doing tech things that are legal, but he seems to have adjusted.

  For the two office calls, Andy told the receptionist that it was urgent that he speak to Mr. Mahler, but each time she put him on hold, then came back and said that Mahler was out of the office.

  On the cell phone calls, they went to voice mail, and Andy left an urgent message each time. The last one was an implied threat that it was in Mahler’s best interests to call Andy back “before it is too late.”

  Andy’s phone rang at noon on Saturday. Caller ID showed that it was Mahler calling, so Andy pressed the button to commence the recording. Then he answered with “R
ichard Mahler, I’m glad you finally called back.”

  “Mr. Carpenter, I am going to have to insist that you stop bothering me. I will turn this over to my attorney if I have to. I am not interested in anything you or your client has to say.”

  “How about Harold Marshall?” Andy asked. “Are you interested in anything he has to say? Because he tells a fascinating story. Actually, not to worry … you can read about it in the paper.” Andy neglected to mention the part about Marshall vowing never to come forward publicly.

  There was dead silence on the phone for at least twenty very long seconds. Then, “I don’t know any Harold Marshall.”

  “It took you all that time to come up with that? That’s the best you got?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “You do and you are throwing away your last chance to deal with this. Because the next person you will be talking to about it is a homicide cop. That won’t go well for you, Rico.”

  Another long silence, then, “What do you want?”

  “First of all, I want you to know that we know everything. Once Marshall comes forward and they start to turn over more rocks, then everyone will know everything. The only thing we don’t know for sure is who is above you. I assume it’s Musgrove, but I can’t be sure.

  “But here’s the thing, Rico … when something like this goes south, goes public, you don’t want to be the top guy. That’s a bad place to be. You want to be the guy who identified the top guy. That is the only way to play it, believe me.”

  “I was a nobody in this. I just did what I was told.”

  “I know that. But you need to take care of yourself now.”

  “You don’t know Musgrove.” Mahler sounded desperate. “He will come after me.”

  “Not if he’s in custody.”

  There was another long silence, then, “I don’t kill people.”

  “Then you need to tell the police, and my jury, who does.”

  “I need to think about this. Please give me until tomorrow.”

  “No longer than that. But understand that it is coming out no matter what. Your only decision is which side to be on.”