John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

"An A scan? Would you explain to the jury what that is?"

Strout leaned forward and gave a two-minute explanation – most poisons and/or volatile compounds were found in the A scan, and it was cheapest and quickest. If a cause-of-death could be found at the A level – without a police report indicating a suspicion of foul play – the scanning tended to stop there.

"And the A scan did find traces of cocaine and alcohol in Mr. Hollis' system, is that it?"

Strout frowned. Making it simple for the jury wasn't his job. He was already on the record as having missed the true cause of death in this case, and he wanted to keep it precise. "There was a potentially lethal level of coca-ethylene, which gets a little technical, but basically it is the by-product when cocaine and alcohol mix in the blood."

"And when you determined the presence of this coca-ethylene, you stopped the autopsy?"

"Well, no. But we stopped looking so hard for a cause-of-death. A man's got a knife sticking out of his head, we don't necessarily go looking for a coincidental heart attack." A brush of low laughter. "But we didn’t complete the autopsy with that finding. In fact, the lab tests and the physical examination are related but separate procedures."

Strout explained about blood samples being sent off to the lab while the autopsy proper concerned itself with the body and its organs. "When we get back the lab results, we check to see if anything we've discovered in the physical examination might throw some new light on the lab's finding or vice-versa."

"And in this case?"

"Well, we found the coca-ethylene. There weren't any appreciable amounts or physical indications of the presence of barbiturates or alkaloids. So we had a probable cause of death at the A level and stopped there."

Powell nodded to Strout, then turned first to the jury, then back to the defense table, making eye contact with Jennifer again. Hardy glanced at her out of the side of his eye. Was she smiling at her prosecutor? He touched her arm, and she stiffened, her face now a mask.

The direct examination continued without any surprises. Both prosecution and defense counsel might have stipulated to all of this forensic detail – the facts were largely undisputed – but neither Powell or Freeman had shown any inclination to do so. They had their reasons. Powell wanted to make the long-ago death of Jennifer's first husband real to the jury. He might have been dead a long time now, but when he died he'd been a healthy twenty-six-year-old man. Powell wanted the jury to know that, to get a sense of a young life snuffed out, to watch his accused killer react to it all. When he'd finished outlining the C scan and discovery of the concentration of atropine in Ned's left thigh, Powell led Strout into an area that did not strictly concern his findings in the lab or at autopsy.

"Now, Dr. Strout, atropine is a prescription drug, is it not? It's not available over the counter?"

Strout agreed.

"And what is it's principle use?"

"It's used in anesthesia and to inhibit the flow of saliva." Strout was good at including everybody. He smiled all around, smooth and comfortable.

"Were you surprised when you found it in the scan you've described?"

"Objection." Freeman was up like a shot, and almost as quickly, without discussion, Villars sustained him. Powell remained impassive.

"Dr. Strout, to your knowledge, does atropine get much use as a recreational drug?"

Hardy could see Freeman getting poised to object again, but he sat back, seemingly content to let Powell continue with this line of questioning.

"If it is, it's not a common one."

"It doesn't produce a so-called high, or anything like that?"

Again, Hardy glanced over at Freeman, Powell was leading the witness all over the place, and Freeman was sitting back in his chair, lips pursed, listening.

"No."

"So if a person were an habitual drug user, and looking to get high, he or she would not-"

Here, finally, Freeman raised a hand, keeping his voice low. "Your Honor? Speculation."

Again he was sustained. Powell smiled, palms out, apologized in his gentlemanly way and nodded to both the judge and the doctor. "That's all, then. Thank you, Dr. Strout. Your witness, Mr. Freeman."

The rumpled defense attorney, no less genial than Powell had been, although – Hardy thought – more believable in this guise, walked to where Powell had been standing, then moved three steps closer to the witness box, lifting one hand in a casual unspoken greeting to Strout, telling the jury by gesture that he and Strout, too, were professional colleagues. Just because he was with the defense, it didn’t mean he was with the bad guys, or was one of them.

"This exhumation business… I don't suppose it's much fun, is it, Doctor?"

Strout was still relaxed. There had been trials where he had testified for the better part of a week. He looked on his witness time as a break from his work in the morgue. He spread his hands. "It's part of the job. Sometimes it gets pretty interesting."

"Was this, the Ned Hollis exhumation, one of the particularly interesting ones?"

Strout thought for a moment, then added, "I'd have to say it was."

"And can you tell the jury why that was?"

Strout liked this, the opportunity to sit back and chat. "Well, in any autopsy the search for a cause of death is a bit of a puzzle. As I've explained earlier, we run laboratory scans for various substances and examine the body, hoping we can point at something when we're finished. In a case where someone has died a long time ago, the puzzle can get complicated. I guess that's what I mean by interesting."

Freeman, apparently fascinated, had now wandered closer to the jury box. "What kind of complications, Doctor?"

"Well, the body decays, for one. Certain substances break down – chemically, I mean – or turn into something else, or disappear entirely. Evaporate. Over time, of course, eventually you can lose almost everything."

"And had that happened with Mr. Hollis?"

"Well, to some degree, yes."

"And yet this was a particularly interesting… puzzle, I believe you called it."

The medical examiner nodded. "That's because we believed we had another poison and we had to find it – not just the substance itself, but how had gotten into the body." Strout, the ideal witness, was forward in his chair again, addressing the jury directly. "During the first autopsy," he explained, "we had, of course, examined stomach contents and so on, but now we were looking to see if we missed anything the first time, so we tried again. But there wasn't much there. Although the scan found the initial trace of atropine, we couldn't get any concentration approaching a lethal dose."

"And your next step?"

Hardy glanced at the jury. This was gruesome stuff, no one was sleeping. Strout continued, showing enthusiasm for his work. "Now here's where the puzzle gets interesting. If there's been a recent death, you might find some needle marks, bruises and so on, but here we took samples from various locations, hoping to find a concentration, and we got lucky."

"How was that?"

Strout got technical on some muscle names and so on, but Freeman brought him back, making it clear that the injection had gone in two-thirds up the front of the left thigh.

"You're sure it was the front of the thigh? It could not have seeped through, so to speak, from the back?"

Strout was certain. "There's no chance of that. The muscles aren't connected." More medical detail, but gradually the picture came out – the lethal injection had been administered to the upper thigh.

To Hardy, it seemed like a long journey to get to something they already knew. Until Freeman asked, "This location on the thigh, could someone self-administer an injection there?"