The Bomb Maker's Son (24 page)

“And you don’t know whether the perpetrator of the La Guardia bombing had the ability to make a bomb like the one that exploded at the Playa Delta VA, do you?”

“I do not know that.”

Word games. Cosmetics. I’m getting him to agree with me about facts that don’t really mean anything, hoping the jury believes the questions to be meaningful.

“DNA evidence can be preserved after an explosion of the type that occurred at Playa Delta, can’t it, Dr. Yellin?”

“That’s correct. There’s no such thing as vaporization, even with a powerful explosion like that.”

“And sometimes hair and blood and clothing can survive an explosion of the type that occurred at Playa Delta?”

“Yes. It’s common with a pipe bomb that such material can get caught in the threads of the pipe.”

“And you didn’t find such material at the Playa Delta crime scene?”

“We did not.”

“So there was no DNA or hair or blood left at the scene that would put Ian Holzner at the scene?”

“Correct.”

“Fingerprints can also be preserved despite an explosion?”

“That’s also true. As I said, no such thing as vaporization here.”

“And you didn’t find Ian Holzner’s fingerprints at the scene?”

“Not Ian Holzner’s.”

I feel Lovely tense behind me, but I’m with her. We’re hoping that Yellin is being evasive, that his answer is what we lawyers call a
negative pregnant
—a partial denial that actually admits a fact. Or maybe he’s just being precise. Either way, it’s time to go fishing.

“You said you didn’t find
Ian Holzner’s
fingerprints at the scene,” I ask. “What about someone else’s fingerprints?”

He inhales and closes his eyes briefly, aware of his error. I wonder if he would’ve made the mistake if he were five years younger, if he were still working for the Bureau.

“We did find a set of partial fingerprints.”

“On remnants from the bomb parts?”

“No on . . . there was a silver earring left at the scene. It was pretty much intact. We were able to get a print.” He’s trying to maintain his composure, but he knows that he slipped up. I’m trying to keep my composure, too. The US Attorney never disclosed this evidence to us, even though she was constitutionally obligated to do so.

“Did you ever identify the person who left the fingerprint?” A lawyer should rarely ask a question on cross that he doesn’t know the answer to, but now there’s no risk, because I know that it wasn’t Holzner.

“We were never able to identify the fingerprint.”

“Could you tell the gender from the fingerprint analysis?”

He chuckles. “You can’t even do that today, though there are new techniques that claim you can.”

“Was it a woman’s earring? Not the type that a man might wear?”

“Probably so, because it was long and diamond shaped. But it’s not totally clear.”

“In nineteen seventy-five, dangly earrings for males weren’t exactly a fashion trend, were they?”

Lifting only her backside off the chair—a mocking recognition of the rule that a lawyer must stand when making an objection—Reddick says, “This is getting ridiculous, Your Honor. The witness isn’t an expert on fashion or popular culture.”

“That’s not a legally correct objection, Ms. Reddick,” the judge says. “But it’s an accurate one. Get this over with, Mr. Stern.”

“Do you know where the earring is now?” I ask.

“It’s been misplaced over the years. The FBI doesn’t lose things, but sometimes it takes a while to find them.”

“Dr. Yellin, in nineteen seventy-five, did all federal employees have to be fingerprinted?”

“Yes. By an executive order issued by the president in the nineteen fifties.”

“And in the course of your investigation did you check to see if the fingerprint on the earring belonged to any of the employees of the Playa Delta VA?”

“We couldn’t match the fingerprint to anyone who worked at the Veterans Administration.”

“And would you agree that few visitors had business on the second floor of the Playa Delta Veterans Administration in December of nineteen seventy five?”

“That’s correct. The second-floor offices were strictly for government personnel.”

I nod sagely. It’s always nice to put my childhood acting lessons to some use. “I have no further questions.”

Lovely tugs at my sleeve, and again we’re thinking the same thing. I ask to approach the bench, and the judge nods.

“Your Honor, I move for a mistrial under
Brady v. Maryland
,” I say. “The government withheld exculpatory evidence from us, namely the earring.”

“It’s not exculpatory,” Reddick says. “It could’ve been dropped by anyone, weeks earlier.”

“The explosion took place in the men’s restroom,” I say. “Why would there be a woman’s earring in there?”

“The witness said it wasn’t clear whether it was a woman’s or not.”

“Oh, come on, a long, dangly earring in nineteen seventy-five was worn by a man?”

“It could’ve been dropped by a cleaning person or just a woman who couldn’t wait for the women’s room to become free.”

“Okay, okay,” the judge says. “The motion is denied without prejudice to renewing it at the end of the case.”

I might not have succeeded in getting the case dismissed, but what I do have is a straw man—or straw woman—whom I can use as a springboard to create reasonable doubt. It’s far more than I had before Earl Yellin took the witness stand. Sometimes gifts are bestowed by the most unlikely of benefactors.

But my happiness is short-lived, because Marilee Reddick says, “The United States calls Gladdie Giddens.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Those of us in the courtroom suffer in agonizing silence as a hunched-over Gladdie Giddens shuffles forward to the witness stand, leaning on a walker and sliding her damaged leg as best she can. Her struggle to climb the single riser to the stand is epic, made all the more poignant when she refuses the proffered assistance of her caretaker, a US Marshal, two AUSAs, and Marilee Reddick herself. She’s so small, her head barely clears the wooden bar. She’s put on lipstick, and her threadlike brown hair has been styled, but the attempts at glamor only make her look like a decrepit lawn gnome. If the jurors don’t hate me now, they will when I’m through questioning her: she’s the one eyewitness who can place Ian Holzner at the scene of the crime, and I have to decimate her on cross.

The clerk asks her name.

“Gladys Giddens,” she says in that surprisingly youthful voice. “But all my life I’ve been known as Gladdie.”

“Good morning, Ms. Giddens,” Reddick says.

“Good morning, ma’am.”

“If you need anything or get tired, you’ll tell me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please tell me what happened on December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five.”

“I worked at the Playa Delta VA. We helped disabled veterans. Not just from Vietnam, but any veteran, going all the way back to World War One. My title was administrative officer. A fancy name for an office manager. I was really the department den mother, responsible for making sure everything ran smoothly. It was December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, Elaine Smith’s thirtieth birthday. Elaine was a vocational counselor. The night before, I baked a carrot cake for her. I was known for my carrot cake, but I haven’t made one since that awful day.”

“What happened that day?” Reddick asks.

“Why, we were going to have the birthday cake after the three-thirty staff meeting. One of my chores was to round up the meeting attendees so we wouldn’t start late. Heavens, that was a tough job. So at about three fifteen, I began herding people into the conference room. I went first to Elaine’s desk. She hugged me and thanked me for arranging her birthday celebration. She picked up some papers and went off to the meeting. I went over to Russell Breen’s desk. Russ was another one of the counselors, a sweet man but always tardy. So I reminded him that our meeting was about to begin. Then I stopped by Lucille Gomez’s desk. She wasn’t there, so she must have already gone into the conference room. Floyd Corwin had to finish some notes for the meeting, but his typewriter had run out of ribbon. Floyd was hopeless with the machine. So I helped him change the ribbon.” Sometimes digressions like this can make an old person seem senescent, and so not credible. Not so with Giddens. One of the female jurors already looks to be on the verge of tears.

“After that, did you ever see Elaine Smith alive again?”

“No ma’am.”

“Did you ever see Russell Breen alive again?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you ever see Floyd Corwin or Lucille Gomez alive again?”

“No, I did not.” She uses her sleeve to wipe her eyes, stiffens her spine, and says, “I will not cry. I swore to myself that I would not do that.”

“What happened next, Ms. Giddens?”

“I finished my rounds and started over to the conference room. Then I realized I forgot Elaine’s cake. So I hurried over to my office and fetched it. Just as I reached for the conference door handle, I felt the explosion. I think my life was spared because someone had already closed that door. I never heard a thing, just felt the blast. Why, we live in California after all, and the shaking reminded me of the Long Beach Quake that happened when I was a little girl, so I thought it was an earthquake. I was knocked to the ground. People were screaming and running. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I reached down to touch my right leg—I don’t know why, because I wasn’t in pain yet—and it was covered with blood. Then I saw. There were nails like the kind you hammer into wood protruding from the flesh above my knee. My slacks were shredded to bits.” She inhales and sighs, the breath so shallow that it sounds like she’s panting. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t an earthquake. I knew it was a bomb. There was debris everywhere. Reams of paper had flown off the desks. Typewriters were all over the floor, and furniture was in splinters. I must’ve blacked out. I woke up in the in the hospital a day later. They tell me I passed out from loss of blood, that I almost died. My leg got infected. Eight surgeries. It’s a wonder they didn’t amputate.” She folds her arthritic, mottled hands on the side bar and looks at the ceiling.

Reddick lets the jury absorb the testimony and asks, “Earlier in the day, was there an unusual incident?”

“Yes. Earlier that morning I was walking over to use the ladies’ room. I passed by a young man coming from the opposite direction.” As she did when I met her at her care facility, she describes what the man was wearing—a T-shirt, military camouflage pants, and a pulled-down cap. “At first I told him he was on the wrong floor, that he should be on the third floor because that’s where the veterans go. He looked so familiar, so I thought he was one of the regulars. After, I realized who he really was.”

“And is that man in the courtroom today, Ms. Giddens?”

“Yes ma’am.” She points to Holzner. “That’s him. He’s older of course, but he still looks the same. I’ll never forget that face. Never forget that day. I know him because he was a friend of my son, Mark. They grew up together.”

“I have no further questions,” Reddick says.

I need to be gentle—otherwise I’ll lose the jury forever. I need to be firm—otherwise I’ll lose the case. I stand behind the lectern and try to seem composed, though I’m fighting off the queasiness and flop sweats that come with stage fright. Thank God my mother forced me to act in live theater when I was a kid.

“Ms. Giddens—”

“It’s
Mrs.
Giddens,” she says. She didn’t have the same response when Marilee Reddick called her
Ms.

“Pardon me. Mrs. Giddens. You testified that you walked by a man you believed to be my client and stopped to talk to him?”

“That’s right. To tell him that he was on the wrong floor.”

“You were within what, five, six feet of him?”

“That’s about right.”

“You didn’t say, ‘Hello, Ian, how are you?’”

“No, because even if he looked familiar at that time, I couldn’t quite place the face. Like I said before, I thought he was one of the vets. He had his hat pulled down. And it was a long time after the boys had been in high school together, you know.”

“You only identified Ian Holzner after you awoke in the hospital after the bombing, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir. But as I said, he looked familiar that morning.”

“And in the hospital you were suffering from serious injuries, including a severe concussion?”

“Yes, Holzner’s bomb almost killed me.”

“And while you were in the hospital you learned that four of your friends had died and many more had been injured?”

“Yes. Horrible, horrible. The worst time of my life. And to think it was almost Christmas.”

“And you were angry?”

“Of course, sir. Angry, but not hateful.”

“You wanted justice to be done?”

“The law’s and the Lord’s, yes sir.”

“You wanted the police to catch the person responsible for all that terror, didn’t you?”

“Yes. What person in their right mind wouldn’t?”

“And then the police showed you a photograph of Ian Holzner, and it was only then that you identified him as the person you saw on the second floor of the Veterans Administration?”

“Oh no, sir. As I recall it, I told the police it was Holzner, and they brought me a picture to confirm it.”

Now I get it—this old woman is an audacious liar. My problem is that she’s a liar the jury loves. I’ll have to do what lawyers hate to do on cross—ask questions I don’t know the answer to. And Giddens’s answers can do a lot of harm.

“You testified in the trial of a woman named Rachel O’Brien, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir. That was your client’s partner in crime.”

“In that trial, didn’t you testify that you only recognized Holzner after you were shown his photograph?” I read that in a newspaper story. I wish I had the actual transcripts.

“I don’t recall it that way,” she says. “But I do remember that I was the one who remembered Holzner and asked the police for a picture, because I was ninety-nine percent sure it was him, and I wanted to be one hundred percent sure. Which I am.”

“You said Ian Holzner and your son Mark were friends. But wasn’t it Jerry Holzner, Ian’s older brother, who was Mark’s friend?”