Fatal Flaw (37 page)

46

THAT NIGHT,
back at my apartment, I gathered together my brain trust. I like the sound of that—brain trust—it connotes images of men and women in stark suits and tense poses, talking on cell phones and working on laptops as they draw on the entire breadth of their mighty resources to solve the seemingly unsolvable. Of course, I didn’t have the resources or clout to have a brain trust that resembled a fashion ad in
GQ
, so I had to settle for Beth and Skink.

They hadn’t yet formally met. I had told them each of the happenings in Pierce, related to each the whole brutal story of love, perjury, blackmail, the defiant priest, the suicidal poet, the crooked poker game, and, finally, the murder of a boy on the edge of his manhood. I had told them each what I had learned about Cutlip but had kept them apart for obvious reasons. I didn’t want Skink spilling all he knew about Hailey and me to my partner, and I didn’t want my partner wondering what I was doing with a creep like Skink. But now I had to come up with some possibilities, fast, and they were, well, my brain trust.

“Do I know you?” Beth said when she entered the apartment and I introduced her to Skink, sprawled out now on my couch, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his tie loose, his shoes off, leaning back with a proprietary casualness.

“Not in a personal way, missy, no,” he said.

“What other way is there?”

Skink chuckled. “Let’s say I had the pleasure of helping yourself out of a tight situation.”

Beth stared at him bemusedly.

“Skink pulled you out of the car after the accident in Las Vegas.”

“You were the one,” said Beth to Skink. “I do know you. You were the one who saved my life.”

“Glad to be of service to a lovely young lass such as yourself, I was. No reward necessary, though if you’re considering buying me chocolates, think low-fat, please, as I gots myself a problem with cholesterol.”

Beth pursed her lips first at Skink and then at me and then again at Skink. “So why are you here tonight?”

“I thought he could be of some help,” I said.

“I am definitely confused.”

“Skink wasn’t in Las Vegas by chance. He was following us. At the time he was working for someone else.”

“Who?” said Beth.

“Can’t say, now, can I?” said Skink. “Disclosing that information would be a violation of my duties as a professional.”

“A professional what?”

“Investigative services, ma’am, specializing in the brutal, the debased, and the carnally depraved.”

“What are you, the HBO of detectives?”

“And now he’s working for us,” I said.

“Oh, is he?”

“Once again, I am glad I can be of service.”

“Victor,” said Beth. “Can I see you for a moment?”

“Go ahead,” said Skink. “Why don’t you two young folk head off into the other room and discuss this among yourselves. Don’t mind me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Beth. “We won’t.”

I stoically withstood the harangue, being as it was absolutely justified. We were partners, working together on the Guy Forrest trial, and all the time I’d had an investigator working on the sly. It made her wonder, she said. It made her wonder what the hell was going
on. I could have tried to lie my way out of it, I could have squirmed like a worm to get free, but when you are dead wrong, it is not time to make excuses. When you are dead wrong, it is time to give a half smile and move right to the meat of it. So I let her blow up at me, get it out of her system, and then I tossed her that half smile and said simply, “He can help.”

“How?”

“He knows things. Before he worked for us, he worked for Hailey Prouix. He knows things. He won’t tell me all he knows, but he knows more than we do. He can help.”

“That’s good, Victor, because after what you pulled today in court, I think we could use all the help we can get.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“THE QUESTION,”
I said, when my brain trust was reassembled in the well of my living room, “is why. Let’s assume that Cutlip sent Bobo out to do the killing. We still have to figure out why. Why? Why?” I turned to look at Skink. “Why? And how does it relate to what happened to Jesse Sterrett?”

“Maybe she was threatening to tell someone what had happened,” said Beth. “Maybe he had crossed some line and she was about to tell the whole story.”

“Not bad,” I said, “except there’s nothing to back that up. She was still taking care of him, was still apparently close to him. He was still the beneficiary on her insurance. There’s no indication she was ready to do such a thing.”

“Look at the money,” said Skink. “It’s usually about money, innit?”

“Yes, it usually is,” I said. “The insurance money was pretty high, and he seemed pretty damned interested in it when we came to visit.”

“But she was the goose laying his golden eggs,” said Beth. “Why would he kill her for money when she was giving him everything he wanted as it was?”

“Maybe he was worried it was running out,” I said. “Especially with Guy starting to raise questions about the missing funds. Or
maybe he was sick of the place, Desert Winds, maybe he thought it was some sort of pre-morgue and he felt halfway already on the slab. Maybe she was using her support as a cudgel to keep him there, and he thought he could gain his freedom and a stake both with one fatal blow. He and Bobo would have themselves a hell of a time before the insurance money ran out and Cutlip’s body fell apart.”

“An interesting idea, that,” said Skink. “A man used to freedom, as was our Larry Cutlip, it must chafe like a pair of iron knickers to be supervised, sanitized, and anesthetized in a place like that.”

“You know him?” said Beth.

“Who, Cutlip? Yeah, I knows him. But the thing about your insurance theory there, Vic, is that he wasn’t even sure he was the beneficiary before she died and he got a gander at the policy. He was just hoping.”

“How do you know that?” said Beth.

“I just do, is all. I just do.”

“What’s he like?” she said. “I apparently met him, but after the accident I don’t remember a thing about it.”

“He’s a saint,” I said, “just ask him. Oh, he’s done some tough things in his life, gone through some hard stretches, but everything he’s done he’s done for the right reasons. He sacrificed his best years to take care of his nieces, and he did the best he could, and he needs you to know it. Anything that went wrong, it was some other person’s fault. The dead father, the meddling local minister, his sister, the girls themselves. But he provided a firm hand when a firm hand was needed. When he thinks tears will be effective, he’ll break down and cry. When he thinks he can bully you, he’ll get as vicious as a cornered rat. His surface is all ornery and hard, he doesn’t like Jews much, or lawyers, or, really, anyone, but he likes to have someone around who will stroke his ego and tell him how good, how strong, how important he is, even as he sits in a wheelchair in a sad desert boomtown with a line feeding oxygen into his withered lungs.”

“Sounds like you didn’t like him much,” said Beth.

“Actually, I was suckered. Before I knew the truth, I admired what he had done. I bought into his act. I guess he didn’t spend fifteen
years banging around Vegas without learning how to con gullible folk from back east. It was you who didn’t like him, not at all.”

“I didn’t?”

“For some reason I couldn’t fathom he terrified you, as if you had seen something in him that I completely missed. You said he reminded you of Murdstone.”

“Murdstone?”

“From
David Copperfield
.”

“The stepfather?”

“Yes, and you seemed particularly concerned with some of the things he said about Jesse Sterrett’s death. He called it an accident, but you kept asking questions. He didn’t like that, didn’t like that at all. It was those questions, in fact, along with the letters, that started me digging in West Virginia.”

“Wasn’t I the perceptive little thing?”

“And then, while we were riding out of Henderson, you said you wouldn’t be surprised if…”’

“If what?”

“I don’t know. It was just before the accident. You never got a chance to finish.”

“What I meant was that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Guy and not Hailey who was supposed to die.”

Skink and I looked at each other for a moment and then back at Beth. “How do you remember that?”

Beth herself look stunned. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I was just listening to what you said about Cutlip and the beginning of the sentence and something slipped out of the recesses of my mind and became clear, and that was it.”

“What a strange idea,” I said.

“Is it, now?” said Skink. “Is it, now? Wouldn’t that change everything? We’re wondering here about motive, because why would Cutlip want to kill his loving niece? But Guy, now, that’s a different story, ain’t it? There are half a dozen blokes who wouldn’t have minded seeing Guy Forrest bite the proverbial big one. And wouldn’t Cutlip be one of them? Guy was starting to ask questions about where his money had gone. Guy was threatening his luxury
existence. And the worst crime of all is that Guy was pumping it to Hailey—no offense, ma’am—pumping it to Hailey just like Jesse Sterrett was pumping it to Hailey. They was two men she was looking to marry. Maybe he killed them both.”

“Out of some raw emotion,” I said. “Something beyond him, something he couldn’t control.”

“Slow down,” said Beth. “She was on the mattress right in the middle of the floor. You couldn’t shoot her from outside the room, and you couldn’t step into the room without seeing her there, clear as day.”

“Really, now,” said Skink. “Clear as day, you say. Vic, you was the first one to see her after Guy, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was the light on?”

“Of course, the overhead light.”

“Not a lamp or anything else, just the overhead.”

“As far as I remember, yes.”

“Guy told us,” said Beth, “that after he hit her, Hailey told him to turn out the light, and he did.”

“Then, what about if it was Guy himself who turned it on, that overhead light, not the killer?” said Skink. “Think about that. Maybe it was off when she was killed.”

“But still, even in the imperfect darkness,” Beth said, “it would be hard to mistake petite Hailey Prouix for a lummox like Guy.”

“Yeah, maybe, except our suspected shooter, Bobo, ain’t no Einstein, is he? If you wanted a killing to be messed up to hell, I suppose he’s the one you’d send to do it. And maybe there was another reason he made the mistake. You got the forensics reports hereabouts?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “the lab technician is testifying Monday.”

“Let me see it. And the autopsy report, too.”

“What for?”

“Just haul them out and let me have a look-see.”

The reports were in the trial bag I had brought with me from the office. Skink spread them out on the coffee table in front of the couch and riffled through them, one at a time, as he searched for
the specific items he was interested in. It was a wonder to behold, Phil Skink in full calculating mode. His mouth twitched, his eyes blinked, he scratched his greased blue-black hair as if it were infested with lice—he looked like a deranged mainframe on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And the whole of the time he was letting out little verbal explosions. “Mmmmmbop,” he said, or “Blip, blip, blip,” or “Now, there’s something, innit?” or, most strangely, “
Parlez-vous
to me, you frog bastard.”

Beth and I stood back and let him at it, both of us afraid to get too close in case he blew up.

After a good twenty minutes he raised his head and said, “I think we got ourselves a G forty-eight.”

“G forty-eight? Is that an exhibit or something?”

“Don’t be daft. I’m talking those little balls what falls out of the cage. G forty-eight. G forty-eight. And you know what that gives us?”

“What?” said Beth.

Skink let a huge smile crease his battered face. “Bingo, mates. Bingo.”

47

“THAT’S RIGHT,”
said the police technician from the stand, adjusting her glasses as she reviewed her report. “I determined that the gun was two to four feet away from the victim when it was fired.” She took off her glasses and looked up at me. “But as I said in my direct testimony, that’s only a rough estimate.”

“Let’s be as precise as possible about this, Officer Cantwell,” I said. “You are estimating the distance from the victim to the end of the barrel, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“With the arm outstretched, the killer’s eyes would have been considerably farther away. As much as two feet, isn’t that right?”

“It’s hard to tell how the gun was held, but that is certainly possible.”

“So the killer, when he fired, could have been as much as six feet away from the victim?”

“Yes, or closer.”

“Six feet. That’s pretty far away with the light off, isn’t it?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained,” said the judge.

“But, Your Honor,” I said, “we have Mrs. Morgan’s testimony that
the lights were out at some point before she saw Mr. Forrest on the steps.”

“Sustained.”

“And there is absolutely no evidence that the light was on at the time of the killing.”

“Argue what you want, Mr. Carl, at argument, but you haven’t laid a foundation to allow this witness to testify what can or can’t be seen in that room with the lights out. Continue, please.”

“Officer Cantwell, were you ever in that room with the lights out?”

“No.”

“With the lights on?”

“No.”

“You’ve never been in that room?”

“I am a lab technician, Mr. Carl. I work in a lab. I of course consult the photographs and the police reports, but my job is a scientific analysis of the evidence.”

“Then, Officer, let me ask you this. With any of your fancy lab equipment, your spectroscopes or infrared cameras, with your micron telescopes, with any of that stuff, is it possible for you to say whether the light was on or off at the time the shot was fired?”

“No.”

“Good enough. Let’s move on. Two to four feet from the end of the barrel to the victim, right?”

“That was my estimate.”

“And you made that determination from the gunpowder residue on the comforter, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you explain to the jury how the gunpowder residue ended up on the comforter?”

“A bullet is fired by the ignition of smokeless gunpowder, or nitrocellulose, in a cartridge. As the powder ignites, there is a violent expansion of gas, which propels the bullet through the barrel and then out into the world. In this case, through the comforter and into the heart of the victim. Under perfect circumstances all the gunpowder would be turned into the propelling gases during ignition,
but as we all know, our world isn’t perfect. Along with the bullet, the expanding gases discharge unburned powder, partially burned powder, and completely burned powder, or soot. If the barrel of the gun is close enough to the target, then some or all of these are deposited on the target’s surface. An examination of the pattern of these discharges can allow for an approximation of distance.”

“Were all three types of powder found on the comforter?”

“No, not on the relevant portion. Generally, if a shot is fired within a foot, there is what is called both fouling and stippling. Fouling, which can be wiped away easily, occurs when the completely burned powder is found on the surface. Stippling occurs from the unburned and incompletely burned particles of gunpowder. These particles become embedded in the surface or bounce off and abrade the surface, and their effects are not easily wiped off. From beyond a foot the soot generally is dispersed into the air and so no soot deposit is made. From the distance of a foot to maybe three or four feet, there will be stippling without fouling. When we examined the comforter, we found embedded unburned and partially burned powder, which gave us our approximate distance.”

“How was this examination done?”

“Because of the color of the comforter, a dark blue, and the encrusted blood staining it, it was difficult to see the residue with the naked eye. We took an infrared photograph of the comforter, but that didn’t prove very helpful, which isn’t surprising, since infrared is better at revealing fouling than stippling. Then we made a search for nitrates using a Greiss test. We pressed a series of gelatin-coated photographic papers onto the comforter with a hot iron and then treated the papers to find the presence of nitrates, which would be found if there existed nitrocellulose on the comforter that had been incompletely burned. Nitrates were found in a wide, elliptical pattern, from which we concluded that the firing range was two to four feet.”

“All very technical, Officer Cantwell.”

“Most of our work is. That’s why we’re called technicians.”

“Now, you found these nitrates over a large part of the comforter.”

“Yes.”

“And what you found would qualify as stippling.”

“That’s right.”

“And this stippling would have been found not only over the comforter but also over the exposed surfaces of anything on the mattress.”

“I would assume so, yes.”

“Including the victim herself.”

“Yes.”

“And based on what you testified to earlier, this would have been clearly evident, as particles would be embedded in the skin or, in bouncing off, would have abraded the skin, isn’t that right?”

“That is what you would expect, but I didn’t examine the victim.”

“You examined her clothes, correct?”

“She was wearing a short nightshirt, a teddy, it’s sometimes called. We found blood and some nitrate residue around the bullet hole, what is known as bullet swipe.”

“But no stippling.”

“Yes, no stippling.”

“Now, let’s look at the autopsy report, shall we?”

“Objection. It is not her report.”

“The autopsy report was introduced through stipulation. I’m not asking her to lay a foundation, I’m asking her to use the information she has already provided to help us analyze the actual report.”

“Is this going somewhere, Counselor?”

“I hope so, Judge.”

“Let’s get there soon.”

“In the autopsy report Dr. Regent analyzed many of the organs of the victim in this case, including the skin, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“On the first paragraph on page four he mentions the bruise beneath her left eye, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“In the second paragraph he mentions the general condition of the skin other than the bruise, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“No other sign of insult to the skin, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that is what he wrote.”

“Nothing about particles of gunpowder embedded in the skin, is there?”

“No.”

“And nothing about abrasions from particles bouncing off the skin, is there?”

“Not from what I can see.”

“So, in fact, in reading the autopsy, there is no evidence of stippling.”

“That’s right.”

“No evidence that her skin was in any way exposed to the nitrates released by the handgun.”

“Maybe not.”

“Now, here is my question, Officer Cantwell. Based on the test you performed with the photographic paper and the comforter, and based upon the absence of stippling on the victim’s clothes or skin, isn’t it quite possible that all the stippling occurred on the comforter only because her entire body, including her face, was covered by the comforter?”

“That might be one explanation.”

“So, to summarize your testimony, the shooter might have been as far from the victim as six feet, you can’t in any way deny the possibility that it was dark in the room, and you maintain that it is quite possible that the victim was entirely hidden by her comforter.”

“Yes, I suppose…”

“With all that, Officer, isn’t it possible that the shooter didn’t even know who it was beneath that comforter? With all that, Officer, isn’t it possible the shooter murdered the absolute wrong person? Isn’t that possible?”

There was to be no answer, of course. This was one of those obviously objectionable questions that lawyers throw in just so they can sneak in some argument in the midst of a cross-examination. But the point was made. It was the first time the jury had heard the possibility that maybe Hailey Prouix wasn’t the intended victim, and they listened to the whole examination with admirable interest. And so, I could tell, did Troy Jefferson.

“I don’t think they bought it,” he said to me after Judge Tifaro had recessed for the day.

“They don’t have to buy it, they just have to buy the possibility of it.”

“So what are you going to argue, that the lover meant to kill Guy and killed his one true love instead?”

“A sad tale worthy of Shakespeare, don’t you think?” I said. “The tragic story of one who loved not wisely but too well and threw it away by trying to kill off the competition and mistakenly murdering the woman he loved.”

“Sounds like a movie of the week.”

“Yes, it does. Maybe after this is over, I’ll option the story to ABC.”

“We have a new witness to add to our list.”

“Someone interesting, I hope.”

“Oh, yes, interesting as hell. You should never have tried to backstab us like you did on that stipulation. We’re calling the victim’s uncle. He’s known her all her life and he is thrilled as hell to testify against the man who killed his niece. He’s going to identify her, and then he’s got a few more things to say, and I’m going to let him say them.”

“Really?”

“Count on it. He’s going to bury your boy.”

“I certainly hope not. I’d like to speak to him before he testifies, if that’s all right. You know where he’s staying?”

“He’s at the DoubleTree.”

“Nice.”

“But don’t waste your breath. He’s not going to speak to you. He’s not going to say a word until he’s on the stand.”

“It shook you a little, didn’t it?” I said. “The wrong-victim theory.”

“Not really. We had seen the possibility beforehand. We were just wondering what took you so long to figure it out.”

As he walked out of the courtroom, I began to wonder the exact same thing. It must have always been a possibility, a close examination of the forensics reports would have shown it to me as clearly as they showed it to Skink. And if there was to be a parallel with the Jesse Sterrett murder, then it only made sense. The boy Hailey was planning to run away with, murdered. The man Hailey was planning
to marry, an attempt on his life. It was so obvious. Why couldn’t I see it?

Because of my obsession. I was obsessed with Hailey Prouix. Call it love, call it lust, call it what you will, but it was an obsession and it colored everything I had done in this case, for better or for worse. She was the focus of my interest, so I assumed she was the focus of the killer’s interest, too. My obsession had been like a set of blinders, but the blinders were off.

Right from the courtroom I called Skink on my cell phone. “He’s at the DoubleTree.”

“All right,” said Skink. “I’ll get my man on it.”

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“You better hurry. He’ll probably go on tomorrow afternoon.”

“It ain’t so easy. It’s a big desert.”

“No excuses, Skink.”

“I understand, mate.”

And he did, we all did. It was no time for excuses, it was no time for sitting back and waiting, no time for mere hope. The blinders now were off and Roylynn had been right all along. There was indeed a primordial evil that had blown through Hailey Prouix’s life and caused a swath of destruction. And now, in a court of law, it and I were coming face to face.