Incriminating Evidence (12 page)

The scene shifts to the front of Skipper’s house. Reading
from a prepared statement, Ann says that her father is innocent and she strides back inside. The camera then turns to the man who was standing next to her on the front step of the house. It’s Fast Eddie.

“What’s he up to?” Rosie asks, startled.

I put a finger to my lips. Molinari looks into the camera and says that he’s been retained by Skipper’s family. “We expect Mr. Gates to be released early next week,” he says. He spends another minute pleading Skipper’s case.

I turn down the sound and I dial Fast Eddie’s cell phone number. I get a recording. “Ed,” I say, “I just saw you on TV We need to have an understanding about the press. I don’t want you talking to the media without telling me first.” I slam down the phone. I turn back to Rosie and say, “This is going to get ugly.”

She doesn’t answer. She points at the TV. A frightened-looking young woman with long blond hair has appeared on the screen. She is standing in front of a BART station at Sixteenth and Mission. I turn up the volume again. We hear her identified only as Candy.

The reporter asks, “Did Mr. Gates pay you?”

“Yes.”

“And did you and Mr. Gates engage in rough sex?”

Her glassy eyes water. “Yes,” she says. She glances away from the camera. The reporter says that Candy may be a witness at Skipper’s trial.

“Looks like we may have another problem,” Rosie whispers.

9
“THEY’LL NEVER CALL HER AS A WITNESS”

“Hooker Says DA Made Her Have Kinky Sex.”

—
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
C
HRONICLE
. S
ATURDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
11.

I’m jolted out of an uneasy sleep by the ringing phone the next morning, Saturday. The first thing I hear is Ann’s strident tone. She’s furious. “Who is this prostitute that they interviewed on the news last night? You don’t seriously think Father is sleeping with hookers, do you?”

“It was the first we knew of it, too,” I tell her. “We’ll talk to her, Ann. We’ll get her story as soon as possible.”

“Damn right we will. I’ll meet you at the Hall. Somehow we’re going to have to try to explain this to Father.”

Skipper is indignant. “That prostitute is lying,” he says. “She’s a plant.” He paces in the consultation room. Turner, Fast Eddie and Ann are here with Rosie and me. Skipper is going to tell his story to the entire team today. “It’s a setup,” he insists as he points a finger in my direction. “This proves it.”

I’m not so sure. “Who’s setting you up?” I ask.

“Sherman’s people. Dan Morris. It’s politics.”

“Have you ever seen this woman?” Turner asks. He shows him the morning
Chronicle
. It’s a front-page story.

“Of course not.”

Ann asks, “Where did they find her?”

Skipper takes a drink of water from a paper cup. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he says. “Probably on the street.” He points to her picture. Her eyes are glazed. “She’s a junkie. She’s looking for publicity and drug money. They’ll never call her as a witness.”

I wish. Still, she doesn’t have a commanding look of authority.

Molinari is surprisingly reserved. He takes off his glasses and fixes his eyes on Skipper. “Are they going to find anybody else out there who is going to make these accusations?” he asks.

Skipper’s eyes dart. “If you’re asking whether I sleep around with hookers, the answer is no.”

Ann looks at me triumphantly.

I’m having lunch with Roosevelt Johnson at Tommy’s Joynt, a bar and hofbrau on Van Ness and Geary. We’d set this up yesterday; I wanted an update on the police findings. Tommy’s isn’t the most politically correct restaurant in the Bay Area. Moose heads hang from the walls. A long cafeteria-style counter where burly men cut brisket, turkey, roast beef and even buffalo extends the length of the restaurant. It smells like a cross between a deli and a gymnasium. People from all walks of life show up here. You stand in line and tell them what to carve for you. Except for an occasional paint job, the place hasn’t changed much in the last forty years.

Roosevelt picks at his turkey sandwich. “I called your mama last night,” he says. He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “She didn’t sound too good.”

The doctors are trying to control her Alzheimer’s with
medication. The disease is winning. “She’s having more bad days than she used to.”

“Getting old is no fun,” he says.

The proprietors of Tommy’s boast that they serve over a hundred different beers. Roosevelt and I drink coffee. He looks around the busy restaurant. A gruff busboy who looks as if he’s been working here since the place opened asks Roosevelt if he wants more coffee. He accepts. This is a good sign. If he didn’t want to talk, he would be standing up. “They found some interesting things at the Fairmont,” he begins. “Skipper’s fingerprints were on the handcuffs.”

I nod. This isn’t news. We’ll argue he got his fingerprints on the handcuffs when he tried to release them.

He takes off his glasses and wipes them with a napkin. “We still can’t figure out how the victim got there,” he says.

I don’t want to tell Roosevelt about Pete’s triumph over the Fairmont’s security system. “Were there any signs of a struggle?”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

I ask what else they found in the room.

He takes out a pad from his breast pocket and consults his notes. “Two empty champagne flutes. The lab techs are testing them to see if they can find traces of any chemicals.”

I ask about fingerprints on the flutes.

“Skipper’s prints were on both of them. The victim’s fingerprints were on one.” He finishes his sandwich and adds, “The room service waiter and your client told us the victim’s eyes, nose and mouth were covered with duct tape. The kid couldn’t breathe.”

My chest tightens. I can visualize Johnny Garcia pulling against the handcuffs and struggling to find air. I wonder how long it took for him to die. “Did you find anything at the house?”

“They’re still sorting out the evidence. They took Skipper’s computer. One of our tech guys is looking at it. We
found a gun in the bedroom safe. It was registered to Skipper. We found a storage locker key. We’re getting a court order to open it.”

We’ll fight the court order and lose. I make a note to ask Skipper what’s in the locker. “None of this adds up to much of a case,” I say.

He lets that pass. “Our guys searched his study. They found two pairs of handcuffs in his desk that match the ones we found at the scene.”

“He was the DA. I’m sure he kept a couple of extra pairs of handcuffs.”

Roosevelt gives me the I’ve-heard-it-all-a-million-times look. “Could be,” he says. “For now, we just have a bunch of coincidences, a death involving suspicious circumstances and some incriminating evidence. McNulty and Payne are going to have to tie this all together very soon.”

Which is precisely what they will do. “Any chance the victim was dead or drugged before he got to the Fairmont?”

“I don’t know. We’re still waiting to receive the final autopsy report. You’ll have to ask the medical examiner.”

I ask if he’s interviewed the prostitute who appeared on the news last night.

“Not yet. The vice cops who found her say she’s articulate and credible. We’re going to talk to her later today. We are very interested in hearing what she has to say.”

10
“HE DIED OF ASPHYXIATION”

“It’s like putting a puzzle together. You have to be patient and it helps if you have an insatiable curiosity.”

—S
AN
F
RANCISCO
M
EDICAL
E
XAMINER
R
ODERICK
B
ECKERT
.
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
C
HRONICLE
. S
ATURDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
11.

Two o’clock the same afternoon. I’m in the basement of the Hall, in the antiseptic office of Dr. Roderick Beckert, the chief medical examiner of the City and County of San Francisco. He’s in his early sixties and is a leading expert on pathology and forensics. He eyes me through aviator-style bifocals and forces a polite smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Daley,” he says. His trim beard has grown more gray than brown in the last few years.

He wears a white lab coat and a striped tie. A thin gold pen sits in his breast pocket. Books on forensics and pathology are arranged in alphabetical order on his matching bookshelves. There isn’t a speck of dust or a piece of paper on his desk. A model of a skeleton grins at me from the corner of the cold room. In what passes for whimsy in this part of the Hall, the skeleton is wearing a black Giants baseball cap.

“Thanks for coming in on a Saturday,” I say.

We shake hands. His grip is firm, his manner businesslike. He pushes his glasses to the top of his bald head.
“In my line of work, you can’t keep regular hours,” he says. He isn’t the kind of doctor you’d call if you’re sick. He is, however, the kind of doctor you’d call if you’re dead. He teaches at UCSF in his spare time. He’s big on the pathology lecture circuit.

He hands me a photocopy of his autopsy report and gives me a few minutes to scan it. “I just finished it,” he says. “I wanted to get you a copy as soon as possible.”

I would have preferred to have seen it before we met. I realize, however, that it isn’t an ideal world and he has no obligation to talk to me. He is doing me a favor by fitting me into his schedule. I’ll study the report in detail after we’re finished. For the moment, I’ll take what I can get from him.

Every time we’ve met, I’ve told him he can call me Mike, but Rod Beckert’s not a first-name guy. When you talk to him, the protocol dictates that you ask him questions with mannerly restraint. “I was hoping you could tell me a little about your autopsy,” I say. I figure I’ll start with an open-ended question to see if I can draw him out.

“It’s in my report,” he says. This is his standard answer for almost every question, delivered in a clinical tone with a hint of a New York accent. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the information
is
, in fact, in his report. This doesn’t deter me. He’s going to testify at the preliminary hearing and I want to hear everything he’s going to say. More important, I want to hear how emphatically he’s going to say it.

“I haven’t had a chance to study it. I was hoping you’d give me the highlights.”

“Of course, Mr. Daley.” We’ve done this dance many times. He knows I’m fishing for information. To his credit, he plays his role without irritation. “Where would you like to start?”

“How about time of death?”

He flips through his report, pausing to moisten his finger every page or two. “Page three,” he says. “Time of death between
one and four A.M.” He says he determines time of death by looking at body temperature, discoloration and the state of rigor mortis. Then he recites the standard caveat that he always gives himself at least a three-hour window. I’m not going to make an issue of it. Beckert is one of the most respected coroners in the country. He’s going to get it right.

I ask about the cause of death.

“He died of asphyxiation,” he says. “The room service waiter reported that the eyes, nose and mouth were covered with duct tape. We found traces of adhesive chemicals on the victim’s face that were consistent with the conclusion that the nose and mouth had been covered.”

“Any chance he died before his face was covered with tape?”

“No.”

“Could you tell whether he died in the hotel room?”

The first hint of impatience. “That’s in my report, too.” He pulls out three enlarged photos of Johnny Garcia’s naked body lying on his stomach on the bed in the hotel room. I’ve been through this ritual before, too. I don’t enjoy it. He thumbtacks them to a bulletin board next to his desk. He moves his glasses from the top of his head down to his eyes and studies the pictures. He gestures with the pen toward a side view of the body. He points toward Garcia’s stomach. “You see this area here, Mr. Daley? There is discoloration. We call that lividity.” I listen to him explain that when a person dies, the heart stops pumping and gravity causes the blood to rush to the lowest point in the body. “The victim was found lying on his stomach,” he says. “The discoloration in that area indicates to me that he was lying on his stomach when he died.”

I ask whether it is possible he may have been killed someplace else and moved into this bed.

He gives me the not-in-this-lifetime look. “I suppose,” he says, “it is theoretically possible that he could have been
killed somewhere else while lying on his stomach and then carefully moved to the defendant’s room and placed in the same position. You would lose a great deal of credibility if you make that argument to a jury. In addition, urine stains were found on the bed.” When you die, your muscles relax and there is often a discharge. “The stains confirm that the victim was lying on his stomach on the bed when he died.” He says they will do DNA tests to be sure that the urine stains came from Garcia. They will also ask for a DNA sample from Skipper.