Key Witness (66 page)

Quinn: “Only police officers, sheriff’s deputies, highway patrolmen have access. And a handful of civilian officials, members of the police board mostly. No politicians—if the mayor himself walked in and asked for a record we’d tell him no. There’s no exceptions to that.”

Abramowitz: “How is a file given out?”

Quinn: “Officer comes in, fills out a form, gives his badge number. We check to make sure he’s who he says he is. He signs out for his document, and when he brings it back, he signs it back in.”

Abramowitz: “So there’s no way an unauthorized party can get a file?”

Quinn: “That is correct.”

Abramowitz: “Thank you.” She turned to Wyatt. “Your witness.”

Before she had taken her seat Wyatt was up. “No way?” he repeated.

“That is correct,” Quinn said. He had a big, red, bulbous drunk’s nose. He stared at Wyatt.

“They sign in, they sign out, they show ID.”

“Correct again.”

“Authorized policemen only?”

“Yep?”

“What about members of the district attorney’s office? They can’t take out files?”

Quinn reddened around the jowls. “Them, too. Of course they can. They’re officers of the court.”

“So am I. I took some out.”

“You had a court order permitting you to do that, didn’t you?” Quinn looked at him suspiciously.

“Yes—but the point is, I got the files.”

“Okay,” Quinn conceded. “With a court order, you got them.”

“A reporter could, too, right? With a court order?”

“Anybody with a court order could,” Quinn snapped. “But you’d have to have authorization. When I was talking about it before I meant without court authorization.”

“What about computers?” Wyatt asked, moving in the direction he really wanted to go. “Detective Marlow testified earlier you can access files through your computer if you have the authority to do so.”

Quinn shifted his ass on the stand. “Well, yes, that’s done. This is the computer age, you know.”

“So how does that work?”

“Same way. They have to ID themselves, declare their badge number, get the case file number, and so forth.”

“But there’s no visual, as there would be over the counter.”

“No,” Quinn conceded. “But there’s enough checks and balances for protection.”

Wyatt jumped on that. “Isn’t it possible for someone to impersonate an officer via computer? Get the officer’s information and call in and access a file?”

Quinn thought about that. “I guess it’s possible,” he conceded. “But whoever did it would have to have a lot of information. It’s never been done,” he added.

“It’s never been done? You’ve never heard of these hackers who get into top secret files in the Pentagon?”

“I mean it’s never been done to us,” Quinn retreated, his bulbous nose lighting up.

“How would you know?” Wyatt asked. “Are you a computer expert?”

“No, I’m not a computer expert, but we have guys that are. And they check this stuff out, and they tell me it’s never been done. They’d know if it was.”

“After the fact,” Wyatt said. “They’d know after someone had hacked in.”

“I guess so,” Quinn admitted. “All I know is, our people say it’s never been done. And that’s good enough for me.”

Wyatt looked over at the jury. Their faces were blank; not one of them was taking notes—his line of questioning had gone right over their heads. They weren’t interested in hardware, or software, or anything about computers; or DNA, PCR, or any other esoteric matters. They wanted to know who did it, when, and why. People matched up to situations.

They wanted to find the killer. And burn him.

T
HE DUTY OFFICER AT
the time Marvin had been brought into the jail recited the inventory of Marvin’s personal effects that had been on him when he was admitted. “One five-dollar bill. Two singles. Thirty-eight cents in change. A driver’s license, current until his twenty-first birthday. A Swiss Army knife. One pack of Marlboro cigarettes. One book of matches.” He looked up from the list he was reading. “That’s it.”

Abramowitz was making a note as he talked. “Was the Swiss Army knife sent to the lab for examination?” she asked.

The deputy looked at his own notes. “Yes,” he said. “They checked it out and sent it back to us the next day. It’s locked up with his other stuff.”

The knife was not the murder weapon. That was the first thing they’d checked out. It was the wrong size and shape, the blades weren’t nearly sharp enough to have made the kinds of cuts the coroner had described, and there was no blood on it. The killer had used a different knife.

She looked up. “Wasn’t there also a gun on the accused’s person at the time of his arrest?” she asked.

“Objection,” Wyatt called from his seat. “That is not on the list of the effects that were inventoried when Mr. White was admitted to the jail.”

“Sustained,” Grant agreed. “The jury will disregard that last question.”

Abramowitz frowned, made a note, then moved on. “This pack of cigarettes. Marlboro cigarettes, you said.”

“There was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes in his possession, that’s right,” the deputy responded.

“Was it a full pack?”

“No.”

“Some were missing.”

“One,” he said. “It was one shy.”

She turned to the jury. “One cigarette was missing from the pack of Marlboros that the accused had on him at the time he was brought into the jail,” she said.

Wyatt looked at the jury. Most of them were taking notes. He knew what they were writing: One missing cigarette from the pack of Marlboros Marvin had on him when he was admitted to the jail. One Marlboro cigarette found in the anal canal of the latest murder victim, Paula Briggs.

“Yes,” the deputy reconfirmed. “One was missing.”

Abramowitz walked away from the witness. “No further questions.”

Wyatt stood up at the defense table. “You recited the list of items found on Marvin White when he was booked into the jail. There was nothing else you might have overlooked?”

“No,” the deputy said. “That was everything.”

“The coroner has testified that the same weapon—a knife—was the murder weapon used on all seven victims, including the last one. Was a knife fitting that description found on Mr. White?”

“No, it was not.”

“There’s no possibility it might have been overlooked in your inventory?”

“No.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

Over the lunch break Wyatt and Josephine reviewed the list of people who had taken out files between the time Marvin had been arrested and sent to jail to the day when Dwayne Thompson talked to the district attorney and subsequently testified before the grand jury. Everyone who had signed out any pertinent files were police officers—over a dozen, men and women who were working on the Alley Slasher murders. They were all city policemen—no members of the sheriff’s department or district attorney’s office. Josephine cross-checked the names against lists they had drawn up of anyone who might have had contact with Thompson, no matter how slim the odds were.

They came up empty—none of the cops who had accessed those files had made contact with Thompson, none they could make any kind of plausible case for.

“Let’s face it, Wyatt,” Josephine said. “The police didn’t give him those files.”

“None of these did,” he reluctantly agreed. “The obvious suspect would be Blake, but she didn’t take them out. Her name’s nowhere on this,” he said, tapping it with his finger. “So how in hell did he get the information?”

She looked at him. “There’s always the possibility …”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t Marvin. He’s too damn stupid. And he didn’t do it,” he added angrily.

“Could the DA’s office have done it?” she asked. “Marvin did tell Thompson some details, he’s admitted to that.”

“And Thompson went to them with whatever information he had and they filled in the blanks?”

She nodded.

“It’s possible, I guess,” he admitted. “Good thinking.” He remembered the situation Bollinger had told him about. “It would be an unbelievable scandal, but stranger things have happened.”

“What other possibility is there?” she pointed out.

“None I can think of off the top of my head.” He slumped in his chair. “Shit. That would tear this city up. Alex Pagano is an ambitious man, but I can’t see him going that far. He’s too smart for that. He’s dying for a conviction, but taking a chance like that? If it blew up on him he’d go to jail until he was ninety-nine years old. No—it wasn’t Pagano. He’s the recipient, but not the instigator.”

“Someone else in his office?”

He shook his head. “And kept him in the dark? And Abramowitz, and the other senior prosecutors? That would be a conspiracy of epic proportions.”

“What else do we have?” she asked, as exasperated as he was.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Wyatt,” she said. “You’re a fast learner, but the semester isn’t over yet. Police departments and DA’s offices are full of shit! How many cops a year get busted? How many prosecuting attorneys get reprimanded for crossing the line? And for every one that gets caught—planting evidence, suppressing evidence, manufacturing evidence, you name it—twenty don’t. Our office sees it all the time. It makes Walcott and every other career lawyer down there crazy.” She pulled her blouse away from her chest, fanning herself. “You’re insisting that someone told Dwayne Thompson. If we don’t come up with who that someone is, it becomes Marvin by default.”

“And we die.” He looked at this watch—time to go back. “If you have time, see what you can find out. But be very circumspect. If Pagano finds out we’re checking up on his office for leaks …” He didn’t finish his thought—it was too grim.

W
YATT, ABRAMOWITZ, AND NORMAN
Windsor met with Judge Grant in his chambers. Wyatt was livid.

“She can’t testify,” he practically screamed.

“Her name’s on the list,” Abramowitz shot back.

“That doesn’t matter. That girl never testified and the case never went to trial. She backed off, Your Honor. The case was dropped. It doesn’t exist. Anything she would testify to is inadmissible. That’s not the case we’re trying,” he argued as strenuously as he could.

The potential witness in question was the girl who had accused Marvin of raping her two years earlier but had gotten cold feet at the last minute (or was pressured by Marvin’s friends) and refused to testify, resulting in the case against Marvin being dropped.

Grant nodded, seemingly in agreement. He turned to Abramowitz. “What’s your precedent for this? If the accused had been tried and found guilty of that crime, I’d have no problem admitting the conviction; but as Mr. Matthews has pointed out, it’s not part of his record, and it’s prejudicial.”

“Marvin White was bound over. The girl made a statement to the police that resulted in White being arrested. That is part of the record,” Abramowitz said passionately. “There is clear precedent for a witness to come forward upon hearing of a crime that has been committed, to state that the same kind of crime was committed against her, but she didn’t press charges at the time for any number of reasons. Fear of retaliation is a big one, and that’s what we’re looking at in this instance, Your Honor. This girl will testify that Marvin White raped her at knifepoint. And that she backed off at the last minute because he threatened her. His friends threatened her.”

“It’s easy to get religion after the fact, Your Honor,” Wyatt spoke up, “but that’s over. It’s highly prejudicial, and the prejudicial effect outweighs its probative value. It’s going to be inflammatory to the jury, and that’s not allowable.”

Grant closed his eyes in thought. “I’m going to have to do some research on this,” he decided. “We’ll adjourn for the rest of the day. I’ll announce my decision when court reconvenes tomorrow morning.”

“He’s gonna let it in,” Darryl said.

“It’s automatic grounds for appeal,” Wyatt replied.

It was after work hours. They were having a drink in their favorite watering hole.

“It doesn’t matter,” Darryl said. “Grant’s gung ho law-and-order on stuff like this. He can rationalize letting this testimony in; I guarantee you he won’t lose one minute of sleep over it. And if you lose and use that as grounds for appeal, the appellate court’ll shine you on. Besides, he’s gotta let it in, for political reasons. If he excludes it, Pagano goes to the press and makes him look like he’s coddling a monster.” He tapped his finger on Wyatt’s forearm. “Deal with it—and then leave it behind. If you start to get enmeshed in paranoid fantasies, even if they’re real, you’ll lose your focus. And then you’ll lose your case.”

Judge Grant called Wyatt that night, at the hotel. Wyatt was in the shower, having passed on dinner and gone for a late run. He shut the water off, hastily dried himself, and slipped into the hotel courtesy bathrobe as he picked up the phone.

“I’m letting you know in advance that I’m going to allow this witness to testify,” the jurist told him. “There are arguments for and against it; but because of the similarities, I’ve made this decision.”

Wyatt groaned silently. He was dripping a puddle onto the floor; he dabbed at his wet legs. Even though Darryl had predicted this, he had been hoping against hope Grant wouldn’t let the girl testify.

“What are these extreme similarities?” he asked wearily. It was considerate of the judge to call him and warn him, but it was going to cost him any chance of sleep now.

“The knife,” Grant said. “If it was merely allegation of rape, I wouldn’t admit it. But the knife makes the cases too similar to ignore. There is a pattern here,” he went on, “and the jury needs to know it.”

“It’s only a pattern if he’s guilty, Your Honor,” Wyatt pointed out.

“I’ve made my decision,” Grant said frostily. “I’ll see you in my courtroom in the morning.”

The phone went dead in Wyatt’s hand. He resisted the temptation to tear the plug out of the wall.

T
HE GIRL’S NAME WAS
Mavis Jones. She was eighteen now, the same age as Marvin. By law she was an adult, although she had been living a hard, grown-up life for years, starting with the night Marvin supposedly stuck a knife at her throat and ordered her to spread her legs or he’d gut her.