John Lescroart - The Motive

"My husband has a cruel streak," Frannie said. "It's well documented."

"I've seen it in action myself." Strout was all amiability. "You going after my forensic colleagues, too?"

"And who would they be?" Hardy asked.

"You know, the teeth people."

"Whoever's up next, John. I'm equal opportunity at skewering prosecution witnesses. But I'm saving the big show for later."

"Who's that?"

Hardy smiled. "You'll have to wait around and find out. Maybe I can get you a special pass to let you back in the courtroom."

"Put me on your witness list."

"That might do it." Hardy's fork had stopped in midair. He chewed thoughtfully for a second or two.

"He's thinking cruel thoughts again," Frannie said. "I can tell."

"Dr. McInerny," Hardy began his cross-examination of Hanover's dentist. "For how long was Paul Hanover your patient?"

"Twenty-seven years, give or take."

"And in that time, how many X-rays of his mouth did you take?"

"I don't know exactly. Usually we do one a year, but if a tooth cracks or… well, really any number of other reasons, we'll do another."

"So it's not a complicated process?"

"No, not at all."

"Would you describe the X-ray process for the court, please?"

Rosen spoke from behind him. "Objection. Three fifty-two, Your Honor." This was a common objection raised when the relevance of the testimony and its probative value was substantially outweighed by the time consumption, prejudicial effect, or by the likelihood of confusing the jury. "We all know how X-rays work."

Braun nodded. "Any particular reason to do this, Mr.

Hardy?"

"Yes, Your Honor, but I'm trying to draw a distinction between how X-rays get taken in a dentist's office and how he took the X-rays of the male victim's mouth at the morgue."

"To what end?"

"What I'm getting at, Your Honor, is that if the picture is taken from a different angle in the morgue, or with a different technique, it will look different than a typical office X-ray, and the identification of the victim might then not be as certain."

McInerny, apparently in his late fifties or early sixties, carried twenty or so extra pounds on a midsize body. Pattern baldness was well advanced, and what remained of his hair was snow white. But his face looked like it spent a lot of time outdoors-open, intelligent, expressive. Now he spoke up, helpful, but out of turn. "Really, though, that's not a concern."

Braun, surprised at his intrusion, swung her head to look at him. "Doctor," she said mildly, "just a moment, please." She looked out at the still-standing Rosen, then came back to Hardy. "I'll overrule the objection at this time. Go ahead, Mr. Hardy."

"Thank you, Your Honor. So Doctor, those X-rays. Is there a difference in the way you take standard diagnostic X-rays at your office, and the way you took them to help identify the victim in this case at the morgue?"

In his element now, enjoying this chance to explain the intricacies of his work, McInerny first walked through the familiar procedure that took place in his office-the film in the mouth, the big machine, the lead-lined sheet. "But of course in a forensic laboratory setting, such as a morgue, we typically don't take a picture at all."

"Why is that?"

"Well, because we can simply look at what's there and compare it to our known sample. Let's say, for example, you look in a victim's mouth and have seven fillings, a crown, and a root canal or extraction site, and they're just where they are in your sample. Well, then, you've got a match."

Hardy, sensing an opportunity, jumped at it. "So you can get a match with only, say, a few matching teeth? Less than a whole mouthful?"

"Sometimes, of course. Sometimes you don't have a whole mouthful. But you work with everything you have. In the case of Mr. Hanover, I compared all of the teeth. There was a one hundred percent correlation."

"And so you positively identified the victim as Mr. Hanover?"

But McInerny was shaking his head. "Not precisely," he said.

"No? Could you explain."

"Sure. I simply verify the match. My dental records match the victim's. And in this case they did."

Hardy, having wasted twenty minutes of the court's time on this dry well of a cross-examination, realized that he let himself succumb to the luxury of fishing. He'd gotten an unexpected and gratuitous, entirely minor victory of sorts from Strout during the morning session and he'd let it go to his head. He was going to alienate the jury if he kept barking up this kind of tree, to no effect.

Acknowledging defeat, he tipped his head to Dr. Mc-Inerny, thanked him for his time, and excused him.

The afternoon passed in a haze of redundancy. Toshio Yamashiru was, as Rosen took pains to point out, not only the dentist of Missy D'Amiens, but one of the top forensic odontologists in the country. As Strout had told Glitsky so long ago, he had assisted in the identification of the 9/11 victims. He had twenty-plus years of experience not only in general dentistry, but in advanced forensics.

No doubt prompted by Hardy's aggressive cross-examination of Dr. McInerny, Rosen went to great lengths not only to establish Yamashiru's credentials, but also the techniques that he'd used in the morgue and then in his own lab to exactly correlate the various fissures, faults and striations of each tooth in the skull he examined with the dental records of Missy D'Amiens.

After an hour and forty-one minutes of this excruciatingly boring detail, he finally asked, "Doctor Yamashiru, what was the correlation between the teeth you examined at the morgue and that of the woman whose records are in court, Missy D'Amiens?"

"One hundred percent."

"You're certain?"

"Completely."

"Thank you, Doctor." Rosen turned to Hardy. "Your witness."

Hardy blinked himself to a marginally higher state of awareness and stood up. "Your Honor, I have no questions for this witness."

With ill-concealed relief, Braun turned to Yamashiru. "Thank you, Doctor. You may step down." She then looked up, bringing in the jury, and raised her voice. "I think we've had enough for today. We'll adjourn until tomorrow morning at nine thirty."

In the holding cell just behind the back door of the courtoom, Catherine, caged, paced like a leopard.

Hardy, who'd endured complaints-many justified, he'd admit-about the family since Catherine had gone to jail, felt compelled to try and tolerate another round. Even if he were wrung out and ready to go home-or really, back to the office for a minimum of a couple of hours where he would check his mail and e-mail, answer urgent calls from other clients and deal with any other outstanding firm business that needed his input-he had to let her get some of her frustration out. Because if she didn't blow off steam back here, out of sight, she might do it in front of the jurors, and that would be disastrous. So he let her go on, unaware that with the tensions of the day his own string was near breaking. "I was just so conscious of them all day long, sitting there in the gallery, watching my back, my every breath, I think, and all of them believing I could have done anything like this. How could they even think that?"

"I don't think they do."

"Ha. You don't know."

"No, I don't. That's true."

She got to one end ofher twelve-foot journey, grasped the bars for a moment, then pushed off in the other direction. "Shit shit shit."

"What?"

"Just shit, that's what." She opened her mouth and let out something between a scream and a growl.

"Hey, come on, Catherine, calm down."

"I can't calm down. I don't want to calm down. I'm locked up, for Christ's sake. I might be locked up forever. Don't you see that?"

She reached the other end, turned again.