Michael Baden: Remains Silent

“I believe so.” Was he winking at her? “Didn’t you write it, Dr. Rosen?”

How can he be so unruffled? I’ve nailed him.

“You’re missing the point,” he said. “In those cases, the police testimony conflicted with the science. Here, it doesn’t.”

Manny turned on him, hair flying out of her hastily engineered chignon. “Do you expect this jury to believe that she just happened to die while being arrested? What does your science say about implausible coincidence?”

Rosen tapped his fingertips on the wooden railing, the first sign of anger. “It’s not a coincidence,” he said, keeping his voice under control. “The bursting of a natural aneurysm can be brought on by emotional stress or physical exertion, like getting caught shoplifting and struggling with the police.”

Uh-oh. Juries didn’t like it when you called an expert witness a big fat jerk, which she was tempted to do. But this last from him was a point for the defense.

“Dr. Rosen,” she said, recovering, “two of your colleagues have testified that Miss Carramia suffered a subdural hemorrhage, which is nearly always indicative of blunt force trauma. Are they lying?”

Rosen rubbed his temple. If I’m lucky, maybe he’s having an aneurysm of his own.

“Not at all. Without fully dissecting the brain, it was an easy mistake.” He addressed the jury in a gentle voice, as though he were Mister Rogers and they lived in his neighborhood. “An aneurysm is like a very small balloon. When this one burst, the blood flowed through the very thin arachnoid layer, which is the inner membrane covering the brain, to the outer thicker dura covering, creating a subdural hemorrhage from natural causes. It’s true that most subdural hemorrhages are due to trauma. This one wasn’t.” To demonstrate, Rosen formed a ball with his cupped hands and then opened the top one as though they were hinged at the pinkies.

Lord, Manny thought. He’s becoming taller in the witness stand. More authoritative. And the jury’s starting to believe him! “Additionally,” Rosen continued, “when the top of the skull was removed at autopsy, blood leaking from the postmortem incisions pooled inside the lower part of the skull, making it look like an even bigger subdural bleed. It could easily be mistaken for a traumatic injury, but it’s actually consistent with the officers’ testimony that the victim’s head never struck the ground.”

“In your opinion,” Manny snarled, watching uncertainty cloud the jurors’ faces. If that pontificating hired gun persuades them- “An opinion,” Rosen said, “which is backed by the vomitus the medical examiner found on the victim’s clothing. Vomiting is a classic sign of a leaking berry aneurysm.”

Manny felt her blood pressure spike. Her hair fell wetly across her cheeks. The son of a bitch was twisting the girl’s suffering to get the cops off the hook. “That vomit,” she said, “is evidence of the trauma six policemen inflicted on a one-hundred-and-five-pound girl. Or didn’t you read Dr. Sumet’s report?”

“I did. But what he failed to note was that the vomitus recovered from her jacket sleeve contained eggs, tomatoes, and tortillas.”

“Exactly. Which the victim ate for breakfast.”

“Counselor,” Rosen said, condescension dripping from the word, “according to her family, Miss Carramia ate at ten-thirty a.m. If she’d vomited as a result of the arrest four hours later, the food would have been mostly digested. It was not. This is proof that vomiting preceded the arrest. The girl died of natural causes. That’s what the science tells us.”

Manny shot a glance at the jury. They believe him. She felt sick, cold. Counterattack. But how? “Dr. Rosen,” she said, “apart from all this suspect speculation, you don’t have any solid evidence about what happened to Miss Carramia, do you?”

He leaned back, looking maddeningly comfortable. She envisioned him with pipe and slippers. “The body always tells the story,” he said. “Not only about how people died but how they lived.”

She felt a shiver of fear. Never mind that he’s an arrogant jerk. Just finish your cross.

“Come on, Doctor. Now you’re telling us you can read a body like some psychic with tea leaves?” Mistake! Never ask a question you can’t answer. What the hell am I doing? “Go ahead. Enlighten us. What could you know about the death of Esmeralda Carramia that hasn’t been covered by two years’ worth of investigation?”

“For one thing,” he said, “she was a gang member.”

Manny heard a gasp and looked behind her. Mrs. Carramia sat with her face covered by her hands, sobbing.

“The evidence is in the autopsy photos,” Rosen went on. “Miss Carramia had a pachuco tattoo.”

Manny breathed a sigh of relief. “You mean the crucifix? A religious symbol?”

Now Rosen stared directly at the jurors. “A simple homemade cross with three small dashes on top. It’s a gang sign, often made with ink or ashes. Hers also had a fourth mark on the lower right side.” His voice lowered. The jury leaned forward to listen. “This indicates heroin addiction. In the really rough gangs it’s a badge of honor. It’s usually a prison tattoo, by the way.”

Manny felt dizzy. She saw Mr. Carramia, his face ashen, lead his wife from the room. They looked like a pair of children caught with their hands in a candy box. Rosen had transformed their angelic little girl into a shoplifting drug-addicted gangbanger. And her parents had known it all along. “Move to strike,” she said tonelessly. Lost. I’ve lost.

A defense lawyer was on his feet. “Counsel opened the door when she had Miss Carramia’s mother testify about her child’s spotless record.”

The judge nodded. “She sure did.”

The others in the room, Essie’s friends and the friends of the cops, sat silently for a moment and then began to talk, heedless of the judge’s gavel. Only Rosen was still, sitting in the witness box like a king on his throne or, Manny thought, like my executioner.

“No further questions,” she whispered.

IT WAS JAKE’S IDEA of a perfect rainy Friday night. The trial was over, the truth had prevailed- too bad about Manny Manfreda; she had done a good job but she didn’t have the right evidence- and now he was alone in his Upper East Side brownstone kitchen, eating Chinese food, reading a treatise on blood spatter, and listening to Duke Ellington’s soundtrack of Anatomy of a Murder. Brilliant movie, inspiring music. Peace, it’s wonderful.

Alongside his take-out containers, piles of paperwork cluttered the top of his chrome-and-red Formica table; he’d tackle it over the weekend. His kitchen held a motley group of appliances: a recently purchased commercial stainless steel refrigerator, an avocado-green stove from the sixties, a white porcelain double sink from the fifties. The countertops were fifties Formica in green geometrical patterns; the metal cabinets, painted and repainted over the years, were a drab beige. A butcher-block island, scarred by years of white rings from wet plates and glasses, stood in faded glory in the center of the space. French doors in the back opened into a garden, converted by neglect into living quarters for a few happy squirrels, some pigeons, and an occasional chair.

Jake had bought the five-story brownstone in the mid-1980s, shortly after being hired at the ME’s office. He could only afford it because it was north of Ninety-sixth Street near Harlem, in those days not the nicest of neighborhoods. But he didn’t see it as an investment or even a possession. He saw New York’s history: the wealthy who had once populated the area, the careful work of nineteenth-century stonemasons, and the varied texture of the constantly changing community. When he finally had the money to do some work on the place, it was so full of forensic teaching materials and artifacts, he had no idea where to start. Besides, he didn’t have the time. This was New York. People died by the hundreds every day. He never had the time.