The Ophelia Cut (47 page)

“Well, as I said, the last time we knew he was alive, I suppose. After that.”

“But it could have been shortly after that, could it not? A few minutes to an hour or two, right?”

“I can’t rule that out.”

“Thank you, Doctor. No further questions.”

N
EXT UP WAS
the sergeant in charge of crime scene investigations, Lennard Faro. Like Strout, Faro had been at his job for a long time and was good at it. Pretty much the sharpest dresser on the police force, Faro sported a soul patch under his lip, and his hair was carefully groomed. Today he was dressed all in black—slacks, shirt, tie, coat—although it was impossible to say whether in deference to the victim or simply as a matter of personal style.

Faro’s testimony was also Stier’s opportunity to introduce to the jury more color photographs taken at the crime scene. Usually, for a violent murder, they tended to be graphic and powerful enough to lend an atmosphere of true drama to the proceedings. By now, no one on the jury was dealing with an abstract event. You can talk all you want about concepts such as reasonable doubt and burden of proof, but their meanings differ in the context of a horrible and brutal crime that took the life of a handsome young man.

Moses was again having trouble controlling his visceral reaction. His eyes were glassy and focused on the courtroom’s floor in front of the defense table, and he kept his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Hardy wished he could get his client to tamp down his reactions, but in truth, he realized that the photos could literally make a person sick, and the fact that Moses took them so seriously might help to humanize him to the jury.

Finally, with the photos now marked as prosecution exhibits, Stier came back to the witness. As he’d done with Strout, he walked Faro through the details of the crime scene. As the jury could see, there was a lot of blood on the hardwood floor and under the head. There was no other sign of
struggle in Jessup’s apartment; he’d fallen a few steps inside the door, and that was where he’d died. When they’d arrived, the front door had been unlocked, because the cleaning lady had opened it that morning upon discovering the body and calling 911. The door did not appear to have been forced open. Stier thanked the witness and gave him to Hardy for cross.

This was precious little for Hardy to work with, but again—nibble, nibble—he thought he had a couple of crumbs.

“Sergeant Faro, you’ve testified that the door showed no sign of forcible entry, is that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Was there a peephole in the door?”

“Yes.”

“Did you happen to notice whether it was working? Whether it was obstructed by anything?”

“No. It worked fine. I looked through it to make sure.”

“So Mr. Jessup, inside, could have looked through that peephole and been able to identify the person standing outside his door?”

“If he looked, yes, he could.”

“And the door opened inward, did it not?”

“Yes.”

Hardy longed to make an argument here. If Jessup, knowing that he’d raped Brittany the night before, and remembering his beating at the hands of McGuire two months ago, saw him standing outside his door, how could he possibly be so foolish as to open the door to him? But Hardy couldn’t make that or any argument. At least not now.

Besides, he had one other small but decent point. “Sergeant, the photographs show a great deal of blood on the floor, do they not?”

“Quite a bit, yes.”

“And isn’t it your standard procedure for your crime scene investigators to make every effort to keep from disturbing the crime scene?”

“Yes.”

“And was there any disturbing of the crime scene, particularly the blood, that you identified or noticed?”

“No.”

“Were there any identifiable footprints in the blood? That is to say, footprints that could be compared to a pair of shoes?”

“No.”

Hardy needed to pound this point home. “How about unidentifiable footprints—that is, a pattern that came from a shoe—even if there was not enough detail later to compare to a shoe. Did you find any of those?”

“No.”

“How about a disturbance in the blood that might have been a footprint? Did you see any of that?”

“No.”

“How about any sign that anyone had touched or interfered or come into contact with that blood in any way?”

“No.”

“If you’d seen anything like that, we’d have close-up photos to show it, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“And as an experienced crime scene investigator, you’re very aware that it would be important to see and document that kind of evidence?”

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“So you were very specifically looking for evidence like that and did not find any, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you the only crime scene investigator at the scene?”

“No. There were several of us.”

“And they all have similar training and various levels of experience, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So we might think that even if you inexplicably missed such evidence, someone else on your team could have noticed and documented it.”

“Well, I was the one doing the blood, but yes, if another investigator saw anything like that, they would bring it to my attention.”

“So, Sergeant, we may be comfortable that there is no evidence whatsoever that the assailant in this case stepped in that blood or touched it in any way?”

“There was no such evidence.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

Hardy felt pretty good for the fifteen seconds it took Stier to demolish
his argument. “Sergeant Faro,” he began. “If the assailant stepped in blood during this struggle, could later bloodshed or blood flow have covered up any sign that he did so?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“And do you have to step in blood to get it on you?”

“No. In this case, there was obvious evidence of spatter and spray from the infliction of injuries that could have got on an assailant without him stepping in blood.”

Stier let out a little breath, decided he had all he needed, and excused the witness.

T
HE NEXT FEW
witnesses were a wash. Stier wanted to show that the CSI team had done a thorough job. Hardy pointed out that the thorough job had produced no useful evidence. Had they checked for fingerprints? Yes. Found any? No. Cloth and fiber analysis? Yes. Nothing worth testing. Crime scene reconstruction and blood spatter. Absolutely. And what did it prove? Nothing that made any difference. Somebody had beaten Rick Jessup to death, but everybody already knew that.

T
HE DAY WAS
flying by as Stier immediately established the significance of the blood at the scene with witnesses who testified about the hiking boots in McGuire’s closet, the testing showing blood on those boots, and finally, the DNA technician who conclusively demonstrated that the blood came from Rick Jessup. Stier did the same with Mose’s Giants jacket and the car. There was no doubt about it. Jessup’s blood was on all of it.

All Hardy could do was remind the jury that Jessup’s blood on those things didn’t necessarily make Moses the murderer. After all, they knew that Moses had fought with Jessup before. Why couldn’t the blood have come from that fight?

Hardy stood for his cross on Sergeant Natalie Morgan, the blood expert from the police lab. “Sergeant Morgan,” he began, “you’ve testified that the DNA testing you did matched blood from the car, the Giants jacket, and the hiking boots to the sample taken from Mr. Jessup at the autopsy, right?”

“That’s right.”

“How old was the blood on the boots?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The blood on the boots. How long had it been on them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there any way to tell?”

“No, unless it’s old and has degraded.”

“And how old would old be?”

“Depending on conditions—for example, if it were exposed to extreme weather—it could degrade in a matter of weeks, but under normal conditions, the blood would be identifiable for
a few months, at least.”

“A few months, at least?” Hardy picked it right up. “Had this particular blood degraded?”

“No.”

“And the same is true of the blood on the jacket, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“How about the blood in the car? Had that degraded?”

“No.”

“Just to be clear, Sergeant, the blood that appeared on Mr. McGuire’s hiking boots, and on his jacket and in his car, might have been on these articles of clothing for a matter of months. Is that correct?”

“Yes, I’d say it is.”

“Now, did that blood get directly on those objects from Mr. Jessup?”

“I don’t understand your question.”

“Well, supposing, for example, that Mr. McGuire had gotten Mr. Jessup’s blood on his hands somehow. Could he have transferred that blood to the Giants jacket?”

“Yes.”

“If he got in his car, could the blood on his hands have gotten into the car?”

“Yes.”

“If he took off his boots, could the blood on his hands have gotten on his boots?”

“Yes.”

“So, for example, if Mr. McGuire had punched Mr. Jessup in the nose and given him a bloody nose, that could account for all the blood that’s been found in this case, couldn’t it?”

“I don’t know myself where any of this blood came from. I just know that samples were delivered to me at the lab. But yes, blood can be transferred, so if your question is can the blood from somebody’s hands be found later on objects that the person touched, the answer is yes.”

Hardy went on, “And your testing is remarkably sensitive, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very.”

“A tiny, almost invisible drop of blood could produce the results that you’ve testified about, right?”

“Right. Even a sample invisible to the naked eye could give us these results, but we only tested areas where we could see blood.”

F
INALLY, IT WAS
time for Stier’s coup de grâce. Sergeant Clay Brito from the crime lab was a large man of about fifty, gray-haired, sallow-skinned, and if looks were any indication, utterly humorless.

“Sergeant Brito,” Stier began, “do you have a specialty in the crime lab?”

“Yes. I am a firearms and tool mark examiner.”

“What do you do in that capacity?”

“As my title indicates, I identify the marks left when one object interacts with another under pressure. This includes pattern injuries and ballistics testing—bullets fired from specific guns make specific microscopic indentations that are unique to each firearm environment. Similarly, I’ll look at firing pin and ejection marks and such on gun shell casings, again microscopically. Over the years, I’ve specialized in the analysis of the impressions that various tools and weapons—hammers, brass knuckles, rings, and so on—make when they come into contact with various other surfaces, such as skin, leather, plastic, wood. Really, whenever one object meets another, there may be some sign of it left on one or both of the objects, depending on their relative hardness, density, and the like. Everything from a key in a piece of clay to a boot mark on a piece of skin.”

“A boot mark on a piece of skin, Sergeant? Does human skin take and hold an impact mark? A pattern injury?”

“Yes, absolutely. The most common one probably being a bite mark, but even if the skin isn’t broken, it may retain the identifiable characteristics of the impact weapon.”

Stier walked to the evidence table and turned over a movie poster–sized blowup of a photograph that he introduced as a prosecution exhibit and then set up on an easel so Sergeant Brito and the jury could see it.

Hardy could see it, too, and though it wasn’t unfamiliar to him, he wasn’t happy about what it depicted. Taken from the Wall of Shame at the Little Shamrock, it was a picture of a grinning Moses McGuire about two years before, holding the shillelagh up as though he were a caveman with, yes, his club, about to brain somebody. The original color picture evidently had been taken with a high-quality camera; even blown up to poster size, the detail of the grain and the small bumps on the knob end of the club were clear.

“Sergeant Brito,” Stier began, “have you seen this picture, People’s Number Fifteen before?”

“Yes.”

“Would you please identify for the jury the object that the defendant is holding.”

“It’s a club of hardwood. Judging from the grain, it is probably ash. It is cut at one end, but the other end is a pronounced natural knob.”

“Can you tell us anything else about this club, Sergeant, which is commonly called a shillelagh?”

“I can. By comparison with the size of nearby objects in the photograph—the beer spigots, particularly, but also the defendant’s head—we can say with confidence that the object is twenty inches long, about an inch and a half thick at the tapered end, three and a quarter inches at the knob. If it is ash, it should weigh between two and a half and three pounds.”

“Sergeant, do you see any distinctive markings on this shillelagh?”

“Yes. There are four. They are the dark specks on the knob in this picture.”

Stier, well prepared, returned to the evidence table and introduced two other poster-sized photographs as People’s #16 and #17, which he set up side by side, each on its own easel.

Hardy, squirming, knew what was coming. It was gruesome; it was compelling.

“Sergeant, could you please identify these two posters for us?”

Brito might as well have been describing mud drying. “On the left is a blowup of the shillelagh picture we’re already seen, focusing on the knob and its four distinctive points, which I’ve labeled A, B, C, and D.”

Hardy knew those points. Even after all the years and the wear and tear and rubbing away, they protruded slightly enough to feel. You couldn’t miss them.

“The other,” Brito went on, “is a close-up of the victim’s shaved head.” Stier projected this picture on the screen next to the shillelagh. The jury had already seen it during Strout’s testimony. It was one of the autopsy photos. It hadn’t gotten any prettier.

A low groan made its way across the gallery, and Gomez picked up her gavel, then let the reaction run its course.

“Sergeant, do you have a professional opinion about the pattern injury we see in the picture on the right?”