Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (43 page)

‘Judge Giotti,’ he began, ‘you were good friends with Sal Russo, weren’t you?’

A nod, genial. ‘I’d known him for years, although we didn’t socialize much anymore. We were close acquaintances.’

‘And as his close acquaintance, did you see him often?’

Giotti considered this. ‘As I said, almost every Friday I’d pick up some fish when I wasn’t traveling. Once or twice I’d gone up to his apartment and had a drink with him. End of the day, end of the week.’

‘On your visits to Sal’s apartment for drinks, did he sit in his recliner?’

‘Sure. Yes.’ Then Giotti threw him a bone. ‘Sometimes.’

‘But not always?’

‘No.’

‘Where did he sit other times?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma spoke quietly, reluctant to intrude upon Giotti’s testimony. ‘This is irrelevant.’

But Salter didn’t think so. ‘Overruled.’

Hardy repeated his question about where Sal sat. ‘He’d sit anywhere,’ Giotti said. ‘Sal was a free spirit. He’d sit on the coffee table, on the recliner, the couch, the floor. He’d move around.’

‘So he could have been sitting on the floor when he received this injection and—’

‘Objection!’ This was Drysdale, citing speculation, and this time Salter sustained him.

Hardy turned back to his table, and Freeman was surreptitiously motioning him over, so he pretended he was getting a drink of water. ‘What?’

Armed with Freeman’s quick advice and the photograph, he returned to the witness. ‘Judge Giotti,’ he said, ‘looking here at People’s One, is the reclining chair in a reclining position?’

Freeman, of course, had spotted that it wasn’t. In the picture it appeared to be straight up, and Giotti said as much. ‘Now, to the best of your recollection, was it like this when you entered the room?’

Giotti closed his eyes again briefly. ‘I’d say yes. I don’t remember it being down. I would have had to push it up to walk around it, and I didn’t do that.’

This was good enough and Hardy would take it. He could later argue that Sal’s body had simply either fallen out of its chair or, better, that he’d been seated on the floor when the injection was given. In all, he was heartened. Giotti had helped him. The jury would at least have some possible alternatives to consider. He considered it was time to move to the other point he’d originally intended to bring up.

‘Judge Giotti, you’ve testified that you were aware that Sal was sick. Did you know he had Alzheimer’s disease?’

‘Not for sure, no.’

‘Did you know he had cancer?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma was behind Hardy, objecting, his voice developing its telltale shrillness. ‘I fail to see relevance.’

And of course, in a legal sense, there wasn’t much. But Hardy felt he had to get some human feeling for Sal’s pain into the proceedings. He had a sense Giotti would cooperate.

First, though, Salter had to be gotten around. And the trial judge seemed to agree with Soma; Hardy’s questions were irrelevant and unnecessary. But Giotti’s authority cut both ways in the courtroom, and when he looked up at Salter and told him he didn’t mind answering — though this was beside the point — Salter acquiesced and overruled the objection.

Giotti turned back to Hardy. ‘The headaches were evidently pretty horrible. Sal told me’ — now Giotti looked over to the jury, speaking to them — ‘half kidding, but you knew he meant it, that if I didn’t see him for a few days, I should check his apartment. He might be dead. If he didn’t die from the pain, he might just kill himself.’

‘And is that why you did just that on May ninth? Stop by his apartment?’

‘Essentially, yes. I think he’d planted that seed.’

Hardy nodded, pleased that he’d gotten it in. ‘He knew he was going to die soon, is that what you’re saying?’

Drysdale: ‘Objection, speculation.’

‘Sustained.’

Hardy: ‘I’ll rephrase, Your Honor. Judge Giotti, did Sal Russo ever seriously tell you he thought he was near death?’

Drysdale again: ‘Objection.’

But Salter overruled this one, and Giotti nodded. ‘Yes. He told me he’d be dead within a couple of months.’

‘He knew that?’

‘He thought he did, yes.’

‘Thank you, Your Honor. That’s all.’ He turned to Soma.

‘Redirect?’

But the prosecutors realized that perhaps, for all their fawning, Giotti was not exactly in their pocket, and they passed the witness.

*
    
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*

As soon as the judge had left the stand, before he was through the bar back into the gallery, Salter pointed down at Soma with his gavel. ‘Your next witness?’

‘The People call John Strout.’

The tall man with the Deep South accent moved from the gallery into the bullpen, took the oath, and went around to the witness chair. Strout testified about once a week in one case or another and was a recognized forensic expert throughout the country. He often traveled to other jurisdictions to render second opinions on ambiguous causes of death. So he sat back, legs crossed, languidly at home on the stand, while Soma got his name, occupation, experience, on the record, asked the first few predictable questions.

Then, ‘In other words, Dr Strout, are you saying that twelve milligrams of morphine injected directly into the vein is sufficient to cause death?’

Hardy thought if Strout were any more relaxed up there, he’d be dead. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention. He corrected Soma. ‘Twelve milligrams intravenous
could be
sufficient to cause death, especially if there were other factors such as alcohol.’

‘And was there alcohol in the case of Salvatore Russo?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘Well, his blood alcohol level was point one oh.’

‘And is that a lot, Doctor? Was Sal Russo drunk?’

‘In California he was legally drunk, yes.’

Hardy didn’t have any idea where Soma was going with all these questions about Sal and drinking, and that worried him. So what if Sal had been drunk? How did it relate to Graham? How could it hurt him?

‘Now, Doctor, could the alcohol level in the victim’s blood contribute to the effect the morphine might have?’

Strout took his time, wanting to be precise. After a moment he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the witness box. ‘Yes, it could have.’

‘In what way?’

‘With that much alcohol aboard, the morphine would have caused his blood pressure to drop rapidly.’

‘Almost instantaneously?’

Strout nodded. ‘Almost.’

‘And then what would happen?’

‘Well, with no blood pressure, you get no blood to your head and you pass out.’

This was the answer Soma expected, and he nodded, pleased. ‘But if Sal Russo injected himself and went unconscious, he would not have had time to remove the needle from his arm, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in this photo’ — Soma entered the Polaroid print into evidence — ‘can you see the syringe on a table near the body with the cap in place over it, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, assuming that the needle was found as shown in the photo, and assuming further that Mr Russo did fall unconscious from the combined effect of alcohol and morphine, it is true, is it not, that this scenario is not consistent with Sal Russo having administered the morphine himself?’

‘Yes,’ Strout replied. ‘Assuming those facts as true, this morphine was not self-administered.’

Hardy scribbled a note. He would hammer Strout with all of this ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ in his cross-examination, but he understood Soma’s point, and he thought the jury would too. Soma made it sound as though Strout were saying that someone had killed Sal Russo. It wasn’t a suicide.

But Soma, well on his way to establishing that, had more, and not in the category of maybe. ‘Dr Strout, was there any evidence of trauma on the victim’s body?’

Strout nodded, going on about the bruise to the head, behind the ear.

‘Could this bruise have knocked the victim out?’

‘Briefly. Yes, I think so.’

‘Do you know what could have caused this bruise?’ Hardy objected, citing speculation, but was overruled. This fell well within the doctor’s realm of expertise. ‘Well, whatever it was didn’t cause a concussion and left no imprint on the skull. I can say only that it was a relatively heavy blunt object without sharp edges.’

‘Such as a whiskey bottle?’

‘Objection. This
is
speculation, Your Honor.’

‘Overruled.’

‘Yes,’ Strout answered. ‘This would be consistent with the whiskey bottle at the scene.’

Soma kept at it, staccato style, barely taking time to draw breath between questions. ‘How about the injection site? How did that look?’

‘Well, there was trauma there too.’

‘What do you mean by trauma?’

‘In layperson’s terms the skin and muscles were slightly torn as the needle was coming out. Like a deep scratch.’

‘Not as the needle was going in?’

‘No. Definitely not.’ A small but important point, since a skilled shot-giver like Graham wouldn’t have botched the injection itself, whereas a jerk or a struggle after the needle was in could happen to anyone.

Soma thanked Strout and walked back to the prosecution table, where he glanced at some papers on the desk. Hardy was ready to pounce with objections should Soma, as he expected, try to wrap it up.

The picture, Hardy thought, was clear enough. Somebody loaded the victim up with alcohol, then hit him on the head, knocking him out long enough to get the shot in the vein, in the middle of which Sal jerked, either in spasm or waking up.

All of that would be speculation on Strout’s part, and not admissible.

But Hardy didn’t get his opportunity to object. Soma simply turned to him, amicable and professional for the jury’s benefit. ‘Your witness.’

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Hardy took it right to him. ‘Dr Strout, did Sal Russo kill himself or did somebody kill him?’

Crossing his legs to get more comfortable, Strout settled in the witness chair. ‘Well, from the pure forensic evidence, it could have been either.’

‘Are you saying there is no way to tell, from a strictly medical standpoint, whether Sal Russo killed himself or someone else killed him?’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’ Strout waited. An experienced witness, he wasn’t about to lead an attorney so he could be interrupted and made to look unprofessional.

Hardy nodded, apparently intrigued with these unearthed truths. ‘Is there anything in the forensic evidence, Doctor, that would lead you to think one is more likely than the other?’

Strout thought this over briefly. ‘No.’

‘What about this bruise on the head we’ve heard about? Did that contribute to Sal Russo’s death in a medical sense?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No, not at all. It was possibly enough to knock out Mr Russo, but it had nothing to do with his death.’

Hardy feigned a small surprise, bringing in the jury. ‘Doctor, did you just say that this bruise
was possibly
enough to knock out Mr Russo?’

‘Yes. It could have.’

‘And are you saying it might
not
have?’

‘That’s right too.’ Strout was showing a hint of impatience. ‘I said it wasn’t very serious.’

‘Yes, you did, thank you, Doctor. Essentially it was just a bump on the head, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now, was the head trauma suffered before or after the injection?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘So Sal Russo might have injected himself, fallen over, and hit his head?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if the head injury happened before the injection, can you tell how long before could it have happened?’

Strout thought for a moment. ‘Only from the bruising, within a day or two.’

Hardy feigned shock and disbelief. ‘Doctor, do you mean you can’t even say that Sal Russo got the bump on his head on the same
day
as his death?’

‘Not for sure.’

‘Not for sure. Well, then, Doctor, is it correct to say you don’t know if this bump on the head has any connection at all to Sal Russo’s death?’

‘Yes, that would be correct.’

‘Good.’ Soma had wanted to use Strout’s testimony to prove that a murder had taken place, but Hardy didn’t think it was going to work. He started hammering at another nail. ‘You’ve also told us about a trauma at the injection site. You said it was consistent with someone injecting Sal with the morphine. Yes?’

‘Correct.’

‘But it’s also consistent with Sal Russo injecting himself, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s true too.’

‘Sal Russo might have jerked as he was injecting himself, mightn’t he?’

‘Objection!’ Soma stood, which Hardy took as a good sign. The trial had barely begun, and already the younger attorney’s placid demeanor was showing signs of turbulence. ‘Speculation, Your Honor.’

This was overruled. Hardy tried to keep his face neutral. Strout said he was correct: Sal might have jerked as he was injecting himself.

Hardy nodded genially and pressed on. ‘Doctor, there’s one last point I’d like you to clarify. Didn’t you tell Mr Soma that Sal Russo had a blood alcohol level of point one oh, and that because of this, he might have become unconscious while the needle was still in his vein, and therefore not have been able to withdraw it?’

‘Yes, that’s what I said.’

‘You said this scenario was consistent with your finding, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But consistent only means it
could
be true, not that it
is
true. You can’t rule out other scenarios, can you?’

‘No.’

‘So even with Sal Russo’s elevated blood alcohol, might this just as easily
not
have happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘In other words, Doctor, just to be perfectly clear about this, there is nothing in your findings or testimony that indicates that Sal Russo did
not
kill himself. Would that be an accurate statement?’

‘Yes.’

‘This could be a simple suicide, couldn’t it?’