The Letter Of The Law

CHAPTER 12

After her expected victory in the hearing on whether to allow the Atlanta killing into evidence, Casey focused all her energy on preparations for the prosecution's final witnesses. Since the silence between her and Taylor had continued, she didn't bother to call, even though she didn't get home until long after he was in bed. With the help of Tony and Patti Dunleavy, she went over every possible turn the following day might take. She knew Hopewood had saved the best for last.

The next day, the prosecutor played his two final cards. Donald Sales was his ace. He would go last and hopefully elicit the jury's inexorable desire to punish someone. But first up was Detective Sergeant Bolinger. He was as credible a witness as Casey had suspected he would be. A seasoned cop who'd been on the stand hundreds of times, Bolinger came across as tough and smart, the kind of police officer people wanted out there keeping the streets safe.

Casey watched him carefully. With Hopewood's lead, the two of them wove a perfectly cohesive tale unveiling the prosecution's theory as to how Lipton had committed the crime. They skillfully rehashed the gruesome testimony already given by Alice Vreeland of the medical examiner's office, re-creating the picture of a young girl who was choked into submission, horrifyingly bound with tape, and then slowly and painfully eviscerated with a sharp instrument until she died.

When the physical evidence was out of the way, Bolinger then helped the DA paint a damning portrait of Lipton as a lying egomaniac who thought he could outsmart the rest of the world because of his intellectual powers. Bolinger was obviously proud of the way he had noticed Lipton's slip of the tongue, proving his knowledge of the crime during their very first encounter, and of the way the police had been able to match the murder with Lipton's unrelated hit-and-run. Farnhorst had already given a vivid recollection of Lipton's attempted escape, but Bolinger added to that by recounting the professor's snide remarks when questioned about Marcia Sales's bloody panties.

When Casey stood for the cross, Bolinger turned her way with a reptilian gaze that made her waver. But it was only a moment before she honed in on destroying the detective and his testimony. That's what she did best, and even the formidable Bolinger wasn't going to keep her from doing her job. Casey stood up. She had pulled back her hair and piled it high on her head. Her long white neck and her regal bearing made her seem taller than she really was. Dressed in a tailored chocolate suit and heels, she was an impressive sight to the jury. She was a woman in total control.

"You've done this a lot, haven't you, Sergeant?" Casey began.

"What would 'this' be?" Bolinger wanted to know. He wasn't going to make it easy.

"This," Casey said, spreading her arms to encompass the entire courtroom, "testifying in a case, being cross-examined by a defense attorney."

"Yes, I have."

"And you don't like it, do you, Sergeant?" she said.

"It's all right," he replied.

"You don't like having your work questioned by someone like me, though, do you?"

"No, I don't think anyone likes to have their work questioned."

"You don't like it when an attorney points out all the things you've done wrong, do you?"

"I haven't done anything wrong," Bolinger said, bristling a little.

"No?" Casey said, arching her eyebrow and giving the jury a knowing look. "But we all make mistakes, don't we, Sergeant? I know I do from time to time. You're not telling us you're perfect, are you, Sergeant?"

"No. I'm not."

"Because you make mistakes, isn't that right?"

"I suppose," Bolinger said sullenly. "Like everyone else."

"Yes, that's what I said, like everyone else," Casey said with a pleasant smile. "You make mistakes and you don't like to have them pointed out… You made a lot of mistakes in this case, didn't you, Sergeant?"

"No," Bolinger scoffed. "No, I didn't."

"No?" Casey asked.

"No," he replied firmly.

"But isn't it true that Mr. Sales was at the crime scene, Sergeant?"

"Yes. What's that got to do with it?" he demanded.

Casey smiled sweetly at Bolinger, then said to the judge, "Your Honor, I would appreciate it if you'd help me to remind Detective Bolinger that I am the attorney and he is the witness."

"Please just answer the questions," Rawlins said to the cop.

"Thank you, Your Honor," Casey said cheerfully. When she turned to Bolinger, her face clouded over with intensity and disgust.

"Mr. Sales was violent at the scene, isn't that true?"

"Yes."

"He resisted arrest. He screamed. He fought. In fact, he had to be Maced and blackjacked and handcuffed before he could be brought to bay, isn't that true?"

"Yeah," Bolinger said, apparently bored.

"He was in a highly emotional state?"

"Yes. He was."

"And he was a suspect at that time, wasn't he?"

"Everyone was a suspect at that time," Bolinger said disdainfully. "At that time we had no clue as to who killed the girl. You were a suspect at that time, Ms. Jordan."

Casey looked to the judge.

"Detective…," Rawlins said in a warning tone.

"So," Casey said after the appropriate pause, "Mr. Sales was in a highly emotional state. He was violent, and at that time, he was your best suspect."

"I don't know about-"

"He was your best suspect at the time!" Casey cried. "Come on, Detective. Let's not play games with the jury. At that time, he was your best suspect, wasn't he?"

"Maybe at that time. He was the first person connected with her on the scene."

"Yes, he was. And so then you took him into the police station, didn't you?"

"Yes, to talk."

"Did you handcuff him?"

"Yes."

"Did you chain him to the floor?"

"That's standard procedure."

"So you chained him to the floor, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Bolinger said wearily.

Casey now marched back to her table and lifted a stack of papers in front of Patti Dunleavy, who was looking on with widened eyes. "But in all these police reports, I see that in all your investigation, your thorough investigation, that Mr. Sales's clothes were not checked for blood, were they?"

"I could see that he didn't have blood on him," Bolinger said irately. "I have eyes."

"You could see?"

"Yes."

"Detective, you know as well as I do that oftentimes blood is present that cannot be seen, isn't that true?"

"It's possible," he said after a pause.

"Yes, and you certainly examined my client's clothes in a lab, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you found no blood on my client's clothes, did you, Detective?"

"No, not on his clothes. Just on her underwear."

"Your Honor!" Casey bellowed in disgust.

"Detective." Rawlins glared. "If you do anything but answer Ms. Jordan 's questions, I can have you locked up for contempt and I'll do it. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," Bolinger muttered.

"The jury is to disregard the detective's remark," Rawlins said. "It will be struck from the record."

Casey took a deep breath and huffed out through her nose. Bolinger had broken her momentum, exactly what he wanted to do.

"You've been a police officer how long, Detective?" she asked.

"Twenty-seven years."

"And in your experience, how many times did you fail to examine the clothes of a murder suspect?"

"I can't examine someone's clothes without a warrant," Bolinger said craftily.

"But, Detective, you searched Mr. Sales's home and his vehicle, isn't that true?"

"Yes."

"Because he let you. He signed a consent waiver, isn't that true, too?"

"Yes."

"But you never asked to examine his clothes, isn't that right?"

"Correct."

"And you never took nail clippings from Mr. Sales, isn't that true as well?"

"Yes."

"Because you made a decision that day that Mr. Sales wasn't the killer, isn't that right, Sergeant Bolinger?"

"Yes," he said defiantly. "I had a gut feeling that he wasn't the killer."

"So, acting on that gut feeling, you neglected your duty as an investigating officer, didn't you?"

"I never neglected my duty," Bolinger growled.

"Isn't your duty to be thorough?"

"Yes."

"But you made a final judgment on who was innocent and who was guilty, didn't you?"

"I guess I did," Bolinger said, again defiant.

"But isn't your job to collect the evidence, Detective?"

"Yes, that's my job."

"In fact, it is the jury's job to interpret the evidence, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Yes, it is. And the jury doesn't know if Mr. Sales had blood underneath his fingernails, do they?"

"No."

"And the jury doesn't know if there were traces of blood on Mr. Sales's clothes, do they?"

"No."

"No, they don't because you didn't do your job!" Casey roared. "You made yourself the jury, didn't you, Detective?"

"No, that's ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous," Casey said, at a boil, "is that you made a decision not to gather all the evidence from your best suspect at the time, and now I have to live with that, my client has to live with that, and this jury has to live with that!"

"Objection, Your Honor," Hopewood complained. "Counsel is simply badgering the witness."

"Sustained," Rawlins said. "Are those all the questions you have for the witness, Ms. Jordan?"

Casey didn't answer. She went back to her table and her notes. She wanted the jury to absorb what she'd just done. She wanted them to consider the detective figuratively lying on the floor, gasping for air, before she stepped on his neck. She couldn't help the surge of pride she felt when Lipton looked at her with admiration. He nearly smiled.

"I'm sorry, Your Honor," she said, turning back suddenly. "I have a few more questions for the detective."

"Then go on," Rawlins told her.

Casey approached the jury and saw that they were right there with her, following her every move. When she had joined them in front of their box, she smiled grimly at them before turning back toward Bolinger. In a clear voice she said, "We've heard the evidence you have against Professor Lipton, Sergeant. But we haven't heard about the evidence you don't have. I'd like to ask you about that…"

Bolinger glared at her with a malicious frown.

"You don't have any of my client's fingerprints at the scene of the crime, do you, Detective?"

"No."

"And you don't have the weapon used to commit the crime against Miss Sales, with my client's fingerprints on it, do you?"

"No, we don't," Bolinger said stoically.

"You haven't even found the weapon, have you?"

"No."

"In fact, you don't have any physical evidence linking my client to the scene of the crime, do you?"

"He was there," Bolinger said triumphantly. "He hit that woman's car when he was racing to get away."

"Oh, he was there," Casey said, moving toward the witness now. "That's true. He went there for a consensual tryst, saw the girl's body, and fled in an extremely disturbed state of mind. But what I'm saying is, you don't know for a fact if he was inside that living room where the crime was committed, do you?"

Bolinger hesitated, looked at Rawlins, then said, "No, not for a fact."

"Because there wasn't one shred of physical evidence to prove that he was in there, isn't that true?"

"He didn't leave anything in the living room," Bolinger cunningly replied, glancing furtively at Rawlins to see if he had incurred any more wrath.

"In fact, you don't even have a motive, do you, Detective?" Casey continued without pause. "You never, in everything you told us today, told the jury why Professor Lipton would want to kill Miss Sales, did you?"

"No, but I don't always know the motive of people's crimes," he said.

"But in your experience as a policeman, isn't it true that most people commit crimes for a reason?"

"Sometimes, I guess mostly they do, yes."

"Robbers rob for the money, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Yes, and most people who are killed are killed for a reason, like jealousy or revenge or unrequited love, isn't that true?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"But none of those applies to Professor Lipton," Casey said incredulously. "He had no reason to harm Miss Sales in any way, did he?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you haven't been able to find any reason in your year-long investigation of this case, have you?"

"No," Bolinger said defiantly.

"Detective, I'm sorry, but you just told us you have no fingerprints, no weapon, and no other solid evidence linking my client to the exact scene of the crime. You haven't given us any explanation as to why my client would have committed the crime. And, by your own admission, we know you conducted a sloppy, erroneous investigation, allowing potentially vital information to go uncollected because in your judgment, Mr. Sales wasn't the killer. With that set of facts, can you tell me what the hell we're even doing here?"

"Objection!" Hopewood roared.

"Sustained!" Rawlins said with a rap of his gavel.

"I have nothing more for this man, Your Honor," Casey said with disgust.

Rawlins called an adjournment for lunch. Casey had no appetite. Sales was next.