Skeleton Justice Page 7

  She held up an apple—a discolored, drying, decayed, smelly brownish red apple. “Let me represent to you that this is a Delicious apple, sir.”

  “Objection! Objection,” bellowed Lisnek.

  She ignored him. Judge Freeman was laughing too hard to rule on the objection.

  “How can you say with scientific certainty that the bite marks in that apple were those of my client when the apple had been rotting away for over twelve hours under improper storage conditions?”

  “Overruled,” came the belated decision from the bench, allowing Manny to officially proceed. She looked over at Lisnek. He really needed to get shirts with collars that weren’t so tight. His head looked like it was about to pop off his neck.

  Olivo sputtered and offered some qualified justification, buttressed with technical jargon. “Scientific certainty only means it is more likely than not.”

  Ah, the dirty little secret of experts reared its head. Their opinion was nothing more than a game of chance.

  “Are you telling this courtroom that your opinion, one that would incarcerate my eighteen-year-old client without bail, disrupt his schooling, prevent his graduation, and—”

  “Objection,” Lisnek again bellowed, his voice echoing through the courtroom doors and reverberating into the hall.

  The recovered Judge Freeman turned to her. “Okay, enough with the sob story, Ms. Manfreda. Get on with the question.”

  “—is based on a mere possibility about a degraded apple?”

  Manny continued to hammer him, rebutting his claims about the reliability of bite-mark evidence with quotes from articles on forensic odontology, and the language in recent court decisions where bite-mark testimony had wrongfully imprisoned innocent people.

  Before she concluded her inquisition, she made a few final thrusts.

  “Did you bring the apple with you today?”

  “No.”

  “Did the prosecutor tell you to leave it in the city?”

  “No.”

  Manny smelled something wrong, and it wasn’t just her one piece of forbidden fruit. This ordinarily talkative expert had become a one-word-answer witness.

  “Where is your apple now?”

  “It’s been discarded. Once we documented the impressions with photographs, there was no reason to keep it any longer.”

  A hush came over the journalists listening to the proceeding. She thought she heard Mrs. Heaton gasp. Her client reached out and grabbed Manny’s hand.

  “Your Honor, I move the whole case be thrown out also. The assistant U.S. attorney has specifically withheld this material fact from the court. Spoliation of evidence, Your Honor, is cause for dismissal.”

  Lisnek tried to respond. Judge Freeman interrupted the proceedings. “There is no need to deal with that issue today.”

  Lisnek preened. His smugness was short-lived.

  Judge Freeman had listened to it all attentively, but it was clear that in the end he was most impressed with the unintended scientific study of Granny Manfreda. “Your rotten apple is out as evidence, Mr. Lisnek. I’ll issue my written opinion next week. What else do you have?”

  “We have an eyewitness who saw Mr. Heaton place the bomb, sir.” Lisnek spoke in a firm, steady voice, but Manny noticed him gripping his government-issued pen until his knuckles turned white.

  Manny took a deep breath as Mr. Park Sung Ho was sworn in. The cross-examination of Dr. Olivo had gone very well, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  Mr. Park was a delicate man with the bright, watchful eyes of a songbird. He took his duty seriously, both as an employee of the Happy Garden deli and as a witness in federal court. Juries automatically liked earnest, hardworking people like him. Even though there was no jury present today, Manny felt she had to be careful. It had been okay to make that pompous ass Olivo look like a fool; it wouldn’t do to humiliate Mr. Park.

  Manny tuned in as Lisnek took the witness through the preliminaries. No, he didn’t own the deli; his cousin did. Yes, he had been working alone there on the night of May 17. He worked every night. “Cousin only trust me to work overnight shift,” Mr. Park said.

  Six young men had come in together that night; Mr. Park’s eyebrows drew down as he recalled what had happened. “They try trick me. They give twenty-dollar bill. They take back, give ten. They add candy bar, take away chips, switching, switching. Try confuse so not have to pay for everything.”

  Manny glanced over at Travis, who had slid down in his seat. So far, Mr. Park’s memory was accurate. This man had the power to send her client to prison for a long time, but Manny found herself sympathizing with him. An immigrant, struggling to make it in a tough town, protecting his family’s assets—who couldn’t feel for the little man as he was hassled by a group of kids?

  “On way out the door, that boy”—Mr. Park pointed at Travis with assurance—“take apple from bin. No pay.”

  With ever-increasing confidence, Lisnek led Mr. Park through his testimony about the explosion. Did Mr. Park get to the door of the store in time to see the boys reach the mailbox? Yes. Did Mr. Park see the boy who had stolen the apple take a bite and then throw the apple in the gutter? Yes. Did that same boy then bend down and place a package under the mailbox? Yes, most emphatically. Did the mailbox then explode? Yes, yes, yes.

  “No further questions.” Lisnek turned his back on the Korean store clerk and strode back to his seat.

  Manny rose and smiled at the witness. “Good morning, Mr. Park. Thank you for that account. You’re obviously a very observant person.”

  Mr. Park nodded, pleased that Manny recognized his good qualities.

  “Mr. Park, did you see one of the other boys also take an apple from the bin?”

  “No, just that boy.”

  “Were all six boys at the cash register at the same time?”

  “No. Come and go.”

  “So one of the other boys could have taken an apple while you were busy with the ones who were paying.”

  “I watch all customer. Make sure no one steal.”

  “I’m sure you do, Mr. Park. But while some of the boys were trying to trick you as they paid, maybe another also took an apple. Is that possible?”

  He shrugged reluctantly. “Maybe.”

  “When you followed the boys out onto the sidewalk, did you see the face of the one who put the package under the mailbox?”

  “No. See boy who took apple bite it, then throw down. He one who put package.”

  “What was the boy wearing?”

  “Blue jean. T-shirt.”

  “What color T-shirt?”

  Mr. Park hesitated. “Dark.”

  “What were the other boys wearing?”

  “Same. Blue jean, dark T-shirt,” the witness replied promptly.

  Poor Mr. Park. He was so eager to be honest and do a good job that he didn’t even realize how he had undermined his own evidence. This was why eyewitness testimony was so unreliable, especially cross-racial identification. Most people didn’t lie intentionally. They said what they were sure they saw. But there were so many variables, so many subtle differences that could create the same reality.

  Manny looked Mr. Park in the eye and spoke without any hint of accusation. “So, if all the boys were dressed similarly, and you couldn’t see their faces from where you were standing, and it’s possible one of the other boys also took an apple, isn’t it possible that the person you saw eating the apple and placing the bomb was not my client, Travis Heaton, but one of the others?”

  Mr. Park’s eyes darted from Lisnek to the judge and back to Manny, searching for some guidance. The courtroom was silent.

  “Mr. Park, please answer the question,” Judge Freeman said. “Is it possible that the person you saw placing the bomb was not Travis Heaton?”

  Mr. Park seemed to have shrunk inside the cheap black suit he’d put on for this important occasion.

  “Possible,” he whispered.

  “Mr. Park, after the explosion, when all the boys ran,
did you notice if one of them ran in a different direction?”

  “Yes. One run down Washington Street, turn up Eleventh. Go toward hill, Sinatra Drive. Others stop on corner. Then police come.”

  “Did you see if the one you thought placed the bomb ran straight or turned down Eleventh Street?”

  Mr. Park bit his lower lip and lowered his eyes, concentrating. Then he looked up at Manny. “Cannot say for sure. Explosion big bright light, everyone running. Then one boy turn, others go straight. Not sure which.” Mr. Park was the soul of honesty. Yes, you had to like this man.

  “Thank you, Mr. Park.”

  Mr. Park looked around the courtroom, expecting praise from every corner. Judge Freeman smiled benevolently. Manny beamed. Brian Lisnek’s lips were compressed in a thin line, his eyes focused resolutely on the yellow pad before him. He never looked up as the Korean grocer exited the courtroom.

  “Well, you’ve certainly established reasonable doubt, Ms. Manfreda.” The glance Judge Freeman cast at Lisnek implied he thought the prosecutor better get busy improving his case. And that was the risk of this bail hearing—it gave Lisnek an advance look at her defense, allowing him to prepare for her best shots. The information Sam had provided was her ace in the hole. Would she have to use it?

  “I’m inclined to grant Ms. Manfreda’s request for bail,” the judge continued. “My only concern is the implication that this bombing is part of some larger conspiracy. What evidence do you have to support that, Mr. Lisnek?”

  Lisnek turned to the other lawyers on his team. A lot of low murmuring and head shaking ensued. Finally, the assistant U.S. attorney rose.

  “We would prefer not to reveal that information at this time, Your Honor.”

  Manny’s eyes narrowed. Did that mean he had nothing to back up his claim, or did he really have information that she should know but didn’t?

  “We will agree to the bail of five hundred thousand dollars, cosigned by his mother,” Lisnek continued.

  “Five hundred thousand!” Manny protested. “It might as well be ten million. My client can’t make that!”

  “We’re not releasing a terrorist on his own recognizance.” Now Lisnek was up and shouting, too.

  Manny turned to Judge Freeman, trying to tap into the sympathy she’d felt coming from him. “Your Honor, what is accomplished by holding this young man in prison with truly violent rapists and murderers? It’s like a death sentence before he’s even convicted of any crime.”

  “No need for melodrama, Ms. Manfreda. We’ll hold him in protective custody,” the judge said.

  Manny’s heart rate kicked up a notch. Protective custody was just another word for solitary confinement—more punishment, not less. The government could drag its feet for months on this case. By the time they got to trial, Travis would be a total head case from spending twenty-three hours a day alone in an eight-by-ten cell. But Judge Freeman wouldn’t be moved by that argument. Manny aimed below the belt.

  “Protective custody didn’t help Roberto Vallardo.”

  Manny saw the judge flinch. Vallardo, awaiting trial for molesting his young stepdaughter, had been killed by other inmates while supposedly being kept in protective custody. Two days later, DNA evidence proved that someone else had raped the child.

  Judge Freeman tapped his pen and studied Travis. Manny kept her mouth shut, letting her client’s scrawny arms and hunched shoulders do the talking.

  When the judge spoke again, his tone was softer. “I can’t just let him go. He has to realize there are ramifications to his actions.”

  “Absolutely, Your Honor,” Manny said. “I suggest that my client be confined to his home, permitted to leave only to go to school, and monitored by means of an electronic ankle bracelet.”

  More conferring at the enemy table. “Fine,” Lisnek said. “But one transgression with that bracelet and he’s behind bars.”

  Cold beer, greasy food, sassy waitresses—Ian’s Pub was the kind of neighborhood joint you used to be able to find every couple of blocks in New York. Now, with sushi and tapas and pinot noir encroaching from every side, the place was an isolated fortress of grit. Jake entered and dodged around some dithering women who apparently thought a maître d’ was going to materialize from somewhere and escort them to a table. They’d be waiting till next Sunday. He strode over to the very last table without guilt—and kept an eye on the door for Pasquarelli.

  While he waited, Jake mulled over the information he had gathered on the kind of implement that might have been used to cause the electrical burns on Amanda Hogaarth. He had spoken to several other forensic pathologists, both in the United States and abroad, who specialized in cases of torture. Electrical shocks were a common form of torture, yet the photos of the Hogaarth autopsy that he had sent them by e-mail had not produced any exact matches to the kind of burning experienced by recent victims of repressive regimes in Africa and the Mideast. Most of these people had obvious external burns caused by a cattle prod or similar large instrument. Amanda Hogaarth’s burns had been more subtle.

  The Vampire’s other victims had all reported the assaults committed on them, outraged at their violation. Would Ms. Hogaarth have done the same had she lived? Had the Vampire intended to kill her, or had the torture just gone too far, given her already-weakened heart?

  Vito Pasquarelli appeared shortly after the waitress interrupted Jake’s reverie by slamming two beer mugs on the table and vanishing for parts unknown. The detective’s polyester tie and brown sports coat looked like they were dragging down a drowning man. If clothes could surrender, Vito’s would have marched themselves off to Goodwill.

  Jake pushed a beer toward Pasquarelli as he collapsed into the booth. “Here. I took the liberty of ordering for you while I had the chance.”

  “The usual?” Pasquarelli inquired hopefully.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Good. This may be the last meal I get today. This case gets weirder by the minute, and the commissioner is all over us to get it solved.”

  “What have you found out about Amanda Hogaarth?”

  Pasquarelli took a long swig from his beer and started to talk. “The woman lived in that apartment for eight years. It seems she just popped up in New York one day. We can’t find any trace of where she lived before. No relatives. The emergency contact she listed on her apartment-rental application is her lawyer. Guy says he met her once, eight years ago, to draw up her will. She left all her money—a cool two million—to a place called Family Builders.”

  “Which is…”

  “A nonprofit agency specializing in finding homes for hard-to-adopt kids. Older, disabilities, emotional problems. Folks over there can’t believe their luck.”

  “Let me guess: They’ve never heard of Amanda Hogaarth.”

  Pasquarelli nodded. “Not on their mailing list, never applied to adopt a kid, never even sent them ten bucks at Christmas.”

  “Neighbors, building staff—what do they know?”

  “Jackshit. Neighbors say she’d say hello only if you greeted her first; otherwise, she’d walk right by you. Both the doorman and the concierge say they can’t ever remember her having a visitor, and the doorman’s been there eight years. Went out almost every day around ten a.m., came back around two.”

  “And she went…”

  “Shopping in the neighborhood, lunch every day at a coffee shop on Madison near Sixtieth. Left a good tip, never chatted to the waiters. It’s positively creepy the way she never talked to anyone. I mean, how is it possible to live eight years in New York and never say more than ‘I’ll have the tuna on toast’?”

  “She had to have left some financial trail,” Jake said.

  “No credit cards. Paid cash for everything. Kept about five hundred grand in CDs at Citibank, the rest in a blue-chip stock portfolio. Every few months, she’d cash in a CD, put the money in her checking account, and draw it down. She doesn’t show up in the IRS system until eight years ago, when she started paying income tax on the
interest earned on her investments. She apparently never worked.”

  “In this country,” Jake added. “Remember the Spanish-language cookbook and the fact that her fillings didn’t appear to be American-made. Was she an immigrant? Have you checked INS records?”

  “We’re doing that now. Their computers have spit out a few Hogaarths in her age range. They’re all German, all accounted for. INS is still looking.”

  The waitress arrived with their food: one-third-pound bacon and Swiss cheeseburgers with french fries and onion rings. Not a scrap of greenery in sight, not even a pickle.

  “Ah, myocardial infarction on a plate.” Jake sighed.

  Pasquarelli prepared to dive in. “Can you believe my daughter says I ought to start eating tofu burgers?”

  “That’s what you get for sending her to college in Vermont.” Jake bit into the pure nirvana of the Ian’s burger, greasy and proud. “So what did this elderly woman, who never talked to anyone, know that was worth torturing her for?”

  “How the hell can I find out if I can’t locate one person who ever had a conversation with her?”

  “You have to go back to this Family Builders place,” Jake advised. “Why did she choose that charity to leave her money to, not the Cancer Society or the Red Cross or a home for wayward cats? It’s not a high-profile group. There has to be some personal connection there.”

  Pasquarelli waved a french fry in Jake’s direction. “They’ve been very cooperative. Let us go through their mailing list and financial records. The director, Lydia Martinette, assures me no one named Hogaarth ever adopted or applied to adopt through their agency, and no kid with the surname Hogaarth was ever placed through their agency.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I checked this place out, Jake. Social Services, family court—they all say Family Builders does great work. You should see the pictures in the waiting room—kids in wheelchairs, mentally challenged kids, kids who’ve been bouncing around foster care for years, and Mrs. Martinette finds them all homes.”