MD05 - The Confession

by Sheldon Siegel

  If past history is any indication, this will be his response to every question I ask. “This is the first time I’ve seen it,” I say.

  He tries to cut off the discussion before it starts. “This copy is for you,” he says. “Call me if you have any questions.”

  This will be my only chance to talk to him before the prelim and I have to press. A flip remark will get me a quick exit and I have no choice but to genuflect. “Dr. Beckert,” I say, “I would be extraordinarily grateful if you would answer a few questions.”

  The corner of his mouth turns up slightly and he makes a big show of pulling up the left sleeve on his camel-hair sport jacket to look at his Rolex. “I have another meeting,” he says, “but I can spend a few minutes with you.”

  It takes every ounce of my self-control to avoid making a sarcastic remark. “Thank you, Dr. Beckert.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  I start with an easy one. “When did you conduct the autopsy?”

  They say that great baseball hitters can remember the exact count and location of every pitch they ever hit for a home run. Great coroners are the same way. He pretends to study the report through the bottom half of his bifocals, but I’m convinced he can remember the details of every autopsy he’s performed since he got out of medical school. He flips through the pages and finds what he’s looking for. “Tuesday, December second,” he tells me. “Three-thirty P.M.”

  “That’s about seven hours after they found the body,” I say.

  “Correct.”

  He isn’t going to offer anything voluntarily, so I’ll have to lead him along. “Were you called to the scene?”

  “Yes.” He says he arrived at Concepcion’s apartment at ten-thirty that morning.

  “That was about an hour after the initial police call?”

  “Correct.”

  It isn’t a big point, but it gives me room to argue about the level of decomposition of the body when he first saw it and, by extension, the time of death. “I understand you’ve placed time of death between nine-thirty on Monday night and one o’clock on Tuesday morning.”

  “Correct.”

  “Which means at least ten hours had elapsed from the time of death until the time you first saw the body, and seventeen hours had elapsed until you began the autopsy.”

  “You can do the math as well as I can, Mr. Daley.”

  Yes, I can. I ask him if the body was still in the bathtub when he arrived.

  “No, it wasn’t.” He explains that the paramedics removed the body from the tub in their attempts to revive her. “Except for the fact that the body was taken out of the tub and moved to the floor, the area was preserved intact.” He confirms that she was pronounced dead at the scene.

  “Was the body still submerged when it was found?”

  “Yes, it was, except for her head and shoulders, which were above the water level, and her left arm, which was dangling outside the tub.”

  “The fact that the body was under water for up to twelve hours would have made it more complicated to determine the time of death, right?”

  “I gave myself a three-hour window because the body was found in standing water,” he says. “The rate of decomposition would have changed depending upon the initial temperature of the water when the body was placed in the tub.”

  “If it was placed in the tub,” I argue.

  He doesn’t budge. He explains that the presence of the water made the usual measurements of body temperature, lividity and rigor mortis somewhat less precise. “I was also able to do some calculations based upon the rate of digestion of food in her stomach,” he says.

  “What food was that?” I ask.

  “A chicken burrito.”

  At least we know she ate some of the burrito that was found in her kitchen. Whether she purchased it that night still remains to be determined.

  Beckert adds, “If she had bled to death on the floor, I may have been able to call time of death within a narrower window.” He adds that Concepcion drank a small amount of alcohol on the night she died, and no drugs were found in her system.

  His analysis gives us wiggle room to argue that she could have died after Ramon left the scene. It would help even more if we could prove that somebody else entered her apartment after he left. I pretend to thumb through the report for another moment and ask, “How were you able to rule out a self-inflicted wound?”

  He knows I’m looking for a preview of his testimony. “It’s in my report, Mr. Daley.”

  I tap his report and say, “I’m sure it’s all here, but I would be very grateful if you would explain your conclusion to me.”

  “We can do that in court next week, Mr. Daley.”

  “If we do it now, we may not have to do it again next week.”

  He glances at his watch again and says, “If you turn to page seven, you’ll see that there were three deep cuts on each of the victim’s wrists that resulted in massive blood loss.”

  I’m prepared to accept the conclusion that she bled to death. “It still doesn’t explain how you determined the wounds weren’t self-inflicted,” I say.

  He places a photograph of the back of Concepcion’s head and shoulders on the desk in front of me and uses his gold Cross pen to point at several areas circled with a black felt-tip marker. “Do you see any unusual marks in these areas?”

  I study the photo for a long minute and then answer honestly. “No.”

  “Look more closely. We found the defendant’s thumbprints on the back of the victim’s neck in these locations using the glue fuming process.”

  “He may have given her a back rub,” I say, “but it doesn’t prove he killed her.”

  He points toward a spot where her right shoulder meets her neck and asks, “Do you notice anything here?”

  I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging anything short of a fully disembodied head.

  “If you look at this spot right here,” he says, “you’ll see a bruise on Ms. Concepcion’s right shoulder, just below the nape of her neck.”

  I never graduated from medical school and I can’t see any blood or other evidence of a significant wound. In a rare instance of the truth lining up with an appropriate legal response, I tell him, “I’m afraid I don’t see it, Dr. Beckert.”

  He hands me a copy of the photo and says, “Your medical expert will confirm that Ms. Concepcion experienced a blow that rendered her unconscious and caused a hematoma.”

  I know just enough medical lingo to understand that he’s referring to a bruise resulting from a direct hit, but I’m not buying it. “Broken bones?” I ask.

  “None.”

  “Blood?”

  “No.”

  “Swelling?”

  “Not discernable to the naked eye.”

  I argue that the wound could have been self-inflicted.

  “It would have been impossible for her to have hit herself in that location,” he says.

  “She could have fallen or bumped into something.”

  “You have no evidence she did.”

  “You have no evidence she didn’t. It’s your job to prove the cause of death was a homicide. It isn’t our job to prove it wasn’t.”

  He strokes his beard and lowers his voice. “I’ll win that argument in court,” he says.

  I’m not going to win it here. I’ll feed the information to a hired medical expert who will massage it to fit our needs. “So,” I say, “you believe Ms. Concepcion was knocked unconscious and then placed in her bathtub, where her wrists were slashed and she bled to death.”

  “Correct.” His expression turns smug. “There’s more, Mr. Daley.” He pulls out another photograph and lays it out in front of me. “They took this picture just before they moved the body from the scene.” Unlike the first photo, which was taken in his lab, this one was taken in Concepcion’s bathroom, and it shows her body on the floor in a pool of bloody water. Her head is propped up against the wall and her eyes and mouth are open. “Did you
notice that Ms. Concepcion’s body was covered with white skin cream?”

  “Yes. It suggests to me that she wanted to relax before she committed suicide.”

  “It suggests to me that somebody made a clumsy attempt to fake a suicide. We found your client’s fingerprints on the empty skin cream container. More importantly, we discovered that amount of cream in the area around the wound on her shoulder was greater than other parts of her body. This indicates somebody was trying to cover the hematoma.”

  “If her shoulder was covered with cream, how were you able to find the fingerprints on her neck?”

  “Her neck wasn’t covered.”

  It doesn’t add up. “If Father Aguirre was smart enough to try to cover the bruise, he would have covered the prints.”

  “He was in a hurry and got careless.”

  “Or somebody else hit her and didn’t know enough to cover the prints.”

  “You can argue that theory to the judge, Mr. Daley. We also found skin cream on and around her reproductive organs and rectum. Women know that it is inadvisable to use such compounds in sensitive areas.”

  “I suspect she wasn’t worried about reading warning labels that night.”

  “She had a rash around her labia majora and her anus. If she was trying to make herself comfortable, she wouldn’t have put that type of compound on those areas.”

  I point out that he found the cream on her hands. “That suggests she put it on herself.”

  He fires right back. “That suggests your client put it on her hands.”

  I can’t refute any of this on the fly.

  Beckert isn’t finished. He points toward the photo and asks, “Do you notice anything unusual about the position of her body?”

  He would have been a great law professor. Like his medical students, I have no choice but to play along. “Nothing leaps out at me.”

  “Look at her head.”

  I don’t see any bruises. “Give me a hint.”

  “When the paramedics pulled her out of the tub, they placed her body on the floor facing the same direction as it was when she was in the water. Her head is at the end of the tub where the faucet and handles protrude from the wall.”

  “So?”

  “Nobody sits in a bathtub that way because you’d bang your head on the faucet or the handles.”

  He’s right.

  He closes his report and hands it to me. “I really need to get to this other meeting,” he says, “and you really ought to give some serious thought to a plea bargain.”

  “That isn’t going to happen, Dr. Beckert.”

  “You’re a good lawyer, but you’re making a big mistake.”

  Duly noted. “Thank you for your time.”

  “You’re welcome.” He taps his fingers on his desk and his professorial tone changes to one that is almost fatherly. “Michael,” he says, “we go back a long way, don’t we?”

  It’s the first time he’s ever called me by my first name and my guard goes up. “Yes.”

  “And we’ve always played it straight with each other, haven’t we?”

  More or less. “Yes.”

  He takes off his glasses and wipes them with a small cloth, then he puts them back on and says, “There’s something else in my report that’s very troubling and you aren’t going to be able to refute.”

  Uh-oh. “What is it?”

  “Ms. Concepcion was pregnant.”

  Chapter 27

  “God Hasn’t Been Charged with Murder”

  “A priest cannot accept confessions if his morals are in question. It’s a credibility issue.”

  — Father Ramon Aguirre.

  “This is now a first class nightmare,” Rosie says.

  Her succinct analysis is dead accurate. My mind is racing as I’m standing in the pay lot next to the McDonald’s down the block from the Hall in a howling wind at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. I slipped out the back door and took a circuitous loop to avoid the press and three dozen of Ramon’s parishioners, who are holding a vigil on Bryant Street. It’s difficult to hear her over the roar of the freeway and I press my cell phone tightly against my right ear. The rain has subsided, but black storm clouds gathering to the west. I can see a black Explorer parked across the street.

  First things first. “Have you talked to Pete?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He says Vince has been following you all day.”

  Good. “Has he seen Mr. Impala?” I ask.

  “Not yet.”

  Dammit. At times like this, you start to question your sanity. I know I saw the Impala outside my apartment earlier this morning, but I start to wonder if it’s all just a figment of my overactive imagination.

  She asks me if I’ve talked to Ramon

  “Not yet.” I tell her that I didn’t want to call him because I’m paranoid enough to suspect that somebody may be listening in on the phones at the archdiocese–or even on my cell. “I’m heading over there now.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asks.

  Yes. “No. I’ll handle it.”

  “Have they identified the father?”

  “No, but they’re going to do DNA testing.” She doesn’t need to remind me that such tests are virtually infallible. In normal circumstances, it takes several weeks to get the results, but Beckert has asked for expedited handling. We leave the obvious unspoken–if Ramon is the father, our problems may be insurmountable. “We should have the answer by Sunday,” I say.

  “The media is going to be all over this,” she says.

  It’s true. The DA’s office, the cops and the press must know about it already and Jerry Edwards will undoubtedly appear any minute now. We consider the possibility of trying to persuade a judge to seal the autopsy report, but we’ll lose the argument and give the impression we have something to hide.

  She gives me a realistic assessment. “The public will turn on Ramon in a nanosecond if there is any reason to think he’s the father,” she says.

  They’ll turn on him even if he isn’t if they think he killed a pregnant woman and an unborn child.

  # # #

  I look into the tired eyes of my client and lower my voice to confession level. “We need to talk,” I say.

  Ramon’s body tenses. He’s sitting in a wooden chair in his makeshift lodgings at archdiocese headquarters. The pressure is starting to take its toll and his complexion is gaunt. “What is it?” he asks.

  I don’t have time to be subtle. “She was pregnant.”

  There is no discernable reaction before he whispers, “She told me it was possible.”

  What the hell?

  He closes his eyes for an interminable moment, then he opens them and understates, “It’s so terribly sad.”

  “We need to discuss this, Ramon.”

  “Maria and her baby are in heaven. Maybe it was God’s will.”

  We aren’t going to be able to foist this one off so easily. “God hasn’t been charged with murder,” I say. My voice starts to rise when I add, “The autopsy report is now a matter of public record. I need to know the truth.”

  “I’ve found the truth is often very elusive.”

  His cryptic answer is troubling. I give him another moment to think about it, but he doesn’t engage. Finally, I say, “Did you have anything to do with her death?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I’ll never speak to you again if you’re lying. “How did you know she may have been pregnant?”

  “She told me she was trying.”

  “When did she tell you about it?

  “About a month ago.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me?”

  “Life is complicated.”

  “It’s going to get even more complicated if you don’t start telling me the truth.”

  He takes a deep breath and says, “Maria asked me to keep her situation confidential until she could sort out some issues.”

  “Such as?”

  “She was concerned that she would lose
the moral high ground in her cases against the Church if it was discovered she was having a child.”

  “Her personal circumstances had nothing to do with the validity of the legal claims.”