Saving Max (13 page)

Sevillas rubs his neck. “I also noticed that we only have excerpts of Max’s chart and none of the victim’s. If they’re try ing to create motive by introducing evidence of violence between Max and Jonas, we need both files in their entirety.”

Danielle holds her tongue. If Sevillas gets Max’s records by subpoena, she avoids having to admit that she hacked into Maitland’s computer to support her claim that the hospital had to have something to do with Jonas’s death. Maybe when Tony sees the bizarre entries in Max’s chart and compares them with the boy he has now met, he’ll understand why she is so outraged by Maitland’s treatment of him.

Doaks leans back in his chair. “I can think of a few things right off. If they have that comb, I want to see it for myself. I also want to pay a visit to that nurse—that Krang woman.”

“Kreng,” says Danielle. “I’ll go with you. I have a lot of information you don’t.”

Doaks shoots Sevillas a poisonous glance and then turns to Danielle. “Remember how we talked about those things I gotta do alone? This ain’t a good time for us to buddy up.”

“Danielle, you obviously can’t go onto Maitland property,” says Sevillas. “I doubt the nurse will talk to Doaks, anyway. She certainly doesn’t have to.”

“She’ll talk to me, all right.” Doaks’s smile splits his wrinkled face into a million pieces. “I got charm.”

“But Danielle does have a point about prepping you,” says Sevillas.

Doaks gazes skyward. “Why me, Lord?”

Danielle crosses her arms and waits. Doaks groans. “All right, all right. I’ll pick you up at seven sharp and you can fill me in on Kreng. I’m gonna park a ways down from Maitland, but then you gotta promise to stay in my sled until I’m done,
capish?
”

Danielle smiles. “Of course.”

“I have some other bad news, I’m afraid.” Sevillas points to a stack of papers on his desk. “The State has moved to have your bond raised to no bond. They’ve requested that it be considered at the hearing on the temporary restraining order.”

“On what grounds?”

Sevillas shrugs. “Apparently they think they have information they didn’t have at the time of the bond hearing.”

Danielle’s mind races. Could they have discovered her trespass and hacking? “How do we find out what they have?”

“Try not to think about it now, Danielle. I need you to stay in lawyer mode so we can lay out our game plan.”

Danielle nods, but a dark panic blooms in her heart. She has to stay out of jail. If she is behind bars, how can she direct the investigation and, if necessary, find another suspect for the jury?

The icy truth of this last thought slices her soul. At some point, her absolute conviction of Max’s innocence has faltered. She feels forced to accept that Max, whether driven by medication or something else, may have killed Jonas. She has plunged into the Cimmerian underworld of murk and damnation—into the black marrow of hell.

She will do anything to set him free.

“Okay,” says Sevillas. “I think we’ve just about got it down.”

“God, I hope so.” Danielle rubs her neck after another morning of grueling preparation. Somewhere along the line, Sevillas has decided to let her participate in the legal aspects of the case. She doesn’t ask why.

“Here’s the game plan,” says Sevillas. “We’re going to find out everything we can before the hearing so we can go in swinging. We’ll have torn apart every document the State has and since the purpose of a proof-evident hearing is for the judge to decide whether the State has sufficient basis to revoke your bond. The D.A. will have to put on key witnesses and experts—to show what color their underwear is, as our good friend John Doaks would say.”

She nods. “This way we can cut away at the State’s case before trial. The best part is that we’ll have a terrific shot at free discovery.”

“Not to mention the fact that all this will take place before trial,” adds Sevillas. “The judge will hear it alone. There won’t be a jury to worry about while we nail down the State’s case and explore leads to exculpatory evidence.”

“When do you think the judge will set the hearing?”

Sevillas shrugs. “Not for a while, I’d guess, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the court’s docket to see what we’re looking at.” He turns and murmurs into the telephone receiver.

The door opens, and Doaks marches in. He gives Danielle a cocky salute and tosses a white paper bag stained with heavy grease spots on top of Sevillas’s burled wood conference table. “Good afternoon, all.” He plops down into a plush, leather chair and lays out a napkin that looks as oily as the bag. With a loud smack, he pulls out a huge cheeseburger and squirts mustard from a plastic pouch onto his pants instead of the bun. Danielle hides a smile. She is beginning to see behind Doaks’s rough façade. Her bet is that he’s a soft touch who would rather take a bullet than admit it.

Sevillas takes in the pedestrian buffet before him and looks at Danielle. “So, did you find anything at the police station?”

“Hold your water, Sevillas. I’m eatin’ here.” Doaks munches a dill pickle and smears a blob of mustard onto his khakis. His hair looks zany, as if he just stepped out of a tsunami. When he finally speaks, his mouth is full of unmasticated burger. The last fry finally disappears. “You’re gonna kiss my feet for this one. They ain’t got no pictures of the comb because the brain-dead sons-a-bitches lost it.”

Sevillas leans forward. “Are you sure?”

Doaks grunts. “Hell, yes, I’m sure. Barnes is still reelin’ from the chewin’ out he caught from the chief this mornin’. Not to mention what the D.A.’s gonna do when he finds out.”

Danielle feels a surge of excitement. “How did they lose it?”

“Some greenhorn handled the transfer of the evidence bags to the station.” Doaks shrugs. “He lost it, plain and simple. My guess is that it fell outta his ride.”

“But if it’s gone, they can’t meet their burden of proof, can they?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” says Sevillas. “They’ll find it. They always do.”

“Yeah,” mutters Doaks. “Still, it’s great to march around shovin’ it up the D.A.’s ass for a while.” He walks over to the coffee pot and pours himself a cup of black coffee. “But however that plays out, I got some news that shows what a terrific dick I am.” He turns and grins.

“Don’t torture us,” says Sevillas.

He strolls back to his seat and settles in. “So I’m walkin’ down the hall at the P.D. mindin’ my own business, when who do I run into? You remember Floyd J., don’t you, Tony?” Sevillas shakes his head. “Sure you do—the janitor. The little guy with a gimped-out leg. Been there a thousand years.”

“Oh, right.”

“Well, Floyd J. and I are catchin’ up and yakkin’ away when I tell him I’m workin’ the Maitland deal. All of a sudden he gets this funny look on his face. When I ask him what’s up, he grabs his broom and takes me by the arm—secretlike—and walks me over to the conference room. You know, the one that’s got the big window with the blinds on it.”

“Right again.” Sevillas gives Danielle a look that tells her to be patient. She turns back to Doaks, who is obviously warming to his story.

“So Floyd J. starts whisperin’ about how some things just ain’t right and how nobody wants to listen to him, his bein’ just a janitor and all,” he says. “The next thing I know he’s unlockin’ the door and lettin’ me in. Then he tells me he’ll stand guard until I see what’s goin’ on in there.” He pauses.

“Come on, Doaks,” says Sevillas. “This isn’t the sequel to
The Sopranos,
you know.”

“That’s what you think. So the minute the door closes, I flip on the light. You’ll never guess what they’re usin’ that room for.”

“No, I won’t.”

Doaks gives him a big grin. “A dryin’ room, that’s what.” Sevillas’s eyes widen. “Yeah, now you’re startin’ to get it,” says Doaks. “Only you don’t know what all I found.”

“A drying room?” asks Danielle.

Doaks turns to her. “It’s podunk Plano, ma’am. It never changes. See, evidence needs to be handled real careful. You can’t just chuck it into a Ziploc and label it. You have to transport it from the crime scene quick—in paper bags so it won’t mold—and then find some place to dry it out.” He shrugs. “Hell, in big cities you got your official state-of-the art dryin’ room with exhaust fans and lots of high-tech shit to dry up blood, semen, urine, vomit—all of the ingredients that go into a really great crime scene. In dives like Plano, you hang crap up anywhere you can find a hook. Today it was the conference room. Tomorrow it’ll be the john.”

Sevillas comes around his desk. His eyes are earnest. “What did you see, John?”

“Now it’s ‘John,’ ain’t it?” he says. “Well, I’ll tell you what I saw. Bloody sheets, towels and other stuff that couldn’t have come from anywhere but the Maitland crime scene. It was layin’ over chairs and hangin’ from the walls.” He winks at Sevillas. “Now for the good part. I start pawin’ through the mess with my pencil and guess what’s layin’ around with all the bloody stuff?” He pauses dramatically. “The St. Christopher’s medal, Jonas’s bloody sheets, Max’s clothes and other stuff from his room—”

“Jesus,” breathes Sevillas.

“—Mary and Joseph, thank you very much,” says Doaks.

“Cross-contamination to beat the band.”

Danielle raises her hand. “Wait a minute. What does that mean legally?”

“It means we can move to have all of that evidence excluded,” says Sevillas. “It’s a colossal blunder.”

Doaks smirks. “Nah, just Plano dumbshits bein’ Plano dumbshits.”

Sevillas frowns. “But we can’t prove it. We can’t very well say that you decided to march into their evidence room and then put you on the stand to testify to what you saw.”

Doaks gives them a wide, jubilant grin. “That’s where my bein’ a genius comes in.” He fishes around in his pocket. “Just yesterday I decided I was gonna need some high-falutin’ gadgets to get through this case. So I got myself a hot-shit cell phone and one of these.” He holds up something that is razor thin and the size of a fat credit card.

“What’s that?” asks Danielle.

“A camera, can you believe it?” He points it at Danielle, presses a button and a flash goes off. “Damndest thing you ever saw,” he says. “So while I’m standin’ there, I remember I got this beauty in my pocket, and I take a bunch of shots. The thing’s digital, you know, so there ain’t no film. Some lady at Walgreen’s said she’d get me prints in an hour. She woulda e-mailed ’em to me, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with computers. They give me piles.”

Danielle shakes her head. “You still can’t get them into evidence.”

“Hell, I hand you the Hope Diamond, and you tell me it ain’t the shade of blue you like.” He scratches the white whiskers on his chin. It sounds like someone scraping branches along a cedar fence. He stops and snaps his fingers. “I got it. Floyd J. can testify.”

“And risk his job?” asks Sevillas.

“He’s quittin’,” he says. “Fed up. They won’t give him benefits, not even a stinkin’ pension. He’ll testify if I ask him to.”

Sevillas nods and makes a note on his legal pad. “It’s terrific
work, Doaks, but let’s try not to break into any more government buildings than we have to, okay?”

“It was Floyd J.’s idea, not mine.”

“What does it mean?” asks Danielle. “Will we get all of the evidence kicked out?”

“Unlikely,” says Sevillas. “Let’s wait and see the photos before we get too excited. Now, John, maybe you could tell us how your meeting with Smythe went.”

“Who’s that?” asks Danielle.

“The M.E. who doubles as the coroner. He would have been the first one to examine the body.”

Doaks pulls out his grimy legal pad and sips his coffee. He passes on the good and the bad of his interview with Smythe: the conflicting evidence of cause of death, as Smythe found both petechial hemorrhaging (pinpoints of blood in the eyes), which indicates asphyxiation, and the lacerated femoral artery, which would have killed Jonas in minutes. He also relates Smythe’s examination of a replica of the comb and his findings.

“But how could Max manage such an attack?” asks Danielle. “Jonas outweighed him by at least twenty pounds.”

Doaks shakes his head. “Sorry, Ms. P., but you know how it’s gonna play. They’re gonna say that once a psycho blows his top…”

Sevillas catches Danielle’s stricken eyes. “What Doaks means—”

“—is that he coulda lifted a damned freight train if he’d had to.” Doaks shoots Sevillas a black look. “And don’t fuckin’ interrupt me.”

Danielle goes on. “But why would the murderer—the real murderer—smother Jonas if he had already severed the femoral artery? Surely that would have killed him more quickly.”

Doaks shrugs. “He chalks it up to how killers ain’t always thinkin’ straight when they’re offin’ somebody.”

“What about defensive wounds?” asks Sevillas.

“Maybe, but the coroner’s leaning toward them being self-inflicted. The kid has a history of it, you know.”

Danielle is crestfallen. “Is there anything positive?”

“You never know what Smythe may have by the time he writes up his final report,” says Sevillas.

“Oh, yeah,” says Doaks. “Smythe was curious about somethin’ else. He wants to run some more tests, because it looks like Jonas had some strange blood levels.”

“What difference would that make?”

Doaks shrugs. “Probably nothin’. Just made him curious, is all.”

Danielle feels a spear of hope. “Like I said, I want to know which psychopharmaceuticals Jonas and Max were taking. It could explain a lot.”

“But whether or not the decedent was improperly medicated has nothing to do with how he was murdered,” says Sevillas.

“Of course it does,” says Danielle. “If the possibility exists that the wounds were self-inflicted, then Jonas’s state of mind at the time of his death is critical. If he was under the influence of psychotropic medications, they could have directly affected his actions.”

“A good point,” says Sevillas. “But that doesn’t help us with the evidence of asphyxiation.”

“Ain’t real easy to smother yourself,” mutters Doaks.

Sevillas ignores him. “If, as Smythe posits, Jonas died from lack of oxygen before he bled out and went into organ failure, then what is our argument? That Jonas stabbed himself repeatedly; lacerated his femoral artery; and then grabbed someone down the hall to smother him? And how does that explain
Max’s presence in his room without any defensive wounds, covered in Jonas’s blood?”

Danielle tries not to let her frustration show. “Okay, okay.”

Sevillas gives her a kindly look. “Let’s wait until Smythe finishes his report. Don’t get discouraged.” He unscrews the top of his fountain pen and scratches out a note on his pad. The telephone rings, and he goes around to his desk to answer it. Head down, he murmurs into the receiver, his words inaudible.

Doaks stands, stretches and nods at Danielle. “I’m headin’ out. Kreng’s the first thing out of the box tomorrow.”

“What time?”

Doaks groans. “You really gonna make me take you with me?”

“Just to ride along,” says Danielle. “There are a few things I want to be sure you ask her.”

Doaks shakes his head. “Man, you remind me of my daughter, you know that?”

Danielle gives him a surprised look, but then remembers Sevillas’s mention of her when she first met Doaks. “She was at Maitland’s?”

He frowns. “Yeah, nervous breakdown, and it didn’t do her a damned bit of good. She’s okay now. She’s stubborn, just like you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He gives her a surprisingly tender glance. “It is.”

Warmed by his words, she gives him a grateful smile. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me. So I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

“You’re just hell-bent on making my life miserable, ain’t you?” he says gruffly. “I told you already you can ride shotgun, but leave me alone until tomorrow. Can you do that?”

She smiles. “I’ll do my best.”

Doaks stomps toward the door, muttering. “Women…Didn’t God have nothin’ better to do?”