Night vision

CHAPTER 26

The writ is an ancient one, Your Honor, as holy as the Scriptures, mightier than any sword. The crown may imprison, but the court, Your Honor, the court may always set free."

Arnold Two-Ton Tannenbaum slipped his right hand inside his bulging vest and held his heart. Either he was pledging allegiance or imitating a blimp-sized Napoleon. He wore a freshly pressed suit of friendly brown and a look of sincere concern.

" Habeas corpus ad subiciendum, " Tannenbaum intoned. Charlie Riggs would have been proud. Judge Dixie Lee Boulton peered down from the bench through her bifocals, wrinkled her forehead, and waited.

"Ha-be-as cor-pus," the corpulent mouthpiece proclaimed, as if the words would cast a spell. "Bring the body to the court. How can the state justify holding such a man without a formal charge? A man with no prior arrests of any kind. A man renowned on the stages of two continents. A man who devotes his time to imparting wisdom to the young. An actor, yea, but also, Your Honor, this is a man."

Two-Ton extended a massive arm toward Gerald Prince, who sat proudly at the defense table. Prince wore a green jailhouse smock and had swept his silver hair straight back. He jutted his fine chin forward and appeared to be looking somewhere over Dixie Lee Boulton's head.

I moseyed over behind the defense table and bent down toward Prince.

"Are we going to hear one of your soliloquies today?" I asked.

He put a finger to his lips. "Silence," he whispered, "is often the greatest achievement of an actor. Make them watch your face. Only the face. Like the Indian in Cuckoo's Nest."

"Or Harpo Marx in Animal Crackers," I agreed.

"In sum, Your Honor, it is indefensible, unconstitutional, and utterly intolerable to detain this famed thespian without a formal charge," Tannenbaum concluded.

"Thank you, Mr. Tattlebum," the judge said. "Who speaks for the people of the state of Florida?"

Just little ole me, I thought.

"Under the statute," I began without pleasantries, "the state has twenty-one days to indict Mr. Prince. He can be held until then unless the defense demonstrates that the proof is not evident and the presumption of guilt is not great. Now, Mr. Prince has been incarcerated only four days, and the state submits there is sufficient evidence to detain him."

I ran through the evidence for the judge, the computer messages, the blood type, the lack of alibis, and reminded her of the seriousness of the crimes.

"Additionally," I said, "we had hoped to have the DNA results ready for today's hearing. Unfortunately, they've been delayed. When they are received, we expect the grand jury to return indictments for three homicides. Three first-degree murders, Your Honor."

I was a reluctant warrior. It had gotten too complicated. Three women were dead, the state attorney was married to one and sleeping with another. The chief homicide detective was a pal of the wife. The third woman didn't belong to the happy little Fox clan, but all three played nighttime chitchat on their computer's sex channel. The state attorney had expanded my duties to prosecute all three. Pretty soon you would need a scorecard. How did I get into this? And what was going on?

The judge looked at me, perplexed. "I don't like to hold defendants without the issuance of indictments or criminal information," she said. "Is there any formal charge you can file today?"

Nothing I could think of, unless overacting was a misdemeanor, in which case Two-Ton would be jailed along with his client. Before I could reply, the courtroom door swung open and a young man in a white lab coat came hustling in. He said something to the bailiff, who pointed at me. Just like on TV, the missing witness bursting in to save the day.

"Your Honor, may we present some brief testimony in support of the state's position?" I asked with grateful charm.

"I suggest you do," the judge said.

I tossed an arm around the young man and hustled him to the witness stand. He looked like an earnest graduate student, bushy mustache and unkempt hair. He held a manila folder and glanced nervously at the judge.

"Ever testify before?" I whispered.

"No…and maybe we should talk-"

"No time, the judge is about to grant the writ."

He placed his left hand on the Bible and raised his right hand with a jerky motion that tossed his folder across the courtroom like a Frisbee. I retrieved it. He sat down and told us his name, Dr. Sanford Katzen; his profession, mathematician and geneticist; and yes, he performed various tests on semen samples from two of the decedents and the blood of the defendant.

"What do you call these tests?" I asked.

"Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis."

Don't you just love doctors? "Is there any other name…?"

"Oh, you probably know it by its colloquial term. Genetic fingerprinting."

"And how do you perform these tests?"

"Oh my, that would take several hours to explain."

Judge Boulton cleared her throat. "Young man, I have nine more hearings before lunch, so perhaps you could just cut to the chase."

"Well, simply stated, and grossly oversimplifying, so you must forgive me, we compare the deoxyribonucleic acid from two different samples. If the size of the genes match, the acid came from the same person. It would be a mathematical impossibility for two random samples to match up."

He opened the folder and pulled out several X-rays. I mounted them on the viewer usually used in auto-accident cases. Dr. Katzen came down from the witness stand without tripping and stood humbly at my side.

"Please describe what the X-rays show," I said.

These are the autoradiograms. First we chop the DNA into small fragments using enzymes. Then they're placed on a gelatin slab, shot with an electrical current, transferred to a membrane that's exposed to a radioactive probe, and pressed against the X-ray film which you see-"

"Dr. Cashman," the judge interrupted. "Could you please get to the point!" Dixie Lee was ready to deny the request for the writ, if only the witness would say the magic words.

"Sorry. Well, as you can see, there are three parallel tracks representing DNA from each sample. The distance between these bands is measured down to one hundredth of a kilobase. That's about one thousand rungs on the DNA ladder, which has some three billion lines. So, as you can see, the measurement is quite precise."

The judge was fidgeting. "Doctor! The results, please."

"Well, if the length of the polymorphic loci match, there's no chance that the samples came from different people. Oh, I shouldn't say no chance, should I? There is perhaps one in one-point-five quintillion, but for statistical purposes-"

"Dr. Katzen," I said, "the results. What does your autoradiogram show?"

"Oh, quite clearly, the kilo bases from each decedent match exactly."

"Exactly," I said.

"So that the semen taken from Ms. Rosedahl and Mrs. Fox obviously came from the same man."

"Obviously," I agreed.

"Of course, as you can see with the naked eye, there is no match with the blood from Mr. Prince."

"Of course," I said.

Wait a second.

What did he say?

"No match at all," he continued. "Not the slightest chance that the semen from either of the bodies came from Mr. Prince, though, as I said, they did come from the same man, whoever he might be."

A thousand blowflies could have laid their eggs in my mouth and still had room for an apple. I was nailed to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gerald Prince get to his feet at the defense table and nod toward the judge. The nod became a bow. He did it again. Waiting for the curtain call. Someone was saying something. What was it?

"Mr. Lassiter, does that conclude your presentation?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said.

The sky darkened at precisely three o'clock, huge thunderheads gathering over downtown, hanging low, bashing each other, lightning crackling. At ten past the hour, the rain came, swirling with the winds, sweeping across Okeechobee Road. An old Pontiac had flooded out and sat, hood up, blocking traffic for five miles. The rain pounded on my canvas top, cold drops sliding inside the window and splatting my left leg.

"I can't imagine why you're so upset," Pamela Maxson said. "You thought he was innocent the whole time. You should be happy."

"Happy to play the fool?"

"Is that it? You're embarrassed that justice was done. Would you rather convict an innocent man?"

"No. I'd rather have stayed out of this. I was set up. To win, lose, I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

I turned down a side street in Hialeah, the Olds splashing through a series of foot-deep puddles. I pulled up in front of a renovated warehouse.

"C'mon," I said to Pam. "I want you to meet Ozzie and Harriet."

Max the Jockey was slouched at the counter, playing solitaire. Cheating. He wore a black muscle T-shirt and the snake tattoo on his forearm coiled as he dealt the cards. "Howdy, shyster," he said. "Your pants are wet."

Pam smiled and said, "Hello, Ozzie."

Max gave her a puzzled look and turned over the deck, trying to find a red queen. In the back, Bobbie's long body was hunched over a silent computer at the sys-op desk.

"How's business?" I asked.

"Slower'n a whorehouse on Sunday morn," Max said.

"What's the matter? Thought every time there was a murder, you two were off to the bank."

His jaw muscles were working up a storm. Either he was sucking his teeth, or he had swallowed his tongue. "Not this time. I figure, after the Rosedahl girl got it, the babes thought it was exciting to fool around, that it wouldn't really happen again. Just like those assholes who throw hurricane parties when the red-and-black flag goes up. They never think it'll hit until their condo gets blown away. So now another babe gets killed, it ain't so much fun."

Bobbie was stirring in the back. She wore black nylon running shorts and rubber thongs. Her midriff was bare; an elastic halter covered her breasts. Barely. She started long-legging it toward the counter, chewing a wad of pink bubble gum, her eyes glued to Pam Maxson. "What's a classy dame like you doing with a dork like him?" she asked.

"Treating him," she said.

"Royally," I added with an inane grin.

Bobbie shrugged and blew a bubble in my face. "Lemme show you something, Lassiter."

She shoved her clipboard under my face, a stack of papers attached. At the top, a male symbol was jabbing the female symbol with his arrow. "Our latest client survey," she said. "Ninety-one percent of the men and eighty-three percent of the women rate our service as very good or exceptional."

I riffled through a bunch of completed questionnaires. "Only a couple written in crayon," I said with admiration.

"Always the smartass. We're a solid business. Satisfaction guaranteed. Just look at these."

She was right. There were numerical listings and eloquent testimonials to Compu-Mate. "Hot and wet," wrote Muff Diver. "Lotsa, lotsa men," gushed Helen Bed. "Need more fetishists," complained Cruel Mistress. Another one caught my eye. "Bitches wouldn't know a real man if they blew one." Signed, Tom Cat. Pithy, you had to give him that.

"So what can I do you for?" Bobbie asked, still looking at Pam.

I drew a subpoena out of my suit coat. "I want to see copies of everything you turned over to Detective Rodriguez. Printouts, membership lists. Everything."

"I thought he worked for you."

"Yeah, I thought so, too."

She shrugged again and waved us back. Her thongs flip-flopped along the tile as she escorted us to a file cabinet next to the computer. She looked at my pants and said, "Is it raining outside, Lassiter, or you get excited on the way over here?"

I ignored her, and after a moment she found the right file and handed me a batch of papers. I didn't know what I was looking for, but it wouldn't take long to find.

On the left-hand side of the page was the handle. On the right was the real name and address.

"Those are in chronological order by date of membership," Bobbie said. "The computer can alphabetize them, if you want."

"No need." I thumbed through half a dozen pages and found the right one:

DAWN DELIGHT DARCY NOLAN 2340 SW 103 ST. LOUNGE LIZARD P. FREIDIN 1865 BRICKELL AVE HONEY POT LOUISE MAROUN 14000 SW 70 AVE. ORAL ROBERT BOB MARKO 635 MICHIGAN AVE. ROCK HARD S. GROSSMAN 120 SAPODILLA DR. BANANA MAN D. RUSSO 3540 SALEM BLVD. FORTY-TWO DEE DEE ANN REYNOLDS 2318 NE 168 TER. HORNY TOAD P. FLANIGAN 1683 TAGUS AVE. BIGGUS DICKUS A. RODRIGUEZ 7560 SW 26 ST.

Boom! Just like that. The little jolt of adrenaline. Then the moment of doubt. There are fifteen pages of Rodriguezes in the Miami phone directory. Nineteen listings just for "A. Rodriguez." Not that Alejandro Rodriguez would be any of those. Detectives don't stick their home addresses in the book. Too many guys short on humanity and long on memory for that. And I didn't know his home address. But easy enough to find out. Just drive by the Twenty-sixth Street address tonight, look for the county-owned Plymouth out front.

It would be there, I knew. All the many pieces fit together. I found the first printout I had spread in front of Charlie Riggs on the dock. On the night she was killed, Marsha Diamond computer-talked with four men.

BIGGUS DICKUS BUSH WHACKER ORAL ROBERT PASSION PRINCE

Nine names turned up on Mary Rosedahl's list.

BIGGUS DICKUS HARRY HARDWICK HORNY TOAD MUFF DIVER PASSION PRINCE ROCK HARD SLAVE BOY STUDLY DO-RIGHT TOM CAT

"Who talked to Priscilla Fox on the night she was killed?" I asked Bobbie.

"Passion Prince. I told the detective that."

"Yeah, I know. Who else?"

She shrugged again, popped a pink bubble, and slinked to the computer terminal. She punched a few buttons and waited for a blip and a bleep and then called out, "Banana Man, Tom Cat, and Biggus Dickus."

"Bingo!"

"What is it?" Pam asked.

"Only two men talked to all three women on the nights they were killed. Prince and Dickus. And we know Prince is innocent."

"So you think it's Mr. Dickus," Pamela Maxson said.

"Unless you have a better idea," I said.