The Jury (9 page)

"You see it?" Crone shoots a glance at Tash, who has a perplexed expression as he follows the pencil scratching on paper.

Tash's eyes suddenly light up like some kid's who's just been given an electric train set for Christmas.

"Oh. Of course." He slaps his forehead with one hand.

"Then that means that down here we were off." He borrows the pencil back and makes his own contribution in the margin.

"You got it," says Crone.

"That's held us up for almost a week," says Tash.

"Why didn't you come to me earlier?"

"Ask him." Tash gestures toward me.

"Mr. Madriani, I thought I made it clear. You cannot interfere with my work."

"No, what you made clear is that you won't cooperate in your own defense," says Harry.

"In my book, that's grounds for counsel to pitch the court for an order to withdraw from the case."

"Go ahead," says Crone.

"I won't object."

"Harry, please." I give him a forced smile, a signal to back off.

"I must have access to Dr. Tash," says Crone.

"I want you to instruct the jail personnel that he is entitled to meet with me whenever."

"Only your lawyers meet with you whenever," I tell him.

"Dr. Tash is a visitor.

No matter what I say, he would be limited to visitors' hours. I should also remind you that he's on the state's witness list as well as our own. That creates a problem. I cannot allow you to talk out of my presence."

"Besides," says Harry, "if you do, the conversations can be monitored."

"Let them listen," says Crone.

"They wouldn't understand a thing. I would challenge them to make heads or tails of these numbers." He holds up the piece of paper.

"Then you wouldn't object if they copied it?" I ask.

"I certainly would."

"That's what they may do if he comes here alone." The fact is they could do so now. Because Tash arrived with us, Crone's lawyers, the guards in the jail have simply assumed that he is part of the defense team. We did not vouch for him. We merely told them he was with us.

"The guards may not be able to interpret those numbers, but an expert, another geneticist might," I tell him.

"He or she might also be able to tell prosecutors whether what you're working on has any relevance to the state's case."

This produces sobering expressions from Crone and Tash.

"Even with us here," says Harry, "the D.A. could always put Dr. Tash there on the stand and ask him what the two of you talked about."

"Is that true?" Crone looks at me.

I nod.

"I could tell them anything I wanted," says Tash.

"How would they know?"

"Then you'd be committing perjury," says Harry.

He looks as if this wouldn't bother him much.

"Well, we'll just have to take that chance," says Crone.

"I must have access to Dr. Tash. You have to understand, we're at a critical stage. Everything we've done for the last five years is coming to a head. You see what's happened? The delays."

"Then counsel's going to have to be present whenever these meetings occur, and we're going to have to keep them to a minimum. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."

Crone looks at me, considers for a moment, then nods.

"Very well."

"No telephone conversations. No meetings," I tell him.

"Unless they are approved by me in advance and either Mr. Hinds or myself is present."

Crone nods.

"Right."

Tash doesn't. He just looks at me, steely-eyed down his long, imperious nose, all the while showering me with his benevolent smile. He turns back to scratch a few more numbers on the sheet of paper with Crone looking on. As he writes I realize that Tash is himself part of the fifteen percent that Crone was talking about. He is writing with his left hand.

chapter six

Jimmy de Angelo is forty-seven, a former street cop turned detective. He has the dour expression and heavy-hooded eyes of a man whose business is death. De Angelo has spent a decade and a half working homicide, and he finds refuge in physical conditioning; the man's body does not look as if it should belong to the furrowed face with sad eyes that rests upon its shoulders.

He has the upper body of an NFL linebacker, with a waist that tapers to thirty-four inches and biceps that move like boa constrictors under the arms of his tight sport coat.

De Angelo worked his way up to lieutenant through Vice and did undercover with the narcs before that. He has more than two hundred homicide cases under his belt, everything from winos clubbed in alleys to the abduction and murder of a local software magnate. He has held hands with snitches to get rollover benefits in murder-for-hire cases and has served on the local violent-crimes task force with state and federal agents. He has instincts and can feel his way around the hairy underbelly of crime even when it is not possible to see very well. De Angelo has driven much of the case against my client based on feelings; call it a cop's intuition.

This morning Tannery has him on the stand, fleshing out the grisly details of Kalista Jordan's murder and the discovery of body parts on the Silver Strand, the closest thing they have to the scene of the crime, "We figure the killer used a plastic bag to dump the body, but it didn't stay together," says de Angelo.

"Either the surf opened it up, or maybe rocks, or sharks. We can't be sure."

"Did you find evidence that the victim's torso had been mauled by sharks?"

"No. But there were some ragged pieces of black plastic caught under a cord that was wrapped around her neck. The one used to tie the plastic around the body."

"So that we don't confuse the jury, you're not talking about the nylon cable tie used to strangle the victim?"

"No. That was underneath the plastic we think was wrapped around the body. We believe that plastic of some kind had been tied around the body, probably to conceal it until it went into the water, and something ripped it off."

"And all that was ever recovered was the victim's torso and head?"

"And one arm," says de Angelo. He has an advantage over most of the other witnesses. He has a permanent seat at the prosecution counsel's table as the authorized representative of the state and has heard all the earlier testimony to this point.

"Lieutenant de Angelo, have you ever had occasion to investigate any other homicides in which the victim has been dismembered in this way?"

"If you mean arms and legs severed, the answer is yes. If you mean cut up in the way that this victim was, the answer's no."

"There was something unique about this case?"

"Objection. The witness is not a medical doctor."

"But he has experience investigating similar cases," says Tannery.

"How many cases involving dismemberment have you done, Lieutenant?" He doesn't wait for the judge to make a ruling, and Coats lets him get away with it.

"Eight."

"In fact, your department has seen enough of these kinds of cases, dismemberment and disposal in the ocean or the harbor, that they have a name for them, don't they?"

"Yeah."

"And what is that name, Lieutenant?"

"Jigsaw Jane, or John, depending on gender," says de Angelo.

"Usually you find heads bobbing in the water."

One of the older guys on the jury, a retired navy demolition expert, sniggers and covers his mouth with his hand. His forearm under the hair is a mosaic of tattoos. The women on the panel do not smile; instead, they are looking at my client for a reaction. Crone offers none. He is busy as always, taking notes.

"I believe, Mr. Tannery, that there was an objection. I'll overrule it, allow the witness to answer the question." Coats has not even lost his place.

But de Angelo has.

"What was the question?"

"Was there something unique about the dismemberment of Kalista Jordan, say from the other cases you've seen?" asks Tannery.

"Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah, there was."

"And what was that?"

"Two things, really. The legs and arms were severed cleanly at the joints. And the head was still connected to the torso."

"Let's take the legs and arms first," says Tannery.

"Did you draw any conclusions from the manner in which these were severed?"

"We did. There was a kind of surgical nature to the dismemberment. We concluded that the person or persons who did it knew what they were doing. We believe that they probably had some special training."

"Objection."

"Overruled," says Coats.

"What kind of training?" asks Tannery.

"They knew something about medical science, particularly anatomy. Might have had at least minimal experience dissecting or performing surgery on the human body."

"Are you saying that it is likely that the perpetrator was a medical doctor?"

"It's possible," says de Angelo.

Tannery looks toward our table and Dr. Crone who doesn't even suspend his note taking to lift his gaze.

"You said there was something else unusual about this case, something having to do with the victim's head?"

"Yeah. It was still attached to the body," says de Angelo.

"We wondered why.

Usually, if a perpetrator goes to all the trouble to cut off arms and legs, he's ."

"Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence." I'm into it before he can finish.

"Restate your answer," says the judge.

De Angelo gives the D.A. a blank stare. He doesn't understand the problem.

"It assumes a male perpetrator," says Tannery.

"Oh." He thinks for a second.

"We assume they go to all that trouble, whoever it is"--he looks directly at me for emphasis--"is gonna take the head off, too. But here they don't. You have to wonder why?"

"Why would you assume they'd cut off the head?"

"Why do they go to all the trouble to cut up the body in the first place?" says de Angelo.

"Because they're trying to make it difficult to identify. You take off the hands, there's no fingerprints assuming the hands aren't found. You take off the head, it makes it that much harder. But they didn't here."

"I see. And you don't have an answer as to why?"

De Angelo shakes his head.

"It's just unusual. Doesn't fit the normal pattern.

If anything like this can be called normal," he says.

"So we thought whoever killed Kalista Jordan was trying to do a copycat."

"Can you explain for the jury?" asks Tannery.

De Angelo turns toward the box.

"There were two murders almost

three years ago now. The bodies of two women were dumped in the harbor. We found the torsos with the heads attached. Arms and legs had been cut off. It was in all the papers. Those cases got a lot of publicity because it looked like a serial murder. Papers always pick up on that," he says.

"Unfortunately, sometimes it becomes an invitation for somebody who's looking for an opportunity. You get a person, wants to kill his wife, or his girlfriend.

He sees the article. So he tries to make it look like the same M.O. They copycat it. Usually they don't succeed."

"And why is that?"

"Little details," says de Angelo.

"Things we never disclose to the media. For example, in this case, the earlier jigsaws, out in the harbor. They were in fact done with saws. Bones cut right through like a butcher would do it with a saw.

We found tool marks from the teeth of a saw blade. Probably a hacksaw. But that wasn't done in this case."

"You're talking about Kalista Jordan?"

"Right. Here, the amputation of the arms and legs was done clean, at the joints.

Somebody knew right where to go, and they used a sharp instrument to get all the ligaments and tendons."

"And this clean amputation, at the joints, is what causes you to believe that the killer possibly had medical training?"

"Correct."

"Therefore, you don't believe these earlier cases are related?" Tannery is driving a wedge, anticipating that we may try to defend using the age-old SODDI, Some Other Dude Did It, in this case some crazed serial killer. If we could produce an alibi for Crone in the earlier cases, this would present complications for the state.

"No. But we think that's why the killer left the head attached. Because it was reported in the press in the earlier two cases. It was also reported that the arms and legs were not attached to the bodies, but there was no report as to how this was done. The killer screwed up," says de Angelo.

"And it wasn't the only mistake they made."

"What else?"

"We don't want to get into too many details. The other two murders are still open."

"Unsolved?"

"That's right."

"But there are other discrepancies?"

"One in particular," says de Angelo.

"The use of cable ties around the victim's throat. It was reported in the earlier cases that the victims were strangled with a nylon ligature and that a similar nylon tie was probably used to bind the hands and feet. In those cases, we found a set of arms and hands. They floated up on the beach. These were tied together at the wrist. The item used to tie these was referred to as, and I quote, 'a nylon tie," in one of the local papers. Actually it was a piece of nylon rope. The paper was using the word tie in the general sense," he says.

"We didn't correct it because we didn't want to get into the details. We think that whoever killed Kalista Jordan read that newspaper article and assumed that a nylon cable tie was used."

"In other words, they tried to copycat and got it wrong?" says Tannery.

"That appears to be the case."

"Let's talk about the cable tie, the one found around Dr. Jordan's neck. Did you have an opportunity to examine that cable tie?"

"I did."

"Was it still affixed to the body when you first observed it?"

"It was."

"Did you remove it?"

"No. The coroner, at the time of the autopsy, removed it."

"Was there anything unique about this particular cable tie?"

"It was an industrial tie, if that's what you mean. It was heavy-duty. Used for bundling things together. Almost anything," he says.