Wyatt had subpoenaed all the reports, computer and handwritten, and had gone over them carefully. They corresponded in great detail to the information Dwayne Thompson had given the grand jury. Which to him meant that unless Marvin had sold him a bill of goods, which he didn’t accept—not because Marvin wasn’t capable of lying, but that he wasn’t good at it; he could never have carried off a deception this elaborate for this long—then someone in a position to get his hands on this stuff had given it to Dwayne.
The problem with that theory was that Doris Blake was the obvious candidate, and she hadn’t done that. He hadn’t figured out where to go from there.
Abramowitz’s voice brought him back to the present. “Would you describe for the jury, Detective Marlow, the way in which the victims were murdered? Not only murdered, but everything that was done to them physically.” She walked to the prosecution table and picked up a packet of photographs that been blown up to eight-by-eleven. “The state would like to introduce these into evidence.”
Wyatt had seen the pictures. They were full-color photographs taken of Paula Briggs, the latest victim. Ugly, gut-wrenching pictures.
“So ordered,” Grant said.
During the pretrial hearing Wyatt had tried to exclude the photographs as being prejudicial, but Grant had denied his motion. He knew he’d be shot down again, but he had to go on the record.
“Objection,” Wyatt called out.
“Overruled,” Grant answered immediately.
The clerk assigned them a number—exhibit #1—and Abramowitz carried them to the witness stand. One of the courtroom deputies set up an easel next to the stand, angled so that both Detective Marlow and the jury could see what was on it. Abramowitz set the stacked pictures on the easel. “Can you identify the body in this photograph, Detective Marlow?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “That is the body of Paula Briggs.”
It was a particularly grisly picture. She was lying on the ground, the scant remains of her mangled clothes twisted around her body. Her private parts were exposed. There were several wounds that looked like knife wounds, particularly around her neck and upper torso. One of her breasts had been sliced open, and lay askew against her rib cage.
The effect on the jury was powerful. There were gasps, hands to mouths. One of the women covered her eyes almost immediately, then looked down at the floor.
Abramowitz turned to them. “I’m sorry to have to subject you to this,” she apologized, “but it’s important that you understand the viciousness of these murders and their similarities. The killer didn’t merely kill his victims—he tortured and mutilated them.”
She turned back to Marlow. “Please describe to us what you saw when you arrived on the crime scene.” She handed Marlow a pointer. “You may use this to point out certain details if you want to.”
Marlow took the pointer from her and turned to the easel. “We went there as soon as the call came in. We knew—my partner and I—there was a good possibility this was another one like the ones we’d been tracking. She was still in the truck then—the garbage guys hadn’t moved her.”
Abramowitz moved the first picture to the side of the easel, revealing a shot of Paula in the garbage truck, as the garbage collectors had found her. “This is how you found her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how she got into that truck? The body?”
“She had been stuffed into a garbage can. When they emptied it into the truck, that’s when they discovered her.”
“So there was some attempt at concealment. So that the body wouldn’t be found immediately after it—excuse me, she—was murdered.”
“That would be the logical assumption, yes.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“We took the body out of the truck as carefully as we could—we were wearing latex gloves, of course—and laid her on the ground, like you see in this first picture.”
“Let me interrupt you for a second, Detective. Who took these pictures?”
“A police photographer. Jack Russett. He was called when we were—he met us at the scene. We didn’t move the body until he took that picture and some others of the victim where she was found.”
“Okay. Continue, please.”
“We looked her over. We didn’t want to disturb the body too much, we wanted it to be as close to the way it was found as it could be for the coroner to look at. We checked it over enough to satisfy ourselves that it was done by the … whoever had done the other ones.”
“And what was your conclusion?”
“That it was.”
“That the victim had been murdered by the same man who had done the previous six that resembled it.”
“Yes.”
“Would you describe what you saw for the jury, please.” She took a third photo from the stack and set it next to the other two. It was a tighter shot of Paula, waist to head.
Marlow nodded. He touched the photo with his pointer. “As you can see, her clothes had been ripped off her, almost completely. Which had happened, to different degrees, with the other six. Since she had been in the garbage truck we couldn’t tell for sure if the killer had done it or the truck had done it—torn the clothes off her. To my eye it looked like the killer had done most of it and the action of the truck mechanism had taken what was ripped and made it worse; but I wouldn’t swear to that.”
Abramowitz nodded. She looked over at the jury to make sure they were all watching—they were. “All right. Continue, please.”
“There were several knife wounds to her head, neck, and chest areas.” He touched the photo with the pointer at some of the visible wounds. “I knew right away that’s what killed her, which the coroner later confirmed. Probably this one.” He pointed to a large knife wound at the right side of her neck.
“What about some of these other wounds?” Abramowitz asked. She took the pointer from him and pointed to the dismembered breast. “What about this one?”
“My guess is that happened before the ones to the neck.”
“So not only was she raped, but she was tortured before she was killed. Murdered.” That to the jury. She turned to Marlow again. “In your capacity as a detective, not a medical examiner, you could tell the following: the victim had been murdered.”
“Yes.”
“By knife wound.”
“Yes.”
“That she had been mutilated.” She touched the pointer to the area on the tight photo of the butchered breast.
“Yes.”
“Could you tell whether or not she was raped?”
“No. That’s the coroner’s job. We could see that her underpants had been ripped off and there was blood between her legs. There was a knife wound down there, too.”
“She had been cut with a knife in the region of her vagina?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
Wyatt looked at the jury. They were completely caught up in the Abramowitz-Marlow colloquy. This was awful, what had been done to these women. Separating the revulsion over the crimes from an attachment to Marvin was going to be one of the most important parts of his defense.
Abramowitz put a fourth picture on the easel. It was a close-up of the abdominal and vaginal areas of Paula’s body. “Is this what you saw?” she asked. She pointed to a dark gash alongside the vagina, the pubic hair clotted with blood. “This is the wound?”
“Yes.”
She stepped back from the easel. “Question: You were called to the murder scene where you found a body in a dump truck.”
“Yes.”
“It had been discovered by two workers from the trash company who had dumped it in from a trash can in the alley.”
“Yes.”
“The victim’s clothing had been torn, her body mutilated, possibly before she was murdered, and the cause of death, as you could best ascertain it, having the experience of thirteen years as a detective on the police force, was by knife. And that since the other victims had been raped it was logi
cal for you to assume that this one had been, too.”
“Yes. I thought it would turn out she’d been raped, and she was. Also sodomized,” he added.
“Was sodomy a feature of the other killings?”
“Some of them. Four of the other six.”
There was no point in Wyatt’s objecting to any of this. The coroner would establish it later; to raise the issue further would more deeply embed it in the jury’s minds—the last thing he wanted to do.
“Okay,” she said. She took him through the similarities with the other murders, a long, painstaking procedure.
“Given all that information,” she said in finishing, “which you could see with the naked eye, and knowing what you knew about the previous murders that were similar to this one—was there any doubt in your mind that this was another one of those murders?”
He shook his head firmly. “None whatsoever. The man who murdered this woman murdered the other six. There’s no question about it, as far as I’m concerned.”
Wyatt stood at the lawyer’s lectern looking at the witness, Detective Marlow. He had Marlow’s official reports for all seven of the murders in a folder on top of the lectern. “Who called you to the murder scene, Detective Marlow?”
“The homicide division dispatcher.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Where were you?”
“I was at home.”
“You were asleep?”
Marlow nodded. “Yes. I’d been out late the night before.” He smiled at the jury. “One of the detectives in our division was getting married, so we had a bachelor party for him. It went pretty late.”
“So you went right over? What time did you arrive at the crime scene, Detective?”
“About nine-thirty, quarter to ten. I showered first and grabbed a cup of coffee on the way.”
“You don’t record when you arrive on a crime scene? The exact time?” He looked at Marlow’s report. “It says here you got there at nine-fifty-five a.m.”
Marlow pursed his lips. “That sounds right.”
“Okay. So you went over there and you met your partner”—he looked at his notes—“Detective Conners. At five to ten. Was he already there?”
“I picked him up. We’d both been to the same party.”
“So you took a shower. Got dressed. Shaved?”
Marlow nodded. “Yes.”
“Stopped on the way for coffee. Picked up Detective Conners—is my chronology right? Did you get the coffee before you picked up Conners?”
“Yes.”
“You figured if you needed an eye-opener, he would, too?”
“Objection,” sang out Abramowitz from behind him. “Irrelevant and trivial.”
“Detective Marlow made several acute observations when he got to that crime scene, Your Honor,” Wyatt explained. “I’m trying to establish his mental acuity at the time.”
Grant nodded. “I see your point. Overruled. You may answer the question,” he said to Marlow.
“I wanted a cup of coffee and I knew Conners would, too. I wasn’t hungover, if that’s what you’re implying,” Marlow said testily.
“I’m not implying anything,” Wyatt returned. “Now when the dispatcher from homicide called you, Detective, did he—”
“She,” Marlow interrupted. “The dispatcher is a woman.”
“Sorry. She. Did she give any indication that this murder victim you were going to look at was an Alley Slasher victim?”
“No,” Marlow answered quickly. “It was a murder victim. I’m a homicide detective, sir. I investigate murders.”
“So why did she call you?”
Marlow looked at him quizzically. “Because that’s what I do. I just said that.”
“I meant you specifically. How many detectives are there in the homicide division, Detective Marlow?”
Slowly, Marlow answered, “Forty.”
“Forty detectives. So out of those forty detectives why were you called, if it wasn’t pertaining to one of your active files? Are you saying you just happened to be the one that was called? What do they do, pick the names out of a hat?”
Marlow glowered. “No. We go by roster.”
“So you and Conners were next up.”
Marlow started to answer, then hesitated. “No, we weren’t.”
“Then that leads me back to my initial question. Why were you called? You in particular?”
Marlow’s eyes darted to the prosecution table for a moment. He looked at Wyatt again. “I guess because maybe they thought … maybe they thought it was connected with the Alley Slasher murders,” he admitted. “Might be connected,” he amended.
“They?”
“The lieutenant who was commander of the watch at that time.”
“So it wasn’t an accident you were called. A roll of the dice.”
“I guess not, no.”
“It was another one like the ones you’d been investigating for almost two years.”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad we cleared that up. Finally.” He shuffled through some notes. “This was the biggest case you were working on at the time. The most important one.”
“Definitely.”
“You wanted to apprehend whoever did this really badly, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“You wanted to catch him so badly that upon hearing the news that another Alley Slasher victim had been found, you got up out of bed, took a shower, shaved, got dressed … did you take time to polish your shoes?”
“Objection!” Abramowitz called out. “Mr. Matthews is badgering the witness.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” Wyatt apologized before Grant could sustain her. “I withdraw that last part.”
“Stay on track,” Grant admonished him.
“Yes, Your Honor.” He returned to his questioning of Marlow. “You got out of bed, you took a shower, you shaved, got dressed, drove to pick up your partner, on the way stopping for coffee—two coffees, one for each of you … did you pick up something to eat, too?”
“A couple of bagels,” Marlow said.
“Stopped for coffee and bagels, picked up Detective Conners, and drove to the murder location. Where the body was waiting for you two hours after you got the call. Is my chronology correct, Detective?”
“The body wasn’t going anywhere,” Marlow answered curtly.
Wyatt couldn’t hear it, but he knew Abramowitz was groaning to herself.
“Not on its own,” he shot back. “But isn’t it important—imperative—to get to a murder site as quickly and expeditiously as possible? Isn’t that what you just told us? How important it is to get there fast?”
“Yes,” Marlow admitted.
“Because every minute that goes by—every minute that is lost—is precious, isn’t it? The trail grows colder, vital evidence gets lost, gets tampered with, compromised, tainted, there’s more of a possibility of contamination of the crime scene. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” Marlow said again.
Tacking away, Wyatt asked, “Who calls the medical examiner to the scene?”
“The detective in charge, usually,” Marlow answered.
“In this case, that would have been you?”
“Yes. I called the examiner. The coroner.”
“Does the coroner’s office come to every crime scene where it’s suspected a murder took place?”
“Yes. They have to, legally. Also it’s in the police code of regulations.”
“But the coroner himself doesn’t usually come, does he? Usually it’s one of his minions, isn’t it?”
Marlow nodded his head in agreement. “It’s usually an assistant, or sometimes paramedics with special training for it, yeah.”
“But this time Coroner Ayala himself came, didn’t he? Because of the prominence of these cases.”
“Yes.”
“But he couldn’t come until you called him, right? He lost valuable time, didn
’t he.”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Abramowitz spoke up. “Calls for conjecture by the witness.”
“Sustained.”
Wyatt looked at his notes. “You canvassed the area pretty thoroughly, didn’t you?” he asked. “ ‘You’ meaning several policemen by this time? Once you got there?” he added.
“Extremely thoroughly,” Marlow answered, not rising to Wyatt’s gibe.
“Did you find the murder weapon?”
“No.”
“You looked for it.”
“We fine-tooth-combed that neighborhood, looking for any evidence. The murder weapon, of course, but anything that might give us a lead. We handpicked through the contents of that entire garbage truck, looked into every trash can in a two-block radius, swept the streets clean. We also talked to anyone we could find who had been in the club at the time, might have seen her with the victim, and so forth. We were damn thorough, believe me.”
“I do.” He riffled through his notes again. “Did you come up with anything?” he asked. “Any concrete leads?”
“No, I’m sorry to say. The killer had been very good at covering his tracks. He didn’t leave anything we could find.”
Wyatt made a note regarding that. Then he looked up. “You’ve given a very good and complete recitation here, Detective Marlow. I guess a policeman gets trained to remember his facts.”
“It’s an important part of the job,” Marlow stated blandly. “A good memory is one of the most important things a good detective has.”
“And you’re a good detective.”
Marlow shrugged modestly.
“You have a good memory.”
“It’s pretty good.”
“But it isn’t that good that you wouldn’t refer back to your notes and reports when you’re investigating a case, is it?” Wyatt asked.
“I’m not going to trust my memory for things that are important,” Marlow said. “I go back over them, especially in a scenario like this one, where you have one murder following another in a particular pattern.”
“You want to see what the consistencies are. Or inconsistencies.”
“That’s right.”
“And when you come to testify in a trial—as you’re doing now—you’d go back over your notes, to refresh your memory, wouldn’t you?”
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