So I know this sounds like an Oliver Stone movie, but it seems like a lot of transactional work has gone toward sending fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) and nitromethane to one company in large quantities.
When you combine ammonium nitrate with nitromethane, you get a potent explosive. It’s pretty much what Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City.
Tell me if I’m totally paranoid, but this is freaking me out a little bit. I know Bruce brushed me off before, but now that we know about the nitromethane, too-should I raise it with him? Or… and I can’t believe I’m saying this… should I go to the police?
Thanks, T. K
“Who’s Tom Rangle?” I asked.
“The head paralegal at the law firm,” Tori said. “Kathy’s boss.”
I read the whole thing a second time. I always miss something when I’m reading fast.
“Jesus, Tori.” I looked at her. “This is the motive, right here.”
I got up from the couch. My left knee screamed at me to slow it down. It was gradually improving but still hurt whenever I breathed. I lapped my office-limped was a better term-and found my football as I ruminated.
“A few days before her murder, Kathy connected the dots,” I said. “Global Harvest bought a company to use as a front to gather two chemicals used to make a bomb-fertilizer and nitromethane. Global Harvest sold the fertilizer but didn’t sell nitromethane. They didn’t want to be too obvious about picking it up as a new product, so they did the next best thing. They purchased another company, SK Tool and Supply, that sells industrial products and had that company sell the nitromethane to Summerset. Nobody’s paying attention because it’s not like they’re selling these things to Al Qaeda or something. They’re selling it to a farm, for Christ’s sake. A farm that needs fertilizer to grow wheat and nitromethane, I don’t know, probably for pesticide. Bradley said that was one of its uses, right?”
“So Summerset Farms is the perfect front.”
“Perfect,” I agreed. “We already know from this e-mail that Kathy talked to Bruce McCabe about Summerset Farms being removed from that interrogatory response. So McCabe was on notice that she was suspicious. And by the time this e-mail was sent-what was it, January eighth? — Kathy had put even more pieces together. She probably told McCabe that there was a possible terrorist operation going on.”
“She probably did,” Tori agreed.
“And that connects us to Randall Manning. McCabe could have just told his client that his paralegal was asking questions.”
“And just a few days later, Kathy is murdered,” said Tori. “Just enough time for Manning to hire the Capparellis to kill her.”
We looked at each other. This was it.
Tori said, “But you can’t use this. It’s inadmissible, you said.”
“I can’t tell the judge I hacked into her e-mail, no. But I can subpoena her e-mails and act pleasantly surprised.”
I thought about that. There had to be another way.
“Better yet,” I said, “let’s talk to Tom Rangle.”
75
Friday, December third. I looked at my watch. We’d gotten a late start for court today, as Judge Nash had to handle a few matters-or, if you prefer, mercilessly berate some lawyers-before we reconvened the trial. I was hoping the delay would give Tori enough time to find Kathy Rubinkowski’s boss, Tom Rangle, and see what we could put together. For the time being, I had to be here at trial, because today was going to be the heart of the prosecution’s case and these were my witnesses.
Thus far, the prosecution had established the murder weapon, plus the victim’s possessions, were found with Tom within an hour after Kathy’s murder. They had proved the obvious, but necessary, fact that the bullet between the eyes was the cause of death. And they had published a number of grisly photos to the jury.
Today, they would present a ballistics expert to match the bullet found in Kathy Rubinkowski’s brain to the Glock 23 found in Tom’s hand. Then they would put on Detective Frank Danilo to testify that Tom Stoller confessed to murder in the interrogation room.
And that was going to be it. They had no eyewitnesses to the shooting. But they probably didn’t need any. Tom was caught with the gun and stolen items. And even if Tom took the stand, he wasn’t going to deny shooting her. He was going to say he didn’t remember.
I still had my ace in the hole, though. When the prosecution introduced evidence of Tom confessing to the murder, I would argue that he wasn’t confessing to Kathy’s murder but to the shooting in Iraq. I was going to back-door the post-traumatic stress disorder evidence. The judge had barred the defense, but I wouldn’t be raising it as a defense-I’d raise it simply as an explanation for the supposed confession.
Wendy, I thought, wouldn’t see that coming. With the PTSD defense knocked out by the judge, she probably assumed Dr. Sofian Baraniq had no basis for testifying. But the judge hadn’t specifically barred Dr. Baraniq as a witness.
It was a quarter after ten when the jury came in. Where the hell was Tori? I prayed that Tom Rangle wasn’t on vacation or something.
Wendy’s second chair, Maggie Silvers, put the ballistics expert on and got through his direct in about twenty minutes. I told Shauna to do what she could to draw this out. We had no basis for denting his testimony, but I needed time. I didn’t want the prosecution to rest today, and if they did, I didn’t want them to rest until the end of the day.
I needed the weekend. I needed at least a couple of days to put all of this together.
Shauna did what she could, but the examination was completed before eleven.
Normally we’d take a mid-morning break, but with the late start it made no sense. The judge told Wendy to call her next witness.
“The People call Detective Francis Danilo,” she said, just as Tori walked into the courtroom with another man.
Tom Rangle, I presumed.
76
I worked on a matter with Frank Danilo once when I was a prosecutor. He was a good guy. Pretty nondescript appearance-average height, average build, short brown hair-and cool under pressure. And overall, a pretty fair guy. I ran into him in the hallway about six weeks ago, while each of us was working on another matter, and he even told me he hated like hell that an Iraq War vet who was obviously messed up in the head was going down for this.
But I remember working an interrogation with him, and he had the suspect so scared that he threw up on Frank’s shoe.
Danilo was dressed today in his Sunday best. He didn’t look comfortable in a shirt and tie. But he did look comfortable on the witness stand. He was the kind of cop juries liked.
I looked over my shoulder at Tori, who was now seated a few rows back next to the man who came in with her, presumably Tom Rangle. I was more interested in what she had to say than what Danilo did, but the judge wasn’t going to give me a break right now, because he’d want to give Wendy Kotowski the chance to complete Danilo’s direct testimony before lunch.
Wendy started with the basics, getting Danilo’s bio before the jury. He’d been a detective first grade for more than seven years now in the robbery-homicide division. He’d investigated over a hundred murders.
Danilo did a chronological tour of the night Kathy Rubinkowski died. The call came in a few minutes after midnight. Danilo and his partner, Ramona Gregus, responded to the shooting of a female DOA. Danilo was the DIC-the detective in charge-who oversaw the handling of the crime scene in every aspect. He and Wendy did an impressive show of how the evidence was collected, but in my opinion they went on too long. I say that because they ultimately didn’t find anything incriminating, so it only highlighted this point. But most jurors these days have watched CSI and expect these kinds of investigatory procedures. In fact, Wendy spent most of the voir dire making the point to the potential jurors that CSI is just fiction-that, in fact, finding fingerprints, for example, is remarkably harder than you’d think from watching TV. Prosecutors around the country face these unfairly high expectations from juries. I feel really bad for them. But that wouldn’t stop me from doing my “ CSI cross,” pointing out all the tremendous resources available to them but the lack of any physical evidence against my client.