Laura tentatively explored the possibility of asking questions about the prospective jurors’ experience with drunken drivers. She made no protest at Judge Wong’s firm rejection of the approach. I’ll probably irritate him enough at the trial, she thought, without getting on the wrong side of him now.
As she surveyed the background of the twelve selections, Laura felt the defense had done about as well as could be expected. The three young construction workers looked good. Four other males ranged in age from thirty to fifty. Laura could see nothing seriously wrong with four of the five women, but she had some doubts about the fifth one. Somewhere in her forties, her occupation was listed as housewife. While she was Japanese, Jane O’Connor’s last name indicated she was married to a haole. None of this meant much except she had an arm in a cast.
With my luck, Laura decided, she’s been in an auto accident, and the other driver was drunk at the time. It’s funny she didn’t use a medical excuse to get off of the panel. Is she just aching to find a drunken driver guilty? Laura asked for a brief recess which Judge Wong granted. Laura used the time to confer with Sid.
“The jury doesn’t look bad,” Sid commented. “What’s the problem?”
Laura explained her doubts about the woman with the cast.
“You are getting to be like Kay. That’s just the kind of thing she’d fret about. Are you thinking of using a perempt on her?”
“Yes, but I’m worried about Emil’s reaction. Will he let it ride and settle for whoever takes her place?”
“I know what I’d do if I were him. I’d bump those three construction workers if you bump the woman.”
Laura nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Besides, she probably won’t be much of an influence on the rest of the jury. If it was some male business executive, some kind of authority figure, it would be a different matter.”
“She also looks so grim,” Laura said, shaking her head.
“Hell! I’d look grim too if I had my arm in a cast.”
After some further discussion with Sid, Laura reluctantly agreed to allow Jane O’Connor to stay on the jury. Emil also approved of the twelve jurors. The three alternates were quickly selected. Judge Wong made it official the trial would begin on the following morning at nine-thirty, indicating he was pleased to see the selection completed so easily. The implication was clear he expected the trial to move as expeditiously.
Chapter 18
The attorneys had decided to set the afternoon aside for a mass rehearsal of Kimo’s testimony. Kay, Sid, Laura and Kimo gathered around Qual’s desk. Sid and Qual alternated in playing Emil’s role. Fifteen minutes into the cross-examination, the sweat on Kimo’s forehead indicated they were playing the role well and he was taking it seriously. Once more, Laura felt sympathy for any hostile witness having to face Sid. After an hour’s workout, Qual expressed satisfaction. “I think we’ve got the tough questions out of the way. Any additional ideas, Laura?”
“No. If you do as well at the trial, Kimo, I’ll be more than pleased. Keep telling yourself Emil can’t be as bad as Sid.”
Sid laughed his appreciation. “Maybe some day I’ll become a prosecutor.”
“I pity the poor criminals if you do,” Laura said, with no humor at all in her voice.
“I wonder if we could cover the accident again, Kimo,” Kay broke in. “I’m still convinced there’s something more there we can use. Laura and I are going back to the subdivision this evening for one last check.”
Kimo patiently begin to recount the events of that night. As he described getting out of the truck and seeing the body, Kay stopped him. “Were there any lights on in any of the houses in the subdivision?”
Kimo shook his head. “I didn’t see any when I drove into the loop, but then I was busy trying to get my wiper to work.”
“Are you sure there wasn’t a light on at the Jacintos, the place with the fighting cocks?”
“I can’t be sure … I don’t think so. I think I would have seen it when I went up and knocked.”
“If it had been on in the kitchen, in the back,” Laura interrupted, “you might have missed it. That’s the one Jill McMahon says she saw when she pulled into her driveway an hour or so after the accident.”
Kay sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It would be hard to see a light in the kitchen from right in front of the house, but she could have seen it from her driveway. What did you do after you got out of the truck, Kimo?”
“Like I said before. I knew he was dead, so I wanted to find a phone to call the cops. I picked the house with the fighting cocks because it was the closest. I ran into the yard and up onto the porch. I knocked, but nobody answered.”
Kay and Laura both started to speak at once. Laura deferred to Kay.
“You ran up on the porch?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have any problems opening the gate?”
“Uh-uh. I didn’t even know there was a gate there.”
Kay and Laura looked at each other. “Are you sure you didn’t open the gate?” Kay persisted.
“Absolutely. I might have been upset, but I sure would have known if I’d had to stop and open a gate. I just ran right in and up on the porch.”
“How loud did you knock?” Laura asked.
“Loud. Real loud. When nobody answered the first time, I knocked again, even louder. I must have rattled the shack with my pounding. When no one came then, I ran out of the yard and around the corner to Mr. Merritt’s house.”
***
Moments after Kimo had departed, Craig arrived, catching everyone in the outer office still discussing the case. “How’s it coming?” he asked. The answers he received were a mixed chorus representing all shades of optimism and pessimism.
He laughed, and said, “I can see I’m going to get nowhere asking that question, but maybe you can help me with another. I’m experimenting with huli-huli chicken. Does anyone have any suggestions about the kind of wine I should have to go with it?”
“Not wine, Craig,” Sid said. “No one has wine with huli-huli chicken.”
“Beer!” Laura broke in loudly. Everyone turned to look at her.
“My,” Craig said, “where did you learn that? I thought you didn’t drink?”
Laura shook her head. “I’m not making suggestions for dinner, I’m just remembering something I wanted to check on. It has to do with beer.”
“What is it?” Qual asked.
“The empty beer can in Kimo’s truck. If he drank the beer just before the accident, then his blood-alcohol level must have been lower at the time of the accident than when they tested him an hour later. I was going to explore the possibility at the first trial, then the discovery of the body drove it completely out of my mind.”
“You’re right,” Kay said. “That’s something you may be able to exploit. Only it’s going to be awfully tricky to do that.”
“Why so?” Craig asked. “The police admit they found an empty beer can in the truck. All you have to do is to repeat what you just said.”
The attorneys shook their heads almost simultaneously, and Craig bristled. “You look like a bunch of puppets on strings. At the least, you should be able to explain why you can’t use perfectly good evidence. You might also try to explain it to me in a straightforward manner.”
Sid did the answering. “Let’s suppose Laura tells the jury Kimo was drinking while he was driving and he finished a can of beer just before the accident. What do you think the impact of that information will be on the jury? Imagine, after that, trying to convince them it’s proof he wasn’t legally drunk when the accident happened.”
Craig muttered something under his breath about giving them all the facts. “I think it’s worth looking into, Laura,” Qual said. “Check with Cal. He’ll be happy to help you. Try to find out how much a beer would add to the alcohol level and how long it would take for it to show up on the blood test. Then get as exact an estimate as possible of the elapsed time between
the accident and when the test was made.”
“Shouldn’t you check with Kimo to see whether or not he finished the can in the car?” Craig asked.
Four pairs of eyes turned in his direction. Even Leilani looked up from her computer screen.
“I guess, it is better if you don’t know,” Craig said, lamely.
***
After Craig left, having decided he would not have beer at the meal under any circumstances, Qual asked, “What were you two driving at with the gate business?”
Laura explained. “The Jacintos have a bunch of fighting cocks in their front yard. They most certainly wouldn’t want any stray dog to get in at them. Also, they have a bunch of hens running loose, and they wouldn’t want them getting out. So the question is, ‘Why was the gate open?’ They wouldn’t have gone to bed and left it open. For sure, they wouldn’t have gone out and left it open. Those hens and roosters are worth too much to take chances with.”
“So you figure they had to be lying about being asleep at the time of the accident.”
“It sure looks that way. Besides, you heard Kimo say he really pounded on the door. He just doesn’t seem like the kind who would knock timidly, especially under those circumstances. Why didn’t they hear him? The Jacintos both claim they were home. It isn’t exactly a mansion they live in. I suppose they could have slept through all the ruckus, but it doesn’t seem likely. The light on an hour or so later is strange, even if it is amenable to an innocent explanation or …”
“So you think Lyndon Stanner came out of that house,” Sid broke in. “Is that it?”
“Yes, but we haven’t been able to connect the Jacintos with Lyndon so far. That’s why Kay and I are going to go talk to Hank. He’s interviewed them on just that point, and we’re going to go see McMahon again. Just possibly he may have seen Stanner there at the Jacintos.”
“You’re building up a good case,” Qual commented. “I’ve already got a vision of a blind drunk Lyndon Stanner staggering out of the Jacinto yard and walking smack into Kimo’s truck. That should do away with any possibility of negligent driving on Kimo’s part.”
Laura nodded and added, “It would be even better if it were a Lyndon Stanner running out with a knife wound.”
***
“The interviews with our Wiliwili Circle friends were interesting, but I’m not sure they’re going to be of much help to you.” Hank was leaning back in his swivel chair with his hands behind his head, as Kay and Laura were making themselves comfortable on the overstuffed couch Hank had discovered at a garage sale. “Corky was in on the interviews. She’ll be in in a minute to give her version.”
When Corky arrived, she was emphatic. “Laura and I were dead right. The Jacintos are into it up to and over their ears, but we didn’t shake them. They’re a couple of tough hombres. Even though Hank was in top form, they kept insisting they’d never met Lyndon Stanner, didn’t know anything about him, never heard of him, wouldn’t know him if they saw him. You name it.”
“We’ve checked,” Hank said as he picked up where Corky left off, “but we haven’t been able to make any connections. Wilson’s record is clean. Not too surprisingly, Jerome’s been picked up a couple of times at cock fights and released with a fine. He was also up on an illegal gambling charge. It was dropped when the main witness against him backed down. We’ll keep digging, but it doesn’t look too promising. As long as they hang tough, we just have to accept Lyndon Stanner was wandering around on his own.”
“What about Drina and her mother?” Laura asked.
“There, we hit pay dirt. Well, dirt, anyway. Corky has long notes on the interview. We taped it, too, if you want to listen.”
“Drina and Lyndon lived together off and on for about seven years,” Corky began, checking her notes. “Drina wasn’t exactly broken up when she heard about Lyndon’s demise, and Makalita said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ or words to that effect. According to Drina, he’d beaten her up a couple of times. Near the end of their relationship, she reciprocated in kind. According to her, he was a boozer and never provided much for the kids. He never held a job for more than a few months at a time. She finally got fed up. When her younger sister left home, it left Makalita alone.
“So Drina and her mother decided to come to Elima. The hotel strike on Oahu was the final straw. Makalita baby-sits the kids and Drina works at the Malalani. About two months ago Lyndon showed up, all tears and contrition. He had a bad cough, worse than his regular smoker’s cough, and he said he’d been sick. Drina felt sorry for him. Makalita didn’t. He hung around for a week or two. Finally, his drinking got to be too much for them, and Drina gave him the boot. According to them, Stanner didn’t have any life insurance and sure as hell didn’t leave any estate. We’re checking it out, of course.”
“Did they say whether or not he visited the Jacintos?” Laura asked.
“We queried them on that. They didn’t think so, but said they couldn’t be sure. According to Makalita, he spent most of his time in the taverns. So I suppose he could have met Wilson at one of them. Also, he didn’t have a car here on the island, and he hitched a lot. Maybe Wilson gave him a lift.
“What’s funny is Stanner wasn’t short of cash even though he wasn’t working or collecting unemployment. Drina said she knew he had money, since he didn’t try to borrow off of them. When she and her mother tried to get some from him to buy clothes for the kids, he peeled a couple of hundreds off of a roll he had. I think the roll was the only reason Makalita and Drina put up with him as long as they did.”
“Did they see him the night of the accident?”
“They deny it, for what that’s worth. They claim the last they saw of him was about six weeks before when they gave him his walking papers.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d rolled him,” Hank added, “then got rid of the body.”
“I wish it were so easy,” Laura said. “If they did roll him, they didn’t need to get rid of him, or strip him of ID. Kimo had already taken care of all their problems. I’m sure going to use them as witnesses, though. They were already on the list, but I hadn’t made a final decision yet. Drina’s description of Lyndon will help to reinforce the impression I hope to make with the high alcohol content of his blood at the time of the accident.” As she spoke, Laura suddenly became aware of what side Hank was officially on. She hoped the position did not include a feeling of obligation to pass her strategic decisions on to Emil.
“Actually,” Hank said, seeming not to have paid any attention to her remarks, “we’ve been pretty lucky so far. If it hadn’t been for the tattoo, we probably never would have identified Stanner. He didn’t have any police record, in spite of reports he’d had problems with the police. No military service either. He never registered a gun or anything like that. So even with his fingerprints, we wouldn’t have made much headway. They aren’t on file. The dentist who worked on his teeth moved to Des Moines a year ago. As it was, we had a tough time running him down even after already identifying the corpse.”
As they left, Hank said, “I’ll let you know if we find out anything more, but I’m not too hopeful about getting any other leads.”
Laura looked gloomy. “Time’s running out,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.
Chapter 19
Laura had left a call for Cal, and he returned it a few minutes later.
“Between patients,” he said, “but no emergency. What is problem?”
“I have the other side of the coin to talk to you about this time, the accused, rather than the victim.”
“He is still alive?”
Laura laughed. “Very much so. Alive and, unfortunately, drinking at the time of the accident. This question isn’t about a corpse.”
“Yes?”
“His blood-alcohol level came out at 0.09, and he was driving at the time.”
“Clearly a DUI.”
“I’m afraid so. He may have consumed a can of beer some twenty minutes before he
was tested, however.”
“Ah. I see where you are going. What is his weight? That can make difference.”
“About a hundred and eighty.”
“Yes. It is possible his blood-level at time of arrest was as much as 0.02 lower, which would have put him at 0.06 at time of accident, below minimum level. Who is your expert witness?”
“Professor Sukuma from the University.”
“Excellent. I would be happy to have him call me or drop by. I haven’t seen him in several years. Very good man. Have exact body weight, time of ingestion of alcohol and total amount, list of any foods consumed during same period, time of accident, time of blood test, any other medicine or drugs he may have taken recently, even pakalolo. Be sure … “
Laura was scribbling furiously.
After she’d finished the list, she asked, “Do you really think we can make a reasonable case for his blood alcohol level being below 0.10 at the time of the accident?”
“At moment, seems very likely. However …” There was a pause at the other end.
“Yes?”
“To my way of thinking, blood alcohol level of 0.08 is overly generous allowance. I am convinced person with blood-level of 0.08 unfit to be driving.”
As Laura hung up, she thought, I know one person who, for sure, I’ll not be using as a witness.
***
Herman McMahon was as pleased to see Kay and Laura as he had been to see Corky and Laura. “My,” he said, “we certainly have attractive police and attorneys in Napua.”
Laura described Lyndon Stanner and asked McMahon if he had ever seen him at the Kalahuis.
“I most certainly have. He was there two months or so ago. I don’t know how long he stayed. He was a strange character, if it was him, though I never spoke to him. Like you say, this fellow was tall, maybe six foot-one or more, and thin, kind of sick looking, a hundred and fifty pounds or so. Maybe more. Wore glasses … “
Laura interrupted. “Glasses?”
“What?”
“Was he wearing glasses?”
Dead and Gone Page 12
