Skeleton Justice (8 page)

Manny raced from the parking lot toward federal court, feeling like she’d just been presented with a white-ribboned robin’s egg blue box from Tiffany’s. God bless Sam—he’d uncovered just the information she needed to clinch this bail hearing. And just in case, she had her usual small piece of red cloth pinned to the inside of her suit jacket to ward off the evil eye, just like her mother and her mother’s mother had taught her. Can never be too careful, after all. Manny was a third-generation Scorpio, her generational DNA included an allele for the belief in the super natural.

“By the time I’m done with Brian Lisnek, that prosecutor is going to be so covered with egg, you could make an omelette out of him,” Manny crowed to Kenneth, who matched her stride for stride past the cement barriers protecting the massive new building across from the old post office.

“The last omelette you made for me was dry and rubbery,” Kenneth complained. “Don’t get overconfident.”

Manny waved his warning off with a laugh, realizing as she did that if Jake had said the same thing to her, she would’ve been highly insulted. But Kenneth could get away with a lot of things that Jake wouldn’t dare try, including, but not limited to, singing “Over the Rainbow” or anything Cher while wearing a vintage Dior sheath.

Jake had been impressed when she told him the judge had granted her the opportunity to examine the government’s so-called forensic expert as well as their eyewitness at the bail hearing. That was highly unusual, but the Preppy Terrorist case was generating so much publicity that the judge had reluctantly agreed.

Now with the information Sam had provided and the research she had done on the shaky science of identifying bite marks through forensic odontology, Manny felt sure that she’d have Travis Heaton out on bail by the end of the day.

Sailing through the security check without setting off any alarms, Manny entered Judge Freeman’s courtroom and took her place at the defense table. Lisnek was already at the prosecutor’s table with a whole phalanx of assistants. “How many federal prosecutors does it take to change a lightbulb?” she muttered to Kenneth.

“You mean, to screw in a lightbulb. And the answer is none. Prosecutors only screw defendants.”

Manny paused from unloading her briefcase. “Did you just make that up, or have you been reading joke e-mails when you’re supposed to be working?”

“Keeping you amused is part of my job description, remember?”

Manny grinned. It was true that with Kenneth by her side she felt much more relaxed than she would have if she were assisted by some navy blue pinstriped-clad minion with an Ivy League law degree. Today, Kenneth had dressed to match the dark green marble that heralded the floors and walls of the imposing house of justice. He wore a slightly used Oscar de la Renta suit he had purchased on eBay, and two-toned green-and-ivory shoes with matching green horned-rimmed glasses. She slid some files across the table to him. “Here. Organize this for me. I don’t want to be fumbling for notes when I have their so-called expert on the stand.”

She sat down and watched Lisnek for a while. He was so busy conferring with his assistants, he didn’t even notice her. Her client was escorted in by a muscular federal marshal and seated next to her. He wore the clothes he had been arrested in—big baggy pants and a black cotton shirt. The bailiff entered the courtroom and Lisnek snapped to attention, finally glancing her way. She smiled sweetly. The assistant U.S. attorney looked away.

“All rise,” the bailiff intoned.

Showtime
.

Manny and Lisnek danced through the opening procedures like Fred and Ginger, so familiar with the steps that they didn’t even have to think about what they were doing. Then Lisnek rose to make his argument for why Travis should remain in jail without bail. “An act of terrorism against the federal government… possible coconspirators, so the accused must be kept in isolation … a matter of national security …” On and on he went.

Manny could feel her adrenaline surge and her stomach churn. This is what being a trial lawyer was all about—face-to-face combat with the enemy. Honestly, how could Lisnek say all this with a straight face? The man was shameless in his pursuit of publicity. She’d defended clients against bogus, trumped-up charges before, but this case beat all.

The judge was also tiring of Lisnek. With a slight elevation of the hand, he cut the prosecutor off in mid-speech. “Very eloquent, Mr. Lisnek, but this isn’t a dress rehearsal for the opening argument of the trial. I believe Ms. Manfreda has some issues with the quality of your supporting evidence, so let’s move directly to the expert testimony.”

The witness, Dr. Eugene Olivo, forensic odontologist, was called and sworn in. In a jury trial, Manny would spend considerable time establishing the expert’s qualifications or lack thereof, because juries tended to believe every word coming from the mouth of anyone who called himself a doctor or scientist. Judge Freeman, thankfully, was not so gullible. He had been a federal judge for more than four decades, handling all the hard cases: Mafia killings, an Aryan gang prison trial, massive drug cartel trials. Freeman was now on senior status, a form of hardworking retirement that allowed him to pick and choose his cases. Not impressed with the pretentiousness of office or enamored with the trappings of power, he no longer wore a robe on the bench. But make no mistake: He was a highly respected jurist, one you weren’t late for unless you were dead, who mandated preparedness and honesty.

“So in other words, Doctor,” the judge said, addressing the expert witness, “for the laypeople in the audience, what you are saying is that a forensic odontologist is a fancy word for … dentist?”

“Well, it’s from the Greek, Your Honor.”

“I see.” A cross between a snort and a chuckle emanated from the bench. “Do you get to charge the government more in Greek?”

Touché
. Old, retired, on senior status, Freeman took the words right out of her mouth.

Satisfied that Judge Freeman was going to give her fair latitude in cross-examination, Manny sat back and let Lisnek walk the witness through his evidence. “The average set of permanent teeth in an adult numbers thirty-two, including the four wisdom teeth,” Olivo informed them.

Yada yada yada. She forced herself to listen to every word and make careful notes, only daydreaming for a split second about the Carramia case, where she had cross-examined Jake. Jake had been a charismatic expert witness in a geeky, scientific kind of way. Almost sexy, talking about vomit and death. His brown hair, interspersed with gray strands, complemented his big frame and professorial tone. Olivo was no Jake. Thank God for that.

“In short,” Olivo finally opined, “the gap between the upper right lateral incisor and the adjoining canine tooth, also called a cuspid, along with the snagglelike characteristics of that canine tooth, establishes within a reasonable degree of medical scientific certainty that the impression in the apple is consistent with the bite dentition of Travis Heaton.” He demonstrated his testimony with digital pictures of the subject apple.

Olivo sat back in the witness chair and folded his hands over his paunch. Manny smiled. How nice to see a witness so confident and comfortable.

She rose and walked toward the witness stand. Today’s hairstyle, red mane caught back in a tortoiseshell clip, left the strand of pearls at her neck and the simple pearl studs in her ears exposed. She looked younger than her nearly thirty years, and too demure to cause trouble for a respected scientist.

Pompous old fart
.

“Good morning, Dr. Olivo.” She beamed at him. “Thank you for that fascinating information.”

He nodded. “I’ve been at this a long time.” He left the “Not like you, girlie,” unsaid.

“Tell me: Were you present at the crime scene after the explosion?”

“No, of course not.”
I’m too important for that, you stupid twit
.

Manny smiled. Maybe the government’s witness was so well rehearsed he would know the chain of custody of the oh-so-important piece of forensic evidence he wanted to use to damn her client to hell.

“So, who collected the apple?” she continued. “Was it the FBI’s crime scene technicians?”

“No.”

“Perhaps it was the CSI team from the Hoboken Police Department?”

“No.”

“Then it must have been a tristate terrorist response unit?”

“Uh, no.”

“So, who did pick up the apple, Dr. Olivo?”

“Uhm, I believe it was a police detective who returned to the scene later to look for it.”

“And what did he do with it? Did he put it in a brown paper bag so that moisture wouldn’t collect and bacteria wouldn’t grow on it?”

Olivo shifted in his seat and straightened his triclub tie. “No, it was in a plastic Baggie when I got it.”

“I see. Do you know what the temperature was on the night in question, Doctor?”

“I don’t know the exact temperature,” he snapped.

Manny walked back to the defense table and accepted a sheet of paper from Kenneth. “National Weather Service records show that at one a.m. on May seventeenth, the temperature at the monitoring station in Hoboken, New Jersey, was seventy-five degrees. Pretty warm for May, huh?”

“Yes.” Olivo stared straight ahead.

“Did you examine the evidence that night, sir?”

“No.”

“When did you get the evidence?”

“Let me look at my notes.” As the page flipped, the doctor grabbed for the small plastic cup of water nearby.

Manny pretended not to notice how he gulped it down. She was making him squirm.

“The day after the bombing. I received the specimen at my office in Manhattan at one-forty-three in the afternoon.”

“The apple had been refrigerated during the period of time since its collection, had it, Doctor?” Manny asked.

He hesitated.

Come on, give it up, Mr Know-It-All expert witness. I already know the answer, or I wouldn’t have asked the question
.

“No.”

Manny could tell he thought he knew where she was headed, but Lisnek looked impatient. She smiled at him in passing and returned to stand in front of the witness. “You know, Dr. Olivo, my Italian immigrant grandma grew up during the Depression and she hated to waste food. When I was a little girl, it would drive her crazy when I took a few bites out of an apple and then couldn’t finish it. You know what she’d do? She’d wrap it up in plastic and put it on the counter and try to get me to eat it the next day. I never would. You know why?”

Lisnek jumped up. “Objection. We’ll be here all day if we have to listen to Ms. Manfreda’s reminiscences about her family heritage, Your Honor.”

But Judge Freeman was grinning. “Tell us why you wouldn’t eat it, counselor.”

“Because by the next day, a bitten apple wrapped in plastic in a warm kitchen was all brown and mushy. Decay had set in. Yes, decay had completely broken down the exposed surface of the apple.” Manny whipped around to take possession of something from Kenneth, keeping her back to everyone in the well of the courtroom. Murmurs began to rumble from the spectator pews. Manny turned to Olivo with the flare of a Miss Universe contestant whipping around a bathing-suit pareu on the turn toward the judges to show off her wares.

She held up an apple—a discolored, drying, decayed, smelly brownish red apple. “Let me represent to you that this is a Delicious apple, sir.”

“Objection! Objection,” bellowed Lisnek.

She ignored him. Judge Freeman was laughing too hard to rule on the objection.

“How can you say with scientific certainty that the bite marks in that apple were those of my client when the apple had been rotting away for over twelve hours under improper storage conditions?”

“Overruled,” came the belated decision from the bench, allowing Manny to officially proceed. She looked over at Lisnek. He really needed to get shirts with collars that weren’t so tight. His head looked like it was about to pop off his neck.

Olivo sputtered and offered some qualified justification, buttressed with technical jargon. “Scientific certainty only means it is more likely than not.”

Ah, the dirty little secret of experts reared its head. Their opinion was nothing more than a game of chance.

“Are you telling this courtroom that your opinion, one that would incarcerate my eighteen-year-old client without bail, disrupt his schooling, prevent his graduation, and—”

“Objection,” Lisnek again bellowed, his voice echoing through the courtroom doors and reverberating into the hall.

The recovered Judge Freeman turned to her. “Okay, enough with the sob story, Ms. Manfreda. Get on with the question.”

“—is based on a mere possibility about a degraded apple?”

Manny continued to hammer him, rebutting his claims about the reliability of bite-mark evidence with quotes from articles on forensic odontology, and the language in recent court decisions where bite-mark testimony had wrongfully imprisoned innocent people.

Before she concluded her inquisition, she made a few final thrusts.

“Did you bring the apple with you today?”

“No.”

“Did the prosecutor tell you to leave it in the city?”