False Witness Read online

  False Witness

  A Novel

  Dorothy Uhnak

  This book is dedicated with deep affection and gratitude ...

  to Tom O’Rourke, for a lifetime of friendship

  to Jack O’Brian and Barry Farber for consistent kindness and generosity from the very beginning through the long years

  Special thanks to my daughter, Tracy, not only for the hours of typing and deciphering, but more importantly for offering encouragement and strength when I faltered

  and to Dr. Marvin J. “Chick” Schissel, as fine a raconteur as he is a dentist

  Contents

  Prologue: Crime Scene

  Part One: The Victim

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two: The Accusation

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Three: The Case

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part Four: Grand Jury

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part Five: Questions of Guilt

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  A Biography of Dorothy Uhnak

  Prologue

  CRIME SCENE

  AS SHE LAY NEAR death, Sanderalee Dawson was spared the pain of her terrible injuries by shock.

  She swallowed the salty thin blood that filled her mouth. It was an instinctive attempt to keep the life force inside her, as was her attempt to breathe in small, short, careful gasps rather than in huge lung-filling expansions, which she might then be unable to exhale. There was a slow dull consciousness working, devoid of panic: if her attempts to breathe made a lot of noise, he might hear her, might still be nearby, would realize she was not yet dead, might return to hurt her again.

  Having made the decision to survive, she experienced one quick electric shock of pain so total, so devastating that the cry caught in her throat, seemed about to strangle her. She was suffocating and it was not gentle or easy. It was terrifying and she fought against it.

  She opened her eyes and gazed without understanding at the pendulum motion of the telephone receiver as it skimmed the floor, dangling from the end of the uncurled white rubberized cord.

  There was a hand holding the receiver, the fingers locked in a rigid grasp. It was a severed hand and a thick trail of blood followed the back and forth swaying motion, in a bright red pattern on her white ceramic tile kitchen floor. It was hers.

  Part One

  THE VICTIM

  CHAPTER 1

  SHE HAD BEEN LEFT for dead. Had Sanderalee Dawson been, in fact, dead, a great many lives and reputations and careers and ambitions and relationships would now be quite different. Including mine. Especially mine.

  When my phone rings in the middle of the night, I have a facility for becoming not only awake but instantly, totally, sharply alert. For some stupid, dark-based reason, I try to convince not only the caller but myself that I wasn’t asleep, I was just lying there in the darkness waiting for an emergency call.

  As Bobby Jones attempted to control his obvious excitement, his voice expanded with the Nebraska flatness that four years in New York City had not totally obliterated. Where anyone else quickens, he slows down.

  “Lynne, I’ve sent a patrol car to pick you up. It should be at your apartment within the next five minutes or so. I’m calling from Roosevelt Hospital. They might have to move her for special surgery and it looks very bad. She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m heading for her apartment and I’ll meet you there. Your driver knows where it is—that old Holcroft Hall building near Carnegie Hall.”

  I don’t see the graveyard-shift doorman, Giorgio, very often. It is unusual for me to dash out of my building and into a New York City Police Department squad car at four in the morning. But Giorgio handled it with great aplomb: he arrived at the curb before I did and held the car door open, sweeping aside with a semi-bow as though it were your standard black limo. There wasn’t any traffic at all. We made the trip from lower Fifth, where I live, to 58th and Seventh Avenue in record time.

  Bobby Jones appeared from the shadows and escorted me into the entrance area of the building, holding open the heavy iron-scrolled glass door, which led into a small cubicle that provided the doorman a good view out. The uniformed doorman was seated behind his battered wooden desk, his job taken over by a large, thuggish-looking detective who squinted with professional suspicion.

  “This is Bureau Chief Lynne Jacobi, D.A.’s office,” Bobby informed the detective. The introductions seemed to stop on that one-sided note.

  “And your name and command, officer?”

  He sucked on a tooth while making up his mind. I’ve met his kind before. Many times.

  “Detective Arthur Godley, Homicide. Godley. Not Godfrey.”

  “Uh-huh. And this gentleman?”

  The doorman was instantly on his feet. “I’m Timothy Doyle, ma’am,” he told me in a soft, aged, melodious brogue.

  “Tim here was on duty the whole night, Miss Jacobi. He’s given me a statement, which is being typed up right now for him to sign.”

  “Mr. Doyle, I’d like to talk to you after I come back from upstairs. I could use a cup of strong wake-up tea and I have a feeling you could brew just the thing.”

  Timothy Doyle’s face lit up and he nodded enthusiastically. He was an Irishman from another era: one of the proud-humble, tough-gentle, devoted-independent, reliable-to-the-death immigrants who considered being “in service” an honorable and respectable profession.

  Bobby Jones handled the old-fashioned elevator as though he’d been doing it all his life. He brought the rumbling old car flat even with the eighth-floor hallway and held it steady with one hand on the control as he pulled at the folding gate.

  I walked directly into Detective Arthur Godley’s twin brother, or his clone.

  “Sorry, lady,” he growled. “Unless you live on this floor you can’t come up here. This is a sealed-off crime-research area.”

  Neither Bobby nor I had to go through the identifications again. Chief of Detectives Jim Barrow swept from the open door of Sanderalee Dawson’s apartment. I was enclosed momentarily in his embrace: a hard, smothering hug followed by a quick cheek kiss of friendship and I thought, fleetingly, of what the reaction of my young female staff members would have been. Oh God, that kind of chauvinistic crap. And you allow it! They have yet to discern what you allow and go with and what you put a sharp stop to. Barrow and I are equals. We work together on occasion and we have worked together very successfully through the years as each of us has risen through the ranks of our respective organizations. His division of the New York City Police Department prepares cases for consideration for my division of the New York County District Attorney’s Office. My people, in effect, evaluate and pass judgment on the work done by his people. We are the ones who have to go before the jury and present,
in an orderly and convincing fashion, what they have come up with. There have been times when we’ve disagreed. There have been bitter and unpleasant moments. There have been times when Jim Barrow and I would gladly have paced off against each other, turned and fired. Except, of course, as an advocate of strict gun control, I do not carry.

  I accept the friendly embrace from my professional equals. At times, a good hug can be very reassuring. I am nearly forty years old and I have been doing battle for many, many years without too many compromises along the way. My young female associates haven’t been in the war long enough to learn that there are necessary times of truce.

  The small square entrance foyer to Sanderalee’s apartment was dark and cavelike with shiny dark brown ceramic tile flooring, darker brown walls, small dull wall lights. By comparison, the huge living room was a blaze of light caused not merely by the lamps and raw bulbs set up by the investigators but by the decor: soft pale monochromatic beige sweep of couch leading to a subtly blending series of velvet chairs in just slightly darker shades, all set on wall-to-wall very thick, pale, mushroomy carpet in the identical hue of the walls and ceiling. Beautiful wooden accent pieces: a desk, a small antique armoire lit from within to display a precise arrangement of exquisite collector’s items—porcelains, paperweights, small silvery treasures.

  The room was out of a magazine. Every item decorator perfect. Everything calculated to set off the main occupant. Sanderalee Dawson would serve as the centerpiece. The recessed spotlights would glance off and enhance her warm beige honey-gold complexion. Even in the confusion caused by the police technicians and photographers, one could see that the professional set designer had selected with great calculation every painting on the walls, every art book and flower arrangement. There was nothing impulsive or spontaneous. The only color selected for the room came from a wonderful collection of pillows; all sizes, all shapes, all designs.

  The discordant, unanticipated color, dominating all the overturned furniture and tossed-about lamps, was the darkening brownish-red thickly shimmering blood. Sanderalee’s life force was sprayed and splattered and pooled all over the room in a way that would have reduced her decorator to suicide. There could be no cleaning up. There would have to be a complete cleaning out.

  Jim Barrow’s heavy arm wrapped around me as he guided a path carefully around the forensic people who gathered, collected, photographed, measured, traced, paced, calculated, guessed, estimated, noted and gossiped. It was all routine to them, although rarely are they called upon to perform their rites in such a lush setting. From time to time, one or another hummed or whistled or stopped work to glance admiringly at the floor-to-ceiling collection of photographs of Sanderalee Dawson along one wall. The blank and beautiful face of the professional high-fashion model watched them without expression: a haughty dark beauty, mysterious, remote, slightly threatening in the distance created by the turn of her chin. And then, the surge of life and spirit caught by an excellent photographer who had created a playful mood: a let’s have some fun with this damn thing babe, show us what ya got Sanderalee, yeah Sanderalee yeah yeah yeah. A series of quick click-click-click living shots. And then, a new Sanderalee Dawson: important lady. First black woman hostess of her own important 11:15 to midnight, five nights a week, live talk show. Important lady: beauty now merging with a keen intelligence, an in-charge, don’t try to kid me, sucker, expression. The photographer had captured the essence of this phase of Sanderalee’s personality. I’d been on her show a few times; I’d watched her on and off. Some of these photographs revealed some deep essence of the woman beyond what a snap-click-gotcha could find. I noted his name: Alan Greco.

  They had entered the apartment, Sanderalee Dawson and unidentified male, stopping while she hung her angora hat and scarf and navy blue jogging jacket on the old-fashioned railroad-car hat rack in the hallway: brass antique, barely turn of the century. They had moved into the perfection of the living room. She had taken some things from the small refrigerator behind the bar and set them on a large tray: a bottle of white wine; a bottle of Perrier water; a bowl of limes, uncut; some cheeses ready on a small china plate. There were two tall crystal glasses set on the bar, the ice cubes melting, the mineral water not poured, the elegant green bottle opened by a sterling silver opener and a sterling silver bottle cap for recapping.

  “She seems to have been preparing for a social evening, at least for a friendly snack. They never got to it. It’s a little hard to trace the sequence,” Jim Barrow admitted. He turned and pointed to a small heap of silky undergarments. “Those, the bra and bikini underpants, were found right there. But the victim was found in the kitchen dressed in her lightweight ski sweater and jogging pants. Peculiar.”

  It was peculiar. Jim pointed to a small object on the rug beside the bar. We both knelt, careful not to touch anything. It was a beautiful silver unicorn with about two inches left of what probably had been a four-inch silver horn. There was blood on the remnant of the horn and on the beautiful body of the fallen good luck symbol.

  “My guess is that he attacked her suddenly, without warning, since she was getting ready for a quiet drink of soda water.” Jim Barrow shook his head. “That’s the trouble nowadays, Lynne, everyone drinking damn bubble water instead of something sensible like Scotch. I’d say the unicorn was on the counter and she grabbed it. My guess is that she connected. Unless we find that broken-off piece of silver horn, the ‘male-unknown’ might have it imbedded in him somewhere. The blood on the unicorn could be his or hers.”

  We stood up. Barrow’s voice was soft and intense. It ignored the presence of all the technicians, the police personnel in the room, and created a lonely intimacy. I faced into the room with him as he described, from the condition of the victim, the assault: beating, tearing, ripping; rape, sodomy, the near-murder which yet may have been accomplished.

  It lingered; something of the dark passions remained and intensified the thought of Sanderalee alone with some madman. She, the center of this carefully created place of beauty and serenity, the reason for this place, this setting, had been the sole and isolated and vulnerable target of a terrible and unanticipated force.

  Barrow led me to Sanderalee’s bedroom. It was a quiet oasis, which she had obviously created for herself and to hell with the decorator. There was a feeling of controlled chaos: yes, it’s cluttered, but damn it, it’s my clutter and I know where everything is. There was a stack of papers and notebooks and magazines on the glass-topped desk; there was a small dish of penny-candy on the table next to the bed; a fancy French telephone; a doodle pad; stuffed teddy bears and pink elephants and rag-dolls on the bed. A shelf of Madame Alexander dolls, black and white, elegant, expensive, untouched, their lovely little eyes seeing everything with disdain and disinterest.

  “You got dolls in your bedroom, Lynne?” Barrow asked.

  “I had my last doll when I was about eight or nine. And then I realized the trap that was being set for me.”

  “And so you turned to law books and university applications. What’s your bedroom look like, Lynne?”

  “Steel furniture. Japanese mat on the floor. You know.”

  “Oh, Lynne, Lynne, were I a few years younger. And not married and the father of ten fine children and grandfather of six. You and I could have had a fine time of it. Here, take a look at this bathroom. Must have imported the whole damn thing from Hollywood.”

  There was, indeed, the look of Hollywood. A large redwood tub with all kinds of interesting devices: brushes, hoses, controls, little seating platforms or whatever. The room itself was huge—a swinger’s family room. There was a conventional stall shower; the toilet was carefully concealed in its own little compartment. Mirrored walls on two sides of the room. Actually they were sliding doors, which hid closets containing more clothes than your local friendly department store.

  And a lovely round sink, a flowered bowl set on a marble pedestal. The flowers in the bowl were covered with a bright, watery red. Sanderalee’s date had washe
d some of the blood off his hands in this room.

  “My guess is he left her unconscious in the kitchen. She never made it in here. He seems to have gone exploring for God knows what reason.” Jim pointed to blood smears on the mirrored doors and on the doorframe. They were smudges, as though made by the brushing of a bloody sleeve. “Then, he washed his hands in here. Doesn’t seem to have touched anything. See that bloody washcloth? He used it to turn on the water faucet. Very careful about his fingerprints. I don’t think we’ll find any from the ‘alleged perpetrator.’ ”

  “All the blood, Jim? My God, what the hell did he do to her?”

  Barrow looked at me in surprise and, apologetically, he said, “I thought you knew about all the injuries, Lynne. I assumed your man, Jones, told you.” His firm arm around my shoulders led me into the hallway, through the living room, past the small expensive little custom bar into an antiseptic kitchen: a glaringly white room. Floors, walls, ceiling, cabinets white. Butcher-block countertops; stainless steel sinks; restaurant large freezer and refrigerator and stove. Brightly lit. More shocking because of the stark contrast: red on white. More blood than I had ever seen in one place before. And I have been on the scene of some very gory homicides.

  There was a heavy meat cleaver on the floor, professional type. Bloody.

  White telephone receiver swinging slightly along the floor, covered with blood.

  “It’s still hard to trace the action, but I’d say the sexual assault took place in the living room. Now, her getting those clothes on—that’s a puzzle, but she was dressed when she came into the kitchen. At least, that’s an assumption; makes more sense than that he came in and put the clothes on her afterward. Well, at any rate, she made it into the kitchen and apparently there was a further struggle. Can’t say who grabbed the cleaver first; maybe she did, but he sure had it last.

  “He hacked off her left hand.” Jim Barrow’s right hand chopped through the air smartly toward his left wrist. “Whack-o. Severed clean at the wrist. Her hand was clutching the service telephone receiver when the uniformed men arrived.”