25

Paul Stier’s first witness the next morning was San Francisco’s ancient medical examiner, Dr. John Strout. The good doctor had been a fixture in and around the Hall of Justice for over forty years and had appeared in court at least a thousand times, maybe more. Tall, with wispy white hair and positively gaunt instead of merely thin, he’d somehow evaded the mandatory retirement he should have taken the better part of a decade ago. But no one was pushing for it, because he remained highly and universally respected. His voice and manner retained a casual authority and easy affability that his Southern drawl only accented.

Now he sat back, comfortable, and waited while Stier positioned the poster board with the mounted autopsy photographs on the tripod next to the witness box, where both Strout and the jury could see. In many trials Strout’s testimony, which concerned itself with the cause and basic fact of a victim’s death, might have a huge impact on the verdict. The patterns of bruises on the deceased’s body could be highly significant. The shape of an injury could identify or eliminate an object as a possible murder weapon. Other, more subtle distinctions-blood alcohol levels, scans for various drugs or poisons-could be spun in myriad ways to cast doubt or lay blame.

But today, no one expected much in the way of fireworks from Strout’s testimony. In fact, after the previous day’s nearly unrelenting drama, the courtroom-sans mayor and supervisor-had nowhere near the buzz Hardy had expected. And this was a relief. After his conversation with Gina and Wyatt last night, he’d come to accept their mutual view that maybe Kathy and Harlen’s presence wasn’t doing his client as much good as they’d hoped.

So Strout’s testimony was going to establish conclusively that there were in fact two dead people, killed at the hands of another. Nevertheless, you never knew exactly what was going to come up in live testimony, and Hardy was paying close attention as Stier took the small pile of photos from the last juror to have viewed them, placed them with the other marked exhibits, and walked to the center of the room.

“Dr. Strout,” he said. “To begin with Dylan Vogler, the gunshot victim. Were you able to determine the time of death?”

“No.” He looked over to the jury box, speaking to them in an avuncular tone. “When the medical technicians arrived, he was warm to the touch. That suggests, for example, that he hadn’t been in the alley overnight, but I can’t say more than that.”

“What killed Mr. Vogler?”

“A gunshot wound to the chest.”

“Please describe the injury.”

Strout did so-the entrance, the exit, the track through the body-and Stier took it from there. “How quickly would an injury like this be likely to incapacitate the victim?”

“The bullet went in his chest and then right through his heart. Most people would collapse immediately from the injury and die shortly thereafter.”

“Doctor, would you tell the jury what defense wounds are?”

“Defense wounds are injuries typically sustained when the deceased tries to ward off blows or an attack. Injuries to the hands, for example, or forearms, usually. Sometimes to the legs.”

“Did you find any defense wounds on Mr. Vogler?”

“No.”

“Any abrasions, scrapes, cuts, or bruises to suggest he had been in a fight or struggle?”

“No. I can’t say there were.”

“In fact, did Mr. Vogler have any sign of injury of any kind except the gunshot wound that killed him?”

“No.” In other words, Hardy thought, Vogler either knew his attacker or was shot without any warning, or both. But Strout had one last word. “It was a pretty efficient killing.”

Hardy could have objected to this gratuitous comment-it wasn’t in answer to one of Stier’s questions-but it wouldn’t have accomplished anything, and he decided to let the prosecutor go on.

“Dr. Strout, moving on to the other victim, then, Levon Preslee. Again, can you tell the jury about the cause of death of this victim?”

“Surely. The victim died from injuries sustained by blows to the top of the head from some sort of a bladed object that cracked his skull, causing massive brain trauma and hemorrhage.”

“And were you able to determine, Doctor, what time it was when death occurred?”

“No.”

Hardy knew that this was a made-for-television question. The public had become so inundated with the pseudoscience of prime-time TV that they expected all sorts of forensic miracles. Stier simply wanted to dispel the popular notion that you could tell when someone was killed and that therefore the prosecution had been negligent in not presenting that evidence.

But Strout amplified anyway. “The body had achieved ambient temperature.”

“And again, same question as with Mr. Vogler, Doctor. Were there any signs of defense wounds on Mr. Preslee’s body?”

“No.”

“And how quickly did this injury kill Mr. Preslee?”

“Just about immediately. He would have been stunned and probably rendered unconscious by the force of the first blow and died soon after. Maybe not as immediate as the bullet through the heart, but pretty quick. Within a minute outside.”

Stier checked the jury to make sure they understood the violent, gruesome, bloody nature of this attack, which, if it had been perpetrated by Maya, painted her as a monster. But he wasn’t quite finished yet. “A couple of clarifications, Doctor. You said blows. How many times was the victim hit?”

“Twice. Although either one would have been plenty.”

Hardy saw the effect this small sentence had on the jury, as a couple of the members actually flinched, imagining the moment.

“And again,” Stier went on, “you said the blows were struck by a bladed object. Can you explain what you mean by that?”

Over the next ten minutes Stier and Strout nailed down all the details of the attack on Levon Preslee-the damage done and use of the dull edge of the cleaver, the attack from directly behind the unsuspecting and probably stoned victim. No surprise, Preslee’s blood tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Overall, Hardy thought, the effect of the testimony painted a coherent scenario of two apparent friends sharing a doob and then one of them going behind the other and launching a premeditated, grisly, and murderous attack.

That is in fact what had happened, and Hardy couldn’t think of a spin in the world that would do any good for his client. He also knew that there was no way he could control Strout, or stop him from delivering those little asides that had such a visceral impact on the jury. So he passed the witness.

Glitsky sat on the corner of Bracco’s desk in the large room that the homicide detail worked out of. Darrel himself was in his normal chair at his desk, while his partner, Debra Schiff, was three flights downstairs delivering her testimony in the trial of Maya Townshend.

“It’ll bite you,” Glitsky said.

“I don’t care. I’m doing it.”

“I don’t see what it’ll get you.”

“Peace of mind. Very important for job satisfaction.”

Glitsky sighed. “What’s the exact wording you’re going with?”

Bracco looked down at the TR-26.5, the department form that cops were supposed to fill out to explain away their parking tickets. Under Alternative Parking Considered but Not Utilized, he read aloud what he’d written: “Leave car on mayor’s lawn with siren on and lights flashing. Walk three miles to crime scene.”

“They’ll flay you.”

“Oh, well.” Bracco sat back. “No guts, no glory. Maybe they’ll realize the absurdity of all of this.”

“Sure,” Glitsky said. “That’ll probably happen. But meanwhile, why are you even here?”

“As opposed to?”

“Downstairs. I thought you guys were testifying on Townshend today.”