Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (27 page)

Karp shrugged. “It’s a simple question as to where evidence was located during a criminal investigation. If Mr. Leonard is so convinced as to what it does or does not ‘insinuate,’ he’s welcome to put his client on the stand and let him say how it got there.”

Leonard glared at Karp. “You’re trying to force my client to take the stand.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can get one of your shrinks to explain Mr. Maplethorpe’s thinking when he balled up the jacket and hid it—or accidentally tossed it—under the bed,” Karp replied. “It might cost a bit more, but I’d bet any one of them would be willing to render an opinion.”

“Gentlemen! Knock it off,” Rosenmayer said quietly but forcefully. He then closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “I’m going to overrule the objection. The location of evidence obtained by the police in a criminal investigation is both relevant and allowable.”

Leonard stomped back to his seat, his cowboy boots clomping heavily in disgust. He glanced at the jury as though he expected them to share his disgust, and he shook his head sadly.

Karp looked back up at Detective Cardamone, who had a bemused smile on his rugged features. “Okay, Detective, where was the smoking jacket located?”

“It was under the bed in the master bedroom.”

Karp held up a plastic bag containing the smoking jacket and handed it to Detective Cardamone, who examined the contents.

“Is that the smoking jacket you just described?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Your Honor, I ask that the smoking jacket, People’s Exhibit Seven, be admitted into evidence.”

Rosenmayer looked at Leonard. But the defense attorney shook his head and stifled a partial yawn. “No objection. Excuse me, Your Honor, I didn’t mean any disrespect, we’ve been working late hours.”

The judge smiled sardonically. “I understand, Counselor. I hope you won’t object if Mr. Karp also finds it necessary to yawn at some point in the trial. I’m betting both sides have been burning the midnight oil.”

“Now, Detective, would you please describe for the jury the type of bloodstain you see on the jacket, People’s Exhibit Seven,” Karp asked.

Cardamone held up the right sleeve of the jacket. “I would describe this as flecks of blood.”

“Not a large amount?”

“No, not really.”

“Not a smear?”

“No, just a few flecks.”

“Detective, when you arrived at the apartment, did you notice anything unusual about the pants the defendant was wearing?”

Cardamone arched his eyebrows, as if this was something new, and shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. Just regular old blue jeans.”

“Not leather?”

“No, sir. Denim.”

“Detective Cardamone, who is Hilario Gianneschi?”

“Hilario Gianneschi, also known as Harry Gianneschi, was working as the concierge at the hotel that night when the defendant
called and asked him to come up to his suite. He was the first to see the deceased and Mr. Maplethorpe, who told him—”

“Objection,” Leonard said. “Once again, this witness is apparently going to speak for everyone. I might as well let him have my job, too.” The courtroom spectators tittered, and Leonard smiled. “But seriously, if this witness, Mr. Gianneschi, is going to testify, why don’t we just let him speak for himself?”

“Your Honor,” Karp jumped right in, “Detective Cardamone is intimately familiar with all of the witnesses and police reports in this case. His answer does go directly to a follow-up question I have regarding what Mr. Maplethorpe was wearing when police officers arrived, and what he did with clothing he was wearing when Miss Perez died. So I respectfully request that you permit this line of inquiry subject to connection.”

“Very well, Mr. Karp, proceed, but make sure you connect later on. You know, I’ll be watching,” the judge said.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp said. “Detective Cardamone, do you recall statements made by Mr. Gianneschi several days after Miss Perez died?”

“Yes. We asked him to come to the precinct to answer a few follow-up questions.”

“And during this interview, did Mr. Gianneschi make a statement about the pants that Mr. Maplethorpe was wearing when he arrived at the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And did the defendant describe these pants in his native tongue, which is Italian?”

“Yes.”

“And he described this article of clothing as ‘
pantaloni di cuoio dispari,’
if I’m pronouncing that correctly.”

“Not bad,” the detective replied. “He said that the defendant was dressed in
‘pantaloni di cuoio dispari,’
which means—”

“Objection!” This time Leonard shouted as he rose from his seat. “I don’t believe that Detective Cardamone has been qualified in this courtroom as an expert witness in the field of linguistics or as a speaker of Italian. I insist that he be prohibited from acting as either.”

The judge looked at Karp and raised his eyebrows. “What say you?”

Instead of answering, Karp turned to Cardamone. “Detective, could you tell the court how you were able to translate this expression?”

“Yeah, my folks are first-generation immigrants from Florence,” Cardamone replied. “I was speaking and reading Italian before I put together my first sentence in English.”

Leonard snorted loud enough to be heard by everyone in the courtroom. “That’s all fine and good,” he said. “But we have no idea if he’s telling us the truth, or perhaps his Italian has gone downhill, or if his interpretation would be matched by a ‘real’ expert.”

“Your Honor, I submit respectfully that Mr. Cardamone would be considered by any court as an expert in Italian,” Karp growled. “He’s been speaking it all of his life with his family. If the court would like to conduct a voir dire on that, I certainly would have no objection.”

Eyes blazing, Karp continued, “And if Mr. Leonard thinks that I would pull a fast one on this court and this jury, all he has to do is add to his assembly line of highly paid experts to attest to the alleged inaccuracy of Mr. Cardamone’s interpretation.”

Karp stopped and stared at Rosenmayer. The judge sat back in his chair, staring back at Karp, then addressed Leonard. “Mr. Leonard, I believe we heard a challenge. I will allow this evidence and permit you to call an expert, well-paid or otherwise, to refute Detective Cardamone’s translation, if you deem it necessary. So, Mr. Leonard, your objection is overruled.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp replied.
And thank you, Mr. Leonard, for helping me make the jury curious about the interpretation of
‘pantaloni di cuoio dispari.’

Karp then asked Cardamone what the phrase meant.

“It means ‘strange or crazy leather pants,’” the detective said.

Karp then ended his questioning of Cardamone by asking about the medical examiner’s autopsy report.

“Detective, was there any evidence of drugs or excessive alcohol in the victim’s system?”

“Her blood alcohol content was within the legal limit for
operating a car in the state of New York,” Cardamone answered. “Otherwise, there was ibuprofen—a mild, over-the-counter pain medication—but no other detected drugs.”

“No prescription medication for depression or anxiety?”

“None.”

“How about cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine?”

“Nope.”

“Marijuana?”

The detective shook his head. “Not a trace. And marijuana leaves a detectable residue for thirty days.”

Karp’s entire direct examination of Detective Cardamone took less than an hour. But Leonard spent twice that long nitpicking at every little detail of the investigation and Cardamone’s testimony.

The defense attorney ended his cross-examination by asking the detective, “Can you tell us beyond any doubt that Gail Perez
did not
place a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger?”

“Yes, sir,” the detective replied. “It’s not my job to speculate about the facts of a case when the evidence demonstrates beyond any doubt that the defendant blew Miss Perez away.”

Karp had to hide his smile at the detective’s clever shot at Leonard’s trial strategy.
Touché, Frank.

Leonard virtually leaped out of his boots and shouted at Judge Rosenmayer. “I move to strike the witness’s statements as totally not responsive and self-serving, and I make a formal motion right here and now to dismiss this case!”

Rosenmayer leaned over the bench. “Oh no, Mr. Leonard, the record will reflect that Detective Cardamone couldn’t have been more spot-on in answering your question. Be careful, Mr. Leonard, when you open a door, sometimes it shuts rather abruptly. Now, would you like to explore just how Detective Cardamone came to his conclusion?”

Leonard offered a faltering smile and dismissively muttered, “I have no further questions of this man.”

T
HE PRETTY YOUNG
H
ISPANIC WOMAN ON THE WITNESS STAND
wiped her tears and blew her nose. She was obviously having a difficult time getting her emotions under control as Karp stood patiently next to the lectern between the stand and jury box.

After Cardamone stepped down from the witness stand, Rosenmayer had called for the afternoon break. When they returned, Karp had called Gail Perez’s sister, Tina, to take the stand, but he’d only made it through the first series of questions before she started to cry.

Come on, Tina, I need you to pull it together,
he thought. Whereas Frank Cardamone was the prosecution’s sole representative of the police investigation, Tina Perez was there as his only voice for her sister’s character.

Prior to the trial, Karp had explained to Katz that normally, having to retry a case worked against the prosecution more than it did the defense. During a first trial, the defense got to see the entire prosecution case, learning its weak points, which it could attempt to exploit the second time around.

“That’s when the defense has a legitimate case, including real evidence to suggest reasonable doubt,”
he’d said.
“However, when
the defense doesn’t have a legitimate case—as in this instance—and is relying solely on something like the Big Lie, we get to see their strategy.”

After reading the transcripts of the witness testimony, Karp had decided to pare all the character witnesses down to just Tina Perez. The question now as she sipped from a cup of water that Karp had poured for her was whether she could hold it together, or if he’d be forced to call other character witnesses.

“Are you ready to proceed, Miss Perez?” he asked gently.

“Yes, sir. Thank you…it’s still hard,” she said apologetically. “I miss her.”

“I understand completely, Miss Perez,” Karp replied. “And I’m sorry to put you through this. We were discussing your sister’s childhood, and you told the jurors that she was a happy kid, full of energy, and that as she grew up, she looked out for you—her kid sister—especially after your parents passed away. I’d like to turn now to her career. How important was it to your sister, Gail, to—and I quote—‘be a star’ on Broadway?”

A pretty brunette with her sister’s green eyes, Tina tilted her head to the side and thought about the question for a moment. “Even in high school, she’d work two or three jobs so that she could afford acting classes and voice lessons. And starting somewhere around her senior year, she went to every casting call she could sneak into. Even if she knew that she wouldn’t get a part, she went anyway for the experience…. I remember the first time she got a role that paid a little bit of money, she was so thrilled.”

“How old was she?” Karp asked.

“Maybe twenty-one or twenty-two.”

“Were there other paying parts after that?”

Tina nodded her head emphatically. “Nothing big, but quite a few, plus she started to get some modeling work.”

“Your sister was a beautiful woman,” Karp stated.

“Yes, she was very beautiful, inside and out.”

Karp picked up a “glamour shot” of Gail Perez and handed it to Tina. “Miss Perez, does People’s Exhibit Eight, marked for identification, fairly and accurately represent a so-called modeling
photograph of your sister, the deceased, Gail Perez?”

Holding the photograph with both hands, Tina nodded her head and stifled a sob. “Yes, it is.”

“Your Honor, I ask that this photograph, People’s Exhibit Eight, be received in evidence,” Karp said.

Rosenmayer looked over at Leonard, who waved his hand without looking up from a document he was reading. “No objection.”

Karp handed the photograph to the jury foreman and then turned back to the witness stand. “Miss Perez, did your sister ever become a ‘big star’ on Broadway?”

Tina shook her head. “No. Mostly smaller parts, but with that and her modeling, she paid the bills, and she loved what she was doing.”

“Did she ever seem down about only getting the small parts…not being a star?”

“Well, there was a time, especially when she was starting out, when she’d complain that someone got a role she felt that she should have had,” Tina replied. “She said some girls would do anything…you know, sexual…to get a part.”

“Was your sister one of those girls?” Karp asked.

The reaction was exactly as he’d hoped and why he’d sprung it on her without warning. Tina’s eyes flashed with anger and her voice tightened as she looked hard at the defense table. “No. Never. She told me there wasn’t a part that was worth her self-respect.”

“Did losing parts to those other women bring her down?”

“Like I said, at first she complained. But later on, she figured that at least she was working onstage when most girls who have the same dream never make it past auditions. She was okay with it, and was even talking about getting her certificate so she could teach drama in high school or maybe a community college.”

“Miss Perez, how often did you and your sister talk?”

“Pretty much every day,” Tina replied. “After Mom died of breast cancer in 1988, Dad only lasted a few more years before he just went to sleep one night and never woke up. We figured it was a broken heart…and maybe the cigarettes. After that, it was just me…” The young woman’s voice cracked and she had to stop. “I’m sorry…”

“That’s okay,” Karp said. As he turned away to allow her a few moments to compose herself, he noted that several of the jurors were dabbing at their eyes, too. “Take your time.”

“Thank you,” Tina replied at last. “Anyway, it was just me and Gail. We were sisters and best friends. We talked all the time, even when I went away to school at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.”

“Wow, that’s an expensive private college, isn’t it?” Karp asked as if surprised, though he’d intended to bring it up.

“It is,” Tina replied. “But I got scholarships for part of it—Gail was real tough on me about getting good grades in high school—and she paid the rest.”

“So your sister was earning enough to pay her bills, and some of yours,” Karp said.

“Yes. She always took care of me.”

Karp nodded and checked something off on the legal pad he kept at the lectern. “You said you talked nearly every day. What would you talk about?”

“Everything.” Tina smiled. “Work, boys—or I should say men—homework, dreams…everything.”

“Did she keep secrets from you? Maybe things she didn’t want to worry you about?”

Tina shook her head. “No. Well, maybe when I was younger, and we’d just lost Mom and then Dad. She had a lot of responsibility on her shoulders back then, and she just wanted me to do well in school and be happy. But especially after a little time had passed, we talked about everything. And if she was down about something, she’d tell me and we’d deal with it.”

“Was she down often?”

Again, Tina shook her head. “No. You really had to know her, but she was always an upbeat sort of person, very outgoing. If you met her, you’d never forget her. But if she didn’t get a part she really wanted, or some jerk dumped her, she’d call me and we’d have a good sister cry, but even that usually ended with us laughing about ‘idiot men and
bastardos
.’”

“Do you think you would have known if she was suffering from a
mental issue, such as clinical depression?” Karp asked.

“Absolutely,” Tina replied. “To be honest, I take a small dose of Xanax for anxiety. We talked a lot about it after a doctor prescribed it for me, Gail did a lot of research on the Internet, and we decided it might help.”

“Do you know if your sister took any prescription medication for anxiety or depression or any other mental illness?”

“I know she didn’t because we discussed it when she took me to the doctor to see why I was having such a hard time. He asked her if she was taking anything, and she said no, that she didn’t need it.”

“Miss Perez, turning to the day your sister died…”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“I called her that morning before I went to school.”

“Did she say anything about her plans?”

“She said she was having dinner that night with some big producer who was going to talk to her about a possible role in his new show.”

“Did she name this producer?”

“No. Or if she did, it went in one ear and out the other.”

“Was she excited?”

“Very.”

“So excited that if later that night, after dinner, she went back to this producer’s apartment and learned that he only wanted to have sex with her—”

“Objection! That is a mischaracterization of my client intended to paint him in an unfavorable light.”

Karp turned to the judge and said, “I’d refer Mr. Leonard to his opening statement, where he all but accused Gail Perez of offering sex for a role in the defendant’s musical and that the defendant’s only interest, according to Mr. Leonard, was ‘romantic,’ which I’m taking to mean didn’t include sending flowers.”

The judge nodded. “You opened that door also, Mr. Leonard; I’ll allow it.”

Karp looked back at Tina Perez. “If your sister was so excited about the possibility of getting this part, only to learn that
Mr. Maplethorpe just wanted to have sex and that she was not being considered, would she have made the effort to locate Mr. Maplethorpe’s gun, stick it in her mouth, and then shoot herself?”

“
Never!
” Tina Perez shouted, before calming herself. “That’s ridiculous. She’d lost out on big parts before; it’s part of that business. And Maplethorpe wouldn’t have been the first loathsome little man to use the opportunity for a big role to try to get in her pants.”

Leonard jumped to his feet, sputtering with indignation. “I’ll ask that the witness’s last remarks be stricken from the record. The sole purpose of this line of questioning is the character assassination of my client.”

Up to this point, Karp had kept his cool and let the defense attorney run his mouth. But now he roared back. “If there is any character assassination going on in this courtroom, Mr. Leonard, I would suggest that you and your client look in the mirror!”

Rosenmayer had heard enough and banged his gavel down three times in quick succession. “That’s enough!” he thundered. “Gentlemen, approach the bench!”

With Karp and Leonard standing in front of him, the judge glared from one man to the other. “You are both experienced, extremely capable professionals, and you know better than to engage in this sort of extraneous hyperbole,” he said in a low, stern voice meant only for their ears. “I want you to knock it off and avoid repeating this sort of crap, or I’ll toss the offender in jail so fast that two hours later his skull will still be waiting for his brain to show up. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” both attorneys answered as one.

“Good, then, Mr. Leonard, I’m denying your request that Miss Perez’s comments be stricken, so let’s resume and carry on like the gentlemen I know you both to be,” the judge warned.

Karp walked to the prosecution table, where he stood facing Katz. “That was fun,” he said in a voice barely audible to his cocounsel.

“Twenty lashes with a cat-o’-nine?” Katz joked. Conscious of the judge’s continuing glare, he managed to avoid smiling as he spoke, though his eyes twinkled with merriment.

“Worth every stripe,” Karp replied with a wink, and turned back
to the witness stand.

“Miss Perez, I believe I asked you if not getting a part would have been enough for your sister to want to kill herself, and you responded in the negative. So if someone was to describe your sister as some pathetic, washed-up actress-wannabe who would whore herself for a chance to be a star…and was so unstable and desperate—as well as apparently vindictive—that she would end her life in the apartment of a man she hardly knew, what would be your response?”

Tina looked beyond Karp to where Maplethorpe was sitting, perched forward at the defense table as if preparing to jump up and object like a lawyer. But her gaze froze him and he had to look down and away. “I would say he was a liar,” she replied icily.

Karp walked back to the prosecution table. “Your Honor, I have one more photograph, People’s Exhibit Nine, that I would like to have admitted into evidence.”

“I don’t remember this photograph.” Leonard frowned as Karp handed it to him.

“We received it only today when Miss Perez brought it to us,” Karp replied. “She said it’s how she wants people to remember her sister. It depicts Gail Perez onstage in a production of
Annie Get Your Gun
.”

Guy Leonard looked shocked. “A photograph of a woman who killed herself with a gun, holding a gun? I hardly think that’s appropriate for a jury to consider as evidence, and I object to its inclusion.”

Judge Rosenmayer looked puzzled as he twisted his lips into a pucker, before adding, “It does seem a bit odd, Mr. Karp.”

“I understand, Your Honor,” Karp replied. “Notwithstanding that it’s a beautiful photograph of a lovely young woman singing as her eyes look upward, I actually have a more pedestrian purpose for asking that it be included.”

“And what is that, Mr. Karp?”

“Actually, my purpose has more to do with a particular fact about this photograph having to do with a question I am about to ask Miss Perez about her sister,” Karp continued.

For perhaps the first time in the trial, the judge laughed. “Everyone loves a good mystery, Mr. Karp, but you’re going to
have to be a bit more forthcoming than that.” He motioned for the photograph, which Karp retrieved from Leonard and handed to Rosenmayer. “Why don’t you ask your question, and then I’ll rule on whether to admit the photograph,” he said with a sly smile.

Karp returned the smile with a small bow. “Fair enough. Miss Perez, was your sister left-handed?”

“She was,” Tina replied slowly, as if wondering where he was going with this. “My mom used to tell her that it made her special, so I used to try to do things left-handed, though I’m naturally right-handed.”

Karp turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, in the photograph Gail Perez is pointing a gun in the air as she sings. I’d like the jury to see the photograph that corroborates Tina Perez’s testimony that her sister was left-handed.”