Ties That Bind

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The offices of Oregon Forensic Investigations were located in an industrial park a few blocks from the Columbia River. Late in the afternoon of the day after her unsuccessful meeting with Jon Dupre, Amanda drove along narrow streets flanked by warehouses until she found the complex where Paul Baylor worked. A concrete ramp led up to a walkway that ran in front of the offices of an import-export business and a construction firm. The last door opened into a small anteroom. It was furnished with two chairs that stood on either side of an end table on which were stacked several scientific journals. She rang a button on the wall next to a door, for assistance. Moments later, Paul Baylor walked into the anteroom. Baylor was a slender, bookish African American with a degree from Michigan State in forensic science and criminal justice, who had worked at the Oregon State Crime Lab for ten years before leaving to set up his own shop. Amanda used him when she needed a forensic expert.

Baylor ushered Amanda into a small office outfitted with inexpensive furniture. A small desk was covered with stacks of paperwork, and a bookcase was crammed with books on forensic science.

"I've got a few questions I wanted to ask you about a new case I've got," Amanda said as she opened her briefcase and took out a manila envelope.

"The Travis and Hayes murders?"

Amanda smiled. "You got it on the first try."

"It wasn't hard. I can't read a paper or turn on my TV without seeing you. I should probably get your autograph."

"If I gave you my autograph you'd be able to sell it and retire. Who'd do my forensic work?"

Baylor laughed as Amanda took a stack of photographs out of the envelope and handed them to him.

"Jail personnel took these right after Wendell Hayes was stabbed to death. What do you make of these cuts?"

Baylor shuffled through the pictures, stopping to study some of them longer than others.

"They're defense wounds," Baylor said when he was ready. "When you have a homicidal attack with a knife, the victim's wounds will normally be deep or long and haphazardly spaced. You're going to find cuts like the ones in the photos on the victim's hands, fingers, palms, and forearms, because he's going to throw up his hands and forearms automatically to ward off the attack, or he'll try to grab the weapon. That's what we have here. A long deep cut on the forearm, a slice on the webbing of the hand, and cuts on the palms and fingers."

"Is there any way that the person wielding the knife could have received those wounds?"

"Sure, if this was a knife fight where both people were armed or one person lost the knife and the other person got it for a while. But those wounds were received by someone who was being attacked."

"Very interesting."

"Not to me. They're exactly what I'd expect to find on Wendell's arms and hands."

"Oh, I agree there. Only these arms and hands belong to Jon Dupre."

Frank Jaffe worked in a spacious corner office decorated with antiques, which was basically unchanged since the firm was founded shortly after his graduation from law school over thirty years ago. When Amanda rapped on Frank's doorjamb, he looked up from a brief.

"Do you have a minute, Dad?"

Frank put down his pen and leaned back. "For you, always."

Amanda threw herself onto a chair that stood before Frank's immense desk and told her father about Dupre's violent reaction when she suggested that he might be guilty of the Hayes and Travis murders and about Ally Bennett's assertion that Senator Travis had attacked Lori Andrews. Finally she told her father about her meeting with Paul Baylor.

"What's your take?" Frank asked when Amanda was through.

"Those defense wounds bother me. Dupre was treated for them immediately after his arrest in the visiting room."

"Any chance they're self-inflicted?" Frank asked.

"Why would he cut himself?"

"To fashion a self-defense argument in a case that's impossible to win any other way."

"Who would believe Dupre, Dad?"

"No one. Which is the problem you're going to have trying to sell this theory to a jury. The logical explanation for those cuts is that Dupre brought the shiv into the visiting room and Hayes somehow got the knife away from him and stabbed Dupre in self-defense. Before you can argue that Dupre acted in self-defense, you're going to have to prove that Hayes smuggled the shiv in, which presents another problem. What motive could Hayes possibly have to attack Dupre?"

"What motive did Jon have to kill Hayes?" Amanda countered. "Don't forget the fix Dupre was in when Hayes came to the jail. If he's convicted of killing Senator Travis, he'll get life in prison or a lethal injection. Wendell Hayes was a terrific trial lawyer. Why kill someone who could have saved his life?"

"Good point. Unfortunately the prosecutor doesn't have to prove motive."

"Yeah, I know." Amanda looked dejected. "There is something else that's bothering me, though. If Dupre brought the shiv to the interview room because he wanted to kill Hayes, he'd have to know that Hayes was the lawyer who was coming to visit him. Grant didn't appoint Hayes until shortly before Hayes went to the jail."

"So, we need to know when Dupre learned that Hayes was going to be his lawyer."

"Right. If Jon didn't know that Hayes was going to be his lawyer until he met him in the visiting room, why would he bring a shiv with him?"

"He may have had it for protection from other inmates."

"Jon wouldn't have had it on him when he went to see Hayes. He'd never risk having it found during a frisk."

"Maybe Dupre planned to kill any lawyer who showed up so he could plead insanity."

"Then why isn't Jon acting crazy or suggesting that he is?"

"And he's got those cuts," Frank muttered to himself.

"What do you know about Wendell Hayes?"

"Not a lot. We socialized at Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association meetings, Bar Association meetings, stuff like that. I've been on panels with him and we've had drinks together."

"Did you ever hear anything that would suggest he was dirty?"

"There are always rumors when a lawyer handles a lot of drug cases."

"Such as?"

"Money-laundering, that type of thing. But how would that explain Hayes attacking your client?"

"I don't know, but it makes it more likely that he'd try to kill someone if he was bent."

"Wendell's career did start with a bang. There was the Blanton case and that one with the hit man--I can't remember the case name. Things really broke his way in those cases."

"What do you mean?"

"The DA had a slam dunk in Blanton until his eyewitness recanted, and the key evidence disappeared from the police property room in the other case. Most people thought he was lucky, but there were a few DAs I know who suggested that the breaks weren't just luck."

"Hayes didn't do much criminal stuff anymore, did he?"

"Wendell still took on a few high-profile criminal cases but, mostly, he was handling business problems for people with money."

"What type of problems?"

"He secured a very lucrative federal construction contract for Burton Rommel's firm and he's maneuvered a few land-use planning rulings for developers that were worth millions. That type of thing."

"Deals that require political clout."

Frank nodded. "Wendell had plenty of that. He was part of the Westmont crowd, old Portland money. He grew up on intimate terms with the people who make this state run."

Amanda talked to her father a little longer. Since they were both working late, they decided to have a quick dinner downtown in an hour. Amanda went to her office and spent the time reviewing everything she knew about Dupre's case. One thing that she thought about was the picture Ally Bennett had painted of Harold Travis. It was far different from the picture the press was presenting. Unfortunately, the only evidence that Ally could offer about Travis's character was Lori Andrews's hearsay statements, which were inadmissible in court. And proving that Travis was a degenerate didn't disprove the state's allegation that Dupre had murdered the senator. Ally's information actually hurt Jon's case. If Travis beat up one of Dupre's escorts after Jon warned the senator about hurting her, it would provide Jon with a motive to kill Travis.

On the other hand, if Tim Kerrigan tried to introduce evidence about Lori Andrews's murder at Jon's trial, evidence that the senator had beaten Andrews would be useful. Amanda was thinking about ways to get Ally's hearsay into evidence when she remembered that cocaine had been found in the senator's house. She wondered if the lab had recovered Travis's prints from the baggie, so she checked the police reports and found that the prints on the baggie were too smudged for comparison. Amanda was disappointed, but she thought of another way to prove that the senator had used cocaine. She found the autopsy report. The tox screen had not found cocaine, but it had picked up something else. According to the report, there were traces of alprazolam in the senator's blood. Amanda wondered what that was. She was about to do some research when her father buzzed her on the intercom to tell her that he was ready to go. Amanda was exhausted and starving. She made a note to find out about alprazolam, grabbed her coat, and left her office.