Matter of Trust (55 page)

‘The detective is my friend,' said Torres, confirming it.

‘Right – well, in your opinion, was Detective McNally, at that time back
in January, not long after his wife's death, capable of conducting a first class investigation?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘There were no lapses in judgment, no neglected duties?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘So he was a topnotch investigator?'

‘The best,' said Torres.

And Marshall smiled before returning to his desk once again. ‘So, you would have no problem in describing the statement he gave at the time as both thorough and accurate?'

‘Detective McNally was never anything but.'

Marshall smiled again. ‘Your Honour, at this time I would like to enter into evidence the report filed by Detective Harold McNally following Senator Chris Kincaid's said visit to the 3rd Precinct on Saturday, January 26. The report outlines a series of lies told to the detective by the defendant while his lawyer was present.'

Marshall paused to look at Chris – and then at David, making the point that birds of a feather . . .

‘It explains how Senator Kincaid told the detective that he and his friend were trying to contact Ms Maloney in relation to a teenage reunion,' Marshall went on. ‘It also describes how the defendant claimed his relationship with the victim was platonic and casual.'

‘Objection.' David was on his feet again, needing desperately to cut the FAP short. Marshall, who mere months ago had basically sacked McNally because of his sharp investigatory skills, was now
using
them to benefit his case. ‘This report has already been entered into evidence. The jury have had access to it since the beginning of the trial. I understand Mr Marshall's need to impress, but this witness,' he gestured toward Torres, ‘was not at the 3rd Precinct at the time and therefore cannot offer any comment as to what was discussed at that meeting.'

‘Perhaps I should call
you
to the stand, Mr Cavanaugh, so you can explain what was discussed,' interjected Marshall. The gallery laughed, and the jury laughed with them.

‘All right, then,' said Judge Jones. ‘Enough of the levity, Mr Marshall.'

Jones turned to the jury. ‘Mr Foreman,' he began. ‘Do you and your fellow jurors have access to the police report tabled as 3b?'

‘Yes we do, Your Honour,' said George Brewster who, luckily for the defence, had been elected as foreman moments before the trial began. ‘As a matter of fact, Detective McNally's statement was on the top of a number of reports provided to us by Mr Marshall – and each and every one of us has read it, sir – at least twice.'

Jones nodded before turning back to the FAP. ‘Looks like you're doubling up, Mr Marshall. The jury has the report and as much as the gallery and our friends from the media here would appreciate a copy, I don't believe they'll be voting on the defendant's guilt or innocence.'

It was Jones's way of slapping Marshall across the wrist, and David was grateful.

‘You may continue, Mr Marshall.'

And so Marshall took the bitter with the sweet and moved on.

The next hour was spent on the two searches – the initial search of Marilyn Maloney's apartment and the subsequent search of Chris Kincaid's house and cars following the raising of the warrant. Torres answered a series of detailed questions relating to the discovery of the satchel, the school ring and eventually Marilyn's missing shoe.

‘And so, after all of these searches and observations,' Marshall pulled his evidence together, ‘after confirming the writing on the satchel was in Marilyn Maloney's hand, after identifying the school ring as one given to Ms Maloney by the defendant, after finding the very shoe the victim was wearing on the night of her death in Rebecca Kincaid's car . . .' Marshall paused for effect. ‘What did you conclude, Detective Torres, as to the defendant's involvement in this crime.'

Marshall wanted her to say it – to say she believed Chris Kincaid to be guilty. But David could see the detective was struggling and he knew Marshall saw it too.

‘Objection,' said David, getting to his feet to offer Torres the lifeline he sensed she needed. ‘Mr Marshall is asking for the witness's opinion. Detective Torres is a dedicated detective who knows that every individual charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty and, as such, Mr Marshall's question is both unfair and inappropriate.'

‘Your Honour,' Marshall was ready with his counter-argument. ‘The detective was involved with the investigation from the outset and she has been a valued member of the Newark PD for fifteen years. I am calling on
her opinion as an experienced investigator – a query which is not only appropriate but relevant.'

There was silence, as the judge considered his ruling.

‘Your objection is overruled, Mr Cavanaugh. I'll allow it.' He turned to Torres. ‘You may answer the question, Detective.'

But the to-ing and fro-ing had given Torres time to think.

‘First up, Mr Marshall, Mr Cavanaugh is right. It is not my job to offer an opinion, merely to collect the evidence that will assist the court in its deliberations. We arrested the senator because the evidence discovered was enough to satisfy probable cause. In other words, we did our job, Sir – and once the defendant was arrested, much of the investigation was commandeered by your own homicide squad so . . .'

David smiled. He could not have answered the question better himself.

‘Then let me ask you this, Detective,' Marshall was pissed and his body language taut as he took three swift strides toward his own witness. ‘At any stage of these early investigations, did the evidence point to anyone else?'

Torres hesitated. ‘No.'

‘There were no other suspects?'

‘Not at that stage.'

‘There was no-one else who had lied to the police, no other accusatory satchels, no other high school mementos or random items of the victim's clothing left in anyone else's wife's car?'

Torres took a breath. ‘No. But there was some skin tissue taken from underneath the fingernails of the—'

‘Detective Torres, I appreciate your offer to answer questions relevant to the medical examiner, but I believe you have done
your
job and we can leave other matters to her.'

Torres nodded, Marshall had left her nowhere to go.

‘One more thing, Detective,' said Marshall after a pause. It was almost midday and the jury looked in desperate need of a break. ‘Your old partner – Detective McNally – why did he decide to take compassionate leave, given he'd already returned to work?'

It was a question plucked from obscurity – misplaced enough to have all in the room at attention. David looked at Arthur who shook his head in an ‘I have no idea' gesture. Chris looked to David as if to say, ‘This is not going well – you have to do something or we are screwed.'

But then Torres's eyes flickered quickly toward David, and David sensed she was telling him to trust her on this one.

‘I believe he took leave because you called our lieutenant and asked that he be relieved of his duties,' she told the FAP.

‘And I did that because . . . ?'

Torres's eyes flickered again. ‘I believe you thought he was not conducting the Kincaid investigation in the manner you saw fit.'

‘Then let me take this opportunity to set the record straight, Detective Torres.' Marshall shifted his stance so that he was now facing the jury. ‘I recommended Detective McNally take leave, because over time, I could see that the very nature of this crime – the fact that Detective McNally's wife had
drowned
just like Marilyn Maloney – made the entire exercise incredibly distressing to the detective and, in all honesty, I felt his pain. More importantly, as hard a decision as it was, I did not feel Detective McNally could act objectively in his investigations given he was already predisposed toward punishing the accused for taking a life in the way that he did.'

David could not believe it. Marshall was using Carla Torres – McNally's good friend and partner – to enter his own set of lies into evidence. He was justifying McNally's dismissal on the grounds that as lead prosecutor on the case, he would not tolerate any form of subjectivity – even if it was from a decent cop he classed as professional but too grief-stricken to conduct an investigation fairly – and all this from a prosecutor who mere moments before had used McNally's professionalism to support his own argument.

But then Torres blinked and the entire courtroom stopped as the witness appeared to be fiddling around in her pocket behind the witness stand.

‘I find that strange,' said Torres then, her hand resting calmly in said pocket – as if whatever was inside it had provided her with some sort of inspiration.

‘It is not so strange that a prosecutor should understand a fellow investigator's grief and as such take measures to assure his own wellbeing, and the unbiased approach to a case which—'

‘No,' interrupted Torres. ‘Not that. I find it strange that you claim you had McNally removed from the case because you were worried about his ability to view the evidence against the defendant objectively. He told
me
you got him thrown off because he told
you
he believed that Chris Kincaid was innocent.'

The gallery was silent for one second, two, three – but then an almighty gasp echoed around the room, as the jury buzzed and the media scribbled and Jones called for order just as Marshall made some quick comment as to the depth of McNally's grief before hastily dismissing his witness.

The judge brought down his gavel calling for an immediate recess for lunch, with a warning that the gallery should return with some sense of decorum.

And as Carla Torres left the stand, now lost in a sea of bustling spectators, she moved past the defence table to whisper surreptitiously into David's ear, ‘Tell McNally thanks for the advice.' And she took the now open envelope from her pocket and slipped it back into David's hand.

‘What does it say?' asked Sara, who had seen Torres's gesture, and like David, was anxious to know what McNally had written in his private note to his old partner.

David held it up for her to see.
Tell the truth
,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
the note read.
So help you God.

T
he morning had flown, and during the lunch recess David had managed to make a quick call to McNally who was parked outside a downtown diner observing a coffee-guzzling Cusack inside. David could almost see McNally smile down the line as he told him of Torres's final response to Marshall.

‘Carla is one in a million,' McNally had said, before adding, ‘Do you think it would be stretching the friendship if I asked her help us organise that tap on Cusack's home and cell phones?' McNally had hit a series of brick walls trying to organise this on his own.

‘I think she hates Marshall so much right now that she'd do anything to help us,' David had replied. ‘And besides, she knows you wouldn't be asking unless it was important.' And McNally had agreed before asking David to play his cross-examination as carefully as possible so as not to get Torres into trouble.

And so when the session resumed, David stuck to the evidence – to not so much what Torres and McNally had discovered in the early stages of the investigation, but rather to what they had not – like evidence that Chris Kincaid had been at Marilyn's apartment, evidence on the victim's body linking Kincaid to her murder, and the fact that Chris Kincaid's prints were not found on either the satchel in Marilyn's apartment or on the victim's single shoe.

Further, out of respect to McNally, and a sense that the questioning was unnecessary in any case, David hadn't questioned Torres about the unidentified DNA sample. He was keeping those queries for Marshall's next witness, McNally's other ally, Medical Examiner Salicia Curtis.

 

‘The prosecution calls Doctor Salicia Curtis.'

Whether intentional or not, David knew the moment Salicia Curtis entered the courtroom that she would have the full attention of the court. The woman was so striking that David noticed several members of the jury and the media were unable to take their eyes off her. She wore a pale blue designer suit with a crisp white shirt – the shirt open at the collar to reveal a simple silver chain from which hung a miniature cross.

She took her seat straight-backed, her demeanour was calm but the expression on her face suggested this was not exactly something she was looking forward to. Her attitude to the FAP was professional but remote – and David sensed there was no love lost between the two.

Marshall began by asking the ME to state her credentials and give a brief description of her role as NRMEO chief. He asked her to give the court an idea of how many homicides she had been involved with – and sadly the answer was many.

‘In the average year we conduct approximately 1250 autopsies of which over two hundred would be homicides. That represents approximately sixteen per cent of all autopsies – a figure we would obviously like to see reduced.'

Marshall nodded. ‘And in the case of Marilyn Maloney, I believe you carried out the autopsy personally.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you immediately concluded this was indeed a homicide – not a suicide, or death by natural causes or . . . ?'

‘That is correct, for several reasons – evidence of bruising on the victim's body and about her face, evidence of an injury to the right side of the back of the victim's head, evidence of a struggle, evidence of sexual assault and a determination that the actual cause of death was death by respiratory failure and subsequent cardiac arrest.'

‘In other words, Ms Maloney drowned?'

‘That is correct.'

David felt Chris shudder beside him, so he reached under the table to place his hand on his forearm.