Compelling Evidence (14 page)

"Let's hope so."

M W H ERE'S the eunuch?" asks Harry. In Cheetam's absence Ron Brown is like a shadow. He produces no real work, but checks in on us like a miser looking for spun gold. He's the first to deliver rel5orts on all progress to Skarpellos and Cheetarn. The man trucks heavily in the intellectual coin of all toadies. "Who cares, as long as he leaves us alone," I say. "Whadda we tell him when we're done? He's gonna demand to know what's here."

"We tell him as little as possible. I'll talk to Cheetarn alone, eve him the bad news as soon as he graces us with his presence. It's one of those long spring afternoons. I'm falling asleep over reams of paper.

"Me clock on the wall has been changed to daylight‐savings time, confusing the internal ticker that manages my body. Since childhood I've harbored a special resentment %"7&% those who mess with time. Tall, slender shadows are falling on the high rises across the Canyon that is the Capitol Mall. I struggle to stay awake in the V,v!.; blizzard that Talia's case is quickly becoming. Rush with a five‐figure retainer, a loan from Skarpellos to Talia V=‐ I by her expected interest in the firm, I've hired Harry for It'little help. We're closeted in the conference room at Potter, poring over the piles of documents, evidence reproby _t1he DA's copy machine, responses to a dozen discovery E, Msjw I've filed. Cheetam's out of town. He's juggling three Q‐Jit) tort cases in other cities, a minor matter he neglected to 7@ 120 t disclose until after I'd agreed to participate in the defense. it seems, he shows up only for prime time, when there's a of cameras or notebook‐toting reporters with, tiny pencils'l‐0 for a case of writer's cranip. "You really think people buy this crap?" Harry's vio mentally from the task at hand. He's looking at a copy iiie, Monthly, the slick state bar journal, left behind in the He's reached the back of the edition, the glossy .Timmlr'@ a whole page of lawyer toys: golf balls and watches

@orv with the scales of justice, a leather high‐back with more buttons than the space shuttle, and an ivtwrt@ "spear‐chuckers"‐$300 Mont Blanc fountain pens, a log raft in the center of the page. "Ah. Before I forget," he says. Harry &lips a small Post‐it note from his pocket and slides it across the @Flolrk name is Peggie Conrad, independent paralegal."

There's a phone number on the slip. "She does mostly probate," he says.

I look at him and raise an eyebrow in question. "Sharon Cooper's probate file," says Harry. "The rr,'@X, all your problems." ell

"What brought

this on?" 41 "Thought you needed a little help."

I look at the note and make a face. Like this is a never tried before.

Hiring someone without a license ‐71f, law. "Thanks," I tell him. "But doesn't the bar object?"le He shrugs his shoulders. "All of her clients are P77=‐@ you're not the only one who doesn't know how to 7T,.,'

forms."

"Guess it can't hurt to talk to her." Sharon's growing hair on my desk.

I pocket the slip and return to T7 paper in front of me. Harry and I have pieced mal F of the evidence the police hold. From the pathoilogy

!w,11" reports, we can tell the cops knew Ben's death was within hours of removing his body from the office. the lack of any fingerprints, even smudged prints on plastic shell cartridge still in the barrel was clean.

VF;07, the gun was wearing gloves or used a rag to insert W Gunshot residue tests on Ben's bands came back are chemical searches for nitrites and traces of lead, antimony‐the stuff expelled with hot gases from firearm. Even with a long gun of the kind used here, @‐,F a, @ : of these elements would have Planted themselves on the front and back of Ben's nonfiring hand, the one used to steady the muzzle in his mouth while he supposedly fingered the trigger with the other. The conclusion is inescapable: Someone else fired the shot. "It's a little baffling," I say. "What's that?"

"How the murderer managed to get Ben to take it in the mouth. I mean, I can understand a head shot, up elm. But a victim's not likely to cooperate by sucking on the muzzle of an over‐and‐under. The immediate intention of the shooter's too obvious."

"I suppose," says Harry. "Maybe he was unconscious when they shot him."

"Medical examiner didn't find any drugs in the body."

"Yeah, but that wound would've covered a lotta bumps on the head."

Harry's got a point. "The weapon itself‐a twelve‐gauge Italian make, Bernardelli Model 192, according to ballistics‐‐featured a lot of tooling and a high price tag. It was registered to Ben. The second barrel was empty. Police reports said the gun was usually kept in a case in Potter's study at his house, where Talia had easy access to it.

Cheetam's making a lot out of the gun. "A shotgun," he says, "is not a woman's weapon." I've told him to save it for the jury. He says the case will never get there. The man has amazing confidence for one who has yet to look at the evidence. Ben's body was found by a janitor in the Emerald Tower who heard the shot. On entering the office the man panicked at the scene of horror and retreated to the outer reception area, to Barbara's work station at the front of the office, to call 911.

A single drop of blood was later found in the service elevator, B‐negative, the same as Ben's. Blood‐spatter analysis, the !ill that the larger drop of blood projected an aura of smaller *0plets like the tail of a cornet@ led forensics to determine the wiim‐& of travel with the body. They concluded that this blood VII'Mr‐R, .. U I'T toward the office. I M height elevator down the ,‐ was gained by using Ben,s electronic key card. Computer k, show that entry was made using that key about ten minutes !(,)'‐'the janitor heard the shot. The cops assume that Ben's keys I I ‐ used to enter the office. : "Whadda ya make of the hair?" says Harry. He's fing through a report on the other side of the table, making notes. I wrinkle an eyebrow. "Troublesome. But not fatal."

I'm sugar coating it. Forensics has found a single strand of human hair caught locking mechanism of the shotgun. According to their xe is consistent in all respects with hair samples taken from the of the decedent's wife, Talia Potter."

"A single strand of hair could've been there ffoorr mmonnths,"

"Maybe she used the gun once. Maybe Ben towok her skeet shooting. Maybe she dusted it in the case."

"Sure," says Harry. "The lady's a real domestic." Harryhis own suspicions. It's part of the reason I've hired him,: me honest. hl im m it

"Access to that gun cuts both ways," I tell *

t, house; that strand of hair could've gotten there in a dozen di ways over a period of months."

"Uh‐huh." Harry doesn't buy it, but a jury of reasonable those who don't know Talia, might. Death was brought about by massive trauma to the brain by the high‐velocity impact of a mass of lead pellets (nu shot).

These are generally the loads used in bird hunting some skeet shooters.

The shot has destroyed the brain. A pellet has lodged in one of the basal ganglia. This, ace the pathology report, would have made any conscious mo by Ben after the shot impossible. He was in all respects in brain dead. "What do you make of this?" I say. I read Harry part of a footnote in the alex' c' t . s@ report. Pathology recovered the pellet from:5e ,a g Is I Is c It measures in at 10.68 grains of weight. ' "Onsi heavier than the few pellets found in the cranial cavity mass of several hundred lodged in the ceiling of Ben's According to the report the usual weight of number‐nine .75 grains. In this case several of the pellets weighed in lighter and some heavier, but none approached the mons in the basal ganglion. "Do they draw any conclusions?" asks Harry. "None'@‐I smile‐‐‐‐@`just the note." Coop's too streetoffer conclusions on such matters in his report. He puts like a ticking time bomb for the defense to figure out, and himself maneuvering room to testify at trial. These are the games he played when we were on the same side, when I was prosecuting and Cooper was my prime expert. Having him as an adversary for the first time in my career is a challenge. It puts an unnerving spin on the case. Having pumped him for information as a neutral in his office that morning, I'm left to wonder how he will view my in the defense. 'a@@hat do you think caused it?" says Harry. He's talking about the monster pellet. 1 don't know. I've heard of shots fusing together.

Sometimes in a bad round the heat'll melt some lead before it reaches die end of the barrel. Could be a number of pellets fused together, But I think we'd better check it out."

Harry makes a note. There's a lot of speculation in the police reports about Talia's infidelities with other men. Harry seems to spawn a particular interest in this line of inquiry. The cops have lined up an assortment of witnesses, mos't of whom are trafficking in gossip.

Talia's maid, Maria, reluctantly confirms finding an article of men's underwear between the sheets of Talia's bed one morning. Ben, it seems, was out of town the previous night, and the item is not likely to have belonged to him. The cops refer to it thing as "a male G‐string'!‐‐"a silk pouch in a leopardskin print joined by two narrow straps of elastic to a waistband."

"Sheena, Queen of the Jungle," says Harry. "Ya think maybe they swung from vines tied to the ceiling?" He looks at me as if to ask whether I've ever experienced such exotic pleasures. I sit silently, looking at him a poker face, confident at least bt the cops can't trace the leopard skin to me, and wonder who among Talia's male cabal might have worn such things. It is troublesome. If Talia takes the stand and denies affairs with Aer men, she will no doubt be asked to explain this item of elothing. Friends and acquaintances in her social circle have seen Talia. "Out on the town in the tow of other men. Her sins of indiscmtion have come home to roost. The men have all talked, tductantly of course, to the police. Their names appear like a 41Plicate of the social register in the police report. The cops, it fterns, are still busy searching for Talia's accomplice in mur'coop was right about one thing,"

says Harry. "Whoev it was a real amateur."

"Maybe," I say. He looks at me. "Can you doubt it? The gun wiped clean blood in the elevator. Serious discrepancies in the time of Only a fool," he says. The suicide scenario, I concede, is thinly veiled. Not li deceive for long. "An understatement," says Harry. ‐He's done with the last forensics report and puts it down on the finished stack of documents. "We've got so problems," he says, He starts a summary from the top. "Time of death. Medical examiner puts it at seven‐oh‐fiv The shot in the office isn't heard by the janitor until eight‐five. The cops don't catch up with Talia at home 'til al o'clock. Unless the medical examiner's been smokin' fo hyde, Potter wasn't killed in the office."

I nod in agreement. "Mat leaves us with the neighbor," says Harry. ter hope the lady's got a reputation for keeping her h bottle."

Harry's referring to the statement of an old woman, Potter's neighbors, who claims she saw Ben's Rolls p driveway of his residence sometime just before eight o'c

"If she comes across as believable," he says, "and shake her testimony as to the time of her observations Potter in that house near the time of death."

"Trouble," I say. "The jury'll jump on it. If he was killed in the hou dictates it was a domestic thing. They'll argue she wh in the house,"

says Harry. "The cops did us one favor," I say. "At least they there with a forensics team and swept through the hou morning. You read the forensics report. Did you see of violence at the house?"

He shakes his head. "Clean as a whistle."

"If he was killed there, one would think there wou physical evidence at the house."

"One would think," says Harry, like an echo. "But absolute. They'll speculate that it could have been d or on a hard surface that was easily cleaned." Harry's_job, dogging the down side of our case. "At least we can argue that they looked and found nothing."

"True," he says. "And they won't claim that she shot him there. A twelve‐gauge would've left blood W brains all over the place. Neighbors woulda heard it too."

"Play cop," I say. "Then how was he killed?"

"My guesst' I nod. "They'll opt for the old reliable‐blow to the head with a blunt instrument."

"Doesn't wash," I say. "The pathology report says death was caused by the monster pellet."

"In the whawbamacaflit," says Harry. "The basal ganglion."

"Yeah, the ganglion,"

"Unless they know something we don't, they've got a problem," I say.

"Good to know they've got one."

"Look it. Time of death is fixed by their own expert at sevenoh‐five P.m. The shotgun blast isn't heard at the office 'til eighttwenty‐five.

Yet according to pathology the cause of death was the pellet to the basal ganglion. You tell me."

Harry's making faces, perplexed. In trial as in life, fear is most often clothed in the unknown. And for the present, our case is shrouded in mystery. Now he's pawing around in the pile of paper on the table. "I think you have it," he says. "Me pathology report."

I reach into the stack and pull it out. "The footnote," be says. "The monster pellet. Read it one more time."

I'm halfway through, when I stop in mid‐sentence and look up into Harry's beaming eyes. "You thinkin' what I amt' he says. I nod, and in near unison we whisper: "A second shot."

"Cooper7‐you little sucker," I say. "You found a bullet hugment, didn't ya?"

"Cheetam can kiss his 'shotgun's not a woman's weapon' theory goodbye,"

says Harry. "We need to find out if either Ben or Talia owned a smalliber handgun. If they did, it might be registered. That means cops know about it." Harty makes another note, then lays his pen on top of the pad 111d rubs his hands together. "All things being equal," he says,

"I'd rather have the other side of this one." Harry means the case.

"Whadda you think?"

"It doesn't look good."

"Try this on," he says. "Potter comes home early from the stumbles onto Sheena and the Jungle Boy swinging throu vines. They fight and Potter buys it, a quick shot to the from a small piece. Maybe something in a bedside stand. put Potter in the car and take him for a ride."

Harry w his nose a little, like this story fits the state's case. "Th(