The Judgment (37 page)

The operator had finished with Dominic. Brunner introduced me to him—Gulbranssen was his name—and I got up and shook hands with him, then retired to my swivel chair. Once the operator had signaled to Brunner that he was ready, he made a brief speech to Dominic about what lay ahead. His manner was reassuring. His tone was sympathetic. The tape was rolling.

“Now, Mr. Benda, what happens is very simple,” he said. “I will simply ask you a number of questions. They are not trick questions, but they are questions that can and should be answered with a simple yes or no. Please answer them truthfully. The polygraph will measure your physical response to each one. It will not tell us whether or not you are lying. No machine can do that. All that it can do is note an increase in physical tension in your response to a question, should you have some difficulty with it. Is this understood?”

Dominic nodded.

“If you could give an oral response, please, for the tape.”

“I understand, yeah.”

“Now, Mr. Sloan, since you are here as Mr. Benda’s attorney, you must understand that, as agreed, you are here strictly as an observer. This is a test, not an interrogation. Maintaining the flow of questions is very important. If you interrupt, you will be obliged to leave, and we shall have to resume the questioning from the beginning. If you will come forward and speak your agreement for the tape?”

I did as he said. He signaled when I was close enough to the microphone, and I spoke up loud and clear.

“I understand, and I agree.”

“Now,” he said, “I think we may begin.”

After all that, the polygraph test that followed was rather anticlimatic. I soon understood that whatever art there was to the process was all in the preparation of the
questions. What could a trial lawyer do if he was restricted to asking questions of a witness that could only be answered yes or no? Not much. By and large, Dominic kept to the rules, except for a few understandable slipups.

For instance, after Dominic’s identity and his service with the Kerry County Police Department had been established, there was this exchange:

During that little tiff at the end, the stylus did move minimally beyond the narrow limits that proved Dominic was awake and breathing.

Gulbranssen, the operator, dutifully noted the number of each question as it was asked on the graph paper that crawled slowly across the machine. Each time he consulted his copy of the list of questions. He was methodical and, I’m sure, quite accurate.

Even later in the interview, when the questions were more direct and specific, Dominic’s line hummed along in the same, steady up-and-down movement. When he was asked if he had known Lee Higgins, and then Catherine Quigley, his negative responses showed no tremor on the graph. When he was asked if he knew Billy Bartkowski and answered with a yes, again there was no discernible variation in the line. Brunner deviated from his prepared
script very calmly and asked if Billy Bartkowski had ever ridden in Dominic’s patrol car. Dominic replied with a no, but then amended that: “Oh yeah, a couple of times.” No change on the graph. Then Brunner asked if either of these two occasions was at or near the time of Billy Bartkowski’s death, and Dominic gave an emphatic no. Again, there was no change in the pattern of the line. Gulbranssen marked these two follow-up questions, 23A and 23B. Then very directly:

No change, the stylus hummed on.

And that was about it, except for one embarrassing moment at the end. Brunner asked if Dominic had ever represented himself as an active-duty police officer since his retirement. This must have been inserted by Stash or Sue to get him to account for his curious habit of wearing his uniform and driving around the county in his old patrol car. But Dominic said nothing. What was the problem? Maybe he had been up to no good, doing—what? Then I glanced over at the polygraph and saw that the up-and-down movement of the line had fallen even below Dominic’s normal low. The problem was, he had dozed off for a moment.

And that was the last question. Brunner turned to me.

“Mr. Sloan, now is the time for you to register your objections to this test. Please come forward and speak into the microphone.”

I got up and walked over to them. As I leaned forward to the microphone, I gave Dominic a reassuring pat on the back.

“I have no objections to the content or the conduct of this examination.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sloan.”

Brunner switched off the tape recorder and tossed his list of questions onto the table. Then he winked at me.

He knew.

I was feeling pretty good by the time I got to the office. I knew that Dominic Benda had passed his polygraph test with flying colors. The fact that neither Mark Evola nor Sue Gillis was around afterward to complain or demand told me as much about that as my observation of the polygraph during Brunner’s questioning. Dominic was feeling good, too. Maybe that little catnap he’d taken at the end had refreshed him. Anyway, he was moving at a quick-march step after we left Interrogation Room Three, and he gave Peg a happy face and a big embrace when they met.

And we all had a nice surprise waiting for us in a note from Stash Olesky that was passed to me by Sergeant Makarides. I opened the envelope, not knowing quite what to expect.

“Charley,” it said, “I managed to intercede on the matter of the patrol car. I convinced the power-that-is that whatever was pulled from it in the way of evidence would be tainted and not useable in a trial. So you will find Dominic’s famous go-car exactly where it was parked, wherever that may be. It has not—I repeat
not
—been touched by forensic hands. The Bendas, Mr. and Mrs., may drive it
home. This is not to say, however, that the said go-car will not in the future be given a thorough going-over at a time more advantageous to the prosecution. Understood? Burn this after reading. Stash.”

So the Bendas headed home in Dominic’s beloved car. I walked them into the parking lot, gave Dominic another slap on the back and Peg a hug as I whispered in her ear, “You do the driving.” They went to the car, and I was glad to see her slip in behind the steering wheel. I gave them a wave as they drove away, and then I discovered I had Dominic’s topcoat in the backseat of my car.

Mrs. Fenton handed me a pile of messages, a lot more than I would ordinarily have expected at ten-twenty in the morning.

“And don’t forget,” she said, “you’ve got a real-estate closing at eleven.”

I had forgotten. I was lucky to have Mrs. Fenton around to remind me. I went into my office and got busy on the callbacks.

The first one had to do with the real-estate deal. I wouldn’t have been in it at all, except that there was a title search involved, just a matter of research in the county courthouse that I handled in an afternoon. I called the salesman, assured him everything was in order, and that I would be expecting him and all concerned parties in my office at the appointed hour.

There were a couple of dud calls, telephone solicitations for life insurance and for a subscription to
The Wall Street Journal.

There was one I wish I’d been around for—LeMoyne Tolliver. Briefly I weighed the possibility of putting in another call to 1300 Beaubien, then decided against it. I’d let him do it his way and just hope I was around when he called back.

And Father Chuck had called. I came close to filing that one in the wastebasket. I even wadded it up. But in the end I smoothed it out and put it up in one corner of my
desk blotter, tucked halfway under the leatherette border. Maybe later. Who knows?

The last one in the pile was the last received. The time: 10:05. The caller: Sue Gillis. The message: “Let’s have lunch. Call me.” This was a pleasant surprise. When last seen, she was staring daggers at me, trying to inform Dominic Benda that it was me, his lawyer, who had fingered him, more or less, with a tip from a Detroit cop who was now under indictment. Had it come from anyone else, I might even call it mean-spirited. Maybe she’d called to apologize. I dialed her number.

She answered in her usual terse, professional manner: “Gillis.”

“Sloan, here, Gillis. I’m returning your call.”

“Ah, Charley, I’m surprised you’re back so soon. I figured you and Dominic would be out celebrating the rest of the morning. But maybe not, considering your client was practically comatose through the entire test.”

“Oh, come on, Sue.”

“Don’t think it went unnoticed. Mark Evola was watching with me through the two-way mirror, and he said he’d never seen anything so outrageous in his life. What did you do, give Dominic sleeping pills? Valium?”

I waited. Let her vent. When at last her sarcasm seemed to have subsided, I said, “I believe you mentioned lunch in your phone message.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well?”

“Let’s forget about it.”

Was I supposed to beg her? “All right, it’s forgotten.”

“Charley,” she said, her tone was less strident, “is it really necessary for you to take on every suspect I bring in as a client? I was even acting on your advice with Dominic. I’m trying to do my job, working overtime to break this terrible, terrible case. Some nights I hardly get any sleep at all, thinking about it, worrying about it. That was how it happened with Dominic. After we had dinner Saturday night, I got to thinking about what you said, or
rather what your client in Detroit said and you passed on to me. I thought maybe it’s worth checking out, so I went in Sunday before I went to see Mom and Dad and began checking out duty rosters, and I came up with Dominic. He was out in that same territory on the days of the first two murders, and as for the Bartkowski homicide, he drives around in uniform in that patrol car, and—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “he said he’d had the kid in the patrol car a couple of times. He must have known them, known the family.”

“Didn’t he tell you? The Bartkowskis were neighbors, just three or four houses down on the same street. Dominic was at the funeral. I can see there’s a lot you don’t know about this case, Charley. Frankly, I’m surprised at you.”

“My chief interest in Dominic Benda, Sue, was that he had been coerced into taking an unreliable test with the threat of depriving him of his pension.”

“Oh, that didn’t matter,” she said dismissively. “The important thing was to scare him. But how could he be scared, drugged to the gills, and with that shrink feeding him those soft pitches?”

“First of all, Dominic was not drugged. I give you my word on that. Secondly, what fault could you possibly find with the way Brunner conducted the test?”

“He should have been more aggressive.”

“Sue, a polygraph examination is not an interrogation.”

“Not the way he handled it.”

“Let me tell you, I’ve sat through two or three others in my day, and I’ve never seen one handled as competently, as professionally, as he handled this one. I may not have any faith in the damned tests, but if you’re going to give them, that’s the way to do it. Now, admit it—that was your first polygraph, wasn’t it?”

She ignored my question. “What I’d like from you, Charley, is a little support. This isn’t easy, what I’m going through. But when I see you show up whenever we bring in a suspect, I just don’t feel you’re on my side. Now, I think I have to tell you that the reason I’m backing out
on lunch is because I certainly haven’t given up on Dominic. I’m sending out for a sandwich, and I’m really going to dig into this. The radio logs are next. And we will get a look at that patrol car of his. If he washes it, vacuums it, or gets it painted, we’ll consider that as good as an admission of guilt.”

“Does this mean there’ll be further interrogation?”

“I’ll bring him in when I’m good and ready.”

“When you do, Sue, I’ll be there at his side.”

“I’ll remember that.” She said it as if it was a threat.

Having heard about as much of this as I wanted to, I was about to say good-bye when she came back at me suddenly with something that threw me into total confusion.

“And, Charley?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget about a week from Thursday.”

“Thursday?”

“Thanksgiving, you dummy. Dinner’s at four, and I think we ought to be there about an hour beforehand. It’s probably going to take another hour to get there—South-field, you know. So, what do you say? Two o’clock?”

For a moment I was struck dumb. She’d switched gears on me so fast that I was left eating dust at the side of the road. All I could do was respond in my most docile manner. “Two o’clock sounds fine, Sue.”

“See you then, if not before.”

She hung up. I hung up. I sat there, trying to figure out who was on first.

After saying the things she had, after practically accusing me of using underhanded tactics, after threatening my client, she would turn around and blandly remind me of this Thanksgiving date she’d inveigled me into. Was this her idea of separating our professional lives from our private ones?

The trouble with her, the trouble with most cops—including Mark Conroy—was that they had absolutely no idea of the law. If it worked against them, if it got in the way, then they’d just sweep it aside, or find some way around it. A suspect was guilty unless he could prove otherwise, and even then he was subject to doubt. If hard evidence was lacking, they’d fake it, plant it, or try to scare the suspect into making some statement that could be used against him, the way they’d tried to do with Dominic. What lawyers were for was to see that the game was played according to the rules. And thank God there were rules.