John Lescroart - The Suspect

"So, is it not entirely consistent with the medical evidence that Ms. Dryden could have injured herself and, not realizing the extent of the injury, got into the hot tub, passed out, and drowned?"

"Well, counsel, I think anybody with this kind of an injury would have sought medical attention after a very short period of time if they were able to do so. It would have been a very painful injury."

"Doctor, what is Vicodin?"

"It is a prescription drug."

"And isn't that precisely the sort of prescription drug that a person might take if they'd just suffered a very painful injury?"

"Yes."

"Thank you." Although she knew exactly what her next question would be, Gina paused for the judge's benefit, consciously frowning as though she were confused. Most uncharacteristically, Strout was showing small signs of discomfort. Shifting in the chair, straightening his rimless bifocals, adjusting his collar. He was so nearly always infallible, and considered so, that this type of minute questioning was a rare occurrence. And clearly an unwelcome one.

If she were in front of a jury, Gina would have slowed down even more at this point. She wouldn't have wanted to stack her own credibility against the kindly and obviously very knowledgeable older gentleman. But here she had no such concerns. Even though she believed that Caryn Dryden had been murdered, she needed to nail down the fact that the testimony of San Francisco's medical examiner in no way proved that point. "All right, Doctor," she said, "moving along to the question of the victim's sobriety at the time of her death, you've testified that her blood alcohol level was point one one, is that true?"

"Yes."

"And this level is considered legally drunk in California?"

"Yes."

"In fact, isn't the legally drunk standard actually quite a bit lower, at point zero eight?" "That's true."

"So Caryn Dryden wasn't just drunk, was she? She was smashed." "Objection!"

Gina knew this was coming from Gerry Abrams even before she'd finished saying her last words, and was frustrated that she'd allowed herself to get carried away and say them. She didn't want anything to get in the way of her flow, her rhythm.

Judge Toynbee didn't even have to think about it. "Sustained," he said.

Gina came right back at Strout. "Doctor, you've already said the victim also had a narcotic in her blood, did she not? Is the use of alcohol contraindicated with the use of Vicodin?"

"Yes."

"And why is that?"

"Because they're both central nervous system depressants." "And when someone mixes Vicodin with alcohol, what is the result?"

"It varies depending on the dosage of each, but certainly lethargy, respiratory depression, maybe extreme somnolence, skeletal-muscle flaccidity." He shrugged. "It can bring on a host of problems up to and including cardiac arrest."

"And incidentally, Doctor, certainly the sort of thing that might make someone slip and fall down? Right?"

"That's right."

"Now, in your vast experience, and excluding Ms. Dryden, have you seen deaths that you attribute to excessive alcohol and drug consumption combined with hot tub use?"

"I have."

"Can you explain?"

"I sure can." He sat back in the witness chair, crossed one leg over the other and gave a short course on the dangers of alcohol abuse in conjunction with extended time in water that was above 104 degrees: respiratory failure, collapse of the central nervous system. He ended with, "But that's not what killed the victim in the case. She drowned."

"So you've testified, Doctor. But in this case, is there any way you can state with certainty that the victim, inebriated as she was and with Vicodin in her bloodstream, did not simply pass out and slip under the water, where she drowned?"

"No. I cannot state that unequivocally. I can't state it at all." Strout could barely keep a straight face. He'd just been subjected to as good a cross as any in his career. He had to give the devil her due. This was still probably a murder, though his testimony had done little to prove it.

But as he liked to say, this was his favorite sort of problem: somebody else's.

Abrams' original battle plan had probably been to use Strout to establish the murder and make the connection between the bottle, the skull fracture, and the drowning. Then, never considering the possibility that Gina would do to Strout what she'd just done, he'd call Lennard Faro from the CSI team to establish the provenance of the bottle, the so-called foundation-what it was, where it came from, how it was relevant-and then move on to his heavy-duty motive evidence. Maybe Gina's cross-examination of Strout had left him shell-shocked; in any event, Gina was pleasantly stunned when Abrams gave her the gift of calling Faro to the stand and putting him through his very short paces.

Gina knew exactly how to take advantage of this strategic error. "Sergeant Faro," she began, "you said that you found this wine bottle in the trash compactor in the kitchen, is that right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you took it out and labeled and bagged it and sent it to the police lab for analysis?"

"Well, not exactly like that. As I said earlier, I took the whole garbage bag to the lab and on my instructions, they took out the bottle and any other relevant items."

"And by 'relevant items,' you mean shards of glass in that same trash compactor, do you not?"

"Yes. We compared those pieces with a part of another wineglass we found under the hot tub, and they matched."

"I see. And did you find fingerprints on any of these glass pieces?"

"Yes."

"Did you find Stuart Gorman's fingerprints on any of these glass pieces?"

"No, we didn't."

"Did you identify whose fingerprints they were?" "No. They didn't appear in our database."

Having gotten all she could from that topic, Gina moved on. "Now. The bottle and the broken glass were in the trash compactor bag together, is that correct?"

"Yes." Faro didn't seem to know where she was going with this line of questioning, and this suited Gina fine.

"Was there anything else in the trash compactor bag, Sergeant?" "Any more glass, you mean?" "No. I mean anything at all."

"Well… sure. I mean, it was for garbage. There was other garbage in it."

His tone and attitude induced a small buzz of laughter from the gallery. He was trying to play the question as ridiculous.

"And did you ask the lab to analyze this garbage as well?"

The onlookers out in the theater seats, now somewhat primed for drama from Gina's earlier performance with Strout, had been listening quietly, even intently, but at this question, another low hum of laughter rippled through the gallery.

Thinking everyone was laughing at Gina-perhaps they were- Faro couldn't quite hide a quick and confident smirk. "Did I ask the lab to analyze the rest of the garbage?" he repeated.

"Right. That's my question."

"For what?" Still playing it for a laugh.

Gina shrugged. "I don't know. Evidence?"

Realizing that even if Gina's question was ridiculous, she was serious about it, Faro sat up. "I was with the lab techs and watched as they went through the whole bag. We got the bottle and other pieces of glass, but there wasn't anything else to look at."

"Just garbage?"

"Yes. Just garbage."

"Hmm. Were there fingerprints on the bottle?" "No. It had been wiped."

"Now, by wiped, you mean that someone had taken a cloth or some other material and rubbed along the surface, presumably to remove evidence that was found there, right?"

"Yes, correct."

"Can you distinguish between an object that just doesn't happen to have any usable prints on it, and one that has been deliberately wiped down?"

"Yes, we can. Typically an object such as a bottle will have something on it, unless it's been washed down or wiped. Dust, debris, smudges, partial prints-even if those partials aren't good enough to give us an ID. And that's particularly true on a surface such as glass, which is a good medium to hold fingerprints. We found nothing like that on this bottle. In the absence of evidence that it had just, for example, been washed, it would appear that it had been wiped before it was put in the trash compactor."