Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script (25 page)

"Yes," Officer Blake said.

"But you caught him in the act of cutting up one of the victims," Tyrell said. "Isn't tampering with evidence a crime in this state?"

"Yes."

"Then why was Dr. Sloan released without being charged?"

"You'd have to ask Lt. Sloan," the officer said.

"You mean Dr Sloan," Tyrell corrected him with a patient smile.

"I mean Lt. Steve Sloan, the homicide detective in charge of the investigation," Officer Blake said. "Dr. Sloan is his father."

"Let me make sure I understand." Tyrell leaned against the witness stand so that he faced the camera mounted above the jury box, beckoning the audience with a glance and slight arching of an eyebrow to pay attention to what was coming next. "You're saying that the detective investigating the homicides is the son of the guy who reported the crime and was caught cutting up one of the victims?"

"Yes," Officer Blake said.

Tyrell looked incredulously at Officer Blake, then at the camera, and finally at Judge Rojas, who was staring at the witness with much the same expression. It was a joy for Tyrell to see.

"No further questions," Tyrell said, and returned to his seat.

The defense attorney quit while he was well ahead. He'd effectively made his point, exacting as much damage to the prosecution's case as he possibly could with this witness. Now that he'd successfully laid the foundation for his at tack, he knew it would be a lot easier to eviscerate the witnesses to come.

Mark and Steve and Karen knew it, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Dr. Amanda Bentley seemed confident, professional, and entirely at ease on the witness stand as Karen Cross walked her through the formality of establishing her professional credentials as the adjunct county medical examiner.

There was no reason for Amanda to be nervous. The questions were perfunctory and she answered them by rote, as she had in hearings and trials a hundred times before. Soon Karen would lead her into recounting the facts of the case, but Amanda wasn't worried about that, either. It wasn't a complicated autopsy. The cause of death for both victims was obvious, as were her methods and conclusions.

She knew the defense attorney would have to take a swing or two at her just to earn his salary, but since the case was so straightforward, she wasn't worried.

But Mark Sloan was.

Amanda hadn't been in the courtroom for Officer Blake's testimony. She was prepared to defend her work and her scientific conclusions, not to handle an attack aimed at undermining the evidence by discrediting Mark and Steve.

Throughout the early stages of her testimony, Mark tried to make eye contact, to somehow convey to her the ordeal she'd soon be facing. But when their eyes met, all his gaze managed to create was a moment of confusion. She didn't get why he looked so grim, when the facts were so simple and clear.

Guided by Karen's questions, Amanda testified that she arrived at the crime scene at six p.m., an hour and a half after the bodies were discovered.

"In the absence of definitive indicators, like a car accident or a shooting that was witnessed by others, how do you determine the time of death?" Karen Cross asked.

"It's not an exact science. We can't definitively state the time of death, we can only provide a reasonably accurate estimate," Amanda said. "The first thing we consider are indicative acts which, in this case, would be the 911 call at four thirty reporting the gunshots. We also look at body temperature, lividity, rigor mortis, and degree of decomposition."

"Was the physical state of the victims consistent with deaths that occurred at four thirty p.m.?"

"Yes."

"All the factors considered, would you have determined four thirty p.m. as the time of death?"

"Yes."

Karen nodded, letting that sink in for the judge. and, presumably, for the millions of people watching.

"But you would have been wrong, wouldn't you?" Karen said.

Amanda didn't hesitate to answer. "Yes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because before I arrived, Dr. Sloan made an important discovery." Amanda glanced at Mark and was again disturbed by his grim demeanor. Ordinarily, this was a moment he would have enjoyed, the moment when one of his deductions came into play in the undoing of the murderer. So she had to ask herself:
Why wasn't he enjoying it now?

In attempting to answer the question for herself, Amanda began to get a general sense of what Mark was trying so hard to communicate to her with the expression on his face.

You're in trouble. This isn't going to go the way you expect. Prepare yourself.

Amanda still didn't know what kind of trouble, but suddenly she felt her heart racing. It was as if she'd just started walking down a dark corridor where she knew someone was waiting to jump out and scare her. Knowing the scare was coming didn't make it any easier to take.

"What was that discovery?" Karen prodded, snapping Amanda out of her thoughts.

"A gunshot victim will bleed out even after death has occurred," Amanda said. "Dr. Sloan arrived at the scene a few minutes after the gunshots, but the blood was already clotted."

"Objection," Tyrell said, without bothering to rise from his seat. "Dr. Bentley doesn't know when Dr. Sloan arrived or what he saw and heard. This is hearsay."

"And this is a preliminary hearing, not a murder trial," Judge Rojas said. "I'll allow it. Please continue, Dr. Bentley."

"If the victims were killed at four-thirty, the blood couldn't have been clotted yet," Amanda continued. "It's impossible."

"But it would have been clotted by the time you arrived, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"So you would have missed that vital clue," Karen Cross said.

"Yes."

"But Dr. Sloan's contribution to the accurate determination of the time of death went beyond reporting to you what he saw, isn't that true?"

"One of the factors we consider in estimating the time of death is, as I said before, body temperature. Normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees. After death, the body loses about 1.5 degrees per hour," Amy explained. "Dr. Sloan made a postmortem incision into Amanda Butler's liver to get an accurate reading of her body temperature. It was 97 degrees."

"So if Dr. Sloan hadn't checked the liver temperature before your arrival, you would have miscalculated the time of death."

"Yes," Amanda said. "Based on Dr. Sloan's findings, and my subsequent autopsies, I estimated the time of death at between three and four p.m."

"Would it be fair to say that Dr. Sloan's actions aided your examination?"

"Absolutely," Amanda replied.

"What was the cause of death, in layman's terms?" Karen asked.

"Gunshot wounds to the head and the heart with a .45- caliber handgun," she replied.

"Did anything else come up in the autopsy?"

"I discovered rohypnol in both victims," Amanda said.

"What is rohypnol?"

"It's a sedative."

"What did that indicate to you?" the prosecutor asked.

"That both victims were unconscious at the time of their deaths," she replied.

"Did you determine how the drugs were administered?"

"Yes," Amanda said. "I saw champagne glasses in the living room at the scene. The crime lab discovered someone had injected the drug through the cork into the champagne bottle."

"Thank you, Dr. Bentley." Karen returned to her seat.

Tyrell whispered something to Lacey McClure, then rose from his seat and strolled up to the witness stand.

"What was your first reaction when you learned that Dr. Sloan had cut into one of the victims?"

"I don't recall," Amanda said.

But Mark remembered what she'd said and was certain Amanda probably did, too. She was committing perjury to protect him, herself, and the case against Lacey McClure.

Steve remembered, too, and he had to use all his self-control not to close his eyes and groan. He knew that Tyrell wouldn't be asking the question if there wasn't some way to prove the answer.

"Then let me help you remember," Tyrell said, as if reading Steve's thoughts.

The defense attorney went back to his desk, opened up his briefcase, removed a video cassette, and approached the judge's bench with it.

"This is a copy of a video shot by the LAPD Scientific Investigation Division to document the crime scene," Tyrell said. "I'd like to play a portion of it to help jog Dr. Bentley's memory."

"Proceed," Judge Rojas said, nodding his head toward a TV and VCR on a rolling stand in a corner of the courtroom.

While Tyrell wheeled the stand over, turned on the equipment, and inserted the video, Karen Cross glanced back at Mark and Steve. Their faces gave away nothing. Since she didn't know what Amanda's reaction at the crime scene had been, the prosecutor was pondering a different question:

How did Tyrell get his hands on the SID tape
? Tyrell hit PLAY. The photographer slowly moved the camera around the living room to methodically establish the geography of the home and what was in it.

The camera passed over Mark, his hands cuffed behind his back, having a conversation with Steve and Amanda. Although other people were talking in the room, Amanda's voice could clearly be heard as she angrily addressed Mark.

"Tampering with the evidence at a murder scene is a crime,"
Amanda said.
"Especially when it's my evidence."

Tyrell stopped the tape.

Amanda felt as if everyone on earth was staring at her. Glancing up at the camera mounted above the jury box, she realized the majority of them probably were.

"Tampering?" Tyrell said. "That wasn't how you described Dr. Sloan's actions in your testimony, was it?"

"I obviously made that comment before I was fully informed of what he had done," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and calm.

"Does that change the fact that what he did violated the law?"

"Objection," Karen Cross snapped angrily. "Dr. Bentley is a medical examiner, not a judge."

"She knows and understands the law in question," Tyrell argued. "She demonstrated that in the video."

"Overruled," Judge Rojas said to Karen, who sat down, simmering.

When this day from hell was finally over, Karen was going to tear Steve Sloan apart, assuming Arthur Tyrell left anything behind when he was done.

Tyrell looked at Amanda. "I'll repeat the question. Did Dr. Sloan's explanation change the fact that he broke the law by performing an invasive postmortem procedure on a murder victim?"

"No," Amanda said quietly.

"I'm sorry," Tyrell said. "I couldn't hear you."

"No," she said louder.

"So why wasn't he charged?" Tyrell asked.

"I don't know," Amanda said.

Tyrell gave her a skeptical look, but decided to let that pass.

"You assumed the murder occurred at four thirty because of the 911 call made by Dr. Sloan, correct?"

"Yes."

"And you also took Dr. Sloan's word for when he arrived at the scene and the amount of blood clotting that had occurred, correct?"

"Yes."

"But you hadn't actually examined the bodies yourself yet, had you?"

"No," Amanda said.

"In fact, isn't it true that you talked to Dr. Sloan as soon as you arrived at the scene, before even taking so much as a peek at the bodies?"

"Yes," Amanda said, knowing now what Mark had been trying to warn her about, and knowing that it was far too late. She'd fallen into the covered pit and was already impaled on the spikes. The only question now was how long she'd be made to suffer.

"So for all you know, the blood still hadn't clotted yet and he was distracting you until he was certain that it had?"

"Objection!" Karen said, practically yelling it out.

"Sustained," Judge Rojas said, not even waiting for her to make an argument. "Mr. Tyrell, save your theorizing for your inevitable press conference on the courthouse steps."

Tyrell acknowledged the comment with a curt nod, then confronted Amanda again.

"You testified that you found rohypnol in the bodies and learned that traces of the drug were found in the champagne bottle," Tyrell said. "Do you know when the drug was put in the champagne bottle?"

"I assume before Cleve Kershaw and Amy Butler opened it," she replied.

"You assume," he repeated. "But you don't know for certain, do you?"

"It could have been introduced into the bottle after they were dead, couldn't it?"

"Yes," she said reluctantly, knowing exactly what the lawyer was implying: that Mark might have tampered with the bottle while he was alone in the house. But she couldn't figure out what Tyrell was hoping to prove. Did he honestly think that anyone would believe that Mark had killed Kershaw and Butler? What possible motive could Mark have?

"You also can't say for certain how the rohypnol entered the bodies, can you?"

"I didn't find any needle marks on their bodies or—"

Tyrell interrupted before she could finish her reply. "Yes or no, Dr. Bentley?"

Tyrell nodded and paced in front of the witness stand for a moment. Amanda looked at the defendants, mostly be cause she couldn't bear to look at Mark—not with what she was doing to him. Lacey and Moira had thin smiles on their faces, clearly enjoying her discomfort.

"Where is the adjunct county medical examiner's office?" Tyrell asked.

"It's in the pathology lab at Community General Hospital."

"Isn't that the same hospital where you practice as a pathologist and where Dr. Sloan serves as chief of internal medicine?"

"Yes."

Tyrell looked at Mark, then back at Amanda. "Is that where you took the victims for autopsy?"

"Yes."

It was clear to her, of course, where Tyrell was going with this line of questioning and where it would end. There was nothing she could do to stop him. She was forced by the law to be an unwilling accomplice in the character assassination of Mark Sloan. If that wasn't painful enough, she was also committing professional suicide for the amusement of a live television audience.