Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery (26 page)

“Did you give those emails to Agent Lucas when you first met with him Monday morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nothing further, Your Honor.” I sat down.

“Redirect?” asked the judge.

“No, sir,” said Swann. He’d had enough of Harry Robson.

Swann called the county medical examiner, Dr. Bert Hawkins. He established that Dr. Hawkins in the course of his duties had performed an autopsy on Nate Bannister and that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. A thirty-eight-caliber revolver had been used to dispatch Bannister. The victim’s blood alcohol at the time of his death was 0.09, just a bit above Florida’s legal presumption that one was too impaired to drive. The stomach contents contained a residue of red wine and pepperoni pizza.

Dr. Hawkin’s opinion was that Bannister had died at about ten o’clock on the evening of March 31, about ten hours before the maid found his body. I had no questions, but told the court that I reserved the right to recall Dr. Hawkins in my case.

Judge Thomas called for a lunch break, and we stood as the jury filed out of the courtroom. Abby and I sat for a few minutes to let the jury get clear of the area. I didn’t want to get caught on an elevator with one of them.

Bill Lester was waiting in the corridor to take his wife to a restaurant. I begged off going with them. I needed a little time by myself to let some of the tension of the courtroom bleed off. I would have enjoyed a walk, but the heat was too much. Florida’s famous humidity had enveloped the Suncoast, and the people who lived here spent their outdoor time scurrying from one air-conditioned building to another.

I retrieved my car from the parking garage and drove to the end of Main Street where the Marina Jack restaurant overlooked the bay. I asked for a window seat where I could watch the boats plying the Intracoastal Waterway, eat a leisurely lunch of grilled grouper, and relax.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The afternoon was consumed by the mundane requirements of the law. The prosecutor’s job is to build his case, one block at a time. He has to put each little piece of evidence in, paint a picture that the jury can understand, and lay out all the legal elements of the crime. A lot of the presentation was tedious. I didn’t object to any of it.

Late in the afternoon, Swann put one of the forensic techs on the stand. He got his name and occupation and his qualifications as a computer expert who had worked for the City of Sarasota crime lab for a decade. “Did you find a computer at the residence of the victim, Mr. Bannister?” Swann asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you examine the computer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you found some emails from the defendant, Mrs. Lester?”

The question was leading and objectionable, but I let it go. No sense in wasting a bullet on something that Swann could get answered easily enough by just rearranging the question.

“Yes, sir,” the witness said.

“What were they about?”

“They were for the most part about sex between Mrs. Lester and the victim.”

“How do you know they came from the defendant?”

“She signed her name to them.”

“How do you mean she signed her name?”

“Her name was printed at the bottom of each email.”

“Anybody could have typed in her name, couldn’t they?”

“Yes, sir. I suppose so.”

I sat up a little straighter on this one. Swann was making a preemptive strike. By bringing this out in the state’s case, it would appear to the jury that he was trying to be straightforward. I could make no points on cross-examination by belaboring the issue.

“Did you have occasion to examine the computer that belonged to the defendant, Mrs. Lester?” Swann asked.

“I did.”

“Was there any indication that the emails in question were sent from her computer?”

“No. In my opinion, they were not sent from her computer.”

“Did that fact cause you to reexamine the computer found in the victim’s home?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What were you looking for?”

“I wanted to see if I could figure out where the emails originated.”

“Were you able to do that?”

“No, sir. I lost the trail in a server somewhere in Europe.”

“What does that mean?” Swann asked.

“I couldn’t tell where the emails originated, but they’d bounced about the ether from one server to another. Some of the servers are encrypted, and if I couldn’t beat the encryption, the trail stopped. I found one I couldn’t beat, so I couldn’t get past it.”

“The emails could have come from anywhere?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From a computer in a library or a computer café?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So the fact that the emails did not originate in the computer found in the defendant’s house would be of little significance?”

“That’s correct.”

“The defendant could have sent the emails from anywhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

Swann had the witness testify that the printed copies of the emails were identical to the ones found on Bannister’s computer. The judge accepted them into evidence and Swann turned to me. “Your witness.”

I walked to the podium and stood there for a minute pretending to study my notes. I looked up at the witness and said, “Sir, you testified that these emails could have come from anywhere, such as a library or a computer café, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then doesn’t it follow that they could have been sent by anyone?”

“Yes, sir. They could have.”

“Then you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they came from somebody other than Mrs. Lester.”

“Objection,” Swann said. “Lack of predicate. There’s no evidence that anybody else sent those emails.”

“There’s no evidence that my client sent them either, Your Honor.”

“Her name’s on them,” Swann said.

“Meaningless drivel,” I said. “Anybody could have typed the name in and sent the email from a public computer.”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “The witness may answer the question.”

“No, sir, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else had sent them.”

“Wouldn’t someone have to be a pretty sophisticated computer user to send an email through the complex web of servers that whoever sent these emails used?”

“I would think so.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re a computer expert. In your opinion, would someone who had enough basic knowledge of computers to send routine emails and that sort of thing, be able to hide the source of those emails?”

“Objection,” Swann said. “Calling for a conclusion.”

“Mr. Swann qualified him as an expert,” I said.

“Overruled,” the judge said. “You may answer the question, sir.”

The witness squirmed a bit in his chair and then said, “I think it would take a lot more knowledge than the average computer user possesses to send emails the way these were sent.”

“Thank you. No further questions.” I sat down.

The computer expert that Gus Grantham provided me had arrived at the same conclusion as this witness. I’d planned to call Gus’s expert in my case to show that the emails had not been sent from Abby’s computer. Swann beat me to it, and had made some points with that witness. He’d given the jury an explanation as to how the emails may have been sent by Abby, even though they hadn’t come from her computer. I had pointed out the obvious, that anybody could have sent the emails, but I would have made a bigger impact by putting up the same evidence in my case. Maybe old Swann was smarter than I was giving him credit for.

* * *

The last witness of the day was another crime scene technician. Swann qualified him as a fingerprint expert and asked, “Did you find fingerprints belonging to the defendant, Abigail Lester, in the victim’s condo?”

“I did.”

“Where were the fingerprints located?”

“They were on a wine glass.”

“And where did you find the wine glass?”

“On one of the bedside tables in the master bedroom.”

“Did you positively identify those prints as belonging to the defendant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you find other fingerprints in the condo that belonged to the defendant Abby Lester?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you find that a little odd?”

“No, sir. It’s very difficult to recover fingerprints from fabric, so she may have used the sofa or one of the chairs, touched the bed sheets, something like that, and the prints wouldn’t show up.”

“Did you find prints belonging to anyone else?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you identify them?”

“All but three.”

“And did you give all those identities to the FDLE investigator in charge of the case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were any of the other prints found in the bedroom?”

“Yes. There was one other set of prints, other than Mr. Bannister’s and Mrs. Lester’s, in the bedroom. We couldn’t identify them. They were not in any database.”

“No further questions,” Swann said.

I had anticipated this testimony. I had taken the witness’s deposition in early May. Swann and I had been in the room asking questions, and everything had been taken down by a court reporter. I stood. “Can you describe the wine glass?”

The witness looked puzzled. “It had a long stem and a round bowl, I guess you’d call it.”

“Was there any engraving on the glass? Initials, maybe.”

“No, sir.”

“Did you check Mr. Bannister’s cabinets to see if the glass with my client’s fingerprints had come from there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The glass with the fingerprints didn’t match any of the others in the cabinets, did it?”

“No, sir.”

“In fact, Mr. Bannister had a set of wine glasses engraved with his initials.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was there wine in the glass with Abby Lester’s prints when you found it?”

“Just a residue of red wine. A drop or two maybe.”

“Did you find any wine bottles in the condo?”

“Just one.”

“Any prints on the bottle?”

“Just Mr. Bannister’s.”

“Any of Mr. Bannister’s wine glasses in the dishwasher?”

“Two. But they had been washed and there were no prints on them.”

“Were there any glasses similar to the one found on the bedside table in the dishwasher?”

“No.”

“Did you see any other wine glasses in the condo? Other than those in the cabinet and the dishwasher and the one on the bedside table?”

“No, sir.”

“Were there any other fingerprints on the wine glass found on the bedside table? Other than my client’s.”

“No, sir.”

“But you did find a smudge on the stem of the glass?”

“I did.”

“Did that appear to be a fingerprint?”

“Perhaps a partial. There was not enough of a print to identify.”

“Could that smudge on the stem have been a partial print left by somebody other than my client?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“That’s probably not true, but could the smudge on the stem have been a fingerprint of someone other than my client?”

“That’s possible, I guess.”

“I think you testified that you didn’t find any other prints belonging to Abby Lester, other than those on the wine glass in the bedroom.”

“Yes.”

“This probably sounds like a stupid question, but please bear with me. You said that Mrs. Lester could have left her prints on fabrics in the condo and you wouldn’t have been able to find them. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The lack of prints could also mean that Mrs. Lester was never in that condo, couldn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Except that the wine glass was there.”

“But somebody else could have put that wine glass in the bedroom, couldn’t they?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“Did you find any fingerprints in Mr. Bannister’s condo that were identified as belonging to Robert Shorter?”

He consulted his notes. “Yes, sir. Mr. Shorter’s fingerprints were found in the living room.”

“Thank you. I have no further questions.”

I couldn’t figure out how that wine glass with Abby’s fingerprints got into the master bedroom, unless somebody else carried it there. The location of the wine glass on the bedside table gave more credence to the prosecutor’s theory about Abby and Lester being lovers than if the prints had been found randomly in the condo. My cross-examination had been meant only to throw a little mud on the wall. Who knows what might stick in the mind of a juror?

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Judge Thomas recessed for the evening after the last witness. I spent a few minutes with the Lesters, talking about the day and trying to prepare them for the day to come. I warned Abby not to react to whatever she heard from the witness stand, no facial expressions, no comments, no body language. I told her she’d hear some lies, and she had to rely on me to correct them. I excused myself, telling them I had work to do, and that I’d see them in the morning.

* * *

Some years before, Longboat Key had become my refuge from a world of which I had despaired. My life had been a series of ever tightening circles, a pitiless gyre whisking me inexorably toward that final drain. My wife, the only woman I’d ever loved before I met J.D., had divorced me, tired of my inattention, my drinking, the eternal meetings that consumed my evenings, and so much else that a self-centered lawyer chasing the holy grail of success got himself involved in. Over the years, the practice of law had changed almost imperceptibly from a respected profession into a business. Lawyers spent more time chasing the dollar than they did justice. Legislatures whittled away at judicial discretion and froze judges’ salaries so that inflation meant that they earned less each year they stayed on the bench. The result was that many qualified lawyers refused to apply for judgeships, leaving the field open to those with little experience, and too often, even less intellect.

The sun was hanging low in the sky as I drove onto the key at the end of the day, another day in a courtroom, the kind of day I thought I’d never see again after I had ensconced myself in this lovely slice of paradise. But here I was, back in the pit with a friend’s life hanging in the balance. I had an abiding fear that I may have lost a step in the years away from the daily grind of the trial practice, but during the months since I had agreed to represent Abby, I had boned up on the procedures and substantive law, and the precedents contained in the cases that had been decided by the appellate courts since I’d given up the practice.