The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  It was a good answer: Summers understood the trap—that much of the evidence against Brett was based on her initial statement—and was trying to avoid it. Caroline made herself look puzzled. “The location of the body is fairly inaccessible, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Making it unlikely you would have found it before daylight.”

  Slight hesitation. “Maybe.”

  “By which time you were questioning Ms. Allen for the second time.”

  “Yes.”

  “After you’d already obtained a warrant from Judge Deane, at three a.m., and searched her body.”

  Once more, the minimal answer. “Yes.”

  “And searched Mr. Case.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Brett Allen’s property.”

  “As best we could, in the dark.”

  “Searches based on a warrant application which cited Ms. Allen’s statement and the body, correct?”

  Summers frowned. “Yes.”

  “And you understood that Brett Allen’s statement—the one to Officer Mann—was obtained without Miranda warnings?”

  Summers sat back. “When Officer Mann called, that was what he told me, yes.”

  “During that conversation, did you and Officer Mann discuss whether he should interrogate Ms. Allen further?”

  Summers’ lids dropped slightly. “Yes,” he said at length.

  Caroline felt a moment’s relief: at least they were honest. “And did you,” she ventured, “advise Officer Mann not to question her?”

  Summers folded his hands. “At that time, yes.”

  “For what reason?”

  Summers considered her. “It was a matter of experience.”

  “And intoxication?”

  “That too.”

  “So that you were concerned not only that Ms. Allen hadn’t been Mirandized but that she was too intoxicated to make sense.”

  Summers shrugged, a slow shifting of shoulders. “I wouldn’t say concerned. When in doubt, it’s better to test someone.”

  “And, when tested, Ms. Allen proved to be intoxicated, correct?”

  “As of roughly two o’clock.”

  “And at six o’clock, when you interrogated Ms. Allen, what was that based on?”

  Summers gave her a level gaze. “Her request.”

  It was a splendid answer, and quite wounding. Caroline stood very still. “I meant the interrogation,” she said evenly. “It was based, was it not, on finding the body, searching Ms. Allen, and searching her property?”

  Summers hesitated. “In the main.”

  “All of which was based on her initial statement to Officer Mann, telling him where to look?”

  A longer pause: Summers knew quite well that, if Caroline was lucky, she could suppress almost every piece of evidence obtained through the initial statement. “We would have questioned her,” he said, “as soon as she was sober—body or no body. Which we’d have found in daylight. But she came to us.”

  Another damaging answer. “Sober?” Caroline shot back.

  “Sober.”

  “According to whom?”

  “Dr. Pumphrey.”

  “Who never saw her, correct?”

  For the first time, Caroline watched Summers fight himself: he wanted to argue with her but was too experienced to do so. Watts, he knew, would handle this. “Dr. Pumphrey saw her at the hospital,” Summers answered. “At six o’clock, I just described her to him.”

  “So the people who did see Brett at six were you and Officer Mann?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, like Officer Mann, cannot offer a medical opinion as to her sobriety?”

  “No. Just an eyeball opinion…”

  “On the effect of THC on memory?”

  “No.”

  “Or personality?”

  “No.”

  Caroline put her hands on her hips. “Do you also have no medical opinion on whether marijuana and alcohol can have the effect of inducing what is commonly known as paranoia?”

  Annoyance, she saw, expressed itself through a certain deadness in Summers’ eyes. “No,” he said tersely.

  Caroline paused a moment. “So based on your assumption that Ms. Allen was functioning normally, if she gave you any information you perceived to be misleading, you thought this was deliberate?”

  “Not necessarily.” Summers’ voice rose slightly. “After all, she had been intoxicated….”

  “Precisely. But now she was a suspect, right? Had to be, or you wouldn’t have given her Miranda warnings.”

  Summers folded his hands again. “If someone is even potentially a suspect, we’ll warn them.”

  “Perhaps you,” Caroline retorted. “But not Officer Mann.”

  “Objection,” Jackson said. “Asked and answered.”

  “Sustained.” Towle glanced at Caroline. “Your point is taken, Counsel. Move on.”

  In the moment Caroline took to compose her thoughts, she was aware of everyone around her and everything at stake—for her and, most of all, for Brett. And then, as at other moments of her life, a blessed calm came over her.

  “Isn’t it true,” she asked, “that from the minute you first questioned her, Brett Allen was your prime suspect?”

  Summers shook his head. “Prime, no. An obvious possibility, sure. As I said, we looked for others—like this drug dealer.”

  “But you dismissed that, right?”

  “No evidence—no money in his apartment, no sign of a break-in.”

  Caroline looked bemused. “Does it seem logical to you that someone who wanted to hide stolen drug money would stick it in his apartment?”

  “Objection,” Jackson interjected. “Calls for speculation.”

  “No more so than that drug dealers are too genteel to cut throats.” Caroline turned to Judge Towle. “I’m calling on Sergeant Summers’ extensive knowledge of the drug culture, Your Honor. As did Mr. Watts.”

  Towle smiled faintly. “Overruled,” he said, and looked to Summers.

  “It is speculation,” Summers answered finally. “But no, your own apartment might not be the best place to hide money.”

  Caroline paused a moment. “It is also true, is it not, that Mr. Case’s door lacks a dead bolt?”

  Summers gave her a long, hard look. “That’s right.”

  “And based on your knowledge of the criminal element, one desiring to enter an apartment can take a mold and have a key designed, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline could feel Jackson’s gaze now; her pulse was rapid. “Or even, with sufficient skill, enter by using a credit card?”

  Summers put a finger to his mouth, tapping it lightly, still appraising Caroline. “True,” he said at length.

  “After which, to the extent the apartment was disordered, James Case could simply have cleaned it up. If not the intruder himself.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Motionless, Jackson stared at the table. “Now,” Caroline went on, “can you say whether or to what extent James Case was dealing drugs? Because, among other reasons, it’s something college kids don’t chat with cops about.”

  “Sometimes,” Summers retorted quickly. “But there’s no evidence that this drug dealer ever existed, let alone found his way to an isolated spot in time to murder James Case with a knife. The physical evidence all points to Ms. Allen.”

  It was the answer Caroline had hoped for. “Let’s take that evidence, then. You say, for example, that you found Brett’s fingerprint on the victim’s neck. Would you call that print important?”

  A small shrug. “It’s one among many pieces of evidence. I wouldn’t want to classify it.”

  “Isn’t it true that, at least in the reported literature, no one has ever lifted a print off the body of a man?”

  Summers emitted a soundless sigh, as if reaching for calm. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Are you personally aware of any?”

  “No.”

  “Because, among
other reasons, the hair and roughness of a man’s skin make lifting prints more difficult.”

  “True. But in this case, Ms. Allen left a print on the skin surrounding the wound. Where there was blood to reflect a print.”

  “That’s hardly surprising, is it—she says she touched him after his throat was cut. Tell me, didn’t you find other prints in the blood?”

  Summers considered her with chilly eyes. “One. It belonged to an EMT who was called to the scene.”

  Caroline raised an eyebrow. “Is he a suspect?”

  “No.”

  “And, in truth, there are no prints on the skin other than those found in the victim’s blood?”

  “No. There are not.”

  Caroline nodded. “Brett’s prints on the knife are also found in a deposit of blood, are they not?”

  “Yes.”

  “As are Officer Mann’s?”

  Summers tapped his lips again and then, quite consciously, placed both hands in his lap. “Yes.”

  “Who made them, just as Ms. Allen did, by touching the bloody knife?”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline tilted her head. “Are there any clean prints on the knife? Ones not imprinted in blood?”

  “Not that we found, no….”

  “Nor,” Caroline pursued softly, “can you link that knife to Brett Allen.”

  “No.”

  “What about the wallet? Was Ms. Allen’s print there found on a deposit of blood?”

  Another pause. “Yes.”

  “Any clean prints?”

  “No.”

  “Not even James Case’s? It was his wallet.”

  “No.” Summers examined his hands. “Leather usually won’t take a print.”

  “Then all this could have happened just the way Brett told you, correct? She found the body, tried to administer CPR, and got blood on her hands.” She paused. “And, therefore, left bloody prints on the victim’s neck, the knife, and the wallet. Just like the EMT and Officer Mann.”

  “Whose prints we can explain.” Looking up, Summers finished in a chill voice. “There are no other prints, Ms. Masters.”

  “And a thousand possible reasons why.” Jackson, Caroline saw, had remained quite still. “For example, might the killer have worn gloves?”

  Summers assumed a certain calm again. “Counselor,” he said patiently, “there’s not many ways to tell if someone was wearing gloves.”

  “Precisely. But if Brett had her hands on the knife, about to slice Mr. Case’s windpipe, wouldn’t she have left at least one clean print on the handle of the knife?”

  “The handle’s bone. Not an easy print, either.”

  “But the sole print Brett Allen left on the hilt is a bloody one, correct? Clearly made sometime after Mr. Case’s throat was cut.”

  Summers lowered his eyelids, studying her closely. “That’s true.”

  “So it couldn’t be the prints that caused you to opine that Brett Allen must be a murderer.”

  “Not in themselves, no.” Summers’ patience sounded strained. “You have to look at the totality of the evidence.”

  “Let’s do that, Sergeant. Pick a piece—any piece.”

  “Is that a question?” Jackson interjected.

  Caroline ignored him. “All right,” she said to Summers. “I believe you mentioned Mr. Case’s failure to ejaculate.”

  Summers nodded. “I did.”

  “And what did the tests show regarding Mr. Case’s level of intoxication?”

  “That he was intoxicated.”

  Caroline smiled slightly. “In your observation, does intoxication in the adult male sometimes lead to, shall we say, incomplete sexual performance? Or is impotence inevitably the result of death?”

  From the back of the courtroom, someone coughed, suppressing laughter. “Maybe,” Summers said mildly, “I should leave that one for the medical examiner.”

  “But you don’t insist, do you, that violent death is the only explanation for Mr. Case’s failure to ejaculate?”

  A first grim glint of humor. “No.”

  “And, in your pantheon of evidence, would you say that this failure is more or less important than your purported failure to find evidence of an escape path other than Brett Allen’s?”

  Summers hesitated. “Less.”

  “Much less?”

  “I would say so.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute, then. But let me ask you this: Do you have any reason to quarrel with Officer Mann’s belief that Ms. Allen’s hair was wet?”

  “I’ve got nothing on that, one way or the other.”

  “So you also have no belief as to whether Ms. Allen went swimming?”

  “No.”

  Caroline raised an eyebrow. “The police photographs do show a bare footprint by the beach, do they not?”

  Slowly, Summers nodded. “One. But it could be anyone’s.”

  “And did you attempt to determine whether the print might be Ms. Allen’s?”

  “Not specifically, no.”

  “Wouldn’t that have tended to confirm Ms. Allen’s claim that she went swimming? And thus was nowhere near Mr. Case at the moment of his death?”

  “Objection,” Jackson called out. “Compound. And either question calls for speculation.”

  “Only because the job wasn’t done,” Caroline shot back. “Which makes this whole proceeding speculative. I’m entitled to show that—contrary to the prosecution claim—no one pretzeled himself to believe Brett Allen.”

  Towle looked from Jackson to Summers, and then nodded. “Overruled,” he said.

  Summers shifted in his chair. “It might have,” he said finally. “But there’s no way to tell.”

  “Not now there isn’t.” Caroline crossed her arms. “According to the police photographs, wasn’t there also an unidentified boot print twenty feet farther down the lake? Along the water toward Mosher Trail?”

  Summers frowned. “Again, it could have been anyone’s. The police were there and the EMTs.”

  “Any of them wearing boots?”

  “I don’t know.” A trace of asperity. “For all we know, it could have been some fisherman.”

  “Or the murderer?”

  Summers threw up his hands. “Because of one print, maybe forty feet from the body? There’s no reason to connect the two.”

  Caroline folded her arms. “Describe for me, if you will, the terrain between the body and that footprint.”

  Summers went quiet; the pauses were no longer feigned. Caroline’s throat felt tight. “Grass,” Summers said at last, “near the body. Then small rocks along the shore.”

  “No way to get footprints off grass, correct?”

  A reluctant nod. “We couldn’t have.”

  “And the rocks on the shore were knocked about?”

  “True. But it could have been the police, or anyone.” Another pause, then a concession. “No way to get prints there, either.”

  “So that it was possible for someone to walk from the body, all the way to the muck that captured this boot print, without leaving any other print?”

  Summers seemed to appraise her. “A theoretical possibility, yes. But there was also no sign of blood.”

  “And no branches or bushes to leave blood on, correct?”

  Another pause. “That’s right. But there was grass and rocks.”

  Caroline looked astonished. “Grass and rocks? Is it your belief that this ‘theoretical’ killer crawled away from the scene?”

  Summers nodded. “I don’t believe in this killer at all, Counsel—”

  “Answer the question, please. Why would a killer who—in your version—was sitting on James Case’s chest have blood on the soles of his feet?”

  Summers folded his arms. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “A judicious answer.” Caroline cocked her head. “Did you also consider whether the killer might have other means of approaching the lake? Along the water, for example, or even by boat?”

  Summers looked a
nnoyed and then visibly reached for calm. “We didn’t consider helicopter, Counselor. But we did consider other means of approaching the lake than by going through Ms. Allen’s property. And in no instance did any resident report seeing an unknown person or vehicle.”

  “Let’s take an example, then. Mosher Trail is the next-closest path to the crime scene, true?”

  “I would say so, yes.”

  “And it goes to the edge of the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you attempt to determine whether there were fresh vehicle tracks or footprints?”

  Summers gave her a level stare. “The ground was packed hard—dried mud from spring—and that trail’s pretty well traveled. So there was no way to tell who might have come there, or when.”

  “So that, again, it would be possible for a killer to walk or drive to the end of Mosher Trail, walk along the water, and approach the place where James Case was lying. All without leaving footprints.”

  “I suppose so. Assuming that no one had seen this person.”

  “It was night, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right,” Caroline said equably. “Have we adequately reviewed the ‘physical evidence’ that you say points to Brett Allen’s guilt—the knife, the wallet, the fingerprints, the supposed lack of an exit path, and Mr. Case’s lamentable failure to ejaculate?”

  Summers’ mouth and eyes seemed smaller now. “You can’t compartmentalize it like that. Among other things, there’s the pattern of blood on Ms. Allen and the victim, as attested to by the medical examiner.”

  “Oh,” Caroline said carelessly, “we’ll take that up with him. But tell me, Sergeant Summers, when did you and Mr. Watts receive the ME’s report?”

  “About four days after the incident.”

  “By which time you already had the lab results.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t run right out and arrest her, did you?”

  “No. We didn’t.”

  “So when, relative to that report, did you determine to charge Brett Allen?”

  Another faint smile, a small acknowledgment that Summers knew where she was going. “About five days after.”

  “Really?” Caroline made herself sound curious. “What happened in those five days to make your case so compelling?”

  Summers paused for a moment. “We had time to put it all together—”