Office Hours

 

Tuesday morning, just before ten AM, two bailiffs led Griff to the defense table in Courtroom 2 dressed in his jailhouse stripes.

“Good morning, Defendant Crowe. How was your ride over to court?” Johnny asked.

“Hiya, fatso,” Maura said. “Ready for Office Hours?”

Griff scowled at her. “Office Hours?”

“It is what we Marines call an Article 15 hearing,” Johnny said. “I recollect you referring to it as the ‘Captain’s Mast’ in your communication with Mr. Rex, which is the Navy equivalent of the same.”

“Excuse me, but a murder trial is a bit more serious than that.”

Johnny looked Griff in the eye, then shook his head. “Nah. Not this one. Trust me.”

“Everybody keeps telling me that.” Griff looked at Maura.

She smiled and nodded.

Their attention was drawn to the entrance as the County Prosecutor entered the courtroom with the man in the suit Maura had photographed at Griff’s arraignment. The two sat in the last row of the gallery.

“All rise,” called out the bailiff.

Judge Hemmings walked in from his chambers and took his seat on the bench.

After dispensing with the proceeding’s formalities, the prosecution called Newport, Kentucky, Police Detective Paul Douglas to the stand with his murder book to lay out the Commonwealth’s evidence in the case against Griff.

Douglas testified dispassionately that late on the night of June 7 or in the early morning hours of June 8, Griff shot Wes Eply five times with a nine-millimeter handgun in Bellevue Beach Park, killing him and leaving the body along the shore of the Ohio River where it was found the next day by municipal workers emptying the trash receptacles. The evidence presented included the Medical Examiner’s autopsy report, video footage of the park, receipts from Christopher’s Bed and Breakfast, the FAA registration records for Griff’s Cirrus, the rental agreement signed by Eply for the National Rental car found abandoned at the uncontrolled Claremont County Airport outside the Class B airspace of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, and Griff’s military service record.

The Commonwealth’s theory of the crime was that Griff, fearful of incriminating information Eply uncovered in his research into the holdings of Cliff Nickolson for his and Griff’s employer, Stein, Baylor and Stein, flew into and out of the area under cover of darkness in his private plane, thus avoiding any airline ticket records and TSA surveillance video; killed his colleague; and stole his laptop—which was still missing—to suppress the information and documents collected for reasons which, William Sewell promised, would be made clear shortly, then sat down at the prosecution table.

Johnny looked to Griff sitting next to him and mouthed, “Helena.”

Griff nodded, his face impassive.

“Mr. Leonard, cross?” Judge Hemmings asked.

“Thank you, your honor.” Johnny stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. “Just a point or two of clarification for my edification.”

“Proceed.”

“Detective Douglas, I am duly impressed at the speed with which you have dispatched this case.”

Douglas clasped his hands together and rested them on top of the murder book. He nodded, watching Johnny come around to pace casually in front of the witness stand.

“And you, your own self, developed all of this evidence, yes?”

“I, ah, er…” Douglas looked at Sewell, then to the back row of the gallery. He took a deep breath, then addressed Johnny. “I, um, of course, the department made use of all available law enforcement resources.”

“Local, state…and federal?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Of course.” Johnny stopped to glance towards the back of the courtroom, then continued strolling about, pausing occasionally to look at Detective Douglas. “Now, I seem to recall the autopsy report tallied up five entry wounds, but only found stippling on his forehead from the final fatal shot. Did the folks in forensics happen to test Mr. Eply’s clothes for gun powder residue?”

“Yes. There was gunshot residue on the victim.”

“So, the four other shots—while not contact wounds—were thrown Mr. Eply’s way from a fairly close distance. How close?”

“Mr. Eply and Crowe were acquainted from their work together at Stein, Baylor and Stein, so it is reasonable to presume that the victim had no cause to fear being in close proximity to his assailant. I’d estimate the shots were taken five to fifteen feet or so away—except, of course, for the coup de grâce.”

“Refresh my memory, please. Where was the victim struck before he was put down?”

“The right shoulder. Abdomen. Left arm and left thigh.”

“Huh, only two shots hit center mass. But you also presented evidence that the defendant was a United States Navy SEAL, a highly trained military commando and expert in the use of firearms. Let me ask you, detective, if, during your own firearm qualification on the police range, you shot a grouping such as was found in the victim’s body, would you have passed the Department’s minimum standards?”

Douglas exhaled loudly. “No.”

“Yet, you are suggesting fifty percent of a Navy SEAL’s shots would have failed to leave even holes anywhere in a paper target from five feet away? That ain’t right.”

“Perhaps, the victim was moving around.”

“And perhaps you would like to share the photographic evidence of footprints and scuff marks from your binder which might indicate such activity at the scene of the crime.”

“I don’t have any such photos.”

“If Mr. Eply was moving around to get away from his assailant, then it might be reasonable to expect that he might have been hit from the side or from behind, but all of the five entry wounds were from the front, correct?”

“Yes, that is correct. Maybe the defendant just doesn’t spend time on the range anymore.”

“And would you have evidence of any such oxidation of Mr. Crowe’s shooting skills in your binder, Detective?”

“No. I don’t know one way or another.”

“Did Mr. Crowe use a Glock 17 or a Walther PPQ to allegedly fire the five bullets into his work colleague?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Why is that?”

“We did not recover the murder weapon. It is suspected that Crowe threw it into the Ohio River after shooting Mr. Eply in the head.”

“Detective Douglas, there are thirty-nine billion rounds of small arms ammunition manufactured each and every year—forty percent of them being nine-millimeter parabellum. What physical evidence do you have to present to us here today linking the five particular bullets fired into the victim—out of the billions and billions and billions, nay trillions of bullets out there rattling around in this old world of ours—to the trigger finger of my client?”

“This is a circumstantial case.”

“A circumstantial case which includes no weapon and no ballistics report.”

“The victim was killed with jacketed hollow point bullets.”

“What is the caliber of your service weapon?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your department issued weapon. When you load its magazine, what caliber bullet do you use?”

“Nine-millimeter.”

“Your honor,” Sewell said impatiently. “Please. The detective is not on trial.”

“Seems he could be.”

“Move along, Johnny,” said the Judge.

“Getting back to this circumstantial evidence. You showed a video of Mr. Crowe in Bellevue Park—and maybe my eyesight isn’t as hawk-like as it once was in my misspent youth—but I don’t recall seeing a date and time stamp on the screen. Was that particular footage from June seventh or June eighth?”

“The video shown was from May.”

“But the Medical Examiner determined that Mr. Eply expired sometime between, say, ten PM the evening of June seventh and three AM June eighth, based on lividity, liver temperatures, and other such scientific medical facts and all, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Well, was there a malfunction in the surveillance equipment that particular night or a careless mishandling of the video footage wherein it was misplaced or erased?”

“No.”

“Thank goodness. Would you be so kind as to show us the actual video footage from the actual night Mr. Eply was killed?”

“I could, but the defendant does not appear in it.”

“Well, that seems to be quite the circumstance, does it not? How could that be?”

“As you noted, Crowe was a Navy SEAL, so he would have likely approached this killing much like one of his SEAL team missions, which would involve reconnaissance and planning. The video footage from early May—the third or fourth, I believe—establishes that he knew the park and, likely, identified the locations of the cameras to avoid detection on the night of the murder.”

“The night of the murder being definitively the seventh or the eighth of June.”

“Correct.”

“And this reconnoitering happening the first week of May, makes this murder premeditated?”

“Definitely.”

“Well, then, in addition to being a Navy SEAL, how in the world did you come to determine that my client is clairvoyant? Or was that in his military service record as well?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If Mr. Eply only began his inquiry into the holdings of Cliff Nickolson after Memorial Day, then how in tarnation did Mr. Crowe know beforehand that he would need to kill him?”

“Uh, Mr. Eply’s laptop has not been recovered.”

Johnny stopped facing the witness stand and slowly shook his head. “Well, at least the one indisputable circumstance in this circumstantial case is that Mr. Eply expired in the darkness of June seventh or eighth, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Thank you Detective. No more questions.” Johnny returned to the defense table and sat down next to Griff.

“What more do you have for us, Mr. Sewell?”

“Just two more witnesses, your honor.”

Johnny looked across the aisle at Sewell. “Bring them on, Mr. Prosecutor.”

“Now, Johnny, it’s almost eleven-thirty,” said the judge.

“I apologize, your honor, for my unseemly salivations at the prospect of fulfilling my duties as an advocate for Mr. Crowe and seeing fit to restore his liberty in the most expeditious fashion possible.”

“Down, boy. Down. Let’s recess for lunch. Reconvene at one-thirty.” Judge Hemmings banged his gavel.

Maura watched the bailiffs take Griff back to the holding cell. She came around to stand by Johnny, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You did good, Papa. No?”

“Won’t be enough. Let’s see what the afternoon brings.”

“Come on, let’s get some lunch.”

“Better to hunt when you’re hungry, my dear.”

“Well, let’s at least get some fresh air.”

Maura and Johnny were the last ones to leave the courtroom.

 

***~~~***