First Degree

by David Rosenfelt

  She’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Thank you for that. We’re going to be okay.” She kisses me, rolls over, and goes to sleep.

  Women.

  I’m not as good at getting to sleep these days as I used to be, and this is a tougher night than most. Instead of counting sheep, I count evidence, and I apply my “nothing is coincidence theory” to the latest developments.

  I had always wondered why someone would decapitate a victim and then bother to set the body on fire. In light of today’s events, I can now make the assumption that it was done so that we would have reason to doubt that the body was Dorsey at all.

  That might not have been accomplished by the decapitation alone, since there may well have been marks on the body capable of identifying Dorsey. Perhaps scars, perhaps a distinctive tattoo—

  I jump out of bed, rush down to the office, and then rummage through the case files until I get to the Stynes file. I find what I’m looking for—the autopsy records. And, more important, the autopsy photographs.

  The coroner had made reference to a tattoo on Stynes’s body, and I look to see if I can find it on the photographs. Sure enough, there it is, on the upper right forearm, where the coroner said it was. Even with my magnifying glass, though, it’s too small for me to make out details.

  At a key moment in the Willie Miller case, I called upon Vince Sanders to utilize the sophisticated machinery at his newspaper to blow up a photograph so that I could read a license plate. He was a pain in the ass about it, and that was at six o’clock in the evening. This is two in the morning. I’m going to call him, but if he has the technology to murder me over the phone, he’ll do it.

  I call Vince at home, and he answers on the third ring. “What the hell do you want?” are the first words out of his mouth.

  “How did you know it was me?” I say, though I realize he must have caller ID.

  “Next question,” he says dismissively.

  “Would you meet me at the paper? I know it’s late, but I need your help.”

  “Not as much help as you’d need if I met you at the paper,” he snarls.

  I play my only trump card. “Vince, it could be crucial to Laurie’s defense.”

  “Twenty minutes,” he says. “Take Market Street.”

  “Why?”

  “When you get to the corner of Market and Madison, you’ll know,” he says, and then hangs up.

  I quickly get dressed, leave a note for Laurie in case she should get up, and head for Vince’s office. Since my life is important to me, I stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the corner of Market and Madison. And since it should only be a twenty-minute meeting, I pick up six jelly and six glazed.

  The fact that Vince is meeting me at this hour reflects his feelings about Laurie. Vince Sanders, Pete Stanton, Kevin Randall, Marcus Clark, Andy Carpenter … we know who Laurie is and what she’s about. And if we have any power at all, she’s not about to spend a goddamn day in prison.

  Vince stuffs a donut in his mouth, takes the picture, and brings it into a room filled with large machines and people to run them. Within a few minutes the job is apparently accomplished, and he brings the enlarged photograph over to me, laying it out on a table.

  The tattoo on Stynes’s arm is now at least three times the size of the entire original photograph. I’m not sure what I was hoping for, probably a name or something that could become a clue to his identity. It’s still hard to make out, but it doesn’t seem as if my hopes are realized.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask.

  Vince shakes his head in disgust. “What are you, one of those hippie, draft-dodging, limousine liberal, pinko, defeatist, chickenshit, pacifist bastards?”

  I nod. “Pretty much …”

  “Those are crossed arrows. Your boy was Special Forces. Green Beret time.”

  This, if true, could be helpful. “Are you sure?”

  Vince snorts and points to his right knee. “Of course, I’m sure. If I didn’t have this trick knee, I would have been fighting commies right alongside him.”

  I point to his other knee. “I thought your left knee was the trick one.”

  He nods without embarrassment. “That’s part of the trick.”

  I thank Vince, and in an uncharacteristically gracious gesture, he offers me a jelly donut on my way out. The bigger they are, the nicer they are.

  I go home, grab three hours’ sleep, and get up at six to call Kevin. I tell him that we need to find a way to track Stynes, or whatever his real name was, back through his army record.

  “No problem,” he says. “I’ll call my brother-in-law.”

  It turns out that Kevin’s brother-in-law is Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Prentice, stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Not only does Kevin get along great with him, but he has done him some legal favors in the past, which Lieutenant Colonel Prentice would love to reciprocate. It is a stroke of luck, the first that we have had on this case.

  We agree that Kevin will spend the day following this lead and leaving the courtroom action in my so-far-incapable hands. And if there is a trial day to miss, this is as good as they come.

  Dylan is emboldened by last night’s news and loaded for bear. Before the jury comes in, he informs Hatchet of the developments and requests permission to revise both the witness list and the order in which they are called. He wants to make sure that the jury is immediately informed of the defense’s disaster. I object, but I don’t have a prayer of success, and Hatchet blows me away.

  Dylan calls the first officer to arrive at my house last night, who describes what took place. The jury doesn’t look terribly surprised, which is evidence that they have been ignoring Hatchet’s repeated admonitions to avoid media coverage of the case. The discovery of Dorsey’s head on my property was the lead story this morning.

  Next up on Dylan’s list is a neighbor of mine, Ron Shelby, who semireluctantly testifies that he had seen Laurie digging in the garden. I start off on cross by getting him to admit that he’s only seen Laurie planting seeds, not heads.

  Moving on, I ask, “Do you remember when you saw the defendant digging in the garden?”

  He thinks for a moment. “I can’t be sure. Maybe a couple of months ago. It’s hard to remember. I mean, at the time it didn’t seem unusual.”

  “Was it daytime?” I ask.

  “Yes, absolutely. And I work during the week, so it had to be on a weekend.” He’s trying to be helpful.

  “Was Ms. Collins acting secretive? Like she was hiding something?”

  He shakes his head. “No, she waved to me, and then we talked a little.”

  “Was she behaving at all strangely? Did you sense anything was wrong?”

  Shelby is picking up on where we’re going. “No, sir. She was as nice as can be. She’s a really nice person.”

  Dylan objects and Hatchet overrules. I conclude with a hypothetical. “Mr. Shelby, if you were trying to hide something very important, do you think you would do it in broad daylight on a weekend when everyone in the neighborhood could see you?”

  Shelby allows as how that is not how he would behave at all, and I let him go. I made a little progress, which Dylan doesn’t seem too concerned about, mainly because his next witness is the coroner, Dr. Tyler Lansing.

  Dr. Lansing is approaching retirement age, which will conclude what can only be described as a thoroughly distinguished career. He has no doubt spent more time in courtrooms than I have, and if there is such a thing as a truly unflappable witness, he’s the one.

  Dylan takes him through his findings concerning the time of death and the likelihood that the severed head and the burned body are a match. He also brings out the fact that the murderer struck from behind, making it more credible to the jury that Laurie could have done it without having to overpower Dorsey in the first place.

  Anybody in the courtroom with a brain knows that what he is testifying to is accurate and correct, and the jury would no doubt frown on anyone trying to get them to believe otherwise. Which
is okay, because I’m not dumb enough to attempt it.

  “Dr. Lansing,” I begin, “you’ve testified that the head that was dug up last night was severed from its body almost three months ago.”

  He nods. “That is correct.”

  “Was the face recognizable as Alex Dorsey?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Why had there been so little decomposition?”

  “It was buried in an airtight plastic wrapping,” he says.

  “A plastic bag?”

  “No, there was considerably more effort taken here. It was a thick plastic that was stapled and sealed at the edges.”

  “So the purpose of that effort would have been to prevent decomposition? To preserve the head?”

  Dylan objects. “Your Honor, the witness cannot possibly be expected to know the murderer’s purpose in doing this.”

  “Sustained,” says Hatchet.

  I try again. “Are you aware of any effect the plastic wrapping would have other than preservation?”

  He shrugs. “It would keep it clean.”

  “Would all of this keep it recognizable?”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  “So let me sum up, and tell me if you agree. The murderer decapitated, and burned the body, which had the effect of leaving the identity in some question. Then the murderer wrapped the head in airtight plastic, thereby preserving the identity. Is that fair?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the body was left in a place that could not be tied to the defendant, but the head was left in a place that could directly be tied to her?”

  Dylan objects, saying that this is beyond the scope of the coroner’s expertise. Hatchet sustains, but my point has been made. Even so, I try to drive it home.

  “Dr. Lansing, how well did you know Ms. Collins when she was with the police force?”

  “Reasonably well, I would say.”

  “Seem like a good cop? An intelligent cop?”

  He nods. “In my dealings with her, yes.”

  “Assuming she has a normal amount of common sense and a good knowledge of police procedures, wouldn’t you say that the prosecution’s theory as to her actions would make her self-destructive and stupid?”

  Dylan objects, but Hatchet lets him answer. “It would seem so. On the other hand, though this is not my area of expertise, I would say that some people who commit terrible crimes want to be caught and punished.”

  “Good,” I say. “We agree.”

  He is surprised. “We do?”

  “Yes. We agree that whoever did this wants Laurie Collins to be caught and punished.”

  LIEUTENANT COLONELS HAVE A LARGE workforce to call on when they want to get something done. Which is why Kevin’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Prentice, is able to call him back with our information just six hours after we had requested it.

  Kevin reports that since all identification records of Stynes had mysteriously been erased, our favorite LC had his minions compare his face with that of every known member of the Special Forces during the Vietnam era. A positive match was made, and Stynes’s real name is Roger Cahill. He was a sergeant in the 307th Division, Delta Company, and served in Vietnam for three years, distinguishing himself and winning three combat medals.

  Kevin asked him to run a military report on Alex Dorsey, but unfortunately Dorsey and Cahill were not in the same division. At first glance, nothing in Stynes/Cahill’s record matches Dorsey, but we put Marcus on the case to try to dig something up. The bottom line is, we have new information but don’t yet know enough to benefit from it.

  I put in a call to Darrin Hobbs, the FBI special agent who deflected my earlier attempts to get information about the FBI’s intervention into the Dorsey matter. I’m told he’s in a meeting, and I wind up speaking to Agent Cindy Spodek, Hobbs’s underling, heretofore best known for successfully resisting my conversational charms when we last met.

  This time she’s just as aloof, but I’m not trying as hard. I don’t really care if she likes me or not; I’m looking for information. I tell her what I’ve learned about Cahill and that I want access to the FBI investigative files to see if he is included in them, under either “Cahill” or “Stynes.”

  To my surprise she seems interested by what I am saying, and asks some clarifying questions. But ultimately, she says, “You understand that I can’t authorize the release of our confidential information. That will be up to Special Agent Hobbs.”

  This is what I expected. “When can I speak with him?”

  “I’ll be talking with him before the end of the day.”

  I give her my phone number and tell her I’ll be waiting for his call.

  “One of us will call you back,” she says. “But I must tell you, I think you should pursue any other avenues you have. It is not the kind of information Special Agent Hobbs is likely to share.”

  I again ask that he call me, and she promises to do her best. She seems sympathetic to my request but cognizant of the inclinations of the person for whom she works. My guess is that she is right, and I doubt that I’ll hear from him.

  It takes ten minutes to again be proved wrong. The phone rings and Hobbs himself is on the phone.

  “Andy? Darrin Hobbs here. What’s this about you needing more information?” His tone is friendly but on-the-run, as if he’s really busy, but he’ll take a few seconds to rid himself of this annoyance.

  “That’s right,” I say. “There’s a new piece added to the puzzle. A guy named Cahill.”

  “Never heard of him,” he says dismissively.

  “It’s not the only name he uses. I need to know if he turned up in your investigation of Petrone and Dorsey.”

  “That road is closed. I told you that.”

  The guy is on my nerves, but it won’t pay to antagonize him. “Yes, you did,” I say. “I’m hoping you’ll reconsider.”

  He laughs a short laugh at the absurdity of my hope. “It’s not going to happen.”

  There’s no sense beating around the bush. “Hopefully, the judge will have a different view of that.”

  The temperature of his voice drops fifty degrees in the blink of an eye. “I don’t know how much you know about me, Carpenter, but if you know anything, then you know I can’t be threatened.”

  “I’m defending my client,” I point out, my voice reflecting my annoyance.

  “Good for you.” Click.

  Within thirty seconds of the time he hangs the phone up, my anger switches from being directed at Hobbs the pompous asshole to Carpenter the idiotic, counterproductive defense attorney. I’ve just permanently pissed off the only guy who might have information that could help Laurie.

  Good job, Andy.

  I call Kevin and give him the job of preparing a motion asking Hatchet to compel Hobbs to turn over the FBI investigation files. Kevin is happy to do it; motions like this are undoubtedly one of his strengths, and this will prevent him from having to be in court tomorrow morning. It would be depressing to watch me spend another day playing legal rope-a-dope, lying back as Dylan pummels us with witnesses.

  Actually, the rope-a-dope analogy isn’t quite accurate.

  Ali, in using it in his fight against Foreman, was doing it intentionally. I’m not.

  Ali had a strategy. I don’t.

  Ali had the masses chanting “Ali bomaye! Ali bomaye!,” which when translated means “Ali, kill him! Ali, kill him!” I have the press, writing columns and going on TV, essentially saying, “Carpenter, you’re a moron! Carpenter, you’re a moron!,” which when translated means “Carpenter, you’re a moron! Carpenter, you’re a moron!”

  Dylan’s first punch/witness of the day is a neighbor of Oscar Garcia, who recounts having seen Laurie hanging out near Oscar’s apartment on a number of occasions. I make the point that “apartment hanging” is not a felony, but it remains an effective small piece of Dylan’s puzzle.

  Next up is Laurie’s ex-partner on the force, Detective Stan Naughton. He looks like he would rather be anywhere
else than here and occasionally looks over at Laurie, his eyes apologizing for what his mouth is saying.

  Naughton recounts the story of Oscar providing drugs to the daughter of Laurie’s friend and how Laurie was determined to nail Oscar for it. It provides motive with a capital “M,” at least concerning the initial framing of Oscar for the Dorsey killing.

  With Naughton obviously friendly to the defense, it’s simply my job on cross-examination to lead him where he already wants to go. I take my time doing so, prompting him to talk about Laurie’s exemplary record on the force, his feeling that she is a levelheaded, decent human being who abhors violence and who never came anywhere close to committing police brutality.

  Kevin shows up, motion in hand, and I tell Hatchet that we have an important matter to bring up before the court. We file the motion, providing Dylan with a copy, and Hatchet schedules argument for nine A.M. tomorrow.

  Kevin and I are going to be up late tonight going over our position on the motion. We will have to convince Hatchet that the Cahill/Stynes involvement in the case is relevant and presents a credible alternative to Laurie’s guilt. At the same time, we also have to make him believe that there is at least a reasonable chance that the FBI files contain information that could be exculpatory to Laurie.

  I arrive home before Kevin, and Edna hands me the mail that has built up over the last three days. It’s mostly solicitations for charitable contributions, and I have a quick pang of guilt that I have been neglecting my philanthropic blundering during the trial.

  There is also an envelope from Stephen Cates, the opposing lawyer in the Willie Miller civil lawsuit. It’s surprisingly thick, and when I open it, I see why. It is a one-page letter attached to a long legal document. The letter informs me that they have agreed to our demands and that when Willie signs the attached settlement agreement, they will forward a check in the amount of eleven million seven hundred thousand dollars.

  I’m thrilled for Willie, but I’m so obsessed with the trial that my first reaction is to view this as a distraction. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be fair to Willie not to tell him about it immediately, so I ask Edna to call him and have him come over.