“So you think he did it?”
She laughed as he poured her some tea. “Who doesn’t? I mean, his fingerprints were the only ones in the car, his empty beer cans were in the backseat, their blood was all over his car, and he didn’t have an alibi.”
“Just because someone doesn’t have an alibi doesn’t automatically make him guilty.”
She glanced around the table, then shook her head and pulled another cigarette from her purse. “No, but it leaves the door wide open.”
He was leading the conversation where he wanted it. “It was eleven-thirty. There aren’t many people who have alibis for that time of night. I bet you don’t have one for that night.”
“That’s true, I don’t. But that’s not the only evidence they have on him.” She looked down at the cigarette. “At least according to the papers.”
Chandler nodded. No alibi; just what he wanted to hear.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step outside for a moment to take a few drags. I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
“No problem.” Take all the time you want.
As she arose from her seat, the busboy came over and began to clear the table. Chandler caught sight of the other cigarette, grabbed it by the end, and placed it in a plastic Ziploc bag he pulled from his jacket pocket.
While Chandler waited for Harding to return, he paid the bill and then stood up to stretch his back, which had begun to ache. Ten minutes after she had left for “a few drags,” he walked outside to see what was keeping her. He wanted to ask her a few more questions and then get her cigarette over to the lab for analysis. He waited outside the restaurant, tapping his foot as the seconds passed. Finally, realizing she was not going to return; finally, he left.
After arriving at the lab fifteen minutes later, he was escorted to the tool impression lab, where Gray was focusing a microscope.
Holding up the Ziploc bag, Chandler said, “I need a favor.”
Gray stood there, looking poker-faced at Chandler, as if he were speaking a foreign language. In that instant, Chandler couldn’t decide if Gray’s expression was Give me a break, or I don’t owe you any favors. Maybe both.
“This cigarette has saliva on it,” Chandler said, forging ahead, “as well as a lip print. I need to know if it matches the DNA and the lip print on the cans of beer.”
Gray shook his head and made a face. Turned and walked away.
“Hey, this is important, I think I’ve got something here.”
Gray turned hard and faced Chandler, who was following close behind. “In case you don’t realize it, this is not your private lab. Maybe that’s the way you do things in New York. Pulling strings to get private evidence analyzed in a state lab. Won’t fly here. And if anyone found out,” he said with a shrug, “might cause problems for your client. Don’t you think?”
Chandler could feel his face turning red—no doubt a deep shade of crimson.
“And your pal Lou is on vacation for two weeks,” Gray continued. “Left yesterday evening. Some kind of fishing trip, I think. Good luck trying to locate him.” He let a thin smile spread his lips. “Oh, but the DA did give the okay to test the saliva on the cans for DNA.”
“That hasn’t been started yet?”
“I do what I’m told. Except when you tell me to do something.”
“Hang on a minute,” Chandler said, trying to contain his anger. “I’m here for only one reason: to get to the bottom of this crime. My client’s innocent. He didn’t kill those people. So in my short time here, I have to find out who did. Isn’t that what we’re all after? Finding the real guilty person and punishing him?”
Gray did not answer. Instead, he turned to walk away.
Chandler grabbed his arm and gently pulled him back.
“Let go of me,” Gray said calmly.
When Chandler released his grip, Gray brushed his hair back and returned to the stool in front of his microscope.
“How hard will it be to run the lip print for me?” Chandler asked, his tone softer. “Tell you what. If the lip print doesn’t produce a reasonable and probable match with the beer can, then I give up, okay? You won’t see me again.” He paused to let this sink in. “But if there is a reasonable match, you’ll run those DNA samples.” If he refused, Chandler could still take the cigarette back with him to New York and run the test himself—but it would add a few variables that he wished to avoid: a different lab, accusations of bias, chain of custody issues, and the danger of contaminating the sample during the trip.
And even then, once he had his DNA results, trying to get a copy of the beer can’s DNA pattern from Gray would be like asking your worst enemy for a loan. It just was not going to happen. He would have to have Hellman handle it through the court. Time consuming. Messy.
Gray stood there, appearing to chew on the offer for a moment. Chandler knew what he was thinking: it would rid him of Chandler’s presence—which was threatening to become as annoying as his dandruff itch. And he would not have to face Palucci’s wrath when he returned.
Gray took the plastic bag without saying so much as a word and headed out of the room.
“Do we have a deal?” Chandler yelled after him.
“Yeah,” Gray shouted back as he turned the comer and walked into the hallway.
CHAPTER 46
THE SUN HAD SET half an hour ago and the wind had whipped up a bit, bringing a cool chill to the air. It was 45 and headed down to the low 30s.
When Chandler arrived at the Madison home, Hellman was getting out of his car with a small bouquet of flowers. They walked up the front steps together and chatted for a moment before Leeza answered the door.
“Jeffrey, these are beautiful,” she said, taking the flowers from him and bringing them up to her nose. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Hellman said.
“So what was the purpose of the motion you filed?” Chandler asked as he walked into the living room.
“The whole idea was to keep this thing from degenerating into a three-ring circus. I wanted the cameras out of the courtroom during the entire proceedings.”
“And?” Madison asked, entering the room. He leaned over and planted a kiss on the back of Leeza’s neck as she placed the cut flowers in a vase.
“And the judge agreed and granted the motion. You should’ve seen Denton’s face.”
“Must’ve been ten shades of red,” Chandler said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I’m sure he wasn’t happy about giving up the spotlight.”
Hellman bobbed his head. “It’s still an important case for him, he just loses some of the fanfare that goes along with it. But I had an idea. I think we should offer to do an interview with that reporter from KMRA. It’d give the media some things to chomp on, divert their focus away from Phil.”
“It seems like everyone assumes I’m guilty before I even go to trial. I can’t even go to the zoo with my family without being harassed by nuts who’ve seen the news painting me as a dreg of society.”
Chandler rubbed his forehead, contorted his face. “A TV interview.”
“I know you didn’t want to think about peripheral matters,” Hellman said, “but a strategic, exclusive interview could neutralize the negative PR and actually work to our benefit.”
“Isn’t this precisely what you argued against in front of the judge today?” Madison asked.
“This is different. It gives us a chance to have equal time after that bogus report Mather did on his interview with John Stevens. We do this one spot and that’s it. Then we stay away from the media. But I really think it could have a positive effect.”
“How do you figure?” Madison asked.
“We tell the press we believe we’ve found the real killer and are in the process of building enough evidence that will not only exonerate you, but will implicate someone else. And of course once we have all the evidence in order, we’ll cooperate fully with the police and turn it all over to them.”
“The police,” Chandler sai
d, “are going to be pissed as hell. You’re showing them up. They accused the wrong guy, so you are going to show them the right way to conduct an investigation. You’re such a damned good attorney that you’re not only going to get the charges against your client dismissed, but you’re also going to hand them the real killer. After all, they’re just a bunch of screw-ups.” He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Don’t expect them to be your buddies.”
Madison took a seat beside Chandler at the table. “Why don’t we give Denton what we have now and see if they’ll cooperate with us?”
“By cooperate you mean drop the charges,” Chandler said.
Hellman shook his head. “Forget it. They’re already deeply committed to your prosecution. Doing a one-eighty at this point would invite criticism from everyone and their uncle.” He shook his head, as if he were convincing himself of something. “In fact, I spoke with Denton yesterday. Their witness, that homeless guy, remembers that the driver was wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball hat—”
“Harding grew up in Chicago,” Madison said.
“I know. I pointed that out to him. He wanted no part of it. He said, quote, ‘we have our man.’”
“I don’t think we have enough of anything to give them now anyway,” Chandler said. “Let’s wait until we get the DNA results back. Then we’ll hopefully have more than enough to make this thing go away.”
Hellman pulled out a chair and settled into it. “Used to be you wouldn’t tell the prosecution anything about what you expected to bring out during trial...because if you gave them the key evidence that you had, they’d have time to investigate it and find a way of refuting it. So you tried to spring it on them in the middle of the trial. If they don’t know what’s coming, they can’t prepare for it. It was a big tactical advantage. Some defense counselors would never give anything to the prosecution; others would feed the prosecution bad info to make them waste time on a wild goose chase. Problem with that method is that once you got a rep for doing that, they’d never again believe anything you told them—and then when you really needed them to look into something legit, they’d tell you to go to hell.”
“So then maybe we shouldn’t tell them anything,” Leeza said.
“Can’t do that. About twenty years ago, Prop 115 made it so that the prosecution got reciprocal discovery. That means,” Hellman explained, noticing Leeza’s twisted face of confusion, “that if the defense gets hold of something pertinent to the case, they have to turn it over to the prosecution. The reverse is also true—if they come across something that might be of assistance to us, they have to give it to us.”
“And if you withhold something,” Chandler said, “the judge could exclude that witness, or fact, or document, from the trial.”
“So,” Hellman said, “bottom line is that we don’t have a choice. If we’ve got something, we have to turn it over, regardless of the tactical advantage we may be losing.”
“But we can fudge a little on when we have to give it to them,” Chandler said.
“Exactly,” Hellman said. “Right now, we’re not required to turn anything over to them because I don’t think we have anything concrete enough. We can do this interview or we can wait and see what happens. Things may lighten up on their own.”
“Wait and see. Wait, wait, and then wait some more,” Madison said, getting up from the table. “That’s all I’ve been doing.”
“Phil, say the word and I’ll set up that interview with KMRA.”
Madison looked at Chandler, who shrugged. “It’s your decision, Phil.”
“Let’s do the interview,” Leeza said. “It’s time we took the offensive.”
“Fine,” Madison said. “Set it up. Let’s divert their attention, get them the hell off my back.”
CHAPTER 47
THE MORNING SKY was bleak, black thunderhead clouds engorged with moisture once again threatening to unleash yet another storm. Chandler called Denise but there was no answer. He left a message, told her that he loved her, and that he would see her soon.
He reviewed his notes, planned out his day, and phoned a friend of his father’s in New York: John Donnelly. A retired private investigator, Johnny was a seventy-six-year-old former cop who had gotten caught in a corruption ring back in 1969 at the height of his career with the NYPD.
“I knew you’d be up,” Chandler said.
“Junior, that you?”
“Who else?”
“Your father’d like to talk with you, Junior.”
“First, tell me how you’re doing.”
“I still put my shoes on in the morning and go for my walk. As long as I can put my shoes on, I’m doing okay.”
“How’s Keara?”
“Fine, just fine. Thanks for asking.” Keara, Johnny’s younger sister, had contracted cancer, and had no medical insurance to cover all the hospital bills and medication while supporting her two children. Her husband had left her one night in a drunken fit—and had never returned. Johnny, a cop with meager pay, gave her what he could to help out—but when that was depleted he went on the take—narcotics dealers were paying him to look the other way on his beat. The payoffs subsidized his sister’s care, and the cancer went into remission—but at the cost of his career. As he was about to ask for a transfer to a different beat to covertly end his arrangement with the dealers, a druggie he had once busted dropped the dime and turned Johnny in. A classic case of irony.
But Johnny, ethics violations and embarrassment aside, had saved his sister’s life, and as a result, had few regrets. He resigned as part of a deal that was arranged in lieu of a long, drawn-out investigation and trial that would have been embarrassing for the department. He ran a successful private investigation practice for twenty years, and remained friends with Chandler’s father, who was one of the judges sitting on the bench at the time of Johnny’s arrest.
“So what can I do for you, Junior?”
“I need to find this witness, a checkout clerk who recently moved back east. Guy’s name is Ronald Norling,” he said, consulting his notepad. “I got his name from the manager at the supermarket where he used to work.”
“I take it you don’t have no address on this fella.”
“I have a PO Box in Rhode Island and a social security number. Should be enough.”
Johnny took down the information on Ronald Norling and agreed to assist Chandler in locating him.
“It’s real important to this case I’m working out here,” Chandler told him.
“Got it,” Johnny said. “I’ll get to work on it.”
“We’ll get together sometime soon, okay? When I get back.”
“Maybe your dad’ll join us. What do you think of that? Grab some supper over at O’Malley’s.”
Chandler chewed his lip. “I— We’ll see.”
“He misses you. He’d like to see his grandson, his daughter-in-law. It’s time already, four years now.”
“I’ll think about it.” Chandler thanked him and hung up. He doubted his father really wanted to see him. He figured it was in fact Johnny who felt that the two of them should make amends, and this was his way of bringing them together. But his father’s inability to accept the fact that Chandler’s back injury genuinely prevented him from doing police work and continuing the family tradition created a friction he felt would never go away. For his own part, he was proud of his work as a forensic scientist. He enjoyed it, and just as with his career as a detective, he excelled in it.
He closed his eyes and tried to put his father out of his mind—he did not need another complicating factor in his life at the moment. He called the Department of Justice’s state crime lab to see if the print results were completed on Harding’s cigarette. He was hoping that Kurt Gray had actually run the comparison and was not just giving him lip service at the time to avoid confrontation.
Chandler tapped his foot while waiting on hold. Finally, the receptionist returned to the line. “He’s busy,” she said.
“What does ‘busy’
mean?”
“It means that he can’t take your call right now.”
Chandler clenched his jaw. “When can he take my call?”
“Just a minute,” she said with a sigh.
A moment later, she was back on the line. “He said he’ll call you.”
Chandler bit his lip. Damn ambiguous answers. He took a deep breath. Keep it calm. “Does that mean today? Sometime this week?”
“Look sir, he can’t speak to you right now. I’ll leave him a message and he’ll call you back.”
Chandler left his number, and explained that he would be there for only a few more minutes and that his cell phone battery was nearly dead. He would have to call back—hence the reason for his asking when Gray would be available. She told him to try again in an hour.
Chandler was unsure if that was her way of putting him off, a useless guess, or if it really was when Gray could take the call. Either way, it seemed as if the criminalist was avoiding him. Not what he needed now. Time was precious.
He made his scheduled appointment at the KMRA studio, where Hellman’s Lexus was parked out front. He entered and explained to the receptionist why he was there. She buzzed Maurice Mather, received authorization, and handed him a visitor’s pass. An escort was summoned to the lobby to take him into the studio.
The set consisted of three chairs positioned around a small round coffee table. Behind it stood an expansive blue backdrop as well as two white pillars that were fashioned to match those on the state capitol building’s facade. This was where Politically Speaking was filmed every Sunday morning.
As Chandler walked into the studio, he saw the host, Maurice Mather, standing off to the side with Hellman, who was touching his index finger into his opposing open hand, as if he were going point by point.
“...Dr. Madison will not be participating. He will not be answering any questions, and he will not be directly addressed, even though he will be standing off-camera. Are we clear on this?”
False Accusations Page 23
