Part 9 (1/2)
Tannery retreats to the evidence cart once more, and when he returns to the witness stand, he is holding a metal tool. It looks like a large pistol with a long trigger-like grip in front of the handle. There is an evidence tag wired to it.
”Do you recognize this item, Lieutenant?”
De Angelo takes it, looks at the evidence tag. ”That's the tensioning tool we found in the defendant's garage.”
”Do you know what it's used for?”
”Yes. For tightening cable ties.”
”Like the ones in these evidence bags?”
”That's right.”
”Where exactly did you find this particular tensioning tool?”
”It was underneath a workbench in the garage, covered up with a small piece of carpet.”
”Did you have an opportunity to test this particular tool to determine whether it worked properly?”
”I did.”
”And did it work?”
”It did. We tested it in the crime lab. Using cable ties similar to those in the evidence bag, we determined that it was possible to achieve tension at over two hundred pounds per square inch using the tool.”
Now Tannery has the tool, the cable ties and Crone's sport coat marked for identification and moves that they be admitted into evidence. We don't object.
”How many cases of homicide by strangulation have you investigated in your career?” asks Tannery.
”A good number.”
”More than twenty?”
”Oh yes.”
”More than fifty?”
”Maybe fifty.”
”So you have some experience.”
”Yes.”
”In your professional opinion, would the tension applied by that tool, the tensioning tool in evidence, be sufficient to strangle a person to death?”
”Easily,” says de Angelo.
”Would it be enough to account for a deep ligature furrow of the kind found around the neck of Kalista Jordan?”
”I would say so. Yes.”
Tannery nods to himself as he paces a little, between his counsel table and a rostrum set up in front of the bench where his notes are.
”Your witness,” says Tannery.
Here the game is to whittle away at the edges. I start with de Angelo's credentials as an expert.
”Lieutenant, you say you've investigated perhaps as many as fifty homicide cases involving strangulation. Is that right?”
”Yes.”
”Not all of those were murder, though, were they?”
”What do you mean?”
”I mean a good number of them were suicides?”
”Oh.” He thinks about this for a moment. ”I suppose.”
”Have you ever investigated a case of murder in which the weapon was a nylon cable tie?”
”No. Not to my recollection.”
”So, in fact, this is the first time you've ever seen a case exactly like this?”
”Every case is different,” he says.
”Still you never investigated a case involving strangulation with a cable tie. Isn't that right?”
”Yeah. Right.”
”Yet you're willing to a.s.sume that a tensioning tool was used in this case?”
”Something was used to gain leverage,” says de Angelo. ”The killer didn't tighten that cable tie with his hands alone. Too much tension,” he says.
”Yes, but does that mean he used a tensioning tool?”
”It seems like a likely possibility to me,” he says.
”But that's all it is, a possibility.”
He doesn't respond.
”Let me ask you, Lieutenant, do you know for a fact that a tensioning tool was used to tighten the cable tie around the neck of Kalista Jordan?”
”Like I said, it's likely . . .”
”I didn't ask you what was likely. I asked you if you knew for a fact whether such a tool was used.”
”No.”