The Brass Verdict (43 page)

“A man who had fired weapons at least ninety-four times was placed in that seat,” she said. “Ninety-four times! He would have literally been reeking of gunshot residue.”

“And is it your expert opinion that gunshot residue would have transferred from Eli Wyms to that car seat?” I asked.

“Most definitely.”

“And is it your expert opinion that the gunshot residue on that seat could then have been transferred to the next person who sat there?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And is it your expert opinion that this was the origin of the gunshot residue on Walter Elliot’s hands and clothes?”

“Again, with his hands behind his back like that, he came in direct contact with a transfer surface. Yes, in my expert opinion, I do believe that this is how he got the gunshot residue on his hands and clothes.”

I paused again to drive home the expert’s conclusions. If I knew anything about reasonable doubt, I knew I had just embedded it in every juror’s consciousness. Whether they would later vote their conscience was another matter.

Fifty

I
t was now time to bring in the big prop to drive Dr. Arslanian’s testimony home.

“Doctor, did you draw any other conclusions from your analysis of the GSR evidence that supported the theory of transference you have outlined here?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what was that?”

“Can I use my mannequin to demonstrate?”

I asked the judge for permission to allow the witness to use a mannequin for demonstration purposes and he granted it without objection from Golantz. I then stepped through the clerk’s corral to the hallway leading to the judge’s chambers. I had left Dr. Arslanian’s mannequin here until it had been ruled admissible. I wheeled it out to the center of the proving grounds in front of the jury — and the Court TV camera. I signaled to Dr. Arslanian to come down from the witness stand to make her demonstration.

The mannequin was a full-body model with fully manipulating limbs, hands and even fingers. It was made of white plastic and had several smudges of gray on its face and hands from experiments and demonstrations conducted over the years. It was dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue collared shirt beneath a windbreaker with a design on the back commemorating a University of Florida national football championship earlier in the year. The mannequin was suspended two inches off the ground on a metal brace and wheeled platform.

I realized I had forgotten something and went over to my rolling bag. I quickly pulled out the wooden dummy gun and collapsing pointer. I handed them both to Dr. Arslanian and then went back to the lectern.

“Okay, what do we have here, Doctor?”

“This is Manny, my demonstration mannequin. Manny, this is the jury.”

There was a bit of laughter and one juror, the lawyer, even nodded his hello to the dummy.

“Manny’s a Florida Gator fan?”

“Uh, he is today.”

Sometimes the messenger can obscure the message. With some witnesses you want that because their testimony isn’t all that helpful. But that was not the case with Dr. Arslanian. I knew I had been walking a tightrope with her: too cute and entertaining on one side; solid scientific evidence on the other. The proper balance would make her and her information leave the strongest impression on the jury. I knew it was now time to get back to serious testimony.

“Why do we need Manny here, Doctor?”

“Because an analysis of the SEMS tabs collected by the sheriff’s forensic expert can show us why the gunshot residue on Mr. Elliot did not come from his firing of a weapon.”

“I know the state’s expert explained these procedures to us last week but I would like you to refresh us. What is a SEMS tab?”

“The GSR test is conducted with round tabs or disks that have a peel-off sticky side. The tabs are patted on the area to be tested and they collect all the microscopic material on the surface. The tab then goes into a scanning electron microscope, or SEMS, as we call it. Through the microscope, we see or don’t see the three elements we have been talking about here. Barium, antimony and lead.”

“Okay, then, do you have a demonstration for us?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Please explain it to the jury.”

Dr. Arslanian extended her pointer and faced the jury. Her demonstration had been carefully planned and rehearsed, right down to my always referring to her as ‘doctor’ and her always referring to the state’s forensic man as ‘mister.’

“Mr. Guilfoyle, the Sheriff’s Department forensic expert, took eight different samples from Mr. Elliot’s body and clothes. Each tab was coded so that the location it sampled would be known and charted.”

She used the pointer on the mannequin as she discussed the locations of the samples. The mannequin stood with its arms down at its sides.

“Tab A was the top of the right hand. Tab B was the top of the left hand. Tab C was the right sleeve of Mr. Elliot’s windbreaker and D was the left sleeve. Then we have tabs E and F being the right- and left-front panels of the jacket, and G and H being the chest and torso portions of the shirt Mr. Elliot wore beneath the open jacket.”

“Are these the clothes he was wearing that day?”

“No, they are not. These are exact duplicates of what he was wearing, right down to the size and manufacturer.”

“Okay, what did you learn from your analysis of the eight tabs?”

“I’ve prepared a chart for the jurors so they can follow along.”

I presented the chart as a defense exhibit. Golantz had been given a copy of it that morning. He now stood and objected, saying his late receipt of the chart violated the rules of discovery. I told the judge the chart had only been composed the night before after my meetings with Dr. Arslanian on Saturday and Sunday. The judge agreed with the prosecutor, saying that the direction of my examination of the witness was obvious and well prepared and that I therefore should have drawn the chart sooner. The objection was sustained, and Dr. Arslanian now had to wing it on her own. It had been a gamble but I didn’t regret the move. I would rather have my witness talking to the jurors without a net than have had Golantz in possession of my strategy in advance of its implementation.

“Okay, Doctor, you can still refer to your notes and the chart. The jurors just need to follow along. What did you learn from your analysis of the eight SEMS tabs?”

“I learned that the levels of gunshot residue on the different tabs greatly differed.”

“How so?”

“Well, tabs A and B, which came from Mr. Elliot’s hands, were where the highest levels of GSR were found. From there we get a steep drop-off in the GSR levels: tabs C, D, E and F with much lower levels, and no GSR reading at all on tabs G and H.”

Again she used the pointer to illustrate.

“What did that tell you, Doctor?”

“That the GSR on Mr. Elliot’s hands and clothes did not come from firing a weapon.”

“Can you illustrate why?”

“First, comparable readings coming from both hands indicate that the weapon was fired in a two-handed grip.”

She went to the mannequin and raised its arms, forming a V by pulling the hands together out front. She bent the hands and fingers around the wooden gun.

“But a two-handed grip would also have to result in higher levels of GSR on the sleeves of the jacket in particular and the rest of the clothes as well.”

“But the tabs processed by the sheriff’s department don’t show that, am I right?”

“You’re right. They show the opposite. While a drop-off from the readings on the hands is expected, it is not expected to be of this rate.”

“So in your expert opinion, what does it mean?”

“A compound-transfer exposure. The first exposure occurred when he was placed with his hands and arms behind his back in the four-alpha car. After that, the material was on his hands and arms, and some of it was then transferred for a second time onto the front panels of his jacket during normal hand and arm movement. This would have occurred continuously until the clothing was collected from him.”

“What about the zero reading on the tabs from the shirt beneath the jacket?”

“We discount that because the jacket could have been zipped closed during the commission of the shooting.”

“In your expert opinion, Doctor, is there any way that Mr. Elliot could have gotten this pattern of GSR on his hands and clothing by discharging a firearm?”

“No, there is not.”

“Thank you, Doctor Arslanian. No further questions.”

I returned to my seat and leaned over to whisper into Walter Elliot’s ear.

“If we didn’t just give them reasonable doubt, then I don’t know what it is.”

Elliot nodded and whispered back to me.

“The best ten thousand dollars I’ve ever spent.”

I didn’t think I had done so badly myself but I let it go. Golantz asked the judge for the midafternoon break before cross-examination of the witness began and the judge agreed. I noticed what I believed to be a higher energy in the verbal buzz of the courtroom after the adjournment. Shami Arslanian had definitely given the defense momentum.

In fifteen minutes I would see what Golantz had in his arsenal for impeaching my witness’s credibility and testimony but I couldn’t imagine he had much. If he had something, he wouldn’t have asked for the break. He would have gotten up and charged right after her.

After the jury and the judge had vacated the courtroom and the observers were pushing out into the hallway, I sauntered over to the prosecutor’s table. Golantz was writing out questions on a legal pad. He didn’t look up at me.

“What?” he said.

“The answer’s no.”

“To what question?”

“The one you were going to ask about my client taking a plea agreement. We’re not interested.”

Golantz smirked.

“You’re funny, Haller. So what, you’ve got an impressive witness. The trial’s a long way from over.”

“And I’ve got a French police captain who’s going to testify tomorrow that Rilz ratted out seven of the most dangerous, vindictive men he’s ever investigated. Two of them happened to get out of prison last year and they disappeared. Nobody knows where they are. Maybe they were in Malibu last spring.”

Golantz put his pen down and finally looked up at me.

“Yeah, I talked to your Inspector Clouseau yesterday. It’s pretty clear he’s saying whatever you want him to say, as long as you fly him first class. At the end of the depo, he pulled out one of those star maps and asked me if I could show him where Angelina Jolie lives. He’s one serious witness you came up with.”

I had told Captain Pepin to cool it with the star map stuff. He apparently hadn’t listened. I needed to change the subject.

“So, where are the Germans?” I asked.

Golantz checked behind him as if to make sure Johan Rilz’s family members weren’t there.

“I told them that they had to be prepared for your strategy of building a defense by shitting all over the memory of their son and brother,” he said. “I told them you were going to take Johan’s problems in France five years ago and use them to try to get his killer off. I told them that you were going to depict him as a German gigolo who seduced rich clients, men and women, all over Malibu and the west side. You know what the father said to me?”

“No, but you’ll tell me.”

“He said that they’d had enough of American justice and were going back home.”

I tried to retort with a clever and cynical comeback line. But I came up empty.

“Don’t worry,” Golantz said. “Up or down, I’ll call them and tell them the verdict.”

“Good.”

I left him there and went out into the hallway to look for my client. I saw him in the center of a ring of reporters. Feeling cocky after the success of Dr. Arslanian’s testimony, he was now working the big jury — public opinion.

“All this time they’ve concentrated on coming after me, the real killer’s been out there running around free!”

A nice concise sound bite. He was good. I was about to push through the crowd to grab him, when Dennis Wojciechowski intercepted me first.

“Come with me,” he said.

We walked down the hallway away from the crowd.

“What’s up, Cisco? I was wondering where you’ve been.”

“I’ve been busy. I got the report from Florida. Do you want to hear it?”

I had told him what Elliot had told me about fronting for the so-called organization. Elliot’s story had seemed sincere enough but in the light of day I reminded myself of a simple truism — everybody lies — and told Cisco to see what he could do about confirming it.

“Give it to me,” I said.

“I used a PI in Fort Lauderdale who I’ve worked with before. Tampa’s on the other side of the state but I wanted to go with a guy I knew and trusted.”

“I understand. What did he come up with?”

“Elliot’s grandfather founded a phosphate-shipping operation seventy-eight years ago. He worked it, then Elliot’s father worked it and then Elliot himself worked it. Only he didn’t like getting his hands dirty in the phosphate business and he sold it a year after his father died of a heart attack. It was a privately owned company, so the record of the sale is not public. Newspaper articles at the time put the sale at about thirty-two million.”

“What about organized crime?”

“My guy couldn’t find a whiff of it. Looked to him like it was a good, clean operation — legally, that is. Elliot told you he was a front and he was sent out here to invest their money. He didn’t say anything about him selling his own company and bringing the money out here. The man’s lying to you.”

I nodded.

“Okay, Cisco, thanks.”

“You need me in court? I’ve got a few things I’m still working on. I heard juror number seven went missing this morning.”

“Yeah, he’s in the wind. And I don’t need you in court.”

“Okay, man, I’ll talk to you.”

He headed off toward the elevators and I was left to stare at my client holding forth with the reporters. A slow burn started in me and it gained heat as I waded into the crowd to get to him.

“Okay, that’s all, people,” I said. “No further comment. No further comment.”

I grabbed Elliot by the arm, pulled him out of the crowd and walked him down the hall. I shooed a couple of trailing reporters away until we were finally far enough from all other ears and could speak privately.