Dachshund Through the Snow

by David Rosenfelt

Janet says that she has studied the autopsy results, and that she is prepared to discuss them. “Dr. Griffith was very meticulous in his work.”

  Under questioning, Janet says that Kristen died of asphyxiation as the result of strangulation. Janet repeats earlier testimony that her neck was broken, and her larynx crushed, but the lack of air was the immediate cause of death.

  “So this was done powerfully?”

  Janet nods. “Yes. Very much so.”

  “In your professional opinion, could it have been done accidentally, perhaps during rough sex?”

  “No, I would say not, and Dr. Griffith specifically discounted that possibility. In addition to the nature of the strangulation, there was no evidence of sexual activity.”

  “Were there any other signs of a struggle?”

  Janet nods. “Her blouse was torn, and she had skin tissue under her fingernails.”

  Jenna goes over the rest of the autopsy with Janet, but there is nothing of any great significance. Kristen had no drugs or alcohol in her system, which I suppose Jenna brings out to further demonstrate her purity and innocence. It’s unnecessary; that she was brutally strangled and left in the dirt is tragic regardless of any other personal facts.

  The photographs come out again, just in case the jury has forgotten what the body and the scene looked like.

  Once again I have no ammunition to attack the prosecution witness; everything they are saying is borne out by the evidence. They are not presenting theories, they are presenting facts.

  “Just to reconfirm what you said,” I begin, “Kristen McNeil’s blouse was torn, her jeans were unbuttoned, but there was no evidence of sexual activity, forced or otherwise?”

  “Correct.”

  “Does that seem strange to you?”

  “That is not within my purview.”

  “What about outside your purview? Does it seem strange there?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Let’s talk about the skin fragments found under Kristen McNeil’s fingernails. Did Dr. Griffith estimate when they arrived there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he estimated a time of death within a four-hour window. Did he say when she got the skin fragments under her fingernails, in relation to the time of death?”

  Janet shakes her head. “No.”

  “Could it have been moments before death?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How about ten minutes before?”

  A slight shrug. “It’s possible.”

  “An hour before? Two hours?”

  “Dr. Griffith would have had no way of knowing that.”

  “When she got the skin under her nails, where was she?”

  “Meaning…?” Janet prompts.

  “Meaning was it even at Hinchliffe Stadium? Could she have been somewhere else entirely?”

  “Again, no way of knowing.”

  “So it’s possible?”

  Janet nods. “Yes.”

  “Can you say with certainty that the person whose skin was under her nails was the killer?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Judge Stiller has done us a favor.

  Jenna had set it up so that her final witness was going to testify just prior to Christmas, and then the last thing the jury would hear would be her resting the prosecution’s case. That witness is going to be presenting the forensics, which is the devastating part of the case.

  The jurors would thus spend the holiday having heard from one side only. The prosecution would have that tremendous advantage, and jurors would be leaning toward believing Noah to be guilty. Those views would have time to harden and set over the holiday.

  But I think that Stiller saw that coming and considered it an unfair advantage. He therefore had us adjourn for the holiday a day early. He wouldn’t admit the real meaning, so instead he unconvincingly mumbled something about his belief that the holiday starts a day early, on Christmas Eve.

  Christmas Day at our house is traditionally a re-creation of the Thanksgiving Day experience, the only notable difference being that I watch NBA basketball instead of NFL football. For years now the NBA has co-opted the day, forcing their top teams to play rather than stay home with their families.

  Once again Laurie has invited Julie and Danny Traynor, and once again they have brought Murphy. The mood is more subdued than it was over Thanksgiving. Back then the trial hadn’t started, so there was optimism that all would go well.

  Julie has been in court every day, and it has not been fun for her. She can tell where this is going, as can pretty much everyone else, including the jurors. It hasn’t been a barrel of laughs for me either. In any event, we do not discuss the trial whatsoever.

  But Laurie has made sure that there are tons of presents to go around. I’m pretty tough to buy for; I don’t need or want anything that I don’t already have. But Laurie has gotten me a pair of great seats to an upcoming Eagles concert. I like the Eagles, but she absolutely loves them, so she’s thrilled with the gift. She assumes I am going to take her, rather than get another date.

  Once the Traynor contingent has left, I head for my walking/thinking trek with Tara and Sebastian. I haven’t been through the park since the night Arrant came after me. I don’t know if Laurie still has Corey and Simon watching for me; I hope not. But walking on the streets seems safer than the park, just in case.

  Thinking back on that night, I still don’t know why Arrant felt it necessary to come after Holzer and me in rapid succession. It’s been bugging me ever since then how Arrant even knew that Holzer had given me his name.

  The only person who knew about it, other than Laurie, Marcus, and me, was Holzer’s “idiot goon.” He was on the ground but awake when Holzer said it, but he should have had absolutely no reason to be connected to Arrant.

  I wish I knew the significance of Arrant’s death. He could have been just one layer in a chain that went up from Siroka to Taillon to Arrant, with others above him. Or he could have been at the top of that chain.

  I’m leaning toward the former theory. Taillon’s phone calls to Arthur Wainwright around the time of the McNeil murder trump everything. It proves that Wainwright was involved.

  Arrant worked for money, and Wainwright has plenty of it, so it makes sense that Arrant was a literal hired gun. But has he been replaced? If so, the replacement hasn’t made his presence known yet, at least to me. But that doesn’t mean he’s not there, or that he won’t suddenly become active.

  But the question of whether he has been replaced, as does every other question in this case, depends on why Kristen McNeil was killed. If Arthur Wainwright was exacting revenge for his son or was himself having an affair with Kristen and wanted to cover it up, then a person in Arrant’s role is not necessary.

  But I am becoming less and less convinced that those theories are credible. If Kristen’s death was for a reason as simple as that, then Wainwright would have had no logical reason to order the deaths of Taillon, Siroka, and Holzer. He’s gotten away with it for fourteen years; why not just let the system run its course and convict Noah?

  And even if Noah was somehow acquitted, or the jury was hung, so what? The police are not suddenly going to dive into a fourteen-year-old murder case and shine a light on Arthur Wainwright.

  Far more likely is that Kristen McNeil had either been a part of, or a danger to, some ongoing conspiracy that Wainwright is desperate to keep operating and concealed. Then the scrutiny of a trial, and a lawyer like me investigating, would represent a problem worth killing to solve.

  If love or sex or family was the motive for the murder, we have what is probably an insurmountable mountain to climb. I can cast suspicion on Arthur Wainwright, and I will, but I’ll never be able to prove the facts.

  If, on the other hand, there is an ongoing conspiracy, then somehow I need to uncover its existence and its perpetrators. That is the kind of case we will have to build for this jury for us to have a real chance.r />
  So midway through the trial, I am clear on a strategy. Executing it? That’s another story.

  Cynthia and Kevin McNeil had not attended a single day of the trial.

  They knew they would not be able to stand it; witnessing it would be far too painful. To watch their daughter spoken about as an object, to have to look away knowing that photographs of her lifeless and brutalized body were being shown to all of these strangers, that would be far too much.

  And to be in the same room as the person who caused them all of their agony, well, that would simply be inconceivable. Their other daughter, Karen, felt differently. She felt that she had to see it, had to watch every moment of her sister’s killer being brought to justice after all these years.

  Karen kept them up-to-date, albeit delicately, and in her recounting, Noah Traynor was unquestionably the person who had taken their daughter from them. It reconfirmed in their minds the correctness of their decision not to speak to his lawyer, even though Karen said that the lawyer seemed to be decent and fair-minded. She said he was just doing his job, but the McNeils saw no reason to help him do it.

  A guilty verdict wouldn’t bring what everyone called closure; that seemed like such a ridiculous concept that Cynthia and Kevin couldn’t even wrap their minds around it. They thought that people who talked about closure must never have had anything to close. Losing Kristen would always be the dominant event in their lives, and nothing that could happen in any courtroom could change that.

  But even though they didn’t speak about it to each other, they both knew that it was time to stop running in place, to finally try to live as Kristen would have wanted them to.

  They would somehow manage to do that as best they could, timed to the start of the new year.

  I wish I could have called in sick today.

  Jenna’s powerful case can be summed up in one witness, and that’s the one we’re going to hear from in a little while. The jury seems to be sitting up a bit straighter in their chairs, which indicates to me that they know what’s coming.

  That further indicates that they are ignoring Judge Stiller’s admonition not to read or watch anything about the trial in the media. Because the media has been quite clear that today is forensics day.

  Jenna is going to heighten the anticipation by making everyone wait a bit longer. She calls as her first witness Arnie Pafko, who was a friend of Noah’s back in the day.

  Jenna establishes their relationship as high school buddies and fraternity brothers. She further gets him to say that they haven’t seen or talked to each other in years, since she would know that I would bring that out on cross-examination. Then she gets down to the meat of it.

  “Mr. Pafko, was there any time during which you were aware that Mr. Traynor knew Kristen McNeil?”

  “Yes, he told me they were dating.”

  “How long before her death was this?”

  He takes a moment to think, as if he is pondering the question for the first time. That is total bullshit since he and Jenna would have gone over this in advance a number of times. Finally he says, “Maybe a couple of weeks. I had gone away to college, so I wasn’t aware of the murder until a few weeks after it happened.”

  “What else did he tell you besides the fact that he and Kristen were dating?”

  He hesitates. “They were going to have sex. He was sure of it.”

  “What was your response?”

  He grins. “I told him he was crazy. We didn’t get lucky too often back in those days.”

  “And when you told him that? What did he say?”

  “That he guaranteed it. He was bragging, which wasn’t so unusual. But then he said, ‘Believe me, she wants to.’ So I said, ‘She’ll change her mind.’ Then he said something which bothered me, and I won’t forget it.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said, ‘Not if she knows what’s good for her.’”

  Jenna ends her examination on this dramatic note, which is a mistake, because I’m about to beat this witness to death with questions that she should have asked in a way that limited their impact.

  “Mr. Pafko, why did the police ignore you when you told them you were concerned for Kristen McNeil’s safety?”

  “I didn’t go to the police.”

  I feign surprise. “So you only told her parents?”

  “I didn’t tell them either. I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess because I didn’t really think Noah would do anything to hurt her. We did a lot of talking in those days, but not too much following through.”

  “I’m confused. You thought he would hurt her, or you didn’t?”

  “I guess I didn’t, but looking back now, I should have taken action.”

  “Because she was killed,” I say.

  “Right.”

  “I can see that. Who at the Paterson Police Department did you talk to once you found out she was killed? And what did they say to you?”

  “I didn’t go to them. I should have.”

  “You just said that looking back, once she was killed, you should have taken action. But you actually didn’t take action once you found out about it?”

  “No; I feel guilty about that.”

  “This is the kind of guilt that doesn’t kick in until fourteen years after the event? It’s a slow-developing guilt?”

  Jenna objects that I’m badgering him, but Judge Stiller overrules her and instructs him to answer.

  “I’m not proud of my actions.”

  I nod. “That’s the first thing you’ve said today that’s believable.”

  Jenna jumps out of her seat to object, and before she even gets the words out, Judge Stiller sustains the objection, strikes my comment from the record, and instructs the jury to disregard it.

  Good luck with that.

  Jenna is pissed, which doesn’t bother me in the least. Then she calls her last witness, which bothers me plenty.

  Sergeant Xavier Jennings is two weeks away from retirement.

  That is just one of many reasons I wish this trial was delayed. As a witness, Jennings is a major pain in the ass to defense attorneys.

  Jennings has been in charge of forensics for the Paterson Police Department since about an hour after forensics was invented. He’s seen everything, and not a defense attorney in New Jersey, yours truly included, can rattle or intimidate him.

  He’s also funny and self-effacing and smart. Outside the courtroom I like him; inside the courtroom I wish that he would spend an entire day stuck in an elevator with Hike.

  As for juries … they eat him up with a spoon.

  Hike is not here today; he is off making sure that we have scientific support for what our first witness is going to say tomorrow. We’d better have it, or we’re dead in the water.

  After Jenna establishes Jennings’s credentials and position in the department, she asks, “Sergeant Jennings, were you in charge of forensics fourteen years ago, when Kristen McNeil was murdered?”

  He smiles. “Yes. My career hasn’t exactly taken off.”

  She returns the smile; they’re having a blast. “Did you uncover any significant human DNA in the immediate area besides that of the victim?”

  “Yes. We found DNA on a discarded beer can, on a chewed piece of gum, and most significantly, there were pieces of skin under the fingernails of the deceased.”

  “Did this DNA all belong to the same person?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “If that person is in the courtroom today, can you point him out?”

  Jennings points to Noah, and Jenna confirms the identification. She asks a few more questions, bringing out that traces of Noah’s blood were under the fingernails as well.

  She then takes Jennings through the way the police got to Noah, describing the website that facilitated it. It’s not important, but Jenna seems to want to keep Jennings on the stand as long as she can. This is the crux of her case, and she just wants to prolong it.

  Final
ly I get to ask my questions, none of which are going to make a dent in Jennings’s testimony. “Sergeant, this crime took place fourteen years ago, and you have had this DNA evidence all that time. Why did it take until now to identify who it belonged to?”

  “The defendant’s DNA was not included in any of the databases that we have access to.”

  “Are there any databases you don’t have access to?”

  “No.”

  “Had Mr. Traynor been arrested or convicted of a crime, either before or after the murder, his DNA would have been in one of these databases?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sergeant, your work in this case demonstrates that Mr. Traynor was at some point at the scene of the crime, and that Ms. McNeil scratched Mr. Traynor in some fashion, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it prove that he was on the scene when she was killed?”

  “No.”

  “Does it prove that he committed the murder?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Judge Stiller asks, “Ms. Silverman, do you have more witnesses to call?”

  She stands. “No, Your Honor. The prosecution rests.”

  Judge Stiller adjourns for the day, telling me to be prepared to call our first witness in the morning.

  I can see Noah is stunned by today’s testimony; he knew it was coming, but to expect it is very different from actually experiencing it. If he’s honest with himself, then he’s putting himself in the jurors’ minds.

  They have to be thinking that he was there, they fought, his skin was under her fingernails. Then she wound up strangled to death.

  How could they possibly not think he is guilty?

  If we are allowed to present the defense I want, I think it’s a good one.

  The problem is that it’s a reasonable-doubt case at its core, and we’re up against a prosecution case based on incontrovertible science. That’s not a great position for us to be in, but it’s all we’ve got.

  We are going to give the jury Arthur Wainwright as the alternative killer. But it’s not necessary that the jury totally believes Wainwright is the guilty party. We’re going to show them that all kinds of bad people are hovering over this case, and that many more murders have occurred. Then we’re going to place Wainwright in their world.