Authors: Sydney Bauer
‘Cool,’ she said, before taking a blue highlighter from Nora. ‘Cool.’
72
J
oe called late. He warned David he was starting with the bad news. He told David about Rigotti and his intel on the DA's second witness list – first about Davenport, and then about the British psych named St John, who, Joe explained, was not a local resident, but had flown into Logan two days ago.
After David asked Joe the obvious – why Joe had not let him know sooner – Joe told David about Rigotti's twenty-four hour embargo, the one put in place to protect their reporter friend's source. Then Joe warned David against letting his fists do the talking, before reminding him that this was no time for ‘self-indulgent payback’ and that ‘revenge was a dish best served cold’.
Next, after David had calmed down a little, they discussed what this might mean for Sienna. They agreed it explained Katz's opening and that the DA probably intended to use this English shrink-for-hire to paint Sienna as a psychopath, but they also agreed the Kat would be hard up against proving the legitimacy of St John's diagnosis considering the psychiatrist had never actually examined Sienna. Joe pointed out that maybe Sienna had been a patient of St John's when she lived in the UK, and David, while sure she would have mentioned this, promised to ask her in the morning.
Bad news done.
‘I need the good news now,’ said David.
‘I'm in Lincoln,’ replied Joe, before going on to explain.
David felt a rush of excitement as he listened to Joe's story about De Lorenzo's brother. But his hopes were soon dashed when Joe told him that Marco De Lorenzo was long gone from the roadside motel where he'd made the call to his brother Vincent. Joe told David how the pissed motel owner complained about De Lorenzo skipping on the $13.55 he owed for the two beers and the packet of pretzels missing from the mini-bar, the only plus from Joe's perspective being the fact that the manager had noticed the car De Lorenzo was driving when he tore out of the hotel – a Buick, light blue, with a broken back bumper guard.
‘Did he get a plate?’ David asked, guessing the answer was no as he assumed Joe would have told him this earlier.
‘The manager has Jack Daniel's for breakfast and smokes weed for lunch.’
‘His vision is twenty-twenty then,’ a weary David managed a joke.
Joe said nothing, just sighed.
Next, after Joe promised to keep on De Lorenzo's tail, it was David's turn, so he gave Joe a run-down on Madonna's list and her idea of targeting certain couples. And while Joe agreed it was a good idea, he also concurred with David's concerns that approaching these people was risky, given that if David and his team were right, these couples were part of an elite baby trafficking business which was not only illegal but punishable with jail terms hefty enough to incarcerate them for most of the rest of their lives.
Finally, David told Joe about Lucas Cole and the fact that he was working on Hunt's illegally acquired DNA. And to Joe's credit, he did not respond by listing the number of ways David was violating the constraints of the law. He did, however, warn David that even if the results were positive, such information could backfire given they had no proof of illegal activity.
‘Your client know you're testing Hunt?’ asked Joe.
‘I didn't want to get her hopes up.’
‘You think she'd be pleased if that asshole was her kid's daddy?’ asked Joe.
‘I think she'd want to puke.’
Joe said nothing, understanding the irony of it all.
‘She's crumbling, Joe,’ said David, just as Joe went to sign off.
More silence.
‘I don't want to be in court. I want to be out there with you, looking for De Lorenzo, or with Nora and Arthur chasing down couples on Madonna's list – or with Cole in his laboratory.’
‘You're where you're meant to be, David.’
‘I'm hamstrung.’
‘No. This case will be won or lost in the courtroom.’
David sighed.
‘Get some sleep,’ said Joe, before hanging up the phone.
And David did, at least for an hour or two, before the sun shot through the bedroom window and wrenched him from rest to reality.
*
‘Good morning, all,’ said Judge Isaac Stein, officially opening the second day of trial in the case of the Commonwealth v Walker.
Katz replied with enthusiasm. ‘Good morning, Your Honor.’
‘Are you ready to call your next witness, Mr Katz?’
‘Yes, Your Honor, the people would like to call Lieutenant Daniel Martinelli.’
Sienna sighed beside David.
And Katz moved forward to begin.
The Kat was slick. His questions were polished and precise. After allowing the Crime Lab Unit chief to state his impressive credentials, he set out to take Dan Martinelli through the forensic evidence piece by piece. He began with the bedroom, firstly going over the testimony already provided by Captain Michael O'Donnell, and then moving onto new territory – the actual analysis on the forensic material collected at the scene.
‘Lieutenant Martinelli,’ said the DA, addressing the Crime Lab chief by his official BPD rank. ‘Before we get to your analysis, can you describe to the court the procedures your technicians undertake to ensure the evidence taken from your crime scene is collected and preserved with the utmost of care.’
David knew where this was going – Katz was about to tackle the issue of the presence of Sienna's blood in the bedroom. He wanted Martinelli to impress the jury with his Unit's impeccable evidence collection procedures, closing any door David might have intended to walk through regarding the possibility that the volume of Sienna's blood found at the scene was a miscalculation on Martinelli's part.
Martinelli took a breath, as if deciding where to start. ‘Basically we run the state's only public forensic DNA laboratory – which is one of only eighteen in the country. When we knew we'd be moving from the old lab in Berkeley Street to the new facility at the new BPD headquarters in Roxbury, we made sure the unit was designed to our specs. That meant building a large laboratory space dedicated to serology, DNA analysis, trace evidence examination, and the chemical and physical processing of evidence.’
‘And serology, for us laymen and women, refers to …?’
David cringed, knowing the DA knew exactly what it referred to.
‘Bodily fluids,’ said Martinelli.
‘Such as blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant, please go on.’
‘Well, alongside the lab space we have an evidence examination room created specifically to accommodate a broad range of forensic evidence analysis – like a custom walk-in biological safety hood, tools such as alternative light sources to aid in identifying, presenting, cataloguing and photographing physical evidence, freezers to preserve biological evidence – sometimes for decades.’
‘And going back to that serology issue,’ the Kat reined Martinelli in, ‘any bodily fluids you collect and test – can you tell me what your margin of error is when it comes to identifying the person from which these fluids may have come.’
The no-nonsense Martinelli nodded. ‘Our testing methods are such that, if we get a DNA match on the fluids, the likelihood of the evidence sample originating from someone other than the particular suspect in question would be greater than one in a billion.’
Katz stopped in his tracks. ‘One in a billion!’ he exclaimed for effect.
‘Yes,’ replied Martinelli.
The Kat shook his head in wonder – his point more than made.
‘The blood found in little Eliza Walker's bedroom – I believe it was a DNA match to the body of the child found some weeks after her murder?’
‘That's correct,’ said Martinelli. ‘Of course we suspected this beforehand because infant blood is quite unique in its make-up, but the discovery of the body confirmed it.’
‘And the amount of blood found in the bedroom led you to believe the child had bled out at the scene?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of the volume present?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how many litres might that be?’
‘An infant that size carries approximately three to four litres of blood,’ said Martinelli as the jury squirmed in their seats.
‘And you found three to four litres?’
‘Of the baby's blood, yes.’
‘The
baby'
s blood?’ Katz's brow furrowed in faux confusion. ‘Are you saying that another blood sample was found at the scene?’
‘Yes.’
‘On top of the three to four litres?’
‘Yes. We found a total of approximately four and a half litres in spatter.’
‘And there is no way a baby of Eliza Walker's age would have held such a volume of blood?’
‘It would be highly unlikely.’
‘So the remaining half a litre or so?’ the DA led his witness.
‘Came from an adult female. Blood type A.’
‘And Eliza Walker was type AB, was she not?’ The Kat wanted to make sure the jury were clear.
‘Yes.’
David took a breath.
‘And did you identify the person to which this second adult sample belonged?’
‘Yes. It belonged to the defendant, Sienna Walker.’
David wanted to object but knew there was no point to it. Sienna's blood was at the scene – there was no doubt about it – and he would have to wait until his cross-examination to even attempt to introduce an explanation for this.
‘You found Mrs Walker's blood in the bedroom?’
‘Yes.’
‘A good deal of it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And as an experienced forensics technician, the conclusion you made as to …?’
‘Objection.’ David saw a window. ‘With all due respect to the Lieutenant, Your Honor, the question calls for speculation.’
‘Judge,’ the Kat was ready. ‘I think we have established Lieutenant Martinelli's unsurpassed record and experience in his chosen area of forensic science. His job is to analyse the evidence, and that requires a certain degree of speculation based on decades of exposure to evidence found at scenes such as Eliza Walker's bedroom.’
Stein considered the Kat's argument before turning to David. ‘He's right. Objection overruled. The witness may answer the question.’
David tried desperately not to show his disappointment as the DA nodded for Martinelli to go on.
‘I concluded Mrs Walker's blood at the scene indicated that she had also bled in the bedroom.’ It was an obvious answer, but it carried connotations David knew they would find it almost impossible to recover from.
‘She cut herself?’
Martinelli nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘On a knife or …?’
‘Objection.’ David was up again, knowing he had to play this one carefully. ‘Your Honor, please, there is no way Lieutenant Martinelli could answer this question with any certainty. There is no evidence that Mrs Walker cut herself at all, let alone what the cause of this phantom cut may have been.’
‘Your Honor,’ the Kat didn't miss a beat, ‘as we have already established, the blood indicated the defendant was bleeding. We know the victim was killed with a knife. So once again I am only offering the most logical explanation for –’
‘Perhaps, but that's a step too far, Mr Katz,’ said Stein. ‘Objection sustained,’ he ruled.
But David knew the victory was a hollow one – the DA had set the jury a path and they were well and truly on it.
Minutes later the satisfied DA moved on to the forensic evidence accumulated from Eliza Walker's body, the nightshirt she was wrapped in and the gutter pipe from which her small body was pulled. And David braced himself for what could well be the most emotionally damaging testimony of the trial, knowing that – if the jury found yesterday's images of Eliza's bedroom disturbing – the photographs the DA would no doubt try to get into evidence here, would be catastrophically damaging in comparison.
‘Your Honor, at this stage I would ask the court's permission to display a series of images taken both in Mrs Walker's courtyard and –’
‘
Objection
!’ David did not underestimate the importance of his winning this objection. The images from that courtyard had the potential to live in the jury's memories forever, as they would in his own. He knew he could not stop the fourteen from being exposed to such photographic evidence, but he could perhaps alter the manner in which these visuals were delivered.
‘Side bar, Your Honor?’ he requested, knowing his arguments would be better aired in private given that what he was about to say would appear to the jury like he was desperate to restrict evidence that was key to the prosecution's case.
Stein agreed, calling David and the DA to his bench.
‘Your Honor,’ David began. ‘The DA is obviously determined to influence the entire courtroom by displaying images in a form that can only be assessed emotionally. The photographs submitted in discovery were eight by tens in black and white, not poster-sized placards in full-blown colour.’
‘I tend to agree,’ said Stein. ‘Mr Katz?’ he called for the DA's response.
‘Your Honor, the display of such images is nothing new in cases like this.’
‘Not for you maybe.’ David could not help himself.
Stein gave him a look of displeasure.
‘I can assure you, Your Honor,’ the Kat went on, ‘that the display of these images in the manner I propose is a matter of logistical necessity. I want to ask the witness to point to certain areas in the photographs, which is impossible if the jury are passing around the black and whites by hand.’
‘You're going to ask the witness to leave his seat?’ asked Stein.
‘With your permission, Your Honor. The images of the baby's clothing and the nightshirt she was wrapped in are of specific significance, as they go to the nature of the cause of death.’
‘Oh for god's sakes,’ said David. ‘No one is disputing the cause of death, Roger.’
‘Then why would you have a problem with the imagery that supports this?’
The DA had him, and sadly David knew it. ‘Your Honor,’ he attempted, but he knew Stein had no choice but to allow what the DA had successfully argued was a procedural necessity to his case.
‘I'll allow it, Mr Katz, but you know how I feel about having my courtroom turned into a playhouse.’
‘I can assure you, Your Honor, I have too much respect for the court and, more to the point, the victim, to even contemplate using her death to win points on the back of theatrics.’