Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

“So I’ve been told.”

  “Objection, hearsay.”

  “Not quite, Counsel. Hearsay probably comes next.”

  AG Moroney continued, unflappable. “Are those bite marks made by the mouth of John Steinmar?”

  “Objection! Can only be based on hearsay as he has no expertise to make that judgment.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Did you ever learn whether those were the district attorney’s bite marks?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you learn?”

  Thaddeus was again on his feet. “Objection! Hearsay!”

  “Let him continue,” said the judge. “Mr. Handelman, first tell us how you came to that understanding.”

  “From the odontology report.”

  “This was a report commissioned by the DA’s office?” asked Jimmy Moroney.

  “It was. We asked the odontologist for a comparison between the photographs from Mrs. Steinmar’s body and the bite mark evidence taken at the autopsy of Mr. Steinmar.”

  “And was a written report rendered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your Honor,” said Jimmy Moroney, “I would like to submit through this witness that odontology report as an exception to the hearsay rule as it is a business record.”

  The judge eyed Thaddeus. “Defense?”

  “Hearsay,” said Thaddeus, although he was sure it wasn’t. Business records or records of public bodies made in the ordinary course of business could come in, immune from the hearsay objection. He sat back down and waited, knowing the cat was just about out of the bag.

  “Overruled. Please read the question back.”

  Court reporter: “No question pending.”

  Judge: “Mr. Attorney General?”

  “Were the bites found on Mrs. Steinmar’s body put there by the teeth of John Steinmar?”

  “They were not. Someone else bit her.”

  Pandemonium erupted and several reporters beelined up the aisle for the doors. The judge decided it was a good time for a recess and took a fifteen-minute timeout.

  The AG and his minions headed for the restrooms and coffee pot. They could barely suppress laughter and grins were on all their faces. The pin was inserted through the thorax, the butterfly was affixed to the mounting board. Let the squirming begin.

  Thaddeus turned on Angelina. Under his breath he whispered, “What the fuck, Angelina? What the fuck?”

  She winced and glared at him. “Do we have an expert witness about this?”

  His stomach fell. He had been set up. Negligence of counsel in not obtaining necessary expert testimony. He could already see the bar complaint and the appellate review of the trial.

  He looked her straight in the eye. “No, we don’t. You told me your husband bit you. I would have no reason to suspect otherwise. No reason to want an expert witness of my own.”

  She toyed with the silver bracelet on her wrist. The turquoise stone looked at him as one eye fixing him in a hard glare. Yet she avoided eye contact with him. “Maybe you should have gotten us an expert just in case.”

  “Maybe there’s still time,” Christine said. “I’ll go work the phones, you want.” She waited for Thaddeus to respond.

  He thought for a moment. Then the answer came that he needed.

  “I think I want to hear what their odontologist has to say first, before I make a record with another expert that just might go against us. One against us is enough. Two would be unacceptable and gross negligence, especially if I had paid one of them and it turned out he wasn’t on our side. That would be not so pretty.”

  “We need to talk,” said Angelina.

  “Christine, please go find yourself some coffee.”

  “You want a cup?” she asked Thaddeus. Her question did not include their client.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Christine went off in search of two cups and coffee, leaving Thaddeus alone with Angelina.

  “All right. Now’s a good time to tell me.”

  “The bites are from Bill, not John.”

  “Bill, not John? What the fuck are you telling me, Mrs. Steinmar?”

  “Bill Gerhardt bit me.”

  Incredulous, Thaddeus’ chin flopped down. “What? What?”

  “That’s right. He’s my lover. He got carried away the night before. John saw the marks and it enraged him. I thought he was going to kill me. He was going to kill me. So I shot him.”

  “What? What?”

  “Would you stop saying that? I’m trying to tell you the truth here.”

  “Are you telling me the judge bit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The judge up there, our judge?”

  “Yes.”

  “The judge who just walked out of here.”

  “We’re in love. And we’re a little kinky. We both like it that way.”

  “You’ve go to be—”

  “Grow up, Thaddeus. We’re adults.”

  “Don’t tell me! I suppose he bit you in California too?”

  “Our families vacation together. He found me in the steam room.”

  “Ten years ago? This romance has been going on ten years?”

  “Stop it, please. Pull yourself together before you lose my case!”

  For a moment Thaddeus had a mental picture of him wheeling Shep Aberdeen out of the hospital in a wheelchair and making him come to court to defend his client. Shep had made it all up. Thaddeus should have known better. He trusted her. Evidently Shep did as well. They had both been wrong. She had lied to both of them and now she was caught.

  So what had happened that morning when she fired off the shot? Had it just been an execution? Did she deserve the needle in her arm? He found himself shivering. He emptied his mind and forced it to stop racing. He made a conscious effort to slow his thumping heart. Get control, he demanded. Stop this shaking and quaking and get about the business of defending your client.

  He decided the one thing that could save Angelina Steinmar at this point was Angelina Steinmar herself. She would have to convince the jury that her life had been threatened. Could she? Highly doubtful. They’d never believe a word she said. Face it, she was all but worm food.

  He decided he would waive cross-examination of Art Handelman, subject to recall as an adverse witness during the defense case if needed. Instead, he would go for the odontologist. See what weak areas he could discover in the expert dental testimony. That was it, yes. The idea quickened inside him. Maybe this was an opening he could work. No need to surrender. Not yet. There would be weak points in the expert testimony about bite marks and he would go after the weaknesses. There were always weaknesses. It was his job to find them and make them into a headline. The odontologist had to be destroyed. Or else they might as well put her in handcuffs and haul her ass back to jail and inject her, forget any appeal.

  Christine returned with coffee. Angelina traipsed off to “the ladies’ room,” as she put it.

  “She lied to us,” Christine whispered when Angelina was gone.

  “No doubt,” he muttered.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Go after the dental testimony.”

  Christine thought this over. “Flanking action.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Five minutes later Judge Gerhardt called the court back into session. The state was finished with Art Handelman’s testimony. Thaddeus surprised everyone by waiving cross but reserving recall of the witness in the defense case. So much for a directed verdict.

  The state then called CSI techs who talked about the scene, preservation of the scene, measurements. Photographs and drawings were marked and admitted into evidence so the jury could take them into the jury room when that time came. By then it was 4:40 and the judge called a recess for the day.

  46

  By the next morning, Thaddeus felt less sure of his case than ever. It had been a sleepless night, tossing and turning, and Katy had finally gone downstairs to the couch where she could sl
eep in peace. She offered to make him a snack in the middle of the night, but he declined. It was all he could do not to climb out of bed and go into the office at 3:30 a.m. and begin going over trial testimony, but he fought down the compulsion and made it until 5:30 a.m. before wearily calling it a night and heading for the shower.

  Trial began promptly at nine o’clock.

  “The state calls Dr. Zachariah Nebuling,” Jimmy Moroney announced in response to the judge’s nod to proceed.

  The courtroom doors flapped as the next witness came striding up the aisle. Thaddeus had tried to take the man’s statement but he had refused. Common enough in criminal cases were that pre-trial witness interviews were not mandated. Of all things.

  Dr. Nebuling was a big-boned, ham-handed man who, one might judge, should never have his boxcar hands inside anyone’s mouth. Which might explain why he had detoured past the ordinary practice of dentistry and become a forensic dental examiner. His neck was noosed inside an ill-fitting navy shirt, white tie, and blue suit that looked like it had been bought off the rack without alterations. It was tight around his shoulders and upper arms, where he was massive. His face was friendly enough and his tone was jocular, as he gave his name and educational credentials. His small mouth and rather bulbous nose were just homely enough as to make him look all innocent and trustworthy, the kind of face that would never seek to take unfair advantage. Which probably explained his success at trials around the country, Thaddeus guessed, where his fame was great among trial lawyers.

  He testified that he was certified by the American Association of Forensic Science. To obtain that board certification he’d had to work twenty-five cases, accumulate three hundred fifty qualification points by attending meetings and other professional development programs, and pass a qualifying exam. This was all pretty basic stuff, he explained, as he had now worked over 2,500 cases, including the important airline crash cases of the past twenty years where bodies could only be identified by dental records. Enamel, he said, is the hardest substance in the human body. Enamel always survives, no matter the cause of death.

  “Please call me Zach,” he was telling Jimmy Moroney. “While I’m a doctor by education and practice, I am just plain Zach to everyone.”

  “All right, Zach. Please tell us what odontology is.”

  Zach unfolded his arms and dropped his hands to the desk. “Typically the forensic odontologist attends the autopsy, takes photographs, cranial measurements, dental impressions, and X-rays from the remains. These exemplars are then compared to those of known bite marks in a case like this. If a match can be made, conclusions can be drawn. If a match can’t be made, other conclusions might be drawn.”

  “What did you do in this case?”

  “Pretty much what I just described.”

  “You were at the autopsy?”

  “I was. I took pictures, made measurements, took dental impressions.”

  “Who asked you to do those things?”

  “You did.”

  “Fine, thank you. And I believe you called the work product—the pictures and impressions—I believe you called those exemplars?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do with those exemplars, Zach?”

  “I compared them to the photographs taken of Mrs. Steinmar’s bite marks.”

  “Which bite marks? The California bite marks or the Flagstaff bite marks?”

  “Both. You asked me to compare both.”

  “What conclusions did you draw from making these comparisons?”

  “The bite marks were made by the same person.”

  “Were they made by John Steinmar?”

  “The bite marks were not made by John Steinmar.”

  A gasp could be heard in the courtroom, coming from the spectators, press row, and even some quick inhalations from the jurors themselves.

  “What’s the basis of that opinion?”

  The doctor leaned back against his chair, ready to recite. “John Steinmar suffered from a dental problem. It is a common disorder called hypocalcination. This is when there are pits and craters in the teeth. Because of those pits and craters, a very definite dental impression is expected. We found those pits and craters to be present in the impressions we made of John Steinmar’s bite. However, and this is the key, the pits and craters were just not present in any of the two sets of Angelina Steinmar’s bite mark pictures.”

  “Are you telling this jury John Steinmar did not bite his wife?”

  All was still, the air steady, as the answer was formulated. Among the jurors, pens were poised to take down word-for-word what was about to come.

  “I am saying the pictures taken of Mrs. Steinmar’s body are not pictures of bite marks that would have been made by John Steinmar.”

  “So he didn’t bite her?”

  “Not in the photographs.”

  “Who did bite her?”

  “Well, this is where it gets strange. The same person bit her in both cases.”

  “Ten years apart?”

  “Ten years apart, yes.”

  “What could that mean?”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  Again Jimmy Moroney stepped back from the podium and reached to his papers. He carefully flipped through page after page while he allowed the jury time to make its notes. Thaddeus noted the room was absolutely quiet except for the sound of jurors’ pens scribbling in jurors’ spiral stenographer books.

  At that exact moment he realized the case was lost. There was no way they could come back from this testimony. He cringed at the thought of trying to cross-examine this expert. The jury liked him, he was a good guy; he preferred his given name Zach to “Doctor.” What wasn’t to like? Plus, the testimony was simple and easy to follow. The jurors would take to the jury room the casts of John Steinmar’s teeth with the pits and craters and they would compare them to the forensic photographs of the bite marks and the lack of any indication of pits and craters. In a word, he was done. They might as well stand up and collect their books and papers and head back to the office. It was over.

  Then it was his turn to cross-examine, as Moroney said he was done with direct.

  “Doctor,” Thaddeus began, “is that the extent of the examination you did?”

  “Except for one other item, yes.”

  The answer hung in the air. Everyone was waiting for him to ask the indicated follow-up, so he did.

  “What one other item would that be?”

  “John Steinmar ate toast with his meal the night before. I obtained a bite mark from those crusts.”

  “Really? What did that tell you?”

  “Pits and craters. It was clearly his toast.”

  At that point, many jurors laid down their pens. The evidence from this witness was in and they were done. It didn’t matter what Thaddeus drew out at this point, their minds were made up.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Thaddeus. “That is all.”

  He sat down and Angelina immediately pressed her mouth to his ear. “That’s all? No searing cross-examination? What the fuck, Thaddeus!”

  He turned and glowered at her. It was unprofessional, the jury saw him do it, but he just couldn’t stop himself. She was done and he was done too.

  A firearms expert testified about gunshot residue—or the lack of any—and the gun used in the killing. He confirmed some earlier testimony about distances, angles, and forensic probabilities.

  Next came a crime lab tech who testified about blood tests and drugs found in blood, both of the decedent and the defendant. John Steinmar had suffered depression and was taking two antidepressants and he was also taking a statin for cholesterol management—both prescribed by his doctor. Angelina Steinmar was found to be chemical-free, no drugs and no alcohol when tested at the hospital.

  The final witness was also crime lab, and she talked about fingerprints, DNA results (there were none), and the fact there was no evidence of a third person in the room at the time of the shooting—no prints, no
hair or fiber, no shoe prints in the carpet, nothing. The testimony and cross-examination ate up the rest of the afternoon. The state ran out of witnesses then, as it was a simple case with simple forensics and very few evidentiary battles.

  The prosecution rested its case and the judge sent everyone home for the day. He made the usual admonition to the jury—don’t watch news accounts, don’t read newspaper or magazine accounts, discuss the case with no one, and don’t consider the case until you enter the jury room after jury verdicts. It was all there.

  But Thaddeus knew better. He knew that nothing would stop them from thinking about what they had heard there that day and nothing would stop them from drawing conclusions. She had lied about being bitten by her husband and that colored anything else she might have to say in her defense. It was over.

  Thaddeus and Christine picked their way through light traffic back across Aspen to the BOA building. While she went upstairs to shut things down, he passed through the building and out the other side to the parking lot. He drove home in a desultory fashion, taking an unusual route just so he had time to think about what had happened that day. In the end, he could come up with nothing. For once he had no idea how to defend the woman. Then he stopped. Maybe Shep could help. He pulled in at a Citgo station and made a U-turn: Back to Shep’s hospital room.

  Shep was just finishing a hamburger patty and applesauce when Thaddeus came into his room. Shep wiped a glaze of applesauce from his chin and profusely welcomed the young lawyer.

  “Shit—shit,” he said, meaning “Sit-sit,” but the stroke had left his speech impaired.

  Thaddeus recounted the day’s events.

  Shep listened intently. His right arm and hand shook loosely against the cotton bedspread. Thaddeus figured the palsy would accompany Shep for a long time and he was sorry he’d had to bother the guy. Still, the client was originally Shep’s and he felt like maybe there was something he had missed. He recounted the entire trial, all key witnesses and pieces of testimony.

  “So what do you think?” Thaddeus said when he was done. “What do I do?”

  Shep pursed his lips—as it were, given the right side of his face was nonresponsive—and studied the air between them. Reason waited there, in that air, waiting to be defined and pronounced. But only a great legal mind like Shep’s would grasp it—that was the premise between the two men. Thaddeus was counting on it.