Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“I do.”

“Did you have occasion to examine that mark in your laboratory?”

“I did.”

“Can you tell the jury what that mark is?”

“It’s a bloodstain.”

“Human blood?”

“Yes.”

“Did it belong to the victim?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the jury whether following your examination of that spot you formed any opinion as to how it got on the attaché case?”

“Looking at the stain under magnification, I observed minuscule, microscopic patterns not unlike brushstrokes in the dried blood at that spot. These strokes were made by the fibers from a fabric, probably cotton. Based on my examination, I concluded that the mark was a transfer stain imparted when a cloth fabric soaked in blood made contact with the leather, and that this contact was probably effected in an attempt to open the lock.”

Tuchio is trying to deal with this, because he knows if he doesn’t, it will fall into my lap. These little smudges of blood, some of them larger than others, were found on the attaché case, the top of the leather portfolio, and the sample case, though on the case they were difficult to make out because, since this was close to Scarborough’s chair, large areas were saturated with blood.

“Let me ask you, with regard to the attaché case, did your examination reveal anything else?”

“Yes. There were similar patterns on the handle where it was touched, on the edge at the top where it was opened, as well as traces of dried blood, again showing evidence of fiber patterns, inside on the bottom of the case.”

“And did you form any conclusions based on these findings?”

“Yes. It appears that someone, probably wearing gloves soaked with blood, opened the case and went through it.”

“Do you know whether they took anything?”

“No.”

Harry and I have had Prichert’s forensics report for months, so I know what’s coming next.

According to the witness, similar evidence of entry and pawing was found in the sample case, but not in the leather portfolio. Prichert says the portfolio was empty and that anyone attempting to open what was essentially a large zippered leather envelope with blood-soaked gloves would of necessity have left stains inside. There were none, either on the outside or the inside.

For Tuchio and the police, this is a puzzle. If anything was taken, it wasn’t found in Carl’s apartment when they turned it upside down during their search. They have also excluded robbery, either as the motive or as a passing frolic after the murder. Scarborough was wearing an expensive Rolex and a two-carat diamond ring, and he had more than three thousand dollars in cash in his wallet when they found his body.

Tuchio quickly passes over all this and gets to the point he wants to make: the gloves. If Carl was wearing gloves when he killed Scarborough, how did his pinkie print get on the hammer along with the other three prints on the floor?

According to the witness, the answer to this question is found back in the bathroom, on the tile floor. There, several fine cotton fiber transfer marks similar to those found on the attaché case were discovered on the bathroom floor. But these were not small dots the size of a fingertip. They were larger, one of them more than three inches in length.

“What, if anything, did you conclude from these transfer marks, the ones on the bathroom floor?” asks Tuchio.

“Based on the evidence, everything I examined, the entire pattern, it would be my opinion that at some point, probably at the same time that the raincoat was wiped down, the perpetrator removed the gloves from his hands, and at that point one or both of the gloves brushed the floor.”

“Do you have any idea what might have happened to these gloves?”

“No.”

The police have never found them.

Having disposed of all the nitty-gritty details they can’t explain, Tuchio moves to the one they can: the shoe impressions left behind in the blood at the entry hall.

The prosecutor has Prichert identify the two dark running shoes already in evidence. These are the Nikes with traces of blood on the soles found in Carl’s apartment the day they arrested him. The bailiff sets up the overhead projector, and within seconds the first transparency is shot up onto the screen. It shows a picture of the right shoe impression lifted from the tiles of the entry floor. Next to it is an impression lifted at the crime lab from the sole of the right shoe belonging to Carl, all the little swirls and marks, jurors leaning over the rail in the box to get a better look.

You don’t need a microscope to see it. Right down to the tiny breaks in some of the ridges where the wear pattern on the sole has eroded them, like the whorls and ridges of a fingerprint, the two images are identical.

If it’s possible, the transparency of the left shoe is even more dramatic. There is a small V-shaped cut near the heel, where Carl obviously ran over something sharp. It isn’t large, but magnified as it is on the screen, all of the cut’s peculiar and jagged edges stand out like a mirror image on the side-by-side impressions.

Two of the female jurors in the box are nodding their heads, another is standing bent over the rail looking closely. Almost all of them are making notes. That it proves a point not in dispute, the fact that Carl was there, can easily get lost in the clarity and definitive nature of the visual evidence. It makes you wonder, when the time comes for a verdict, will they ask themselves, What do I believe-the picture I saw with my lying eyes or the spin of a hired lawyer in the courtroom telling me what it means?

Why would the killer remove the gloves before he left the room?” This is my opening question to Prichert on cross-examination.

“The gloves had blood all over them. You’re not going to leave the room and walk through a busy hotel with your hands dripping blood.”

“Why didn’t he leave the gloves in the room?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you be so certain that he didn’t take them off after he left the room?” This is the question. I can see Tuchio looking up at his witness, hoping he’s caught the drift.

Implicit in my question, of course, is the fact that my client could not have been wearing gloves when he left the room. If so, how did his fingerprints get all over the entry floor and on the hammer?

“It doesn’t fit the evidence,” says Prichert. “Because it doesn’t account for the smears, the transfer marks on the bathroom floor. Or any of the other evidence.” He’s sticking to his story. “For example-”

“I think you’ve answered the question.”

“Let him complete his answer.” Tuchio, slouched in his chair, directs this to me, but for the judge to rule on. “Your Honor, counsel asked a question, the witness should be allowed to complete his answer.”

“Sustained. You can answer the question,” says Quinn.

“For example, if he was wearing the gloves when he left the room, he would not have left fingerprints on the floor in the entry,” says the witness.

Prichert turns it around on me in front of the jury and force-feeds me the theory of their case.

“Also, the blood smears on the handle of the door on the way out of the room. Gloves would be inconsistent with this evidence. Those smears were made by bare hands moving too quickly to leave clear latent prints.”

Carl must have been flying at the speed of light on his way out of that room. From the smeared prints all over it, you might have thought he was frisking the door. Forensics couldn’t get a single print that didn’t resemble the inkblots on a Rorschach test, not that it matters given the bonanza of evidence they found on the entry floor.