Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Surely there must be some margin of error,’ I tell him, ‘as to the percentage or probability?’ I say.

‘This is not like some political survey,’ he tells me, ‘but science. There is no margin of error, plus or minus,’ he says. ‘The percentage of probability as to paternity turns on the fact that there are degrees of relatedness between individuals. This would range from no possibility, as where the subject is excluded by blood type, for example, to a very low probability, to a point of near or virtual certainty,’ he says.

He smiles, waiting for me to ask, but I do not, where along this continuum our particular case falls. He would only gore me with his pike one more time.

‘It’s very interesting that you’ve reduced none of this to writing,’ I say. ‘Surely there must be working papers?’ I say. ‘Your notes?’

He smiles a little concession. ‘I can produce my working notes,’ he says. ‘They’re not with me at the moment.’

‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘I would like to see them.’

‘No problem. I’ll send them to your office.’

I can examine these and call him again in my case-in-chief, but Angelo knows I am grasping at straws. Any working papers would be written in chicken scratches that only another physician could decipher, and would be crafted in such general and vague terms that the procedures used in testing could be fleshed out only by resort to Angelo’s own testimony. I could spend five grand on a scientific circle-jerk and end right back where I started.

Of course we could run our own tests. Exhume the bodies and do our own DNA, but there is no time and Angelo knows this. Our case opens on Monday. DNA analysis at most labs takes a minimum of six weeks.

I am getting angry. It is written in my eyes.

‘Dr. Angelo, are you familiar with the medical records pertaining to Mr. Vega’s vasectomy twelve years ago?’

‘I’ve read them,’ he says.

‘Well, then, perhaps you can enlighten the court on how it’s possible for a man who’s undergone a vasectomy for the express purpose of sterilization to father a child?’

‘It happens all the time,’ he says.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Obviously you’re not aware, but there’s a considerable potential for failure with regard to this procedure. Lawsuits filed all the time,’ he says, ‘by couples surprised at becoming new parents after the man has undergone a vasectomy.’

‘Now you’re going to tell us that ninety-nine-point-four percent of these procedures fail. Is that right, doctor?’

‘No, actually it’s about five percent.’

‘Pretty rare,’ I’d say. ‘Not exactly an odds-on bet,’ I tell him. ‘I suppose some witch doctor performed this procedure on Mr. Vega, using a dull stone scalpel?’

‘No. It’s called recanalization,’ he says. ‘The vas deferens, the excretory duct for sperm from the testicles, is normally severed as part of the vasectomy. The ends are tied off. Failure rates often depend on how much is removed and how the occlusion is performed, the tying-off,’ he says. ‘If the occlusion fails, the ends of the duct can grow back together and rejoin.’

‘Did you surgically examine Mr. Vega to determine that this is what occurred?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘But the techniques used by the physician in his case are no longer considered to be medically on the cutting edge. Please excuse the pun,’ he says.

A few jurors actually smile at this. Angelo has made a joke. He is mocking me. Unless I can turn this around I should sit down now. But I have dug the hole deeper, damaged our case more by these specifics. The compulsion to fill in just a little, some concession from the witness, some seeming high ground that I can end it on, if only for the illusion that we have gained something by all of this. Like the compulsive gambler, I am driven to win back just a little of my losses, some equivocation that I can build on later, that I can argue to the jury on close.

It is a high-stakes gambit, but I sense that even the most medically disinclined in this courtroom have a singular burning question at this moment. If I passed out a hundred cards for suggested queries, all would come back with this at the top of the list. I could leave it and sit down, but the jury will wonder why. Against this I balance the first rule of the courtroom: never ask unless you know. Still, I can hear it murmured in their collective minds. It is overpowering, a single interrogatory in the desperate hope that he says no.

‘Dr. Angelo, did you perform a sperm count on Mr. Vega?’

I stand transfixed by the twinkle in his eye as he says, ‘Yes.’

It is like the sensation of hot lead flowing into every orifice of my body, the shuddering realization that I have fallen into the fiery crucible prepared for me by Cassidy.

I could turn and walk away, excuse the witness. But Morgan on redirect would drive this thing through me like a javelin.

‘And what did you find?’ I ask.

‘We found that while Mr. Vega had apparently suffered some scar tissue as a result of the vasectomy, he was able to project a sufficient number of sperm to conceive a child.’ He delivers this death blow with a smile, the coup-de-grâce.

I stand leaden before him, the shambles of my case arrayed around me. Even the skull of Melanie Vega, skewered by its metal stake on the evidence cart, seems to mock me in its stark silence. Except for pictures of them copulating — Jack and Melanie — Angelo has slammed the door on any doubts concerning Vega’s fatherhood of the dead child. In a single sitting he has done more damage than all of their witnesses combined.

It is why Cassidy didn’t touch this, the vasectomy or any of its tangents, in her original examination of Angelo. She wanted to wait until I was too far along the path of my defense to change course, until after I had called Jack a killer in front of the jury. It was the trap she constructed for me, and I fell into it like a lamb to the shearing. I had been warned about her, the cunning, relentless style. Her case in seeming disarray, with two judges and the referee giving the bout to the challenger, Cassidy has gone for the knock-out punch and connected.

By the time Angelo finishes I am gutted like some bottom fish on a factory ship, filleted in front of the witness box. It is nearly noon, and Cassidy tells Woodruff that the state now rests its case.

As Angelo steps down from the stand, there is a palpable atmosphere in the courtroom, a mood swing of dynamic proportion, that would have oddsmakers offering book that Laurel will never leave this place a free woman.

The apprehension in her eyes as she studies me, unsteady in front of the witness box, tells me that she is not oblivious to this sea change. At one point I find it necessary to actually grip the railing at the edge of the bench in order to steady myself as I negotiate the ten feet back to our counsel table.

It is Friday afternoon, and Woodruff tells me to be prepared to open my case for the defense first thing Monday morning. I think he is taking pity on me.

When I answer him I hear all of this, even my own reply, through a pulsing auditory drone, like the rumbling of an engine in the bowels of a ship. It is the pounding of blood through carotid arteries, caused by the panic now coursing through my brain.

The judge slaps the gavel and the court is adjourned, the jury led out.

The matron is moving on Laurel, whose eyes have not left me. I arrive just in time to take her hand and exchange a few words.

‘We’ll have to talk,’ I tell her. ‘This afternoon.’ My voice has an ominous quality, the forbidding tones of a surgeon who has spent some time with his fingers inside of a loved one, looking for cancer, and now must deliver the news.