Proof of Intent (11 page)

“You're saying,” Stash said, “that based on your many years of experience as an investigator, that's not the normal behavior of an innocent person.”

“Any fool knows it's not.” Her eyes flashed. “And once I got there, all I got from Mr. Dane and from his lawyer, Mr. Sloan, was a bunch of evasiveness and ducking and weaving. Again, this is something that's only suitable for a probable cause hearing, I guess, but Mr. Sloan kept interrupting the interview on one silly pretext or other. Pretending he was choking, things that wouldn't fool a four-year-old child.” I flushed. “It was obvious he used the opportunity to coach Mr. Dane.”

I stood up. “Objection. Coaching has a narrow legal definition. If I did interrupt the interview—and I'm not saying I did—but if I did, it would have been to apprise Mr. Dane of his rights, as per my duty as an attorney. Not to
coach
him.”

“Sustained,” Judge Evola said after a pregnant pause. “Choose another word, Detective.”

“Call it what you want. It was obvious Mr. Sloan was not happy with how the interview was going. He could see as well as I could what a pathetic story his client was telling. I wasn't in the room with him, so I can't testify as to exactly what he told his client. All I'm saying was that the conduct of Mr. Sloan and Mr. Dane, taken as a whole again, and in the context of my experience as a trained investigator, blah blah blah, all the legal verbiage you need to qualify why I'm making this judgment—what I'm saying is, I smelled a rat.”

“I object, Your Honor,” I said. “This is not testimony as to probable cause, it's an attempt to tar my client with—”

“Stow it, Mr. Sloan, before you get rolling on one of your fourteen-minute objections. I get the drift of your objection, and I'm ruling against it. You know as well as I do that this is not a trial. Hearsay and hunches and so on are perfectly admissible in this venue.”

Stash moved on quickly. “Did you arrest Mr. Dane at that time, Detective?”

“Certainly not. I don't arrest on hunches. I waited until we got hard evidence.”

“Tell us about that.”

“Well, first, I got the initial autopsy findings from the medical examiner. Dr. Rey's report confirmed the results of my initial examination of the body. There were no defensive wounds.”

“And that was enough for an arrest?”

“No it was not. At that point I still didn't have any sort of motive.”

“Did you come to find any sort of motive?”

“Yes, I obtained Mr. Dane's financial records. At that time I found that Mr. Dane was in very poor financial shape, with a large amount of debt and dwindling income. He held a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on his wife. In addition his wife apparently had a small trust fund that Mr. Dane appears to have stood to benefit from on her death. In my view these provided a financial motive.”

Stash Olesky nodded, then reached into a large canvas gym bag and came out with a long black object with the slight but unmistakable curve of a Japanese sword. “Did this play into your decision to arrest Mr. Dane?”

“Yes it did. I'll identify that object, by the way, as a stick made of ebony wood, carved in the shape of a sword. As I mentioned earlier, martial artists apparently refer to such an item as a bokken. On our first examination of the property we were unable to locate the murder weapon. So we expanded the scope of our search last week, examining a location near the victim's home—specifically a boat owned by a neighbor of Mr. Dane's, which was docked a few hundred feet upriver from Mr. Dane's house. With permission of the owner, I opened a locker on that boat and found the bokken. The bokken was covered with a substance resembling blood.

“I secured the item, placed it in a paper bag, and using customary chain-of-custody procedures I personally transported it to the state crime lab. The state crime lab ran tests on the bokken. The results of those tests were as follows. First, the bokken was indeed covered with blood, and that blood was a DNA match with the blood taken from Diana Dane at her autopsy. Second, several hairs were found on the bokken. Again, DNA tests on the follicles of one of those hairs showed a match to Diana Dane. Third, several latent fingerprints were revealed by cyanoacrylate fuming. According to the state crime lab fingerprint specialist, those fingerprints were a match with those of Mr. Dane.”

Stash Olesky took out another paper bag, set it on his table.

“Last line of questioning, Detective. During your conversation with Mr. Dane in his home on the morning of his wife's murder, what was he wearing?”

“A robe. A white robe. With white pajamas underneath.”

“And did you see any visible evidence of blood on those clothes?”

“Not a speck.”

“Did you ask him if he had touched his wife after he found her?”

“He indicated he had not.”

“Did he say whether or not he had changed clothes between the time he discovered her and the time you arrived?”

“He indicated he had not.”

“Can you tell us if you found anything besides the bokken in the location where you found what you believe to be the murder weapon.”

“Yes I can. I found a pair of black wool trousers, a pair of black silk socks, a black Turnbull & Asser shirt, and a pair of black boots. They were covered with a substance that appeared to be dried blood. I might add that it's generally known that Mr. Dane wears black clothes almost exclusively.”

Stash Olesky opened his paper bag, dumped the contents out on the witness stand. “Are these the clothes you found?”

“Yes, they are.”

“So what happened then?”

“I sent the clothes to the state crime lab. DNA tests showed that they were indeed covered with blood and that the blood was Diana Dane's. At that point in time, I believed that I had probable cause to arrest Mr. Dane. I obtained a warrant and after a bit of a . . . fracas . . . I placed him under arrest.”

Stash Olesky nodded. “Thank you, Detective. I believe that's all I have for you.”

Judge Evola looked down at me. “Mr. Sloan?”

“Briefly, Detective. These fingerprints, you mentioned that they were latent prints, correct?”

“Yes.”

“There are two types of fingerprints, are there not?” “I'm not sure I follow.”

“A latent fingerprint is left by the grease and amino acids on your fingers. An impression print, on the other hand, is one left in some soft or liquid substance. Blood for instance.”

“That's correct.”

“Were there any fingerprint
impressions
on the bokken? Bloody fingerprints, specifically.”

Brief pause. “No. Only latents.”

“Thank you. Let's turn to these bloody clothes. Any reason to think they might belong to Mr. Dane?”

“Yes.”

“Other than the fact that Mr. Dane's favorite color is black?”

I waited, but Denkerberg just looked at me with an amused expression on her face. “Pray, Detective, let us in on that reason. Our breath is bated.”

Chantall Denkerberg picked up the pair of black cowboy boots and turned the lip down. “It's this label. You want me to read it?”

“Sure, why not?”

“ ‘Handmade by Royce Daniels, bootmaker of Harlingen, Texas, for Mr. Miles Dane.' ”

In theory a defense attorney's goal in a preliminary hearing is to get his client kicked free for lack of probable cause. But realistically that almost never happens. As a result my real goal at the hearing was to force Stash to reveal as much of his case as possible. The old saw about never asking a question to which you don't know the answer doesn't apply to probable cause hearings. From a strictly technical standpoint, I had gained something of value. But the courtroom is about perception as much as it is about legal technique. So when you walk into a setup like that—valuable as it may be tactically—you feel a little silly. Stash Olesky was no Mark Evola, but he was not insensitive to the camera in the back of the room either: He'd set me up and tagged me with a nice combination right there on national TV just to let me know he could do it.

“Mr. Sloan?” It was Judge Evola. “Any more questions?”

I grinned. “I believe I've asked more than enough.” There was some laughter from the courtroom. Judge Evola scowled theatrically, and the laughter died.

“Mr. Olesky, call your next witness.”

To my surprise Stash Olesky stood, and said, “The state has no further witnesses.”

It was an intensely ballsy move. Stash tends to be a belt-and-suspenders guy. I'd expected to see a nice little parade of witnesses—the ME, some state crime lab people, a couple more cops . . . But that was it: One witness, and he sat down.

Truth was, he probably had all he needed. With the right judge on the right day with the stars in the right configuration, I probably could have gotten the case dismissed. Problem was, I was the wrong lawyer with the wrong judge. No way in a million years Judge Mark Evola would give me this one. No trial meant no Court TV. No Court TV meant no chance at getting elected to Congress. It was an easy call.

Stash made his usual closely reasoned, methodical wrap-up. He focused on lies, evasions, inconsistencies, fingerprints, the apparent financial motive—and of course the bloody boots and clothes. Then I made my spiel. I focused on the murder weapon. No bloody fingerprints on the bokken meant no proof that Miles Dane had committed the murder. I suggested that the clothes could have been stolen by the intruder. Perhaps, I hinted darkly, they were even planted. It was a pretty good speech, and an utter waste of breath.

Judge Evola ruled from the bench without even bothering to take a recess. He was hoping, clearly, that the armchair quarterbacks at Court TV would label him as a Bold and Decisive Jurist. I noticed that he didn't address the room generally, but looked straight into the TV camera in the back of the room. “This court finds probable cause to bind Miles Dane over pending trial for the murder of Diana Dane. Trial in this matter is hereby set for January 2 of next year.”

Then he stood up and swept out the door.

Lisa and I sat down for dinner at my cramped little house. I live on a road that dead-ends into the railroad tracks, most of my neighbors being drawn from the upper echelons of the working class. It's a fine little house, nondescript, clapboard-sided, with a small front porch that suits a man of plain tastes. I've been thinking for some years that I'll get a nicer place soon, and so I haven't hung any art on the walls, and my bedroom windows are still covered with bedsheets. There are stacks of books everywhere that I keep meaning to organize or shelve or sell, but never get around to. At the rate I'm going, I may be here forever. But it still has an air of the temporary about it.

Lisa seemed eager to put on a domestic show, so I lounged around watching the
NewsHour
on public TV and nursing a Diet Coke—which substituted for the triple scotch I would have been working on back in the old days—while she chattered about little things and cooked spaghetti.

I thought a change of mood might be nice, so when it looked like she was about ready to serve up the food, I rummaged around for some candles in the distant hope that I might have acquired some while sleepwalking. After coming up dry on the candles, I drew from my extensive collection of two classical CDs and put some Bach on the stereo. Lisa had set the table with linen napkins and my finest CorningWare.

After putting the spaghetti on the table, she took out a bottle of nonalcoholic sparkling grape juice, popped the cork, and poured it into my two wineglasses. I own about as much crystal as I do classical music.

Raising a glass, she said, “I appreciate your helping me out. I really just . . . I didn't know where else to go.”

“Well, you seem to be doing well. I'm glad you're here.”

She made an attempt at a smile and took a sip of her grape juice. It struck me that there was something a little pathetic about drunks trying to stage a celebration with fake alcoholic beverages. But maybe it was just the feeling I kept having of all those years I'd wasted that colored my thinking on smaller things.

“I don't know why, Dad, but right now I'm feeling better than I have in years.” She reached across the table and grabbed my arm. “I feel secure with you. Safe.”

Something warm moved inside my chest.

“Back in New York, I always felt like . . .” She frowned. “You know in those cartoons how Wile E. Coyote always goes off the edge of the cliff and then stands there for a minute in mid-air? Then as soon as he looks down and realizes there's nothing underneath him, he starts to fall? That's how I felt in New York, as though if I ever looked down at my feet, even for a fraction of a second, I'd start to fall.”

“Well, if you can't plant your feet on the ground in Pickeral Point, Michigan,” I said, “then you can't do it anywhere.”

She smiled wanly.

“So you want to tell me about New York, Lisa? About what happened there?”

She looked thoughtful. “No. Not yet.” Suddenly her face changed, and her voice went enthusiastic. “Look, let's stay away from depressing things. Let's talk about the case.”

“That's
not
depressing?”

She grinned. “You know it's not.”

I grinned back. She was right. There was something bracing about being behind the eight ball. It was where I did my best work.

Her grin faded. “So look, you think he's guilty?”

I went into sage mode: “When I first started practicing law, Lisa, I made a big sport out of guessing who was innocent and who was guilty. But at a certain point, I realized that it was messing with my head to do that. You can torture yourself to death trying to figure out whether the people you represent really deserve to be zealously defended or not, but the truth is, you never really know. So eventually I figured out that the best thing I could do was to put that question in a little box, lock it away in some dark corner of my brain, and just do my job as vigorously as possible.”