High Country Fall (7 page)

I opened the folder on the case and read through the rulings made last week at Daniel Freeman’s first appearance. An accused’s first appearance is the first court day after his arrest on charges that will carry serious prison time or worse if he’s convicted. It’s when the judge, in this case Judge Rawlings, reviews the warrant for arrest; determines what bond, if any, is appropriate; assures the defendant of his right to counsel if he can’t afford to hire one; and sets a date for a probable cause hearing five to fifteen days later so that both the State and the defense will have enough time to prepare.

A probable cause hearing is more formal and more adversarial than the first appearance hearing because it’s the proceeding that transfers a case to superior court unless district court—me—finds that there is insufficient cause to continue with the prosecution.

All the paperwork seemed to be in order. I nodded to Ms. Delorey and she and the defendant rose.

“Defense is ready to proceed, Your Honor,” she said.

“How is your client pleading?” I asked.

“Not guilty,” the young man said firmly, looking me straight in the eye.

He reminded me of some of my younger nephews. A lanky kid barely out of his teens, he had sandy brown hair that curled around his ears, a thin nose between wide-spaced hazel eyes, a deep summer tan, and a teenager’s build that hadn’t yet thickened into a man’s frame. He was well-scrubbed and neatly dressed in a coat and tie, but then he would be, wouldn’t he? Even for something as minor as a DWI, very few attorneys let their clients come to court looking like a mud turtle fished out of a drunk tank. First impressions are too important and you don’t want to make a judge automatically unsympathetic to your client because he’s wearing a kiss-my-ass T-shirt. On the other hand, his clean-cut Mom-and-apple-pie appearance probably wasn’t a total sham because his short hair had not been cut short for this occasion. For some reason, that’s something I always notice, especially in summer and fall. I can usually tell when a neck hasn’t seen sunshine in months, and this kid’s tan went right up under his hairline all around.

His eyes fell as I continued to study him. He might be a killer, but I doubt if he was much of a con artist. Consummate liars can look you straight in the eye till hell freezes over.

I motioned for him to be seated and told Mr. Burke to proceed.

“Call Officer Brian McKinley to the stand.”

Officer McKinley came forward, placed his hand on the Bible, and assured Mary Kay he intended to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Both the DA and Ms. Delorey placed their tape recorders on the chest-level rail in front of the witness seat.

In his own words and referring occasionally to his notes, McKinley described how he’d been on regular patrol Thursday afternoon when a call came in at 4:35 that assistance was needed at 7482 Old Needham Road. He was only a mile from that location and he and the ambulance made it at approximately the same time.

Upon arrival, they were met by the defendant, who told them that the owner, Dr. Carlyle Ledwig, had fallen from the deck he was rebuilding. Freeman then led them around the house to a large, multilevel deck that was built out from the rockface to overlook Pritchard Cove. They could see a gap in the deck’s temporary railing and Dr. Ledwig’s body some thirty feet below, but to get to him, they had to wait another fifteen minutes for the fire and rescue truck to come with ropes and ladders.

“Was there anyone else there? Any family members? Neighbors?”

“No, sir, not on the deck itself. The houses aren’t close together up there, but two men who lived next door did come to see what was happening. We advised them to stay clear of the deck. Dr. Ledwig’s wife and daughters came home just as they were bringing him up.”

“Where was the defendant through all this?” asked Burke.

“He was there on the deck with us.”

“Did you observe anything unusual about him?”

“Objection,” murmured Ms. Delorey. “Leading.”

“Sustained,” I said.

“Describe his appearance, please,” Burke said.

“He seemed agitated and upset and he kept saying, ‘Oh God, what’s Carla going to think?’”

“Did you ascertain who Carla was?”

“His girlfriend—Dr. Ledwig’s daughter.”

“What else did you observe?”

“We had to restrain him from trying to climb down the side of the cliff. He didn’t want us to wait for the fire truck. He said he thought there were ropes in Dr. Ledwig’s garage and he wanted us to lower one of the ambulance team down to try and save the doctor’s life.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“From the way the decedent was lying, they could tell that he didn’t survive the fall. There was really nothing they could do for him at that point, even if they could’ve climbed down.”

“Did the defendant say anything else?”

“He said he knew Dr. Ledwig was replacing some of the decking and the railings and that he’d come up from Howards Ford to help.”

“Did he say how long he was there before he saw Dr. Ledwig’s body?”

“He said it was only a few minutes. That he rang the bell, and when no one answered he walked around to the deck to see what was being done, looked over the railing and there he was. He said he knelt down and called to the doctor, then ran in the house and called us.”

“No further questions.”

Ms. Delorey looked over the small wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Officer McKinley, you said that Mr. Freeman came onto the deck with you to show you where Dr. Ledwig had fallen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Does this mean you did not originally consider this a crime scene?”

“I didn’t know what it was, ma’am.”

“So you did
not
rope off the deck and keep everyone out except yourself and the rescue team?”

“Well, Mr. Freeman had already been there, but I didn’t let nobody else come on that part of the deck, no, ma’am.”

“No further questions,” said Ms. Delorey.

I recessed for lunch at that point and, feeling in the mood for a quick order of chicken fingers, asked Mary Kay for directions to the nearest Hardee’s or Chick-fil-A.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I looked at her blankly.

“There aren’t any fast-food chains in Cedar Gap. Not allowed. Nearest one’s down in Howards Ford.”

“Not allowed? How can you not allow McDonald’s or Burger King?”

She laughed. “There used to be a Tastee-Freez, but it went bust and the town council voted not to allow any more chains in. Generates too much trash and they tend to drive out local cafés. They’re not real happy with the Trading Post or Roxie’s either because their customers aren’t as careful as they ought to be about where they drop their napkins.”

“So where do people go for a quick lunch?”

“Well, there’s a new place next to the Trading Post. The Three Sisters Tea Room.”

“A Russian tea room?” I asked, amused.

She smiled. “No, it’s American and it’s really good—salads and sandwiches made from bread baked right there in the kitchen every morning, but it’s only open from twelve to four and there’s always a line, so you might be better off at the High Country Café. It’s just on the other side of the monument, about two doors off Main. Their chicken salad’s not as good as the Tea Room, but it’s not bad and you can usually get a seat.”

Her assessment of the chicken salad was an understatement. It was delicious. If that other place was better, I was going to have to check it out before I left Cedar Gap, long line or not.

I was back in the courtroom at one o’clock sharp.

“Call Detective Glenn Fletcher to the stand,” said Burke.

As I watched Detective Fletcher come forward and once more take the oath to tell only the truth, I reminded myself to keep an open mind and not to let my earlier speculations about his willingness to bend the facts color my opinion of his testimony in this case.

What he had to say was fairly straightforward. As is routine in cases of violent or accidental death, he and members of the sheriff’s department crime scene team had proceeded to Dr. Ledwig’s residence, arriving there shortly after five.

“Mrs. Tina Ledwig and her daughter drove in right behind us.”

“Miss Carla Ledwig?”

“No, sir, this was the younger sister, Patricia Ledwig.”

Carla
Ledwig? The quarter finally dropped. The same Carla that had left a message for the twins to call her?

“What did you do when you arrived?” asked Burke.

“We immediately secured the scene. Mrs. Ledwig was upset and wanted to go over to see what the recovery team was doing.”

“You did not let them onto the deck?”

“No, sir.”

“But Mr. Freeman continued to be there?”

“No, sir. We moved him outside our tape barrier, too, and our photographer took pictures of the entire scene before recovery began.”

“Permission to approach?” asked Burke.

I nodded.

He handed a packet of four-by-six color photographs to Fletcher. “Are these the pictures that were taken on the deck?”

Fletcher did a pro forma flip-through. “Yes, sir.”

Burke then handed copies to Ms. Delorey and to me.

Long framing shots captured the whole deck, from a handful of mailers carelessly heaped on a table beside the French doors that opened into the stone house to pots of bronze-colored chrysanthemums ranged along the steps. I saw exposed joists where the old decking had been removed, as well as a section of the railing. New planks were stacked next to a pair of sawhorses, and a circular power saw lay on a piece of wood across the sawhorses. From another angle and well behind the yellow police tape, Freeman stood near an older woman and an adolescent girl—the same older woman who now sat on the front row behind Lucius Burke.

I glanced across the aisle. The two young women seated there in support of Freeman were probably Patricia Ledwig and her sister, Carla. I wasn’t sure which was which, though, because they were very similar in looks—same long brown hair, same thin faces.

Two pictures were of a body crumpled on a rocky ledge amid vivid orange and red underbrush. The close-up of Ledwig showed the head at an unnatural angle.

“Explain the photographs numbered five, six, and seven, please.”

These were close-ups of the foundation joists, which seemed to run perpendicularly from the house out to the edge of the deck where part of the railing was missing.

“As you see, there is a large patch of blood here on the edge of the joist.”

“Did you form a hypothesis as to how the doctor died?”

“Yes, sir.”

Looking up at me, Fletcher pointed to the line of new planks that had been nailed to the joists. “It would appear that he had been working near the edge here, probably on his hands and knees. See this can of nails?”

I nodded.

“We think he was struck from the front and fell backward, hitting his head on this first joist and opening the wound that was subsequently found in the autopsy.”

The next picture was a close-up of the joist. “This is where we found hair from the doctor’s head. Whoever did it then pulled him to the edge and shoved him over, getting smears of blood on the edge of the planks.”

Burke directed our attention to photograph number ten. “You are speaking of these smears here on the joist and at the edge of the deck?”

“Yes, sir. If you’ll notice, there’s also a fingerprint.”

“Has the source of that blood been identified?”

“It was the decedent’s.”

“What about the fingerprint?”

“It was from the defendant’s right middle finger.”

“Photograph twelve?”

“Those are fibers caught in some splinters at the edge of the deck.”

“Did you subsequently identify the source of those fibers?”

“Yes, sir. They came from the decedent’s trousers.”

“Were these photographs taken before or after Dr. Ledwig’s body was retrieved?”

“Before.”

“You’re quite clear on that?”

“Yes, sir. As you can see, the photographs are time-dated. I believe you have photographs taken when the body was being lifted up and you can see that the time is several minutes later. The fibers and blood were photographed before we brought the body up.”

“Describe photograph eighteen, if you would. What are we looking at there?”

Fletcher dutifully shuffled through the pile while Ms. Delorey and I did the same. It showed the reddish brown imprint of a diamond and two indistinct lines on the decking. I’d looked at enough shoe tracks in the last month to realize these were the tread marks of someone’s sneaker. And guess who was the only one on that deck wearing sneakers with those marks?

You got it.

Further questioning revealed that it was the blood on the joist that made them question whether the doctor had fallen accidentally. Dr. Ledwig had spoken by phone to a colleague at the clinic at 2:15. Freeman’s 911 call was logged at 4:37. The autopsy confirmed that Ledwig had indeed died during that time period, but when the autopsy also showed that the fatal head wound had probably been administered with a hammer, deputies had gone back to the ravine and searched until they found it. Blood and hair from the doctor’s head were still on the hammer.

Finally, in addition to the traces on the soles of his sneakers and his fingerprint on the edge of the deck, a smear of the doctor’s blood was also found on the young man’s jeans.

Each separate thing could be explained away by a skillful attorney, and when it was her turn, Ms. Delorey proved to be just that. She suggested that the young man’s actions were the natural actions of a close friend of the family. Of course there was blood on the soles of his shoes. He had come to help his girlfriend’s father work on the deck. When the doctor didn’t answer the door, he’d walked around to the back, and yes, he’d crossed the deck to see how the repairs were coming. He hadn’t noticed the blood on the edge of the planks and walked right through it. And when he saw the body and knelt down to call to the doctor, he’d knelt in blood and accidentally got some on his fingers.

“Couldn’t all that be true, Detective Fletcher?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed.

“The blood on my client’s pantleg. Was it a smear or a spatter?”