True Colors

Vivi Ann stood up, rising like a white rose from a messy garden, and tried to smile at Dallas.

Before Dallas was seated at the defense table, the guards removed his restraints.

Judge Debra Edwards entered the courtroom, wearing her flowing black robes. She took her place on the bench and looked at the attorneys. “Are the parties ready to proceed?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” the lawyers said in tandem.

The judge nodded. “Bring in the jury.”

The jurors filed into the courtroom in quiet order; all of them stared openly at Dallas. Several were already frowning.

Sara Hamm stood up. With that simple act, she commanded attention. An imposing woman in a crisp blue suit with a needle-thin white pinstripe, she looked professional and calm. She smiled at the jury and moved toward them confidently. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the facts in this case are simple and straightforward.” She had the voice of a fairy tale witch: smooth and honeyed on the surface but with a layer of steel beneath. Winona found herself leaning forward, hanging on every word.

“During the course of this trial, the state will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dallas Raintree feigned an illness on Christmas Eve of last year to avoid having to attend church services with his family. While his wife and child were away, he went to Catherine Morgan’s home and he killed her.

“How do we know this beyond a reasonable doubt? The answer is evidence. Mr. Raintree left a trail behind him that investigators were able to follow. First and most obvious was his long-term association with the victim. Several eyewitnesses will testify as to Mr. Raintree’s regular weekend trysts with Ms. Morgan. These evenings have been described as ‘rowdy, drunken, lewd’ gatherings that went on long into the morning. But association doesn’t equal murder. For that we have to look to the physical and forensic evidence. Of which there is plenty.”

Sara held out a photograph of Cat Morgan; in it, she was sitting on her porch, smiling at the camera. In the next photograph, she was slumped against a bloody wall, naked, a torn dark bullet wound in her chest.

Several jurors flinched and looked away; others glared at Dallas. Sara Hamm strolled in front of the jury, pausing now and then in front of the female jurors as she went on, describing the crime in excruciating detail. When she was finished with that, she turned to the jury again.

“The state will introduce evidence that the gun used to kill Catherine Morgan was owned by Dallas Raintree. Experts lifted his fingerprints from the weapon. That alone could be enough to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, but the state has even more proof. An expert from the Washington State Crime Lab will use hair samples gathered from the scene to place Dallas Raintree in Catherine Morgan’s bed that night, and an eyewitness will testify that he left her house at just past eight o’clock that evening. The medical examiner has placed Ms. Morgan’s death at somewhere between six and nine-thirty on the twenty-fourth. DNA samples from the crime scene will establish that Dallas Raintree is the same blood type as the man who had sex with Ms. Morgan just before her death.

“Coincidence? Hardly. When all this evidence is put together, the answer is inescapable. Dallas Raintree, who had a very public affair with Catherine Morgan before his marriage, went back to the affair sometime thereafter. After an argument of some kind, things went wrong for the lovers. Evidence will show that they fought for control of the gun. And Dallas Raintree won that fight. He shot her in the chest at point-blank range and then went home to his wife, celebrating a cozy Christmas while Catherine Morgan lay dead in her house. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a commonsense case. There is no doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that Dallas Raintree murdered Catherine Morgan in cold blood, and at the conclusion of the evidence I am confident that you’ll find him guilty of this heinous crime. The mistake Ms. Morgan made on that dark Christmas Eve night was in believing that the defendant was her friend and letting him into her home. She died for that mistake, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s not compound it now. Let’s make sure that Dallas Raintree is never able to hurt anyone again.” She returned to her seat and sat down. “Thank you.”

Winona sat back in her seat, finally releasing the breath she’d been holding. She glanced up at the clock, seeing that it was nearly ten-thirty. The hour and a half Sara Hamm had been talking had flown by. But it was the jury that captured her attention. Almost all of them were staring at Dallas through cold, angry eyes.

Dallas’s attorney rose. He appeared nervous and ill-put-together next to the elegant prosecuting attorney, and when he spoke his voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. Winona wondered how many murder trials he’d done. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have just heard the story the state would like you to buy; it is a collection of circumstances that appear to fit together like a puzzle, but upon closer examination create only a portrait of reasonable doubt. Dallas Raintree was sick that Christmas Eve. He never left his home that evening, and he certainly never killed the woman he identified as a friend. A good friend, but not a lover. Evidence will show that Catherine Morgan had lots of men in her life. Additionally, the DNA evidence left at the scene does not identify Dallas Raintree as the man who had sex with Ms. Morgan. Experts will testify that the sample was too small to be tested. And the matching of his blood type is meaningless; forty percent of the population shares that blood type. The state has arrested the wrong man. It is as simple as that. Dallas Raintree is innocent.” With a nod to the jury, a kind of head-bobbing exclamation point, the man returned to his seat and sat down.

Winona couldn’t believe it. Lovejoy’s opening had taken less than fourteen minutes. A look at the jury convinced her that he hadn’t swayed one mind, not after the prosecutor’s brilliant blow-by-blow account of the crime.

She saw Vivi Ann frown at Aurora, who shrugged.

Winona wasn’t sure what to make of it. She didn’t know much about criminal law and knew very little about trials, but the defense attorney seemed to be making a crucial mistake.

The judge looked at the prosecuting attorney. “Ms. Hamm, you may call your first witness.”

The rest of the day and all of the following afternoon were taken up with the slow lacquering of facts, layer by layer. The prosecuting attorney brought in a series of crime scene witnesses, from Sheriff Bailor, to his deputy, to the dispatcher, to the photographer, to the medical examiner. In total, they confirmed everything that Sara Hamm had promised in her opening. Somewhere at or around five on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Cat Morgan let someone into her home, presumably someone she knew, given that there was no evidence of forced entry. Several disreputable-looking witnesses testified that Dallas was at Cat’s every Saturday night and repeated the speculation that they’d been lovers. Photographs of the bedroom revealed evidence of a fight; a lamp was knocked over and broken, a picture had fallen off of the wall. Defensive wounds on Cat’s palms suggested that she’d fought her attacker and her prints on the gun suggested that she’d actually fought for control of the weapon.

Winona sat in the gallery day after day, riveted by the slowly expanding web of circumstance and fact. She learned more than she ever wanted to know about fingerprint analysis, DNA testing, and blood types. The prosecution introduced one expert after another, proving bit by bit their assertion that Dallas’s fingerprint had been found on the gun (which had once belonged to his father—a convicted murderer himself) and that his blood type matched the sample left at the scene. The defense argued that the semen sample had been too small to run a DNA test on, and that the blood type match was meaningless, and, perhaps most importantly, that two unidentified prints had also been found on the weapon. But the damage had already been done.

On the morning of the fourth day of trial, the prosecuting attorney called Dr. Barney Olliver, a forensic criminologist. After presenting more than an hour of testimony about his credentials and testing methods, Sara got to the point. “Dr. Olliver, we’ve established that you are an expert on hair analysis. Were hair samples recovered from the crime scene?”

“Indeed.”

Ms. Hamm moved to admit a series of hair samples found at the scene, and then said, “I know this is complicated scientific testimony, Dr. Olliver, but could you explain your findings to this court?”

“Certainly. May I go to my boards?” he asked, indicating four large easels.

The judge nodded.

For the next hour, Mr. Olliver explained everything there was to know about hair sample analysis, including itemizing the hairs found at the scene, textures, thicknesses, cuticles, and more.

Winona could see the jury losing interest, taking idle notes, until the prosecuting attorney said, “And of the nine pubic hairs found at the scene, which you examined and subjected to your rigorous testing methods, did any match the defendant’s?”

“Objection!” Roy said, coming out of his chair. “The use of the word match is misleading.”

“Sustained,” the judge agreed.