"Amanda Jaffe is here to see you," the receptionist said. Tim was in no mood to talk to Jon Dupre's attorney but it would look odd if he refused to see her, and it was essential that he act naturally now that he had made his decision.
"Amanda," Kerrigan said as soon as she was shown in, "to what do I owe this pleasure?"
Tim was usually neat and well dressed. Today, his eyes were glassy and there were dark circles under them. His hair looked like he'd run a comb through it without concern for the results, and the top of his white shirt showed because the knot in his tie had not been pulled tight. Amanda also noticed an uncharacteristic quaver in his voice.
"I heard that you weren't busy enough," she joked to conceal her surprise, "and I don't want you to get laid off, so I brought you something to do."
Kerrigan forced a laugh. "Gee, thanks."
Amanda handed him a motion for discovery that she'd worked on as soon as she'd finished talking to Sean McCarthy. Kerrigan thumbed through it. There was a general request for discovery of all evidence uncovered in the investigation that would tend to prove that Jon Dupre was innocent. Kerrigan wondered if he had a statutory or constitutional duty to disclose the lab report to Amanda. Did it exculpate? Finding Lori Andrews's blood in Travis's cabin would be evidence Amanda Jaffe could use to argue that Dupre did not murder Lori Andrews, but did it have any tendency to disprove the cases against Dupre for the Travis and Hayes murders?
Under the general request was a series of specific requests, which he skimmed because he was anxious to be by himself. His eye passed down the list and was almost to the bottom when something in the middle of the demands made him go back. Amanda was requesting production of a set of police reports from the 1970s. Kerrigan was tempted to ask Amanda how they could possibly be relevant to Dupre's case, but he held his tongue.
"I'll review your motions and get back to you if there's a problem."
"Great." Amanda looked closely at Kerrigan. "Are you feeling okay?"
"I think I might be coming down with something," he answered, faking a smile.
As soon as Amanda left, Kerrigan buzzed Maria Lopez and asked her to come to his office. When she walked in, he handed her Amanda's motions.
"Amanda Jaffe filed these. I have two assignments for you. One is going to upset you a little."
Maria looked puzzled.
"Jon Dupre may not be responsible for the murder of Lori Andrews," Kerrigan said.
"Then who . . .?"
"Senator Travis had a penchant for rough sex and he'd been with Lori Andrews. We also found Lori Andrews's blood in Travis's cabin."
Kerrigan briefed Maria on the lab report. "And there's more," he continued. "Carl Rittenhouse was Senator Travis's administrative assistant. He told me that he brought Lori Andrews to the cabin where Travis was murdered, a few months ago. Then he told me about an incident in D.C. where it appeared that Travis had beaten up a woman."
"Travis might have beaten up Lori, but that doesn't clear Dupre," Maria insisted. "Dupre could have murdered her to keep her from testifying after Travis beat her at the cabin."
"That's a theory," Kerrigan agreed. "What I need to know is whether we have a legal obligation to disclose to Jaffe the information we have about Andrews's death."
"I'll look into it."
"There's something else. Amanda wants all the police reports of a 1970 shootout at a drug house in North Portland and a drug killing from 1972."
"Why does she want that?"
"That's what I need you to tell me. Get the reports and tell me why they bear on this case. If Amanda wants them, there's got to be something in them that will cause us trouble."
Chapter Thirty-Six.
The state medical examiner's office, a tree-shaded, two-story red-brick building on Knott Street, looked more like a real estate office than a morgue. Kate Ross parked in the lot at the side of the building, crossed the well-tended lawn, and climbed the steps to the front porch. She asked for assistant ME Sally Grace at the front desk, and moments later she was sitting in Grace's office.
Dr. Grace, a slender woman with frizzy black hair, had a dry sense of humor and a sharp intelligence that made her an excellent witness. Kate had seen her testify on several occasions, and had spoken to her in the course of a few investigations.
"I pulled the file on Michael Israel," Grace said after they got the small talk out of the way. "Norman Katz did the autopsy, but he's not with the office anymore."
"Did Dr. Katz conclude that Israel committed suicide?"
"That's the official finding."
Kate heard the hesitation in the ME's voice. "You don't concur?"
"It would probably be my finding, too, but there are a couple of anomalies. Not enough to challenge Norm's conclusion," Dr. Grace said quickly, "but, on the phone, you did ask me to see if there was any way that Israel's death could have been a homicide, so I looked at everything from that angle."
"What did you find?"
"Two things. First, Israel had six hundred nanograms per milliliter of temazepam in his blood. Restoril is the trade name. It's like Valium, and the usual therapeutic level would be somewhere between one-hundred-ninety and five-hundred-seven nanograms per milliliter, so the level is high."
"Could someone have drugged Israel and faked the suicide?" Kate asked.
"It's possible, but taking a sedative makes sense if Israel was going to commit suicide. He might have needed to calm himself to get up the courage to do the deed. Now six hundred nanograms per milliliter is high, but it's not so high that it suggests that someone drugged him. He could have just taken too much."
"Okay. You said two things bothered you. Give me the rest of it."
Dr. Grace showed Kate a color photograph of the crime scene. Israel's upper body lay on a green desk blotter stained red by the blood that had pooled under his head. Grace pointed to a raw red spot on Israel's temple.
"That's the entry wound. Do you see the black halo of gunshot residue that surrounds it?"
Kate nodded. The residue looked like a perfect circle that had been drawn with a compass.
"When a person commits suicide by gunshot, they usually eat the gun or shoot themselves in the temple. With a temple shot, the victim is going to screw the barrel into his skin, so I would expect to find a tight contact wound, not this circle of gunpowder. Israel's wound was a near contact, which means that the gun barrel was not touching his temple when it went off. Six hundred nanograms per milliliter of temazepam might not have been enough to put out Israel completely. If it did put him under, the dose is light enough so he could have awakened. If Israel was drugged first and someone put the gun in Israel's hand and held it next to his temple, he could have flinched and that could account for the near-contact wound.