Polar Quest

25

The county deputies brought Oswald Eames into the small courtroom in the Service Center. Instead of an orange prisoner’s jumpsuit, he wore a shirt and tie, black pants, and a blazer. At the defense table, the deputies removed his restraints and left him with his attorney, Tiv Balogh.

‘Good afternoon, Oz,’ Balogh said politely.

Eames nodded, then glanced at the prosecutor. McPherson sat at his table looking over some notes on a yellow legal pad. On the bench, he saw a different judge than the one who had arraigned him.

Eames leaned close to Balogh. ‘What happened to our judge?’

Balogh looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled when he realized what Eames was really asking. ‘Nothing happened. Preliminary exams are assigned to judges on a rotating basis. Judge Thacker drew us today. Don’t worry about it,’ he added reassuringly. ‘It’s not a problem.’

‘The People versus Oswald Eames for the purpose of a preliminary examination,’ the bailiff announced.

‘Appearances for the record,’ Thacker said.

Balogh and McPherson identified themselves, their statements transcribed by the court recorder.

‘Mr McPherson, you may call your first witness.’

‘Thank you, Your Honor. The state calls Irene Yale.’

Yale entered the courtroom from the hallway and walked up to the witness stand. She was a small woman in her late twenties dressed in a colorful print dress, her hair pulled closely against her head in a pattern of tightly woven black braids. The bailiff swore her in and she sat down.

‘Please state your name and address for the record,’ McPherson said.

Yale recited her name and address clearly into the microphone.

‘Miss Yale, where do you work?’ McPherson asked.

‘I’m an emergency dispatch operator for the city of Ann Arbor.’

‘And how long have you worked there?’

‘Four years.’

‘You were working on the night of February fifteenth, were you not?’

‘Yes, I had the late shift that night.’

‘I see. Do you recall receiving a call that night from a woman claiming that she’d been stabbed?’

‘Yes.’ Yale’s voice faltered, the woman’s voice still echoing in her memory.

‘Did the woman identify her attacker?’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Whom did she name?’

‘Her ex-husband, a man named Oz.’

‘Your Honor, I have a copy of that conversation between Miss Yale and Faye Olson that confirms this testimony,’ McPherson said. ‘I have no further questions for this witness.’

‘Your witness, Mr Balogh.’

‘Thank you, Your Honor. Miss Yale, do you know Faye Olson?’

‘No.’

‘So it would be fair to say that you wouldn’t recognize her voice if she called you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If Faye Olson called you at your home, you wouldn’t recognize her voice, would you?’

‘How could she? She’s dead?’

‘What I’m trying to get at, Miss Yale, is that prior to February fifteenth, you would have no way of knowing what Faye Olson sounded like, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘So when that call came in on the fifteenth, you had no way of knowing if the caller was indeed Faye Olson, because you’d never heard her voice before, correct?’

‘I just assumed that — ‘

‘And that’s the problem. In a court of law, it’s not what you assume but what you know for a fact. For example, you know for a fact that you received a nine-one-one call from 4731 Pineview. Your computer traces a call once it comes in, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in that call, you heard a woman who said she’d been stabbed?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you have no way of knowing if that woman was Faye Olson or someone claiming to be her?’

‘I guess I… no, I can’t say for sure who actually made the call.’

‘That’s all, Your Honor.’

‘Redirect?’ Thacker asked.

‘No, Your Honor.’

‘Then the witness may step down. Next witness, Mr McPherson.’

‘The state calls Detective J. R. Fink.’

Fink entered the courtroom and walked directly to the stand, where he was sworn in and recited his name and address for the record.

‘Detective, could you describe what you found at 4731 Pineview early on the morning of February fifteenth?’

‘I arrived at the scene around two-thirty in the morning. The house had been secured by two Ann Arbor police officers. Inside the house, I found the bodies of two victims, a man and a woman whom we’ve identified as Lloyd Sutton and Faye Olson. Sutton’s body was in the kitchen, lying facedown on the floor with a wound to the throat. Olson’s body was in the bedroom. Her body was nude and there were several stab wounds to her torso. She also appeared to have been sexually assaulted, which the medical examiner confirmed.’

‘Was there a phone in the bedroom?’

‘Yes.’

‘What kind of phone was it?’

‘Cordless.’

‘Was the handset in the charging stand?’

‘No, it was on the floor.’

‘Did it look like someone placed it there?’

‘No. It looked like it had been dropped. The phone was on its side and the battery door was broken off.’

‘Did it appear that the victim, Miss Olson, had used the phone?’

‘Yes. The evidence technicians found bloody fingerprints on the phone that matched the victim. Also, the position of the body was such that it appeared that she pulled herself over to the nightstand to reach the phone. Her hand was near the edge of the bed, just above where the phone was found on the floor.’

McPherson smiled and looked up at the bench. ‘That’s all for this witness, Your Honor.’

‘Mr Balogh.’

‘Detective, were any other fingerprints found on the phone in the bedroom?’

‘No, just the victim’s.’

‘Let me be a bit more explicit. Were there several of the victim’s fingerprints on the phone — after all, it was her phone — or just the bloodstained ones from the night of the murders?’

‘I believe only the one set of prints was found.’

‘The one set being those left by the victim after she’d been stabbed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you find that a bit odd? Unless the victim wiped her phone clean earlier that day, I would think the evidence technicians would have found multiple prints layered over the phone.’

‘Your Honor,’ McPherson said. ‘Where’s defense counsel going with this?’

‘I was wondering the same thing, Mr Balogh.’

‘I’ll get to the point, Your Honor,’ Balogh replied. ‘Detective, do you know for a fact that Faye Olson and not some other individual placed the call to nine-one-one?’

‘No.’

‘That’s all, Your Honor.’

McPherson declined an opportunity to ask further questions of the detective and Fink was excused.

‘Do you have anything else, Mr McPherson?’ Thacker asked.

‘Just one more thing, Your Honor,’ McPherson replied. ‘A report from the Michigan State Police Crime Lab in Northville shows the blood drawn from Oswald Eames and the semen found at the crime scene are a perfect DNA match.’

McPherson handed a copy of the report to Thacker and Balogh. Eames opened the report and studied the four sheets of graphs that described the thirteen loci analyzed by the crime lab. Each spike was identical in location and magnitude. Eames became light-headed and felt like vomiting.

‘This can’t be right,’ Eames said softly. ‘It just can’t be right.’

Thacker looked up from his copy of the lab report. ‘Based on the evidence presented, I believe the state has cause to proceed. I’m ordering the defendant bound over for trial in the Washtenaw County Circuit Court.’