“Your Honor, Mr. Tuchio went on at length regarding blood evidence, on the floor in the bathroom, blood on the victim’s chair, and blood transfer marks on the briefcases. All I’m doing here is addressing blood evidence on one of the cases, the small portfolio.”
“There were no transfer marks on the portfolio,” says Tuchio.
“I beg to differ. There is blood on the portfolio, and it was delivered there by centrifugal force. I’d call that a transfer.”
“Transfer involves touching,” says Tuchio.
“Maybe I should ask your witness,” I tell him.
The judge tells me to go ahead, and he flips the switch so everybody can hear again. Tuchio sits down, and I ask Prichert whether drops or particles of blood flung from an object such as the hammer, imparting themselves onto an object such as a briefcase, could be considered transfer evidence.
“Sure. You could look at it that way.”
“I’m going to renew my objection,” says Tuchio.
“Overruled,” says Quinn.
I ask the judge to have the clerk retrieve the portfolio from one of the evidence carts.
To this point we have been using photographs to document much of the physical evidence for reasons of convenience—they’re easier to handle—and because they provide a more permanent record. But the best evidence in this case will be the item itself.
Ruiz puts on gloves before he touches the leather portfolio, then brings it over and lays it on the rostrum just next to the witness stand. The portfolio had been on the table near the television in the hotel room, approximately twelve feet from where Scarborough sat on the morning he was murdered.
“This right here.” I point with my pen, avoiding contact.
Prichert studies it, this time leaning back in the chair. He can see it now. I’m guessing that he didn’t notice it during the investigation that day because two crime-scene photographers were moving among the items in the hotel room taking pictures with macro lenses, close-ups of the gloved prints in blood on the other two briefcases.
The portfolio, the top opening of which was unzipped, bore no gloved print marks. Moreover, it was empty. When Prichert turned his attention to these items in the lab, the one he concentrated on was the clean attaché case, which was on the couch in the living room, out of the line of fire from the blood spatter.
“Do you see what looks like a kind of rectangular outline of clear leather, here in the center of the portfolio?” I point to the area with my pen.
He looks more closely. “The distinction is faint,” he says. “Hard to see. But I think I see what you’re referring to.”
“And around the outside of that outline, do you see that?”
“Yes…”
I can tell by the look in Prichert’s eyes that he already knows what’s happened here.
“Can you tell the jury what that is, covering the surface on this side of the portfolio, almost all of it except the inside of the rectangular outline?”
He looks more closely. “I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you, except that I know where that portfolio was located at the time of the murder. While it doesn’t look normal, from the appearance I would say it’s a very fine mist of blood spatter. Though it’s much lighter in color than what you would usually associate with blood evidence.”
“As a trace-evidence expert, you deal with minute amounts of blood fairly regularly, don’t you?”
“I’m not a blood-spatter expert, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, but I assume you’ve attended crime scenes involving traumatic head wounds before?”
“I have.”
“In your experience in dealing with those cases, is there anything unique about the blood in those cases, particularly the density and color of the blood?”
“You’re talking about spinal fluid.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I would say that’s probably a good guess,” he says. “Blood diluted with spinal fluid might very well account for the near transparency of the stains on that leather.”
“So you’ve seen something like this before?”
“Not quite like that,” he says. “No. Every case is different.”
“Could the fine mist also be the result of the distance between the leather portfolio and the point where the hammer was swung?”
“It could.”
The seminal rule in asking any question in court is to know the answer before you ask. Harry consulted two experts with regard to an explanation for the fine film of blood that landed on the portfolio. The first was a blood-evidence expert who told us that distance from the point of origin would be one contributing factor; the farther the distance, the finer the spray. The other expert, a medical pathologist, provided the missing element, cerebrospinal fluid. The human brain virtually floats in this. Puncture the skull and what you get is not only a vigorous flow of deep red blood, often surging with the force of a pump, but a less-viscous, almost clear flow of spinal fluid. It is the reason that blood from massive head wounds often appears to be diluted, almost watery.
“Let me draw your attention back to the clear rectangular area in the leather on that side of the portfolio. Can you tell the jury what might have caused this outline to be formed?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say that something was lying there covering that area when the blood spatter hit the portfolio.” Prichert just says it right out, matter-of-fact, no big point. He knows that to belabor what is now obvious is to be pounded with it.
“Do you have any idea what that item might have been?”
“No.”
“Then I assume you don’t have it?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you know whether the police have it?”
Prichert looks over at Detrick, who is now huddled with Tuchio at the counsel table. The detective gives him a quick shake of the head, then turns back to the prosecutor.
“I think you can be fairly certain that they don’t have it either.”
It’s the only available answer, because if the police have it, they haven’t turned it over to us in discovery.
“So it appears that the item is missing?” I say.
“It would appear so.”
“Earlier I believe you testified that from your examination of the attaché case, while there was evidence of the case having been opened and traces of blood inside, you couldn’t be sure whether anything was taken. Let me ask you now: After looking at the leather on that portfolio, do you think there’s a fairly good chance that whoever killed Terry Scarborough took something from that room?”
“In light of the physical evidence, I’d have to say yes, there’s a pretty good chance that they did.”
SIXTEEN
I am told that the phenomenon on the surface of the leather portfolio is sometimes called “a shadow.” It is similar to what often happens in structural fires where a book, a sheaf of paper, or some other object covers the surface of, say, a wooden table. If the table isn’t destroyed by the flames, its surface will be smoked or charred, except for areas covered by the object. There, the surface will present the precise outline of the item resting on it at the time of the fire.
The difference here is that we’re dealing not with flames but rather with the fine mist of blood cast across the room by the repeated blows of the hammer as Scarborough was beaten to death.
Harry and I have measured the rectangular shadow on the leather portfolio. The only edges that are sharply defined are the bottom—the edge closest to Scarborough’s chair, the edge that caught Harry’s eye—and the shorter right edge of the rectangle. Because of the angled trajectory of the blood, the other two edges were provided a kind of small defilade by the object resting on top of the portfolio, so that the shadow in these areas is less sharply defined. Along the bottom, the sharper and more defined edge, if you look closely, you can see a slight smear of blood. This was probably made when the killer lifted the item from the leather.
Still, when we measure the rectangle, Harry and I come to the same conclusion. The shadow on the leather matches the size of an ordinary business envelope, or perhaps letter-size sheets of paper folded in thirds, in the manner of a letter, the contents you might stuff into a business envelope. To say that this has inspired us is an understatement.
From everything we know, the information from Richard Bonguard, Scarborough’s literary agent, and Trisha Scott, the former Supreme Court clerk who lived with the victim, Scarborough possessed only a copy of the Jefferson Letter. While the original was probably larger, it is likely that a facsimile made on a modern photocopy machine might well have been reduced down to a more convenient size, eight and a half by eleven inches, modern letter-size paper, the size of the rectangle on Scarborough’s leather portfolio.
We are done for the day, finished in court. Harry and I are milling around in the office after hours, collecting our messages and trying to get a grip on what may happen tomorrow. Harry comes into my office.
“News from Herman,” he says. Herman is back in D.C. trying to chase down or get a lead on the whereabouts of Arthur Ginnis.
Harry is holding a telephone slip stapled to a page of typed notes, information I assume Herman dictated over the phone to one of the secretaries while we were in court.
“Has he found Ginnis?”
“No. Not yet.” Harry is reading as he settles into one of the two client chairs on the other side of my desk. He looks at the telephone slip. “It came in just after noon,” he says. “He has gotten the information from the investigators we hired back there, though.
“Interesting stuff,” says Harry, “but no surprises. What I expected. Aranda, full name Alberto Aranda, age thirty-two, Yale Law grad. It doesn’t say here, but I’m guessing Mr. Aranda would be at or near the top of his class,” says Harry.
“Why?”
“Because he was selected last year to become a Supreme Court clerk by Associate Justice Arthur Ginnis.” Harry looks up from the paper. “I told you so.”
What Harry means is that the e-mail from the Court to Scarborough telling him to take his inquiries away from the Court’s official e-mail domain to a numbered snail-mail box was not dealt out by some obscure tech guarding the Court’s electronic access points.
“The mailbox, the box number sent to Scarborough in the e-mail for the pursuit of private business. What we thought,” says Harry. “An address of convenience. Says here it’s one of those private parcel-and-post places that small businesses use. The box number is registered—oh, this is interesting,” says Harry, “—to ‘A. Aranda.’” He looks up again.
“So it’s not registered in Ginnis’s name?” I say.
Harry shakes his head. “Get the sense we’re dealing with a very careful man here? Now here’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“One of the investigators Herman hired was able to glance into the postal box through the little glass window in the front. He told Herman it looked like there were a couple of items inside, but he could only read the one on top. It was addressed to Aranda.”
“Well, he owns the box,” I say. “I think we need to talk to Mr. Aranda.”
“It had a funny stamp on it.”
“What had a funny stamp on it?”
“The item in the postal box the investigator was reading,” says Harry. “According to the note, the stamp was something foreign, overseas. He couldn’t make out the entire return address, but he said the street name was very long and appeared to be more than one word. The investigator told Herman that it looked like the address was written in German.”
We regard each other with quizzical expressions.
Harry reads on. “The street named ended in the word ‘straat.’ But the man did get the country—‘Curaçao.’ Where the hell is Curaçao?” says Harry.
As he’s saying the word, I am already turning in my chair to the computer behind me. I do a Google search on the name. Harry spells it out. What pops up at the top of the screen are three small thumbnail photos, pictures of two small maps on the right and the left, what looks like the shape of the same island in each. In the center is a picture of a sugar-white sand beach lapped by azure waters, a woman in a bikini lying with her lover at the ocean’s edge.
I can see enough on the site lines below the pictures to pick out the word “Caribbean.” I tell Harry.
“Trisha Scott told me that according to the Court staff she talked to, Ginnis was down in the Caribbean.”
By now Harry is out of the chair, leaning over my shoulder looking at the center thumbnail photo, the picture of the beach and the bikini. “Yeah. Recovering from surgery, as I recall,” he says.
I open the first site on the page and try to read. It’s in Spanish. I try the second site, Wikipedia.
A few lines in, I have one answer. “That explains the street address,” I say.
“What does?” asks Harry.
“It wasn’t German. It was Dutch. It’s part of the old Dutch West Indies, the ABC islands—Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao.”
“I’ve heard of Aruba,” says Harry. “Vacation island.”
“Yeah, and a young American girl disappeared down there a while back. It was all over the news.”
“That’s right.”
I have opened up a larger map. Harry is still looking over my shoulder.
“What the hell?” he says. “Is that it?”
I nod.
“That’s as far away as you can get and still be on an island,” says Harry.
He’s right. Curaçao is just off the coast of Venezuela, the absolute tail end of the Antilles.
Next morning, early court call, neither Harry nor I have time to be looking at maps. Tuchio is beginning his run for the finish, bringing out the big guns.
He starts with his fingerprint expert. For the better part of a day, using charts, magnified photographs of the full set of Carl’s fingerprints taken at the time he was booked after his arrest, and comparing them to the partial prints lifted from the entry-hall floor of Scarborough’s hotel room, the witness explains the art of fingerprint identification to the jury.
He tells them that based on studies of the millions upon millions of fingerprints classified over the last nearly one hundred years, no two sets of prints from different individuals have ever been found to be identical. In addition to being unique, they are immutable. Except in the event of physical injury, fingerprint patterns do not change over a person’s lifetime.
The witness explains that comparison between known fingerprints taken from a known individual and those found at a crime scene turn on the analysis of ridge characteristics, known as minutiae, as well as the location and proximity of these characteristics one to another.
The testimony, questions and answers, drones on for hours. Tuchio risks putting the jury to sleep with evidence of what everyone in the courtroom already knows to be fact: The fingerprints at the murder scene belong to Carl.
Asked how the small pinkie print landed on the handle of the hammer, the witness testifies that based upon photographs taken by police of the hammer’s location on the floor, it appeared that the fingerprint in question was made at the same time as the other prints on the floor. According to the testimony, the defendant’s contact with the handle caused it to move several inches away, accounting for the later gap between the print of the third finger of Carl’s right hand on the floor and the fourth finger, the pinkie print on the handle. Nonetheless, the fingerprint in question, the one on the hammer’s handle, is sufficiently clear to identify it conclusively as belonging to the defendant.
Tuchio turns the witness over to me. I pass on him without a single question. It is, after all, exactly what Carl told the police when they questioned him, the same story he told Harry and me the first time we met him.
The judge looks up at the clock on the wall. It’s approaching four. Friday afternoon, and Quinn decides that’s it for the week. He cuts some slack and allows the jury to go home early.
Monday will be a big day, the intimate details of death. The state is scheduled to bring on its medical examiner.
On the way to the parking lot, Harry and I shake the last two reporters about two blocks out. By now they know we’re not going to say anything, so they take a few file shots of our backsides and retreat toward the courthouse.
Harry is holding a note delivered to us in court by one of our secretaries. It’s an e-mail from Herman back in D.C. While we don’t have a street or an address, we are now pretty sure of the general whereabouts of Arthur Ginnis.
I have sent three successive letters and left numerous telephone messages for Ginnis during the time since my meeting with Trisha Scott in Washington. I offered to converse by phone, or if he wished I would travel once more to Washington at the justice’s convenience. I told him that I was representing the defendant in the murder of Terry Scarborough and that I would appreciate it if I could speak to him just briefly. To date I have received no reply.
When Herman arrived in D.C., he made a polite phone call, got through to a clerk in Ginnis’s office, told the woman what it was about—an ongoing criminal trial in California, a capital case, an urgent matter—and requested a brief meeting with the justice. After some confusion in which the clerk thought the request involved a case on appeal and nearly hung up, she finally got it straight. Not that it mattered. Herman was told that Ginnis was on medical leave from the Court and that if Herman had a request, he should reduce it to writing and mail it in. When Herman asked for the address, he was given not the mail drop rented by Aranda but the name and address of another clerk at the Court.
Herman’s helpers, the PI’s he hired in D.C., got the nugget. One of them was sent by Herman to check Ginnis’s house in Chevy Chase. He rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. He talked to a few of the neighbors. One of them, a woman, a neighbor next door, told him that Maggie and Art went where they always went when they needed a rest, down to the islands. She said she’d gotten a postcard from them and that Arthur was coming along well, recovering from his surgery, though they were not quite ready to return home yet.
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