Journal of the Dead (23 page)

There on the monitor was the cowboy grave, surrounded by the investigators, whose arms began moving in and out of the frame in an eerie ballet as they reached to remove the stones, one by one. First a pallid patch of skin appeared, then a leg, then his whole body was there, ringed almost regally by the remaining stones. Thankfully, his face remained covered by the blue plaid shirt, but anyone who had known David Coughlin in real life, or had even seen a photograph of him, could see that they were looking at a different man. His legs, once nearly worthy of a linebacker, now seemed inordinately long and sadly feminine. His torso was woefully flat. Not a trace of his stockiness remained. He was an empty husk.

Raffi watched with what appeared to be curiosity at first, but
when his friend’s body became visible, Mitchell turned to him and whispered in his ear. He then looked away from the TV monitor for the duration of the excavation. Later on, Mitchell said that he had told Raffi he didn’t have to watch it if he didn’t want to.

Lead investigator Eddie Carrasco, who had spent more hours working on the investigation than anyone, took the stand next and gave the shortest testimony out of all the key witnesses. He introduced eleven pieces of evidence, including the four knives, three water bottles, and the journal, then left. He was followed by Dennis Klein from the Albuquerque Medical Examiner’s Office, and Mark Hopkins, the doctor who had treated Kodikian. Hopkins swore that Kodikian’s sodium level, 174, was the highest he had ever seen.

The rest of the witnesses that day, and for much of the next, were all experts, in varying degrees, on dehydration. None of them disagreed about whether or not the friends were dehydrated, only to what extent. Robert Moon, the state’s first expert, was especially persuasive. A biologist with the National Park Service, he had seventeen years of experience studying dehydration’s effects on the human body, and he knew Edward Adolph’s dizzying array of tables and calculations by heart. At the outset of the investigation, Williams had asked him to calculate how dehydrated the friends had actually been. Using only the journal as a guide to their activity, and temperature data from the park—and factoring in the water and Gatorade they had brought with them into the canyon—Moon had estimated their dehydration levels between 12 and 13 percent at the most, and 10 percent at the least. Since Coughlin’s postmortem body weight—one of the most accurate gauges of dehydration—later indicated that he was about 13 percent
dehydrated, Moon had been almost right on the money in his case with a very limited set of facts.

“There was certainly substantial potential for physical and psychological impairment,” he conceded when Mitchell cross-examined him.

Mitchell’s own dehydration expert, Dr. Spencer Hall, pushed far greater numbers, testifying that, based on his sodium levels, Kodikian could have been as much as 18 percent dehydrated—a number which, according to Adolph’s work, meant that he was on the very edge of death when Mattson found him. In the end, the experts agreed that both men were bad off, but disagreed on how close to death Coughlin had been. Moon thought Coughlin would have lived; Hall thought there was a strong chance he would have been dead by the time the rangers arrived. Hall, with the last words, said that the friends had been right to think that they were going to die in the canyon.

But all the expert testimony, number crunching, and hairsplitting was about to become virtually irrelevant.

Y
our Honor, I’d like to call Raffi Kodikian,” Mitchell now announced.

Raffi rose from his spot at the defense table, crossed the well, and sat down in the stand. His face was expressionless and waiting.

“Good morning to you, Raffi,” Mitchell said, as if for the first time that day.

“Morning.”

“I think it’s necessary for the court to learn some things about you, so we’re going to ask some very central questions; then we’ll get into the facts of this case. Would you tell the court your full name?”

“Raffi Paul Kodikian.”

“And Raffi, when were you born?”

“December 26, 1973.”

“And where were you born?”

“Lansdale, Pennsylvania.”

Raffi seemed to relax as he answered the routine background questions, as if comforted by their familiarity. He had a rich, full voice, far more rounded in pronunciation than the New Mexicans with their soft twangs.

“All right, let’s visit with more of the facts as it directly relates to this case,” Mitchell said after the preliminaries. “This case involves you and David. Will you tell the court when and how you met David?”

“David and I met through my ex-girlfriend. He was dating her best friend at the time, and they were living in Amherst, Massachusetts, going to school out there. I was living in Boston. And they came into the city one night. That was the first time we met.”

“How many years ago was that?”

“I would say it was about five years ago.”

“What happened after that in terms of your friendship with David?”

“Well, because he was living a distance away we didn’t see each other that much. But it was always something to look forward to when we did see each other. We immediately took to each other. Very similar people, very similar senses of humor. He was somebody I could spend time with and hang out with very easily.”

“And did you do that as the years went by?”

“Frequently. As often as we could, yes. And once he moved into Boston we saw each other frequently.”

“By frequently, how often is that?”

“At the minimum, once every two weeks, but more frequently on a weekly basis. At least we talked definitely on a weekly basis, if not less.”

“Most of us have relationships in which we like somebody, either a neighbor or we knew them through business and whatever and we enjoy visiting with them, but was this relationship anything more than that?”

“Uh, yeah. We grew very close. Like I said we were very similar people. We kept each other laughing, which was a big part of our relationship. His sense of humor and mine meshed very well. We often finished each other’s punch lines.”

“Did you go to sporting events together?”

“Yes, Red Sox games, stuff like that, yeah.”

“Did you go to movies?”

“All the time. It was one of the things we did most frequently.”

“And let me ask you, you’re under oath here today … were there ever any problems between you and David?

“No. We never fought. I don’t remember a disagreement once. It just wasn’t part of our relationship. We usually saw things eye to eye, so we had no reason to disagree on any topics. We always got along very well.”

“And there’s been some innuendo about a mutual girlfriend or something, somebody that both of you knew. One, who are we talking about here?”

“I believe we’re talking about my ex-girlfriend. It was never the case. Dave and her never dated. There were never any issues with it. When Kirsten and I broke up, she and David hung out frequently because they were friends, and I never had a problem with that. The three of us hung out on occasion after we broke up. Our friendship, the three of us, remained very close.”

“As a matter of fact, is Kirsten here?”

“Yes,” replied Raffi. He nodded toward the Kodikian side of the audience. In the second row, wearing a floral jumper, sat the woman who had been the source of so much speculation among the investigators and journalists. The Kodikians were infinitely grateful that she had come, her mere presence a powerful confirmation of Raffi’s veracity.

As if to drive home his comfort with the idea of Raffi, Dave, and Kirsten together as a platonic threesome, Mitchell next displayed on the projector screen photographs of the three of them together. They were from New Year’s Day, 1998, when the three had driven down to Philadelphia to watch the Mummers Parade. It was a classic down-home moment for Mitchell, showing his audience the family photo album.

“How long would you say that you and David palled around together, how many years?” Mitchell continued.

“Uh … we really got tight for the last three years.”

“And close enough to both share and seek the advice and counsel of the other as to emotional problems, business problems, educational problems?”

“Sure, all that stuff, yeah,” Raffi said. “If I had a problem that I couldn’t go to Kirsten about, I went to Dave about it. Sometimes the problem
was
Kirsten, so Dave was the one who heard about it,” he said, smiling. There were chuckles on both sides of the audience.

“I see. And how about David with you?”

“Same thing.”

“And how close would you describe your relationship to David? What did he mean to you?”

Raffi was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, he seemed burdened with memory and loss.

“Dave was a constant…. I knew that if I needed something he was there. I’d describe Dave as the closest thing I’d have to a brother.”

“Let’s talk about the trip to New Mexico, Raffi,” Mitchell now said in a low, conciliatory voice, “Will you tell Judge Forbes when you first got this idea and how it came about, how you came to be on the road to New Mexico?”

“David was moving from the Boston area to California,” Kodikian began, then led the courtroom through the opening of their misadventure—Dave’s invitations for Raffi to come along, his initial reluctance, and the going-away dinner when he finally decided to ask for leave without pay. Then the trip itself: their mad dash to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and finally Austin, where, over beers at a local pool hall, they’d realized they were ahead of schedule and decided to take the advice of Coughlin’s uncle and detour to Carlsbad.

“When you were in Austin, and you had had some alcohol to drink, how much?” asked Mitchell.

“I would guess at least five beers each,” said Raffi. “Probably a little bit more because we weren’t concerned about driving. I really don’t remember.”

“Okay. And had you had much in the way of water to drink on the trip from Austin to Carlsbad?”

“I’m sure we had something in the car. We tended to keep a
couple sodas or drinks with us, but I don’t remember exactly how much we had.”

“So we’re talking about sodas and Coca-Colas or something like that?”

“We would have had probably a couple sodas and maybe a couple bottles—small bottles of Gatorade—smaller bottles than that one.” He pointed to the empty bottle of Gatorade sitting on the evidence table.

“Now, was the car air-conditioned?”

“Yes.”

“And from Austin to Carlsbad in August of 1999, do you recall if the air conditioner was on or off?”

“It was on,” he said confidently.

“And we know from the journal what day you arrived at Carlsbad, but this is a big area here, so where was the first place you went and about what time did you get there?”

“We got into White’s City. It was late afternoon. We stopped at a gas station to ask about camping in the area…,” he said, and told of how he and Dave drove up to the park’s visitor center and asked Ranger Kenton Eash about getting a camping permit. “He gave us a pass to fill out and started trying to explain it,” Raffi said of Eash, “but he really didn’t seem to know what he doing—as if this was the first time he was doing it, that he had not filled one out before and he didn’t really know how the process worked. Shuffling papers, not certain about what order things should go in and stuff like that. It was something that both Dave and I noticed. And then he actually said to us, ‘You can see I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And at the time we were like, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s
not a big deal.’ And so we just … we got through that and we rushed down into the canyon, because at this point it was getting kind of late, and—”

“I wanna stop you before we got down to the canyon,” Mitchell interrupted. “Did the ranger, whoever—I assume this was probably a student that was working there—”

“That’s what we assumed, yeah.”

“Did they explain to you certain rules of the park?”

“Yes.”

“Tell the court what you remember.”

“I remember him telling us about no campfires in the park. Pack out what you pack in, which means don’t leave anything behind, I believe including waste. He told us the recommendation about the amount of water we should take. It was a gallon per day. He warned us about rattlesnakes in the area and … I believe that was about it.”

“Did you get anything else other than the permit?”

“I asked him where we could get water. I hadn’t planned on doing any serious backpacking, so I didn’t bring all the supplies that I would have brought on the trip that I made across the country in ninety-seven. So I didn’t have a canteen or anything like that. So we didn’t have any containers, really, to put water into. He told me that the cafeteria sold water, and I went in and the one-pint bottles down there are what they sold.” Raffi gestured toward the empty water bottles that Eddie Carrasco had introduced during his testimony.

“And how many did you buy?”

“I believe I bought three.”

“The three that are here in court?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what else did you have in the way of liquid sustenance?”