“Why do we need Manny here, Doctor?”
“Because an analysis of the SEMS tabs collected by the sheriff’s forensic expert can show us why the gunshot residue on Mr. Elliot did not come from his firing of a weapon.”
“I know the state’s expert explained these procedures to us last week but I would like you to refresh us. What is a SEMS tab?”
“The GSR test is conducted with round tabs or disks that have a peel-off sticky side. The tabs are patted on the area to be tested and they collect all the microscopic material on the surface. The tab then goes into a scanning electron microscope, or SEMS, as we call it. Through the microscope, we see or don’t see the three elements we have been talking about here. Barium, antimony, and lead.”
“Okay, then, do you have a demonstration for us?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Please explain it to the jury.”
Dr. Arslanian extended her pointer and faced the jury. Her demonstration had been carefully planned and rehearsed, right down to my always referring to her as ‘doctor’ and her always referring to the state’s forensic man as ‘mister.’
“Mr. Guilfoyle, the Sheriff’s Department forensic expert, took eight different samples from Mr. Elliot’s body and clothes. Each tab was coded so that the location it sampled would be known and charted.”
She used the pointer on the mannequin as she discussed the locations of the samples. The mannequin stood with its arms down at its sides.
“Tab A was the top of the right hand. Tab B was the top of the left hand. Tab C was the right sleeve of Mr. Elliot’s windbreaker and D was the left sleeve. Then we have tabs E and F being the right-and left-front panels of the jacket, and G and H being the chest and torso portions of the shirt Mr. Elliot wore beneath the open jacket.”
“Are these the clothes he was wearing that day?”
“No, they are not. These are exact duplicates of what he was wearing, right down to the size and manufacturer.”
“Okay, what did you learn from your analysis of the eight tabs?”
“I’ve prepared a chart for the jurors so they can follow along.”
I presented the chart as a defense exhibit. Golantz had been given a copy of it that morning. He now stood and objected, saying his late receipt of the chart violated the rules of discovery. I told the judge the chart had only been composed the night before after my meetings with Dr. Arslanian on Saturday and Sunday. The judge agreed with the prosecutor, saying that the direction of my examination of the witness was obvious and well prepared and that I therefore should have drawn the chart sooner. The objection was sustained, and Dr. Arslanian now had to wing it on her own. It had been a gamble but I didn’t regret the move. I would rather have my witness talking to the jurors without a net than have had Golantz in possession of my strategy in advance of its implementation.
“Okay, Doctor, you can still refer to your notes and the chart. The jurors just need to follow along. What did you learn from your analysis of the eight SEMS tabs?”
“I learned that the levels of gunshot residue on the different tabs greatly differed.”
“How so?”
“Well, tabs A and B, which came from Mr. Elliot’s hands, were where the highest levels of GSR were found. From there we get a steep drop-off in the GSR levels: tabs C, D, E and F with much lower levels, and no GSR reading at all on tabs G and H.”
Again she used the pointer to illustrate.
“What did that tell you, Doctor?”
“That the GSR on Mr. Elliot’s hands and clothes did not come from firing a weapon.”
“Can you illustrate why?”
“First, comparable readings coming from both hands indicate that the weapon was fired in a two-handed grip.”
She went to the mannequin and raised its arms, forming a V by pulling the hands together out front. She bent the hands and fingers around the wooden gun.
“But a two-handed grip would also have to result in higher levels of GSR on the sleeves of the jacket in particular and the rest of the clothes as well.”
“But the tabs processed by the sheriff’s department don’t show that, am I right?”
“You’re right. They show the opposite. While a drop-off from the readings on the hands is expected, it is not expected to be of this rate.”
“So in your expert opinion, what does it mean?”
“A compound-transfer exposure. The first exposure occurred when he was placed with his hands and arms behind his back in the four-alpha car. After that, the material was on his hands and arms, and some of it was then transferred for a second time onto the front panels of his jacket during normal hand and arm movement. This would have occurred continuously until the clothing was collected from him.”
“What about the zero reading on the tabs from the shirt beneath the jacket?”
“We discount that because the jacket could have been zipped closed during the commission of the shooting.”
“In your expert opinion, Doctor, is there any way that Mr. Elliot could have gotten this pattern of GSR on his hands and clothing by discharging a firearm?”
“No, there is not.”
“Thank you, Doctor Arslanian. No further questions.”
I returned to my seat and leaned over to whisper into Walter Elliot’s ear.
“If we didn’t just give them reasonable doubt, then I don’t know what it is.”
Elliot nodded and whispered back to me.
“The best ten thousand dollars I’ve ever spent.”
I didn’t think I had done so badly myself but I let it go. Golantz asked the judge for the midafternoon break before cross-examination of the witness began and the judge agreed. I noticed what I believed to be a higher energy in the verbal buzz of the courtroom after the adjournment. Shami Arslanian had definitely given the defense momentum.
In fifteen minutes I would see what Golantz had in his arsenal for impeaching my witness’s credibility and testimony but I couldn’t imagine he had much. If he had something, he wouldn’t have asked for the break. He would have gotten up and charged right after her.
After the jury and the judge had vacated the courtroom and the observers were pushing out into the hallway, I sauntered over to the prosecutor’s table. Golantz was writing out questions on a legal pad. He didn’t look up at me.
“What?” he said.
“The answer’s no.”
“To what question?”
“The one you were going to ask about my client taking a plea agreement. We’re not interested.”
Golantz smirked.
“You’re funny, Haller. So what, you’ve got an impressive witness. The trial’s a long way from over.”
“And I’ve got a French police captain who’s going to testify tomorrow that Rilz ratted out seven of the most dangerous, vindictive men he’s ever investigated. Two of them happened to get out of prison last year and they disappeared. No-body knows where they are. Maybe they were in Malibu last spring.”
Golantz put his pen down and finally looked up at me.
“Yeah, I talked to your Inspector Clouseau yesterday. It’s pretty clear he’s saying whatever you want him to say, as long as you fly him first class. At the end of the depo, he pulled out one of those star maps and asked me if I could show him where Angelina Jolie lives. He’s one serious witness you came up with.”
I had told Captain Pepin to cool it with the star map stuff. He apparently hadn’t listened. I needed to change the subject.
“So, where are the Germans?” I asked.
Golantz checked behind him as if to make sure Johan Rilz’s family members weren’t there.
“I told them that they had to be prepared for your strategy of building a defense by shitting all over the memory of their son and brother,” he said. “I told them you were going to take Johan’s problems in France five years ago and use them to try to get his killer off. I told them that you were going to depict him as a German gigolo who seduced rich clients, men and women, all over Malibu
and the west side. You know what the father said to me?”
“No, but you’ll tell me.”
“He said that they’d had enough of American justice and were going back home.”
I tried to retort with a clever and cynical comeback line. But I came up empty.
“Don’t worry,” Golantz said. “Up or down, I’ll call them and tell them the verdict.”
“Good.”
I left him there and went out into the hallway to look for my client. I saw him in the center of a ring of reporters. Feeling cocky after the success of Dr. Arslanian’s testimony, he was now working the big jury—public opinion.
“All this time they’ve concentrated on coming after me, the real killer’s been out there running around free!”
A nice concise sound bite. He was good. I was about to push through the crowd to grab him, when Dennis Wojciechowski intercepted me first.
“Come with me,” he said.
We walked down the hallway away from the crowd.
“What’s up, Cisco? I was wondering where you’ve been.”
“I’ve been busy. I got the report from Florida. Do you want to hear it?”
I had told him what Elliot had told me about fronting for the so-called organization. Elliot’s story had seemed sincere enough but in the light of day I reminded myself of a simple truism—everybody lies—and told Cisco to see what he could do about confirming it.
“Give it to me,” I said.
“I used a PI in Fort Lauderdale who I’ve worked with before. Tampa’s on the other side of the state but I wanted to go with a guy I knew and trusted.”
“I understand. What did he come up with?”
“Elliot’s grandfather founded a phosphate-shipping operation seventy-eight years ago. He worked it, then Elliot’s father worked it, and then Elliot himself worked it. Only he didn’t like getting his hands dirty in the phosphate business and he sold it a year after his father died of a heart attack. It was a privately owned company, so the record of the sale is not public. Newspaper articles at the time put the sale at about thirty-two million.”
“What about organized crime?”
“My guy couldn’t find a whiff of it. Looked to him like it was a good, clean operation—legally, that is. Elliot told you he was a front and he was sent out here to invest their money. He didn’t say anything about him selling his own company and bringing the money out here. The man’s lying to you.”
I nodded.
“Okay, Cisco, thanks.”
“You need me in court? I’ve got a few things I’m still working on. I heard juror number seven went missing this morning.”
“Yeah, he’s in the wind. And I don’t need you in court.”
“Okay, man, I’ll talk to you.”
He headed off toward the elevators and I was left to stare at my client holding forth with the reporters. A slow burn started in me and it gained heat as I waded into the crowd to get to him.
“Okay, that’s all, people,” I said. “No further comment. No further comment.”
I grabbed Elliot by the arm, pulled him out of the crowd, and walked him down the hall. I shooed a couple of trailing reporters away until we were finally far enough from all other ears and could speak privately.
“Walter, what were you doing?”
He was smiling gleefully. He made a fist and pumped it into the air.
“Sticking it up their asses. The prosecutor and the sheriffs, all of them.”
“Yeah, well, you better wait on that. We’ve still got a ways to go. We may have won the day but we haven’t won the war yet.”
“Oh, come on. It’s in the bag, Mick. She was fucking outstanding in there. I mean, I want to marry her!”
“Yeah, that’s nice but let’s see how she does on cross before you buy the ring, okay?”
Another reporter came up and I told her to take a hike, then turned back to my client.
“Listen, Walter, we need to talk.”
“Okay, talk.”
“I had a private investigator check your story out in Florida and I just found out it was bullshit. You lied to me, Walter, and I told you never to lie to me.”
Elliot shook his head and looked annoyed with me for taking the wind out of his sails. To him, being caught in the lie was a minor inconvenience, an annoyance that I would even bring it up.
“Why did you lie to me, Walter? Why’d you spin that story?”
He shrugged and looked away from me when he spoke.
“The story? I read it in a script once. I turned the project down, actually. But I remembered the story.”
“But why? I’m your lawyer. You can tell me anything. I asked you to tell me the truth and you lied to me. Why?”
He finally looked me in the eyes.
“I knew I had to light a fire under you.”
“What fire? What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Mickey. Let’s not get—”
He was turning to go back to the courtroom but I grabbed him roughly by the arm.
“No, I want to hear. What fire did you light?”
“Everybody’s going back in. The break is over and we should be in there.”
I gripped him even harder.
“What fire, Walter?”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
I relaxed my grip but didn’t let go. And I didn’t take my eyes off his.
“What fire?”
He looked away from me and put an “aw, shucks” grin on his face. I finally let go of his arm.
“Look,” he said. “From the start I needed you to believe I didn’t do it. It was the only way for me to know you would bring your best game. That you would be goddamn relentless.”
I stared at him and saw the smile become a look of pride.
“I told you I could read people, Mick. I knew you needed something to believe in. I knew if I was a little bit guilty but not guilty of the big crime, then it would give you what you needed. It would give you your fire back.”
They say the best actors in Hollywood are on the wrong side of the camera. At that moment I knew that was true. I knew that Elliot had killed his wife and her lover and was even proud of it. I found my voice and spoke.
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“Oh, I’d had it. Bought it under the table at a flea market back in the seventies. I was a big Dirty Harry fan and I wanted a forty-four mag. I kept it out at the beach house for protection. You know, a lot of drifters down on the beach.”
“What really happened in that house, Walter?”
He nodded like it was his plan all along to take this moment to tell me.
“What happened was I went out there to confront her and whoever she was fucking every Monday like clockwork. But when I got there, I realized it was Rilz. She’d passed him off in front of me as a faggot, had him to dinners and parties and premieres with us, and they probably laughed all about it later. Laughed about me, Mick.
“It got me mad. Enraged, actually. I got the gun out of the cabinet, put on rubber gloves from under the sink, and I went upstairs. You should have seen the look on their faces when they saw that big gun.”
I stared at him for a long moment. I’d had clients confess to me before. But usually they were crying, wringing their hands, battling the demons their crimes had created inside. But not Walter Elliot. He was cold to the bone.
“How’d you get rid of the gun?”
“I hadn’t gone out there alone. I had somebody with me and they took the gun, the gloves, and my first set of clothes, then walked down the beach, got back up to the PCH, and caught a cab. Meantime, I washed up and changed, then I dialed nine-one-one.”
“Who was it that helped you?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
I nodded. Not because I agreed with him. I nodded because I already knew. I had a flash vision of Nina Albrecht easily unlocking the door to the deck when I couldn’t figure it out. It showed a familiarity with her boss’s bedroom that had struck me t
he moment I saw it.
I looked away from my client and down at the floor. It had been scuffed by a million people who had trod a million miles for justice.
“I never counted on the transference, Mick. When they said they wanted to do the test, I was all for it. I thought I was clean and they would see that and it would be the end of it. No gun, no residue, no case.”
He shook his head at such a close call.
“Thank God for lawyers like you.”
I jerked my eyes up to his.
“Did you kill Jerry Vincent?”
Elliot looked me in the eye and shook his head.
“No, I didn’t. But it was a lucky break because I ended up with a better lawyer.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I looked down the hall to the courtroom door. The deputy was there. He waved to me and signaled me into the courtroom. The break was over and the judge was ready to start. I nodded and held up one finger. Wait. I knew the judge wouldn’t take the bench until he was told the lawyers were in place.
“Go back in,” I said to Elliot. “I have to use the restroom.”
Elliot calmly walked toward the waiting deputy. I quickly stepped into the nearby restroom and went to one of the sinks. I splashed cold water on my face, spotting my best suit and shirt but not caring at all.
Fifty-one
That night I sent Patrick to the movies because I wanted the house to myself. I wanted no television or conversation. I wanted no interruption and no one watching me. I called Bosch and told him I was in for the night. It was not so that I could prepare for what likely would be the last day of the trial. I was more than ready for that. I had the French police captain primed and ready to deliver another dose of reasonable doubt to the jury.
And it was not because I now knew that my client was guilty. I could count the truly innocent clients I’d had over the years on one hand. Guilty people were my specialty. But I was feeling bruised because I had been used so well. And because I had forgotten the basic rule: Everybody lies.