Antonelli - 03 - The Judgment (45 page)

“That’s correct,” he said, reaching for his handkerchief.

I waited while he blew his nose and when he finished asked him if he wanted more water.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“If you had not been given a set of his fingerprints,” I asked, pointing at the defendant, “would you have been able to iden-tify him as the person whose prints were on the knife?”

He coughed into his hand. “No,” he said finally. “There are no prints of his on file.”

“Isn’t it true, Detective Blensley, that everyone arrested for a crime—even a misdemeanor—has their fingerprints taken?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And those fingerprints are kept on file?”

“Yes.”

“So what you’re saying is that the defendant in this case has never before—not once—been arrested for a crime, any crime, isn’t that right?”

He lifted his arms and turned up his palms. “All I can say is what I said before: His fingerprints weren’t on file.”

I went back to the counsel table and stood next to my chair.

“Your honor, may the witness please be shown state’s exhibit number 106?”

The clerk handed the detective the clear plastic bag containing the knife.

“I won’t ask you to take it out and test it, but just looking at it, does the blade seem to have been filed sharp? In other words, does it have an edge on it?”

“No, it doesn’t have an edge.”

“In fact, wouldn’t you say it appears rather dull?”

He nodded, and waited.

“Of course even a dull knife can be used to stab someone, can’t it?”

He nodded again, and I had to remind him to answer out loud.

“Yes.”

“Now, if you would, look at the handle. Does it look to you—

the way it looked to me—worn, faded, a knife that has been used a lot?”

“Yes, I’d say so.”

“In other words, from everything you observe, you would have to say, wouldn’t you, that this is a rather old knife—certainly not a new one?”

“I would agree with that,” he said, sniffing into his handkerchief.

“Probably used by lots of different people from the time it was first sold, wouldn’t you think?”

“Yes, I would imagine.”

“And yet, if I heard you right, the only fingerprints you found on the knife belonged to the defendant. All those people—dozens, perhaps hundreds—used this knife and you only found one person’s prints. Doesn’t that suggest something to you, Detective Blensley?”

He hesitated, not certain what I meant. I drew myself up, and with a sense of urgency in my voice, asked, “Doesn’t it suggest to you that whoever had that knife before it came into the possession of the defendant must have wiped it clean?”

He started to answer, but I cut him off. “Doesn’t it suggest to you that whoever had the knife before didn’t want anyone to know? And why do you think whoever that was wouldn’t want anyone to know that he had held that knife—that knife that the prosecution tells us was used to murder Quincy Griswald—unless it was because he was the one who murdered him?”

Loescher was on her feet, shouting her objection. “Nothing further, your honor,” I said as I started to sit down.

I was back on my feet before I had touched the chair. “There is one more thing, your honor.”

Loescher looked at me, her mouth still open. Bingham looked at me, his mouth still shut.

“Detective Blensley, the fingerprints you found—the fingerprints that belong to the defendant—can you tell us if they were put there before Quincy Griswald was murdered?”

He shook his head. “No, there is no way to know that.”

“In other words, they could just as easily have been put there sometime after Quincy Griswald was murdered, correct?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Twenty-six

_______

The prosecution began the third day of testimony with Dr.

Friedrich Zoeller, head of the laboratory that had conducted the DNA testing on the blood residue found on the knife. Tall and thin, with prominent cheekbones and deep-set eyes, he slouched on the witness chair, one leg dangling over the other, one arm sticking straight out to the side. With astonishing rapidity he rattled off facts and figures and did it with such confidence that it was almost impossible to think he might be wrong. From nine-thirty in the morning until the court recessed for lunch a few minutes after twelve, Dr. Zoeller lectured the jury on the nature of DNA and the absolute certainty that the blood from the knife belonged to Quincy Griswald and to no one else.

Cassandra Loescher treated him with a deference she had not shown anyone else. Zoeller was not just an expert witness, he was a scientist, and science, she seemed to say with every respectful question she asked, was the one thing no one could question. The testimony of the state’s witness that the knife found on the defendant, the knife that had only his fingerprints on it, had been used to murder Quincy Griswald was something only a fool could doubt.

Standing in front of the charts and graphs that had been carefully arranged on two large easels between the jury box and the witness stand, I studied for a moment the brightly colored, neatly labeled exhibits. With my hands clasped behind my back I moved to the far end of the jury box.

“I’m afraid I’m just a lawyer, Dr. Zoeller,” I said, watching the faces of the jury. “Earlier we heard testimony from someone about fingerprints. If I followed what you were saying, DNA is the same kind of thing. Is that right?”

He seldom moved from the languid position he had assumed when he first took the stand. His head rolled onto his shoulders and he looked at me down his nose.

“In a manner of speaking,” he replied with an indulgent smile.

“The difference is that fingerprints are just what the word suggests: the surface skin of the tips of the fingers. DNA, on the other hand—

as I tried to explain—can be taken from virtually any part of the body: skin, blood, hair, bodily fluids—the saliva inside the mouth, for example.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, flapping my hands in the air. “I understand that. What I want to be clear about is this: DNA, like fingerprints, is unique to every individual—no two people have the same fingerprints or the same DNA. Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, flashing that same patronizing smile.

“With the exception of identical twins.”

I smiled back. “Tell me, Dr. Zoeller, do identical twins have the same fingerprints?”

He blinked. The smile disappeared, and the hand that had been dangling in the air gripped the arm of the chair as he started to sit up.

“I don’t think so,” he replied cautiously.

“You don’t think so?” I asked, still smiling. “You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t believe they would be the same,” he said, becoming a shade more pale.

I dismissed it as a matter of no great consequence. “Fingerprints aren’t your specialty. You’re an expert on DNA.”

He seemed relieved. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Then tell me this. You gave us an extraordinarily clear account of the way this works. The genetic code you described, made up of billions of very specific directions—is it all right to put it like that?”

He was sitting straight up, following every word. “Yes, that’s a fair way of putting it.”

“It’s like a vast, enormously complicated computer program, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s a good analogy.”

I stopped and looked at the jury. “It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose one could say—”

“A miracle that science has now proven the existence of God?”

“No, I don’t think you can say—”

“But you said it, didn’t you? You said it was like a computer program. Every program has a programmer, someone who designed it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you know of any computer program more intricate and complex than the genetic code?”

“No, but—”

“You’re a scientist, Dr. Zoeller. Would it be reasonable—would it be rational—to assume that less complex systems can only come into being by design, but more complex systems come into being by chance?”

He sat back, a condescending smile on his mouth. “Or millions of years of evolution.”

“Which is chance plus duration,” I said with a dismissive glance.

“Now, Dr. Zoeller, however the genetic code was first written, you were able to establish that the blood on the knife was the blood of the victim in this case because the DNA in one sample matched the DNA in the other, correct?”

“Yes.” He gestured toward one of the charts left on the easel.

“I see that. You showed how the pattern of horizontal marks which represents the DNA taken from the body of the victim matches the marks which represent the DNA taken from the blood left on the knife. And because each of the marks in these two samples match each other, we can be confident that they belong to the same person, correct?”

“Yes, that’s absolutely correct.”

“We can be confident, in other words, that they have a common origin?”

He seemed amused at the way I was struggling to understand something which to his well-trained mind was self-evident. “Yes, they have a common origin; they belong to the same person. As I said, they’re identical.”

“So we can all be confident—with scientific certainty—that if two things are in all important respects the same, they’re identical and have the same origin?”

“Yes, yes of course,” he replied, relaxed and self-assured.

“Even two murders?” I asked innocently as I turned toward the jury on my way back to the counsel table.

Loescher shot an angry glance at me as she got to her feet and, eager to show everyone just how wrong I was, almost shouted out the name of the prosecution’s next witness. “The state calls Detective Jack Stewart.”

Though long since abandoned by even the most senior members of the department, Stewart still adhered to a formal dress code. Perhaps he remembered the time when he made his first appearance in a courtroom, a uniformed patrol officer, testifying in front of a jury in which every woman wore a dress and every man wore a tie; perhaps, living alone and close to retirement, he just needed an excuse to put on a suit.

Cassandra Loescher was wearing one as well, a dark-striped tailored suit that fit her perfectly. It was new and it was expensive, and more than the way she looked, it changed the way she felt.

She held her chin just a little higher and her shoulders just a little straighter than she had before. When she turned on her heel, there was a bit more confidence in her step and a kind of hard sparkle in her eye. While Stewart took the oath, she stood with one hand on her arm, stroking her sleeve.

After a few quick questions established Stewart’s rank and experience, Loescher moved directly to the only issue left, the utterly absurd suggestion that the defendant could not have killed Quincy Griswald because whoever killed him had killed Calvin Jeffries as well. Her hand still on her sleeve, she tapped her fingers, impatient of the necessity of having to prove what everyone already knew.

“You were the lead investigator in the case involving the murder of Judge Calvin Jeffries?”

“I was one of them,” Stewart explained.

She pivoted a quarter turn. Facing the jury, she asked, “And was an arrest made in that case?”

“Yes, there was. Jacob Whittaker was charged with the murder of Judge Jeffries.”

“And would you please tell the jury,” she said as she plucked lint from her sleeve and brushed it away, “did the person you arrested confess to the crime?”

There was no response from the witness. Loescher glanced up.

“Detective?”

“He made a confession. That’s true.”

It was not as emphatic, nor as immediate, as she would have liked, but when he finally gave it, the answer was clear enough.

One more question and there would be no more room for doubt, and that slight hesitation in his voice would be all but forgotten, a momentary lapse of memory, the sort of thing that happens to witnesses all the time.

She settled her eyes on the jury, a confident smile on her lips.

“And tell us, Detective Stewart, what did the confessed killer of Calvin Jeffries do after he confessed?”

“That evening he was found dead in his cell.”

The smile froze on her face. Her eyes flared as she turned on him. “You mean he committed suicide, don’t you?”

“That was the official finding, that’s correct,” Stewart replied without expression.

She looked at him, trying to figure out why he did not answer her questions the way he was supposed to, instead of insisting on all these unnecessary distinctions. He was a police officer, not a lawyer, and while he was not supposed to lie, neither was he supposed to make the truth more difficult to grasp.

“Just to sum up, then. There was an arrest, there was a confession, and the man who confessed, it was officially decided, then took his own life. One last question, Detective Stewart. After the arrest, after the confession, after the suicide, what happened to the investigation? Did it continue, or was it closed?”

“It was closed,” he replied.

Loescher looked at the jury. “The killer was caught, and the killer confessed, and the case was closed.” She sat down, and then, as if she had just remembered, glanced up at the bench. “No further questions, your honor.”

I stood up so fast I had to catch the chair from falling over.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we, Detective Stewart?” I asked, laughing at myself as I stumbled free of the chair.

He did not hesitate. “Yes, we have.”

Loescher’s head came up, and she looked at him and then at me.

“You’ve been a witness for the prosecution in several trials in which I’ve been the attorney for the defense, isn’t that correct?” I asked as I straightened the chair and moved away from the table.

“Yes, that’s correct,” he said.

Loescher looked back at the legal pad on which she had begun to scribble a note to herself.

“Jacob Whittaker—the man who was arrested, the man who confessed, the man found dead in his cell—how did you know where to find him?”

“An anonymous phone call.”

“And where did this anonymous caller say the killer could be found?”

“Under the bridge.”