His Honor backed her up on that.
Hetzler turned away from me, consulting some notes on the defense table.
When he faced me again his lips were pursed. “I’d like to return to your earlier statement, Ms. Dare.”
“Fine.”
“Since we can’t establish an accurate time frame for the number of months—or years—the child’s remains might have been at the cemetery,” he continued, “how could you have known that the damage to the rib cage you saw was not inflicted after the remains had been placed inside the grounds?”
“Because of the bushes,” I said.
Hetzler smirked. “The bushes.”
“The space beneath them was about this high,” I said, holding my left hand less than two feet above my right, stationary in its plaster.
“It’s impossible that anyone could have accidentally stepped on the child’s ribs while walking upright. Furthermore, I can’t imagine how someone could have inflicted a blow of sufficient force to crack the bones given the restricted size of the space.”
“In your non-expert opinion,” said Hetzler.
“Yes sir, in my non-expert opinion. Not least because that foliage had been untouched since the mid-nineteen-fifties.”
“Despite the considerable homeless population known to camp inside the cemetery?”
“All I can tell you, Mr. Hetzler,” I said, “is that they seemed to have done a great deal more camping than gardening.”
Someone on the jury stifled a laugh.
“Nonetheless, you offer this opinion on the basis of your own expertise as—what, a volunteer gardener?” he shot back.
“Yes, and why not? My initial impression of the vegetation struck me as pertinent to bring up here because what it all looked like originally might not have been apparent to the investigating police officers. It was greatly altered by the time they arrived at the scene.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I’d chopped the bushes up with a machete and hedge clippers. That foliage was six large lawn-and-leaf bags less overgrown by the time the police arrived. That was the whole point of the afternoon. We weren’t there for a tea party on the lawn.”
Hetzler looked at the judge. “Your Honor, I have no more questions for this witness.”
Galloway passed as well.
I was instructed to step down, the judge dismissed us for lunch, and everyone who could bolted for the lobby.
I waited until the room had emptied out enough that I could glom onto Kyle and Cate before I would brave the exit doors myself. Even then, my heart rate was manic until I saw Skwarecki waiting outside.
47
Any news?” I asked Skwarecki.
“Nothing yet on the car,” she said. “I’ve got a couple guys on it again.”
“What car?” asked Kyle.
I laid out the previous night’s events for Kyle and Cate as we headed once more to the restaurant across the road.
“You guys ever feel like you’ve been marooned on Gilligan’s Ziti Island?” I asked, shivering in the snow as we waited for the light to change.
“Five days a week,” said Kyle, blowing into his cupped hands. “Right around now.”
Despite my bitching I practically licked my plate, then batted cleanup on Cate’s.
“Stomach settled?” asked Skwarecki when I asked if we had time for dessert.
“Making up for yesterday,” I said.
My testimony was finished. I didn’t figure there was anything else to worry about—outside whether the jury convicted Angela and
Albert.
About that I worried a great deal.
Kyle left first, after throwing a ten and a five on the table. “Bost wants to run something by me. See you back inside.”
He was waiting for us in the gallery’s back row by the time we returned ourselves.
Taking the seat between him and Cate, I knew I’d have a much better view of the judge and jury than I’d had on the stand, but I already missed being able to check out the facial expressions of Angela, Albert, and the three attorneys head-on.
The five of them were already seated at their tables up front, separated from the rest of us by a low railing, but I noticed an extra head next to Bost’s. “Who’s the new guy?”
“Assistant,” Kyle whispered back. “She’s got some display stuff to set up.”
There were maybe thirty other people scattered throughout the gallery in front of us, most sitting solo, buffered by unoccupied chairs to either side.
The jury box was still empty, as was the judge’s high-backed black leather chair. We were quiet but for the occasional rustle of papers or muffled February cough. The clerk and bailiff sat beneath the judge’s dais, heads bent over some sort of desk work.
The jurors filed in and took their chairs, two rows of six. The bailiff announced the judge.
Knees and chairs creaked around the room as we all rose to our feet, and for just a second I thought we might sing the national anthem next, or at least turn toward the flag, hands over hearts to pledge
allegiance.
The judge twitched his robes and sat down. The rest of us followed suit, sneaking in a few last sniffles and throat-clearings.
Someone nearby crinkled a bit of cellophane, and I caught a sharp hit of mentholated cough drop.
The judge brought things back into play with a gavel rap, and Bost called Skwarecki to the stand at long last.
I looked around the audience while she did the whole swearing in, but couldn’t tell much from the back of anyone’s head.
Boogeyman, boogeyman, fly away home; leave me and all other children alone.
Bost got to her feet. “Good afternoon, Detective Skwarecki.”
“Good afternoon.”
Bost walked closer to the witness stand. “I’d like to return to the afternoon last September when you were first called to Prospect
Cemetery.”
“September the nineteenth,” said Skwarecki.
“Exactly, thank you. Can you tell us what you found there, Detective, when you first arrived at the scene?”
I zoned out a little as they ran through the preliminaries. The room was getting stuffy now, as though the heat had just kicked up a notch. I unbuttoned my jacket and took it off, laying it across my lap.
I’d forgotten about Bost’s assistant until he stood to set up a tripod easel, about twenty minutes in. He walked back to her table and picked up a stack of what looked like posterboards, then settled the first one into the easel brackets so that it faced the jury.
From our corner we had a decent view: a large black-and-white shot of Prospect, from just inside the front gates.
“Detective Swarecki,” said Bost, “is this the cemetery as it looked when you arrived that afternoon?”
“Yes. You can see the crime-scene tape running along the outside of the bushes, to the left of the path there.”
The assistant replaced shot number one with a view taken from the path into the bushes.
“This is the area where Ms. Dare had been working that afternoon?” asked Bost.
“Yes.”
“She testified earlier that the area of foliage she’d been working on was particularly dense,” said Bost. “Would you agree?”
“Yes,” said Skwarecki.
Bost nodded to the young guy, who switched out the path image for shot number three: a wall of vines and branches with a low, dark space at the bottom.
“Can you describe what we’re seeing here, Detective?”
“This is the area where Ms. Dare stopped clipping branches. You can see the white ends of those she’d just finished cutting.”
Bost stepped up to the easel. “Here and here, for instance?”
“Exactly.”
“And what is this area?” asked Bost, pointing to the shadowed area at the base of the image.
“That’s the opening she crawled into after spotting a headstone.”
The fourth shot was a close-up of the tun
nel with a yardstick measuring its height: nineteen inches. You couldn’t see into the darkness beyond.
“Could you say how this little passageway was made?” asked Bost.
“Animals, most likely.”
Bost motioned to her assistant. “And inside that tunnel you saw this?”
The next photo had obviously been taken with a flash. I heard someone in the jury box gasp. You could see Teddy’s tiny skull clearly, and his little smashed rib cage.
“Yes,” said Skwarecki as Bost’s assistant displayed two more photos of the bones from different angles. “We wanted to make sure that we’d recorded the site where the remains were discovered exactly as it was when Ms. Dare found it, before any further effort was made to clear the surrounding brush.”
The next shot showed the skull in more detail: Teddy Underhill’s big eyes, and baby teeth.
The flash had illuminated part of the headstone behind him so you could make out a piece of its spidery inscription: Beloved Son, Departed This Life…
I hoped they hadn’t shown it to Mrs. Underhill. I’d lied about the cherub.
I turned to look at the jury in time to see one lady crossing herself. The men looked angry, the women on the verge of tears.
Good.
“Could we return to the previous photo?” asked Bost.
Her assistant complied and she thanked him before stepping closer to the image.
“In your opinion, Detective Skwarecki,” said Bost, pointing to the broken ribs, “could the damage we see in this photograph have occurred after the child’s remains had been placed here?”
“No, it could not,” said Skwarecki.
“Why is that?”
“Given the amount of force necessary to inflict that kind of damage,” she said, “it couldn’t have occured in such a confined space. I’m sure the pathologist can explain that in more detail, but I can tell you based just on what you see in this photo that there’s no way someone could have done that while inside the tunnel, even if they used some sort of instrument.”
Bost nodded. “But could it have been done by an animal, or someone who stepped on the child’s body after it was placed here?”
“No, it could not. For the same reasons.”
“Thank you, Detective,” said Bost.
Her assistant gathered the photos and returned them to the prosecution table, but he left the easel in place.
48
I’d like to jump ahead a bit, here, Detective,” said Bost, “and ask you about how you came to identify these remains as being those of little Teddy Underhill.”
“All right,” said Skwarecki.
Bost turned to the jury box. “Now first of all, as Ms. Ludlam told us yesterday, Prospect Cemetery has been in use as a burial ground since the mid-sixteen-hundreds. I’m sure we all might wonder whether it’s extremely unusual to find human bones in a graveyard, yet it seems that the investigating officers immediately decided that this was a suspicious death which had occurred relatively recently. Can you tell us what first led you to that conclusion, Detective?”
“Two things,” said Skwarecki. “The first is that Ms. Ludlam was so familiar with the state of the grounds as a whole. She knew that none of the graves had been disturbed, beyond some vandalism to the memorial stones over the years. The second indication was the state of the bones themselves.”
“Can you describe what you learned from your own inspection of the bones on-site that first day?”
“It was immediately apparent that the victim was a child, of course,” answered Skwarecki. “But I could also tell right away that these were the remains of someone who’d died within the previous six months.”
“How so?”
“Most importantly, the ends of the bones change over time with exposure to the elements. It would be impossible to pinpoint an exact day of the victim’s death from skeletal remains, but forensically, we can establish a slightly broader time frame with a good deal of accuracy. The color of the bones themselves also tells us something. They grow whiter over time when exposed to the elements. These bones weren’t white. Given those observations, I knew this was not a child who’d died a hundred years ago, or even two years ago.”
“So you estimated that the boy had died within the previous six months?”
“Yes,” said Skwarecki. “And I was backed up by the pathologist’s report, as I expected to be.”
“But there were things you couldn’t tell about this victim because of the state of his remains, weren’t there?”
“Yes. A number of them.”
“In fact, the boy’s age made the likelihood of identification more difficult?”
“If the child had been found sooner, of course we might have had more to go on—his blood type, his hair color, his facial features—and had he been older, we might have expected to confirm his identity with dental records.”
“With none of those details, you’re still certain that the boy found in the cemetery was Edward Underhill?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us why?”
“First of all, none of the information the pathologist was able to give me on the basis of his examination ruled out that identification.”
“Such as?” asked Bost.
“This was a child, aged just over three years, of African American descent.”
“Were you aware that Teddy Underhill was missing when these remains were discovered?”
“Not personally, no.”
“And yet you found the report that listed him as missing rather quickly, didn’t you?”
“Within a week,” said Skwarecki.
“Is there some sort of database you consulted?”
“No. It turned out that one of Teddy’s relatives had been very active in keeping the attention of some fellow officers on his case.”
“Was that the boy’s mother, Angela Underhill?” asked Bost.
“No, it was not.”
“So Teddy’s mother didn’t seem to care that he was missing?” asked Bost.
Hetzler leaped up. “Objection!”
“I’ll withdraw the question, Your Honor,” said Bost before Hetzler could even specify what he was objecting to.
The judge nodded and Hetzler sat down again.
“Which relative kept in contact with the police?” asked Bost.
“Teddy’s great-grandmother, Elsie Underhill. She came to the station on a weekly basis.”
“Detective,” continued Bost, “on these occasions did Angela Underhill accompany Mrs. Elsie Underhill when she visited the officers in your precinct house?”
“Only on the first occasion, when they came together to file the missing-persons report.”
“Can you tell us anything else about the circumstances of that report having been filed?”
“Yes,” said Skwarecki. “Teddy’s mother waited for two weeks before contacting the police to report him missing.”
“And was there a reason why she waited so long?”
“I know why she stopped waiting.”
“And why was that?”
Skwarecki leaned in, a little closer to the mike. “Angela Underhill went to her grandmother for money the day that report was filed.”
“Objection!” said Hetzler, on his feet again. “Hearsay.”
“Sustained,” said the judge. “The jury is instructed to disregard the answer.”
“On what date was the report filed?” asked Bost.
“May the second,” said Skwarecki.
“And it was something listed in that report that allowed you to identify the remains found at Prospect as Teddy Underhill’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Skwarecki. “The little boy’s sneakers.”
Bost’s assistant returned to the easel and fitted a new photo enlargement into its brackets, a shot of Teddy’s sneaker, the words CLUB MELMAC clearly legible even though it was smeared with dirt.
Bost pointed at the shoe. “This is the sneaker one of Ms. Ludlam’s volunteers found o
n the afternoon of September twenty-sixth, isn’t it?”
“It is,” confirmed Skwarecki.
“Ms. Dare testified earlier that she could tell the sneaker matched your description from these words printed on the side.”
Skwarecki nodded.
“But can we know for sure that this sneaker belonged to Teddy Underhill?” asked Bost. “It was found some distance from the remains, wasn’t it?”
“About a hundred feet away.”
“And did you find any other item of the boy’s clothing that had been listed in the report?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
“The second shoe,” said Skwarecki.
Bost’s assistant put another photo up on the easel. This one was printed with the aardvark-faced character ALF, waving.
“How can you be so sure that these shoes belonged to Teddy Underhill? Isn’t it possible that finding them at Prospect Cemetery was a coincidence?”
“We know when and where they were purchased,” said Skwarecki. “All the clothes Teddy was wearing when his mother last saw him had been birthday gifts.”
“From whom?”
“From Elsie Underhill.”
“You’re certain about that?” asked Bost.
“Mrs. Underhill still had the receipts,” said Skwarecki.
“Detective, can you tell us anything else about that missing-persons report?”
“Such as?”
“Well, how did Angela Underhill say her child had gotten lost?”
“Objection,” said Hetzler. “Calls for hearsay.”
“Sustained,” said the judge.
“In the missing-person’s report Angela Underhill filed with the police,” said Bost, “Miss Underhill stated that while her boyfriend Albert Williams was babysitting her son, Teddy, Mr. Williams fell asleep and Teddy wandered out of their motel room, isn’t that right?”
“It is,” said Skwarecki.
Cate leaned toward me, whispering, “Do they know yet what happened?”
I shrugged. “Skwarecki didn’t mention anything.”
“And is that what happened, Detective?” asked Bost. “Did Angela Underhill tell the truth in her report?
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