“You really think people buy this crap?” Harry’s wandered mentally from the task at hand. He’s looking at a copy of Lawyer’s Monthly, the slick state bar journal, left behind in the library. He’s reached the back of the edition, the glossy advertisements, a whole page of lawyer toys: golf balls and watches stamped with the scales of justice, a leather high-back executive chair with more buttons than the space shuttle, and an assortment of “spear-chuckers”-$300 Mont Blanc fountain pens, arranged like a log raft in the center of the page.
“Ah. Before I forget,” he says. Harry slips a small yellow Post-it note from his pocket and slides it across the table. “Gal’s name is Peggie Conrad, independent paralegal.”
There’s a phone number on the slip.
“She does mostly probate,” he says.
I look at him and raise an eyebrow in question.
“Sharon Cooper’s probate file,” says Harry. “The lady’ll solve all your problems.”
“What brought this on?”
“Thought you needed a little help.”
I look at the note and make a face. Like this is a brand I’ve never tried before. Hiring someone without a license to practice law. “Thanks,” I tell him. “But doesn’t the bar object?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “All of her clients are lawyers. Seems you’re not the only one who doesn’t know how to fill out the forms.”
“Guess it can’t hurt to talk to her.” Sharon’s probate file is growing hair on my desk. I pocket the slip and return to the pile of paper in front of me. Harry and I have pieced together a good part of the evidence the police hold. From the pathology and forensic reports, we can tell the cops knew Ben’s death was no suicide within hours of removing his body from the office. Apart from the lack of any fingerprints, even smudged prints on the gun, the plastic shell cartridge still in the barrel was clean. Whoever loaded the gun was wearing gloves or used a rag to insert the cartridge. Gunshot residue tests on Ben’s hands came back negative. GSRs are chemical searches for nitrites and traces of lead, barium, and antimony-the stuff expelled with hot gases from any modern firearm. Even with a long gun of the kind used here, the residues of these elements would have planted themselves on the front and back of Ben’s nonfiring hand, the one used to steady the muzzle in his mouth while he supposedly fingered the trigger with the other. The conclusion is inescapable: Someone else fired the shot.
“It’s a little baffling,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“How the murderer managed to get Ben to take it in the mouth. I mean, I can understand a head shot, up close. But a victim’s not likely to cooperate by sucking on the muzzle of an over-and-under. The immediate intention of the shooter’s too obvious.”
“I suppose,” says Harry. “Maybe he was unconscious when they shot him.”
“Medical examiner didn’t find any drugs in the body.”
“Yeah, but that wound would’ve covered a lotta bumps on the head.”
Harry’s got a point.
The weapon itself-a twelve-gauge Italian make, Bernardelli Model 192, according to ballistics-featured a lot of tooling and a high price tag. It was registered to Ben. The second barrel was empty. Police reports said the gun was usually kept in a case in Potter’s study at his house, where Talia had easy access to it.
Cheetam’s making a lot out of the gun. “A shotgun,” he says, “is not a woman’s weapon.” I’ve told him to save it for the jury. He says the case will never get there. The man has amazing confidence for one who has yet to look at the evidence.
Ben’s body was found by a janitor in the Emerald Tower who heard the shot. On entering the office the man panicked at the scene of horror and retreated to the outer reception area, to Barbara’s work station at the front of the office, to call 911.
A single drop of blood was later found in the service elevator, type B-negative, the same as Ben’s. Blood-spatter analysis, the fact that the larger drop of blood projected an aura of smaller droplets like the tail of a comet, led forensics to determine the course of travel with the body. They concluded that this blood dripped as Ben was carried from the freight elevator down the hall toward the office.
According to the police reports, access to the garage of the building was gained by using Ben’s electronic key card. Computer records show that entry was made using that key about ten minutes before the janitor heard the shot. The cops assume that Ben’s keys were used to enter the office.
“Whadda ya make of the hair?” says Harry. He’s fingering through a report on the other side of the table, making some notes.
I wrinkle an eyebrow. “Troublesome. But not fatal.” Maybe I’m sugar coating it.
Forensics has found a single strand of human hair caught in the locking mechanism of the shotgun. According to their report, “It is consistent in all respects with hair samples taken from the head of the decedent’s wife, Talia Potter.”
“A single strand of hair could’ve been there for months,” I say. “Maybe she used the gun once. Maybe Ben took her hunting or skeet shooting. Maybe she dusted it in the case.”
“Sure,” says Harry. “The lady’s a real domestic.” Harry harbors his own suspicions. It’s part of the reason I’ve hired him: to keep me honest.
“Access to that gun cuts both ways,” I tell him. “It’s in her house; that strand of hair could’ve gotten there in a dozen different ways over a period of months.”
“Uh-huh.” Harry doesn’t buy it, but a jury of reasonable people, those who don’t know Talia, might.
Death was brought about by massive trauma to the brain caused by the high-velocity impact of a mass of lead pellets (number-nine shot). These are generally the loads used in bird hunting and by some skeet shooters. The shot has destroyed the brain. A single pellet has lodged in one of the basal ganglia. This, according to the pathology report, would have made any conscious movement by Ben after the shot impossible. He was in all respects instantly brain dead.
“What do you make of this?” I say.
I read Harry part of a footnote in the medical examiner’s report. Pathology recovered the pellet from the basal ganglion. It measures in at 10.68 grains of weight. This is considerably heavier than the few pellets found in the cranial cavity and the mass of several hundred lodged in the ceiling of Ben’s office. According to the report the usual weight of number-nine shot is.75 grains. In this case several of the pellets weighed in a little lighter and some heavier, but none approached the monster found in the basal ganglion.
“Do they draw any conclusions?” asks Harry.
“None”-I smile-“just the note.” Coop’s too street-smart to offer conclusions on such matters in his report. He puts it there like a ticking time bomb for the defense to figure out, and leaves himself maneuvering room to testify at trial. These are the games he played when we were on the same side, when I was prosecuting and Cooper was my prime expert. Having him as an adversary for the first time in my career is a challenge. It puts an unnerving spin on the case. Having pumped him for information as a neutral in his office that morning, I’m left to wonder how he will view my part in the defense.
“What do you think caused it?” says Harry. He’s talking about the monster pellet.
“I don’t know. I’ve heard of shots fusing together. Sometimes in a bad round the heat’ll melt” some lead before it reaches the end of the barrel. Could be a number of pellets fused together. But I think we’d better check it out.”
Harry makes a note.
There’s a lot of speculation in the police reports about Talia’s infidelities with other men. Harry seems to spawn a particular interest in this line of inquiry. The cops have lined up an assortment of witnesses, most of whom are trafficking in gossip. Talia’s maid, Maria, reluctantly confirms finding an article of men’s underwear between the sheets of Talia’s bed one morning. Ben, it seems, was out of town the previous night, and the item is not likely to have belonged to him. The cops refer to the thing as “a male G-string”-“a silk pouch in a leopard-skin print joined by two narrow straps of elastic to a waistband.”