Like fine wine, a criminal prosecution needs to age. First, a flurry of activity during the fermentation of the case, hearings, depositions, and an exchange of papers. Then, a quiet time, waiting for a trial date, files stored away in darkened cabinets, a time for brooding, waking at dawn with brilliant strategies, tossing them on the scrap heap of half-baked ideas by midday.
Judge Crane had set the trial for June, the beginning of Miami's unremitting summer. Those who can afford it are already getting away, escaping the blazing sun, ferocious humidity, and afternoon gully washers. By June the winds have shifted to the southeast-a wet, warm breath from the Caribbean-a time when each day begins with the same notion: no relief for six months. The calendar still says Spring, but in the tropics, it is not a time of renewal. It is the season of decay, streets steaming in afternoon storms that soak but do not cool, businessmen ducking from refrigerated cars to refrigerated offices while the poor, like desert dwellers, seek shade during the day, then roam free after dark, a time of short tempers and midnight shootings. And it would be our time of trial.
Six weeks after the indictment, we knew the state's case inside out. Abe Socolow detailed it for us in a bill of particulars, a witness list, and a carton of physical evidence. We knew who would testify and what they would say. No more trial by surprise, no last minute witnesses popping from the gallery.
We knew there was no wiretap evidence, no statements made by Salisbury to be used against him, and that the confidential informant, one Melanie Corrigan, would be the star witness. We learned the test results from the Medical Examiner's Office: evidence of succinic acid and choline in Corrigan's liver and brain, but strangely, none around the needle tracks in the buttocks. I would talk to Charlie Riggs about that.
On a warm, overcast day in April, I deposed Melanie Corrigan in Abe Socolow's office, staring hard at her when she took the oath. She stared right back and promised to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Once upon a time, she held a rich man's hand and promised to love and to cherish, to honor and obey.
Today she had no surprises. After her marriage, Roger
Salisbury kept pursuing her. Yes, she had dated him years ago, but that was ancient history, she was just a kid. No, she was not having an affair with him. Kept spurning his advances. He said he loved her, that Philip didn't appreciate her, didn't spend enough time with her. Roger showed her a little black valise with hypodermics and a glass vial, clear liquid inside, like a miniature vodka bottle they give you on a plane. He told her to get rid of Philip by injecting him with the drug. She was shocked, then laughed it off, thinking it was all talk. Roger always talked crazy. But when Philip died after surgery, she suspected Roger. She wanted proof. She thought something would come out in the civil trial, but nothing did.
So after the verdict, when Roger invited her over to his place, she went, and while he was fixing drinks, she looked through a desk in the study. Voila, the black valise and two hypodermics. Nearby in a small refrigerator was the vial, this time with some of the fluid missing. She slipped everything into her purse and the next day called the State Attorney's Office. At about the same time, Dr. MacKenzie tipped Socolow to the brain and liver samples that came from Charlie Riggs. When both the tissue samples and the liquid tested positive for succinylcholine, the grand jury indicted Roger Salisbury for Murder One.
She told her story well. Socolow had several weeks to prepare her for deposition after almost botching it at the bond hearing. I couldn't shake her. She denied that the valise was ever in her possession, denied planting the drug at Roger's house. Nothing there for us, but at least we knew the state's case and knew we could not win unless we discredited Melanie Corrigan.
What about the valise and the drug, I had asked Roger. I wanted him to tell me that he had never seen the succinylcholine, that Melanie must have come up with it and then stolen his valise to frame him. If we could trace the drug to her, bull's-eye!
'It didn't happen that way,' he said.
'No?'
'I borrowed the sucks-that's what we call it-from an anesthesiologist. Had an old Lab retriever, must have been close to twenty, comatose, but still breathing. Put him to sleep by paralyzing his lungs with the sucks. Kept the bottle in a refrigerator. Don't remember what happened to it.'
'The valise?'
He shrugged. 'Noticed it missing shortly after Philip died. Didn't think anything of it.'
I checked it out. The anesthesiologist confirmed the story, the pet burial place, too. An unexpected bonus, it all happened two years before Corrigan died. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't get your murder weapon and wait two years to do the job.
One name on the state's witness list meant nothing to us. Rebecca Ingram, R.N., Mercy Hospital. I took her deposition with Abe Socolow sitting grimly at her side. Nurse Ingram was in her thirties, no makeup, close-cropped dishwater brown hair. Next to her name on the witness list was the innocuous description: Responded to decedent's cardiac monitor alarm.
'Did you see Dr. Salisbury the night of Mr. Corrigan's death?' I asked.
'Yes. I saw him leaving Room five-twelve, Mr. Corrigan's room, hurrying down the hall.'
Okay, the state can place Roger in the hospital that night. No problem. Seeing patients, stopped in to check on Corrigan after surgery.
'And what time did this occur?'
She did not hesitate. 'Ten o'clock. Almost exactly. I remember because I was checking Mr. Corrigan every half hour on the half hour.'
Still no harm done. The aneurysm occurred at eleven fifteen.
'Is that all?' That's not much of a question, sort of asking the witness what the heck you're doing on the state's witness list.
'He was carrying a little leather valise. Black. With three gold initials on it, about yea-big.' She held her hands about one foot apart, and I felt a knife, the same size, lodge in my gut. Nurse Rebecca Ingram shrugged and smiled a tiny, innocent smile. 'That's all,' she said.
Oh. That's all. I asked Socolow if he would be kind enough to find Exhibit C in his cardboard box.
'Similar to this valise?' I asked the nurse.
'Well, it looks like it. Yes. Either that one or one just like it.'
I put my hand over the gold lettering. 'What initials were on the valise you saw?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know.'
'And of course you couldn't see what was in the valise, correct?'
'No. I mean yes. I mean, correct, I couldn't see what was in there.' Questions phrased in the negative always confuse.
'Did you ask Dr. Salisbury what was in the valise?'
'No. I said nothing to him, and as far as I know, he didn't even see me.'
'And in your experience, is it unusual for a doctor to carry such a valise?'
'Oh no. Many physicians carry small instruments in them or keep their patient notes there.'
'Was there anything unusual about seeing Dr. Salisbury on the floor in the evening?'
'No. He frequently checks on patients after surgery.'
'So in summary, you saw Dr. Salisbury on his regular nighttime rounds more than an hour before Philip Corrigan suffered an aneurysm from unknown causes, and the doctor was carrying a rather ordinary valise that may or may not be the one I am holding, and you don't know what, if anything, was in it?'
'Yes, yes, that's right,' she said, clearly relieved not to have buried the doctor any deeper.
I paused a moment and tried to get smarter in a hurry. At trial you worry about asking one question too many; in discovery, one too few. I couldn't seem to pump any extra voltage into my brain. Abe Socolow cracked the knuckles of his bony hands and said, 'Any more questions, Counselor?'
We were sitting in his tiny office in the Justice Building, files and cardboard boxes everywhere, a flood of paper, the daily bread of lawyers. The three of us plus a court reporter taking everything down on her silent machine. Socolow seemed a little too anxious to end this one. I pretended to study the chart of his convicted and condemned killers. Buying time, I stood up and walked to the small window that overlooked the trestles of the nearby expressway. I looked for a signpost on the foggy road that runs through my mind.
'One more question,' I said.
