Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: Secrets Girls Keep: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 2)

by John Ellsworth

  "No."

  "And you didn't hear her complain about Jana?"

  "Not to me."

  "To anyone? Did she complain to anyone?"

  "Not that I heard."

  "After leaving the bleachers and heading for the restroom, did you see Amy and Jana together again?"

  "No."

  "Did you see Amy again after leaving the bleachers?"

  "No."

  "Did you see Jana?"

  "No. Somebody told me Amy stopped at the snack shop to give Scott his ring back."

  "Who is Scott?"

  "Her old boyfriend. They were an item since eighth grade."

  "Why give him his ring back--if you know?"

  "She broke up with him that week and he wanted the ring back. It was his class ring."

  "So she left your restroom procession and stopped by the snack shop?"

  "That's what someone told me."

  "Objection. Hearsay."

  "Exception to the hearsay rule: doesn't seek to prove the truth of the matter asserted but only that it was said."

  "Overruled. Please continue."

  "Now, Erin, how long did you know Amy Tanenbaum?"

  "Since first grade."

  "Were you classmates that entire time?"

  "Yes. Except we had different classes in high school. She wanted to be a doctor and I didn't."

  "So your curricula didn't match up?"

  "That's true."

  "Did you spend time at each other's houses in high school?"

  "At least one night a week."

  "So you were good friends?"

  "Best friends."

  "So you want whoever killed your friend to be convicted and brought to justice, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Is there any other reason that you can think of that Jana Emerich might have been Amy's murderer?"

  "No."

  "And you were with her all of that night?"

  "Yes."

  "Rode with her in the same car to the game?"

  "Yes."

  "Sat with her the entire first half?"

  “Yes.”

  "Observed her and she appeared fine?"

  "Yes."

  "Observed Jana and he appeared normal?"

  "Yes."

  "So you witnessed nothing that might suggest Jana was her killer?"

  "Well, not exactly."

  "Then what?"

  "Nothing, I guess."

  She is crying now, her shoulders shaking, and I step away from the lectern, back toward my table.

  "Your Honor, that is all I have."

  There is no re-direct examination. We are through with this witness.

  She flees the witness stand, leaning against an adult who must be her mother, wiping her eyes with a tissue as she walks up the aisle to the door.

  My confidence is building. I am beginning to see some light.

  But we haven't gotten to the tough witnesses yet. The medical/technical witnesses. They will be hardened veterans and will out-dance me if they can because they know all the steps.

  But so do I.

  36

  It is late in the day when the first CSI is called to the witness stand. This is the first of the technical witnesses. Crime scene techs are professionals, usually with a degree in biology or other applied science. They have been trained in their specialty, certainly, but also exhaustively trained at the police academy in witness methods and testimony formulation and withstanding cross-examination. They are professional testifiers; they make and keep eye contact with the jury, keep a patina of serious on their testimony, and they can bury your client and look pleasant and innocent the whole time they are doing it.

  She is a black woman, average height, wearing her hair close-cropped like Halle Berry and dressed in the uniform of the Chicago Police Department Crime Scene Investigation unit. Taking the witness stand with grace and ease, she is the picture of confident competence.

  "Your name?" asks State's Attorney Dickinson.

  "Angie McClelland."

  "Occupation?"

  "Crime scene investigator two, Chicago Police Department."

  "How long have you worked for CSI?"

  "Thirteen years and six months."

  "Ms. McClellan, please tell us about your education. Do you hold any college degrees?"

  She smiles and looks directly at the jury, the key eye contact in play.

  "Bachelor's degree in biology, Loyola University. Master's degree in forensic science, National University."

  "Finally, please tell us about your departmental training in crime scene investigation."

  She goes on and on for several minutes, detailing this and that experience beginning with the Chicago CSI Academy and weekend courses and conferences around the country. She has also published ten different papers on the DNA practices of police departments around the world, including Scotland Yard, Interpol, the LAPD, and CPD. She is well-versed, well-trained, and to hear her speak and exude her knowledge I know she will be an implacable witness. A tough cookie.

  "Were you involved in the investigation at the Amy Tanenbaum crime scene?"

  "I was. I headed up the CSI team that day."

  "Please tell us what you did."

  "My primary responsibility is, one, to secure and preserve the scene, and, two, to task different team members with their roles at the scene."

  "What does that last part mean, tasking team members?"

  "That's just departmental-speak for assigning different jobs to each CSI at the scene. Some did fluids, some did hair and fiber, some did trace and transfer, including fingerprints and hand prints, some did DNA. Of course, the same worker might do two or even three of these things. My third job was to make sure each contact with the scene by our team members met departmental and professional standards."

  "Do you recall particulars about the Amy Tanenbaum scene?"

  "Of course. And I also have my case notes."

  So do I. Through the discovery process, all CSI notes and workups and reports have been made available to the defense team. I am well-versed in what she did, who she spoke to, and conclusions that devolved from her investigation. Ms. McClelland spends the next forty-five minutes describing what she heard, saw, and discovered about the death scene.

  During her testimony she describes finding the red muffler and the DNA testing. Jana's DNA, is, of course, found on the muffler. So is the DNA of other individuals unmatched as they haven't been sampled and don't exist in any database. But Jana was last seen wearing the muffler, so its presence at the murder scene rests with him. Jana loses this point.

  She also talks about the lack of fingerprints. They have examined her entire body for a latent print from someone other than Amy herself and have found nothing. Jana wins this point.

  The entire body depression left in the tall grass was vacuumed and the vacuum's contents studied under a microscope. This has yielded human and animal hairs that cannot be matched to Jana's sample, thank God. Jana wins this point.

  There is no method of death found, as Ms. McClelland puts it. Meaning no wire or garrote was found that might have been used to strangle and sever the carotids of Amy Tanenbaum. This point is a neutral, although the search warrant that later turned up a missing E string from the package in his guitar case could be said to make this a point for Jana. I'll give it a half-point, his favor.

  Then come the endless photographs of the scene and the body. There are over fifty in all, and they are identified by Ms. McClelland and introduced into evidence one-by-one, at which moment they are passed to the jury. The rest of the afternoon is gobbled up by this process and by the time we quit, at five-fifteen, we are all dizzy with horrendous images of death. A smart move by the prosecution to send the jury home for the night with horror dancing in their brains. And there's nothing I can do to sap away the sting. It's a fait accompli when we all pack up.

  Detective Ngo spots me and approaches my table. The courtroom is empty but for the two of us. His black face is twis
ted in rage and the whites of his eyes are red-veined with anger.

  "How can you defend this man?" he hisses. "He killed an innocent child!"

  Where is this coming from? I wonder, directed at me?

  He pulls his hand to the rear of his waist, purposely displaying the gun on his belt.

  "It's my job," I say. "It's nothing more than that. I don't vouch for these people, don't know all that much about them. But the U.S. Constitution says they're entitled to a lawyer. I'm just providing that service.

  "I was at Amy Tanenbaum's autopsy. I watched the mouse being pulled out of her mouth. It was covered in black blood. Amy's blood. They couldn't open her casket because of the terrible damage done to her face by the autopsy and by that goddam rodent your client put in there."

  He moves around my table and sits down on the end of it, the end nearest me. If I reached out I could touch his side. He glares down at me.

  "You and I are going to meet someplace again. I guarantee it. It may not be tonight or tomorrow, it may not be until next month or next year. But we will meet again. And you will be alone and so will I. You are going to feel pain, friend. You are going to feel serious big-boy pain. I'm not going to kill you. But I am going to fuck you up."

  He stands and remains close.

  "Remember this when you see me again. Remember that I told you so."

  "I will."

  I make the elevator minutes later and hammer the down button, praying that it closes before Ngo comes onboard. The door whooshes closed and I ride down to the lobby, alone. I am shaken and shaking when I step out of the elevator. I look behind me, half-expecting him to be there. But he is not.

  Then I am outside and Marcel is waiting with my car.

  We are gone.

  37

  A third student death. This time a basketball game.

  What I am able to piece together about last night, after we are all home and having dinner and spending the evening with our families, is that Wendover High hosted the Triton basketball team at the Superior Field House on the Wendover High campus. The game began at seven o'clock. Security and CPD uniforms were everywhere: at the entrance, at the exit, at the restrooms, in the stands around the basketball court proper--everywhere. So how it could have happened is unknown. But it did happen.

  A high school sophomore girl, who had spent the last three years of her life in a wheelchair following a tragic auto accident, was somehow murdered inside the girls' restroom. Even with security posted at the door leading in and out. The extant theory is that the assailant, dressed and made up to look like a woman, entered the restroom during the third quarter of the game and strangled the young student, again with some thin wire that severed her right carotid artery so that she bled out in the handicap stall and was found slumped sideways in her wheelchair inside the stall. It was only when her brother found she hadn't returned to her parking spot on the basketball floor that a hue and cry arose and a search quickly located the victim. Her name was Scarlett Newson and she had just turned fifteen.

  A stylish dress and plain black flats were found stuffed inside the wall-mounted paper towel receptacle in the men's room of the visitors' dressing room shortly after the discovery of Scarlett's body. Evidently—the courtroom deputies are postulating this morning before court—the assailant, after murdering Scarlett, then dodged around to the visitors' dressing room of the field house, changed back into men's clothing, washed away the eye makeup and lipstick, and left the gymnasium.

  To say that I am astonished would be to understate how I'm feeling this morning. I have stepped outside the courtroom bar and told Danny. She is equally shocked and has rushed back to the office to see what else can be learned. She is doing this because, of course, the death of another young female student at Wendover High tends to exonerate Jana Emerich from the death of Amy Tanenbaum because Jana, last night, spent the evening with his father, the priest, at a movie at the Cineplex. There could be no better alibi witness in all of Chicagoland than Father Frederic Bjorn. The cops contacted Jana and attempted to question him but he referred them to Father Bjorn, who swiftly dampened their enthusiasm for considering Jana as the perp by confirming the time they spent together last night and even going so far as offering to produce two admission tickets validated for last night's seven o'clock showing.

  I arrive at court to find Judge Lancer-Burgess has vacated the trial today and continued us until Monday. When I stop by her office, her secretary tells me on the DL that the judge wanted to avoid any prejudice or inflamed emotions from the murder last night. Evidently the entire courthouse--the entire city--is shocked and Wendover has closed its doors, as have all other schools in the Chicago Public Schools System. A three-day weekend will be taken. Funeral services for Scarlett Newson will be held tomorrow afternoon at Petson's Funeral Home. Danny and I agree to attend if for no other reason than to see who else might turn up. Granted, our reason for attending is the wrong reason, but Jana's life is in my hands and I can't shirk my responsibility to him. I must go to see and learn as much as I can.

  38

  Marcel tracks me down just as I am exiting Judge Lancer-Burgess's chambers. He wants to go straight over to Rudy's house and question the boy about last night. I consider whether this might be considered interfering with an official police investigation--a crime--but again fall back on the excuse that I am doing whatever I can to defend Jana. It's not unreasonable for us to follow up on the boy who has admitted being present when Franny Arlington died. We've heard there's a plea pending in that case to voluntary manslaughter and we also know he's out on bail and has been attending school at Wendover as if nothing has happened. Not so dissimilar from our own Jana's continued matriculation.

  We walk back along the sidewalk to the parking lot and agree we'll take Marcel's Ram truck. It's freezing this morning, snow flurries blowing bursts of white flakes across the asphalt and snow-covered sidewalks of this part of Chicago. I walk with my head down, against the wind, my hands stuffed inside my overcoat's large, warm pockets. Marcel easily outpaces me and I feel him holding back his gait to enable me to stay beside him.

  "So," he says as we make our way. "What the hell is going on at Wendover?"

  "All I know is that it wasn't Jana. He was with Father Bjorn last night."

  "Well, thank God for that."

  "Agree. And this Rudy Gomez kid: I can't imagine him pulling off another. I mean, why would he even want to? He's made it to his senior year and all of a sudden a switch gets thrown inside his brain and he starts killing classmates? I'm sorry, but that doesn't stack up for me."

  “Maybe it’s a conspiracy.”

  “How would we ever know?”

  "So where does that leave us? There's a third killer on the loose? Or just a second, the same one who murdered Amy Tanenbaum?"

  "Bingo. I think that's our argument. The phantom killer. We argue that Rudy was a copycat or just an aberration and that there's a serial killer on the loose that has now killed twice."

  Marcel turns to me as we walk. "What about we put Rudy on the stand too, just to give the jury the possibility that he might be a suspect in all three cases?"

  "I like that, too. We can suggest a two-and-one by two assailants or a three-victim by one assailant. Either one holds water."

  "And the two-and-one allows for the possibility of a serial killer if it turns out Rudy's got a strong alibi for last night."

  I like what I'm hearing. As horrible as it is, the death of Scarlett Newson gives rise to the possibility of a serial killer being on the loose. The fact that Jana has an airtight alibi takes him out of the running for those honors. So we get a new phantom plus we get a suggestion it's Rudy on all three. Nice and neat. It's terrible for a person to have to think this way. And it's even more terrible for a defendant's attorneys to have a happier day because yet another young girl has died. But that's the way of the lawyer game. And it is just that, a huge frigging game. With the losers attending their own funerals and the judicial system culling out who g
oes to jail. It's not pretty, but it's what I do. It's where I spend my days. No wonder my alone times are troubled and conflicted. It's time for a couple of days on my boat. Lake Michigan can't thaw out soon enough to suit me.

  Rudy's father is a top-flight oral surgeon and in the OR today. His mother is at yoga class, Rudy tells us when he answers the door. He doesn't want us to come inside: the cops have already been there and his lawyer has told him not to speak with anyone. He starts to close the door.

  "One more thing," I interject, "about your snake."

  The door hesitates.

  "What about my snake?"

  "Is it true he's friends with Leonard?"

  "Jana's snake? Yeah, they've met."

  "You guys trade mice back and forth sometimes too, isn't that right?"

  He rubs his eyes. He looks beyond us, then says, "Why are you asking me about my snake? Is that really why you're here?"

  "Actually it is," I tell him.

  "We'd like to see your setup," Marcel tells him, all innocence. "I'm thinking of getting my kid a snake. Do you mind if we have a look at what you've got?"

  The door opens a couple of inches.

  "I guess. I mean, if you want. But don't ask me any questions about last night. My lawyer says I'm not to discuss my whereabouts last night."

  "Sure, sure," Marcel says. "I just want to see the snake setup. My kid is bugging me no end for a snake."

  "What kind's he want?"

  "She. She's a freshman at St. Elizabeth's."

  "What's her name? I know some kids over there."

  "Mary Ellen. She's small, about five-one, dark hair, still wearing braces. But she gets those off next summer."

  "Doesn't ring a bell," says Rudy. He pushes the door wide open. "I guess you can come in and look. But not you," he says, meaning me. I stand back.

  "Fine, fine, I don't like snakes. I'll wait in the truck."

  "Fine," says Rudy, and he steps aside so Marcel can enter.

  I turn, walk back across the circular drive, and climb back inside the Ram. The key has been removed, so I stuff my hands in my pockets and shiver in the cold. Meanwhile, I can only imagine what Marcel is doing inside. Ten minutes drag past. Then fifteen.