No Time for Death: A Yoshinobu Mystery

by John A. Broussard

  “Now, his wife and several of the people he worked with reported his eyes were badly swollen. Taking all of these symptoms under consideration, and assuming they are a correct report of the victim's condition, would you have arrived at a tentative diagnosis?”

  “Most certainly. I have seen many cases such as this in the Philippines. I would have assumed it was trichinosis.”

  “Would you explain that term, please?”

  “It's a parasitic disease caused by a small worm called Trichinella spiralis. The chief source of the disease is infected pork, though any carnivorous or omnivorous animals such as bears or chickens or dogs may be a source. If raw or inadequately cooked meat from an infected animal is eaten, viable parasites are ingested. They then breed and multiply in the human and eventually invade the muscle tissues causing, in the early stages, the symptoms you have just described.”

  “The victim's wife testified he had recently purchased some Bulgarian sausages. Could these possibly be a source of trichinosis?”

  “Yes. A few years back there were some cases resulting from eating processed meats imported from Europe.”

  “Assuming someone does become infected with this disease, how high might the patient's temperature get?”

  “That would be difficult to predict. It could range from a low-grade fever to as much as a hundred-and-five degrees. I've seen it even higher than that, though that is unusual and could be fatal.”

  “Had Mr. Matthias kept his appointment on that Saturday, would you have conducted any tests to determine the correctness of your diagnosis?”

  “Most certainly. There is a standard blood test aimed at diagnosing trichinosis.”

  “Would you describe the test, please?”

  “There is a special white blood cell in our system which increases in the presence of parasites. These cells are called eosinophilia. Ordinarily, they make up only four to five percent of all the white blood cells. A severe infection by Trichinella spiralis can produce a count of forty percent or more.”

  “The police provided you with a blood sample from the victim. Did you test the sample?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “A count of almost eighty-five per cent.

  “Would a patient with such a high count be expected to have an accompanying fever”?

  “Yes, most certainly.”

  “Could the fever have reached a hundred-and-two degrees.”

  “Easily.”

  At that point, Kay returned to the defense table, picked up a chart from it and showed it to Dr. Abang. “Do you recognize this chart, doctor?

  “Yes, it's the Dawes Temperature-Morbidity chart, used to estimate time of death.”

  Kay went on to describe the temperature in Matthias office at the time he was discovered, the temperature of his body at the time of the preliminary examination, and the pathologist's decision death had occurred at two o'clock.

  “If the victim's temperature was normal at the time of death, do you feel two o'clock is an accurate estimate of the time of death?”

  Abang examined the chart, running his finger along it.

  “Yes, it corresponds exactly to the graph for that ambient temperature.”

  After that day’s session, Kay told me she had been really nervous about the next question. She said she was hoping Ikeda was so cowed or so preoccupied with his quick medical course he wouldn't object to her completely hypothetical question. It was part of the reason she ended her questioning so suddenly following Abang's answer. “Now, if we assume the victim's body temperature was one-hundred-and-two degrees at the time of death, what time would death have occurred?”

  Abang again ran his finger along the chart.

  “That would place time of death at five minutes to twelve, plus or minus fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Abang.”

  Kay turned abruptly away and said, “No further questions, your honor.”

  I was a bit peeved. Abang had everyone's attention. He was doing a great job. I thought there were a lot more questions she could have asked. I couldn't resist writing her a note asking her why she hadn't kept on questioning him.

  She wrote me back one word.

  “Watch!”

  ***

  Ikeda was back in top form again and raring to go. Taking one last look at the medical book on his table, he trotted up to the witness stand.

  His first question was. “Are you a pathologist?”

  “No.”

  “Did you examine the body of the victim?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “But you have made the representation the victim was killed at five minutes to twelve.”

  Kay rose and objected. She protested Ikeda was being argumentative.

  “Sustained. Please confine your questioning to questions.”

  “Did you make the representation the victim was killed at five minutes to twelve?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “But you gave as your opinion the victim expired at five minutes to twelve.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Again I must remind the prosecutor cross-examination is meant to elicit answers to questions. It is not intended as a means for an attorney to tell the witness what he ought to be saying.”

  Ikeda's exasperation began to show. His voice sounded truculent. “Well, what did you say about the time of death?

  “I said that if the ambient temperature was seventy-two degrees, and if the temperature of the body at the time of preliminary examination was ninety-seven-point-four degrees, and if the victim—my patient—had a temperature of one-hundred-and-two degrees at the time of death, then—according to the Dawes Temperature-Morbidity chart—death occurred at five minutes to twelve, plus or minus fifteen minutes.”

  Ikeda abruptly shifted to a different topic.

  “Is the blood test you described a definitive test for trichinosis?”

  “No, it is not.”

  “But you claimed the victim was suffering from trichinosis.”

  “Objection.”

  “This is becoming tedious,” Lisa said, showing no signs of anger. “Counsel for the defense need not voice further objections on these grounds. I will personally monitor the prosecutor to see he confines himself to questioning rather than to asserting answers for the witness.”

  Kay could see the back of Ikeda's neck reddening.

  “Didn't you state the victim was suffering from trichinosis at the time of his death?”

  “No, I did not.”

  There were sounds of laughter among the spectators. Lisa glared, and the laughter quickly tapered off.

  “What did you say about the victim's condition?”

  “I said that if the reported symptoms were accurate, and in light of the results of the blood test, the victim was very likely to be suffering from trichinosis.”

  “But isn't trichinosis very unusual in the US?”

  “Yes it is?”

  “Then wouldn't that make it likely that your patient was suffering from something else?”

  “Not if he had eaten raw Bulgarian sausages?”

  Lisa had to gavel the court back to silence.

  “But no one made the . . . “ Ikeda caught himself and looked at the judge, then shifted topics again.

  “Wouldn't the final proof of trichinosis have been the presence of the parasite in muscle tissue?”

  “No it would not?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the presence of the parasite might be simply an indication of an earlier infection by Trichinella spiralis.”

  “Dr. Abang, why did you fail to diagnosis the patient as suffering from trichinosis when he first came to your office?”

  “Because the symptoms he exhibited and reported at the time are typical of a wide range of diseases, from appendicitis to food poisoning. There is no known medical test which would have definitively identified trichinosis at that stage.” Ikeda worked away at trying to under
mine Abang's competence in the area of parasitology only to uncover two years of clinical experience by the doctor where he had actually conducted scores of postmortems in the Philippines.

  Lisa interrupted the questioning to declare a recess. Ikeda had apparently decided finally he wasn't making much headway against the witness, who by that time actually seemed eager to field questions. The prosecuting attorney shook his head and indicated the cross-examination was over.

  Kay chose not to re-examine, and Lisa changed the recess to an adjournment to the following morning.

  Kay commented to Sid. “After that, it would be awfully easy for me to become overconfident.”

  Chapter 24

  I seldom take a sleeping pill. But the night before I was scheduled to testify, I knew I needed a good night's sleep. I took two. They knocked me out.

  On the way to Kay's office the next morning, I stopped at the market and sneaked a look at the editorial page of the Chronicle. I wasn't about to buy a copy. There wasn't a trace of the campaign against women judges. There were no letters praising the editor's courageous stand against females in the judicial system, and no cartoons at all. The editorial was an innocuous one urging the administration to send troops to some Middle East country.

  That's an improvement, I thought.

  Kay, Sid and I got to her office at an early seven-thirty. Kay took me through a dress rehearsal. We'd done it all before, but she didn't want to take any chances. And neither did I. After she'd finished, Sid took over and acted out Ikeda's role. And he was good! So good, in fact, I caught myself getting furious at his questions and the way he was asking them.

  At the end, Sid grinned, and said. “Now you know what to expect. There's nothing Ikeda would like more than to have you blow your stack and take a swing at him. No matter what he asks or how he asks it, keep telling yourself, ‘The jury thinks I'm a mild-mannered guy and that's what counts. The more the prosecutor tries to make me mad, and the less he succeeds, the better for me.'“

  Kay added, “Make believe he's a particularly obnoxious customer, looking for a piece of real estate, and with a million dollars to spend. Does that help?”

  I laughed. “I'll be so sweet and cooperative Ikeda will be by the real estate office on Monday begging me to show him a condominium.”

  That's when I suddenly wondered just what it was I'd be doing on the following Monday.

  ***

  When the judge walked into court, my mouth felt like the Sahara Desert. I suddenly had the urge to get up and scream, “I'm guilty! Send me to jail. Get it over with.”

  Kay knew how I was feeling. She put a cool hand on top of mine, and I begin to climb up from the bottom of that deep well. By the time I was called to the witness stand, I was in only a mild state of shock.

  Kay followed our strategy to the letter. She planned to make my testimony short and to the point. The idea was to maintain the impression I was innocent, and my testimony was necessary only to explain why there was any confusion at all on that point.

  She asked me to describe what had happened from eleven on that Saturday morning until two o'clock in the afternoon.

  I described Dale when he called me into his office. Kay had warned me to underplay his strange behavior. I did, but it wasn't easy. The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced he was hallucinating while he was talking.

  She asked me to describe my mood when I left, and I told her I wasn't exactly happy. Talking to Schultz had helped. And I figured maybe by the time Dale had had the chance to calm down, he'd change his mind about firing me. Then, when I got back to the office, I got cold feet.

  “What time was that?”

  “Just about quarter to two.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Puttered.”

  “Puttered?”

  “Yes. I was pretty upset. I don't enjoy having people get mad at me, and I was afraid if I went back in to see Dale he'd pick up where he'd left off. On the other hand I knew I was going to have to face him sooner or later. So I kind of cleaned up my desk and then straightened up some books on the shelf. Finally, I took a deep breath, walked across to Dale's office and knocked on the door.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I'm not sure. But it must have been right around two o'clock.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I waited, but there wasn't any answer. At first, I thought he'd gone out. I knocked again and, since the door was ajar, I pushed it open and walked in. When I saw him with his head down on his desk, I thought he was just having a snooze. When I stepped up closer and saw the club I got over that feeling real quick. I suppose what I should have done was to check his pulse or do something like that. Instead, I picked up the club.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I'm not sure. In fact, I'm not sure why I did anything right then. The head of the club was lying on his neck as though someone had thrown it there, and I guess I just felt that wasn't right. I know what I did doesn't make any sense. Just then I got to thinking I should call the police.”

  “Was there any fresh blood on his head, or on the club, or anywhere in the room?”

  “No. There was some dried blood, though. I remember seeing the glass ashtray he’d slammed down just as I left. He must have cut himself on the glass, because there was dried blood on it too.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I heard someone come into the building and walk toward Dale's office. I suddenly had the feeling the killer was coming back and I was going to be next. Then I saw it was Reggie. His eyes were bigger than saucers. I told him someone had killed Dale, which was kind of a dumb thing to say because it was pretty obvious. He stuttered and said we'd better call the police. I put the club down and walked out to the reception desk and put through the call. The police got there right after I hung up.”

  Kay turned me over to Ikeda.

  When he stepped up in front of me, he smiled and looked a little bit like the male half of the Japanese couple running the Mom 'n Pop grocery near my house. That guy's always friendly and polite.

  Ikeda was neither friendly nor polite.

  I told myself he had a million dollars in his pocket and was almost sold on a condominium I had an exclusive on.

  “Are you trying to make the jury believe that you were caught holding the murder weapon in your hand and standing over your employer who'd just fired you, and that you didn't kill him?”

  “I hope the jury will believe I didn't kill him, since I didn't.” (Not a bad answer, if I say so myself.)

  “Were you angry at him for firing you?”

  “Yes. I don't think any employee is exactly happy with his boss if he gets fired.” (That was too cutesy. Gotta watch it.)

  “Employees do not ordinarily kill their bosses because they've been fired. Are you aware of that?”

  “Yes. And it didn't occur to me, either, that I should kill my employer because he fired me? (That's a little better.)

  Ikeda worked his way through the two o'clock scene a half dozen times. I thought he was doing more than a little badgering, but Kay had warned me she wasn't going to object unless he became completely outrageous. “If you can stand up under it,” she'd said, “it will make a good impression on the jury. Keep in mind, that's what's important.”

  I stood up under it.

  ***

  Sid and Kay had spent most of the previous evening going over her summation to the jury. John Samuel insisted on walking back and forth on Kay's yellow pad, trying to get her attention. Sheena had taken refuge from her kittens by crawling up onto Sid's lap. The three offspring were playing wildly around Sid's legs.

  “It's time to move those little devils on to their new homes,” Kay said. Craig keeps asking for his tabby, and Corky's getting impatient, too. Do you have any idea what we should do with Bluebeard?”

  “Well, I was thinking that perhaps, maybe . . .”

  “Sid, you're impossible. We can't have three grown cats in this apartment. Th
e landlord's already making grumbling noises.”

  “That's something I was going to talk to you about. Ron says he has a really good buy on the Ridge, just below the road. It's an acre of flat ground with a great view. I've been out there. What we'd get out of that piece of commercial property—the one I got from Bill Landis for defending him—would be more than enough to pay for the land and for a new house. And Ron says the value of the land out there is bound to go up. We could move and see what it was like. If it didn't suit us, we could always sell it at a big profit. And look at the rent we'd save in the meantime.”

  Kay shook her head in wonder. “I only hope Ron is as successful at selling himself to the jury as he is at selling real estate.”

  “Well, would you at least consider it?”

  Kay smiled, leaned over and kissed him. “OK, I'll consider it, but only if you keep quiet and let me get on with this summation. I'll let you read it when I'm through, and you can tell me if I've missed anything.”

  Sid gave a snort. “We can't afford to miss anything.”

  “That's the old pessimist speaking. Let's go into court tomorrow with a positive attitude.”

  “It's going to be a lot more important for Ron to have a positive attitude.”

  Chapter 25

  There had been one brief moment while Ikeda was questioning me when I slipped away from reality. The courtroom became the one at the end Alice in Wonderland. The jury had become animals, and though I hadn’t turned to look at her, I fully expected the judge to have changed into the Queen of Hearts and to hear her bellow “Off with his head!” The moment passed. I had to ask Ikeda to repeat his question, but no one seemed to notice

  If anything, the unreality of the now real world made it that much easier for me give calm answers to my raging interrogator.

  ***

  Sid passed a note to Kay.

  “He's doing great.”

  She returned his note with her comment.

  “He sure is. I only hope I do him justice this afternoon.”

  Sid drew a line under her comment and wrote:

  “You will.”