“If the casing wasn’t moved, yes.”
“Detective, have you ever fired a Glock weapon?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Hitting someone with a shot between the eyes from ten feet away with a Glock pistol-that’s no easy feat, is it?”
“It’s good marksmanship,” he agreed.
“It’s excellent marksmanship, wouldn’t you agree?”
He gave that a moment. “Yes,” he said.
“And the street lighting on Gehringer Street was rather weak, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure I would characterize it that way.”
I walked him through the high-powered flashlights and the remote-area lighting equipment he brought in to conduct the crime scene investigation that night. I drew it out in a series of questions to overstate my point, which was that the shot from the Glock was not only impressive because of the distance but also the relative darkness.
“But since you raised it, Detective.” I moved from the podium now. I didn’t even feel my knee. “In your experience, why would someone move a shell casing?”
Danilo thought for a moment. He probably hadn’t expected that question. “To throw off the measurements,” he said. “Criminals alter crime scenes to make the story look different than it was.”
That was what I needed. “Criminals try to alter things to hide their crimes, yes?”
“Of course.”
“For example, some killers pick up their shell casings after firing their weapon. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“And in your experience, you’ve seen instances where killers robbed their victims after killing them to make their motive appear to be robbery. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? They had a different motive but they wanted to conceal it, so they made it look like a robbery? In your twenty-two years on the force, you’ve seen that?”
Danilo had no way out of that. “I’ve seen that happen. It’s not the norm.”
“But you’ve seen people use a purported robbery to cover up their real motive.”
“Objection, Your Honor. Asked and answered.”
“I’ll withdraw,” I said. “Kathy Rubinkowski was a paralegal at a law firm, wasn’t she, Detective?”
“Correct.”
“Do you know how many criminal cases she worked on?”
“I don’t, no.”
The answer was zero, but I don’t know was what I wanted.
“Well, then describe for us generally what cases she worked on.”
He shook his head. “I’m not able to do that.”
“You didn’t investigate the cases she worked on?”
“I didn’t consider it necessary, no.”
“Did you check her e-mails?”
“No, sir. I didn’t consider it necessary, given that your client was found with the victim’s personal items and the murder weapon, which he claimed as his own.”
“Did Tom say how long that gun had been in his possession?” I asked. I asked it as an open-ended question only because I knew the answer; the entire conversation was captured on tape.
“No, he didn’t,” Danilo conceded.
“He didn’t say, ‘I’ve owned that gun for ten years.’”
“No, sir.”
“He didn’t say, ‘I’ve owned that gun for ten hours.’”
“No, sir, he did not.”
“Detective, you’ve had some experience with homeless people as both a beat cop and later a detective, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t it fair to say that homeless people are often possessive of their things?”
“They can be. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but I take your point.”
Nice of him. “So isn’t it possible that when Tom said, ‘That’s my gun,’ that he had only possessed that gun for an hour before he was arrested?”
“That would surprise me.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Possible, I suppose.”
“So it’s possible that someone dumped that gun over the fence-the closest fence to the crime scene-and Tom was there. He picked it up, and in his mind, voila, it was now his gun.”
“Objection. Calls for speculation.”
“It’s no more speculative than the prosecution’s theory,” I protested. That wasn’t a valid response to the objection, and every lawyer in the room knew it. It was my closing argument.
The judge sustained and admonished me.
Good enough. I wanted to get back to my larger point. “Did you talk to Kathy’s co-workers about whether anyone had a problem with Kathy or would want to hurt Kathy?”
Danilo looked up and sighed. “I don’t believe we interviewed them, no.”
“What about her friends?”
“No, sir. As I indicated-”
“It wasn’t necessary. Yes, Detective. So you would have no way of knowing whether Kathy Rubinkowski had expressed some fear for her life? Fear that someone wanted to hurt her. You would have no way of knowing that?”
“Objection.” Wendy got to her feet. “This is all rampant speculation.”
“Your Honor, I’m simply inquiring into the depth, or lack thereof, of the investigation.”
Judge Nash paused, then overruled the objection.
“We had our guy, Counselor,” said Danilo.
“So you can’t tell this jury, one way or the other, whether Kathy sent e-mails to friends or co-workers that she was afraid for her life.”
“He said he didn’t review her e-mails, Counsel.” This from the judge.
I glared at him and then moved on. “And as the lead investigator on this case, Detective, that would be kind of an interesting thing to know, wouldn’t it? That the victim thought her life was in danger?”
“Objection. Argumentative and speculative, Your Honor.”
“Overruled. The witness will answer. But Mr. Kolarich,” said the judge, peering down at me over his glasses, “don’t belabor this.”
“Yes, Judge.” I looked at Shauna, who nodded back at me. She was right. It was probably time.
“Detective,” I said, “isn’t it true that Kathy Rubinkowski was about to blow the whistle on what she believed to be serious criminal activity only days before she was murdered?”
“Objection!” That was the quickest I’d seen Wendy leap up. “May we have a sidebar, Your Honor?”
The judge waved us up. I’d thought about going to the judge first, showing him everything I’d come up with to date, and begging him to let me introduce this evidence. But I liked springing it better. No matter how Judge Nash ruled on this, the jury heard it at least once.
The judge stepped down from the bench. We met him off to the side.
He gave me a long look.
“This better be good, Mr. Kolarich,” he said.
78
The prosecutors, Wendy Kotowski and Maggie Silvers, were speechless. Judge Nash, sitting behind his desk in his ornate chambers, was likewise dumbfounded. My client, Tom Stoller, sat quietly without showing any reaction.
Wendy Kotowski said, “Judge, I have to assume this is some kind of a joke.”
“I know it’s late, Your Honor,” I said. “Believe me, I know. But this is the first time I’ve had something concrete to show you. If I’d come to you before now, I don’t think I would have had much chance at succeeding.”
“And you think you have a chance now?” asked the judge. Out of his robe, his bony shoulders and stooped posture made him appear frail. But he still had that cannon of a voice.
“I would hope so, Your Honor. I know all about procedural rules, and I take them seriously. I’ve been working around the clock to compile this evidence so that I could give you something more than speculation.”
“It’s still speculation,” said Wendy. “This company-Global Harvest-sold fertilizer to one of its subsidiaries? Another company sold another product, also perfectly legal, to that same subsidiary? Kathy Rubinkowski came up with a theory that this meant someone is building a bomb, and she was murdered to silence her?”
The judge pointed at Wendy but looked at me. “Beyond the fact that all of this information is untimely, it’s also unconvincing,” he said. “If you think these individuals are up to something like you’re saying-some kind of terrorist
activity-then you should talk to the FBI.”
“I have,” I said.
“All right, you have.”
“Judge, the victim in this case stumbled upon the information and ended up dead less than a week later. And when she sent an e-mail to her boss at the law firm, that e-mail never made it to him. We just spoke with the individual, Tom Rangle. He never got the e-mail. Which means that someone at the law firm was monitoring Kathy’s e-mails and deleted them. And then killed her only days later. I have more than enough to take to a jury on this.”