Authors: Phillip Margolin
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective
If Harvey Grant was telling him the truth, the world he thought he knew was being manipulated by a cadre of people who believed themselves to be above the law, people who would kill without compunction to achieve their ends and who were commanding him to kill.
Going to the police or another DA was out of the question. If Harvey Grant, the presiding judge and one of the most powerful people in the state, was involved with this group, then anyone could be in it.
What about the FBI? He could contact someone in Washington, D.C., but what would he say? The story sounded insane. And the judge had those photographs, which would completely discredit him.
There was suicide, of course. Kerrigan wiped his eyes. We all die. Why not go now and save himself this pain? He’d made a mess of his life, so why not end it? The idea of escaping to the peace of death was tempting.
Then Kerrigan thought about some of the things that Grant had told him. The judge was certain that he could kill Bennett with impunity. If he did do this one terrible thing, his immediate problems would be solved and his future could be something he had never even dreamed about. At first, the suggestion that he could become a president of the United States seemed preposterous, but it did not seem so ridiculous when he examined the idea objectively.
Winning an election to the Senate was easy to imagine. He looked like a senator, he was famous and popular throughout the state. And once he was a United States senator, it was easy to imagine himself as president. Any senator was in a position to try for the highest office.
Kerrigan remembered how excited Cindy was about the prospect of his running for Travis’s seat. Megan would know that her father was someone very important. So many doors would open for her. He might even win the respect of his father.
Kerrigan no longer felt the cold. He was no longer aware of where he was. It was as if he was on the border of a world far different from the one he had known his whole life. One step and he would be over that border and in a new world without limits, where he could do anything he wanted to do without fear.
The judge was right about so much he’d said. Ally Bennett was a whore—a whore with the power to ruin his life. And how was she using her power? She wanted Tim to set free an unrepentant killer. There was no way that Tim could do what she wanted anyway. That meant that Ally Bennett was going to destroy his life and make his lovely, innocent daughter go through her life carrying the burden of her father’s shame.
Kerrigan looked up. The stars no longer wavered, his sight was sharper, and his mind was clearer. No longer was he asking himself if he
should
kill Ally Bennett. He was contemplating a new question:
Could
he kill Ally Bennett?
Dodson was certain that he had not reviewed Amanda’s file since their last appointment, which was when he’d written the note. Amanda had come to see him on Friday. Was it possible that the paper had lain unseen under his desk all day? That had to be what happened because the only other explanation would involve someone breaking into his office.
“Gee, we only keep records for twenty-five years. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have them.”
“Even in a homicide case?”
“Oh, that’s different. Those we don’t destroy, because there’s no statute of limitations.”
“So, I can get them?”
“You might be able to, but I couldn’t give them to you. Those reports are in a locked cabinet in a locked room. The only people who can get them are Records techs.”
“Can I talk to one of them?” Amanda asked.
“You could, but they won’t give you the reports. They have to be authorized to get them.”
“Who can do that?”
“The detectives who handled the case.”
“They’re probably retired, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“Any homicide detective can authorize the request if the original detective isn’t available.”
“Thanks.”
Amanda dialed Homicide and asked for Sean McCarthy.
“How’s my favorite mouthpiece?” McCarthy asked.
“Hanging in there.”
“Is this call about Mr. Dupre?”
“Sherlock Holmes has nothing on you, Sean.”
McCarthy laughed. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to get my hands on some police reports from the early nineteen seventies. Records won’t give them to me without the authorization of the detective who worked the case or, if he’s not available, another homicide detective.”
“Are the reports connected to Dupre’s case?”
“They might be. I have to read them to be certain.”
“What do you think you’ll find?”
“I’d rather not say until I’m certain I’m going to use them.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
“I’ll just file a discovery motion. Why make me go through that?”
“Kerrigan is running this case. He’s the one you should talk to. If he tells me it’s okay to authorize the release, I’ll make sure you get the reports, but I’m going to let him make the decision.”
Amanda had hoped that Sean would give her the reports without asking for her reason for wanting them, but she had expected him to refuse. Nothing was ever easy.
When Kerrigan arrived at his office on Monday, he was exhausted from lack of sleep. One of the few tasks he could handle was reviewing his mail. There was a report from the crime lab on the old blood that had been discovered in Harold Travis’s A-frame. The blood was the same type as Lori Andrews’s blood. DNA testing would show conclusively whether or not the dead call girl had bled in the senator’s cabin. If it turned out that Senator Travis had murdered the escort during rough sex, it would be unethical for Tim to use evidence of Andrews’s murder to convince a jury that Dupre had killed her. It also made no sense from the standpoint of strategy to argue that Dupre had killed Travis to avenge Andrews. That would only create sympathy for Dupre and make the jurors hate Travis. Kerrigan was still trying to decide what to do with the evidence of the senator’s perversion, when his intercom buzzed.
“Amanda Jaffe is here to see you,” the receptionist said. Tim was in no mood to talk to Jon Dupre’s attorney but it would look odd if he refused to see her, and it was essential that he act naturally now that he had made his decision.
“Amanda,” Kerrigan said as soon as she was shown in, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Tim was usually neat and well dressed. Today, his eyes were glassy and there were dark circles under them. His hair looked like he’d run a comb through it without concern for the results, and the top of his white shirt showed because the knot in his tie had not been pulled tight. Amanda also noticed an uncharacteristic quaver in his voice.
“I heard that you weren’t busy enough,” she joked to conceal her surprise, “and I don’t want you to get laid off, so I brought you something to do.”
Kerrigan forced a laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
Amanda handed him a motion for discovery that she’d worked on as soon as she’d finished talking to Sean McCarthy. Kerrigan thumbed through it. There was a general request for discovery of all evidence uncovered in the investigation that would tend to prove that Jon Dupre was innocent. Kerrigan wondered if he had a statutory or constitutional duty to disclose the lab report to Amanda. Did it exculpate? Finding Lori Andrews’s blood in Travis’s cabin would be evidence Amanda Jaffe could use to argue that Dupre did not murder Lori Andrews, but did it have any tendency to disprove the cases against Dupre for the Travis and Hayes murders?
Under the general request was a series of specific requests, which he skimmed because he was anxious to be by himself. His eye passed down the list and was almost to the bottom when something in the middle of the demands made him go back. Amanda was requesting production of a set of police reports from the 1970s. Kerrigan was tempted to ask Amanda how they could possibly be relevant to Dupre’s case, but he held his tongue.
“I’ll review your motions and get back to you if there’s a problem.”
“Great.” Amanda looked closely at Kerrigan. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I think I might be coming down with something,” he answered, faking a smile.
As soon as Amanda left, Kerrigan buzzed Maria Lopez and asked her to come to his office. When she walked in, he handed her Amanda’s motions.
“Amanda Jaffe filed these. I have two assignments for you. One is going to upset you a little.”
Maria looked puzzled.
“Jon Dupre may not be responsible for the murder of Lori Andrews,” Kerrigan said.
“Then who . . .?”
“Senator Travis had a penchant for rough sex and he’d been with Lori Andrews. We also found Lori Andrews’s blood in Travis’s cabin.”
Kerrigan briefed Maria on the lab report. “And there’s more,” he continued. “Carl Rittenhouse was Senator Travis’s administrative assistant. He told me that he brought Lori Andrews to the cabin where Travis was murdered, a few months ago. Then he told me about an incident in D.C. where it appeared that Travis had beaten up a woman.”
“Travis might have beaten up Lori, but that doesn’t clear Dupre,” Maria insisted. “Dupre could have murdered her to keep her from testifying after Travis beat her at the cabin.”
“That’s a theory,” Kerrigan agreed. “What I need to know is whether we have a legal obligation to disclose to Jaffe the information we have about Andrews’s death.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“There’s something else. Amanda wants all the police reports of a 1970 shootout at a drug house in North Portland and a drug killing from 1972.”
“Why does she want that?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me. Get the reports and tell me why they bear on this case. If Amanda wants them, there’s got to be something in them that will cause us trouble.”
“I pulled the file on Michael Israel,” Grace said after they got the small talk out of the way. “Norman Katz did the autopsy, but he’s not with the office anymore.”
“Did Dr. Katz conclude that Israel committed suicide?”
“That’s the official finding.”
Kate heard the hesitation in the ME’s voice. “You don’t concur?”
“It would probably be my finding, too, but there are a couple of anomalies. Not enough to challenge Norm’s conclusion,” Dr. Grace said quickly, “but, on the phone, you did ask me to see if there was any way that Israel’s death could have been a homicide, so I looked at everything from that angle.”
“What did you find?”
“Two things. First, Israel had six hundred nanograms per milliliter of temazepam in his blood. Restoril is the trade name. It’s like Valium, and the usual therapeutic level would be somewhere between one-hundred-ninety and five-hundred-seven nanograms per milliliter, so the level is high.”
“Could someone have drugged Israel and faked the suicide?” Kate asked.
“It’s possible, but taking a sedative makes sense if Israel was going to commit suicide. He might have needed to calm himself to get up the courage to do the deed. Now six hundred nanograms per milliliter is high, but it’s not so high that it suggests that someone drugged him. He could have just taken too much.”
“Okay. You said two things bothered you. Give me the rest of it.”
Dr. Grace showed Kate a color photograph of the crime scene. Israel’s upper body lay on a green desk blotter stained red by the blood that had pooled under his head. Grace pointed to a raw red spot on Israel’s temple.
“That’s the entry wound. Do you see the black halo of gunshot residue that surrounds it?”
Kate nodded. The residue looked like a perfect circle that had been drawn with a compass.
“When a person commits suicide by gunshot, they usually eat the gun or shoot themselves in the temple. With a temple shot, the victim is going to screw the barrel into his skin, so I would expect to find a tight contact wound, not this circle of gunpowder. Israel’s wound was a near contact, which means that the gun barrel was not touching his temple when it went off. Six hundred nanograms per milliliter of temazepam might not have been enough to put out Israel completely. If it did put him under, the dose is light enough so he could have awakened. If Israel was drugged first and someone put the gun in Israel’s hand and held it next to his temple, he could have flinched and that could account for the near-contact wound.
“Of course, this is pure theory. Israel might have flinched anyway before he pulled the trigger.”
“You’re sure he shot himself?”
“I’m sure he was holding the gun when it went off.”
Grace pointed to Israel’s right hand in the crime scene picture. A layer of soot peppered Israel’s thumb and index finger and the webbing between them.
“That’s gunshot residue on his hand, which you’d expect to find if he was holding the gun when it was fired.”
Kate took a moment to digest what she’d been told.
“If you had to bet—suicide or homicide—where would you put your money?”
Dr. Grace tossed Kate a copy of the suicide note that she’d found in the file.
The note said:
Pamela Hutchinson was carrying my baby. When I refused to marry her she threatened to expose me. I shot her with the gun I am using to take my life. I made the murder look like a mugging gone wrong. No one suspected me, but I have never been able to forget what I did and I can no longer live with my guilt. Maybe God will forgive me.
“What do you think?” Grace asked when Kate had read it.
“The note is pretty formal. I’d expect something a little more emotional. But . . .” Kate hesitated then answered: “Suicide.”
“Me too. And it would take very clear evidence to make me change my mind. What made you look into this after all these years?”
“A fairy tale, Sally. A fairy tale.”