Betrayal (26 page)

Mills looked up at the clock, which read four forty-five. She could probably get in a question or two about whether or not Scholler’s “Goddamned right” had sounded coherent or not to the lieutenant, but in the end she decided that this would only serve to underscore Washburn’s thrust—that nothing Evan said that day meant much of anything. Even “Goddamned right,” which she had worked so hard to get in. It was what he’d said, and she had no doubt what it had meant—it was tantamount to an admission that he’d killed Nolan and Washburn knew it. But whether or not the jurors would come to see it that way was anyone’s guess. She was going to have to trust that they would use their common sense.

All she wanted at the moment was to put this day behind her. She’d get another hack at Washburn tomorrow, and she had the cards—Evan Scholler was guilty and the jury was going to see it and that was all there was to it. Raising her eyes to the judge, she felt the urge to smile begin at the corners of her mouth. She looked over to the jury, to Washburn, back up to the judge. “No questions,” she said.

Tollson brought down his gavel. “Court’s adjourned until nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

F
RED
S
PINOZA WAS
a far cry from being a hostile prosecution witness.

In fact, he felt seriously abused that someone who worked for his department, played on his bowling team, got his help finding the address of the house he was planning to break into, where he would then commit murder, and had even come to his own home and played the war hero with his children…

Every time Spinoza thought about it, it roiled his guts. He believed that there was a special section in hell reserved for someone who could have done that to his kids.

Never mind what Evan Scholler did to Ron Nolan.

Resplendent in his dark blue uniform, Spinoza settled himself into the chair hard by the judge’s platform. He’d put in a lot of time on the witness stand in his career, and rarely had he looked forward to the experience more than today. Now here came Mary Patricia Whelan-Miille up from her table in the packed courtroom, to a space about midway between him and the jury.

Mills and he had shared drinks on several occasions, once they’d gotten to know each other over this case. There had been a short time in the first weeks when he thought she might be coming on to him, but though he found her quite attractive, he loved Leesa and had made that clear enough to Mills that, if she was in fact trolling, she chose to back off.

But some chemistry, he knew, still sparked between them.

He knew that this would play well for a jury—it was just another one of those intangibles that sometimes came into play during a trial. A major People’s witness and an assistant DA working in understated sync could bring a sense of rightness, of unassailable conviction, to a prosecution case.

Mills seemed rested and confident as she nodded to the jurors, then smiled at her witness as though she meant it. “Lieutenant Spinoza, what is your position with the police department?”

“I’m the head of the homicide detail.”

After she went over the details of his service, she got down to it. “Defendant was a patrolman, was he not, Lieutenant?”

“Yes. He’d been a patrolman working a regular beat before he went overseas, and when he came back, he went back to his former position.”

“How was it, then, that you came to know him?”

Spinoza shot half a grin at the jury, then shrugged. What was he going to do? It was the truth. “He was on my bowling team.”

“Can you tell the Court, please, Lieutenant, about the first time you ran across a connection between Defendant and the victim in this case, Ron Nolan?”

“Yes. I was in the office on a weekend. The Khalil murders had just taken place, so I was working overtime. I happened to run across the defendant at one of the computers, and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he was trying to locate the address of a drug dealer.”

“Did you ask him the name of that drug dealer?”

“Yes. He told me it was Ron Nolan.”

“Is that against department policy?”

“Well, it’s a gray area. Of course, police are not allowed to use computers for personal reasons. He could use the computer to follow up on a narcotics tip, although, strictly speaking, he should have referred the whole thing to vice.”

“How about using the computer to locate a romantic rival?”

“That would not only be against policy, but completely illegal. If he were caught doing that, he could expect to be fired and probably prosecuted.”

“So Defendant’s use of the computer in this case was illegal?”

“As it turns out, yes.”

“And yet you helped him?”

In his prep work with Mills, they had both acknowledged that this would be an uncomfortable moment that they needed to address head-on. “Of course, I didn’t know the real reason he was using the computer at that time, but yes. He told me he was tracking a drug dealer and I believed him.”

“So in what way did you assist him?”

Spinoza looked at the jury, spoke directly to them. “Well, I knew that he’d have to know how to work the system if he ever did need to find an address from a license plate. I suppose you could say I viewed it as more or less a casual thing, a training opportunity.”

“Did Defendant tell you why he wanted to find Mr. Nolan’s address?”

“Yes. But I thought his reason…I thought he was making a joke.” This was an important clarification that Mills had wanted him to make sure he got in, since it served to underscore both Evan Scholler’s arrogance and his premeditation.

“Nevertheless, what was the reason he gave you?”

“He said he wanted to hunt down Mr. Nolan and kill him.”

A shimmer of reaction echoed through the courtroom, serious enough that Tollson dropped his gavel a couple of times.

Mills let the murmur die down and then resumed her questioning. “Did Defendant mention this killing of his rival any other times?”

“Yes.”

“And where was that?”

Spinoza turned in the witness chair to face the jury again. “At my house. After work.”

“Was this a usual occurrence, a patrolman coming to your home outside of work hours?”

“No. It was decidedly unusual.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, we got ourselves some coffee and went outside and since it was something we’d joked about before, I asked him if he’d killed his dope dealer yet.”

“And what was his answer to that?”

“He said he hadn’t because Mr. Nolan was out of town.”

“And yet you still considered this a joke?”

“Maybe not a funny joke, but it’s the way we cops often talk to each other. It still never in a million years occurred to me that he was actually planning—”

Washburn was on his feet, not letting him finish. “Objection!”

Not missing a beat, Tollson nodded. “Sustained. Confine your answers to the questions, please, Lieutenant. Go ahead, Counsel.”

Mills nodded, satisfied, and apparently ready to begin the next line of questioning they’d rehearsed, which was the aftermath of the murder itself, the FBI’s involvement, and Scholler’s arrest. But then, suddenly, she paused, threw a last glance at the jury, and must have seen something she liked, because her next words were, “Thank you, Lieutenant.” And then to Washburn, “Your witness.”

Spinoza knew Washburn well. As head of homicide in Redwood City, he’d sparred with the veteran attorney many times before, and he was particularly looking forward to it today. Confident that even a master like Washburn wouldn’t be able to put a different spin on the events about which he’d just testified, Spinoza was settling himself in, getting psyched for a cross-examination he thought he’d actually enjoy, when Washburn lifted his head, shook it, and said to Tollson, “I have no questions for this witness.”

“S
PECIAL
A
GENT
R
IGGIO,”
Mills began with the next witness, “how did the FBI get involved in the Khalil case?”

Marcia Riggio had short, cropped dark hair. She wore a navy-blue suit that would not have looked out of place on a man. But the severe look was mitigated by a tan open-necked blouse of some soft and shimmery material, as well as by a plain gold chain necklace. She sat upright in the witness chair, her hands folded in her lap, and spoke with a formal and flat inflection. “Many witnesses at the scene reported hearing an explosion, which the arson inspectors concluded was consistent both with the damage to the bedroom and with the cause of the ensuing fire. Mr. Khalil and his wife were both naturalized citizens from Iraq, and so because of a possible terrorist angle, local officials deemed it prudent to contact Homeland Security, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaccco and Firearms, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Subsequently, analysis of the shrapnel from the explosion revealed that the blast was caused by a device called a fragmentation grenade, probably of domestic manufacture, the possession of which is against federal law. Effectively, the FBI took jurisdiction of this case, although we of course shared our findings with local police.”

“And what were your findings?”

“Very little in the first few days. Besides the fragmentation grenade, we discovered that both victims had been shot before the explosion, with nine-millimeter caliber bullets which, when we found them, were too badly formed for comparison to a firearm. We interviewed several family members, of course, in the wake of the attack, and were beginning to process that information when my partner, Jacob Freed, and I received an envelope in the mail that contained a computer diskette with a photograph file that focused our attention in a different direction. Among the pictures in that file were photographs of the Khalils’ home taken from several angles, with a handwritten note that the pictures had been downloaded from a computer belonging to a Mr. Ron Nolan. Subsequently, Mr. Freed obtained Mr. Nolan’s telephone number and left him a message that we would like to have a discussion with him on a matter that might involve national security. There was no mention of the Khalils, or of the photograph.”

“Did you in fact interview Mr. Nolan?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

Washburn was on his feet. “Objection. Hearsay.”

Tollson looked at Mills. “Counsel?”

“You’ve already ruled on this, Your Honor,” Mills said. “When Mr. Nolan’s accusations to the FBI are repeated to Mr. Scholler, they give Mr. Scholler yet another motive to kill him.”

Tollson looked over to Washburn. “She’s right, Counsel. We did talk about this, and it’s coming in. Objection overruled.”

She went on in the same vein, meticulous as to every detail and nuance. Nolan’s call to the FBI, his theory that his romantic rival, the defendant, might have broken into his house, his discovery of the frag grenades and 9mm Beretta weapon in his closet, the record of computer usage while he’d been away; then, following up on Nolan’s theory, the FBI’s discovery a day later of the defendant’s fingerprints on the computer diskette. Finally, she came to an end.

“Trying to get the timeline correct, do you recall the day or date that you made the discovery about Defendant’s fingerprints on the diskette?”

“Yes. Both. It was Thursday, June fourth.”

Mills waited for more of a reply until she realized that Special Agent Riggio had answered her question and didn’t need to deliver a speech about it. “And after you had that information, did you try to contact Defendant?”

“Yes, we did. We attempted to reach him through his job as a police officer in Redwood City, but he had not come into work that morning.”

“Had he called in sick?”

“No.”

“All right. Where did you try next?”

“We called him at his home, but there was no answer there. So we left a message on his answering machine.”

“Did he ever answer that message?”

“No, he did not.”

“Were you planning to place Defendant under arrest at that time?”

“No. At that time, we wanted to question him.”

“Did you stake out his apartment?”

“No. We had no reason to suspect that he was avoiding us. We thought it likely that he would either call us or we would otherwise locate him in a day or so.”

“Did you attempt to locate Mr. Nolan during this time?”

“No. He said he would call us if he got any more information. Beyond that, we had no reason to try and contact him during this period.”

“So what did you do next?”

“We ran the fingerprints we’d picked up in Mr. Nolan’s townhouse and determined that he had been correct. The Defendant had been in his house. Further, the defendant’s prints were on the Beretta that was in Mr. Nolan’s backpack.”

“Did you find his prints on the fragmentation grenades?”

“No. They have a rough surface and did not contain usable fingerprints.”

“But the Beretta with Defendant’s prints was in the backpack with the fragmentation grenades, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“And could you tell if that gun had been fired recently?”

“We could only say that it had not been fired after its last cleaning. But we have no way to tell when it had last been cleaned.”

Mills, in a rhythm, kept it going. “Was the gun loaded?”

“Yes. There was a full magazine and a round in the chamber.”

Mills knew she had covered a lot of ground with Riggio, who was in many ways the ideal witness, an uninflected, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of presence. But she still had a ways to go. “Special Agent Riggio, how did you discover that Mr. Nolan had been killed?”

S
PINOZA AND
R
IGGIO
ate up the whole morning, and court didn’t resume until nearly two o’clock in the afternoon.

Washburn, who’d remained silent throughout the lengthy direct, showed little of the enthusiasm he’d displayed the day before as he slowly rose from his chair and advanced to make his cross. “Special Agent Riggio,” he began sonorously, “you’ve testified that in the immediate aftermath of the Khalils’ shootings, you interviewed several family members. What did you talk to them about?”

“We had the usual preliminary interviews following this kind of event.”

“And what are these interviews comprised of?”

“Developing knowledge of the relationships between the family members and the deceased, as well as business, personal, political, or any other issues that might throw light on the investigation of the crime.”

“How many of these interviews did you have?”

Mills spoke from behind him. “Objection. Relevance.”

“Sustained.”

Washburn couldn’t entirely camouflage a disappointed grimace. “The Khalils have widespread business interests, do they not?”

Again: “Objection. Irrelevant.”

This time Washburn replied. “Not at all, Your Honor. The People, while never charging Mr. Scholler with the murder of the Khalils, are attempting to insinuate without proof that he was somehow involved in their deaths. I’m wondering if Special Agent Riggio had interviewed anyone among Mr. Khalil’s vast business interests who had any connection to Mr. Scholler.”

“All right. Overruled. You may answer that question.”