Hilliard crossed to the evidence table and picked up the plastic bag containing the bloody sweatshirt. “Dr. Pettis, have you had a chance to examine the blood on the sweatshirt that constitutes Commonwealth Exhibit 13, which we admitted earlier into evidence?”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
Hilliard rested on a single crutch, extracted the sweatshirt from the bag, and walked to the stand with the sweatshirt, which flopped at his side like a blood-soaked battle standard. “These spots on the sweatshirt are what you are referring to as blood spatter, is that correct?”
“Yes. That is a very typical pattern of blood spatter. In addition, I performed a number of tests on that blood, the conventional blood work for typing and so forth, as well as DNA testing. PCR testing. I could elaborate, if you wish, on the PCR process.”
Hilliard shook his gleaming head. “That won’t be necessary,” he answered, glancing at the jurors. “PCR testing is accepted in the scientific community as reliable and valid, is it not, Dr. Pettis?”
“Oh, yes, of course. PCR testing is used for plant and animal research around the country. In the human biology context, PCR testing may be used to determine paternity and twinness.”
Bennie flushed instantly, thinking of the DNA test she and Connolly had taken. She had completely forgotten about the test because of all that had happened in the interim. When would those results be in? She caught one of the jurors, the videographer with the goatee, looking over at her.
“Dr. Pettis, did you test the blood on the sweatshirt and compare it for identification purposes with a sample of Detective Della Porta’s blood supplied you by the Commonwealth?”
“I did,” Dr. Pettis said, nodding.
“And is it your considered expert opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the blood on this sweatshirt is that of Detective Della Porta?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thank you, sir. I have no further questions of this witness, Your Honor,” Hilliard said, gathering the sweatshirt and dropping it back at the evidence table, bloody side up before the jurors. They fell silent, gazing at the stains. Even Bennie imagined the blood on Della Porta’s forehead, then the blood spurting from Lenihan’s neck. The blood of Valencia Mendoza. Then hers and Connolly’s, squinted at through microscopes, cell-size.
“Will you cross-examine, Ms. Rosato?” Judge Guthrie asked, and Bennie rose without looking at her client.
71
“It’s Vega the Younger,” Lou said when he saw Carlos Vega’s kid bounding out of the rain and through the glass doors of the precinct house.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” the young cop said. He palmed his dripping cap and brushed it dry. A flock of uniforms flowed into the station house, talking and shedding wet slickers when they got inside. They all looked like babies to Lou, none as robust as Carlos’s kid, who crammed his hat under his arm and extended a large hand. “I’m Ed Vega. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jacobs.”
“Shit, who’s Mr. Jacobs?” Lou said. He shook the kid’s hand and held on to it for a minute, marveling at his broad, earnest face. The kid had dark hair, a small mustache, and the bedroom eyes his father had at twenty-three. “Call me Lou, okay? Your dad, now he has to call me Mr. Jacobs.”
Vega laughed. “Okay, Lou. Sorry I’m late. You buyin’ me lunch, I hear?”
“Depends on how hungry you are.”
“I could eat a horse,” the kid said, and Lou shot him a look.
“Drink water. I’m on Social Security.”
“Deal.”
Lou fell in step with the kid and they headed back outside, but were stopped at the door by a flood of uniforms coming in from the rain. Lou counted eight of them, including two broads who cursed worse than the men. “It’s a brave new world, ain’t it?” Lou said, without elaborating, as an older, taller cop hurried up the steps.
“Hey, Lou,” Ed said, grabbing the older man by the elbow, “wanna meet somebody even older than you? Lou, this is Joe Citrone, my partner. Joe, Lou Jacobs, a friend of my dad’s.”
“Hey,” Citrone said quickly, nodding like he was too busy to shake hands. He tried to pass but the boisterous crowd blocked the door.
“You look kinda familiar,” Lou said, his crow’s-feet wrinkling as he appraised Citrone. A fit guy, with hard eyes and no laugh lines. “When’d you graduate the academy? Class of—”
“Don’t try to make conversation,” Ed interrupted with a grin. “Joe Citrone is a man of few words.”
Lou laughed. “Most cops yap like yentas.”
“Lou, you want to know about Lenihan, you oughta be talkin’ to Joe,” Vega said, and Lou’s ears pricked up.
“You knew Lenihan, buddy?”
“No, I didn’t,” Citrone said, and confusion creased the younger cop’s forehead.
“Sure you did, the other day…” Vega started to say, but his sentence trailed off.
“You’re mistaken, Ed.” Citrone looked at Lou. “Good meeting you.”
Vega fell silent as his partner walked away, then he slapped his cap on and gave it a twist. “Where we goin’ to lunch?” he asked.
“Where else?” Lou said, and after a backward glance at Citrone, he ventured into the storm.
Debbie’s Diner, with its aluminum sides, train-car shape, and familiar doughnut sign, had become a fixture in South Philly. The food was good, the prices cheap, and the only drawback to the diner were the mob killings that took place in its front parking lot, generally in odd-numbered years. The murders were of the old-fashioned variety; a single, accurate gunshot to a target selected by an organized crime family, not the scattershot drive-by that shredded kids in the crossfire and left Lou asking what had the world come to, whenever the killers acted so inhuman. But rather than scare the patrons away, the murders served only to authenticate Debbie’s, fazing neither the made men nor uniformed cops who ate there. Lou knew that as long as there was scrambled eggs with ketchup, there would be Debbie’s. And he was glad.
“Let’s sit here,” Lou said, and showed Vega to his favorite booth. He sat down and grabbed some paper napkins from the steel dispenser, leaving it rocking. “You wet, kid? You want a napkin to dry off?”
“No, thanks.” Vega shook his hair dry like a Newfoundland puppy, and the waitress came over, cute with a short haircut and a black uniform that fit just right.
“You guys ever hear of umbrellas?”
“No,” Lou said. “We hate umbrellas.”
Vega grinned. “It’s a cop thing.”
The waitress shook her head. Her lapel pin, in the trademark doughnut shape, read TERESA — THREE YEARS, her name and years of service at Debbie’s. Teresa was an infant by Debbie standards. “Two coffees, right away?” she asked.
“You’re a genius,” Vega said with a grin.
“Yeah, right. I should go on Jeopardy,” she said, and took off.
Vega ran his hand over his hair and it popped back up like porcupine quills. “So, Lou, I don’t know anything about him. Never even met the guy. It’s an effin’ shame, what happened.”
“You hear anything about him? What’s the scuttlebutt?”
“There isn’t any.”
“Hard to believe.”
“Lou, I don’t know what my dad told you, but I only been in the district two months. I just got paired with Citrone.”
Lou nodded. “Citrone knows Lenihan, though?”
“You heard him. No.”
“I heard you. You said he did.”
“I musta made a mistake.”
Lou blinked. “I don’t think so, son, and I gotta know what you know. Lenihan got dead tryin’ to kill somebody I care about. I want to know why.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“You said Citrone knows Lenihan. What made you say that?”
Vega swiped his hair again and squinted around for the waitress. “Where’s that coffee?”
“Why’d you think Citrone knew Lenihan?”
Vega waved a hand, caught th
e waitress’s eye, and made a drinking motion. She nodded, grabbed the pot by its brown plastic handle, and scored two mugs on the fly.
“Ed, why did you think Citrone knew Lenihan?” Lou asked again, but the kid kept squinting at the waitress, avoiding his eye. “Ed?”
“Here’s the brew,” Vega said, turning around as the heavy mugs arrived and the waitress set them on the table with a harsh clatter.
“I was gettin’ the menus for you, Skippy.” She poured the coffee into one mug, then the next. Lou noticed a dark tattoo on her forearm, a Chinese symbol, and wondered when girls started getting tattoos. Right after they joined the police force, but before they started law firms? Lou watched the waitress walk away and saw with satisfaction that some things still remained the same.
Vega gulped his coffee and hunched over the table. “Mr. Jacobs, Lou,” he said, in a low voice. “My dad says you’re a great guy, so you’re a great guy, but I’m not about to go up against Joe Citrone for you. You understand?”
“I’m only asking for information.”
“Information is going up against Citrone, and I don’t know anything anyway, I swear.”
Lou sipped his coffee and looked at the kid’s face. “You’re afraid.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t work in clothes, kid. They’d make you in a minute.”
“I’m not afraid, there’s nothing to be afraid of. That I don’t want to fuck with Citrone? Nothing wrong with that, I’m new on the job.”
Lou edged over the table. “What’s the big deal? Citrone the President of the United States? Did I miss something when I was in the can?”
“Citrone’s the old man. He knows everybody.”
“Then he must know Lenihan, like you said the first time.” Lou held his coffee cup. “Kid, Lenihan was in business with two guys from the Twentieth. They were in it together, with a detective, Della Porta, who got it last year and who used to be in the Eleventh. You think Citrone knows something about it? He’s an old-timer, like you said.”
Vega stood up abruptly, reached in his pocket, and flipped open his wallet. “Don’t call me, don’t find me, don’t bother me.” He threw a creased five on the table. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my father.”
Lou rose, his knees creaky. “Listen, I just want to talk.”
“You heard me,” Vega said, and lumbered from the booth and out of the diner.
Lou watched him jog across the parking lot to his patrol car. Running scared, Lou thought.
“What happened to your friend?” she asked. The waitress appeared and tugged a pad and a stubby pencil from a black apron.
“My friend? He had to see a man about a horse.”
“Wha?” The waitress scratched her head with her pencil.
“It’s an expression. Don’t you know that expression?”
“No. You wanna order?”
“Gimme three scrambled eggs and answer me this. You see a lot of cops in here, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever see a cop in here named Lenihan? He was from the Eleventh.”
“Lenihan? Isn’t he that blond babe from the newspaper?”
Babe? Lou thought he heard her wrong. Maybe he did need a hearing aid. “Babe? When did men become babes?”
“Wha?”
Lou wiped his forehead, still damp. “Forget it. Did Lenihan eat here?”
“Sure.”
“Who’d he eat with?”
“Other cops.”
“Which other cops?”
The waitress shrugged. “How would I know?”
“Cops wear nameplates, for one thing.”
“I don’t read their nameplates. Besides, I don’t talk about my customers.”
“It’s just a question. Who’d he eat with, usually?”
“You a cop? I thought you were a cop.”
“No, I’m just a guy. An old guy who wants to know.”
“Well, you’re shit out of luck, old guy who wants to know,” the waitress said, and shifted her weight. “You still want those eggs?”
“You got ketchup, right?”
“’Course.”
“Then yes,” Lou said, and sipped his coffee as she sashayed off.
72
Bennie faced the blood expert on the witness stand. “Dr. Pettis, you and I have met before, so I won’t introduce myself.”
The professor nodded, with a jowly smile. “Good to see you again, Ms. Rosato.”
“And you, sir,” Bennie said, hamming it up. The jury liked Pettis and she wanted them to know that Pettis liked her, too, so she wasn’t the enemy. It was the best tactic with a reasonable expert put up by the other side: make him your own. “Dr. Pettis, the Commonwealth has provided you with various items to examine in this matter. It has provided you with photos, a complete file, blood samples, and a sweatshirt, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“The Commonwealth did not provide you with a weapon to examine, did it?”
“No.”
“Is it your understanding that the police have not recovered the murder weapon in this case?”
“Yes.”
Bennie was watching the jurors’ faces. They looked attentive, and she guessed they were already wondering about the absence of the murder weapon. She walked calmly to the witness stand. “Dr. Pettis, what kind of forensic evidence can be found on a gun used to commit a murder?”
“Objection,” Hilliard said, half rising. “This is beyond the scope of direct examination. Dr. Pettis didn’t discuss murder weapons on direct.”
Bennie faced Judge Guthrie, who sat listening behind his tented fingers. “Your Honor, Dr. Pettis has been qualified as a forensics expert, and I’m asking him some basic questions about forensics.”
“I’ll permit it,” Judge Guthrie said, and his mouth disappeared behind his finger steeple.
Bennie returned to Dr. Pettis. “Please tell us the type of evidence you usually find on a murder weapon, such as a .22 caliber gun, for example.”
“Obviously, one would find fingerprints on the gun, which may result in a positive identification. There may also be flakes of skin, hair, or other trace evidence that could help identify the person who shot the gun.”
Bennie raised a hand. “But in this case, there was no weapon, so no suspect can be identified or eliminated on that basis in this case, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Pettis, are you also aware that a sweatshirt was found in a Dumpster in an alley, is that right?”
“I was told that by the prosecutor, yes.”
“No gun was found in the Dumpster, that you know of?”
“Not that I know.”
Bennie took a moment to look at the jurors’ faces, one by one. If they were wondering, let them wonder. “I have another forensics question, Dr. Pettis. When a person fires a gun, from any distance, aren’t certain residues deposited on their hand?”
“Yes, provided there’s no intermediate barrier, such as a glove.”
“Can you test for the presence of such residues in your lab?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Were you asked to perform any such test on Alice Connolly’s hands?”
“No.”
“You have no knowledge if any samples of residues were taken from Alice Connolly’s hands, do you, Dr. Pettis?”
“I do not.”
“Thank you. Let’s move on.” Bennie crossed to the evidence table and plucked the large baggie containing the sweatshirt from the evidence table. “Dr. Pettis, I am showing you what is marked as Commonwealth Exhibit 13. Do you recall testifying about the spatter pattern on this sweatshirt?”
“Yes.”
Bennie extracted the sweatshirt and unfolded it, releasing a stale, distasteful scent. The blood dotting its surface was caked and dried, but she couldn’t help feeling vaguely nauseated. “Dr. Pettis, blood spatter analysis is well accepted in the law enforcement community, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
r /> “And most law enforcement professionals, such as the police, are familiar with its principles, are they not?”
“Objection, calls for speculation, Your Honor,” Hilliard said from his chair.
“Overruled,” Judge Guthrie said. “Dr. Pettis may so testify.”
Dr. Pettis faced Bennie. “Law enforcement professionals, such as police, would be familiar with blood spatter analysis. I myself lecture on it at police academies around the country.”
“Do you lecture on blood spatter to the Philadelphia police, as part of their training?”
“I do, and on other forensic principles as well.”
Bennie cocked her head, still holding the sweatshirt. “Do you have an estimate of how many police officers you’ve trained over the years in principles of blood spatter analysis?”
“I’m so long in the tooth, God only knows,” he said, and the jurors smiled with him. “Thousands, easily.”
“Thank you.” Bennie held up the sweatshirt. “Dr. Pettis, didn’t you testify earlier that the blood spatter pattern on this sweatshirt is typical?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You teach this in your lecture course to the police, is that right, sir?”
“Yes.”
Bennie faced the jury, still holding the sweatshirt against her own chest. She didn’t need hair or skin analysis to tell her it was Connolly’s; it would have fit Bennie exactly. “Tell the jury, Dr. Pettis, do you ever re-create spatter like this in your lab?”
“Yes. All the time. I do it to test my hypotheses and confirm my conclusions.”
“So you create blood spatter, all the time? How do you do it?”
“I simply spray blood, I use pig’s blood, at different garments. If it’s at a distance I use a spray gun. But short of that, I simply flick the blood onto the garment, as Jackson Pollock did with paint. It isn’t difficult.”
Bennie smiled inwardly. Thank God for the expert’s modesty. “So isn’t it true that an individual familiar with blood spatter principles can create blood spatter?”