Authors: Sydney Bauer
70
L
unch had been heated, but not in the way David had anticipated. He had expected Sara and Arthur to be frustrated, even furious, at his opening statement, but like Sienna, they had accepted his decision with a new burst of energy, perhaps relieved to have laid down the challenge – for Hunt and his conceited doctor friend.
So they had entered the courtroom invigorated, more than ready to start fulfilling David's promises, buoyed by the fact that the DA's first witness was an ally – the lead homicide detective in the investigation, their friend Joe Mannix.
‘The Commonwealth calls Boston Police Captain Michael Patrick O'Donnell.’
David looked at Arthur. There had to be some mistake. David had seen Joe seated on a bench immediately outside the courtroom waiting to be called. He had not spoken to his homicide chief friend as that would have been a serious breach of pre-testimonial protocol, but Joe had gestured at his watch – in indication that when he was done here, they had to talk.
David was up. ‘Your Honor, according to the District Attorney's witness list, Deputy Superintendent Joseph Mannix was to be called as his first witness. In fact, Captain O'Donnell is not on his list at all.’
‘Your Honor,’ Katz did not hesitate. ‘Mr Cavanaugh is correct – but I would like to reassure him that my questions to the Captain are the same I would have asked both Superintendent Mannix and Detective McKay. My decision to call Captain O'Donnell in their stead is fourfold – firstly, because the Captain was first on the scene, secondly, because he was with both Homicide detectives as they carried out their inspection of the crime scene, thirdly, because both Superintendent Mannix and Detective McKay are currently bogged down in a busy investigation involving the recent double homicide in Dorchester, and finally because, in the interest in preventing any wastage of the court's time, I thought it best not to slow these proceedings down with what would inevitably be some arduously repetitive testimony.’
‘You're calling Captain O'Donnell with mind to expediency?’ asked Stein, perhaps wondering when the DA had started paying homage to cutting his stage time in the interest of the court.
Katz nodded. ‘The Captain will be able to give a more efficient overview of both the initial findings at the crime scene and the collection of evidence by the Boston Police Crime Unit technicians.’
Katz's argument was strong and David knew the jury would find his objection as to O'Donnell's competency as a witness as an indication that O'Donnell had evidence David wanted to hide. He wanted to call for a recess, or ask for a side bar to argue his case further, but he knew both of these moves would make him look nervous, hesitant, and he could not afford to weaken his position in front of a jury whose loyalties were still being decided. And so, after a slight shake of the head from Arthur, he knew objecting further was pointless, that he had no choice but to withdraw his objection and re-take his seat, knowing the soon-to-be furious Joe Mannix sitting outside the courtroom could be of no help to him now.
O'Donnell looked flustered. His face was red. David knew this was most likely because the Captain had been called to the stand at the last minute, with Katz instinctively sensing the testimony of a less than cooperative Mannix could backfire at this point. David was confident the DA was unaware of the assistance Joe and Frank were giving the defence team, but he also knew Joe and the Kat had a history almost as combative as the one David had with the conceited DA – and Katz was most likely unwilling to risk a face-off with Joe, given the bullish opening statement David had delivered.
‘Thank you for coming, Captain,’ Katz began.
O'Donnell nodded, catching his breath. ‘I apologise if I am a little late, but I only got word about –’
‘That's not a problem,’ Katz cut him off, not wanting the jury to realise just how late a replacement O'Donnell was.
After getting O'Donnell to give a brief but impressive description of his twenty-five years on the force, the DA began by asking the Captain to tell the court what happened after he responded to Sienna Walker's initial 911 call.
‘The call was put through to us at headquarters,’ O'Donnell began. ‘Mrs Walker was clearly very distressed. She said her daughter was missing and that there was a substantial amount of blood in her bedroom, at which point we immediately called for a paramedics team to meet us at the scene.’
‘You thought this was an abduction?’
‘We made no assumptions until we arrived at the scene, Mr Katz, but that was what the initial information provided to us suggested, yes,’ replied O'Donnell.
‘But surely the mention of blood must have concerned you?’
‘The whole thing concerned me, Mr Katz, but at this point my priority was getting to the scene as quickly as possible. There was always the possibility that an intruder intent on burglary had entered the house and removed the child from its crib in order to carry out the robbery without the interruption of a baby's crying. This has happened before.’
‘So you hoped the child was still in the house or close by somewhere where she might be found and treated for her injuries?’
O'Donnell hesitated. ‘Yes, that was the first thought that entered my mind.’
‘But murder did not?’
O'Donnell paused once again. He sensed the DA was using him for effect and he didn't want a bar of it. ‘Once again, Mr Katz, I reserved an opinion as to the child's whereabouts or status until I got to the scene.’
The DA smiled in acquiescence. ‘A police officer with an open mind,’ he said.
But an increasingly frustrated O'Donnell did not answer, perhaps knowing there was nothing to be gained.
‘So you attended the house?’ Katz got his witness back on track.
‘Yes,’ replied O'Donnell. ‘I paged our Head of Homicide, Deputy Superintendent Mannix, while we were on route.’
‘Excuse me, Captain, but wasn't Superintendent Mannix at a rather extravagant function at Boston's Taj Hotel? A legal fundraiser, I believe, attended by the city's who's who?’
David felt his temperature rise. The Kat was hedging his bets. Katz knew Joe was an influential member of the police community and, given the suppositions made in David's opening, he was laying down some groundwork just in case David decided to call Joe as a witness for the defence. He was attempting to use Joe's subordinate to paint Joe as conceited and incompetent – but David suspected a loyal O'Donnell would have none of it.
‘I believe Deputy Superintendent Mannix was at the fundraiser, yes,’ said an obviously uncomfortable O'Donnell. ‘But that is not the type of thing he would normally –’
‘And this fundraiser,’ the Kat cut him off yet again, ‘I believe it was the same one attended by Mr Cavanaugh and other members of the defence team. In fact I think the Deputy Superintendent was on their table.’
Stein looked at David, expecting him to object, but David sensed he had an ally in O'Donnell – and that any objection would look better coming from him.
‘I don't know where Deputy Superintendent Mannix sat, Mr Katz,’ said O'Donnell, ‘but I heard it was a big event – like you called it, a who's who of Boston.’
Katz smiled at his witness's answer.
‘But I did hear where you sat, Mr Katz – on the head table with some rather influential individuals. So if the Deputy Superintendent wasn't with you he was either in the boondocks or on his way to attend the crime scene I'd paged him to. He's probably the most dedicated cop I know, Mr Katz, which explains why he was at the Walker house within minutes of receiving my page.’
The room fell silent, the only noise a snicker from the media gallery which David recognised as belonging to Marc Rigotti. And it was enough for Stein to ask the Kat to move on – which the DA proceeded to do – but this time with a change in attitude to his witness, one of directness with a tinge of aggression.
The next lot of questions were to do with Sienna Walker and how O'Donnell found her when he attended the scene. O'Donnell replied saying Sienna had been cooperative but extremely distressed, so much so that her doctor had administered medication to prevent her from going into shock.
‘She was out of it,’ summarised Katz.
‘Objection.’ David saw an opening. ‘Captain O'Donnell has just described Mrs Walker as both cooperative and understandably distressed. The decision to sedate her was made by her physician and not by my client.’
‘Mr Katz?’ An undecided Stein sought a counterargument.
‘Your Honor, what I am trying to establish here is the decision made by the defendant immediately following her daughter's death. Eliza Walker was missing and there was a substantial amount of blood in her bedroom. I would suggest that her mother's decision to allow sedation prevented the police from asking her questions that may have been relevant to finding her child if she had been abducted – a window of time that any investigator knows is vital when it comes to increasing the police's chances of locating the missing victim.’
Stein considered the DA's reasoning before turning to David. ‘Your objection is overruled, Mr Cavanaugh.’ His eyes returned to Katz. ‘But you're walking a fine line here, Mr Katz.’
The DA offered an apology before proceeding with aplomb. ‘So you were unable to conduct a satisfying interview with Mrs Walker?’ he said.
O'Donnell was ready. ‘No, sir, that was not my job at this point. It was the job of Deputy Superintendent Mannix and Detective Frank McKay.’
‘And to the best of your knowledge, were they able to interview Mrs Walker in her sedated state?’
O'Donnell's eyes flicked to the defence table. ‘I don't believe so, but if you –’
‘In fact, didn't they arrange for the near catatonic Mrs Walker to be taken to Massachusetts General to be attended to by doctors in the emergency room?’ The Kat cut his witness off for a third time as David felt Sienna shudder beside him.
‘I believe so,’ said O'Donnell, ‘but Deputy Superintendent Mannix, who I saw
immediately outside this
–’
‘Asked and answered, thank you, Captain,’ Katz interrupted yet again, before finally changing tack.
The DA spent the next few minutes getting O'Donnell to describe Sienna's state of dress on the evening in question – to tell the court what she was wearing or, more to the point, what she was not. And once O'Donnell had described her virtually ‘bloodless’ sweater every which way, the DA moved on to the bedroom itself, once again asking the police captain to describe the state of the crime scene, blood spatter by spatter, drop by drop.
‘Your Honor,’ the DA continued, ‘at this point I would ask permission to display a series of photographs of the bedroom in question.’
‘You want to hand these shots to the jury, Mr Katz?’
‘No, Your Honor, I took the liberty of blowing up these images so that the jury would get a better perspective of the details.’
Once again Stein looked to David, expecting him to object. And this time David obliged.
‘Your Honor, there is no evidentiary benefit in displaying these images in cinemascope. Mr Katz is grandstanding. He knows that by exhibiting such images in oversized proportions he is not only unduly influencing the jury but also the impressions of the media, the gallery –’
Stein held up his hand. ‘I tend to agree with him, Mr Katz,’ he said.
‘Your Honor,’ the DA was ready with his counterargument. ‘These images are key to the evidence found at the crime scene and the jury's understanding of it. Might I remind Mr Cavanaugh that it is not the media, nor the gallery, we are interested in here.’
Bullshit
, thought David.
‘What I am interested in, Your Honor, is providing the jury with as much information as possible in order for them to make an educated judgment. Yes, the images of little Eliza Walker's bedroom are distressing, but murder
is
distressing, Your Honor, especially when it involves the slaughter of –’
‘
Objection
!’ David was up again.
‘All right, all right,’ said Stein, determined to calm things down. ‘That's enough, Mr Katz,’ he said to the DA. ‘You may show your images but I'll shut you down the moment I feel that you've crossed the line from pertinence to performance.’
‘I understand, Your Honor,’ said Katz, doing his best impersonation of humble. And then he moved to his desk to retrieve the poster-sized photographs – and David grasped his client's hand tightly under the table, preparing her for what was to come.
71
O
utside the courtroom Joe Mannix's blood was boiling. He looked at his watch. It was almost three. He had been asked to attend court at one but had seen O'Donnell rushed in before him and it didn't take him long to guess what was happening. He was being bumped for what the DA assumed would be a safer hand to bet on.
While Joe knew and respected O'Donnell, and was sure the no-bullshit Captain was giving the Kat as good as he was getting, he also knew O'Donnell would answer the questions to the best of his knowledge, which would mean Sienna Walker was coming off as guilty as sin. And there was nothing Joe could do about it. He suspected there was nothing Frank would be able to do about it either, given he assumed the DA was going to bump his partner as well.
As if on cue the elevator to the eighth floor opened and a somewhat dishevelled Frank McKay stepped out. He was doing that thing he did when he was anxious – running his hand through his thinning grey hair before patting it back into place.
Joe called him over and was surprised to see that Frank was not in the least bit surprised to see Joe still sitting in the corridor. No doubt word had got out that O'Donnell had been called to court unexpectedly, and Frank would have put two and two together from there.
‘We've been recast.’ Joe stood as his friend approached. ‘Apparently the Kat didn't like our audition.’
Frank caught his breath. ‘I know but to be honest I never made the school play either.’ He looked at Joe. ‘The Kat did us a favour.’
Joe glanced up in confusion as a still puffing Frank slipped his hand into his pocket and retrieved his police-issue BlackBerry. ‘Here.’ He held up the screen in front of Joe. ‘Look see.’
Joe squinted to decipher the writing, expecting to see an email or a text, but all he saw was a number in the ‘calls received’ directory.
‘Four ten,’ he said, quoting the area code. ‘Where is …?’ But then it hit him, and he could not help but smile. ‘Vincent De Lorenzo,’ he said, referring to the Baltimore-based truck driver.
Frank nodded. ‘I just hung up from him. His brother Marco finally called and they talked. Vincent said he was straight up – told his brother that we weren't out to burn him but that he had to contact us because the information he had could help us with a case we were investigating.’
‘And Marco?’ asked Joe, praying Vincent De Lorenzo's attempts to convince his brother had worked.
‘Marco freaked out. Said the cops were the last people he wanted to talk to. But Vincent said, after a half-hour of cajoling, his brother started to come around, enough for him to agree to think about it and call his brother back within the next twenty-four hours.’
‘I know people like Marco, Frank,’ said Joe. ‘He ain't gonna call.’
‘I know,’ said Frank, ‘which is why I got an urgent trace on the incoming call.’
Joe smiled. ‘You know where Marco De Lorenzo was calling from?’
Frank nodded. ‘He was calling from Lincoln.’
‘Marco De Lorenzo's in Nebraska?’ he said, referring to the capital of the Cornhusker State.
‘No,’ smiled Frank. ‘He's in Lincoln Massachusetts, the one in Middlesex County.’
Joe returned the smile. ‘Lincoln's a thirteen mile drive from here, Frank.’
‘Just past the Hanscom air force base.’
‘We can be there in half an hour,’ said Joe, as they both rushed toward the elevator.
‘Thanks to the Kat excusing us from our duties as witnesses.’
‘Kind of him, that.’
‘I thought so.’
*
O'Donnell's testimony had been nothing short of disastrous. The DA had taken the police captain through each and every graphic image, section by section, inch by inch, until the half of the jury that were studying the images had turned an ashen shade of grey – and the other half, who could not stomach them, had stared accusingly at David's client.
Sienna had sat motionless, her face blank. David had seen this expression on his client's face many times over the past six months. It told him that she was on the verge of breaking, that she was trying desperately to hold things together, to find the strength to cope. But he also knew that to the jury she would appear cold as she sat seemingly unmoved by the bloody images of her prettily decorated daughter's bedroom … cold, removed, cruel.
‘It's okay,’ David said to his client at the end of the day's session, knowing there was nothing he could do at this point bar try to console her and get to work on the days ahead. ‘We made up some ground on cross.’
This was true. David had scored two major points on cross – the first being the issue of that controversial window screen. David had argued that just because the window screen had been forced from inside the room, it did not mean that his client was the culprit. He used O'Donnell to begin to introduce his countertheory that another intruder had entered the house by other means – perhaps someone who knew the layout of the house as well. Second, David had gotten Katz's witness to concede that Sienna's explanation for the lack of her fingerprints on the bedroom light switch – her use of the burping towel she instinctively put over her shoulder – was a more than viable rationalisation of the seemingly damning evidential anomaly. O'Donnell even admitted that his wife spent ‘a good ten years of her life wearing one of those things over her shoulder’. ‘We had four kids in six years,’ he had explained. ‘That towel became a permanent fixture in both our lives.’ And for this David had been grateful.
‘We made some ground,’ Sienna managed to agree, ‘but tomorrow the DA calls the forensics expert and the coroner.’ She was referring to BPD Crime Lab Unit Chief Dan Martinelli and to the Suffolk County ME, Gus Svenson. ‘And there is still so much we cannot explain – starting with the presence of my blood in her bedroom.’
Starting with was right, thought David, not wanting to depress his client even further by pointing out that Martinelli's and Svenson's testimonies could introduce several evidential issues the defence would have to account for on cross-examination. Dan Martinelli's evidence would be even more damning than O'Donnell's, as he would introduce not just the presence of Sienna's blood at the crime scene, but that goddamned nightshirt – found in his client's courtyard – which indicated Eliza Walker had been nursed to death. The DA would then question Svenson about the body of the baby that was – after being wrapped in said nightshirt – shoved unceremoniously up his client's backyard gutter pipe. And the jury would sit and listen, as Gus spoke words like ‘jugular’ and ‘thorax’ and ‘aspiration’, ‘spinal cord’ and ‘blood loss’ and ‘cardiac arrest’.
‘Are you going to introduce what we know about Eliza's DNA?’ she asked, perhaps hoping he was confident enough to broach the issue of Eliza's paternity.
David was unsure how to answer her. Knowing Eliza's paternity could well be Hunt's motive for killing her. It was true Lucas Cole was rushing through the results of the DNA he was lifting from the glass Sara had taken from the Fairmont Copely Plaza, but this would take time, and even if – long shot of long shots – Hunt was proven to be Eliza Walker's biological father, this still did not prove he and his cohort Davenport were involved in the murder of his client's baby daughter.
Worse still, revealing that Eliza Walker was not Jim's daughter at this early stage could backfire as it could validate the lies Hunt may be willing to tell on the witness stand – lies about Sienna's fidelity, or more specifically, her lack thereof.
‘I'm not sure,’ he said, knowing she deserved his honesty.
‘And my blood?’ She was asking about the presence of the cyropreservative found in the sample taken from her daughter's bedroom. They had discussed introducing this at length but had been hesitant to do so given they knew the DA could explain away its presence by claiming Sienna had used the DMSO as an anti-inflammatory.
‘I'm not sure. It might make us look desperate,’ he said.
She nodded, her expression tired and defeated as she took his hands in her own. ‘I trust you,’ she said once again.
He felt sick as her eyes started to water. And then the deputies came and took her away, and David collected his things and moved from the now deserted courtroom, more determined than ever to bury the man named Daniel Hunt.
*
By the time David returned to the office it was dark. He found his fellow defence team members in Arthur's office, each, including Nora, nursing an icy cold beer. There was an additional team member sitting cross-legged in the corner, and David immediately advanced to shake her hand. ‘Hello, Madonna,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ she replied. ‘You were mean … for not telling me who you were.’
But David could see she was not angry. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said, ‘but this case, it …’
‘It means you have to keep secrets,’ she finished the sentence for him.
‘Yes.’
She nodded, attempting a half-smile. But David could tell the girl was nervous and he wanted to put her at ease. ‘I need to thank you for helping us.’
Madonna looked at Sara, as if in apology, or perhaps for reassurance. ‘But I haven't really done anything.’
‘That's not true, Madonna,’ argued Sara. ‘You forwarded the doctor's client list, you gave me Esther Wallace's email address.’
‘Yeah, but Mrs Wallace hasn't emailed back, and the list – well, it's just a list, it doesn't tell you anything juicy.’
Unfortunately this was true. The list Madonna had provided was simply that – a list of patients who had consulted the doctor. The list may have contained the names of clients who had benefited by Davenport and Hunt's illegal services, or those whose reproductive cells had been stolen to use in the fertilisation of another child, but the list itself did not discriminate, and was a long way from pinpointing the people who were involved – wittingly or unwittingly – in Hunt and Davenport's sick activities.
‘Worse still,’ Madonna continued, ‘Sophia never returned my calls and this morning, Dr Davenport left real early so …’ she sighed. ‘I have no idea what has happened with her and … I sort of liked her, so that kind of sucks.’
This wasn't good. ‘Did Dr Davenport tell you where he was going?’ asked David, taking a seat across from her.
Madonna looked at Sara, who responded in her place.
‘He told Madonna he was going to the Dorchester clinic he volunteers at, but I called and checked, and they said they hadn't seen him all day.’
It got worse. What if Davenport had run and taken Sophia with him?
‘Madonna,’ said David, ‘did Dr Davenport say anything else that might have tipped you off as to his plans over the next day or so – for example, did he ask you to cancel tomorrow's appointments as well?’
‘No,’ said the girl, before her face crinkled in concern. ‘But, I've been thinking …’
David glanced at Sara. ‘About what?’ he asked.
The girl shifted in her seat, her too-tight skirt twisting at her waist. ‘Well, from what Sara told me, she thinks Sophia is a surrogate. But she can only have a baby or two at a time, right? So, if this is like – a big business, there must be more – girls like Sophia, I mean.’
David nodded. The girl was savvier than she appeared.
‘But Sophia is the only one that stands out,’ Madonna continued, ‘which means he must see the others at the clinic, which makes sense because Sophia was a clinic patient who only came across to the surgery because there was some problem with her ultrasound.’
‘What was the problem?’ he asked.
‘I don't know. But when I think about it now, Dr Davenport was always kinda stressed after her visits.’ She shook her head. ‘But that wasn't what I was getting at.’
Sara turned to look at her. ‘Then what is it, Madonna?’
‘Well, when I was first interviewed for the job, I remember Dr Davenport saying his clients were not sick but limited in their options. He said it was his job to expand those options because they could afford to be choosy and …’ Madonna shook her head as if trying to clear it. ‘What I mean to say is, if you think about it, he might be getting the sperm and the eggs from different people, but if the lady who wants that baby is able to, I guess she might be carrying that baby for herself. Which makes sense because he sees lots of pregnant women, and he delivers these rich women's babies.’
David smiled. She was right. Davenport would not need surrogates for all the children he manufactured, especially if the ‘client’ was young and healthy and wanted to experience the process of childbirth for herself.
‘So what are you thinking?’ asked David. ‘Are you suggesting we could get a link to the surrogates if we got hold of Davenport's clinic patients and …?’
‘No,’ interrupted Madonna. ‘It's almost impossible to get details on the clinic patients. The clinic is super confidential. It's one of those places that assures young girls who, you know, get knocked up by accident … anonymous … ness,’ she struggled to find the word. ‘But what I was thinking was, we have the other list, the one with the rich people on it. And since I know what these patients look like, I could tell you the ones that, you know, didn't get pregnant, or the ones that would be too old to pop one out for themselves.’
David smiled again – Madonna was full of surprises.
‘Some of these people stand out to you?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Like … there was a couple who came in this morning. They're not on the list yet because they're new and they didn't have an appointment, which means I didn't get their names, but they'd been in once before and … they're old, you know, like real old – over forty and then some.’
David would have laughed if what they were discussing were not so serious.
‘You can tell us which patients on this list are too old – or who did not conceive personally?’
‘Yes.’
David smiled, his eyes drifting to Arthur. ‘It's a start,’ he said.
‘A very good one,’ agreed Arthur.
Sara pulled out a copy of the list Madonna had emailed to her. ‘Could you highlight those sorts of couples?’ she asked.
Madonna smiled. ‘Sure,’ she said, as if pleased her idea had been received with such enthusiasm. ‘So I'm like … helping, right?’ she asked, her brown eyes meeting David's once again.
‘You bet,’ smiled David.