Chapter 12
Cross
"Dr. Okonkwo, how many autopsies have you performed in your career?"
"A little over three thousand."
"And of those, how many involved blunt-force trauma to the head?"
"Perhaps seven hundred."
It was the sixth day of trial, a gray Tuesday, and the courtroom smelled of wet coats. The medical examiner had been on the stand for forty minutes. She was a small, compact, dark-haired woman of fifty with half-moon glasses on a chain and the quiet, unhurried manner of someone who has spent her life being the last person to speak to the dead. She did not look at the jury when she answered. She looked at the lawyer who had asked, directly, as a good teacher looks at a student, and she answered in complete sentences.
Whitlock had taken her through it on direct. The cause of death, blunt-force trauma to the left temporal and parietal regions, three separate impacts, the first of which would have caused loss of consciousness within seconds. The photographs, which had been shown to the jury on a screen the size of a window and which Eleanor Hale's sister had not looked at, for I had watched her, with her eyes fixed on the carved rail of the gallery and her lips moving silently. When the first one came up, a sound went along the jury box like a draft under a door. The baker put her hand flat on her stomach. The young software tester looked at the ceiling and swallowed twice. Teresa Ouellette, who had spent nineteen years among the dying, did not look away. She looked at it with a steady, grave, professional attention, and I saw her lips tighten, and I knew that she was counting the wounds.
Dr. Okonkwo had walked them through it in her clear, unhurried voice. The first blow had landed above the left ear and driven a roughly circular section of the skull inward, about the size of a child's palm. Depressed fracture, with radiating lines. The second, a little behind and lower, had split the scalp to the bone along a gash four inches long, and had been delivered, she thought, while the victim was already falling. The third was the worst. It had come down at an angle onto the back of the head as she lay on the floor, and had shattered the bone there into eleven pieces, and driven some of them into the brain. She had said the word brain without lowering her voice. She had said that there was a small fragment of bronze-colored patina, flaked from the sculpture, embedded in the edge of the wound.
"Would she have been conscious?" Whitlock had asked.
"After the first blow, I think not. She may have made sounds. A reflex, a breath." The medical examiner took off her glasses. "I have seen people struck a single time who lived for hours. I have not seen one struck like this. The third blow was delivered with great force. By someone who wished to be sure." The time of death. The state of the stomach, the temperature of the liver, the rigor in the jaw and the neck.
"And in your opinion," Whitlock had asked, last of all, "to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, was the weapon recovered at the scene consistent with the injuries?"
"It was."
"And was the pattern of the injuries consistent with a particular type of assailant?"
"The geometry of the wounds suggests that the blows were delivered from the victim's left, moving upward and across. That is most consistent with a right-handed person standing in front of her."
"Thank you, Doctor."
She had sat down. Beside me Victor had not moved, and I had thought, with an odd cold flicker, of a man at a steel table in a jail, saying, I can't write a word with it. I had written two words on my pad. Right-handed. I had put a question mark after them. I had not known, then, why.
Now I stood at the lectern in a gray suit with the pen in my hand, and I looked at the woman in the witness box and felt the sensation I always do at that moment: a kind of tenderness, almost. It is hard to be gentle with a witness you intend to move. It is also, I have found, the only way.
"Dr. Okonkwo, I want to ask you about the time of death."
"Of course."
"You've told the jury it was between nine o'clock and ten-thirty p.m."
"That is my best estimate."
"A ninety-minute window."
"Yes."
"How did you arrive at the endpoints?"
"By a combination of factors." She folded her hands on the ledge of the stand. "The core body temperature when I first measured it, which was at 12:40 a.m. The ambient temperature of the room. The degree of rigor. The state of digestion. These are all variable. They depend on the size of the person, their clothing, whether the body was moved, air circulation. A formula is applied, and then it is tempered by experience."
"So it isn't exact."
"No medical estimate of time of death is exact."
"Could the real time have been earlier than nine?"
She considered. "It is possible but unlikely. If the room was warmer than recorded, or if she had been physically active before death, the body could have cooled more slowly, which would make the actual time of death later than the estimate. Conversely, if the room was cooler, the actual time might be earlier."
"By how much?"
"Perhaps thirty minutes in either direction."
"So the real window might run from 8:30 to eleven."
"That would be the outer limit."
"Eleven would be after Mr. Hale reached the house."
She did not smile. "It would be after he said he reached the house. Yes."
I nodded slowly. I had not intended to make the point. The jury could make it for me. In the second row, Raymond Teague was looking at her with his head slightly tilted, his chin in his hand, and I knew without turning that Whitlock had stopped writing.
"Doctor, you testified that the blows came from the victim's left, moving upward and across."
"Yes."
"And that this was most consistent with a right-handed assailant."
"It is the most likely configuration, given the geometry."
"I'd like to ask how strongly that conclusion rests."
"I'm not sure I follow."
"You said most consistent. Is it a certainty?"
"Nothing in forensic pathology is a certainty." There was a trace of dryness in her voice. "I would say that, in my experience, about eighty percent of this type of injury pattern is produced by right-handed attackers. The population base rate is roughly ninety percent right-handed. The geometry here shifts it slightly toward the right."
"Slightly."
"Moderately."
"So it's not impossible that a left-handed person made these wounds."
She hesitated. I could see her working through it. I have found, over the years, that I get my best answers from expert witnesses by asking only what is true, and letting them hear for themselves how it sounds.
"No," said Dr. Okonkwo. "It is not impossible."
"Thank you." I set the pen down on the lectern. "No further questions on that point."
It was nothing. It was a dry little exchange about handedness, an arithmetic of probabilities, and no one in the room, I thought, would remember it by the evening. But I felt Whitlock's eyes on me, and when I returned to the table Victor was looking straight ahead with an expression of exaggerated, rigid calm, like a man holding a full glass on a moving train.
"Why did you ask that?" he murmured, without moving his lips.
"I'm testing it."
"Testing what?"
"Whether the State will use it," I said. "They put it in. I want to see whether they intend to say you're right-handed."
"I am right-handed."
"Yes," I said. "That's what you told me."
He did not say anything else. After a moment he picked up his water glass with his right hand, and drank, and set it down with a very small click.
Detective Sergeant Ray Dunleavy took the stand at two o'clock.
I had waited for him. It is the cross I like best and trust least. A good police witness is a hard, resilient, entirely sincere thing, like an old oak, and the work is not to cut him down but to find the place where the grain is soft. Dunleavy was a veteran of thirty years, a man jurors liked and judges believed. When he sat, he adjusted the microphone with a heavy, careful hand and said his name and rank in a rough, tired voice that seemed to come up from the bottom of a well.
Whitlock led him through the investigation. He did it beautifully, in the plain, flat, undramatic tone of a man reciting what he had seen. The call at 11:19. The arrival. The body. The photographs and measurements. The evidence tag on the heron. He described the first interview, such of it as the judge had allowed, the time spent in the room, the voluntary conversation. He described the search of the Hale Meridian offices on the sixteenth. He described the License Plate Reader data, the cameras, the neighbor.
"And at what point," Whitlock asked, "did you form the view that Mr. Hale was the person responsible?"
"I'd say within a couple of days, ma'am."
"What was it that persuaded you?"
"It was the weight of everything." He said it slowly. "No single thing. The prints on the weapon. The car in the garage and the car at the gate. The motive. The fact that he told us he'd never left his building."
"Thank you, Detective."
I rose.
"Detective Dunleavy, you've been a police officer for thirty years."
"Yes, sir."
"Nineteen of them in Homicide."
"That's right."
"You would say you're experienced at forming a view about who committed a crime."
"I would."
"And you formed this one within a couple of days."
"I did."
"Which is to say, before the forensic laboratory had returned the analysis of the blood on the weapon."
"The preliminary report was in."
"Before the License Plate Reader data had been examined by a technician?"
"We had the logs."
"Before the telephone records had been analyzed?"
He shifted. "They were being analyzed."
"Before you had spoken to any of the guests at the Hale Foundation dinner, held at the Ardent Hotel, on the night of the murder?"
"I didn't see that as relevant."
"Because the dinner was at a hotel, and the murder was at a house."
"Because the defendant wasn't at the dinner."
"No, he wasn't. Who was?"
Whitlock rose. "Objection, Your Honor. Relevance."
"Your Honor," I said, "I'm exploring the scope of the investigation."
"I'll allow it," said Judge Teague. "Briefly."
"Detective, among the guests at the dinner were members of the Hale family."
"Mr. Julian Hale, the defendant's brother."
"Did you speak to him?"
"Briefly. On the fifteenth."
"About his own whereabouts?"
"He told us he'd been at the dinner. We didn't have a reason to doubt it."
"Did you verify it?"
"I'd say we confirmed he was seen there."
"By whom?"
"By, well." He rubbed his jaw. "The organizers. A few people."
"Were you aware that during the evening, Mr. Julian Hale left the ballroom for approximately twenty to twenty-five minutes to take a telephone call?"
The room went very quiet. I did not look at the gallery. I did not look at the second row, where a tall man in a dark suit was seated with his hands in his lap. I looked at Ray Dunleavy's face, and watched him realize, in his blunt, stubborn, honest way, that he had not known it.
"No, sir."
"So no one in your department established where Mr. Julian Hale was between 9:15 and approximately 9:40 that night."
"Objection," said Whitlock, rising swiftly. "Your Honor, counsel is insinuating—"
"I'm asking what the police did, Your Honor."
"Sustained as to form." Judge Teague's eyes met mine over her glasses, hard and level. "Mr. Cole. I'll caution you to be careful where you walk."
"Yes, Your Honor." I took a breath. I had crossed a line, and I knew it. It was a line I had promised my client I would not cross. I had not named his brother. I had only asked a policeman where a man was, in the form of a question that the jury could answer for itself, and then stopped. It was legal, and it was true, and it was very close to a betrayal.
I felt the heat of Victor's gaze on the side of my face. I did not turn.
"Detective," I said, more quietly, "in the course of your investigation, did you recover the victim's mobile telephone?"
"No."
"Do you know where it is?"
"No."
"Did you search the house for it?"
"Twice."
"The grounds?"
"We did a sweep. The perimeter, the garden. The studio."
"Did you search the defendant's office?"
"We did. And his car."
"And did you find it?"
"No, sir."
"So the State's theory is that Mr. Hale took the phone from the scene and disposed of it somewhere."
"That's our belief."
"Where?"
"We don't know."
"Did you search the river?"
"We've, ah. We didn't, no."
"The harbor? The landfill? The bay?"
"There's a lot of water, sir."
"There is." I paused. "Detective, is it possible that the telephone was never removed from the house? That it was hidden there, perhaps, in a place you did not search?"
"We searched thoroughly."
"Is it possible that there was something on that phone that someone wanted not to be found?"
"Objection. Speculation."
"Sustained."
"Detective, did anyone in your unit photograph the study's north wall?"
He frowned. It was a different frown from the others, puzzled, inward, a man reaching for a word in a language he had not spoken in a while. "That would be the crime-scene unit. I don't, I'm not sure I'd know."
"Do you know whether any photographs of the shelf above the defendant's desk were taken?"
"I'd have to check."
"Do you know whether any are missing?"
Whitlock was on her feet. "Your Honor, may we approach?"
We stood at the bench, the four of us, Whitlock and Pryce on the left, Priya and I on the right, with the white noise machine hissing its small dry static over the court reporter's low voice. Judge Teague had taken off her glasses. She did not look angry. She looked, if anything, intensely weary.
"Ms. Whitlock."
"Your Honor, I disclosed to the defense yesterday that there was a clerical error in the photograph log. The relevant frames were reshot and provided on Monday. Mr. Cole is attempting to suggest a conspiracy."
"I'm suggesting no such thing."
"You're implying it."
"Your Honor," I said, "I'm asking whether the lead investigator knows of any irregularity in the handling of evidence from the north wall of the study. It's a simple question, and it goes to the thoroughness of the investigation."
"Is there a basis?"
"There is. The log shows fourteen frames missing. The State says they were reshot. I'm told the reshot frames are of substantially lower resolution." I did not look at Whitlock. "The reshot frames do not show the surface of the shelf."
"Ms. Whitlock?"
A pause. Whitlock's face, in the pale glare of the bench lamp, was perfectly composed, but I saw her throat move.
"That's correct, Your Honor," she said. "The angle is poor. I've asked Mr. Voss to explain. He's not available until Thursday."
"I see." Judge Teague folded her glasses. She was silent for a long moment. I could hear the machine's soft hiss, and the faint far-off sound of a car horn in Meridian Square, and my own heart, which was going steadily and rather slowly. "I'll allow the question. I'll limit it to what this witness knows. Mr. Cole, I'd advise you to keep it narrow."
"Yes, Your Honor."
"And I'd advise both counsel," she said, "to remember that this courtroom is not a stage."
We went back. Dunleavy was sitting very upright in the box with his big hands on his knees and an expression of tired, obstinate courtesy. I asked the question again, and he said, with a slow, heavy, genuine puzzlement, that no, he did not know, and that he would find out.
"Thank you, Detective." I picked up my pen. "No further questions."
I sat down. My legs felt hollow, as they sometimes do. I had said nothing that was not true. I had broken no rule of procedure, and I had violated none of my client's instructions in any way a court would call a violation. But as I sat there, I became aware of something that I had not felt in twelve years of cross-examination, a faint, creeping, nauseous sense of having touched a thing that was alive.
Beside me Victor said, in a voice no louder than the hiss of the white-noise machine, "Mr. Cole."
"Yes."
"You said you wouldn't."
"I didn't say his name."
"No." He was looking straight ahead, at the witness stand, at the empty chair. "You didn't."
A silence. And then, very softly: "That was almost worse."
I turned my head. He did not look at me. But I saw his right hand, lying open on the table, and I saw it close, slowly, around the pen that someone had left there, and hold it, as a man holds a rail on a ship in a rising sea.
I had meant to say something. I had an answer. It was in four parts.
I did not say any of them.