Obstruction of Justice (31 page)

"Were any of these prints identified?"

"Yes, sir. They were matched against the prints of the defendant, Jason de Beers, on file at the Department of Motor Vehicles. He applied for a driver’s license the day he turned sixteen and his prints were taken at that time." Jason muttered something and Nina put a warning hand on his arm.

"How long did this process of identifying the defendant’s prints take?"

"It says here within two days. We were in a hurry. The sheriff’s office had found the bodies of Quentin de Beers and Raymond de Beers in a burning cabin at Wright’s Lake...."

"We’ll get more into that with the next witness," Collier said.

"What was the next step taken by the South Lake Tahoe police department?" The question was vague, but Nina owed Amagosian, and she knew it. She would object now only if it was absolutely necessary. She kept her mouth shut.

"I was contacted with that information, and I attempted to locate the defendant. I went to the address listed on his application for the license and talked to his mother, Sarah de Beers. She informed me that Jason was staying with a friend by the name of Kenny Munger. I located Mr. Munger’s address and talked to him, but he indicated he had not seen the defendant since the day just preceding the incident at the cemetery.

"Nobody seemed to know where the defendant was. Quentin de Beers’s car was missing. I sent out bulletins on the car and on the defendant. The defendant was picked up by Las Vegas police while trying to play a slot machine on September second. He waived his right to counsel in Nevada and waived an extradition hearing. He was transferred into the custody of the County of El Dorado on a warrant of arrest."

"All right, Sergeant, thank you very much. I have no further questions."

"Mrs. Reilly?"

Nina looked up from her notes and said, "No questions at this time."

Clearly pleased that she was passing, Judge Amagosian gave both Balsam and Nina a big smile and said, "Well, then, Officer, I think you may go."

Paul passed a note to Nina that said You are now officially rehabilitated. Nina scrawled at the bottom, for both Paul and Jason’s benefit, The next guy is ours.

"Call Deputy Daniel Beatty," Collier said, and as Suntan Beatty uncurled from his chair next to Collier and strode up to the witness stand, Nina glanced over the notes she had made from Balsam’s testimony, and wrote rapidly: "1. Footprints and trampling. One large man. 2. Two parallel drag marks of bodies to driveway. 3. Quentin’s blood on shovel handle. 4. Jason’s fingerprints on shovel handle."

All that raw material came down to so few physical facts. She shuffled and reshuffled them in her mind, then set them out one by one without the obvious linkages, and waited like the rest of them for the next witness to unfold the rest of the story.

26

"STATE YOUR FULL NAME AND OCCUPATION FOR the record," Collier said.

"Daniel Allen Beatty. Deputy sheriff assigned to the Placerville Station of the El Dorado County sheriff’s oflice."

Collier elicited over the next few minutes that Suntan had received special training in investigation of crime scenes over his twelve years with the sheriff’s office and that he was an arson specialist. Suntan had a low-key, ingratiating look. He was very young-looking, with deep-set eyes, a sharp jaw, and white teeth when he smiled, which was frequently. When he wasn’t sailing on Lake Tahoe he was running Iron Man triathlons in Hawaii. According to Paul, he had dated every good-looking woman at the sheriff’s office and somehow managed to keep them all happy.

He might be a great runner, but Paul had told Nina he was an uninspired, plodding investigator. His involvement was another good reason to rush the preliminary hearing. Suntan had been greatly stressed preparing any report of his investigation at all in the short time frame. Nina had received her copy only on Saturday, and recognized it as her favorite kind of police report, a sloppy job.

Now she listened with strained attention to every word, her mind searching for gaps and errors. Suntan had come to the fire.

"Two thirty-five A.M., a 911 call was received from a pay station at the Wright’s Lake camp. A woman. We tape all 911’s, so we have it." Nina’s silk blouse stuck to her underarms as sweat surged from every pore. How in the world could she have overlooked the fact that she would be examining an officer who had listened to her voice on the phone over and over?

"Did the caller identify herself?"

"She hung up before the dispatcher could find out who she was. The caller was very excited. I have the tape with me. Or I can just read a transcript."

Collier started to say, "Well, let’s go ahead and hear the—"

"As the court stated," Nina interrupted, "the Best Evidence Rule doesn’t apply. There’s no necessity here today to get all that equipment going, and—"

"It’s really no problem," Suntan said, looking at her with a gleam that could mean something very bad for Nina or might just reveal a Boy Scout excitement over his preparations. He whipped out a retro-style tape player in red plastic. "It’s already loaded up," he said.

"Let’s not waste time on this, Your Honor," Nina said quickly. "The transcript will be sufficient."

Suntan continued to look at her, and she didn’t like the look in his eye. But she didn’t dare look away, and for a long moment he held on to her eyes until his steady gaze broke through her fear and she recognized with relief that the look in his eye was a look she had seen before quite recently in the doting eyes of her doggy admirers. Suntan must think she was cute. If she was really lucky, he might be half as stupid as she was. "Why don’t we just get it read and move on?" she entreated the judge.

"No, I’d like to hear it," Amagosian said. "It won’t take long." If she kept breathing this hard for another minute, she’d need a paper bag.

Paul reached out one of his long legs and kicked her ankle under the table. On the folded note he passed her he had scrawled the words Shut up. Nina leaned back in her chair, trying to get a little more air and rubbing her ankle.

Suntan turned on the tape.

"This is the emergency operator," a vaguely familiar voice said.

"Fire," a woman yelled. "At Wright’s Lake. Two people are in the cabin! Hurry!" The woman had a much higher voice than Nina’s, a bit of a screech really, and she sounded hysterical. This must be another 911 call. Nina had been perfectly rational at all times....

"Give me your name, please—"

"No! I can’t! I can see it from here! It’s burning down!" A distant crash washed over the background. "Oh my God!"

It was her, all right. Nina looked fearfully around.

"We need your name."

"Wright’s Lake! Wright’s Lake!"

"The caller has disconnected. We’ve placed that call as coming from the Wright’s Lake pay station," said the detached voice of the emergency dispatcher. Nina pried her fingers from their deathly grip on the table and forced them to lie perfectly still on the papers in front of her. "Placerville Fire, come in," the tape said. "Report of a burning building at Wright’s Lake."

"Call the Lake for an extra unit, Dispatch," said a new voice.

"Calling now. Could result in a forest fire; it’s been very dry up there. Shall I contact the Forest Service?"

"Ten-four, Dispatch, have them send a helicopter so we can see if there are any flamers starting up."

"Ten-four. Over and out."

"That’s it," Suntan said, clicking the button and returning the recorder to his pocket.

"Did everybody hear that all right?" Amagosian said. Jason’s head touched hers, and he muttered, "It’s you, all right."

"Shhh," Nina said.

"Has the woman making the call been identified to this date?" Collier said, resuming his questioning while seated at the counsel table.

"Not yet, but we’re working on it. We have some prints from the pay phone station. We’re still sorting them out."

"What occurred after the 911 call?"

"Two fire units went up to Wright’s Lake. It’s kind of a shared responsibility area because it’s almost equidistant from Placerville and Tahoe. The Placerville unit arrived at 0257, followed by the Tahoe unit at 0303 hours. The chopper was already circling the building. I have the reports here in front of me."

"Go on."

"The firefighters from the first unit went in and removed two adult male bodies from the living room area. Both had been severely burned. With a fire still burning, obviously they couldn’t take photos of the placement of the bodies in situ. Emergency efforts to resuscitate one of the men failed to bring a response. The other body appeared to be partially decomposed and smelled of embalming fluid. It had clearly been dead for some days. Both bodies were taken to the Lake Tahoe morgue on Doc Clauson’s instructions. The firefighters continued efforts to fight the fire and had it under control in under an hour. There were no subsidiary fires."

"Thank you, Deputy. Now, at some point were you called in to investigate the circumstances of this fire?"

"Yes. I was hauled out of bed at 0415 hours and reported for duty at the fire site along with my partner at 0500 hours. It took us thirty minutes from Placerville predawn. One of the Placerville fire units was still there, but the chopper and the Tahoe unit had already taken off. I suited up and went in."

"And what did you personally observe at the fire site?"

"I have my report right here." While Suntan looked it over, Judge Amagosian said pointedly, "Far be it from me to ask for it." Nina managed a sickly smile.

"This was a typical summer cabin with two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen area with a long counter, and a living area with a fieldstone fireplace, which remained intact. The walls and ceiling of the living area sustained the worst damage. Wallpaper on one wall hung off in shreds. The roof had burned through near the kitchen area to the point where you could see sky. Although the bedroom walls were blackened with soot and smoke, the fire never made it through the closed doors. In an area about four feet by four feet near the kitchen, the wooden floor had burned through, revealing the crawl space. I got down in there and found this." He held up a large, charred can of lighter fluid.

"Was there any fluid in the can?"

"No, sir. And I can tell you the can was empty before the fire started, because otherwise the heat would have caused it to explode. Instead, only the outside showed burning and it was intact."

"Indicating?"

"Indicating the floor burned through early and the can fell down there early in the fire. I could smell lighter fluid on what was left of the floorboards all around the living room and on the bodies."

"And based on this evidence did you arrive at any conclusion regarding the cause of the fire?"

"I concluded that the lighter fluid was spread around the bodies and the living area, then lit. I found no trace of a lighter or matches, but pocket matches would likely have burned up. We do have a number of samples from the flooring area that we are still analyzing."

"Could the fire have started by accident?"

"No, sir. An accidental lighter fluid spill would have occurred in a much more circumscribed area."

"What did you do next in the course of your investigation, Deputy?" Collier said. He had hit his pace, relaxed and confident, the pace that comes only from years of evidentiary hearings. He was bringing out the important points and leaving the morass of data for trial, where it could all be picked over for weeks or months. Nina felt mingled envy and admiration, watching him move so self-assuredly around the witness, hearing him never stutter, never ask a question she could object to unless he intended it. How could he be such a paragon in his job and such a wreck outside it? With an effort, she concentrated again on the testimony.

"My partner and I made an inventory of all the objects in the house and their condition. When it got light enough we examined the area for traces of vehicles. We found a lot of tire tracks in the drive. It’s all woods behind the cabin, and there’s only one road."

"You also photographed and diagramed the tire tracks?"

"Exactly. We sent the info to a tire tracks expert out of Cameron Park who works with us now and then."

"And do you have any report from this expert?"

"No, sir. He says he’s just getting started. He did mention that one of the sets was light-duty truck tires like you would find on an SUV—a sports utility vehicle, like a Ford Explorer or something."

Or a Bronco, Nina corrected him silently.

"Did you recover any fingerprints?" Yikes! Nina thought. She would make a terrible burglar. She dug her nails into her palms.

"The soot was a major problem. We do have prints from the two bedrooms that were relatively undamaged, and we have a preliminary report. They include prints made by Quentin de Beers. Several more are still unidentified."

"Any prints on the can of lighter fluid?"

"No such luck," Suntan said regretfully, shifting his weight back and forth on the hard wooden seat. They were all getting hungry, but until the clock on the wall hit the exact moment of twelve, Nina knew Amagosian would not dismiss them, and that was still eighteen minutes away.

Collier plowed on. "Have you since made any determination as to the owner of the cabin?"

"The sole owner for the last twenty years, a man named Noel Gant, was interviewed and indicated the place was a fishing cabin, and that he had told Mr. de Beers to use it whenever he wanted to. We also talked to several neighbors, none of whom were at their cabins that night.

"They say Mr. de Beers came up frequently during the summer to go fishing, using the canoe we found beside the house. He occasionally brought up friends and family over the years, including the youngest Mr. de Beers there." Suntan indicated Jason, who sat up straight in his seat. It was the first connection between Jason and the cabin, but it wasn’t very persuasive. So Jason had been up there once or twice as a kid. So what?

"Over the last couple years, the defendant would go up there alone sometimes, the neighbors said. His grandfather gave him a key, introduced him around."

"Did you at some point learn that the South Lake Tahoe police had identified the two bodies taken from the burning house?"

"Yes, I learned sometime earlier that night that the body of a ... a deceased person named Raymond de Beers had been removed from a grave in town. Quentin de Beers’s body was initially identified by a representative of De Beers Construction Company, and later by family members."

"And did you have access to the reports of the South Lake Tahoe investigation of the incident at the Happy Homestead cemetery on that night?"

"They were provided to me by Sergeant Balsam. I’ve had a chance to read them."

"Now let me ask you..." Collier said, and Nina recognized the phrase with which he always introduced important testimony. "You, as a highly experienced sheriff’s department investigator, have reviewed each and every report available as of this morning with regard to this case? All of which have been provided to counsel for the defense?"

"Well, I don’t know if they’ve been provided—"

"They have."

"Yes, I believe I have all the reports except the autopsy report. Your office has also provided me with an account of a civil case to exhume the body of Raymond de Beers, in which Jason de Beers and his grandfather were apparently on opposite sides."

"The civil pleadings in that case are in evidence by stipulation and are available for the Court’s bedtime reading," Collier said to Amagosian, who blinked his eyes and said, "Very well."

"Are you able at this time, based on your experience and the reports in question, to reconstruct what occurred at the cemetery in question and subsequently at the cabin at Wright’s Lake on the night of August twenty-second?"

"Objection!" Nina called out. "Calls for speculation and a conclusion. Vague, ambiguous, and unintelligible. Lack of foundation. Leading. The whole thing is based on second- and third-hand reports. It’s one thing to bring in the facts that way, because the hearing is preliminary. It’s another to draw conclusions as to the ultimate facts in a case."

Collier said, "Let’s take those objections one at a time." He then proceeded to dismember her objections, mostly on the basis that Suntan was an expert allowed to give his opinions, up to and including reconstruction of a crime scene. After Nina had her chance to speak again, Amagosian made Collier try again twice more until he was satisfied with the form of the question. The clock edged toward twelve, as implacable as Collier, who was now asking again what Suntan made of it all.

"I would also have to assume that the coroner has found that Quentin de Beers died of foul play," Suntan said.

"I will represent to the witness and the Court that exactly such a finding has been made and will be discussed when Dr. Clauson is called," Collier said. "Now go ahead."

"Ask me again. Sorry," Suntan said.