John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“And did the blood on the floor cover any of this eighteen-inch area?”

“You can see from the pictures-”

“Yes, but I’m asking you to calibrate it for us.”

“About half of it.”

“So, according to your theory of the case, the assailant killed Mr. Preslee, then stood behind him cleaning up the murder weapon in the sink?”

“Yes.”

“And the glass?”

“Yes.”

“While blood dripped off the table just behind?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find any shoeprints in the blood itself?”

“No.”

“Or tracks or any traces of blood except directly at the scene?”

“No.”

“So according to your theory, Sergeant, the assailant stood directly behind the deceased, with blood dripping onto the floor from the table, into an area only eighteen inches wide. And stood there long enough to wash both the cleaver and the glass. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes flitted between the jury box and Stier. I’ve got no idea where he’s going with this. The thought unnerved her.

“Sergeant, did you and your partner obtain a warrant to search the Townshends’ house?”

“Yes, we did.”

Hardy, in no hurry, took another walk back to his table, picked up a piece of paper, then turned again and walked all the way back to her, handing her the exhibit. “Sergeant, do you recognize this?”

“Yes, of course. It’s the search warrant we served on Defendant the day after Levon Preslee’s murder.”

“Wasn’t it first thing in the morning, just at seven o’clock, that you served this warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Would you please read for the jury, Sergeant, from the affidavit section, what you were searching for with this warrant?”

Schiff looked down at the paper and, suddenly aware of where this must be going, read in a mechanical voice. “Computer disks and downloads, business and banking records, shoes and clothes that might contain blood spatter-”

“Thank you, Sergeant, that’s enough. So you were looking for blood spatter, true?”

“Yes.”

“And why was that?”

In the witness box Schiff lifted a hand, then cleared her throat. “We thought there might be blood spatter on her clothes and shoes.”

“And why is that?”

Schiff drew a breath and made herself sit up straight and face the jury. She would brazen it out. “Because we figured the blood dripping on the floor right behind her would have some spatter, even if microscopic.”

“Were you looking for spatter anywhere else?”

“We thought it possible there would be some on material covering the upper body.”

“Why did you think that?” Hardy now had Schiff firmly assuming the role she didn’t want and wasn’t qualified for, that of crime-scene reconstruction expert. But if Stier wasn’t objecting, she couldn’t very well refuse to answer the question.

“We thought… after the first blow… the assailant would have to lift the cleaver, which now had blood on it, and swing it hard down again. Some blood might have come off in the swinging or from the second impact.”

Now Hardy turned and faced the jury, impassive. Without looking at Schiff he asked, “Sergeant, did you in fact search for blood on the clothes you took from Maya’s home early in the morning after the murder of Mr. Preslee?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Isn’t it true, Sergeant, that you removed all the clothing from the house, including her husband’s and children’s? And removed for testing the contents of the hampers and laundry room? Everything, in fact, except for what they were wearing?”

“Yes.”

“And were there clothes in the washing machine or dryer or anywhere else in the house?”

“No.”

“So you got them all?”

“Yes.”

She hated this. She knew it was coming across to the jury as some form of police harassment. Even if she didn’t have the specific evidence. She knew that it wasn’t particularly difficult to be in a room or an apartment, even for a substantial period of time, and leave no physical sign of it, especially if you knew you were going in to commit a crime. She knew that Maya had been at Levon’s, and if not to kill him, then why? She didn’t know what the damned Townshend woman had done with her clothes and her shoes in the time she’d had to get rid of them. And if she hadn’t gotten rid of them, Schiff didn’t know how she’d avoided the blood spatter. But none of that made any difference to her core belief that this defendant was a crafty and dangerous killer. “We were just trying to be thorough.”

“Indeed,” Hardy said, “thoroughness is commendable. And you were careful when you seized this clothing to package it appropriately for later testing for blood by the crime lab, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“But with all their sophisticated testing, the crime lab found no evidence whatsoever of blood on anything you seized from Maya Townshend’s house, did they?”

Stier finally came alive. “Objection. Hearsay.”

“Sustained.”

“Okay, let me ask it this way, then, Inspector. I want you to assume that lab personnel will testify that they found no blood. That’s not consistent with your theory of how this crime was committed, is it?”

Now Stier compounded his error. He should have let Schiff say that maybe the defendant had gotten rid of her clothes, or maybe there just wasn’t enough blood to find, but instead he objected. “Speculation, Your Honor. Irrelevant. Inspector Schiff’s theories are not evidence.”

Hardy couldn’t believe his luck. “Well, gosh, Your Honor,” he said. “My point exactly. Since the prosecution concedes that Inspector Schiff’s theories aren’t evidence, and since the prosecution doesn’t seem to have anything besides her theories, I have no further questions.”

Braun banged her gavel and chastised Hardy for making speeches, but he didn’t care.

For the rest of the afternoon Hardy continued to hammer the same point through the other lab witnesses.

“You’re a fingerprint expert, right? Did you find fingerprints inside Mr. Preslee’s home?”

“Yes. Lots of them.”

“Were any of those Maya Townshend’s fingerprints?”

“No.”

“In fact, there are several fingerprints that belong to people whom you’ve never identified, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints at the table where the victim was seated?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints at the sink where the cleaver was allegedly washed?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints on the interior door handle of the apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And none of these are Maya’s, and some of them are unidentified, right?”

“Correct.”

Hardy did the same with the DNA-some recovered, some unidentified, none belonging to Maya. When he was finally done with his last cross-examination at quarter to five, Hardy took a long beat and threw a look at Stier, wilting at his own table. The prosecutor had taken a beating today on the Preslee evidence, and he knew it.

But next up, he would be talking about motive. And motive evidence, Hardy knew, was going to be brutal.

The apartment dooropened and Wyatt Hunt stood looking at his young associate. “What is this bullshit, Craig?”

“What bullshit?”

“ ‘What bullshit?’ he asks. Calling in sick when you look about as sick as I do, except for a little red around the eyes. Are you stoned?”

“Slightly.”

“And what do you hope to accomplish by that?”

“Nothing. I’m not trying to accomplish anything. Except figure out how I’m going to get back with Tam.”

“You think better when you’re loaded?”