22
On Monday, April 9, Detective LA Finnegan and a tribe of four Milton County police officers and evidence techs executed a second search warrant on Caleb Tate’s mansion. They wanted to see if they could find strands of Rikki’s hair for testing—perhaps from an old brush—that might generate results different from the hair on her head when she died. They also needed detailed information from Tate’s computer. The court had authorized the warrant on the condition that a special master oversee the retrieval of data. The court was worried that there might be information on the hard drive pertaining to Tate’s other cases that was protected by the attorney-client privilege.
Somebody—and I was pretty sure I knew who it was—had tipped off the media so the local TV stations could show live footage of the police swarming Tate’s home. They also ran excerpts from the affidavit we’d filed in support of the search warrant.
Unfortunately, we found little additional information, on the computer or otherwise, that helped our investigation. Tate had done his spring cleaning after the first search. And then, the day after the second search, he struck back.
LA sent me a text just before noon on Tuesday with the latest.
I called LA to make sure I had it right. “They’re going to interview him about the case?”
“Not just that,” LA told me. “He’s taking a polygraph on the air.”
“What?”
“The man’s got a flair for the dramatic.”
We gathered in the conference room to watch the big show—me, Regina, LA, and a half-dozen other staff members and attorneys from our office. Masterson was on the campaign trail. I had invited Dr. O’Leary, the medical examiner, but she had other pressing work.
The program started with an earnest young reporter named Lori Conrad asking Tate questions about his wife’s death. Conrad was one of the most popular television reporters in the Atlanta market. She sat face to face with Tate, the way the big-name reporters did on 60 Minutes. After a few softball questions, Conrad got to the point.
“Despite everything you’ve said, there are still some who believe that you poisoned your wife. What would you say to them?”
Caleb looked smug and seemed torn between looking at Lori and staring directly into the camera. “I’ve been mostly silent since my wife’s death because I knew that defending myself would mean talking about some very private things in our lives—things that might tarnish Rikki’s memory. But I’ve finally come to realize that she would not want this to be a double tragedy. We loved each other. And as tragic as her death was, she would not want that tragedy compounded by having me blamed for it.”
Caleb swallowed hard and continued. “As you probably know, Lori, you can tell how long someone has been ingesting drugs by testing their hair. Drugs bond to the roots of the hair and become part of the hair shaft as the hair grows out. I’m assuming that the investigators have tested Rikki’s hair. If they have, they should release those results.”
“What do you think those results would prove?” Lori Conrad asked.
“That my wife had been abusing narcotics for a very long time.”
When Tate said it, with that cocksure attitude of his, I glanced quickly around the room. It was the first time in the case that I wondered whether Tate had a source inside our investigation. If we indicted, we would have to reveal the hair-testing results. But right now, there was no way he should know about them. Unfortunately, his assessment was right on the money. The hair results had confirmed six months of drug ingestion.
Others in the room seemed transfixed by the interview, unperturbed by the hair-testing comments.
“But some of our viewers might think you had been slowly poisoning her,” Conrad said. “How would you respond to that?”
Tate smirked as if it was ludicrous that he had to put up with such far-fetched allegations. “I would respond the same way I responded to the investigators and the DA’s office. I told ADA Jamie Brock, who is spearheading this investigation, that I would cooperate fully. I said I would come in and answer questions, produce documents they needed, let them search my house as often as they needed, or take a polygraph test. I have nothing to hide.”
Lori Conrad scrunched her face into a confused look, one that seemed rehearsed. I felt my stomach clench. I knew what was coming next.
“Did it surprise you that Ms. Brock was handling this case?”
“I’ll say this: I was surprised that out of twenty-six attorneys in the DA’s office, they chose the one person whom I have a history with. You may recall that I defended the man accused of killing Ms. Brock’s mother.”
When Conrad let the answer linger for a second, it felt to me as if the other attorneys in our conference room were stealing sideways glances at me. I braced myself.
“What did Ms. Brock tell you when you offered to cooperate?”
Caleb couldn’t resist a little shake of the head. “She basically went off on me. She told me I had better watch myself. She told me if I gave her even the slightest bit of rope, she would use it to lynch me from the nearest tree.”
Conrad acted startled. “She said that—‘lynch you from the nearest tree’?”
“Those were her exact words.”
A few of the ADAs in the room registered their disapproval at the dramatic tone of the interview. Those hadn’t been my exact words, but still I felt my face turn red as I realized that Tate had set me up.
“That’s why I came to you,” Caleb Tate said to his host. He appeared sincere. Hurt.
I wanted to throw something.
“The DA’s office wouldn’t accept my offer to take a polygraph, so I asked if you’d be interested in doing one on the air.”
I scowled at the audacity of it. I hoped the public would see through this.
Lori Conrad turned sideways to the camera, proud of herself for landing such an impressive stunt. “We brought in Dr. Stanley Feldman, one of the top polygraph analysts in the country. Earlier today, he sat down with Caleb Tate and administered an exhaustive test.” She paused for effect, then turned back to Caleb. “We’re going to show the viewers some footage from that test and then, after the break, we’ll have Dr. Feldman on live to give us the results.”
Once more she turned to the camera. The cheese factor was off the charts. “Even Mr. Tate does not know what Dr. Feldman concluded.”
As the advertisements rolled, my friends in the DA’s office jumped to my defense. Tate was a grandstander. Polygraphs were notoriously unreliable. Experienced liars like Tate could fool them every time. This was just a publicity stunt from a desperate defendant. The whole city would see it that way.
But Regina Granger was silent. So, too, was LA. I could tell he wasn’t used to being outflanked in the media.
Dr. Feldman made quite a show of it after the break. He talked about the mechanics of the polygraph test and how it could detect even the slightest increases in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and perspiration. Yes, there were some hardened liars who were able to game the exam, but he had ways of telling whether somebody was trying to fake it. That was most definitely not the case here. Feldman was 100 percent convinced that these results were accurate; he would stake his formidable national reputation on it.
“How many polygraphs have you administered?” Lori Conrad asked.
“I don’t know. Probably a couple thousand. Maybe more. Frankly, I don’t even try to keep track.”
Satisfied, Conrad asked the question everyone was waiting for: “So what’s your conclusion? Did Caleb Tate poison his wife?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Did Caleb Tate provide any of the drugs that caused Rikki Tate’s death?”
“Absolutely not.”
“In a court of law, you are required to express scientific opinions to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. Do you have that kind of certainty with regard to this test?”
“I am familiar with the standard,” Dr. Feldman said. “And my level of certainty here is well beyond the standard required for admissibility in a court of law.”
The camera zeroed in on Caleb Tate, tight enough so you could see the pores, and his expression showed genuine relief. He didn’t seem to know that this result was coming. Maybe he was just a really good actor, or maybe he didn’t kill his wife. For a moment, even I had a flicker of doubt.
But only for a moment. “It’s junk science,” I said. “He’ll never get that test admitted in this case, and he knows it.”
“He just did,” LA said.