David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

Roger Ogren looks at Judge Wilderburth. His Honor must be sure, at this point in the trial, that this was a lie.

“Shedenied being romantically involved with Sam Dillon?”

“Yes. In fact, I asked her that question at both interviews. Wednesday the eleventh and Friday the thirteenth. Both times, she denied being involved with Mr. Dillon.”

“Okay. Let’s stay with the eleventh. Did you follow up with her?”

“We asked her if she had gone to Sam Dillon’s offices, looking for him, the previous Friday.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t answer, initially.”

“What didyou say?”

“I told her that there were witnesses. That people had seen her at both the city and capital offices of Dillon and Becker that day, Friday the sixth. And that she had been seen going into Sam Dillon’s office at the capital and slamming the door shut, and she’d been heard yelling at him.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She didn’t speak for a while. I would say about five minutes. Then she said, ‘It’s complicated.’ That’s all she said. She got up and left.” The detective shrugs. “We had no basis at that time to hold her.”

“Was there anything about her personal appearance that struck you as significant?”

“Yes,” says Czerwonka, holding up a hand. “She had nails. They weren’t particularly long but they were there. But the left-hand index finger-that finger had almost no nail. It was broken down past the fingertip.”

Allison curls her left hand into a fist.

“Were her fingernails painted?”

“Not at that time, no.”

“All right, Detective. What did you do next? After the defendant left the police station after that brief visit.”

“We got a search warrant.”

Roger Ogren shows Detective Czerwonka the search warrant and admits it into evidence.

“You searched the defendant’s home?”

“Yes. The following day. The twelfth of February.”

“Can you tell us what you found, Detective?”

“We looked in her jewelry box. I did it myself.”

“What did you find?”

“We found one platinum earring-”

The judge takes notice of this. Chin lifting, mouth parting.

“-with a gold fastener.”

“Pure platinum,” the jeweler told Allison. “A polished finish. The post is fourteen-karat yellow gold. It’s our finest.”

They were beautiful. Allison favored platinum, and she wanted to give herself something. Her novel had just been published. Mat had been generous with jewelry over the years, but it was always gold, and no matter how many hints she dropped, he never bought her platinum.

She put them on and looked into the small mirror on the counter. She had never bought herself jewelry before. But something felt right about it. Something about the very fact that she was doing it for herself. She had begun to do such things, as the separation from Mat was becoming more pronounced. It was with a small thrill, mixed with a deepening sadness, that she set down her credit card.

Roger Ogren walks from the evidence table to the witness, holding a bag containing the single earring.

“Is this the earring you found in the defendant’s jewelry box, Detective?”

“That’s it,” he says with assurance. “It obviously stood out.”

“And why did it stand out?”

“It stood out,” says the detective, “because it is identical to the earring that we found in Sam Dillon’s house at the crime scene. It’s the second earring of the set.”

Ogren shows the detective the other platinum earring, in a separate evidence bag.

“That’s the one we found near Sam Dillon’s body,” Czerwonka confirms.

“And as a reminder to the judge,” says Ogren, going back to the evidence desk placed behind the prosecution table, “this is a credit-card receipt for this pair of platinum earrings, purchased by the defendant eighteen months ago?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Did you find anything else, Detective, in your search of the home?”

“Yes. We searched the defendant’s garbage, of course. We found cotton balls that contained fingernail polish and nail polish remover.”

“What color?”

“Red. We ran a check on it.” Czerwonka looks at the notepad on his lap. “The actual color is ‘Saturday Night Red.’ It was made by Evelyn Masters. It’s pretty pricey.”

“And did you find such a fingernail polish in the defendant’s home?”

“Yes. There was a bottle of it in her drawer in the bathroom.”

“And remind us, Detective. The broken fingernail you found in Sam Dillon’s house after his death.” Roger Ogren holds up the evidence bag and approaches the witness. “What was the color of that fingernail?”

“It was the same. ‘Saturday Night Red’ by Evelyn Masters.”

“And yet, by the time you spoke with the defendant at the police station, a few days after the death of Sam Dillon-”

“Her nails had no polish on them,” Czerwonka finishes. “She had removed the polish.”

“Very good, Detective. Now let me ask, did you find anything else of significance?”

“We did,” he answers. “We found, in Mrs. Pagone’s laundry, a maroon sweatshirt. A Champion sweatshirt with the name ‘Mansbury College’ on it.”

“All right.” Ogren retrieves another evidence bag. “Is this that sweatshirt?”

“It is.”

“And did you find anything of significance on it?”

“We found blood.”

“Blood that has been matched through DNA testing to Sam Dillon’s blood?” Ogren asks. This is a leading question, but these are only foundational questions. Ogren, yesterday, called a forensic scientist to the stand to confirm that the blood on Allison’s sweatshirt was Sam Dillon’s blood. Technically, the evidence was presented out of order-it had not yet been established that the sweatshirt was found in Allison’s house-but this is a trial by judge, not jury, and the judge accommodated the scheduling needs of the witnesses by hearing the evidence out of order.

So now, Detective Czerwonka is confirming that he found the sweatshirt in Allison’s laundry during his search of the house.

“Yeah,” the detective says, “the sweatshirt we found in the defendant’s laundry had Sam Dillon’s blood on it.”

So let’s summarize all of this for the Court,” says Roger Ogren. He is directing a deputy medical examiner, an elderly man named Ernest McCabe, on the second day of trial. “What was the cause of death?”

“The cause of death was blunt trauma to the skull,” says the doctor. “Four independent blows to the head, from two different sources. One of the sources we know about. The clock that was on the mantel. The other source, which was in all likelihood a much heavier and sturdier object, was not recovered.”

Yes, it was a much sturdier object. The prosecution knows what the murder weapon is. The award from the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association was conspicuously absent from the mantel above Sam’s fireplace. It didn’t take the police long to discover what had been removed from the mantel. The MMA gives out an award annually, so law enforcement had no trouble finding a replica, had no difficulty seeing how easily it could have been used to kill Sam Dillon.

But they can’t find it, not the one used to kill Sam. They dragged the lake near Sam’s house. They searched Allison’s home and her yard. They searched every waste-disposal facility in the county and dragged every river. They figure Allison killed Sam around seven that night and drove around for hours before returning to Sam’s house at close to one in the morning. They assume she has hidden the weapon somewhere. But they couldn’t possibly guess where. They would never think to look in the back of a grocery store where Allison shopped before the family moved to their current house.