The Wrong Man (33 page)

Shauna was handling the science in the case so she took the cross. “Doctor,” she said before she got to the lectern. “Where the bullet entered the victim’s skull—there was no charring of the skin around the site of the entry wound, was there?”

“No, there was not.”

“And there was no tattooing or spotting, either, was there?”

“No, there was not.”

“No soot or powder stippling, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, you can say that the gun muzzle was not within three feet of the victim’s skull, true?”

“True.”

Shauna paused for effect. “So the shooter was more than three feet away, wasn’t he?”

“That appears so, yes.”

“That’s what you think, right?” Shauna doesn’t like it when witnesses equivocate. It’s one of the things I love about her. It makes her a pain in the ass when we argue, though.

“That’s what I think.”

“It’s possible that the shooter was ten feet away, true?”

“I can’t say it’s
im
possible.” Another equivocation.

“Meaning it’s possible.”

“Yes, it’s possible. I only say that—”

“You’ve answered my question, Doctor.”

I couldn’t get away with that. I’m not sure if it’s just a gender thing or my relative size compared to the diminutive witness, but I’ve never felt
like cutting off a witness played well with the jury. I’m also pretty sure that the judge wouldn’t let me get away with it, but the old goat seems to like Shauna.

“In fact, wouldn’t you agree, Doctor, that nothing in your findings would contradict the possibility that the shooter was ten feet away from the victim?”

Dr. Agarwal paused. She wasn’t typically argumentative, but she didn’t completely agree with Shauna. We all knew that the spent shell casing from the murder weapon landed in the soil of a planted tree on the sidewalk and that the strong likelihood was that the weapon was fired from ten feet away. But it was possible that the casing rolled on the sidewalk, so there was a little bit of leeway in the estimate on either side of ten feet.

Shauna was baiting the witness.

“If common sense and experience are included in my findings,” the doctor answered, “then I would say that I am not totally convinced that the gun was fired from ten feet away.”

“Why would you say that, Doctor?” Shauna said. You never ask open-ended questions on cross-examination unless you’re sure that any answer will suit your purpose. Shauna had a pretty good idea of how the doctor would answer, but she wasn’t sure.

“In my experience autopsying homicides,” Dr. Agarwal replied, “most gunshots from the Glock handgun used here are not so precise that one could hit someone between the eyes from a distance of ten feet. It’s obviously possible, but it’s difficult.”

“The shooter would have to be very good at what he did,” said Shauna. “He’d have to be an experienced shooter of that weapon?”

“Objection,” said the prosecutor, Maggie Silvers, but she was a little late objecting to this line of questioning and the judge told her so.

“I would think so, yes,” said the doctor, after Shauna repeated the question.

We wanted the shooter to be as far away as possible, to show both the bizarre nature of the prosecution’s theory and that it would take a very good shot to hit a victim between the eyes from that distance. The prosecution had an answer for that, of course—First Lieutenant Tom Stoller was a trained shooter in the Army Rangers—but to bring in that
evidence, they had to bring in Tom’s military background. And they didn’t want to do that, especially since we landed a retired colonel on the jury.

Shauna killed another twenty minutes with the doctor and the prosecution redirected with just a few questions. We had scored one simple point, but the jury had seen several close-up, gruesome photos of the murder and heard graphic descriptions of the violent end to Kathy Rubinkowski’s life. When it was all said and done, it was another good witness for the state.

Prosecution 2, Defense 0.

Tori was in the courtroom at the close of the day and caught my eye as I packed up. She was telling me she had something significant.

First, I had to do the customary wrap-up at the end of the court day with Aunt Deidre and Tom. Tom had actually been pretty composed in court today, to my chagrin, as I wanted the jury to see a guy who was clearly suffering from some mental problems. Instead, for some reason, Tom had remained relatively calm and still.

We conferred in the holding room they gave us for post-court discussions. I told them about what we’d found so far with Global Harvest and my talk with the FBI earlier today. “We’re pursuing this with everything we’ve got,” I said. “If there’s something there, hopefully we can come up with it over the next few days.”

Tom seemed like he was listening to me, but he didn’t say anything. For all I knew, he was contemplating his dinner in county lockup tonight. Deidre’s expression could best be described as downcast.

“Remember,” I told them, “this is a circumstantial case. They can’t put Tom at the scene, and they don’t have him firing the weapon.”

“Right,” said Deidre. She’d heard this before but, I’d come to learn, the repetition comforted her. We said our good-byes in the lobby, where Tori awaited me. As always, she wore that long white coat, only this time I didn’t have to fantasize about what it would be like to undress her.

Now was not the time to be thinking with that part of my anatomy. I
needed my brain more. “Whaddaya got for me, kid?” I asked her, trying to give it a platonic feel. It sounded forced. It sounded ridiculous.

“Kid? Now I’m ‘Kid’?”

“Your new nickname.”

“Well, okay, Daddy-O.”

“Nice.”

We made it out of the doors and into the cool air. It felt good.

“So do you want to know what I came up with?” she asked.

“I do.”

She looked at me.

“I found Kathy’s e-mail address,” she said. “And I hacked into it.”

Tori and I went into my office, where she opened her laptop. I thought, under the circumstances, this was a discussion best held in private.

“So this is what you lawyers would call unethical,” said Tori.

“Not to mention inadmissible,” I added. Even if we discovered gold in Kathy Rubinkowski’s e-mail inbox, I wouldn’t be able to use it. On the other hand, if I found something really useful, I could subpoena her e-mails and pretend to discover the e-mail for the first time.

I really should record these thoughts and play them back to myself during a moment of reflection. The rules of ethics in my profession, last I checked, weren’t optional. When did I start treating them that way?

Oh, that’s right—when an innocent man was on the verge of going down for murder.

“So here it is.” Tori showed me the computer screen. “This is Kathy’s personal e-mail, not work.”

“This is her inbox?” I asked.

“Right. As you can see, she’s still getting a few e-mails, a year later. Mostly ads. But the real traffic ends on January thirteenth, when she died.”

We sat next to each other on my couch. She handed me the laptop. I scrolled through the messages she received. Most of them appeared to be sent to friends. Many of them at the top of the screen—the most recent chronologically—revolved around plans to celebrate her twenty-fourth
birthday, which would have been the next day after her death. It hit me at that moment, something palpable in my gut, the sense of loss. This woman didn’t make it to twenty-four. What I was doing, trying to solve this puzzle, wasn’t solely for my client. I owed it to her, too.

“Check out January eighth,” Tori said.

I had to move to the second screen to do so. I pulled up an e-mail dated Friday, January 8, 1:31
P.M.
:

So far, this was tracking with what I knew. It actually laid out what we’d discovered in a concise fashion. She sent this e-mail from work—the “DLMlaw”
e-mail address surely meant Dembrow, Lane, and McCabe—but blind copied her personal e-mail. She was keeping a record of this e-mail for herself.

And the e-mail continued:

“Who’s Tom Rangle?” I asked.

“The head paralegal at the law firm,” Tori said. “Kathy’s boss.”

I read the whole thing a second time. I always miss something when I’m reading fast.

“Jesus, Tori.” I looked at her. “This is the motive, right here.”

I got up from the couch. My left knee screamed at me to slow it down. It was gradually improving but still hurt whenever I breathed. I lapped my office—limped was a better term—and found my football as I ruminated.

“A few days before her murder, Kathy connected the dots,” I said. “Global Harvest bought a company to use as a front to gather two chemicals used to make a bomb—fertilizer and nitromethane. Global Harvest sold the fertilizer but didn’t sell nitromethane. They didn’t want to be too obvious about picking it up as a new product, so they did the next best thing. They purchased another company, SK Tool and Supply, that sells industrial products and had
that
company sell the nitromethane to Summerset. Nobody’s paying attention because it’s not like they’re selling these things to Al Qaeda or something. They’re selling it to a farm, for Christ’s sake. A farm that needs fertilizer to grow wheat and nitromethane, I don’t know, probably for pesticide. Bradley said that was one of its uses, right?”

“So Summerset Farms is the perfect front.”

“Perfect,” I agreed. “We already know from this e-mail that Kathy talked to Bruce McCabe about Summerset Farms being removed from that interrogatory response. So McCabe was on notice that she was suspicious. And by the time this e-mail was sent—what was it, January eighth?—Kathy had put even more pieces together. She probably told McCabe that there was a possible terrorist operation going on.”

“She probably did,” Tori agreed.

“And that connects us to Randall Manning. McCabe could have just told his client that his paralegal was asking questions.”

“And just a few days later, Kathy is murdered,” said Tori. “Just enough time for Manning to hire the Capparellis to kill her.”

We looked at each other. This was it.

Tori said, “But you can’t use this. It’s inadmissible, you said.”

“I can’t tell the judge I hacked into her e-mail, no. But I can subpoena her e-mails and act pleasantly surprised.”

I thought about that. There had to be another way.

“Better yet,” I said, “let’s talk to Tom Rangle.”

Friday, December third. I looked at my watch. We’d gotten a late start for court today, as Judge Nash had to handle a few matters—or, if you prefer, mercilessly berate some lawyers—before we reconvened the trial. I was hoping the delay would give Tori enough time to find Kathy Rubinkowski’s boss, Tom Rangle, and see what we could put together. For the time being, I had to be here at trial, because today was going to be the heart of the prosecution’s case and these were my witnesses.

Thus far, the prosecution had established the murder weapon, plus the victim’s possessions, were found with Tom within an hour after Kathy’s murder. They had proved the obvious, but necessary, fact that the bullet between the eyes was the cause of death. And they had published a number of grisly photos to the jury.

Today, they would present a ballistics expert to match the bullet found in Kathy Rubinkowski’s brain to the Glock 23 found in Tom’s hand. Then they would put on Detective Frank Danilo to testify that Tom Stoller confessed to murder in the interrogation room.

And that was going to be it. They had no eyewitnesses to the shooting. But they probably didn’t need any. Tom was caught with the gun and stolen items. And even if Tom took the stand, he wasn’t going to deny shooting her. He was going to say he didn’t remember.