Incriminating Evidence (41 page)

“Grudgingly.”

Good enough. “How do you account for the fact that Mr. Gates didn’t try to flee?”

“Objection. Speculative. State of mind.”

Right on both counts.

“Sustained.”

“If you had just committed a murder, Inspector, don’t you think that you would have left the room right away?”

The judge sustains Payne’s objection. I’ve planted the seed. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Redirect, Ms. Payne?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Any other witnesses, Ms. Payne?”

“No, Your Honor. The prosecution rests.”

Judge Kelly turns to me and says, “I take it you would like to make a motion.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” I make the customary motion to have all charges dismissed.

“Objection,” Payne says. “There’s no basis for this.”

Judge Kelly waves her back into her chair. “Sit down, Ms. Payne,” she says. She turns to me. “The motion is denied. I presume, Mr. Daley, that you’ll be ready to call your first witness on Monday morning?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

41
THE BALL IS IN OUR COURT

“Michael Daley was unable to discredit the compelling testimony of respected homicide inspector Elaine McBride.”

—N
EWS
C
ENTER
4 L
EGAL
A
NALYST
M
ORT
G
OLDBERG
. S
ATURDAY
, O
CTOBER
23.

Rosie and I head over to the martial arts studio to meet Carolyn and Ed and recap our defense tactics. I tell them I’m going to cast doubt on the physical evidence and then call our medical expert. “He’s coming over in a little while so Ed and I can prepare him,” I say. “He’s going to testify that Garcia may have died of a heroin or GHB overdose, or from an irregular heartbeat from a combination of drugs and alcohol.”

“If Skipper gave him the GHB and he died as a result of a chemical reaction,” Rosie points out, “Skipper still might have caused his death.”

“I realize that. Ed and I are going to spend a lot of today working with him,” I say. Ted Raffel is a full professor at Stanford. He’s a chatty fellow who makes the rounds on the pathology circuit. I’ve met with him three times already. He tells me about the hole in one he got thirty years ago every time I see him. At least he’s engaging, and he has the right degrees from the right schools. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

We break up into smaller groups. Molinari and I spend
the morning and part of the afternoon working with Dr. Raffel on his testimony. Carolyn and Rosie work on exhibits and our computer-generated graphics. It’s not enough to show the jury pictures anymore. You have to dazzle them with special effects.

At eight o’clock that evening, I’m at Rosie’s house. Grace has lined up all her Beanie Babies for roll call. She’s told me that I have to read them a story tonight. Her new favorite book is called
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
, by a good-hearted anarchist named Dav Pilkey. It’s very funny. I’m willing to read anything she wants, within reason. Tonight, I’m reading chapters four and five. The Beanie Babies appear to be more interested in this story than the jurors are in Skipper’s trial. I read them the story. As usual, I’m reading the words though my mind is on other things. I’d like to do this every night.

We finish chapter five. Grace looks up and says, “Daddy, can we watch the
Cats
video?” It warms my heart to know she’d rather watch a video of a Broadway musical than a cartoon.

“Sorry, sweetie,” I say. “It’s bedtime. And Daddy and Uncle Pete and Uncle Tony have to do some work tonight.”

“On a Saturday night?”

Busted. “Yeah, sweetie. The trial is almost over. Then we’re going to take a little break for a while.”

“How long?”

Good question. How about the rest of my life? “I’m not sure.”

“Daddy, did Mr. Gates kill that prostitute?”

Jesus. When I was eight years old, I didn’t know what the word
prostitute
meant. “No, sweetie,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

“Then you’ll be able to get him off, right?”

“That’s right.”

We gather the Beanie Babies and find room for them on her bed. She kisses each of them in turn and then she kisses me. “I love you, Daddy,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

“Don’t get yourself whacked on the head again, okay, Daddy?”

I see Rosie standing just outside the door, smiling. I kiss Grace and say, “I’ll be careful.”

Rosie says the same thing a few minutes later.

“I’ll be careful,” I assure her, too. “I’ve got the troops with me this time. Ron Morales and a couple of uniforms from Mission Station are going in. Want to come? You’ll get to ride in a squad car.”

“I think I’ll pass. I had more than enough fun when you decided to storm the Jerry.” She turns serious. “I trust you’ll be waiting outside in the police car this time?”

“Absolutely.”

“Listen, cowboy,” she says, “remember what happened last time you tried a stunt like this. I don’t want to spend another night at San Francisco General. This time, you leave the cops-and-robbers stuff to the pros.”

“I promise.”

She smiles. “And you’ll call me just as soon as you know something?”

“You bet.”

She hugs me.

At ten-thirty, Pete, Tony and I are sitting in the squad room in Mission Station. Ron Morales and three of his cohorts have a handmade diagram of the floor plan of the Curtis Hotel. “The appliance store on the ground floor is closed,”
Morales is saying. “John and I will go in the main entrance.” He points at the other two uniforms. “You guys will go up the back stairs.”

“What about us?” Tony asks.

“You guys will wait in the squad car until we come and get you. Leave the police work to us. We don’t know if anybody is up there.”

“Got it.”

Eleven o’clock. Pete, Tony and I are in the backseat of Morales’s squad car as we pull out of Mission Station and head up the block toward the Curtis. Morales and one of his colleagues are in the front. A second squad car with the other two officers follows behind us. We stop in front of a beat-up three-story building with a small sign on the front that says Curtis Hotel. Morales and John walk inside the front door, their guns drawn. The other two uniforms jog down the gangway next to the building and disappear.

We sit in silence. Cars are whizzing by us on Valencia. The blinking red lights on the top of our squad car cast flashing reflections off the buildings across the street. We look at the second floor and see a light in the Boys of the Bay Area room. A moment later, Morales leans out the window, holding up his hand to signal us to stay where we are. His head pops back inside.

“You think they found something?” Tony asks me.

“Can’t tell.”

A moment later, two more squad cars pull up behind us, their lights flashing. Four cops leap out and head straight up the main stairway. They ignore us.

“What’s happening?” Tony asks.

“They found something,” Pete says.

The flashing lights make it look like Rockefeller Center
at Christmas. A few minutes later, Morales walks out the front door and motions us to come in. “I’m going to take you guys upstairs,” he says. “Be careful not to touch anything.”

We climb up to the second floor. The hallway of the Curtis is like those of the Jerry and the Royan—drab, gloomy, grungy, smelly, ominous. The lights are dim, but at least they’re working. People are milling around in the corridor on the second floor. A young Hispanic man in a T-shirt and shorts is talking to the police. A woman holding an infant peers out her door. She appears frightened. I pause to consider how difficult it must be to try to raise a child here.

As Morales leads us to Room 204, he instructs us to follow the exact path that he takes. The police have already cordoned it off with yellow tape. “Don’t touch anything,” he reminds us again.

Two police officers who came with us are standing in the middle of the room. One of them is talking on his cellular phone. He nods toward us when we walk in. There is a double bed pushed up against one wall but little other furniture. I see a laptop computer, a printer and a fax machine on a table against the wall near the bathroom, and a small bookcase packed with dozens of videotapes.

There is a door with a broken padlock propped against the wall next to the bathroom. The cops have forced the door open with a crowbar and taken it off its hinges. It led into a big closet, and inside I can see more bookcases tightly packed with videos and binders and a metal file cabinet.

Morales is wearing plastic gloves. He shows me a black binder marked Boys of the Bay Area. It contains photos of naked men. He flips through it until he spots a familiar face: Johnny Garcia’s.

Morales pries open the top drawer of the file cabinet. He
reaches inside and pulls out two large clear plastic bags containing white powder.

“I presume that’s not sugar,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “This must be a distribution center. It looks like you could buy anything from them over the Internet—sex, drugs, porn. Somebody’s been running a high-tech shopping center. This heroin is probably worth about a quarter of a million bucks on the street.”

I observe that an operation of that size requires considerably more funding than Andy Holton would have been able to provide. “And you know this building is owned by the Mission Redevelopment Fund,” I add.

Morales gives me a sarcastic grin. “We’re aware of that. As usual, it looks like all roads lead back to the same place we always end up—Donald Martinez. If past history is any indication, I’ll bet you anything he has a perfectly legitimate explanation for everything.”

By the time I finally get home on Sunday morning, the sun is coming up. I’m getting too old to pull all-nighters. I have only one day to finalize our exhibits and line up our defense, which will be short. We’ll take potshots at the evidence and try to shift the blame onto some of the other people who were there that night. Then we’ll sit the hell down and let the jury decide. A friend of mine who is a prosecutor in San Diego tells me that juries usually end up making the right decision. They don’t always have the correct reasons, but they get to the right place. We’ll see.

I walk into my kitchen, think about making a pot of coffee, then decide to pull a Diet Dr Pepper from the fridge. I must look like hell. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’m supposed to take a leading role in Skipper’s defense. I close my eyes, then open them again. The blinking red light on my
answering machine has caught my eye. I have only one message. I hit the play button.

“Beep. Saturday. Eleven-thirty p.m. Mike, it’s Nick Hanson. Please call me as soon as you can. I found some stuff that you may find very interesting. Beep.”

I pick up the phone and punch the number he gave me. I get an answering service. They tell me that Mr. Hanson is working, but he’ll call back right away.

I ask for one of his sons.

“They’re all working, too,” the cheerful voice replies.

That figures.

42
SMOKE AND MIRRORS

“Gates defense begins today.”

—
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
E
XAMINER
. M
ONDAY
, O
CTOBER
25.

Monday morning comes too soon. It’s overcast when Ed Molinari and I push our way through the throng of reporters at the front of the Hall. Rosie and Natalie are already inside. Rosie has managed to convince her that it would be helpful for her to be seen in the courtroom today. I hope she’s up to it.

The reporters assault us. “We’re very pleased with the way the trial has progressed thus far,” I say. “We are very confident. We have no further comment at this time.”

And by the way, my head feels like somebody hit me with a two-by-four.

“All rise,” says the bailiff.

Judge Kelly strides to the bench. She’s ready to roll. She turns to the jury and says, “The defense will begin its presentation today.” She looks at me and says, “You may call your first witness.”

“The defense calls Douglas Kaplan,” I say.

A lifelong “white coat,” Doug Kaplan is a fifty-year-old civilian scientist who does chemical analyses in the bowels
of the Hall. Black-framed bifocals surround his droopy eyes. He isn’t a charismatic guy, but he’s very good at what he does. I run him through his résumé, then show him the two champagne flutes found in Skipper’s room. “Mr. Kaplan,” I say, “do you recognize these?”

Kaplan moves his glasses to the top of his bald head and studies the tags. “Yes,” he decides. “They’re the champagne flutes found in the defendant’s room at the Fairmont Hotel.”

I hand him the first flute and ask him if he is familiar with the fingerprint analysis prepared by Sergeant Jacobsen.

“Yes.”

“And she found only Mr. Gates’s fingerprints on this flute, right?”

“Yes.”

“And no fingerprints of the victim, Johnny Garcia?”

“That’s true.”

“So it’s logical to conclude that Mr. Gates handled this flute, right?”

“Objection. Speculative.”

“Overruled.”

“Yes,” Kaplan replies. “It is logical to conclude that Mr. Gates handled this flute.”

“And it is logical to conclude that the victim, Mr. Garcia, did not handle it.”