Proof Positive (2006) (29 page)

I'm dead serious, Mike. Art is a homicidal maniac and a drug dealer, but he trusts my dad. If he murdered Ballard he wouldn't admit it, but I don't think he'd be as adamant about his innocence as Frank says he is.

Mike softened. He could see that Amanda was upset and he regretted being sarcastic.

I just don't buy your theory. Bernie is one of the best criminalists we have and I' ve never heard a whisper of suspicion about his results.

You were at that house the other night when they found the gun that was used to shoot Vincent Ballard. Dad told me that the ballistics test is positive.

We both know that Martin Breach planted the gun, Mike said.

What if he didn' t? What if Corrales and Castro murdered Ballard with that gun?

Have you talked to Hannah Graves about this yet?

I can' t, Amanda said. Doug told me she's really got it in for Jacob, and you know how she is. Both Doug Weaver and I humiliated her in trials recently. She's not going to listen to anything I' ve got to say.

You could talk to Carlos Guzman in confidence, Amanda added. Ask him if he's ever had any concerns about Cashman's results.

Not based on what you' ve given me. Planting that kind of doubt about Bernie could destroy his career.

Think of the consequences if I'm right. There's more at stake here than Cashman's career. If Raymond Hayes was innocent, Cashman murdered him. Do you want Jacob Cohen and Art Prochaska on death row for something they didn't do?

Jesus, Amanda, Cashman has testified in hundreds of cases. Every one of them would have to be reviewed if he was found to have falsified the results in even one case.

They should be reviewed if he's faked results in even one case. Look, Mike, I want to be wrong as much as I want to be right, but I can't stand by and do nothing.

Mike took a deep breath and exhaled. I don't want you to think that I'm not taking what you' ve told me seriously.

I know I'm asking a lot. Will you think about what I' ve said?

Mike was in turmoil. He wanted to help Amanda, but she was asking him to try to dig up dirt on a criminalist who was respected by everyone in the state. Still, Amanda was scrupulously honest, and she would never use him to gain an acquittal for a client.

Okay, Mike answered reluctantly, I'll go to Guzman and ask him if he's ever had any problem with Bernie. But I know what he's going to say.

Amanda smiled with relief. You' re a good guy, Mike. You mean a lot to me.

Mike's heart pounded and it took all of his self-control to keep his composure.

You know how important you are to me, Amanda.

Yes, I do. Amanda looked down. I don't know how you put up with me. I' ve been a real shit to you at times.

Mike took a deep breath, then plunged in headfirst. I put up with you because I love you.

The words hung in the air between them. No one moved for what seemed an eternity to Mike. Then Amanda put her wineglass on the table and stood up.

I don't want you to go home tonight.

Mike wasn't certain he'd heard Amanda correctly.

Will you stay the night? she asked.

Mike didn't answer right away. When he did, he sounded frightened but determined.

Amanda, I want to make love to you more than anything on this Earth, but you really hurt me before. I can't go through that again. If you go to bed with me it's got to be because you love me as much as I love you.

You know when I broke up with you it wasn't you. I was really messed up from what happened with the Surgeon. And it's taken a long time for me to get over that and to realize how much you mean to me. I do love you, Mike. I wouldn't have asked you to stay if I didn't love you. Now, are we going to get into a deep philosophical discussion or are you going to take me to bed?

Mike broke into a grin. Several very witty answers to that question occurred to him but he had enough sense not to use any of them. Instead, he stood up and took Amanda in his arms.

*

WHEN STEVE HOOPER WALKED INTO BERNARD CASHMAN's OFFICE, the criminalist was working on a report and whistling a happy tune.

Got a minute, Bernie? the detective asked.

Cashman looked up and smiled. For you, any time.

The detective grabbed the chair from the desk next to Cashman's and settled his bulk in it. It had belonged to Mary Clark. If Hooper realized whose chair he was sitting in, he did not show it.

What's up? Cashman asked.

I'm working the murder of that lawyer, Doug Weaver.

I' ve been expecting someone to contact me, Cashman said, faking a sad smile.

Did you know him well?

I' ve testified in a few of his cases. He was Raymond Hayes's attorney, remember?

Yeah, I saw him at the execution. He seemed decent.

That was my impression.

I understand he called you the night he was killed.

Not exactly, answered Cashman, who had rehearsed his answers to the questions he was certain he would be asked. An operator called me. It was the middle of the night.

I' ve talked to her.

Then you know that I never spoke to Weaver. I only talked to the operator. She said that Weaver wanted to speak to me about the hammer in the Hayes case. I'd been in a deep sleep and I was exhausted so I didn't take the call. I thought he'd ring back in the morning.

Do you have any idea why he'd want to talk to you about the hammer?

I haven't a clue, but something weird has been going on with it. You know that Mary Clark took the hammer from the evidence locker and hid it in her car? And then a thief stole the hammer along with some other stuff from Paul Baylor's lab.

I know all about that. Hannah had me look into it.

What have you come up with?

Not a thing. It could be a coincidence. Still, Clark taking the hammer and hiding it, then it's stolen and Weaver calls you about the hammer right before he's murdered. It makes you think.

I agree completely, Cashman said. I' ve given the matter a lot of thought, but I haven't come up with anything useful. You don't think this business with the hammer and Weaver's death is going to help Cohen's case, do you?

No way. Cohen is a dead man.

Good. I was worried.

Cashman paused and forced himself to appear solemn and thoughtful like a man carrying a heavy burden. He looked directly at Hooper and hunched forward while folding his hands in his lap.

Steve, do you think it would have made a difference if I'd taken Weaver's call?

No, I don' t.

Cashman shook his head sadly. Sometimes I wonder if I could have prevented Weaver's death if I'd talked to him.

That's bullshit, Bernie. It was the middle of the night. I wouldn't have taken the call. And what would you have done, anyway? Even if you heard someone breaking in while you were on the phone with Weaver, he lived miles away.

No, you' re right, but I just have this feeling that I could have made a difference. I know it isn't logical.

Don't beat yourself up about it.

Cashman sighed. I'll try not to, but

No ' buts.' Put this behind you.

Cashman nodded, as if he was going to take Hooper's advice very seriously. The detective pulled a cassette player out of his pocket and laid it on Cashman's desk.

What's that? the criminalist asked.

This is a voice-mail message that Weaver left for Amanda Jaffe on the evening he was killed. Tell me what you think.

Cashman listened intently to see if anything on the tape gave him away. He was greatly relieved when the tape ended.

I don't know what to say. I can't make heads or tails out of the dream he had. He does mention me. I assume he was going to suggest that he and Jaffe talk to me about whatever he wanted to discuss when he tried to get through to me. Other than that

The reference to snow doesn't mean anything to you?

No. What do you make of this, Steve? Do you have any idea why Weaver called me and Jaffe?

Not yet.

What does Amanda think?

If she's got a theory she hasn't shared it with me. Hooper stood up. I' ve taken enough of your time. If anything occurs to you, give me a call, okay?

Of course. I have a personal interest in this case. Will you keep me in the loop?

Definitely.

As soon as Hooper left, Cashman allowed himself a self-congratulatory smile. He believed that he had passed this latest test in the investigation with flying colors. He was still smiling when Carlos Guzman and Paul Baylor walked by his office in the direction of the evidence locker. It was the second time in the past few days that Baylor had been nosing around. During a casual conversation with the lab director, Bernie had found out that Baylor had looked at Jacob Cohen's attempted rape case. Cashman had been tense for a day or two, but nothing seemed to have come of Baylor's inquiry. Now Baylor was back, and Cashman was beginning to regret that he had not taken care of the forensic expert permanently when he had the chance.

Cashman paused to marvel at the casual way he thought about taking a life. A few weeks ago, the mere thought had made him physically ill, but he'd grown used to the idea and he had to admit he did feel more powerful since he'd freed himself from the natural repulsion most people experienced when they thought about killing a fellow human being. Of course, Cashman did not consider the killing of Doug Weaver or Mary Clark to be an expression of a depraved or criminal desire. He had killed the lawyer and the forensic expert for good reasons. That was what made him different from monsters like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.

There was no question that he had changed since the unfortunate incidents with Mary Clark and Doug Weaver. Killing Clark and Weaver had made him feel so self-confident. He believed that he could do anything and handle any situation. Cashman could see how he had evolved from an insecure boy filled with self-doubt. Now, he thought of himself as a superior man. What would his fellow employees at the lab say if they knew his secret?

Guzman and Baylor disappeared from view and Cashman sighed. He was being silly. There was no need to worry about Paul Baylor. Baylor couldn't hurt him. No one could hurt him.

Chapter
42.

AMANDA JAFFE STARED AT THE PAPERWORK THAT COVERED THE table in the conference room. Spread out before her were police reports, lab reports, autopsy reports, and the reports from Kate Ross and Paul Baylor. She had read them and reread them in the hope that a word or a phrase would ignite an idea she could use to save Jacob Cohen from death row, but there was nothing useful. Amanda took a sip of her latte and rested her bleary eyes for a moment. As soon as they were closed, she thought about Mike Greene.

A week had passed since Amanda had slept with Mike, and it had been one of the best weeks of her life. They had been together almost every night, and Amanda had to admit that making love had never been more satisfying. With Toby, sex had often been an athletic event. There were times when Amanda thought Toby expected her to raise a placard with a point total after each encounter. Sex with Mike was different and thoroughly enjoyable. They had both been nervous the first time, but there had been no clumsy groping and no anxious stops and starts once they were in bed together. When they were both exhausted, Amanda had fallen asleep contented, and she had experienced that feeling of contentment each time they made love. It had been difficult to concentrate at work, because Amanda found her thoughts filled with images of sex, and that was not good. She needed to focus on the Cohen case, which was not going nearly as well as her personal life.

Mike had managed to talk to Carlos Guzman about Cashman, and the lab director had told him that the forensic expert's competence and honesty had never been questioned. Mike had even asked around his office and had not come up with a single complaint about the criminalist. To the contrary, his fellow DAs felt lucky when Cashman worked on their cases.

Neither Kate Ross nor Paul Baylor had made any progress in proving that Bernie had framed Jacob, and Amanda had no other strategy for gaining an acquittal. Once they were in the penalty phase, she knew that the odds of saving Jacob's life were not good.

Art Prochaska's chances were also grim, and the threat of a death sentence was even more immediate, since Prochaska was scheduled to go to trial in a week.

A knock on the door brought Amanda out of her reverie. Kate sat down across from her. In her hand was a sheaf of papers, and on her face was a big smile.

I' ve got the fucker, the investigator proclaimed as she handed the papers to her boss.

As Amanda shuffled through the papers, her grim expression gave way to a grin.

You are amazing, Amanda said when she was finished. How did you think of this?

I was reading through the transcript of the prelim in Prochaska and it dawned on me that no one ever questions the academic credentials of a witness. A guy says he was summa at Harvard and everyone just nods. But we think Cashman is a liar, and it occurred to me that if he lied about something big, like Hayes's fingerprint, he might have lied about his academic achievements, so I did a little digging into his academic history.

Aren't there privacy issues? How did you get this stuff?

Kate had graduated from Caltech with a degree in computer science and was an expert hacker. She shook her head.

You don't want to know, and don't even think of trying to get what I just handed you into evidence in a court of law. However, since you are a genius, you would probably have thought about checking Cashman's credentials yourself. Then you would probably tell your father about your brilliant idea and suggest that he ask some nice judge for a subpoena to secure copies of Cashman's academic record to use at Art Prochaska's trial.

Right you are, Amanda said as she handed the papers back to Kate. And I would have done all this without ever seeing these papers that you never gave me.

Or telling Frank where the idea really came from, Kate answered. He's old school and I think he thinks that there's not much difference between computer hacking and armed robbery.

Chapter
43.

CARLOS GUZMAN HAD ESCORTED PAUL BAYLOR TO THE EVIDENCE room, waited while he took the pubic hairs from Jacob Cohen's attempted-rape file, then led him to a lab with a microscope and left him alone. Twenty minutes later, Baylor massaged his eyelids for a moment before fixing another hair to a slide and placing it under the lens. A triumphant smile spread across his face. He knew the moment he saw the fifth hair from Jacob's file that it was different from the others. He had the bastard.

Then the smile faded. Paul could prove that at least one of the pubic hairs in Jacob's file was different from the others, but he was a long way from proving that it was Bernard Cashman who had taken the hairs from the file. And what about the evidence in Art Prochaska's case?

Baylor sighed, his triumph of a moment ago forgotten. He had looked at the readouts of the neutron activation analysis until he was bleary-eyed, and his conclusion was always the same: the sample from the bullet that had killed Vincent Ballard was consistent with the sample taken from the bullet found in Prochaska's closet. And then there was that damn thumbprint. How could ?

Baylor froze as he remembered a story he'd heard a few years ago at a convention for forensic scientists. He'd been at the bar in his hotel with a group of criminalists from back East, and one of them had told the story. They'd all laughed at how dumb some people could be. What was the name of the criminalist who had gone to prison Harvey, Hasty? He couldn't remember, but he did remember that Harvey, or Hasty, had been caught in the most bizarre way.

The subject of the story wanted to go to work for the CIA. The CIA interviewer had pointed out that the criminalist had sworn to obey the law while working for his state law enforcement agency, but CIA operatives were sometimes asked to break the law of the country in which they were working. The interviewer wanted to know if that would be a problem. The criminalist, thinking that it would help him get the job, bragged that breaking the law would be no problem for him. He then told the interviewer how he had faked fingerprints in a case to ensure the conviction of a defendant. The CIA had turned the information over to the FBI, and the injustice was eventually corrected. But it wasn't this aspect of the case that excited Baylor. It was the method the criminalist had used to fake the print that had Baylor's heart pounding.

It took all of Baylor's self-control to keep him from racing back to his lab to reexamine the fingerprint card, but he calmed down long enough to examine the rest of the hairs in Jacob's file and to dust the file to see if he could find Cashman's prints on it. When he finished his work, Paul thanked Carlos Guzman and drove back to his lab.

As soon as he was through the door, Baylor found the evidence card with Prochaska's thumbprint that Cashman claimed to have lifted from the beer can in Vincent Ballard's motel room. He removed a small section of the card with a hole punch. Then he placed the section in his electron microscope and scanned it. Every element has its own X-ray signature and frequency. The electron microscope identified the X-ray signature of every element present on the sample he'd taken from the card.

Yes! Paul shouted when his suspicions were confirmed. He punched his fist in the air with the enthusiasm shown by Tiger Woods when he won the Masters. He'd made the breakthrough that would break Cashman. His satisfaction would be complete when he figured out how the bastard had faked the ballistics test, but he already had an idea how that illusion had been created.

Paul took a deep breath. When he was calm, he dialed Amanda Jaffe's number.

What's up, Paul? Amanda asked.

I made a breakthrough in Cohen, he said excitedly. Remember I told you that I checked to see if there were any pubic hairs missing from Jacob's attempted-rape file?

Yes. You said there were eight hairs listed on the inventory and eight in the file.

There are eight, but only six are Cohen' s. I tried to think of what I would do if I were going to frame Jacob. I'd use the hairs in the file but I'd have to assume that a smart defense attorney might figure out that the file was the source.

Cashman put someone else's hair in the file!

Bingo! I went back to the crime lab and examined the hairs. Two of them aren't Cohen' s.

Amanda thought of something. Paul, the last time anyone saw Clark was when she and Cashman worked that liquor store robbery, wasn't it?

Right.

So Mary was probably killed within twenty-four hours of finishing her work.

That fits with the estimate of time of death in the autopsy report, Baylor agreed.

If Clark confronted Cashman after they finished working the crime scene and he killed her soon after, he'd have to have gotten the pubic hairs quickly. So he probably took the substitute hairs from another file at the lab. I'm willing to bet that we'd find a file with two missing hairs if we searched the files in the evidence locker.

I agree, Baylor said.

Amanda was quiet for a moment. Then she frowned.

We still can't prove that Cashman took the hairs unless he was incredibly stupid and handled the file without gloves.

I dusted the file for prints. His aren't on it.

Damn. Well that's great work, anyway, Paul. Don't let up. You figured out how Cashman faked the pubic hairs. You'll get the rest.

Baylor paused for a dramatic heartbeat. Then, when he could stand it no longer, he said, I know how Cashman faked the thumbprint.

Chapter
44.

THIS IS DEPRESSING, FRANK JAFFE SAID TO AMANDA, AS THEY walked down the nearly empty fifth-floor corridor toward Judge Arthur Belmont's courtroom on the morning of the first day of testimony in Art Prochaska's case.

What's depressing? Amanda asked.

Oregon did away with the death penalty in 1964. When it came back in the eighties, there were mobs of reporters and spectators crowding these halls whenever someone was on trial in a capital case. I couldn't walk two steps without a reporter jamming a microphone in my face or being blinded by the lights from television cameras. But we' ve gotten so used to state-sanctioned executions that everybody takes these capital cases for granted nowadays.

Amanda looked around the quiet courthouse corridor, where the people she passed in the hall were preoccupied with their own problems and uninterested in whether a middle-aged gangster had murdered a lonely junkie. Her father was right. It looked as though the only person interested in Art's case was Martin Breach, who got up from a bench and walked over to the lawyers.