Matter of Trust (38 page)

‘Where's the camera?' asked Sara, just as Trudeau pulled out a key card to open the door.

‘At the other end of the corridor near the elevator,' she gestured.

Sara made out the discreet device sitting at a diagonal near the ceiling, and she had no doubt it must have caught their mystery guest on tape. This might just work after all, she thought.

The room itself was warm and friendly. Recently renovated in tones of gold, it featured a large king-sized bed, three strategically placed brocade lamps and a tidy cherry wood desk and upholstered chair situated at the far end of the suite under the window.

‘You keep a nice hotel, Ms Trudeau,' said Sara.

‘Thank you. The renovation was costly, but well worth it. We re-carpeted, installed new bathrooms, had the plumbing upgraded and the wiring . . .' She stopped short. ‘Which reminds me.'

‘Yes?' said Sara.

‘There was a slight problem with the camera on this level on the night in question. But I don't think it will hinder your investigations.'

‘How is that?' asked a now slightly concerned Sara.

‘On the night of Saturday, January 12, we had a small electrical fire.
Something to do with the new wiring installed as part of our renovations,' said Trudeau, moving around the bed to open the curtains. ‘Unfortunately this means our sixth floor cameras were down from about 8.30 pm – so they won't have caught Mr Winston arriving at his room. However, they definitely would have caught his exit, given the cameras were back up by 1 am.'

Sara felt her stomach wrench, the timing couldn't have been worse. ‘Jacqueline,' Sara began, facing the manager. ‘We believe Winston left not long after midnight.'

‘
What?
' said a genuinely disappointed Trudeau. ‘But . . . I assumed he was here all night. Oh dear. I don't believe this. Honestly, Sara, this is a terrible case of bad luck. Our cameras are notoriously reliable.'

‘It's not your fault, Jacqueline,' said Sara, feeling crushed. Their mystery man had eluded them after all.

‘I am so sorry,' said Trudeau. ‘We tried to get them back up earlier, but as soon as we switched the power back on, the wires sparked and the smoke alarm went off. The alarm is extremely loud so we had no choice but to shut the cameras down again until the problem was resolved.'

‘It was loud?' asked Sara, an idea coming to her now. ‘What time was this?'

‘About a quarter past eleven, a dreadful noise at such an hour. Several of our guests rang down to reception but—'

‘Not Mr Winston,' said Sara.

Trudeau shook her head. ‘I'm afraid not.'

‘Was there any smoke in the rooms, the corridor?' continued Sara, the idea forming.

‘No.'

‘And you know this because . . . ?'

‘My people informed me. They called me at home the minute the problem was identified and I came straight in. By the time I got here, they had reassured all the guests who had expressed concern and—'

‘Did the guests come out of their rooms?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘The guests. On this level. Did they come out of their rooms and into the corridor to see if there was any smoke? I know that is probably what I would have done if I would have heard a fire alarm at 11 pm.'

‘Well, I suppose some of them did, they . . .' And then Trudeau saw what Sara was suggesting. ‘While the alarm was ringing, the camera was up,' she said. ‘If this Mr Winston came out into the corridor to check on the cause of the racket . . .' She was already moving toward a bedside phone, her perfectly manicured pointer finger raised in a gesture that said, ‘Hold on just a moment'.

‘Marcus, it's Jacqueline here,' she began. ‘Well, thanks,' she added before, ‘Marcus, could you please retrieve the recordings on level six on the night of January 12?' A pause. ‘Yes, that's right. But not the material before the shutdown, I need the brief moments when we switched back on – causing the alarm to go off.' Another pause. ‘Yes. Excellent, thank you, Marcus. I'll be down in a moment.' And she hung up the phone.

‘That was my head of security, Marcus Devlin,' said a now excited Trudeau as she moved around the bed and gestured for Sara to follow her back toward the door. ‘He said he can have the tape up on screen within minutes.'

Sara felt a rush of anticipation. ‘You think the camera may have caught him?'

‘Unless Mr Winston was in the dead of sleep I doubt he could have resisted
not
moving out into the corridor,' Trudeau replied.

‘Then we could be in luck,' said Sara, rushing to join the manager on her march back down the corridor. ‘I believe this Mr Winston was up to many things on the night in question, Jacqueline – but sleeping was not one of them.'

‘N
ever play cat and mouse games if you are a mouse' read the caption under the funny cartoon by the famous Florida-based illustrator, Don Addis.

Elliott Marshall liked cartoons. He had often been accused of having no sense of humour but cartoons appealed to his appreciation of irony, and today's newspaper image certainly hit the mark.

Marshall was excited. He was downright
thrilled
. Kincaid had rejected his plea. He had never thought of himself as one of those egotistical prosecutors (like Kincaid himself) who secretly enjoyed it when defendants rejected pleas because it meant they could parade their wares in front of a packed courtroom but – lo and behold – there was a little ‘Hollywood' in Marshall after all!

Better still, Kincaid had dumped the experienced Fisk for his ‘fish-out-of-water' friend from Boston – which meant Marshall would get to face off against the good-looking out-of-towner, and show him how it was done. In front of all those cameras to boot!

Kincaid was an idiot. He was throwing away his only chance at a reduced sentence just so he could have his old high school buddy around to hold his hand. And Cavanaugh's wife, who wouldn't know a New Jersey courtroom from one filled with kangaroos, was co-counsel, which made
the situation even more ridiculous – that and the fact that, from what he'd heard, they were running their client's defence out of Cavanaugh's mother's kitchen!

It was really just too funny, so much so that Marshall laughed out loud – an outburst that resulted in his nervous-faced secretary coming to his door for fear he was actually choking on something.

This is what it's like, he thought then, to be totally in control. Despite his earlier reservations, his case was going gang busters. He had the shoe that placed the victim in Kincaid's wife's car, he had the footage from the Grand Summit, he had telephone records showing Kincaid had made repeated attempts to contact the victim on the afternoon of the day of her death, he had the ring, he had the satchel covered with words of accusation written by the victim herself, he had the paver who would testify that the wife's car had indeed been used on the night in question, and he had all those wonderful lies that Kincaid had told the police.

Furthermore, Marshall's trusty homicide team had scoured the city for evidence of Kincaid and Maloney's affair, and had found at least three hotel employees who could give testimony regarding their clandestine meetings. Maloney's building super would testify how Kincaid had visited his dead lover's apartment after her death, which was when Marshall would claim Kincaid took back the $100,000, and . . . wait for it . . . just hours ago, he had finally located Lorraine Stankovic's mother.

Yes! He had found the dead hairdresser's mother – and she wasn't going anywhere. She was in jail – in the same goddamned facility as Senator Chris Kincaid! Now, admittedly Eva Stankovic was being housed in the Essex County Corrections Facility's Delaney Hall – a special rehabilitation facility for drug and alcohol addicted inmates, but from what Marshall could tell, the sixty-one year old was more than
compos mentis
. In fact, their initial conversation had led Marshall to believe she had an extremely savvy head on her shoulders – given she had successfully negotiated, without the help of a lawyer, a deal in which she agreed to testify that Kincaid had bought his way out of the homicide charge relating to the death of her daughter in exchange for a five year reduction on a cumulative sentence she was currently serving for two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, and theft of a state owned and operated vehicle. (In a drug-addled haze,
Eva Stankovic had hijacked a city bus and driven it and all its passengers to the closest bar.) Now the woman would be out at seventy instead of seventy-five – so three fucking cheers for her!

Of course, there were some negatives, mainly related to the physical evidence associated with the case – in particular, that unidentified DNA. It was times like this that Marshall cursed the progress of forensic science. As far as he was concerned the world had been a much better place when prosecutors relied solely on the evidence at face value – before that pathetic hour of television known as
CSI
had juries expecting to see the forensic evidence laid out like a banquet before them – like twelve couch potato analysts who got up in the commercials to pee. But Marshall was fast learning that a man of conviction had the power to make even the most negative pieces of evidence work in his favour. All it took was a sharp sense of foresight, and a determination to drive those working for you so that their role as evidence-collectors satisfied your needs.

Which brought him back to the task at hand.

ME Curtis was late.

The obviously self-affected Curtis had no idea how this was supposed to work. Her lack of respect for Marshall's office – evidenced by her tardiness and general inability to investigate and report her findings with haste – was nothing short of unprofessional.

‘I'm sorry I'm late,' she said a few moments later as she flounced into his third-floor office, that ridiculously long hair trailing in a Clairol commercial mass behind her. ‘But seriously, Elliott, I don't know why this stuff can't be done over the phone. We're flat out down at the morgue. I had two more bodies come in this morning, and I am one examiner short which means—'

‘You call your responsibilities to discuss your findings with the Prosecutor's Office a chore?' asked Marshall.

‘No,' she said as she plunked herself in the seat across from him. ‘It's just that, my report was delivered months ago and—'

‘I want to know what's happening with the DNA sample.'

‘The last I heard your homicide squad was running it through the state DNA databank.'

‘Which obviously they have done,' replied Marshall. The ME was referring to the New Jersey databank which stored over 140,000 DNA samples
taken from sex offenders and other violent criminals. The databank was set up in 1994 after the heinous rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka, the little girl responsible for the now famous ‘Megan's Law'. ‘But the last I heard was that
you
were trying to enhance the sample to give
my
squad something more solid to work with.'

‘DNA is DNA, Elliott.'

And Marshall could have sworn Curtis gave a slight roll of her eyes.

‘I said I was willing to liaise with your squad in confirming identification once we got a possible match,' she went on, ‘but beyond that, I . . .' Curtis hesitated as if a new thought had entered her head. ‘What's the rush, Elliott, you taking your focus off Kincaid?'

‘Certainly
not
,' said Marshall, bristling at the suggestion. ‘On the contrary, as soon as we identify the woman's other sexual partner, the sooner we can interview him and dismiss him as a secondary suspect.'

‘Sexual partner?' asked Curtis. ‘I know I noted there was a chance the sex was consensual, but my instincts tell me it was rape.'

‘Your instincts? You work in the area of criminal science, Doctor Curtis, not clairvoyance.'

But Curtis was shaking her head. ‘My instincts are based on scientific experience, Elliott. Woman who like rough sex usually show evidence of old vaginal scarring and my autopsy showed no such signs of such previously inflicted wounds.'

This is exactly what Marshall did
not
want to hear. At first, the evidence of rape had pleased him as it meant he could go after Kincaid for raping the woman before he hit and drowned her. But when the vaginal swab came up empty, and Kincaid got a pass on the fingernail DNA, Marshall knew his case against the senator would look all the stronger if he could prove Maloney had had other lovers – lovers who could well have pissed a scorned Kincaid off.

‘Maybe in all her wisdom she decided to try something new,' he offered before adding, ‘There's something else. I want all your paperwork and photographic data on the blow to the head.' Marshall changed tack, sensing there was no point in discussing the DNA any further with the obviously defensive physician.

‘
What
?'

‘Your theory on the contrecoup haemorrhage bothers me.'

‘It
bothers
you?'

‘Yes, I want a second opinion, someone who can stand up in court and explain the blow could have been the result of an act of aggression rather than a fall.'

‘But the blow
could
have resulted from an aggressive action – a push that resulted in a fall.'

‘It plays better with a blunt instrument to the head, Doctor.'

‘
You want to make up evidence to suit your case
?'

‘No!' Marshall raised his voice. ‘You should know by now that I run every case I prosecute with the utmost integrity. I play things by the book, Doctor Curtis – always have, always will.'

But even as he said this Marshall wondered if it was one hundred per cent true. There was something about this case that had ignited in him the desire to push the legal envelope. He had always been a stickler for protocol, but he could not deny that taking on Kincaid – a man who had never hesitated to bend the law to his benefit – had instilled in him the courage to step a little out of his zone.