Proof Positive, page 26
part #3 of Amanda Jaffe Series
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.”
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.”
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.
“How are things looking, Frank?”
“You can’t predict what will happen in a trial, but I’m feeling good about our case.”
“Did you come up with something about that fingerprint?” Breach asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Did one of the lab guys set up Artie?”
The question was asked without emotion, but Frank could sense rage swimming below Breach’s calm surface like a great white shark cruising beneath the placid waters off a beach filled with vacationers.
“Sit in on the trial when the state’s forensic expert testifies this afternoon and you may be pleasantly surprised,” Frank said with a reassuring smile.
“You don’t think it will hurt Artie to have me in court?” Martin asked anxiously.
“Not today, Martin, not today.”
Bernard Cashman had studied the composition of the jury in the Prochaska case before choosing his wardrobe. An hour before court, he’d still not decided which suit and tie to wear. Most of the jurors were from the lower and middle classes, so he didn’t want to look too well dressed: but there was a retired doctor, and also a housewife who was married to a wealthy architect. They might not give full credit to the testimony of a witness who dressed down too much. In the end, he selected a conservative suit that he’d purchased at an upscale department store, instead of one of the suits that he’d had hand-tailored in London on a recent trip, and a solid navy blue tie. He felt that the outfit was understated but tasteful.
Mike Greene summoned Cashman to the witness stand an hour after court resumed in the afternoon. Cashman had treated himself to a light lunch at one of the better downtown restaurants, but had not ordered wine. Even though he was not worried, he wanted to be clear-headed for Frank Jaffe’s cross-examination. Cashman had testified against Jaffe’s clients before, with success, and Frank had not laid a glove on him at the preliminary hearing, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He couldn’t imagine what the attorney had learned since the preliminary hearing that he could use to call into question the evidence that would lead to Art Prochaska’s well-earned conviction. True, the defendant had probably not killed Vincent Ballard, but he had gotten away with murder and numerous other serious crimes in the past. This time, he would not be so lucky.
As Cashman strode down the center aisle of the courtroom, he spotted Martin Breach and several of his associates. Breach fixed the criminalist with an intimidating stare that unnerved Cashman for a moment, but he forgot about the mob boss as soon as he was through the bar of the court and standing in front of the witness box, ready to take the oath.
Cashman’s hair had been styled the day before, and his beard and mustache were neatly trimmed. After being sworn, he dazzled the jury with his smile, then humbly related his academic credentials and work experience in the pleasing baritone that was so effective with jurors. After these preliminaries, Mike Greene asked Cashman to explain the investigation that he had conducted at the Continental Motel. Then Cashman explained how he had discovered the thumbprint of the defendant, Arthur Wayne Prochaska, on a beer can that had been sitting on the night table in Vincent Ballard’s room and why he had concluded that the bullets that had caused Mr. Ballard’s death were consistent with bullets discovered in a box of bullets found by the police during a search of the defendant’s closet. By the time Mike Greene finished his direct examination of the witness, the jurors were nodding after every statement Cashman made, and he was certain they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Prochaska was guilty as charged.
“Your witness, Mr. Jaffe,” Judge Belmont said.
“Mr. Cashman,” Frank said, “you testified that you graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in chemistry, did you not?”
“That’s correct.”
Amanda handed Frank a document. It was hard for Cashman to tell from his seat across the courtroom what it was. Frank studied the document for a moment before turning back toward the witness.
“Would you please tell the jurors the name of the professor who taught the first chemistry class you took in college?”
Cashman chuckled. “That was many years ago. I’m afraid I can’t remember his—or her—name.”
“Can you tell the jurors the name of any professor who taught you chemistry?”
Cashman shrugged. “I simply don’t recall any of them.”
“There would have been several, wouldn’t there, if you were a chemistry major?”
“Well, yes.”
Frank took another look at the document he was holding.
“Let me give you an easier task. Would you please tell the jury the title of three classes you took in your major while at the University of Oklahoma?”
Cashman shifted in his seat. “Let’s see. There was introduction to chemistry, of course, and organic chemistry, and I believe one of them was called advanced chemistry.”
“Those sound about right, but I’m having a problem.”
Frank stood and strolled across the space between the defense table and the witness box. On the way, he handed a thin packet of papers to Mike Greene and the bailiff. When he reached Cashman, he handed him an identical packet.
“For the record, Your Honor, I’ve just handed the district attorney and Mr. Cashman copies of Mr. Cashman’s undergraduate transcript from the University of Oklahoma and his transcript from graduate school at the City University of New York. I’d like them marked as exhibits.”
“Any objection, Mr. Greene?” Judge Belmont asked.
“No, Your Honor.”
“Very well,” the judge ruled.
“Can I have copies of these documents given to the jurors?” Frank asked.
“No objection,” Mike said.
Amanda handed a stack of copies to the bailiff, who distributed the transcripts to the jurors.
“Maybe you can help us out, Mr. Cashman,” Frank said after each juror had a copy. “My eyesight’s a lot worse since I’ve gotten older, so maybe I missed them, but other than intro to chemistry—in which I believe you received a grade of C—I can’t find another chemistry course listed on that transcript. Could you point them out to the jurors?”
“They’re not on here. The college must have sent you someone else’s transcript. I remember getting an A in my introductory chemistry class.”
“I see. This is all a big mistake?”
“Well, obviously.”
“Just for the record, before I move on, what major did the Bernard Cashman who is listed on this transcript have?”
Cashman pretended to study the document. “It appears to be secondary education.”
“Not chemistry?”
“No.”
Frank looked at the second transcript. “It looks like the City University of New York screwed up, too. This is supposed to be the transcript of someone named Bernard Cashman, but it shows that this fellow never finished his master’s degree, and it looks like it was in the education department, too—not forensic science.”
Cashman did not respond.
“You’d better call up those schools when court is over and get this straightened out, so you won’t be embarrassed the next time you testify,” Frank said.
Cashman was seething inside, and he vowed to make Jaffe pay. Not right away, when suspicion would fall on him, but later—maybe years later—when waiting would make revenge all the sweeter. Jaffe was laughing at him now, but he would see who had the last laugh.
Frank glanced at Amanda, who handed him a folder that Paul Baylor had put together.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about the thumbprint you found on the beer can in Vincent Ballard’s room. You said that you dusted the can with black fingerprint powder.”
“Yes,” answered Cashman, who was relieved that there would be no more questions about his academic record.
“Then you used tape to lift the print, which was highlighted by that black fingerprint powder, and transfer it to an evidence card so it could be preserved as evidence?”
“That’s correct.”
Frank scratched his head. When he turned toward the jury, he looked puzzled.
“Can you explain to the jury and to me why there are traces of copy toner, like you’d use in a Xerox machine, on the evidence card with Mr. Prochaska’s print?”
Cashman felt faint. “There isn’t any copy toner on the card,” he stated with as much authority as he could muster.
“Gee, that’s not what my expert and Ron Toomey, one of your coworkers at the crime lab, told me,” Frank said.
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cashman looked toward Mike Greene, desperate for him to object, but Greene was leaning back in his chair, studying him, stone-faced. Martin Breach was sitting a few rows behind the prosecutor. His eyes lasered in on Cashman. The expert’s stomach rolled and he forced himself to look away.
