Phillip Margolin - Heartstone

“Dr. O. J. Pollak’s review of spermatozoa morphological survival time, in an article called ‘Semen and Seminal Stains’ found in the Archives of Pathology , 1943, states that thirty minutes to twenty-four hours is the more usual range. Dr. Bornstein in ‘Investigation of Rape: Medico-Legal Problems,’ Medical Trial Technique Quarterly , 1963, suggests forty-eight hours to be the maximum spermatozoa morphological survival time. Drs. Gonzales, Vance, Helpern, Milton, Charles and Umberger in Legal Medicine , 1954, maintain that spermatozoa can be recovered from the vagina as long as three to four days after their introduction. W. F. Enos, G. T. Mann and W. D. Dolan report finding fragments of spermatozoa on a pap smear four days after an alleged rape in ‘A Laboratory Procedure for the Detection of Semen-A Preliminary Report,’ American Journal of Clinical Pathology , 1950. The longest survival time I was able to find in the literature was fourteen days. Now this was in a living vagina and the report has been discredited by numerous other authorities in the field. Dr. Gottlieb said he thought that seventy-two hours was probably the outside for survival. Does that help?”

“Yes. Very much. Can you mail me copies of the articles you just referred to?”

“Sure. Anything else you want me to do?”

“No. You’ve been a real help.”

Caproni hung up the phone and closed his eyes. How to proceed? He now had concrete evidence to support Toller’s story. He could go to Heider and tell him what he had discovered, but a feeling about his superior warned him not to. Heider was in this case to get publicity. Caproni had heard enough office scuttlebutt, and he had seen enough while working with Heider, to realize that Heider needed this case to further his political career. The case was unimportant. It served only as a means of getting Heider’s name in the papers every week. He was not going to dismiss a prosecution of this magnitude on the basis of the findings in a few scattered medical journals. Especially when the evidence pointing toward guilt was so strong.

And that was the crux of Caproni’s problem. He had gone through the evidence and he believed that the Coolidges were guilty. Toller’s story raised a possibility that they were not, but only a possibility and a slim one at that. Even so, under the United States Supreme Court decision in Brady versus Maryland the prosecution was obligated to turn over to the defense any evidence in its possession that would tend to clear a defendant and Toller’s evidence would meet the criteria, if Toller was telling the truth. If the prosecution kept Toller’s story secret and the defense found out, the Coolidges would have grounds for overturning their convictions if they were found guilty. And more important as far as Caproni was concerned, if the prosecution did not reveal Toller’s information to the defense, it would be violating the Canon of Ethics. If Toller was telling the truth!

Caproni sighed. He was back where he started. He had to have some way of substantiating the facts in Toller’s story. And there was a way that he could do that, he suddenly realized. Find Heartstone. He had an idea. A person like Heartstone would have to have a criminal record. He might have been arrested recently. If he had, there would be a file on his case and, in that file, a police report with the defendant’s address. He hurried down to the file room.

Caproni was in luck. Eleven months ago, William Lewis Heartstone had been arrested for “Public Intoxication” and “Carrying a Concealed Weapon.” Officer Clark McGivern had responded to a call concerning a disturbance at a skid row bar. Heartstone had been drunk, raving and brandishing a taped broom handle which McGivern found concealed under Heartstone’s coat at the time of the arrest. Caproni looked for the section of the report that was used to list the defendant’s address. It was blank.

Caproni returned to his office and dialed police headquarters. Officer McGivern was on patrol, but the officer he spoke to promised to have him called on his car radio. Twenty minutes later McGivern was on the phone. At five-thirty that evening, he was seated in a booth in a coffee shop several blocks from the courthouse sipping coffee while Caproni explained a confidential project he wished him to undertake.

“I remember this case vaguely,” McGivern said, after studying the copy of the police report that Caproni brought with him. McGivern was young, tall and well built. He had blue eyes, a nice smile that revealed a set of perfect teeth and sandy blond hair that was balding prematurely. “Whatever happened to him? It never went to trial, did it?”

“No. Heartstone was recoged and never showed for trial.”

“I’m not surprised he missed his court date. Probably forgot he was arrested by the time the booze wore off.”

“Do you think you could find him for me?”

“I can try, but it might take some time. The guy looked like a transient. He might not even be in town.”

“I realize that, but it’s very important.

“There’s one more thing. I want this kept confidential. I don’t want you telling anyone what you are doing or who you are doing it for and that includes police officers, district attorneys, anyone.”

McGivern’s brow furrowed and he looked at Caproni suspiciously.

“This isn’t something illegal?”

“No, it’s not illegal, but the work I am doing is very sensitive. If word of this leaked to the wrong people, there could be plenty of trouble,” Caproni said, failing to add that he was the one who would be in trouble.

Caproni took out his business card and wrote his home phone number and address on the back. He handed the card to McGivern.

“As soon as you locate Heartstone, I want to know. Day or night.”

McGivern fingered the card and placed it in his wallet. They shook hands and Caproni left.

Bobby Coolidge was standing on the second-floor balcony of a manor house of a great estate. The manor house was constructed of an odd combination of Ionic columns, stark concrete blocks and unpainted wooden planks. The house was incomplete and furnished rooms, carpeted with Persian rugs and lighted by Tiffany lamps, opened into bare rooms whose western walls did not exist and whose ceiling was the sky.

Bobby gazed across a rolling lawn, lush, green and smelling of new-mown grass. A low hedge separated the estate from a dark and forboding wood and an arched lattice work provided the only means of entrance into the forest. Sarah stood beneath the roses that twined around the thin, white-painted wood sticks of the arch. She was dressed in a white hoop skirt and looked as if she had just attended an antebellum ball given at the home of a Georgia plantation owner.

There was an orchid in Sarah’s hair and her blond tresses flew behind her like honey-colored wings as she whirled into the forest, disappearing, then reappearing, in a flash of white petticoats.

Bobby watched helplessly as she danced deeper into the dark woods. Panic seized him and he rushed through the corridors of the empty house looking for a way out. Suddenly he was at the top of a spiral stairway that twisted downward toward the main ballroom. A figure climbed to meet him, its face shrouded in shadow. Its hand stretching out. Bobby screamed as he looked deep into the eyes of the old man.

The young guard listened sympathetically to Bobby’s request to see a doctor and promised that he would pay immediate attention to the problem. Later, in the guard room, he noted the request, along with those of several other prisoners, in a report.

In his cell, Bobby lay on his bunk, his forearm pressed tightly against his closed eyelids. How will I make it through another night, he asked himself. How will I survive the trial?