'You writing headlines now, Abe?'
'No, just getting indictments and convictions.'
'What's the charge?'
He laughed. 'I'd say Murder One after the grand jury meets tomorrow.'
'You got a corpus delicti?'
Another laugh, like a horse's whinny. 'Right here on ice, along with some hog snapper.'
'And a weapon?' I asked. Might as well do some pretrial discovery if he was in a talkative mood.
'Implements of the crime. About an hour ago, we served a warrant on Salisbury's house. Found a real interesting vial with two hypodermics. Lab will have it back tonight. Wanna bet on the contents?'
So that's what happened. A lot of things about my late-night phone call to Roger's house were coming into focus.
'Sure I'll bet. I'll bet you got the search warrant based on an affidavit from a charming widow. I'll bet she swore she saw the stuff in Salisbury's house within the last twenty-four hours.'
'What of it?'
'She planted it there!' I thundered. 'Last night. I know she was there. She wanted me to know she was there. It corroborates her affidavit. But I also know where she got the vial and the hypodermics and it wasn't from Roger.'
'I'm listening,' Socolow said.
But I wasn't talking. Melanie Corrigan must have known I wouldn't drag Susan into it. Susan would swear the drug came from Melanie's bedroom but could not prove it. That left Susan holding the drug. Roger was trapped, but I was too. Nowhere to turn. Finally I said, 'Roger Salisbury isn't a murderer. He may look at life through a zipper, but last time I checked, that wasn't a capital crime.'
'Fine, Lassiter, argue that to the jury. And this is what I'll argue. Roger Salisbury is banging his patient's wife. He asks her to kill her husband. She refuses. He has access to a dangerous anesthetic. The husband dies after routine surgery. The anesthetic is found in the doctor's home and traces are present in the corpse. That's our case, a simple, straightforward path to Murder One.'
'Anything else?'
'Only this. It's premeditated. It's a cold-blooded, calculated murder for lust and money. It's a heinous, atrocious crime without any pretense of moral or legal justification. You know where I'm heading, doncha Jake, old buddy.'
I wasn't his old buddy but I knew where he was heading. He was reciting Section 921.141. Like the Pledge of Allegiance, he knew the death penalty statute by heart.
'I know. You want twelve men, good and true, not just six.'
'You got it. Warming up the hot seat at Raiford.'
Abe Socolow wanted me to sweat. And I was sweating. But thinking, too. His case all wrapped up like that. Something was missing. The same thing Charlie Riggs and I couldn't figure out: How could Roger have killed Philip Corrigan- how could anyone?-if the cause of death was a spontaneous rupture of the aorta?
But if I was right, if nobody killed Philip Corrigan, why would Melanie frame Roger? It made no sense. She only needed Roger out of the way to cover her own tracks. If her husband had died of natural causes, there would be nothing to hide, nothing to gain.
So I was back at square one. I didn't know what caused Philip Corrigan's death, or who. And I didn't know the answer to Abe Socolow's first question. I didn't know if Roger wanted me to defend him. After all, if I hadn't dug up the body, there probably wouldn't be a murder charge. If I were Roger, I wouldn't hire me; I'd sue me.
17
in the name and by the authority of the state of florida:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Florida, duly called, empaneled and sworn to inquire and true presentment make in and for the body of the County of Dade, upon their oaths, present that on the 14th day of October, 1986, within the County of Dade, State of Florida, ROGER A. SALISBURY did, unlawfully and feloniously, from a premeditated design to effect the death of PHILIP CORRIGAN, a human being, kill PHILIP CORRIGAN, by injecting him with a dangerous drug, in violation of Florida Statute Section 782.04(l)(a), to the evil example of all others in like cases offending and against the peace and dignity of the State of Florida.
The indictment was signed by the foreman of the grand jury and delivered to my house by a messenger from Abe Socolow's office. I telephoned Roger, regretful and apologetic.
'I'll understand if you file a complaint with the Bar,' I said.
'Then who'd defend me? The phony malpractice case was bad enough. But a murder charge? It's crazy, and you're the only one I trust to beat it.'
He made it sound easy, as if I could pull a few strings, get him a bye. I halfheartedly tried to talk him out of it. 'I'm a little rusty in Criminal Court. There are some big gun criminal lawyers you could get.'
'But you believe I'm innocent. None of them will.'
He had me there. I believed he was innocent, but I wanted to know. He was surprised when I asked him to take a polygraph test. When he agreed, I believed him a little more.
'This machine is so primitive,' Roger Salisbury said. 'I don't trust it, not a bit.'
He was squirming in a hard wooden chair, a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his right arm, pneumograph tubes circling his chest and abdomen, electrodes attached to two fingers of his left hand. He sat on an inflatable rubber bladder and leaned back against another one, trying to balance his weight.
He was right; the equipment was primitive. The polygraph hasn't changed much since a psychologist named William
Marston started fooling around with blood pressure deception tests seventy years ago. Dr. Roger Salisbury would have been more comfortable lashed to a shiny chrome device with microchips and digital readouts, not this Rube Goldberg contraption.
'Just try to relax,' I said. 'They used to throw people into wells to see if they were demons. The ones who drowned were found innocent. The ones who floated were obviously children of Satan deserving of death. We've progressed a bit.'
The technician had spent an hour with Roger getting him prepared, gaining his confidence. And setting him up. That's what polygraph examiners do. Some small talk, convince the subject he has to tell the truth, then try to solicit a lie to an irrelevant question to measure the response against the relevant one: Did you steal the petty cash, do you smoke dope on the job, then… did you murder Philip Corrigan?
Roger Salisbury wouldn't know this. And he wouldn't know what every con learns while still in reform school- how to screw up the test with a nail in the shoe, a hard bite into the tongue, or other ways of jacking up blood pressure. Good. That's the way I wanted it. I wanted the truth about the death of Philip Corrigan. Not to determine whether to defend Roger. I could do that either way, guilty or innocent. Even if Roger told me he planned the murder for months and carried it out, I could still give him a defense, force the state to meet its burden of proof. That's our system. But I couldn't let him take the stand and lie. So I needed the knowledge for strategy purposes and for another reason, too. I just wanted to know. I had gotten too close to this one, nearly seduced by the widow, sleeping with the daughter, and now defending Roger Salisbury a second time.
Regardless of the test result, it would not be admissible in the murder trial. Although juries frequently hear witnesses whose powers of observation are impaired by booze, drugs, or lack of intellect, polygraph tests are barred as not meeting scientific standards of proof. The courts constantly struggle to determine who lies and who tells the truth. Some judges claim to be experts on body language. A witness who raises one heel from the floor, bites a lip, or shifts his eyes is considered untrustworthy. I tell my witnesses to ogle the lawyer asking the question and not to keep time to show tunes with their feet. And I carry ChapStick for the biters.
'Do you understand that you must answer every question truthfully?' The polygraph examiner, a retired cop named Tony Cuevas, twisted the dial on the galvanic skin monitor and waited for Roger's response. Before he went
