The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  “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.

  THE 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.

  38

  THE 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.”

  FINALLY, 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 i
s 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?”

  Brito pulled out a laser pointer. “Well, we can clearly see the A, B, C, and D points reflected in the pattern here on the scalp. They appear to be exactly the same relative distance from one another and assume the same shape when taken together. In my opinion, the shillelagh depicted in the photo here was used to inflict the injuries in the autopsy photo.”

  “What supports that opinion?”

  “The shillelagh is not a machine-made object, nor does it appear to have a common configuration such as a jack, a tire iron, or a hammer. The injury had to be caused by either that shillelagh or one exactly like it.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” Stier turned on his heel with buoyant confidence. “Your witness, Mr. Hardy.”

  THERE WAS NO escaping the damaging nature of Brito’s testimony. Hardy knew he could bring up technical objections until he turned blue, but he doubted that he would convince even one juror that the shillelagh was not the murder weapon.

  That did not mean he didn’t have to try.

  Getting up from his table, Hardy took a moment to glance down at his legal pad, although he didn’t need a reminder of what he was going to say.

  “Sergeant Brito,” he said when he arrived in front of the witness, “the reason you say it was the shillelagh or something exactly like it is because in the photo, the shillelagh has four protuberances that appear to match four injuries to the victim’s head. How do you know that those four injuries came from a single blow?”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “So any object with a knob could have been used to hit the victim four times, and you’d get the same result, wouldn’t you?”

  “In my opinion, that’s extraordinarily unlikely. First, the four injuries aren’t precisely the same, just like the four knobs on the shillelagh are not precisely the same. So you’d have to use four separate objects exactly like the four knobs on the shillelagh and then deliver the blows in precisely the same relative positions as if he’d been struck by the shillelagh.”

  “So they’re not exactly the same, but each of those knobs is simply a rounded protuberance, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is possible, is it not, that an object with a rounded protuberance like that could have been used to hit the victim four times and left these marks?”

  “I can’t say it’s impossible. Most things are possible. In my opinion, it was the shillelagh.”

  Hardy knew that it wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do, especially since the experts he’d consulted had all told him the same thing—the murder weapon was the shillelagh or something very much like it.

  Hardy took in the jury briefly as he turned to walk to his table—no one was asleep today. Then, as though he’d just remembered something important, he whirled back around. “The shillelagh,” he said, raising a finger. And then he was at his place in front of the witness, to all appearances newly energized. “Sergeant, you’ve described the shillelagh in People’s Number Fifteen and Sixteen in some detail. Size, weight, identifying protrusions, heft, and so on. Tell me, where did the crime scene locate this shillelagh that they brought to you for your analysis?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “They didn’t locate the shillelagh?”

  “No, not that I know of. If they did, they never brought it to me to analyze.”

  “Well, then, Sergeant, how did you make your analysis of it?”

  Brito hesitated and tried to look behind Hardy to get some kind of a clue from Stier. But there was no help from that quarter.

  “I analyzed it using assumptions that could be made from the photograph.”

  “But you’ve never seen the actual shillelagh?”

  “No.”

  “Sergeant, were you present when the picture of Mr. McGuire holding the shillelagh was taken?”

  The question sent a ripple of humor through the gallery; even the witness seemed to think it was funny.

  “No,” he said, “of course not.”

  “So you have never held the shillelagh in that photo or seen it close up or anything like that?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So, Sergeant, how do you know it’s real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve been calling the object in the photo a shillelagh, which is a heavy wooden club, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know what the object in the photo is made of?”

  Hardy knew that the exchange galled the bejesus out of Stier. Try as they might, the police hadn’t found a single witness from the Little Shamrock who would admit to even having touched the shillelagh Moses kept behind the bar. They would say it was there and that it looked real, but every other question about the shillelagh was met with an indifferent shrug.

  Brito said, “It appears in the photo to be an actual shillelagh, so presumably, it’s made out of heavy, hard wood.”

  Sometimes Hardy simply loved the theater of the courtroom. Now he went back to his desk, where he’d left his huge lawyer’s briefcase. Opening it to the gasps of the gallery, he withdrew a twenty-inch length of what looked for all the world like Kentucky ash, with a tapered lower end and a distinctive knob on the other end.

  When he had shown the exhibit to Stier during pretrial motions, the prosecutor had gone crazy, telling Gomez it was simple fraud, an active attempt to deceive the jury. Hardy countered that it was no such thing; they were not going to claim it was the murder weapon or the object in the photo. All it did was prove that no one could tell from the photograph that Moses McGuire might have had access to what might have been a murder weapon. And Gomez had agreed.

  As Hardy walked forward to offer it as an exhibit in evidence, the rumble behind him got loud enough that Gomez lifted her gavel. Bam bam bam. “The court will come to order.” Finally, Hardy was standing in front of Brito as the last of the murmuring subsided.

  “Sergeant,” he said, “do you recognize this club that I’m holding, Defense B?”

  “It looks like the shill
elagh, the murder weapon.”

  “I’m going to ask you to assume that this is neither the murder weapon nor the object in the photo. Would you agree that it looks like both?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what, based on your analysis of this visual inspection, would you estimate as the weight of this shillelagh?”

  “I’d say somewhere between two and a half and three pounds.”

  Hardy handed it to the witness. “Sergeant, holding the shillelagh in your hand, would you estimate its weight?”

  Brito was not happy with this development. He glared at Hardy with true contempt. “Two or three ounces,” he said. “It’s a fake.”

  “It’s not a fake at all,” Hardy said. “It simply is what it is. Which, Sergeant, would you agree is an object made out of something like Styrofoam that looks like a shillelagh?” Taking it from the witness, he placed it on the evidence table. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your answer.”

  “Yes. It’s an object made out of Styrofoam that looks like a shillelagh.”

  “No further questions,” Hardy said, then, to Stier, “Redirect?”

  Ugly, on his feet, in clipped tones. “Sergeant Brito, referring to People’s Number Seventeen, the photograph of the victim’s shaved scalp, did you have an opportunity to see the pattern injury on the victim’s head in the coroner’s office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take the picture of it, seen here in People’s Number Seventeen?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you edit the photograph in any way?”

  “No.”

  “So this was a very real pattern injury inflicted by a very real instrument of exactly the kind you’ve described, is it not?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Stier said, shooting a withering look at Hardy. “You may step down.”

  39

  BY THE END of lunchtime, Hardy knew little beyond the bare fact of Tony Solaia’s disappearance. Wyatt Hunt had located his apartment building in the Tenderloin and had talked his way inside. The manager had verified that the tenant had come in with another man—“some kind of cowboy”—and the two of them had packed up what little goods Tony had and moved out the day before in the middle of the afternoon. They had a small U-Haul into which Tony pulled his motorcycle. He had left no forwarding address, although the manager suggested that Hunt try the post office, which he did to no avail.