Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

“LIEUTENANT Battersby, why did Mr. Douglas ask to meet with you?” Dylan asks.

“He wanted to know if we were making progress on the Lisa Yates murder case.”

Dylan gets him to explain that case for the jury, in case they are not familiar with it. Then he asks, “What was Mr. Douglas’s interest in Ms. Yates’s case?”

Battersby painstakingly tells the story that I told him that day, about my domestic violence call, my belief that Kline was guilty of hitting her, and my frustration that I couldn’t do anything about it.

“Mr. Douglas expressed to you that he was holding a grudge against Mr. Kline?”

Battersby nodded. “I don’t remember all of his exact words, but that was the general thrust of it.”

“Do you remember any of his exact words?”

Battersby frowns; he doesn’t want to be doing this. “Yes. He said he wanted to ‘strangle’ Kline.”

Dylan turns the witness over to Andy, who asks, “When Mr. Douglas made the comment about strangling Mr. Kline, did you place him under arrest for threatening a citizen with death?”

“No, I—”

“Did you warn Mr. Douglas not to do such a thing?”

“No.”

“Did you find Mr. Kline and warn him that an ex-cop was intent on killing him?”

“No.”

“What did you do?”

“Well … I laughed.”

“So you didn’t take his comment seriously?”

“I did not.”

“Okay, then when Mr. Douglas expressed an obvious interest in the Lisa Yates murder, wanting to know how your investigation was going, did you put him on your list of suspects?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was looking to find her killer. Why would he do that if he was her killer? Coming forward like that would have made no sense.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

On redirect, Dylan asks, “Lieutenant, if at the time of that meeting you knew that at some time in the future Mr. Douglas would be in a house alone with Mr. Kline’s dead body, would you have taken his threat more seriously?”

“I might have,” Battersby says. “I suppose so.”

Dylan next calls Tony Sciutto, a cop I served with in the Paterson PD. He worked in the records department, so I filed the domestic violence report with him. He’s another obviously reluctant witness, but relates how I expressed my dislike for Kline and my frustration with not being able to arrest him.

Andy has little to ask him on cross; my dislike for Kline has already been established. All Andy does is get Tony to say that he did not view my attitude as a threat to Kline, and that Tony always knew me to be an outstanding cop.

Judge Wallace sends the jury home early so he can discuss our motion to subpoena Doris Landry’s health records. Dylan, obviously, is opposed. “The defense has not even come close, they have not even made an effort, to show that whatever happened to Ms. Landry is relevant to this case.”

Andy responds, “Your Honor, we will do more than make an effort, we will demonstrate relevance quite conclusively. But we will do it during our defense case, which is the appropriate time. It is not necessary for us to do so now because relevance is not a factor here.

“Federal law is quite clear; the deceased do not have a right to privacy in medical matters. This material is absolutely available under the Freedom of Information Act; we are asking for a subpoena because applying under that act would take far too long.

“There is some deference to state law in matters of this kind, but there is nothing in New Jersey law that contradicts it. We are entitled to this information by any standard, and a showing of relevance at this time is therefore not required.”

Dylan says, “Your Honor, rather than take the defense’s word for this, we would request some time to analyze applicable New Jersey law. As Your Honor knows, this was just sprung upon us.”

Andy shakes his head, as if saddened. “I would have hoped that the prosecution team, as lawyers representing the State of New Jersey, would have been familiar with New Jersey law. The defense should not be delayed in the search for truth because the prosecution is uninformed.”

Dylan looks like his head is about to explode. “That is outrageous, Your Honor.”

“Which part?” Andy asks. “You just admitted you were uninformed. I was supporting your position.”

“Gentlemen, do I really need to hear this childish bickering?” the judge asks.

Dylan and Andy both apologize, after which Judge Wallace says that he will authorize the subpoena. I’m relieved when Andy doesn’t stick his tongue out at Dylan in triumph. Instead he asks the judge to insist on compliance with the subpoena immediately.

“All it takes is to go into the computer and print out the records,” Andy says. “That should take a matter of minutes.”

Wallace agrees and adjourns court for the day. Eddie Dowd will follow up and make sure the subpoena is served immediately.

“Nice job,” I say, but Andy frowns.

“A temporary victory. Ardmore will now get involved and will appeal the decision. This could take forever; all we did was start the process.”

That is bad news, obviously, and we’re greeted with another piece of bad news when Sam calls me on the way home. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t get into the Ardmore records.”

“Why?”

“It’s got at least two layers of encryption that are impenetrable without knowledge of the code. If our atomic secrets had this much protection, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg would be playing shuffleboard tournaments in a senior home in Florida.”

“I was wrong,” Andy says when I answer the phone.

“Is it good news or bad news that you were wrong?” I ask, not knowing what he was wrong about. It could be that he was wrong when he said we had a chance to win the case.

“Remains to be seen. They’re not contesting the subpoena; we’ll have the data by noon today. They’re having one of their computer techs access it from home.”

“I don’t like it. If it was something helpful to us, they would be fighting it tooth and nail.”

“That was my first