Flesh and Blood (28 page)

A corner office he likes to say, it’s nothing more than a workstation with a computer, a coatrack, equipment piled on the floor and photographs crammed on the fabric-covered partition. I notice he’s changed his clothes, in khaki cargo pants, a black polo shirt, a black flak jacket. He has on the same black leather high-tops.

“How’s it going?” Benton asks.

“He’s not budging from his story and the wound on his head isn’t pretty.” Marino looks keyed up and sure of himself.

“Did he have it treated?” I want to know.

“Nope.”

“He continues to say Jamal Nari hit him with a trophy?” I look at a large brown paper evidence bag on Marino’s cluttered desk, files, pink message slips and dirty coffee cups, the long cord to the phone ridiculously snarled.

Cop humor. Since Marino has worked here he’s replaced his phone cord every month. Overnight it ends up like this. It probably won’t happen anymore. I’ve always suspected Machado.

“The kid’s a damn good liar,” Marino says. “I’ve lifted a few prints and swabbed for DNA. There’s definitely blood on the trophy.”

He reaches for the bag sealed with red evidence tape and snatches two pairs of examination gloves out of a box, handing a pair to me. We put them on. Opening the blade of a folding knife he slits the tape. Heavy paper rattles as he digs inside and pulls out a large silver cup with a rosewood base, what Leo Gantz was presented when he won the state tennis championship last summer. The trophy is spattered and smeared with rusty dried blood. There are smudges of fingerprint powder all over it.

I open my portable kit, this one small and silver aluminum, a modified EMT medical box that includes essential forensic necessities. It’s not often I need first-aid supplies but typically when I examine pattern injuries on the living I find their wounds could use a little extra cleaning up and of course I have to replace their dressings. I give Benton an alcohol wipe and he gets the implication.

“Excuse me.” He tears it open, turns away from us and wipes the inside of his nose.

“What the hell?” Marino stares and Benton ignores him. “Oh I get it. I guess I know where you’ve been. Me? I root up there with a wet paper towel before I leave the morgue, as far up as I can reach without causing brain damage. Don’t use Vicks. It makes it worse.”

I find a tape measure inside the kit and estimate the weight as I hold the trophy by its stem, rosewood embedded with a gold medallion, what looks like a Roman coin. The trophy is heavy, approximately eight pounds, I estimate, and twenty inches high. If enough force were used it could inflict profound damage but obviously it didn’t or Leo Gantz wouldn’t be sitting inside an interview room. I notice that one of the silver handles is bent and an area of the cup is dented and scuffed.

“Before I take a look can you tell me exactly what he claims happened?” I find my camera and set the trophy on top of the paper bag.

“That Nari took the trophy as if he intended to give it to his wife and then suddenly whacked Leo in the head.” Marino watches me take photographs. “He says he didn’t see it coming, had his back to him, heading to the door.”

“He hit him like this?” I pick up the trophy by the stem and turn it upside down, wielding it like a club. “And struck him with the base of it?”

“That’s his story.”

I look at the bent handle, at the smudges and smears made by someone with bloody hands.

“I’m going to guess the trophy was already damaged.” I point out the handle, which is bent the way it would be if someone smashed it against the floor. “In other words the dent, the bent handle are probably unrelated to the alleged attack.”

There’s also blood on one edge of the wooden base, crusty and thick and beginning to flake. I turn the trophy this way and that, looking at it carefully.

“How many times does he say he was hit?” I take more photographs.

“Once,” Marino says.

“Not possible,” I reply. “Assuming he was struck with the base there wouldn’t be this much blood on the edge of it unless he was already bleeding. Notice the teardrop-shaped droplets pointing in different directions. The pattern is haphazard and nonsensical. These would appear to be consistent with a medium-velocity impact spatter caused by the base of the trophy striking blood, in other words, striking someone already bleeding. But the problem is it makes no sense that the direction of travel is inconsistent and erratic.”

“Because he put the blood drops on there himself,” Marino sums it up.

“He could have flicked it.” I flick my fingers as if they’re bloody, flicking from different angles. “That could account for the droplets and the chaotic pattern. What about castoff?”

“As you know there was no blood inside Nari’s apartment, not even any that was cleaned up. Just something like bleach on the guitars, the two cases on the bed, the other stuff. They lit up when we sprayed them but not the same way blood does,” Marino says.

“What about at Leo’s house?” Benton asks.

“I’ve got photographs,” Marino says. “How about you talk to him alone for a few minutes. Then we’ll bring the Doc in and maybe she can get something out of him. I quit.”

Benton tucks the used alcohol wipe back into its packet and drops it into the trash.

“My being the good cop didn’t work,” Marino adds.

Benton doesn’t say he’s not surprised because he isn’t.

“He’s the same arrogant prick we saw this morning,” Marino says to me. “When I tried to be his friend he went out of his way to piss me off.”

“What does he think is happening next?” Benton asks.

“You’re looking at him,” Marino says to me. “I hope he doesn’t recognize you from this morning.”

“I never got out of your car.”

“So maybe you wander in first,” he says to Benton. “Use your touchy-feely magic on him and get him to start telling the truth so he doesn’t spend the night in jail.”

“He wants to spend the night in jail. He wants to be out of circulation.”

“He’s probably scared of his father.”

“That’s not why he wants to stay locked up,” Benton says.

“Yeah well maybe if he’s lucky they’ll give him a vacation at McLean for a while.”

The Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital is a few miles from here in Belmont, and Benton used to be a consultant there. It would be a good place for Leo, truth be told.

“That’s what he wants,” Benton says. “He wants exactly what he’s getting.”

“Then how come he keeps asking when he can leave?”

“Asking you,” Benton says pointedly. “He wants to be locked up and he wants nothing to do with you.”

“And you’re basing this on what?” Marino is getting offended.

“Did you Mirandize him?”

“Now you’re thinking I’m stupid.” Anger touches Marino’s face.

“Obviously he waived his right to an attorney. Obviously he’s fully aware and understands the legal process and the repercussions of his confession.”

“According to him he’s not trying to hide anything so he doesn’t need an attorney. Plus I told him three times he could wait for one or his parents.”

“This kid is very bright, very logical but his prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed yet,” Benton says.

“Give me a fucking break,” Marino says.

“He doesn’t like the police but he’s not afraid of them. He’s afraid of something else.”

“Like what?”

“The police won’t hurt or kill him. Something else might.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” Marino says.

“Leo is impulsive,” Benton says. “He’s driven by fight or flight, by a need to survive and conquer. He’s also driven by the short-term gratification of notoriety, of being a hero and also feelings of guilt. At his young age he’s three times more likely to confess to crimes he didn’t commit than an adult would be.”

“I’m not interested in statistics right now.” Marino doesn’t try to be diplomatic or anything but annoyed.

“Give me fifteen minutes.” Benton walks off.

T
HE BEDROOM IS SMALL
with French wallpaper in a blue floral pattern that is stained brownish in places near the molding. The pumpkin pine floor is badly scuffed. Against one wall are bunk beds. Supposedly Leo’s was the top one until he relocated to the basement and began sleeping on a couch.

Marino has given me his desk chair while he leans close clicking the mouse, showing me what he found when he went through the Gantzes’ house. What grabs my attention instantly are tennis awards that fill three walls, trophies of all size and description, crystal, silver, bronze, and large medals on bright ribbons. Everything is damaged. Male figures are serving and hitting strokes with rackets that have been removed or broken off. There are blank gluey areas where engraved plates used to be. Platters and bowls are scratched as if someone took a screwdriver to them.

I zoom in on the wooden floor. The scuffing isn’t due to normal wear and tear. There are deep scrapes and gouges, and I ask Marino about the bent handle on the tennis trophy inside the brown paper bag on the desk. It appears that someone deliberately vandalized Leo’s awards and I wonder if this was discussed when Marino was at the house.

“He says he did it,” he replies.

“He ruined his own awards?”

“That’s what he said. He’d get angry and couldn’t control himself and he’d break something.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would be the point in vandalizing something that sets him apart in an extraordinary way?”

“To give the impression that they don’t mean anything to him. To act like a big guy because he’s a wimp, five-six or seven, maybe one-thirty soaking wet.”

I ask if Leo’s family was home when Marino was there.

“Watching TV in the living room,” he says.

“What was their demeanor?”

“Scared but uncooperative.”

“And the mother?” I ask.

“Sitting in the kitchen crying. But totally defensive about the father who’s a worthless tool, a mean bastard.”

“Did you find a firearm or anything firearms related?” I ask.

“The father’s got an old .38 special. Unregistered in Massachusetts and I could get him for that too.”

“Loaded?”

“No. I didn’t find any ammo.”

“Is Leo suggesting he might have used his father’s .38 to kill Jamal Nari?”

“He’s a clever piece of shit. He just says it was a gun he dropped in the sewer. He says he doesn’t know what kind it was.”

“Where does he say he got it?”

“He bought it on the street.”

“He says it was a handgun?”

“Exactly. The possibility of a rifle hasn’t come up. I don’t think he has any idea that’s what was used.”

“Did you ask him what type of ammunition was loaded in this handgun?”

“He says he didn’t know. That it was loaded when he bought it and the person who sold it to him for sixty bucks said it was
badass
ammo that would explode someone’s head like a watermelon. By the way this person is someone Leo doesn’t know and can’t describe.”

“I think we get the picture,” I reply. “One lie after another.”

Marino clicks the mouse and another photograph opens up on the display. “There was no visible blood so I used Bluestar in the bathrooms, figuring Leo must have cleaned himself up. This bathroom here is the one near the bedroom with the bunk beds.” He clicks back several photographs to remind me, then returns to the bathroom.

The chemical reagent causes nonvisible blood to luminesce, and areas of the sink glow a pale sapphire blue, on the handles, around the drain. Splotches and streaks on the tile floor are a ghostly blue like spirit light.

“Someone cleaned up,” I agree, “but the question is who and when? And are we to assume he conveniently carried the tennis trophy all the way back. On his bicycle?”

“That’s his story.” Marino displays another photograph and as he moves I smell cedar and lemon, a cologne called Guilty that Lucy bought for him because she liked the irony of the name. He must have splashed it on when he changed his clothes. “He claims he had the trophy in his backpack,” he says.

“Did you find this backpack he mentioned?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He shows me photographs before and after he sprayed the inside of it, checking for transferred blood that isn’t visible without a special light or chemical.

“Nothing luminesced,” I observe. “So it’s not likely he put a bloody tennis trophy inside.”

“Nope.”

More photographs, these of laundry machines in the basement, a front-load washer, then several of Marino’s gloved hand holding a white tank top. It’s heavily stained with blood that’s a dark rusty brown around the edges and a brighter red in the middle. In other photographs he’s holding a pair of blue shorts and a large bath towel, also bloody.

“The blood looks damp,” I comment.

“It would have dried more slowly from being inside the washing machine with the lid closed. But yeah this didn’t happen early this morning like he claims.”

“And he also claims he was wearing a tank top and shorts when he allegedly was attacked with a tennis trophy?”

“Remember when we saw him at around quarter of noon?” Marino answers with a question.

“He had on a sweatshirt and long pants.”

“Because it wasn’t that warm,” Marino says.

“And his story is that he was in shorts and a tank top when he showed up at the apartment with the tennis trophy at around eight this morning. No matter how much you emphasized how illogical this is he wouldn’t budge.”

“It’s ridiculous, right?”

“The problem is false confessions more often than not lead to wrongful convictions. Leo Gantz may have a teenaged brain, but he’s anything but stupid. Why is he doing this?”

“Maybe I don’t care why,” Marino says.

“Did you photograph the entire house?”

“Sure.”

“Continue to take me through it please.”

He shows me the kitchen, the living room, a den, the parents’ bedroom, dark upholstered furniture that looks cheap and tired. A lot of clutter, magazines, newspapers, and dishes are piled in the sink. I ask him to return me to the bathroom where the reagent reacted positively, presuming blood.