Defense for the Devil (35 page)

“On August twenty-sixth you learned that a large sum of money might be involved in the case. Did that make you consider a possible different motive for the murder?”

“No.”

“Then, on September second, you learned that two unknown men had left fingerprints in Ray Arno’s house. Did that make you reconsider his story about possible intruders, and about his father’s statement that his house had been broken into as well?”

“No.”

“At any time from the moment you entered the case until the present did you consider an alternative suspect?”

“We considered all those other things and decided they were not relevant.”

She nodded. “So your attention was focused on Ray Arno from the start, and you did not allow yourself to become distracted by anything that might conflict with your first assessment. Is that correct?”

He said no, it was not. He was angry now, but still controlling it. “There are always false trails that have to be looked into, false leads, and we investigated them all.”

“But not to the extent of obtaining a sworn deposition from Mr. Palmer, or examining the Lexus in person. Did you ask the Corvallis police to make a thorough search of the automobile?”

“No. They reported that they had looked it over. I didn’t see any need to do anything else about it.”

“Do you know who collected the Lexus after it was repaired?”

“No. The car wasn’t part of my case.”

“I see.” She went to her table and picked up a photograph of the shallow grave near the cabin. It was one of the first pictures that had been taken, and showed the grave and one foot exposed quite clearly. She asked him if he recalled it. He said yes.

“Did you find any evidence of an animal? Any footprints or droppings, anything of that sort?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yet in your report you stated that it was obviously the work of an animal. Why did you conclude that, Lieutenant?”

“In my experience,” he said coldly, “I’ve found that that’s what an animal would do. It smells blood and digs for it.”

“Then why didn’t it dig in the area where there was a great deal of blood? That’s the right foot exposed, isn’t it? Wasn’t the only blood from the head wound, and a trace amount on the left heel?”

Roxbury objected that she was piling on questions and not giving the witness a chance to respond. Judge Waldman sustained the objection.

Barbara didn’t belabor the point, but moved on to the name scrawled in blood inside the cabin. She produced the photograph and showed it to the lieutenant. “Did you have an enlargement made of this picture in order to study it more thoroughly?”

He had not done that.

“I did,” Barbara said. She found the enlargement on her table and showed it to him, then to the judge and Roxbury, and had it admitted. “Lieutenant Washburn, those letters were scratched into dried blood, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know how dry it was,” he said. “We know it was not flowing any longer.”

She pointed out the flaking and cracking, and the fact that the blood had not flowed back into any of the markings, and he admitted that it had been dry when the letters were written.

“Yes,” she said. “Further, whatever was used to write those letters made scratches in the wood floor, didn’t it?”

He said yes, the floor had been marked.

“Would that have been a metal object? A nail or a key, possibly the point of a knife, something like that?”

“I don’t know what was used.”

“Did you find a nail or key, or even a sharp stick, with blood on it?”

“No.”

“Would it have taken a bit of strength to scratch through the dry blood hard enough to mark the flooring?”

“Not much,” he said. “The cedar’s old and soft.”

“Would a man with a broken arm and broken fingers on his other hand have been able to do it, in your opinion?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Would a dead man with a broken arm and broken fingers have been able to do it?” she asked scathingly.

He tightened his lips and Roxbury objected stridently. Judge Waldman frowned at Barbara and told her to rephrase her question.

“You heard the testimony that the head wound was the only wound to produce blood, and that the head wound was instantly fatal, that the brain stem had been broken, his skull crushed. He had no awareness, no cognitive function; he was dead. Are you telling us it is your opinion that he survived long enough for the blood to dry first, and then he scrawled his name in it with a sharp object that then disappeared?”

“That’s how it must have happened,” he said darkly.

She shook her head. “You mean that’s how it had to have happened for your scenario to work, don’t you?”

“Objection! She’s arguing with the witness.”

Very coldly Barbara said to Washburn, “You gave three possible reasons for burning the deceased’s hands after he was dead. You said, first, to mutilate the body. Was the deceased’s face marked, his nose broken, teeth knocked out, anything like that?”

“No. His face was untouched, except where it came in contact with the floor.”

“Were there any other signs of mutilation on his body, not connected with the beating he received?”

“No.”

“All right. Then you said possibly it was to torture him. Are you still of that opinion? That you can torture a dead man?”

“The killer might not have known he was dead at that point,” he said.

“With his head crushed in as it was?” she said incredulously. “All right. Then you suggested that the killer might have wanted to burn down the cabin, hide the evidence of the crime through arson. With all the incendiary material around the cabin, would anyone have tried to burn it down in that grisly fashion?”

“Nobody sane would,” he said harshly.

“I agree. Lieutenant Washburn, did you consider a fourth possible reason for burning his hands? That the killers might have wanted to obliterate his fingerprints?”

He shook his head. “No. That didn’t seem reasonable.”

“Did you consider a possible reason for sparing Mitchell Arno’s face, his mouth and nose? That someone might have wanted information from him?”

“No.”

When Barbara was finished, Roxbury had Washburn restate that they had investigated the business that had brought Mitchell Arno to Oregon, and they had concluded that there was no connection between that and his murder. Everything to the contrary was simple speculation.

Then Roxbury said, “Lieutenant Washburn, you’ve had many years of experience in police work. During those years do you recall instances when the perpetrators of crimes left incriminating evidence behind in a way that looked as if they did it on purpose in order to be apprehended?”

“They do it more often than people suspect,” Washburn said. “Either consciously or unconsciously.”

Barbara objected. “This is really getting into the area of abstract speculation,” she said. “Philosophy 101.”

“I agree,” Waldman said. “Sustained. Move on, Mr. Roxbury.”

“Would you find it surprising if the perpetrator and not the victim had scratched those letters, that name, in the blood in the cabin?” Roxbury asked, with a sly glance at Barbara, as if awaiting her objection, now that his point had been made.

Since his point was exactly the one she intended to come back to, she held her peace.

“I would not find that surprising at all,” Washburn said.

After Washburn was dismissed, there was a brief recess, and then the last state witness to be recalled came forward. He was a police officer from Corvallis. His testimony had been brief and not very
informative earlier. Today he looked a little nervous, as if he was afraid he had been found negligent somehow.

She smiled reassuringly at him. “Officer Trent,” she said, “I have just a few questions for you. Do you recall the incident of the wrecked Lexus and the subsequent events?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You testified that you went to the garage to inspect the car, and you found the title transfer in the glove compartment. Was the glove compartment locked?”

“Yes, ma’am. The officers who found the car said it was locked up, so I took a locksmith with me, and he got it open.”

“You testified that you then called Mr. Palmer in New York. Did you reach him?”

“I left a message on an answering machine, and he called me back in fifteen minutes, at seven-thirty our time. Ten-thirty his time. He told me the car was supposed to go up to Washington State somewhere, and he wanted to know about the driver, if he was okay. He said his lawyer, Mr. Trassi, would come around to take possession of the car.”

“When the car was in the possession of the police, did you make a thorough search of it?”

He looked puzzled, then shook his head. “No, ma’am. We looked in the trunk, just to make sure it wasn’t carrying something illegal. After I talked to Mr. Palmer, it seemed like it was a legitimate delivery arrangement. No one had been hurt, and the guy who had driven it must have walked away after he ran into a tree. No one filed a complaint and it didn’t seem like police business, more like insurance business.”

“All right. When Mr. Trassi arrived, did you go with him to inspect the car?”

“Yes, I did. I had to make sure it was the right car, and he didn’t know the town, so I went with him.”

“Was the car locked when you went with Mr. Trassi to inspect it?”

“Yes, ma’am. We couldn’t get inside, but he said it was the right car, and he had the license number and some papers that Mr. Palmer had faxed to him. I was satisfied that the Palmer Company was the owner, and he was their lawyer.”

“But Mr. Trassi didn’t have a key for it, is that right?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Where was the car at that time, Officer Trent?”

“In a lot we use up in Corvallis, the back lot of a mechanic’s shop. Mr. Trassi said he would have the car towed to a repair shop, and I told him it was in the best one in town, and he decided to let them fix it there.” He added, “Besides, nothing was open anyway, it being on a Saturday. That’s when he said he’d just leave it where it was. He didn’t want to hang around and see to having it towed on Monday.”

“Could the car be driven at that point?”

“No, ma’am. Looked like the left front wheel was bent, and the radiator was leaking pretty bad, and the left headlight had to be replaced. They had to order parts.”

“But the damage was all to the exterior, is that right?”

It was clear that he was puzzled by her questions, but he answered readily. “As far as I could tell, the inside was in near perfect shape, except the radio and CD player were gone.”

“Thank you, Officer Trent,” she said then. “No more questions.”

He was surprised and evidently relieved. Roxbury had no questions, and Officer Trent was dismissed.

Judge Waldman told the jurors again not to read about the case or watch television news concerning it, not to talk about it, and then she wished them all a Merry Christmas, and announced the court would recess until December twenty-sixth.

33

“What I thought
we might do tomorrow,” Frank said in the kitchen, preparing dinner, “is put up a tree and decorate it. Those damn-fool cats are old enough now to leave the ornaments alone, I hope.” Last year, as kittens, they had undecorated the tree repeatedly and joyously.

“We should put our tree up,” Barbara said. John had bought a tree, which was standing in a bucket of water in the storage space under their stairs.

“Is it really true that criminals, perps,” Shelley asked, “often leave really incriminating evidence behind?”

“You bet,” Frank said, slicing a beef filet into strips. “This guy goes into the bank and passes a note to the teller, the usual thing—I have a gun, give me money. She gives it to him and then gives the note to the police. It’s on the back of one of his own deposit slips.”

“Another guy goes into a jewelry store,” Bailey said then, “and while he’s waiting for another customer to get finished and skedaddle, he’s playing with his car keys like there’s nothing on his mind. So he takes a bag full of diamonds and stuff out and leaves the keys on the counter. Then the poor sucker goes back for them, and the clerk says he has to go to lost and found, and he walks to the back of the store and into the arms of the cops. True,” he added.

They were all laughing by the time Frank told another story. “A guy bashed his wife in the head and put her behind the wheel of the family car and pushed it off a cliff, perfect accident. Except he took pictures of the whole thing and turned in the film to a local processing company to have it developed.”

No one drank much of the wine; Barbara had several hours of work ahead, and so did Shelley, and Bailey was antsy about Palmer in his motel in Vancouver. He hadn’t asked again if she still planned to subpoena him if he entered the state, and she still hadn’t made up her mind. That was something they had to discuss after dinner.

After they finished eating, John volunteered for kitchen duty. “You all have to have your conference,” he said. “I’ll clean up.”

Barbara suppressed a smile at the “you all.” Every once in a while his Southern roots poked through, not often, but when he addressed a group, there it was, not slurred as one word exactly, but close enough to betray his origins.

He began to busy himself in the working part of the kitchen, and Bailey asked bluntly, “What do you want us to do about Palmer?”

“What do you think, Dad?” Barbara asked.

“Heilbronner’s a good man,” he said. “I don’t think he’d steer you wrong. The real problem that I see
is if you implicate Palmer without enough to make it stick, he will squirm free, and he might drag Trassi out with him. A confused jury is not a pretty sight when you’ve got a defendant depending on you.” He paused, and she waited. “As of today,” he continued, “you’ve probably got Ray off the hook, but the question is, if you try to go too far, will the jury decide you’re throwing dust in their eyes? Palmer might be that kind of distraction for them.”

Barbara nodded slowly. She turned to Shelley, whose eyes had grown very round as she listened to Frank.

“Do you think Ray’s really off the hook?” Shelley asked.

Frank answered, “She laid the foundation today for serious doubt in their minds, and she’ll build on that foundation day by day. Reasonable doubt, remember, is all it takes, and what she’s giving them and will keep giving them is a tad more than just reasonable doubt. It would be a mistake to undo that doubt, maybe, by trying to do too much.”