MD02 - Incriminating Evidence Read online

  Every time we’ve met, I’ve told him he can call me Mike, but Rod Beckert’s not a first-name guy. When you talk to him, the protocol dictates that you ask him questions with mannerly restraint. “I was hoping you could tell me a little about your autopsy,” I say. I figure I’ll start with an open-ended question to see if I can draw him out.

  “It’s in my report,” he says. This is his standard answer for almost every question, delivered in a clinical tone with a hint of a New York accent. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the information is, in fact, in his report. This doesn’t deter me. He’s going to testify at the preliminary hearing and I want to hear everything he’s going to say. More important, I want to hear how emphatically he’s going to say it.

  “I haven’t had a chance to study it. I was hoping you’d give me the highlights.”

  “Of course, Mr. Daley.” We’ve done this dance many times. He knows I’m fishing for information. To his credit, he plays his role without irritation. “Where would you like to start?”

  “How about time of death?”

  He flips through his report, pausing to moisten his finger every page or two. “Page three,” he says. “Time of death between one and four A.M.” He says he determines time of death by looking at body temperature, discoloration and the state of rigor mortis. Then he recites the standard caveat that he always gives himself at least a three-hour window. I’m not going to make an issue of it. Beckert is one of the most respected coroners in the country. He’s going to get it right.

  I ask about the cause of death.

  “He died of asphyxiation,” he says. “The room service waiter reported that the eyes, nose and mouth were covered with duct tape. We found traces of adhesive chemicals on the victim’s face that were consistent with the conclusion that the nose and mouth had been covered.”

  “Any chance he died before his face was covered with tape?”

  “No.”

  “Could you tell whether he died in the hotel room?”

  The first hint of impatience. “That’s in my report, too.” He pulls out three enlarged photos of Johnny Garcia’s naked body lying on his stomach on the bed in the hotel room. I’ve been through this ritual before, too. I don’t enjoy it. He thumbtacks them to a bulletin board next to his desk. He moves his glasses from the top of his head down to his eyes and studies the pictures. He gestures with the pen toward a side view of the body. He points toward Garcia’s stomach. “You see this area here, Mr. Daley? There is discoloration. We call that lividity.” I listen to him explain that when a person dies, the heart stops pumping and gravity causes the blood to rush to the lowest point in the body. “The victim was found lying on his stomach,” he says. “The discoloration in that area indicates to me that he was lying on his stomach when he died.”

  I ask whether it is possible he may have been killed someplace else and moved into this bed.

  He gives me the not-in-this-lifetime look. “I suppose,” he says, “it is theoretically possible that he could have been killed somewhere else while lying on his stomach and then carefully moved to the defendant’s room and placed in the same position. You would lose a great deal of credibility if you make that argument to a jury. In addition, urine stains were found on the bed.” When you die, your muscles relax and there is often a discharge. “The stains confirm that the victim was lying on his stomach on the bed when he died.” He says they will do DNA tests to be sure that the urine stains came from Garcia. They will also ask for a DNA sample from Skipper.

  I ask him if he found any evidence of a struggle.

  “No. No bruises or contusions on his body. No bruises on his wrists or ankles from the handcuffs. Nothing under his fingernails evincing a fight.”

  This seems odd. Even if Johnny Garcia was unconscious, I would think he might have struggled or begun to convulse in his desperate attempts to find air. It’s hard to believe there wouldn’t have been some reflexive effort to free himself. I ask about food in his stomach.

  “A partially digested tuna sandwich and some potato chips. It looks like he had a late dinner.”

  “Any alcohol?”

  “Traces in the stomach and urinary tract.” He pretends to study his report. It’s all for show. He could recite every word verbatim. “A glass of wine late in the evening.”

  “Or perhaps a glass of champagne?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “We found traces of heroin in his bloodstream.” He pauses. “And traces of gamma hydroxy butyrate.”

  This is curious. GHB is a date-rape drug. It’s a clear liquid that knocks you out almost immediately. It can kill you if you take enough of it. “How much GHB?”

  “Enough to have rendered the victim unconscious.”

  “Or to kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Is it possible that the combination of heroin and GHB caused an overdose?”

  He’s adamant. “No, Mr. Daley. The victim died of asphyxiation.”

  We’ll need our own medical expert on this. We may try to argue that he OD’d. Of course, if Skipper gave him the GHB, and if an overdose is what killed him, Skipper could still be responsible. “Doctor,” I say, “your report indicated that the victim may have engaged in sexual activity before he died.”

  “He did. We found traces of semen on the bed and on his body. We’re going to do DNA tests on that, too.”

  I didn’t really expect Beckert to help us.

  A short time later, I’m in the second-floor office of Sandra Wilson, a meticulous African American woman who is recognized as the SFPD’s best field evidence technician. She turns her brown eyes toward me and forces a smile. She’s six months pregnant with her second child. A picture of her five-year-old son grins at me from the top of her computer. It must be hard on a pregnant woman with a small child to be working on a Saturday. She’s a trouper. She takes a drink of water. “My doctor won’t let me drink coffee,” she complains. “The best I can do is pretend.”

  I like her. She doesn’t play games. I assure her that I’ll get out of her hair as soon as I can. “Have you found anything that might cast some doubt on my client’s guilt?” I ask with a smile.

  “Of course,” she says. “The fact that he admits he was found in a hotel room with a man who was suffocated shouldn’t suggest that he did anything wrong. I’m sure it was all just a coincidence.” She gives me a sly grin. “Or, as Skipper likes to say, it was all just a big misunderstanding.”

  Tell that to Johnny Garcia.

  She opens a manila envelope and starts spreading crime-scene photos across the top of her desk. The same pictures that Beckert showed me of Johnny Garcia’s body handcuffed to the bedposts. Sheets and blankets strewn about the floor. Close-ups of the handcuffs. A handcuff key. A roll of duct tape on the nightstand. An overnight bag that I surmise belongs to Skipper. Two champagne flutes and an empty bottle. An ice bucket.

  I point toward the handcuff key. “Where did you find that?”

  “In the toilet.”

  That’s odd. “Did you find any fingerprints on it?”

  “Nothing identifiable. It’s too small. We found Skipper’s fingerprints on the duct tape, the handcuffs, the champagne bottle and the two glasses,” she adds. “And, of course, the telephone.”

  I remind myself that Skipper told me he called building security. “How about Garcia’s fingerprints?”

  “On the champagne bottle, one of the glasses, the doorknob and the phone.”

  Why would Garcia have touched the phone? “What about phone records?”

  “We’re still looking into it.”

  I leave Sandra Wilson and head toward the lockup in the new wing of the Hall. As I walk toward the intake desk, I see Natalie, who’s coming toward the elevator. She’s wearing sunglasses and she almost bumps into me in the crowded corridor.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  She stops but doesn’t take off her sunglasses. Her voice cracks as she says, “I needed to
talk to Prentice.” Her hands are shaking. “Is there any chance the judge will reconsider his decision on bail?”

  “The chances aren’t good.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  I ask if there is anything that I can do.

  There is a look of anguish on her face. “This is all terribly unfair,” she says, and heads to the elevator.

  When I arrive in the lockup, I find Skipper in the consultation room, talking with Turner about the campaign. Turner says it might be appropriate to run some ads claiming that Leslie Sherman lacks the experience to be the chief law enforcement officer of the State of California.

  I bring Skipper up-to-date on the evidence and autopsy findings. “How did Johnny Garcia’s fingerprints get on the champagne glass?” I ask him.

  He keeps his eyes on the drab green wall of the cramped consultation room. “I don’t know,” he says. “Whoever killed him must have pressed his fingers on the glass.”

  That’s a stretch. “And the phone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And how did GHB get into his bloodstream?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “Who ordered the champagne?”

  Turner says, “I did. It was part of the order to room service.”

  “Only one bottle?” I ask.

  “Yes.” He says the order also included wine, soft drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Except for the champagne, the food and drinks were removed by room service around twelve-thirty.

  “Why did they bring only two champagne glasses?”

  Turner holds up his hands. “They were supposed to bring more.”

  Seems decidedly odd. “And there were refreshments in Room 1504 and in 1502?”

  “Yes,” Turner says. “We needed two rooms because we wanted each side to have a place to meet separately from the larger group. There was a door in between.”

  Something doesn’t quite add up. “Help me here, Skipper,” I implore him. “They put the first team on this case. Rod Beckert is going to get it right. So is Sandra Wilson. Johnson and McBride are the best homicide team on the force. We’ll play whatever cards we have, but I don’t want to get sandbagged.”

  His handsome face rearranges itself into a confident smile. He stands and holds up the index finger on his right hand, lecture-style. “There was a meeting. It broke up around twelve-thirty. I was by myself in my room after that. I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up, there was a dead body in the bed. That’s it.”

  At least his story has remained consistent. I shift gears and ask about Natalie. “I saw her a few minutes ago in the hallway,” I say.

  The confident look disappears. “I wish there were something I could do to make this easier for her.”

  “She’s very strong,” Turner adds, “but she’s been through some very difficult times.”

  “Look,” Skipper says, “there’s something I think you should know. This information is highly confidential and must stay in this room.”

  I glance at Turner, who strokes his beard but doesn’t say anything. We both nod.

  “Natalie has been on medication since Ann’s divorce,” Skipper says. “The dosage had to be increased when Ann got in trouble at the nightclub last year. You’d never know it, but she’s been fighting depression for many years.”

  I glance at Turner, who nods almost imperceptibly. “We’ll do everything we can to help her get through this,” I say.

  “I would be very grateful,” Skipper replies.

  —————

  “There’s more going on between Natalie and Skipper than meets the eye,” I say to Rosie. We’re in her mother’s living room that evening. Sylvia and Grace are playing computer games. Rosie and I are sitting on the sofa.

  “Depression’s a serious problem,” Rosie says.

  “Yes, and she’s not in good shape now. In some respects, Skipper’s terribly callous toward her, yet he’s also very protective—that seems genuine. And she’s always the first to come to his defense.”

  “It’s a more complex relationship than their public personas would suggest,” Rosie says. “He’s less of an asshole than I thought he was.”

  I agree with her, though I point out his blanket denials about how Johnny Garcia’s body got onto his bed do sound pretty strained. “But you’re right,” I add. “Underneath that incessant politician mode there’s a guy with feelings I didn’t think he had. He genuinely cares about Natalie. That’s for real.”

  “And she about him,” Rosie says. “That’s pretty amazing when you consider his compulsive womanizing over the years. In her place I’d be depressed myself. She’s got to have known about it—after all, the whole world does—yet she’s kept up the dignified society matron front. I don’t think she’s ever lost her composure.”

  “Until now.” I’m thinking about the anguish on Natalie’s face when I encountered her in the Hall a few hours ago, and those shaking hands. “You know, it’s not the public disgrace—it’s Skipper’s plight itself that’s hit her so hard.”

  “I think you’re right,” Rosie says. “And it’s worse when you don’t have anyone you can share your feelings with. I suspect she was never good at that, and now—Jesus, what a burden to carry all by yourself. If only Ann…”

  Ann. It’s hard to see her mother accepting her as confidante—there’s too much past there. And Ann’s still a powder keg as far as I’m concerned—I doubt that Skipper’s talking to her is going to make any difference. “Where do you suppose she fits into this?” I ask.

  “That’s a tough one. She seems to run hot and cold. It’s clear she worships her father—at least on a professional level. She’s every bit as ambitious as he is. I can see some affection for her mother, but they don’t seem to be close. It’s a dysfunctional situation.”

  Families, families. “Were we ever as dysfunctional?” I ask.

  I think I glimpse a quizzical expression on her mother’s face.

  “Pretty close,” Rosie says, “but when issues came up, we laid them all out on the line. Maybe that was part of our problem. Sometimes, you have to learn to pick your spots. We never did.”

  Zingo. It occurs to me that whenever we’re working on a case together, we learn as much about ourselves as we do about our clients.

  “In Pacific Heights,” Rosie points out, “you aren’t allowed to have knock-down-drag-out fights like normal people do. Skipper seems to get it all out of his system by sleeping around and running political campaigns. I don’t think Natalie has any similar outlets.”

  “Which means that there’s a woman ready to explode behind the polite facade.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Rosie says. “She’s a tormented soul.”

  “Are you guys ready?” Pete asks.

  Rosie and I nod.

  It’s the next morning, Sunday. A shroud of fog is beginning to lift. We are standing at the corner of Fifteenth and Valencia in front of the cast-iron fence near the entrance to the Valencia Gardens housing projects, a series of faded pink three-story buildings with a dozen or so apartments in each. They were built back in the fifties, when urban renewal meant tearing down the old ghetto structures and housing the poor in new ones. Although the Valencia projects are not as notorious as those in Bay View or the back side of Potrero Hill, they’re a mean place, too. The politicians are talking about starting over yet again. Kevin Anderson’s father is trying to get permits to raze them and put up a mixed-use project with some low-income housing and some expensive lofts. He’s hired Turner Stanford to help him get the approvals from the city. We’ll see.

  A few kids are playing in the concrete courtyard. A family dressed in their Sunday best passes us on their way to church. There’s a bearded homeless man wearing an overcoat sitting next to his shopping cart on the corner. I slip him a couple of dollars and tell him to find something to eat. He thanks me and begins pushing his cart down the sidewalk toward Sixteenth.

  “He’ll just go buy some booze with that,” Pete says.
He isn’t being harsh. He’s being realistic. “Apartment 17B,” he says. “Let’s be careful. They don’t know we’re coming.”

  Apartment 17B is the address that appeared on Johnny Garcia’s driver’s license. The current residents may know something about him. There is also a chance that we’ll get our brains blown out when we knock on the door.

  We approach the second-floor apartment with caution. Pete motions us to stand back. If my guess is correct, there is a small-caliber gun in his pocket. He’s licensed to carry one. He stands to one side and knocks firmly on the door three times. No answer. He knocks again. Still no answer. He frowns. He knocks once more and we hear movement inside. Rosie and I step back. Pete inches forward. I hear the locks turn. The door opens about six inches, but a chain prevents it from opening further. We make out a heavyset Hispanic woman in the gap. “Si?” she asks hesitantly.

  Pete shows her his detective permit. “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” he says.

  The woman looks at the permit blankly. “Police?” she asks.

  Pete shakes his head. “No,” he assures her.

  When the woman begins to close the door, Rosie calls out to her in Spanish. She responds. They talk for a moment, and the woman unfastens the chain and opens the door. She motions us into the small living room. A beat-up sofa sits against one wall. There’s an eleven-inch TV on a folding chair and a table covered with crayon drawings. I can see a tiny kitchen with a sink full of dishes. We hear a TV in the bedroom tuned to a Spanish-language channel. There are photos of three small children on a table. A huge man with a dark complexion appears in the doorway leading to the bedroom. He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and he’s holding a baseball bat. The woman motions to him to remain calm. He glares at us but doesn’t say anything.

  Rosie shows the woman a picture of Johnny Garcia. She shakes her head. Then she shows the picture to the man. He shrugs but doesn’t respond. Pete is studying every move. From the woman’s body language, I sense that she doesn’t know the whereabouts of Johnny Garcia’s family.