Michael Gresham: Secrets Girls Keep Part 20

"So that's what he means, we'll receive a copy of the search warrant return by mail?"

"Yes, we'll be told what all the items were that they seized. We'll also receive those from the court to our office address as the attorneys of record."

"Shall we go look at our guest room?" Danny says.

"Let's do it."

Danny brushes off Dania with a damp cloth and hikes her up onto her hip. The three of us proceed to Jana's old room.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Danny exclaims and then she turns her face into my shoulder and cries. Dania, meanwhile, is sucking at her fingers, her head bobbing around as she ignores the pandemonium we have found ourselves within. In cops' parlance the room has been tossed-which is an understatement. It looks like a bomb was set off. The carpet is peeled back and left doubled up against the wall. The pad has been cut away-the rubbery mat-and taken away. The moldings and quarter round wood pieces are pulled out and left hanging. The bed is stripped and the bed covers and sheets seized. Every book in the bookcase has been pulled out and riffled. Some older volumes have come apart and their pages lie scattered around on the rubber matting. These were my college yearbooks from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. We open the closet door and find all garments missing, as well as the extra blankets that Danny kept on the upper shelf.

"These guys are very serious," I say under my breath, and Danny, from behind me, stifles a sob.

"Oh, Michael! What will we do in here?"

"Well, first we'll get some carpet people in. h.e.l.l, maybe this is a good time to re-carpet the whole house."

We had hardwood floors until just before Dania's birth, but switched to carpet to soften those head-first landings that kids take.

"The carpet we have is still new. Let's think about just our guest room."

"They might not be able to match it," I caution her.

"Whatever. I'll call them in the morning."

We spend another half hour going through things, trying to figure out what's missing.

Then I call Tim back, as promised.

"It looks like a tornado went through here," he says.

"Yeah, same on our end. How's Jana holding up?"

"Fine. Sore head. They pulled out some of his hair. Not much."

"Tell him that's standard. They'll use the hair follicles to obtain DNA to test against other DNA found at the scene, on the girl, and so forth. What else?"

"Craziest thing. They took all of Leonard's bedding. And the mouse bedding."

"What's that mean?"

"You know, the sawdust he crawls around in. They took all that. The stuff in the cage, the new stuff in the bag, and the stuff Jana had dumped into his wastebasket. Same with the mice, all their bedding."

The memory of the mouse immediately comes to mind. Hair. They're looking to match mouse hair with mouse hair. The mouse in Amy's mouth had hair. Match that to hair left behind in the snake's bedding-or mouse bedding-and there's the smoking gun. The mouse had to have come from Jana's menagerie.

Suddenly I feel like I've been struck down. The roof is caving in and I see it coming. If there's a match between the hair on the mouse removed from Amy's mouth, to any mouse hair found in Jana's room, he's going away for a long, long time.

"Why take the bedding?" Tim asks.

"We'll just have to wait and see."

"Sons of b.i.t.c.hes," says Tim.

"Just doing their job," I remind him. "You would do the same if you were a cop."

"I'm glad I'm a plumber. I tear people's stuff up, but then I put it all back together again before I leave."

"Yeah, well, cops don't. You're fair game to them."

"Can't I sue them for the mess or something?"

"You can try it in small claims but trust me, you'll get nowhere. Just suck it up and start cleaning."

"Okay, Michael. Thanks for calling."

We say goodbye and disconnect.

I find Danny in the kitchen where she is pouring herself a gla.s.s of port.

"Dinner is cold," she says.

"I'll order something delivered," I tell her. "Go in and put your feet up. Where's tiddlywinks?"

"She got crabby so she's in her bed. Singing to herself and kicking her legs at her mobile."

"Sounds good. I'm going in to kiss her goodnight."

"Kiss her for me, too. I doubt I'll leave this chair again tonight, Michael."

"Be right back."

"Michael, one other thing."

"What's that?"

"They found the Superglue."

"Jana's Superglue. Where was it?"

"In my briefcase. I was keeping it there."

"They took it?"

"It's not there now. It's got my prints all over it. And maybe Jana's too."

On my way back down the hallway, I can think of nothing but mice.

Mice, dammit, big, fat mice.

Then thoughts of the Superglue take hold and I know we're in trouble. Danny has inadvertently injected herself into the case.

I enter Dania's room and find her sound asleep. I turn her onto her side. Her breathing is deep and steady.

I hold my hand on her shoulder and I know that, for the first time ever, I have found the pure innocence my clients never possessed.

Not Jana, not Tom Meekins, not Guy Lafitte, not Phun Loc.

And now, not Danny, either.

29.

The search warrant returns come by mail four days after the searches. The number of items seized from my house and Tim's house is nothing short of astonishing. All told there are at least fifty items seized from my house and it looks to be over one hundred from Tim's. I shut my office door and sit back to digest the list.

There is one thing, in particular, that I search for on the list of items from my house and that is the tube of Superglue. Its location is stated as ISP crime lab. Evidently they're comparing the glue in the tube to the glue that held the victim's lips together that required the medical examiner Dr. Tsung to actually cut into the oral cavity to get inside. It was a mess and disfigured the young girl. The funeral was closed casket, but it would have been even without that, given the terrible cuts on her neck where she was garroted. When someone is strangled, it is very common for their eyes to hemorrhage. Even a deceased loved one presented to the family with her eyes closed by the mortician is no guarantee, given how people might touch a loved one. Some people, I have been told over the years by morticians, even take pictures of their dead loved ones in remembrance of their last moments on earth. That one escapes me, but I don't want to judge such things.

At any rate, the Superglue has been sc.r.a.ped away from the victim's lips and samples preserved for further testing. I am certain that both the batch number of the Superglue in the tube and that from the skin samples is being tested for a match. But the bad part is that if there is a match, then Danny's having possession of the tube of glue const.i.tutes an ethical violation.

"An attorney is required to turn over evidence of a crime," I tell her when she comes into my office and we review the lists to together.

"I did not know that," she says. "I thought it was confidential."

"It's not. What is confidential is statements made by the accused to his lawyer. That is protected and you must keep that confidential. What is not confidential are items you receive from your client that const.i.tute evidence of the crime. That must be turned over by you. Failure to do so is both a crime and an ethical impropriety."

"So I'm going to be charged with a crime?"

"Not likely. Your response is that you meant to turn the glue over and were taking it with you to the office in order to do that. That's why it was in your briefcase in the first place."

"But that's not really why I had it."

"Why did you have it?"

"I was planning on testing it."

"What was your thinking?"

Her hands shake and she pulls at the scarf around her neck.

"I was going to obtain a sample from the DA and have it tested against the tube I removed from Jana's room. Then I was going to decide."

"Decide what?"

"Decide what to do with it. I was confused. We're defending Father Bjorn's son, Michael. That's got to mean something to us. Imagine how horrible it would be if we turned over the one item that got him convicted, like the tube of Superglue? We couldn't ever go to church again."

I go around my desk and pull her to her feet and hug her.

"No need to ever do something like this," I whisper. "Next time, tell me. Let me make that decision about how to handle it. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Good. Now let's go over the rest of this list."

IT IS NOW the second week of December and trial is slated to begin the seventh of January. One month, more or less, until we take Jana back to court. We have received the crime lab reports and we have received a list of the State's witnesses and their probable testimony. Marcel has been busy taking the statements of those witnesses who would speak to him. Smooth as he is, and as understated as he can be, there were several students whose parents had told them not to speak with Marcel. They had been told to speak with no one except the police and the SA's office. Which is entirely legal and entirely within their rights. In the U.S., witnesses have no obligation to speak with the defense or its representatives. Open and shut.

Then a strange thing happens. The police return to Tim's house with a second search warrant. They come in the evening and he is home. Straight to the hall closet they go, where they seize his winter coat and an army surplus work coat. Then they search the other closets in the house. Within ten minutes, they are finished and walking out the door when Tim complains to them about the loss of his coats. Without answering his questions and complaints, they abruptly leave. So he calls me.

"Tell me about the coat with the scarf. Does Jana ever wear that?"

"Well, sometimes. When he moved back here from Santa Monica he had no cold weather gear. So he wore some of my stuff a few times until I got paid and could get him a coat of his own. I'm sure he's the one who lost my red m.u.f.fler on one of his jaunts here or there."

"Like maybe to a football game?"

Tim is silent for several moments.

"I told you, Mr. Gresham, Jana wasn't at that game where the Tanenbaum girl was killed. Why don't you believe me?"

"I'm having trouble with it because a red m.u.f.fler that Jana was seen wearing at the game was found near the girl's dead body. You should be having trouble too!"

"Well, say he did sneak out that night without me knowing. And say he wore my coat. What's it about that coat that would make the cops make a special trip out here to grab it?"

"Mouse hair."

"What in the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"A dead mouse was found at the scene."

"What the h.e.l.l has that got to do with my coat?"

"Does Jana keep mice?"

"Sometimes."

"And if he took a mouse to the football game, wouldn't it make sense if he hid it inside a pocket of the coat he was wearing? Your coat?"