“Officer, in your search after arrest, you ultimately found that my client had a small living area staked out in the park, didn’t you? Blankets, some canned foods, that kind of thing.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“And Tom’s living space was on the southwest corner of that park, true?”
“That’s right.”
“It was right up against the fences, right? The southern and western fences? That corner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The corner nearest the crime scene.”
“That… That would be correct, sir.”
I looked at the jury. “Less than a
block
from the crime scene.”
“Correct.”
I realized this cut both ways. It might make a crime of opportunity more likely. Tom was hanging out where he lived, saw someone and robbed her. But it also went to my theory.
“Someone walking, or let’s say jogging—someone jogging from the crime scene to the southwest corner of Franzen Park—could get there in seconds, right? Less than a minute?”
Officer Crespo gave that some thought. “No more than a minute, probably.”
“Someone could have robbed Kathy Rubinkowski after killing her
and, in less than a minute, dumped those items and the murder weapon basically over a fence and into Tom Stoller’s lap.”
“Objection.” Wendy Kotowski got to her feet. “Calls for speculation.”
The judge removed his glasses and wiped them with a cloth. “The witness will answer.”
Surprising. I would have sustained. But Judge Nash ain’t most judges.
“I guess that would be possible,” said Crespo. “But that means he also could have reached the victim within seconds and killed her and robbed her.”
“Glad you brought that up,” I said, which is what I typically say when I’m
not
glad somebody brings something up. It deflects the zinger, the initial impression that the other side has scored is momentarily abated, and by the time I’m done drawing out the issue, hopefully the jury has forgotten.
Only this time, I really was glad. “The park was north of the crime scene, right?”
“Right.”
“And Kathy Rubinkowski’s assailant shot her while standing from the south. He was south of Kathy when he shot her, true?”
“Objection,” said Wendy. “Foundation.”
I flapped my arms. “Your Honor, I don’t think anyone disputes this point. Kathy Rubinkowski was facing south when she was shot head-on. Her assailant must have been south of her. That’s what the state’s going to say, and I won’t disagree. Do I really need to recall this witness or can we stipulate?”
The judge liked my idea. “Ms. Kotowski?”
“Fair enough, we’ll stipulate,” she said.
“Might we waive a written stip in lieu of testimony?” the judge asked her. If there isn’t testimony on a stipulated fact, you have to write it up for the jury. The judge was suggesting we skip that step if the state was going to introduce oral testimony on the point.
“Absolutely, Judge,” she said.
I agreed as well. Then I turned to the officer again. I had to restart my momentum. “Officer, if your idea held water, that would mean that my client left his living space at the corner of the park, traveled south
past
the
victim, and then came back up north on the sidewalk and shot her. Isn’t that true?”
“Well, maybe he was casing her, checking her out to make sure she was an easy target first. Then, when he decided she was, he came back around and attacked her.”
That was a pretty good answer. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone this route. But still time to make lemonade out of lemons.
“That would entail a little forward thinking, right? Some planning?”
He chuckled. “Not much.”
He was right. He was a more worthy adversary than I’d expected. Still, lemonade was within reach. “So then, under your theory, he robs her and then heads
south
, away—
away
from the park, and turns around and shoots her?”
I wouldn’t normally kick around ideas with a witness like this—a good cross-examination is all about control, getting yes or no responses, knowing the answers before they’re given—but in a case like this, about all I had going for me was that the state couldn’t pin down exactly how the murder took place. So I was willing to do this back-and-forth all day if Wendy didn’t object.
But she did. She popped to her feet. “Now we are going far afield,” she said. “This is rampant speculation. There is no foundation for this, and we don’t stipulate.”
“Judge,” I said, “does the state claim that the victim was shot first and then robbed, or robbed first and then shot? Because if they’ll tell me which way it happened, I’ll adjust my questions accordingly. Otherwise, I completely agree—and would be willing to stipulate—that the prosecution’s theory is entirely speculative.”
“Your Honor, this is ridiculous—”
The judge raised a hand. “The objection is sustained. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please disregard Mr. Kolarich’s speech to you. Closing arguments are a few days away. Now move on, Counsel.”
“Yes, Your Honor. One more line of questioning. Officer, you called out to Tom to remove his hands from the purse, correct? You identified yourself as a police officer and ordered him to show his hands, didn’t you?”
“That’s correct.”
“And he didn’t react in any way, did he?”
“No.”
“Your voice was rather loud and commanding, I take it?”
“I would hope so.”
“Right, because when you give orders, it’s important that you’re taken seriously.”
“Correct.”
“So? He didn’t respond to your clear command?”
“He did not.”
“And then you said it all over again, right?”
“I… yes, a second time.”
“And again, he didn’t react in any way?”
“Object to relevance,” said Wendy. “Could we have a sidebar?”
She knew what I was doing. I was portraying Tom as mentally ill, in his own little world, oblivious to the shouts of an approaching police officer.
“I think the ship already sailed, Ms. Kotowski,” said the judge, before Wendy could get her sidebar. I’d gotten two answers on that topic already, he meant. She missed her chance. “Overruled.”
“Officer? A second time, Tom was unresponsive?” Since I had a clear shot now, I might as well use a more clinical word, make Tom seem like he was comatose.
“That’s correct.”
I was done. I hadn’t accomplished much. Wendy got all she needed from this guy, and I didn’t put any meaningful dent in him.
Prosecution 1, Defense 0.
“I don’t think you did much to that cop.” Lee Tucker was dressed comfortably as always in his standard look, a blue sport coat, white shirt, and jeans. He had a scrappy look, a wiry frame and rough complexion, long dishwater-blond hair.
I’d worked with Lee before. He’d been the case agent assigned by the FBI to me during the investigation of Governor Carlton Snow. That was a long story; suffice it to say the two of us generally got along but had the occasional rock in the road.
Lee had agreed to meet me here, and the county attorney, who had offices in the criminal courthouse, had given us a room on the eighth floor during the trial’s lunch recess.
I laid out everything I knew to date: Kathy Rubinkowski, her cryptic notes, what I’d learned about Global Harvest and Randall Manning and the associated companies.
“I think these guys might be building a bomb,” I concluded.
Tucker wasn’t assigned to counterterrorism. He handled political corruption, always a booming business in this city. But he’d been around the block and digested the information quickly.
He perused the notes he’d taken. “So this company sells ammonium nitrate fertilizer to another company it purchased. And they register the sales with the state and federal governments. So that’s perfectly legal, right?”
“Yes. I
think there might be something unusual going on with those sales, because they were so sensitive about them—”
“Right, no, I got that. And you don’t know if they even sold that company nitromethane, the other ingredient?”
“I don’t. Trying to find out.”
“So right now, all we can say is this company legally sold a product to another company.”
I nodded. “Same thing I told my associate, Lee. I get it. Maybe this doesn’t give you PC to search—”
“It sure as hell doesn’t.”
“—but you can knock on their door, can’t you? I mean, maybe if they know you’ve noticed them, they slow down what they’re doing. And we build a case, meanwhile.”
“We,” he said. “
We
build a case.” He nodded generally to the door. “Could I be so bold as to assume that this is going to help you with that case you got going there?”
“I don’t deny that. Yes, it will. But these guys might be building bombs, Lee. It’s bigger than my case.”
He accepted that but with skepticism. I think it’s fair to say that he’d learned, after our last go-round, not to underestimate me. He thought I was using him to make my case, that I’d call him as a witness to testify that the FBI was actively investigating a terrorist threat regarding Global Harvest, that kind of thing.
“Lee, there’s a time to bullshit and there’s a time to get fucking serious. This is the get-fucking-serious time. These people are scary customers. A paralegal and a lawyer are dead. They’ve tried to kill me. I’d bet my law license they’re up to something big here.”
He thought for a moment. “You get any photos of them firing those assault rifles?”
I shook my head. “They confronted me before I could do it. I screwed up.”
Tucker folded up his small notepad and wagged it at me. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ve got the information.”
I love how these guys talk. Reveal absolutely nothing. Not even a simple
We’ll take a look
. Just a simple confirmation that he heard what I said.
Which meant, if my history with the FBI was any guide, that they would do whatever they were going to do and keep me completely in the dark about it from start to finish.
Still, I exhaled with relief. I’d done what I could do. I’d handed this over to the experts. I’d keep doing my own investigating, but the feds had resources I couldn’t dream of.
I knew Randall Manning and those guys were up to something.
I just hoped the FBI would take me seriously.
The prosecution called the forensic pathologist next. Dr. Mitra Agarwal had been with the county coroner’s office for more than thirty years and currently served as the chief deputy medical examiner. She was old friends with my mentor, Paul Riley, and I’d known her professionally and personally for several years. She testified for me twice when I was a prosecutor. Juries liked her because she had no flash, no spin. She was as straitlaced as they came. Her gray hair fell to her shoulders without style. Her now-weathered brown skin was freckled. She was stooped a bit with age but still spoke with a strong voice.
I didn’t know why she was handling this case, but my assumption was that she was next in the rotation when Kathy Rubinkowski’s body was wheeled in. As the top deputy, she could have passed on autopsies altogether, but the thought probably never occurred to her. She was a workhorse.
All of which made her a good witness for the prosecution and a terrible one for me. The only good news was she was a complete straight shooter—to a fault if you asked prosecutors. But in the end, there wasn’t much to get here. The cause of death was beyond dispute. I would have considered stipulating but we needed a couple of things from the witness, and the prosecution wanted to introduce graphic photographs through her, which I was unable to exclude during pretrial motions.
Wendy Kotowski let her second chair, a woman named Maggie Silvers, handle the witness. She probably figured Dr. Agarwal was a safe witness.
The prosecutor took the jury painstakingly through the pathologist’s credentials and then the autopsy she performed.
“The bullet penetrated the skin and musculature of the forehead,” said the doctor, pointing to a diagram of a human skull. “It penetrated the glabella and continued front to back, impacting the occipital bone, where it came to rest.”
“And the blood, Doctor?” asked the prosecutor, pointing to the pool of blood that had formed at the victim’s head. “This was caused by the gunshot?”
“Yes, surely so. The sphenoid and ethmoid bones were shattered. It would cause a large episode of bleeding. Remember that even if brain activity had ceased, the heart would have continued beating. It could have gone on for a good five minutes, while she lay prone on the street.”
“All right,” said the prosecutor. “You mentioned the ceasing of brain activity. In your expert opinion, how did that happen?”
Dr. Agarwal nodded. “The bullet produced a shock wave that essentially ended all brain activity. Her brain activity would have ceased almost instantly upon impact. That explains the injuries to her knees and the side of her skull.”
“Explain, that, please. Is this what we call a ‘dead drop,’ Doctor?”
“That’s a term that is used. She died upon impact of the bullet and fell straight to the street. Her right kneecap was fractured in the fall, and she received significant contusions to the skull on the right side as well.”
“She was dead before she hit the ground?”
“Correct.”
“And the blackening of her eyes, Doctor?”
“Yes, you see here.” The doctor pointed to a close-up photograph of the victim, whose eyes had blackened. “Her orbital plates shattered from the pressure wave from the bullet. But as I said, her heart kept beating, so blood ran into the tissue around her eyes.”
“So, Doctor, the fractured kneecap, the blackened eyes, the contusions to her skull—these were all the result of the gunshot?”
“Without question, yes. The single gunshot caused her death. There is no evidence that she was otherwise beaten or attacked physically.”
The witness appeared to have jumped the gun, anticipating the last question of the prosecutor. Without the final question she’d planned, she fumbled for a moment with her notes. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said.
A little rough with the ending, but she got the job done. She wanted to establish that the only thing that attacked Kathy Rubinkowski was a bullet between the eyes. No punching or kicking or the like, because no evidence of such was found on Tom Stoller. He didn’t have bruising or blood on his hands or shoes. She had done her job, I thought. It was one single shot that dropped the victim.