With the exception of his discontinuing the day-to-day practice of law, and Melinda’s abrupt resignation, it was as if that Black Monday had never happened.
As always, he continued to have access to the firm's trust account.
* * *
While the psychiatric inquiry had proceeded, the murder case itself also had gone ahead.
Under Illinois law the question of fitness to stand trial does not delay preparation and advancement of the case in chief so, while he was working up the psychological issues, Thaddeus was also investigating the evidence collected by the police.
Among those artifacts were, of course, extensive photographs of the crime scene.
Hundreds of frames were shot and blown up to 8x10 and turned over to Thaddeus by the DA.
There were pictures of the head wound, close-up and wide angle. There were pictures of the victim at rest in her chair, her head slumped away from the force of the muzzle blast. There were pictures of powder burns and stippling on the skin and hair at the site of entry of the bullet into the head. There were pictures of the hardwood floor around the victim's office chair where she had been sitting. There were pictures of her desk, her body, her clothing, the file spread open on her desk, the murder weapon seized from Ansel's office, hundreds and hundreds of pictures. But one photograph stood out.
From among 368 photographs, one in particular grabbed Thaddeus' attention.
The office itself wasn't large by firm partnership standards: 15x17. As you came into the room you were greeted by a hexagonal table with slate top, four chairs equidistant around the table, and Suzanne's desk and chairs off to your right. She would have been facing her assailant when he first came into her office and, it had to be assumed, she would have known him, because her body was still seated in her chair--there evidently had been no effort on her part to stand and try to move away before being shot.
But there was blood--lots and lots of blood. Head wounds bleed profusely and hers was no different, for the bullet had entered and exited her head. The entry wound was not prodigious, maybe the size of a small marble. But the exit wound, entering on her right and exiting on her left, was huge, and had sprayed and leaked blood not only on her clothing, chair and desk, but also onto the floor.
And it was one picture of the floor that stopped Thaddeus cold.
The floor itself was unremarkable. It was a hardwood that was lighter in color than the blood which had sprayed it. Nothing remarkable there.
But what was remarkable was the patterning in and around the pool of blood on the hardwood. The blood itself, darker than the wood of the floor, looked as if it had been tattooed with some kind of object that left small tread marks. The tread marks were parallel, maybe two inches long, with four distinct treads per circle.
It stumped him.
And it didn't.
He had his ideas, but there was further inquiry to be made.
He already knew what he was looking for. Now to lay hands on it.
41
Chapter 41
It was cold that Monday in the third week of April.
Unusually frigid temperatures clung to the midwest and kept the thaw at bay. Ice slick sidewalks had been salted but the melted water quickly re-froze and people slipped and slopped as they navigated the Chicago court district.
At the street corners it was abnormally congested, with block-long plumes of smoke issuing from the traffic crawl. And everywhere were the jaywalkers, some successfully darting across, others getting halfway and slipping to the frozen surface, and on it went. The careful driver had one foot near the brake and one hand near the horn at all times.
Thaddeus hop-scotched the ice patches and clipped along two blocks from his LaSalle Street office.
He swung into the building and joined a frantic herd on the elevator for the monumentally slow ride upstairs. All eyes were glued to the passing numbers on the floor indicator. Occasional embarrassed conversations flitted between passengers who knew each other, or at least recognized each other and thought they might like to know each other better.
On the assigned courtroom floor, he found a crowd of reporters and cameras. It was as expected, because of the notoriety of Suzanne Fairmont, the only real challenger for the office of District Attorney. It was the headline of the day, the News at Five lead story, and Thaddeus had assiduously avoided calls from the press for comments and the occasional TV crew drop-in at the office. While he was friendly and affable, he really believed that trying cases in the press was verboten and to be avoided like the plague. Woe to the attorney who said one thing to the press that turned out to be other than what he had predicted once trial got underway. It was the same thing with opening statements to the jury: very little detail, hit the dynamics, avoid the specifics, somber tone, mildly ingratiating but not smarmy, sit the hell down.
He had made his way down front through the crowd. TV crews were set up outside the courtroom and reporters jabbed mikes at him as he shot past, mouth-clenched, his body language clearly indicating no comments would be made.
He had told Ansel to arrive at least an hour early in order to avoid the throngs outside, and the bailiff, by special decree, had unlocked the main doors momentarily and allowed Ansel to come inside, re-locking behind him until nine o'clock.
Both attorney and client were dressed in navy blue with pinstripes, both wore heavily starched white shirts, both wore regimental ties of some indiscernible regiment or other--all by design. Thaddeus had wanted them to look as lawyerly common as all other barristers looked that day, as they did every day in Midwestern winter. No need to stand out right or left or up or down. Vanilla, just plain vanilla. And if you really didn't want to insult anyone you even left the regimental stripes at home and opted for plain red, yellow, or blue. Those neckties always made it beyond all tests by the psychologists specially retained to sway jurors.
Thaddeus looked back over his shoulder. Prospective jurors and press and court-addicts jostled elbows and vied for seats. A huge swell of anticipation roiled the crowd at 9:00 a.m. Silence followed.
At 9:03, Judge Lawrence X. Zang was ready to address the packed court room.
"The defendant has been charged with first degree murder in the death of Suzanne Fairmont and he is facing life imprisonment for his natural lifetime in the Illinois State Penitentiary," Judge Zang announced. "Among the jurors in the courtroom right now, are there any among you who believe you should be excused from jury service here today based on what I have just said about the nature of this case?"
He gave it almost a full minute.
"Or about the identity of the victim, Suzanne Fairmont?"
Again, almost a full minute ticked by while everyone stared straight ahead.
Finally a wizened little man wearing a blue cardigan and an ancient necktie featuring a red bull, stood and said, "Did Suzanne live on my block?"
"What block would that be, sir, without giving your full address?"
"Thirty-seven-hundred North Sheridan, Room 400, Chicago, Illinois."
"That's a little more information than I needed, but thank you. And what is your name, sir?"
"Do I have to say it?"
"Please."
"Charlie Winters. Charles Nightingale Winters. Now you got me."
Smiles played across the mass of faces following the exchange.
"Let me ask counsel. Do either of you have any information regarding the victim's address? Whether she would have been a neighbor of Mr. Winters?"
Simultaneously both clusters of lawyers, cops, and investigators at counsel tables flashed on the fact that no one among them had any idea of Suzanne's address.
The judge finally lost patience with the buzz along counsel tables as everyone fumbled for some kind of knowledgeable response.
Then Mr. Winters continued on. "It probably don't matter. The Suzanne I know about has been gone fifteen years now."
Whereupon the judge's head snapped up. "Oh, all right, then, Mr. Winters. We wouldn't be talking about
the same Suzanne Fairmont, then, as the victim in this case is alleged to have died more recently.”
"Can't be her," said Mr. Winters. He sank back into his chair and absently rolled his necktie up and down, up and down.
"All right is there--"
"I'll just volunteer," said Mr. Winters. "First sergeant always said never volunteer. But that was beer call. Combat, you better be first with your hand up."
"Thank you, Mr. Winters, counsel will note that. The clerk will now draw names from a basket. If your name is called, please come forward and the clerk will seat you in the jury box. The court will then ask you questions, as will the two lawyers."
The clerk called names until the box was filled. They were an amalgam of Chicago voters from all walks of life. Young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino--every species of American was represented. Overall there were six more women than men, which happened time and again in Thaddeus' trials, and always made him wonder why more women made it onto juries than men.
Questioning of the jurors went on for several hours. Finally it was time for peremptory challenges. Thaddeus and Ansel put their heads together and struck jurors from the list—those they believed wouldn't serve them well. The state did likewise, until a jury panel was selected. While neither side was totally satisfied with the final makeup of the jury, what they were actually left with were the mildest of the worst. As was always true. Because if one juror was especially liked by the state, Thaddeus would strike that juror. And if Thaddeus wanted someone, the state would always strike them.
The jurors were welcomed by the court and sworn. Preliminary jury instructions were given, just general guidelines for the role of juror, what could be expected, length of trial, hours of court, hours of lunch, morning and noon breaks, and how to get a message to the judge if a problem came up during the week.
The attorneys were then asked to give their opening statements. The state went first. For the trial portion of the case, the DA’s office had sent to the fray William Eckles himself. It was high profile and Eckles needed votes; what better place than the highest-profile case of the year, to garner votes and love.
William Eckles scraped back, climbed to his feet, and took to the podium. Eckles was understated in looks: plain grey suit and yellow tie and socks, a military grade flattop hairstyle, black-frame eyewear and a confident look. He launched right into his speech, which Thaddeus immediately knew he had practiced several times in front of his mirror, for it was articulate and persuasive, bordering on argument but avoiding that precise terrain, as argument wasn't allowed, just a recitation of what he expected the facts and evidence to be. He smiled a very bright and winning smile several times at the jury as he went along, and Thaddeus was pained to see that at least four jurors were making copious notes as his adversary spoke.
Then came Thaddeus' turn.
"What you have just heard isn't evidence," he began. "Instead, it's a mere recitation of what Mr. Eckles expects the evidence to be. In all fairness, now that he has shown his hand, so to speak, I would respectfully request that you require him to prove to you each and every fact he has just told you about, beyond a reasonable doubt. And if he doesn't prove one or more of those facts, I would ask that you find my client not guilty as the state hasn't met its required degree of proof. Now here's what I think the evidence is going to show."
Thaddeus recounted the night in question, that, as Eckles had just said, Ansel was in fact at the office the night Suzanne Fairmont was murdered, but that he had heard no gunshot and, if he had pulled the trigger himself, as the state was claiming, you would expect him to flee from the scene, which he hadn't done at all. Instead, the parking garage attendant would testify that when Ansel checked out at his station that night, he didn't seem to be hurried or flustered, and there was nothing about him that was other than his ordinary demeanor. Phone records would be introduced that would show Ansel had been working up one of his cases that night, and that he had called his client and two witnesses from the office, and spent all told about two hours preparing their testimony for upcoming depositions and listening to their concerns. Those three witnesses would testify that Ansel was all business that night, that he wasn't hurried or bothered, and that he had worked with them on their case like he always did. He was thorough, polite, and perspicuous and they saw nothing extraordinary in his approach, his tone, or his telephone demeanor. He was, in their words, the same old Ansel as always.
Then Thaddeus went over what DA Eckles had had to stay about the gun recovered from Ansel's office. Without delving into particulars and giving away his game plan, he simply reminded the jury that they should jump to no conclusions about the gun, the fingerprints, the DNA, and that it was seized from Ansel's office until they had heard Ansel's side of what actually happened. He assured them that when they heard the truth about this they would be outraged and that this particular evidence alone would be enough for them to return a verdict of not guilty.
After the lay witnesses, the defense would call at least one forensics expert, maybe more, but Thaddeus kept this vague on purpose in order to disallow the state full preparation for his expert or experts.
Finally, Thaddeus said that he would put Ansel's wife on the stand to talk about his demeanor that night, what time he had left home, what time he had returned, whether he had any signs of blood or other unusual signs on his clothes. She would testify that she had personally washed the jeans and sweater shirt he was wearing that freezing night, and that she had noticed nothing unusual about the clothes such as blood spots or any other indication of his having been involved in a close-up shooting. She would also testify that Ansel hated guns, that he cried out against the NRA whenever it was mentioned on CNN, and that he regularly supported financially the James Brady lobby and movement to make the acquisition of firearms much more difficult in the U.S. Ansel had signed the petition at bradycampaign.org, urging Congress to require stringent background checks on all gun sales. The actual inclusion of his name among those who had signed the petition would be proved, along with a facsimile of the petition itself. This would, Thaddeus promised, go to his state of mind and his complete abhorrence of guns and possession of firearms without stringent checks. For him to have a gun his own office, Thaddeus summed up, was preposterous. It just didn't fit the puzzle that was the overall case.
Thaddeus sat down, the judge took a fifteen minute break, and the jury went back to the jury room and restrooms. Presentation of the state's case would begin when they resumed.
The first witness after the break was Chief of Detectives Jake O'Connor. He first recited his training and his long career with the Chicago Police Department. He had received three Commissioner's Commendations for meritorious service, and FOP Outstanding Citizen awards in 1992 and 2001. He testified that he commanded a group of Army Reserve MPs and held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, that he held a master's degree in forensics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and professional training and experience.
Jake was tall, lithe, and moved easily about the courtroom, coming down from the witness stand several times to explain photographs and drawings with a pointer, and to demonstrate how the gun seized from Ansel's office worked and describing the bullets that had been found in its cylinder as target loads.
He was conservative and didn't smile easily, but when he did smile--twice in four hours, Thaddeus was counting--his manner was winning and immediately caused all jurors to smile right back at him.
In great detail he testified how he had found Suzanne slumped in her office chair that night and that the gun that killed her had been seized from Ansel's office two doors down the hallway.
Several dozen photographs were marked and introduced and explained, including two of the wood floor around Suzanne's desk.
Then came Thaddeus' turn to cross-examine.
He stood and began, "Mr. O'Connor--"
"Lieutenant O'Connor, sir."
"Lieutenant? Your first name is lieutenant? So should I call you lieutenant lieutenant?"
"Objection! Harassing."
"Please move on, Mr. Murfee. Lieutenant O'Connor, you may answer to mister or to lieutenant, but you will need to answer."
"Mr. O'Connor, isn't it true you visited Ansel Largent at the jail late in the afternoon following his early morning arrest?"
"Yes. I was there very briefly."
"Describe your purpose in going there."
"I wanted to get his statement. I wanted to discuss Ms. Fairmont's murder with him, since we found the gun in his office."
"So you took the gun with you to meet with him?"
"I did not."
"And isn't it true the gun had no fingerprints and no DNA when you seized it from his office?"
The police officer broke off eye contact. He looked at D.A. Eckles. No help there. Slowly, he formulated his answer. "Prints and DNA were in fact found on the gun."
"But not until you had my client handle the gun at the jail, correct?"
"He didn't handle the gun at the jail."
"What if he testifies and tells the jury you brought the gun to your meeting with him at the jail?"
"He'd be mistaken. Or he'd be lying. I don't know him well enough to say which."
"Isn't there another possibility?"
"Not that I'm aware of."
"Isn't it possible that because the police and the sheriff's office deprived him of some very key medications that he was mentally imbalanced at the time you spoke with him?"
"I'm not a doctor. I know nothing about his mental balance. Or lack of."
"Well, I am going to call as a witness Ansel Largent's psychiatrist. Her name is Abigail Wurster, M.D."
The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 6) Page 20
