High Crimes (26 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“
Did you
really agree that conversation was off the record?” rasped Farrell.

“Yes, Your Honor, I did,” Claire replied. “I tricked him. I had my investigator make a tape recording to ensure that we got accurate testimony at the trial.”

“Does your investigator secretly tape-record all your witness interviews?”

“I’d rather not say. But it’s legal, sir.”

“Why’d you tape him?”

“I mean no disrespect to you or to this court, but I had my doubts about his veracity. This witness should not be permitted to come in here and tell barefaced lies to you, me, and the jury.”

Waldron, who’d been pacing during this exchange, stopped suddenly and said, “Your Honor, this is a clear-cut violation of reciprocal discovery. We’ve got a discovery request for all statements by government witnesses in the hands of the defense. How come we never got this transcript?” He was smooth.

“It was nondisclosable,” Claire said. “This is obviously not a statement of the witness. The witness hasn’t read and signed the statement and sworn to the truth of it. We didn’t put the guy under oath.”

“But, Your Honor—”

“Well, I gotta go along with defense counsel on this one,” Farrell said, draining his can of Pepsi and setting it down on the podium with a hollow
thock.
“It’s no violation of discovery.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Claire said.

“But I’m going to grant prosecution a delay of one hour. I don’t like this surprise stuff. I want the witness to have the chance to read through this transcript. I’m not interested in soliciting perjury in this case just to help you out, Ms. Chapman. Or you, Mr. Waldron. Really. Mr. Waldron, you put your poor excuse for a witness in a room, and I’m going to let the members take a break.”

“But, Your Honor,” Claire said, “this is right in the middle of my cross-examination. Can you instruct the government not to talk to the witness?”

“No, I will not.”

Claire sputtered, “But, sir—”

“Now we’re finished here,” Farrell said.

*   *   *

“Have you read the transcript?” Claire asked when Henry Abbott was finally back on the stand. His hair was freshly combed, and he even appeared to have changed his shirt.

“Yes, I have.”

“And are you satisfied it’s a true and accurate transcription of our interview with you at the Madison?”

“Yes, I am, as far as I can tell, without my notes.”

He probably was the sort of person who’d have taken notes on what was said at their twenty-six-minute breakfast, Claire reflected. “Then can you explain to this court why you lied under oath?”

“I didn’t,” Abbott said.

“You
didn’t
? Would you like me to have the reporter read back your testimony before we took a break?”

“Not necessary,” he said. “I didn’t lie under oath.”

“Excuse me? Would you like me to play the tape for you?”

“I said I didn’t lie under oath. I was lying to you.”

Claire’s heart sank. Waldron had obviously coached him. “I told you what I thought you wanted to hear,” he continued. “You were obviously on a conspiracy-theory jag, and that pissed me off. You seemed to think that nobody in the military could be trusted to tell the truth, and, frankly, I found that offensive. So I decided, well, this was off the record—I took your word of honor on that—and I decided I’d put you in your place, give you a load of bull, give you what you so desperately wanted to hear.” And he gave her the barest wisp of a smile.

*   *   *

That evening Claire met Dennis, Tom’s CIA source, at the same yuppie Georgetown bar he so loathed.

He wore a blue blazer with gaudy gold anchor buttons, a white shirt, and a red-and-blue rep tie. “Now, I should tell you,” Dennis began, “that I may not contact you again. The situation’s getting uncomfortable.”

“I’ve got your number. I’ll call only if it’s important.”

“That number’s no longer in service.”

“You moved?”

“Just changed phone numbers. I do that periodically.”

“Why, you get a lot of crank calls?” she said. “I’ve been getting them myself recently.”

He looked puzzled but went on, “We’ve got a little old lady who works for us. Got the memory of an elephant.”

“Does every spy agency have one of those?”

“She remembered seeing the MFR I told you about. The memorandum for the record. Found it in operational files.”

“Really?” she exulted, but then she was troubled by something. “Why would CIA have an internal army document?”

He shrugged. “We’re pack rats. We had a source in the army’s Southern Command, SOUTHCOM, friendly to us. Found it in a safe full of classified stuff down there in Panama. Figured it would be of interest to us.”

“‘Friendly’ to you means he works for you?”

Dennis raised his heavy, Mephistophelian brows. “You said it, not me.” He slid a single photocopied sheet across the table.

It was not a good photocopy. It bore the smudges and detritus and vestigial chicken-scratchings of a document copied many times over. Yet it was quite readable. The general, fortunately, had had neat, if minuscule, handwriting. It was no more than three lines. She read it and looked up.

“He says here the peasants had weapons, so he got on the radio to Hernandez and instructed his men to fire.” She looked up, astonished.

Dennis drank his bourbon.

“That’s not in his statement to CID, or his interview with the government. That’s not in
anyone’s
statements,” she mused. “Nowhere else did he or anyone else ever mention weapons. Or that he gave the order. And to
Hernandez
!”

Dennis smiled. “That’s why I never put anything in writing,” he said.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, when Dennis left Claire, he did not notice the tall, bulky figure of Ray Devereaux get up from a table near the door and follow him out.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Claire and
Tom met in the small private conference room within the secure courtroom complex. She showed him the photocopy of General Marks’s memorandum for the record that Dennis had given her. He read it, betraying no expression, and looked up. “Nice,” he said, and smiled.

“‘Nice’?” Claire said, aghast. “Is that all you can say? ‘Nice’? This little piece of paper may have just won the case for us here!”

Tom cocked his head and said curiously, “You think so?”

“Well, who the hell knows what will happen in this kangaroo court. But now we’ve got proof that Marks gave Hernandez the order to have those people killed. This is hugely important.” She looked at him for a moment. “Do you think it’s possible Hernandez was one of the shooters?”

Tom shrugged. “I told you, I didn’t see anything. I heard gunfire, and by the time I got there all I saw was the bodies.”

“But did you see Hernandez holding his machine gun as if he’d just fired it, anything like that? You’re not withholding anything from me, are you?”

“Claire,” Tom said, raising his voice, “are you listening to me? I said I didn’t see anything. Okay? You want me to repeat it? I didn’t see anything.”

She stared at him, taken aback by this sudden flash of anger. What in the world was he so mad about?

“I hear you,” she replied tersely, and got up to enter the courtroom.

*   *   *

“The government calls Frederick W. Coultas.” Coultas was the prosecution’s ballistics man, a firearms-identification expert of national rank.

A tall, awkward man in a cheap brown suit, Coultas walked up the center aisle, settled himself in the witness chair, and was sworn in. He had a large oblong head, a tall forehead fringed by an ill-fitting hairpiece of beaver-pelt brown, wire-rim glasses framing beady brown eyes, and virtually no chin.

The jurors turned to look at him with curiosity. Most of the time they seemed to betray little emotion, but not once had Claire ever seen them look bored or distracted.

Coultas stated his credentials for the record, and Waldron helped him elaborate. Frederick Coultas was with the FBI’s Firearms and Toolmarks Unit and an instructor in firearms identification at the FBI Academy at Quantico. Graduate of the U.S. Army Small Arms Repair School, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in Maryland. Graduate of armorer school, of gunsmith courses, of the firearms-instructors course at the Smith & Wesson Academy. A dozen years with the FBI’s Firearms Identification Section. Specialist in tool marks. On and on in overwhelming detail. Waldron made his point with wearying unsubtlety: Frederick Coultas knew his guns.

He went on to a methodical direct examination, Waldron at his merciless best.

“Tell me about the ammunition that was recovered,” Waldron said sometime later.

“Thirty-nine projectiles, bullets, were recovered, and one hundred thirty-seven cartridge casings.”

“Were they in good condition?”

“Yes.”

“Is that number of bullets, thirty-nine, consistent in your opinion with testimony that two hundred rounds were fired?”

“Yes. Even if you use a metal detector at the scene of the crime, many tend to be lost. You can’t help it.”

“Was anything else found?”

“Yes. One hundred and seven links, the little serrated and notched metal pieces that connect cartridges to each other in the ammo belt.”

“Were these links of use to you in identifying which gun was used?”

Coultas pushed up the nosepiece of his glasses. “No. It’s quite hard to identify links to a specific weapon, though I suppose it’s theoretically possible.”

“Mr. Coultas, does the El Salvador government report say whether any of the bullets were recovered from bodies?”

“No, it does not, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s extremely hard to recover machine-gun projectiles from the body, since most of them pass right through.”

Relentlessly, like a jackhammer, Waldron took him through the chain of custody. Coultas was satisfied with the way the evidence had been collected by the Salvadorans and sent to Army CID, marked with a metal scribe and put down on an evidence worksheet. Waldron left no stone unturned, right down to the head stamp at the base of each cartridge.

“Now, tell us, were these projectiles and cartridge casings all fired by the same exact weapon?”

“Yes, they were.”

“And was it this one?” Waldron held up the plastic-wrapped machine gun. Coultas leaned forward to inspect it. Theatrics.

“Yes, it was.”

“Mr. Coultas, can you tell us how you can connect a particular bullet to a particular weapon?”

Coultas settled back in his seat and pushed again with a long finger at the nosepiece of his glasses. His voice became high, nasal, and insufferably pompous. “Inside the barrel of every gun, spiral grooves are cut. This is called the ‘rifling.’ It causes the bullet to twist in a certain direction, to spin quickly and thus travel faster and with greater accuracy. Also, the spiral grooves of each type of weapon have a unique pattern. Between the grooves are raised areas called ‘lands.’ These lands and grooves make an imprint on the bullet, the gross markings that we can see under the microscope.”

He had to be a deadly instructor, Claire reflected. No wonder the FBI lab was always in trouble.

“And did the rifling system on this particular weapon match the bullets you looked at?” Waldron asked.

“Absolutely. The rifling system on this particular M-60 machine gun is what we call 4-R, a four-right system, or four lands and grooves with a right twist. Also, there’s one turn in twelve inches. Using comparison microscoping, I saw that the projectiles showed traces of this rifling. Also, I noticed that one of the lands in this barrel was narrower than the others. That was another distinguishing feature. The striations on the bullets caused by passage through a barrel were identical to the barrel of the weapon in question. That is, they all appeared to come from the same weapon.”

Farrell popped open a can of Pepsi.

“What about the cartridge casings?” Waldron asked.

“I inspected the ejected casings, looking at the primer, the firing-pin impression, the chamber markings, and, on the bottom, the breech-face impression.”

“So there’s no doubt in your mind that these bullets were fired by the machine gun you examined?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Coultas. Nothing further.”

“Defense, do you have cross-examination?” Farrell asked.

“Yes, sir,” Claire said as she stood. For a few seconds she looked questioningly at the witness. Finally, she said, “Mr. Coultas, do you know if this was the gun used by Sergeant Kubik?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well, I’m really not competent to testify to that. I understand the government has already had a witness from Fort Bragg up here, describing the computer armory records and how they’re maintained. But that’s outside of my area of competence.”

“So you have no idea whose gun this was?”

“That’s right.”

“And, Mr. Coultas, you’ve already testified that you don’t know whether any of these bullets were recovered from bodies, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“So do you know whether these bullets killed anybody?”

“No.”

“You don’t.”

“No. That’s outside my area of expertise, strictly speaking. I suppose the eyewitnesses—”

“Thank you. Now, Mr. Coultas, based on your thorough examination of the evidence, can you tell the court when these rounds were fired?”

“Actually, no.”

“You can’t? Really? You have absolutely no idea?”

“Well, the attached records—”

“I said, based on your examination of the evidence. Were they fired on the date in question, June 22, 1985?”

“I really wouldn’t know.”

“Can you tell if they were fired that week?”

“No.”

“Or that month?”

“No.”

“Or even that year?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Interesting. And, Mr. Coultas, can you tell me something? When you fire a machine gun for a long time, what happens to the barrel?”

“Well, it gets hot.”

A low chuckle from the jury box, and some titters from the spectators.

“And what do you do then? Do you keep using it?”

“Oh, no. After five hundred rounds have been fired, you change the barrel to avoid overheating. You remove it and replace it with another.”

“Even when you’re out in the field?”

“Oh, sure. The machine gun is usually issued with a spare barrel. Sometimes you might have a whole sack of barrels. They’re interchangeable. They also deteriorate. After a while, you throw them away.”

“So this particular machine gun might have been issued with two separate barrels?”

“Correct.”

“Possibly more.”

“Possibly.”

She gave Embry a sidelong glance. His eyes gleamed with, she thought, pride. “Mr. Coultas, are machine-gun barrels serialized the way guns usually are?”

“Sometimes. I’ve seen it.”

“But is this one?”

“No.”

“It’s not marked.”

“No.”

“So do you know whether
this exact
barrel was issued along with
this exact
gun?”

Coultas shook his head in bafflement as he stroked his receding chin. “I’d have no way to know that.”

“But you do know that they’re easily switched?”

“That I do know.”

“Mr. Coultas, granting for the sake of argument that this is the barrel that was used to fire the projectiles you’ve so carefully studied—isn’t it possible that someone might have switched barrels?”

“Well, I suppose so, yes.”

“You
suppose
so?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“So someone might have taken this gun, with this particular serial number stamped on it, and actually put on it the barrel that was used to fire all those rounds?”

“I can’t rule it out.”

“It’s possible?”

“Theoretically, yes, it is.”

“It’s not difficult to do?”

“No, it’s not.”

“It would, in fact, be quite an easy thing to do, wouldn’t it, Mr. Coultas?”

“Yes, it would,” he said. “It would be very easy.”

“Thank you, Mr. Coultas. I have nothing further.”