A Plague of Secrets

26

Debra Schiff had given her direct testimony to Paul Stier and now was well into her second hour on the stand. She thought she was holding her own pretty well in the first twenty minutes of cross-examination by Dismas Hardy, most of it dedicated so far to the murder of Dylan Vogler. He might have thought he’d scored some points off her on the gun issue, but she’d stuck to her guns, reiterating how Maya had lied to them initially about whether she’d even been in the alley that morning. Beyond that they had Defendant’s registration of the gun in her name, and her fingerprints, for God’s sake, on the magazine.

What more could the jury want?

In Schiff’s mind there was no question of what had happened on that Saturday morning, and she knew that she was conveying it to the jury effectively in spite of Hardy’s best efforts. Now he turned and walked back to his counsel table. He turned a yellow legal pad around and appeared to read from it for a moment-although Schiff knew, since both Jerry Glass and Paul Stier had told her, that much of this extraneous physical activity was choreographed so that attorney and witness didn’t just transmogrify into talking heads to the jury.

Hardy walked back to the middle of the courtroom, eight feet or so in front of her. “Inspector Schiff,” he began again, “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about the Levon Preslee murder scene. We’ve seen the pictures. There was a great deal of blood, was there not?”

“I’d call it more a moderate amount, but there was blood, yes.”

“A moderate amount, then. But certainly puddles of it both on the table and also on the floor between the table and the kitchen sink, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So the blood dripped from the table down to the floor, did it not?”

“That’s what it looked like, yes.”

“But no blood was found on the cleaver, which Dr. Strout has identified from the deceased’s injuries as consistent with the murder weapon. Is that true?”

“Yes. No blood was found on the weapon. It had been washed.”

“And how do you know that?”

Schiff, for the first time, showed a brush of annoyance-a small pursing of her lips-gone almost as soon as it appeared. “Well,” she said, now directly at Hardy and not to the jury, “it appeared damp at the scene, as if it had been washed, and there were traces of the decedent’s blood in the disposal under the sink and in the pipes underneath. And the cleaver was next to the sink in a drying rack.”

“So presumably, someone had washed the murder weapon in the sink, is that right?”

“That was our assumption, yes.” Schiff cast a passing glance over at Stier, hoping that he might object. She was a little uncomfortable talking about what the crime scene meant, since that was really the provenance of the CSI team. But her ally the prosecutor just offered her a faint smile and sat with his hands crossed on his table.

“All right,” Hardy said. “That was your assumption. That the cleaver was the murder weapon, is that true?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Accepting that hypothesis for the moment, were there any other clues that indicated to you, a trained investigator, how the murder had actually taken place?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. The deceased was hit from behind with the cleaver.”

“Yes, but just before that. The deceased was seated at the table when he was struck, granted. But was there not a water ring on the table?”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“And what did you assume from that?”

“That Defendant was sitting-”

“Excuse me.” Hardy, playing with her rhythm, interrupted and looked up at the judge expectantly. “Your Honor, move to strike that last phrase.”

“Granted.” Braun frowned down at Schiff, who was all of a sudden aware that Hardy had tricked her-she really should have known better. He’d lulled her with these mundane questions and caught her off guard. She would have to be more careful or risk losing her credibility. “Sergeant,” the judge intoned at her most sanctimonious, “the jury will decide whether this defendant or someone else entirely was sitting with Mr. Preslee. Just stick to what you observed.”

Hardy was graciousness itself. A quick, warm smile, a barely perceptible nod. “Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Sergeant, again…”

She wanted to punch him.

“We were talking about a water ring on the table, Sergeant, and your theory of the murder.”

Schiff tossed another look at Stier, who’d developed a frown, and then at the jury. “It appeared that the assailant, Mr. Preslee’s murderer, had been sitting across the table from him, perhaps just talking, having a glass of water, and possibly smoking marijuana. At some point the assailant got up-maybe on the pretext of refilling the glass-got behind Mr. Preslee, grabbed the cleaver, and hit him.”

Hardy stood relaxed in front of her. “Very succinct, Sergeant, and I believe supported by the evidence.”

Herself confused by Hardy’s comment, Schiff could only manage a small nod. “Thank you,” she murmured, and realized that this interrogation had somehow gotten away from her.

Hardy was moving ahead. “Sergeant, what was the approximate distance between where the deceased was hit and the kitchen sink right behind it?”

He was off on another apparent tangent. Schiff didn’t see the point of any of these questions, and yet Stier was allowing them. Why wasn’t he objecting to something? Her sense of dread increased, and she felt a drop of perspiration fall out of her hairline. She brushed it away and tried to narrow her focus. Just relax and stay with the facts, she told herself. And then, aloud, “Not far. Maybe eighteen inches.”

“And did the blood on the floor cover any of this eighteen-inch area?”

“You can see from the pictures-”

“Yes, but I’m asking you to calibrate it for us.”

“About half of it.”

“So, according to your theory of the case, the assailant killed Mr. Preslee, then stood behind him cleaning up the murder weapon in the sink?”

“Yes.”

“And the glass?”

“Yes.”

“While blood dripped off the table just behind?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find any shoeprints in the blood itself?”

“No.”

“Or tracks or any traces of blood except directly at the scene?”

“No.”

“So according to your theory, Sergeant, the assailant stood directly behind the deceased, with blood dripping onto the floor from the table, into an area only eighteen inches wide. And stood there long enough to wash both the cleaver and the glass. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes flitted between the jury box and Stier. I’ve got no idea where he’s going with this. The thought unnerved her.

“Sergeant, did you and your partner obtain a warrant to search the Townshends’ house?”

“Yes, we did.”

Hardy, in no hurry, took another walk back to his table, picked up a piece of paper, then turned again and walked all the way back to her, handing her the exhibit. “Sergeant, do you recognize this?”

“Yes, of course. It’s the search warrant we served on Defendant the day after Levon Preslee’s murder.”

“Wasn’t it first thing in the morning, just at seven o’clock, that you served this warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Would you please read for the jury, Sergeant, from the affidavit section, what you were searching for with this warrant?”

Schiff looked down at the paper and, suddenly aware of where this must be going, read in a mechanical voice. “Computer disks and downloads, business and banking records, shoes and clothes that might contain blood spatter-”

“Thank you, Sergeant, that’s enough. So you were looking for blood spatter, true?”

“Yes.”

“And why was that?”

In the witness box Schiff lifted a hand, then cleared her throat. “We thought there might be blood spatter on her clothes and shoes.”

“And why is that?”

Schiff drew a breath and made herself sit up straight and face the jury. She would brazen it out. “Because we figured the blood dripping on the floor right behind her would have some spatter, even if microscopic.”

“Were you looking for spatter anywhere else?”

“We thought it possible there would be some on material covering the upper body.”

“Why did you think that?” Hardy now had Schiff firmly assuming the role she didn’t want and wasn’t qualified for, that of crime-scene reconstruction expert. But if Stier wasn’t objecting, she couldn’t very well refuse to answer the question.

“We thought… after the first blow… the assailant would have to lift the cleaver, which now had blood on it, and swing it hard down again. Some blood might have come off in the swinging or from the second impact.”

Now Hardy turned and faced the jury, impassive. Without looking at Schiff he asked, “Sergeant, did you in fact search for blood on the clothes you took from Maya’s home early in the morning after the murder of Mr. Preslee?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Isn’t it true, Sergeant, that you removed all the clothing from the house, including her husband’s and children’s? And removed for testing the contents of the hampers and laundry room? Everything, in fact, except for what they were wearing?”

“Yes.”

“And were there clothes in the washing machine or dryer or anywhere else in the house?”

“No.”

“So you got them all?”

“Yes.”

She hated this. She knew it was coming across to the jury as some form of police harassment. Even if she didn’t have the specific evidence. She knew that it wasn’t particularly difficult to be in a room or an apartment, even for a substantial period of time, and leave no physical sign of it, especially if you knew you were going in to commit a crime. She knew that Maya had been at Levon’s, and if not to kill him, then why? She didn’t know what the damned Townshend woman had done with her clothes and her shoes in the time she’d had to get rid of them. And if she hadn’t gotten rid of them, Schiff didn’t know how she’d avoided the blood spatter. But none of that made any difference to her core belief that this defendant was a crafty and dangerous killer. “We were just trying to be thorough.”

“Indeed,” Hardy said, “thoroughness is commendable. And you were careful when you seized this clothing to package it appropriately for later testing for blood by the crime lab, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“But with all their sophisticated testing, the crime lab found no evidence whatsoever of blood on anything you seized from Maya Townshend’s house, did they?”

Stier finally came alive. “Objection. Hearsay.”

“Sustained.”

“Okay, let me ask it this way, then, Inspector. I want you to assume that lab personnel will testify that they found no blood. That’s not consistent with your theory of how this crime was committed, is it?”

Now Stier compounded his error. He should have let Schiff say that maybe the defendant had gotten rid of her clothes, or maybe there just wasn’t enough blood to find, but instead he objected. “Speculation, Your Honor. Irrelevant. Inspector Schiff’s theories are not evidence.”

Hardy couldn’t believe his luck. “Well, gosh, Your Honor,” he said. “My point exactly. Since the prosecution concedes that Inspector Schiff’s theories aren’t evidence, and since the prosecution doesn’t seem to have anything besides her theories, I have no further questions.”

Braun banged her gavel and chastised Hardy for making speeches, but he didn’t care.

For the rest of the afternoon Hardy continued to hammer the same point through the other lab witnesses.

“You’re a fingerprint expert, right? Did you find fingerprints inside Mr. Preslee’s home?”

“Yes. Lots of them.”

“Were any of those Maya Townshend’s fingerprints?”

“No.”

“In fact, there are several fingerprints that belong to people whom you’ve never identified, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints at the table where the victim was seated?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints at the sink where the cleaver was allegedly washed?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints on the interior door handle of the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And none of these are Maya’s, and some of them are unidentified, right?”

“Correct.”

Hardy did the same with the DNA-some recovered, some unidentified, none belonging to Maya. When he was finally done with his last cross-examination at quarter to five, Hardy took a long beat and threw a look at Stier, wilting at his own table. The prosecutor had taken a beating today on the Preslee evidence, and he knew it.

But next up, he would be talking about motive. And motive evidence, Hardy knew, was going to be brutal.