Corpus Delicti (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Book 6)

by Stephen Penner

  Seven months and two weeks, Brunelle knew. At least that’s how long it had been since Chen had called him down to watch Linda’s interview. So probably a week or two more since the last time Amy had stopped by to see her mom and dad, and daughter. That was the next line of questioning. But there was a trap along the way.

  “How often did you see Amy before that?”

  Mary thought for a moment or two, then answered, “Every week, mostly. Sometimes more often, but not usually. She didn’t usually go more than a couple weeks before she’d come around again.”

  The trap was that Mary couldn’t tell the jury what Amy was doing in between those visits, namely hooking for Kenny Brown. Brunelle had worried that Mary would be upset that the judge was keeping out important evidence about her daughter’s disappearance and murder. That was how it usually went: Brunelle would tell the witness that the judge had suppressed some piece of evidence that the witness wanted to talk about. An argument would ensue, except that Brunelle had no authority to change the ruling. One cop had even threatened not to swear ‘to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ since the judge had eliminated part of ‘the whole truth.’

  But Mary was more than happy not to talk about her daughter’s occupation. She said she didn’t want her dead daughter called a whore in public. And Brunelle figured Mary probably didn’t want her own parenting questioned either. So they had an easy agreement not to mention it. Brunelle just had to hope she’d remember it while under the stress and distraction of testifying.

  The trick was to stay as far away from the topic as possible. He could have asked a professional witness something like, ‘What was she doing during that time?’ and they would know not to mention anything about pimps and prostitutes. He couldn’t quite trust Mary, so he just avoided the subject entirely and got to the main point: “When Amy came around, who was she coming to visit?”

  Mary nodded. “Me and Howard, her dad. But really, it was to visit Lydia.”

  Brunelle allowed himself a quick glance out of the corner of his eye at the jury. The few faces he could see from that angle seemed interested. Good, he thought. As long as they were really paying attention, he could extract the information quickly, not risk further testimony from a distraught civilian, and sit down.

  “Who’s Lydia?”

  Mary sniffled and finally turned to the jury; she was going to tell them directly. Awesome, Brunelle thought as the mother of the victim looked at the good people of the world who’d come to judge her daughter’s killer and told them, “Lydia is Amy’s daughter.”

  Brunelle let out a sigh of relief. He just needed to wrap up the details and see if Edwards dared to attack poor, sweet Mary Corrigan.

  He took another photograph from his counsel table and showed it to Edwards. Edwards again nodded, barely looking at it, and Brunelle walked it over to Mary. “Do you recognize the person depicted in this photograph?”

  Mary nodded. “Yep. That’s Lydia.”

  “How old is she in that photo?” Brunelle asked.

  “That was at her birthday party last fall,” Mary answered. “She turned two. So she’s more like two-and-a-half now.”

  Brunelle decided to stick the sympathy dagger a bit deeper into the jury’s hearts. “Was Amy there for her birthday party?”

  But Mary squirmed in her seat. Not what Brunelle wanted. He felt a flush race up the back of his neck as he remembered that old lawyer’s saying: ‘Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.’

  “Uh, no,” Mary answered reluctantly. “She couldn’t make it. Uh, because, uh…”

  Brunelle had to jump in. Mary knew not to mention the prostitution, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say in its place.

  “But she usually visited Lydia when she could?” he interrupted.

  “Oh, yes, yes.” She again turned to the jury, this time to try to convince them that Amy really was a good mother to Lydia. “She even came by that day, but it was late. She missed the party. But she kissed Lydia good night. She was so sad that she missed the party. She cried. It was so hard. She, just… It was really hard for her. It was hard for all of us. But she loved that little girl. She loved her more than anything in the world.”

  Brunelle was grateful for that last bit of testimony. But that still hadn’t gone quite as well as he’d hoped. He suddenly remembered the photograph he’d handed Mary and looked up to the judge. “The state moves to admit exhibit two.”

  Again Edwards was ready. “No objection.”

  “Exhibit two is admitted,” Grissom declared.

  Brunelle walked over to the projector and replaced Amy’s photo with Lydia’s. It was definitely a birthday party. Lydia was definitely the birthday girl—and she definitely looked neglected. Her hair was tangled, her shirt dirty. But she was smiling for the camera. Even though her mommy missed her birthday party.

  “How often did Amy visit Lydia, did you say?” Brunelle asked from over by the projector.

  “Maybe every week or so,” Mary repeated.

  Brunelle nodded. “Did she ever miss a visit?”

  Mary shrugged. “I mean, sure. Sometimes. But if she did, we’d always see her the next weekend. Well, usually.”

  Brunelle breathed in through his nose. The examination wasn’t going quite as well as he’d wanted. Lydia was supposed to be the reason why the jury could be sure Amy was dead, not just missing. But Mary was chipping away at that theory with every ‘sometimes’ and ‘usually,’ Time to finish up. He walked back to his usual spot between his table and the jury box.

  “So six months ago,” he started, “when Amy didn’t come to visit Lydia on schedule, it didn’t concern you at first, right?”

  An incredibly leading question, Brunelle knew, but Edwards didn’t bother objecting.

  “Um, right,” Mary admitted. “We just figured we’d see her the next weekend.”

  “And did you?” Brunelle asked.

  Mary cocked her head at him. “Did I what?”

  Brunelle kept his poker face, but just barely. Sometimes, he really hated civilian witnesses. “Did you see Amy the next weekend?”

  “Oh,” Mary replied. “No. No, we didn’t.”

  “How about the next weekend?” Brunelle followed up.

  “No, no,” Mary answered. “Like I said, we never saw her again. She just stopped coming. We never heard from her again. That’s how we knew something terrible had happened.”

  Finally Edwards stood up. “Objection, Your Honor. The witness is speculating.”

  Brunelle frowned. Edwards was right. Witnesses couldn’t speculate. He looked up to the judge, but no argument came to him. Grissom saw it in his eyes. “Objection sustained, Mr. Brunelle. The witness can report her contact with her daughter, but she can’t speculate as to why it ended.”

  Brunelle nodded. It didn’t matter. The jury understood. And he’d be allowed to argue it in closing argument. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  He turned back to Mary Corrigan and went through his mental checklist for her examination: mother, in-life photo, Lydia, photo of Lydia, hadn’t seen Amy for six months. Yep, that was everything.

  “No further questions,” he announced and returned to his seat. It was Edwards’ turn.

  She stood up and double checked her notes. Then she stepped over to the projector and turned it off. Lydia’s smiling face disappeared from the screen.

  “Assuming Amy visited you every two or three weeks,” Edwards said, “you only saw her maybe twenty times a year, correct?”

  Mary’s face contorted a bit as she tried to do the math. “Uh, maybe. I don’t know. I guess so. I mean, it seemed like more than that.”

  Edwards nodded at the answer and moved to the next question. “And she sometimes missed important occasions like her daughter’s birthday, correct?”

  “She only missed the party,” Mary protested. “She made it before her birthday ended.”

  “She wasn’t always reliable, was she, Mrs. Corrigan?” Edwards pre
ssed.

  Mary narrowed her eyes. “There were reasons,” she snarled.

  Oh, shit, Brunelle thought. If Mary got too angry at Edwards, she might go ahead and mention the prostitution, just to spite her. It was one thing to do what the prosecutor told you when he was standing in front of you. It was another to let a defense attorney mischaracterize your daughter.

  But Edwards stepped back from the precipice. “I know, Mrs. Corrigan,” she assured, almost motherly. “I know.”

  She paused long enough for Mary, and the jury, to realize she wasn’t such a bitch after all. “And I know you have your opinion about what happened to Amy to cause her not to come visiting for over six months but, really, based on just the facts and just on what you yourself personally know—you don’t actually know what happened to Amy, do you?”

  Mary shifted her weight again. The line between what a person believes and what a person knows can be blurry. Especially when that person is a mother.

  “I know what happened to my daughter,” Mary insisted.

  Edwards frowned for a moment. Then she crossed her arms and tried a different approach, “If Amy came home tonight, you’d be pretty surprised, wouldn’t you?”

  Mary was quick to nod emphatically. Her tears had dried. Her expression was clearly one of contempt for the woman defending her daughter’s killer. “Damn right I would.”

  “But it’s not impossible, is it, Mrs. Corrigan?” Edwards asked.

  Mary hesitated.

  “Based on what you actually know yourself,” Edwards pressed, “it’s not impossible, is it?”

  Mary opened her mouth to answer, but the reply got caught in her throat.

  Edwards’ expression softened sympathetically. “There’s still a part of your heart that hopes it’s not impossible, isn’t that right, Mrs. Corrigan?”

  Mary looked Edwards in the eyes, then dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes,” she admitted, choking back another sob. “I hope it’s not impossible.”

  Edwards nodded. “No further questions.”

  Brunelle looked at the woman on the witness stand. She was in no shape for further questioning. And he wasn’t sure how to rehabilitate her anyway. Edwards was right. But the last shred of hope of a distraught mother didn’t mean Amy Corrigan was alive. It just meant Mary was a mother. And that was better left to closing argument.

  “Any redirect examination, Mr. Brunelle?” Judge Grissom asked.

  Brunelle stood. “No, Your Honor. This witness may be excused.”

  Mary looked up again, visibly relieved but also shaken. She probably had no idea how her testimony had helped or hurt the case—Brunelle himself wasn’t even sure at that point. But talking about your probably-dead daughter, whose death had come at the hands of drug addiction and a brutal pimp, would drain anyone. She clutched her purse in both hands and made her way out to the hallway where Brunelle knew Howard Corrigan was waiting for her.

  Then Brunelle returned his thoughts to the job at hand: laying out his case-in-chief. Now that the emotional aspect had been put to the jury, it was time to talk about the investigation.

  “The state calls Larry Chen to the stand.”

  Chapter 34

  Chen strode confidently into the courtroom. His large frame pushed through the doors and made its way directly to the witness stand. He knew the drill. The judge did too. In a matter of moments Chen was sworn in, seated, and ready for Brunelle’s first question.

  “Please state your name for the record,” Brunelle started. Not really a question, but pretty much the best way to start a direct exam.

  “Larry Chen.”

  “How are you employed, sir?” Brunelle moved to the usual second question, at least for cops and other professionals.

  “I’m a detective with the Seattle Police Department.” Chen was delivering all of his answers to the jury, just like they taught all the cops at the academy. That was good; it brought the jurors into the action, but Brunelle knew they’d lose interest fast if Chen didn’t provide some good information after the introductions.

  Mary Corrigan had been a good first witness. Emotional, and it got those photos up on the screen. It explained that Amy hadn’t been seen for quite some time. But it didn’t explain why. That would be Chen’s job.

  “What kind of cases do you investigate, detective?”

  “Homicides, mostly,” was his response. “And other major crimes. Rapes, robberies, serious assaults.”

  “Do you investigate missing person cases?” Brunelle asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

  Chen shook his head. “No. I haven’t done a missing person case for years. That’s more junior detective stuff. Or even senior patrol officers.”

  Brunelle nodded. “So you don’t handle missing person cases?”

  Chen shook his head again. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Did you handle the Amy Corrigan case?”

  Chen looked at the jury. “Yes, sir, I did.

  Brunelle smiled inside. He enjoyed doing the direct exam song-and-dance with Chen. They were good at it. He had a vague recollection that they’d had a falling out recently, but his mind was too busy with the task at hand to bother remembering why. They were good, and they were together again. Nothing else mattered right then.

  “Please explain to the jury,” Brunelle inclined his head toward the jury box, “how a homicide detective came to be involved in the Amy Corrigan case.”

  Chen nodded to Brunelle, then turned again to the jurors. “I was working on a stabbing that happened down on East Marginal Way, down by the First Avenue Bridge. A couple of homeless guys. One of them said the wrong thing and the other guy had a knife. The guy with the knife took off and we were left with just a dead guy on the street. No witnesses, no leads, no nothing.”

  Brunelle nodded along with the story, but didn’t interrupt his witness.

  “We started asking around if anyone had seen anything,” Chen continued. “Usual stuff. Local businesses, stuff like that. Everyone we talked to insisted they hadn’t seen anything, but they would usually give us the name of someone else to talk to who maybe did see something. It was going nowhere, but then we got the name of Linda Prescott.”

  Brunelle frowned slightly at the name. He’d forgotten about her a little bit, since he couldn’t prosecute anyone for her death. Then he remembered he’d solicited her for sex—fake sex, but still. It was a weird conflux of emotions, so he shook himself out of it and returned his attention to Chen.

  “Did Linda have information about that murder?” Brunelle asked, knowing the answer.

  “No.” Chen shook his head. “But she had information about another murder.”

  “Whose murder?” Brunelle followed up.

  An earnest look to the jury from Chen. “Amy Corrigan’s.”

  Brunelle nodded again. His way of mentally checking off the bullet points of his direct examination.

  “What did Linda tell you about Amy Corrigan’s murder?”

  “Objection.” Edwards stood up, calmly enough, but her voice was still forceful. “The question calls for hearsay.”

  Grissom turned from Edwards’ objection to Brunelle’s reply. “Response?”

  Brunelle frowned. It was hearsay—sort of. Hearsay was anything a witness said outside of a courtroom that a different witness told the jury about. ‘I didn’t see Jimmy steal the apple, but Cindy told me she saw it.” Well then, Cindy needed to come in and tell the jury what she saw—and get cross-examined by Jimmy’s defense attorney. But that was just it, Linda wouldn’t be coming in to testify—she was dead. And Edwards knew that. Hence the objection.

  “It has a non-hearsay use, Your Honor,” Brunelle replied. There were two ways to get hearsay admitted: first, it might fit one of the so-called ‘hearsay exceptions’ where the circumstances suggest the speaker probably wasn’t lying. Descriptions to a 911 operator while a crime is occurring, statements to a doctor for medical treatment, a dying declaration to a loved one just before you pass away. But no
ne of those really fit. Linda died, but not right then, so that wasn’t going to do it.

  The second way to get hearsay admitted was if it was being admitted for a non-hearsay use, that is, for some reason other than a desire for the jury to believe what the speaker was saying. If it’s not about what the speaker said, then it doesn’t matter if the jury hears it.

  “What’s the non-hearsay use?” Grissom asked dubiously.

  “It goes to what the detective learned and what steps he took afterward,” Brunelle explained. “It goes to the detective’s state of mind and explains why he did what he did next.”

  Grissom frowned, obviously unimpressed by this excuse to admit hearsay without calling it that. She turned back to Edwards. “Any response to that, Ms. Edwards?”

  Edwards crossed her arms. “That’s just a flimsy excuse, Your Honor. That’s what lawyers always say when they want to admit hearsay but there’s no exception for it. The detective can testify to what steps he took, if any, without having to relate Linda Prescott’s untested assertions to jury.”

  Grissom nodded. “I’m going to sustain the objection. You can elicit what steps the detective took after speaking with Ms. Prescott, but you can’t elicit what Ms. Prescott told him.”

  Brunelle sighed, but he wasn’t surprised by the ruling. That’s why it was so frustrating that Linda had died. Well, that, and he didn’t want anyone to die before their time. But right then, it was mostly about how her death was damaging his case-in-chief. Luckily, it wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew how to tell the jury what Linda said without actually telling the jury what she said.

  “Let’s do it this way,” Brunelle directed Chen. “Did you speak with Linda Prescott?”

  Chen nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did she provide you with information?”

  Another nod. “Yes.”

  “And based on that information, what steps did you take?”

  Chen looked to the jury. “I opened a homicide investigation.”

  “What was the name of the victim in that investigation?”

  “Amy Corrigan.”