Bury the Lead

13



THE INITIAL EVIDENCE against Daniel Cummings arrives in three boxes at ten o’clock on Monday morning. Its promptness is a further demonstration that Tucker is going to play this strictly by the book. He has no intention of being nailed on any kind of technicality involving procedure; his case must be too good for that.

What is here represents only a small piece of what will eventually be the prosecution’s case. The investigation is ongoing and in fact just beginning, but this is daunting enough.

The first set of documents is technical in nature. I am nontechnical in nature, so it takes me a while to understand them. Basically, what they say is that technology exists that can tell in fairly precise terms the location of a cell phone when it receives a call. They’ve employed this technology in this case, and the results run counter to Daniel’s story. According to the reports, Daniel was already in or near the park that night when he received the call, which was made from a nearby pay telephone. Daniel had said it took him fifteen minutes to get to the park after receiving the call. Even worse, Daniel’s fingerprints were found on that pay phone, leaving the clear impression that he made the call to himself so as to fabricate a story.

With this information on hand, the police then executed search warrants on Daniel’s house and car while he was in the hospital. Hidden in the car’s trunk were Linda Padilla’s clothes, including a scarf, which the police believe was used to strangle her. And wrapped in that scarf were her severed hands.

It goes downhill from there. Three other scarves, bloody but mercifully without severed hands, were found hidden in Daniel’s closet at home. Tests are being done to confirm that they are from the previous three victims. I would say it’s a pretty safe bet that they are.

When Kevin, Laurie, and I finish going through the documents, it’s so quiet in the office you can hear a severed hand drop. It’s Laurie who finally breaks the silence. “This is bad,” she says, vastly understating the case.

Kevin doesn’t respond, which means he agrees. It’s up to me, as the lead defense attorney, to give the upbeat analysis. “This is just their side of it” is the best I can manage.

“Do we have a side?” Kevin asks.

“Not yet,” I say. “But we’re gonna get one.”

Their faces do not show great enthusiasm, more like total dread. “Look,” I say, “if you guys want to back out of this, I’ll understand.”

“But you’re staying in?” Laurie asks.

I nod. It’s not a vigorous or enthusiastic nod; it’s more just having my neck go limp and letting my head roll around on top of it. But it conveys the message: I’m staying on the case, and I’m doing it for Vince.

“We’ve had cases that looked bad before,” Kevin reasons. “I’m in.”

We both look to Laurie; she is aware that hers is one of the cases that looked particularly grim before we turned it around. Countering that is what I know to be her absolute horror at the prospect of helping a serial killer. “Okay,” she says. “Me too.”

I’m very glad to have them aboard. “Then let’s kick this around,” I say.

We discuss the case for the better part of two hours, at the end of which I verbalize my evolving strategy, pitifully obvious though it might be. “Either Daniel is guilty, or someone is trying to make him look guilty. It doesn’t do us any good to assume the former, so let’s go with the idea of an unknown bad guy. We have to find out who it is and why he’s chosen Daniel as his target.”

Kevin does not seem convinced about any of this, a sign of his intelligence. “My problem,” he says, “is that we seem to be talking about a killer who randomly picks and murders victims and cuts off their hands. In other words, a real weirdo.”

I know where he’s going; it’s bothered me as well. “Yet that’s not the type of person to concoct an elaborate frame-up,” I say.

Laurie nods her agreement. “Unless the murders weren’t random.”

The problem with that is that the victims were in no way similar; there is a young nurse, a street hooker, a grandmother, and a gubernatorial candidate. It seems hard to believe there is a connection between them, but that’s one of the things we have to look for.

We make the decision to look at each murder individually. If we can exonerate Daniel on any one, then he might well be off the hook on all of them. Left unsaid is the one fact that hangs over us: If there are no more murders, Daniel will look even more guilty. It’s left unsaid because no one wants to talk about the obvious flip side: If someone else is brutally strangled, it makes our case. Vicious murders are a tough thing to root for.

Kevin makes the suggestion that we bring in Marcus Clark, a private investigator who helped us in Laurie’s defense. His methods are unorthodox but effective, and Laurie and I both agree that we can use him. Kevin volunteers to contact him.

We also understand that publicity is going to be a key component of our efforts and that the responsibility for that will fall on me. It’s not something I enjoy, but that doesn’t make it any less necessary.

Two hours ago we had nothing. Now we have a plan, things to do, information to digest, a mountain to climb. Deep inside me, so deep that it could be just a gas pain, I feel a rumbling, an eagerness to get the game started.

I always approach my cases as games; it helps me kick into gear the competitiveness that I need. When I was younger, I wanted to spend my life playing baseball. I was a shortstop, and I could have made it to the majors if I could only hit the curveball or the fastball or the slider or the change-up.

So criminal law is the game I play. It’s always one game, winner take all, none of this sissy four-out-of-seven stuff. And right now I’m getting ready.

Play ball.