Howtown (12 page)

I fired my last, feeble volley. “The court’s condition of an eight-week delay violates my client’s right to a speedy trial.”

“You can take that up with the Court of Appeal,” he said, coldly, “after you give me an answer.”

“I’d like five minutes to discuss this with my client.”

“Court is in recess for five minutes. You can talk to your client in the tank,” he said, adding acerbically, “We’ll wait for you here.”

The bailiff led Paul and me to the holding cell off the courtroom. As soon as he left, Paul asked, “What the hell’s going on out there?”

“I think I may have offended the judge’s pride,” I said, and explained the choice that Lanyon had given us. “The bottom line is that we can do the prelim today in front of a very angry judge, or wait eight weeks for another court to open up.”

Paul paced the cell. “What difference does it make?”

“It could make a lot of difference on how he conducts the hearing, how he rules on my objections, what he lets Rossi get away with, and I can promise you that you will be held to answer.”

He stopped pacing. “They’re going to hold me to answer no matter where we go. They’re not going to dismiss the complaint.”

“Probably not,” I agreed, “though with a case this thin, we’d have a fighting chance in another court.”

Paul balled his hands into fists. “I’m not sitting in that fucking cell for another eight weeks. Why won’t he give me bail?”

“You’re too unpopular to get bail.”

He glared at me. “It couldn’t be any worse if I had killed the son-of-a-bitch.”

“We’ve got to go back in, Paul. What do you want to do?”

“Let’s just do it.”

“I think you’re making a mistake.”

“I’ve had lots of practice.”

“Well?” Lanyon asked, when Paul and I had resumed our seats at counsel table.

“The defense withdraws its motion, Your Honor,” I said. “We would like to proceed with the hearing.”

“Fine,” he said, with the narrowest and briefest of smiles. “People call their first witness.”

“The People call Robert Doyle.”

Doyle was the medical examiner with the literary flair. As he made his way to the witness stand, I watched Lanyon, who glanced back at me once as if I were a fleck of dust on his robe, and I settled in for what promised to be a long day.

On the stand, Doyle, without much prodding from Rossi, essentially repeated what he’d put in his report.

McKay had been killed between midnight and three in the morning. He’d been bound to a chair and gagged. The cause of death was blunt force trauma—a series of blows to the head by an instrument unknown. The same instrument had also been used to crush his testicles. Offhandedly, Doyle remarked that McKay had also suffered partial asphyxiation.

Rossi asked, “What caused that?”

“He swallowed his gag,” Doyle said.

“Do you have an opinion on why he might have done that?” Rossi asked.

“Objection, relevance. Asphyxiation was not the cause of death.”

Lanyon brushed my objection aside with a curt, “Overruled.”

Doyle said, “It was a fear reflex.”

“He suffered?” Rossi asked solicitously.

“Yes. This wasn’t a quick or painless death.”

“Nothing further,” Rossi said.

Lanyon looked at me. “Mr. Rios?”

I got up. There had been some murmuring in the gallery as Doyle sketched the gruesome details of the murder, but now there was silence as if everyone was wondering how I could turn his testimony to the defense’s advantage. Sitting up late the night before, going over Doyle’s report and examining the autopsy pictures, I’d wondered the same thing myself. The key lay in the passionate nature of the killing: this death made a statement.

“Mr. Doyle,” I said, making my way to the podium at the end of counsel table. “Do you have any idea of what kind of object was used to kill Mr. McKay?”

He smiled. “Well, it was bigger than a swizzle stick.”

I smiled back, as if this was nothing more than an exchange of pleasantries. “More on the order of a baseball bat?”

“Something like that.”

“And do you have any idea of the kind of force that was used on the victim?”

“I don’t understand,” he replied.

“The skull is a pretty hard thing, isn’t it?” I asked, tapping my head.

Rossi said, “Objection, vague.”

Lanyon looked at Doyle. “Can you answer the question?”

“Sure,” he said agreeably. “The skull is a pretty hard thing. It does take a certain amount of force to shatter it.”

“Do you have an estimate of how long it actually took between the first blow and last blow to the victim’s head?”

“They were fairly close in time.”

“Fairly close?” I echoed. “Five seconds? Five minutes? An hour?”

He turned his eyes upward for a second and his lips moved silently. “I’d say ten minutes, maximum.”

“So, Mr. Doyle, what we have is someone striking another person with a baseball bat for a ten-minute period with sufficient force to shatter the victim’s skull, is that right?”

He smiled, again, having apparently caught the drift of my questioning. “Are you asking me whether your client was strong enough to do it?”

“Or sufficiently motivated.”

Rossi and Doyle spoke simultaneously. “Objection.” “I can’t answer that.”

“I have nothing further,” I said.

Doyle was excused. Lanyon said. “Your next witness, Mr. Rossi?”

“The People call James Mitchell,” Rossi said.

James Mitchell was the first officer called to the scene of the motel the morning after the murder. He testified that there was no evidence of forcible entry. He had searched the grounds of the motel for a weapon without success. What he did find, in McKay’s suitcase, were pictures of nude teenage boys, engaged in sexual acts with each other and adult men. Over my relevance objection, the photos were admitted into evidence. With that, Rossi concluded his examination.

“Officer Mitchell,” I said, rising, “what was the condition of the room when you entered it?”

Rossi said, “Objection, vague.”

“Sustained.”

“Was there blood in the room?” I asked.

Rossi stirred in his seat but said nothing.

“Yeah, there was blood, all right,” Mitchell replied.

“Where?” I asked, approaching him.

“All over.”

“On the walls?”

“Yes.”

“On the bed?”

“Yes.”

“On the floor around the chair where Mr. McKay was bound?”

Impatiently, he said, “Yeah. All over the room. Even on the windows.”

“And how far were the windows from the chair?” I asked. “Your best estimate.”

Thoughtfully, he said, “Five, eight feet.”

“In other words,” I concluded, “would it be a fair statement that when Mr. McKay was struck, his blood sprayed across the room?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I smiled. “No guessing, just answer based on what you saw.”

“Yes,” he said, fidgeting.

I returned to counsel table and scribbled a note: “blood everywhere—why no bloody clothes from paul. no blood in car. ask sara if she saw him that night.”

“Now, Officer,” I continued, looking up at him. “You testified there were no signs of forcible entry into the room, is that right?”

“Yeah, it looked like he let the guy in.”

“Well, was the door unlocked when you arrived at the scene?”

He looked at me blankly. “The maid was there.”

I scribbled a note to track down the maid.

“But you don’t know whether the door was locked or unlocked the night McKay was murdered, do you?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“So,” I continued, “as far as you know the door could’ve been unlocked.”

“Objection,” Rossi said, “calls for speculation.”

Lanyon said, “Sustained.”

“Your Honor, if I may be heard.”

Lanyon glanced down at me. “Save it, Counsel. I think we all see what you’re driving at.”

I shrugged. I’d made my point—if the door had been left unlocked by McKay his murderer could have entered the room at any time with or without his consent.

“Officer Mitchell, did you observe any signs of a struggle in the room?”

He thought about it for a moment. “The room was a mess but …”

I pressed him. “But what?”

“I don’t know what you mean by struggle,” he said, petulantly.

“Well, Officer,” I said, “McKay was gagged and bound when you found him. Were there any signs he resisted?”

He repeated, “The room was a mess.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He drew a deep breath. “The bed wasn’t made. His suitcase was open and there was stuff all over.”

“Officer, are you sure that wasn’t just bad housekeeping?”

There was laughter in the courtroom. Rossi objected.

Humorlessly, Lanyon said, “Sustained. The statement is stricken.”

“Nothing further,” I said.

“Step down,” Lanyon directed the officer. “Your next witness, Mr. Rossi.”

“The People call Calvin Mota.”

Mota was the fingerprint man. His testimony was crucial to the prosecution’s case because it provided the only evidence that Paul had been in McKay’s room. A bespectacled, civil-servant type, Mota began his testimony with a professorial calm that doubtless went over well with juries.

Rossi got him to lay out his professional qualifications and was asking him to explain the process by which he made fingerprint comparisons. He asked, “Now, you’ve used two words, latent prints and inked prints. What do those terms mean?”

Mota could probably have replied by rote, but he managed to put a little animation into it. “The latent fingerprints are usually those prints which are lifted at the crime scene and submitted to evidence for checking against a suspect. The comparison is made with an inked print. These are rolled at booking stations and kept on file cards in the sheriff’s bureau of identification.”

“Tell me what produces a latent fingerprint,” Rossi said.

On the bench, Lanyon stifled a yawn. It was getting near to noon.

“Well,” Mota was saying, “latent prints are the result of certain body fluids that are secreted through the pores at the tips of the fingers, the palms of the hand and the soles of the feet. These fluids contain salts and fatty acid, amino acids, and also water. Sweat, in other words. Now of course, the other part of this is that you have to have a surface capable of recording the print …”

He droned on, explaining how prints were developed, lifted and transferred to evidence cards. He explained how comparisons were made between the latent prints and inked prints by looking for points of similarity between the two. When there were enough such points—seven was what he looked for—he would make an identification.

“Now,” Rossi said, his voice becoming brisker, “do you know whether the sheriff’s bureau of identification has an inked print of the defendant?”

“Yes, it does,” Mota said.

“And do you know how that print was acquired?”

I broke in. “Your Honor, we stipulate that such a print exists. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into how it was acquired.”

“Yes, go on, Mr. Rossi.”

“Mr. Mota, you’ve heard testimony about a murder committed on Tuesday, July twenty-fifth, at the Little King Motel. Did you lift any fingerprints from that location?”

“Yes,” Mota said. “On July twenty-fifth, in the morning.”

“Did you compare any of those prints with the defendant’s inked print?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what were the results?”

“I was able to identify eleven of the prints at the crime scene as the defendant’s fingerprints.”

Next to me, Paul balled his fingers into his palms.

“Relax,” I whispered.

Mota was saying that Paul’s prints had been lifted from the metal toilet handle, a glass, the doorknob and McKay’s suitcase. Only the last location seemed at all suspicious and I made a note to ask Paul about it. After a couple of follow-up questions, Rossi finished.

“Do you have any questions on this witness?” Lanyon asked.

“One or two, Your Honor,” I rose. “Mr. Mota, were you able to lift any fingerprints off the victim’s body?”

“No.”

“What about the chair where he was sitting?”

“No, I wasn’t, Counsel.”

“Now, Mr. Mota, you’re not able to tell at what time these prints were made, are you?”

“Do you mean, what? Day? Weeks?”

“Well, in any twenty-four-hour period, you couldn’t tell by looking at it whether a print was made at twelve noon or at twelve midnight, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Nothing further.”

Lanyon dismissed the witness and said, “It is now near noon. We will be in recess until one-thirty.”

Paul whispered, “Why didn’t you ask him any more questions?”

We rose while Lanyon left the bench. I turned to Paul and said, “Well, they were your prints, Paul. But all they prove is that you were there sometime before McKay was murdered. That’s not enough.”

“What’s not enough?” Rossi asked, coming up behind us, all smiles.

“Your evidence.”

“We’re not done yet.”

The bailiff tapped Paul on the shoulder. “Lunchtime.”

“I’ll see you after lunch,” I said, as he was led away.

Rossi rested his considerable butt against the edge of the table. “I like the way you took on Lanyon.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I keep waiting for him to take his revenge.”

Rossi got up. “Don’t worry about that, Henry. He will.”

“H
ENRY, HOW ABOUT LUNCH?”

I looked around and saw Sara standing at the rail that separated the gallery from the well of the court. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the night in her garden. Her smile was tentative, worried.

“Sure,” I said.

We stepped out of the courthouse into the blazing noontime heat. Men in shirtsleeves and women in sleeveless blouses poured from the nearby office buildings, faces hidden behind dark glasses, walking quickly to nearby fast-food places. Sara stopped and fished her own sunglasses out of her purse, adjusting them on her face, pushing stray, brittle hairs away from her face.

“I know a nice place not far from here,” she said, “if you can stand the heat.”

“Lead on,” I replied. We walked beneath the motionless branches of the sycamores from the civic center to the old streets of downtown. Untouched by urban renewal, these streets were lined with squat brick buildings and canopied entrances to vacant storefronts.