Heartstone

“Like what?”

“Details,” Shindler said evasively. “I can’t remember any specific examples right now. Look, forget it, huh? I’ve got to see Heider now.”

Shindler walked away and Caproni returned to his office. He did not believe Shindler. Something was wrong here. The question was what to do about it. He didn’t want to run off half-cocked to Heider without more proof and he certainly didn’t want to tell the defense about Toller if the prisoner’s story was a fabrication. Then there was the problem of the time of death. If the coroner was right, Toller had to be mistaken or lying.

Caproni sorted through a stack of papers and picked up Dr. Beauchamp’s autopsy report on Elaine Murray. Something in the report had bothered him when he had read it the first time, but he had not thought much of it, because he had not heard of Eddie Toller yet. He found the section and reread it. He didn’t know enough about biology to know if he was right or not, but he knew someone who could help him. He picked up the phone and dialed the University Medical School.

The next day, at eleven in the morning, Caproni’s intercom buzzed.

“There is a call for you from a Dr. Rohmer. Do you want to take it?”

“Yes,” Caproni said, trying to contain his excitement. Kyle Rohmer was a young gynecologist who worked at the Medical School. Caproni had met him at a party approximately a year before and had seen him socially on occasion since then.

“Al,” Rohmer said, “I’ve got the information you wanted. Fortunately, Dr. Gottlieb had actually done some research in the area, so I was able to find my sources pretty fast.”

“Shoot.”

“Okay. Now you say that the doctor who did the autopsy on the girl said she died four to six weeks before she was found and that morphologically identifiable sperm were found in her vagina. That’s just not possible.

“Dr. O. J. Pollak’s review of spermatozoa morphological survival time, in an article called ‘Semen and Seminal Stains’ found in the Archives of Pathology, 1943, states that thirty minutes to twenty-four hours is the more usual range. Dr. Bornstein in ‘Investigation of Rape: Medico-Legal Problems,’ Medical Trial Technique Quarterly, 1963, suggests forty-eight hours to be the maximum spermatozoa morphological survival time. Drs. Gonzales, Vance, Helpern, Milton, Charles and Umberger in Legal Medicine, 1954, maintain that spermatozoa can be recovered from the vagina as long as three to four days after their introduction. W. F. Enos, G. T. Ma

“Yes. Very much. Can you mail me copies of the articles you just referred to?”

“Sure. Anything else you want me to do?”

“No. You’ve been a real help.”

Caproni hung up the phone and closed his eyes. How to proceed? He now had concrete evidence to support Toller’s story. He could go to Heider and tell him what he had discovered, but a feeling about his superior warned him not to. Heider was in this case to get publicity. Caproni had heard enough office scuttlebutt, and he had seen enough while working with Heider, to realize that Heider needed this case to further his political career. The case was unimportant. It served only as a means of getting Heider’s name in the papers every week. He was not going to dismiss a prosecution of this magnitude on the basis of the findings in a few scattered medical journals. Especially when the evidence pointing toward guilt was so strong.

And that was the crux of Caproni’s problem. He had gone through the evidence and he believed that the Coolidges were guilty. Toller’s story raised a possibility that they were not, but only a possibility and a slim one at that. Even so, under the United States Supreme Court decision in Brady versus Maryland the prosecution was obligated to turn over to the defense any evidence in its possession that would tend to clear a defendant and Toller’s evidence would meet the criteria, if Toller was telling the truth. If the prosecution kept Toller’s story secret and the defense found out, the Coolidges would have grounds for overturning their convictions if they were found guilty. And more important as far as Caproni was concerned, if the prosecution did not reveal Toller’s information to the defense, it would be violating the Canon of Ethics. If Toller was telling the truth!

Caproni sighed. He was back where he started. He had to have some way of substantiating the facts in Toller’s story. And there was a way that he could do that, he suddenly realized. Find Heartstone. He had an idea. A person like Heartstone would have to have a criminal record. He might have been arrested recently. If he had, there would be a file on his case and, in that file, a police report with the defendant’s address. He hurried down to the file room.

Caproni was in luck. Eleven months ago, William Lewis Heartstone had been arrested for “Public Intoxication” and “Carrying a Concealed Weapon.” Officer Clark McGivern had responded to a call concerning a disturbance at a skid row bar. Heartstone had been drunk, raving and brandishing a taped broom handle which McGivern found concealed under Heartstone’s coat at the time of the arrest. Caproni looked for the section of the report that was used to list the defendant’s address. It was blank.

Caproni returned to his office and dialed police headquarters. Officer McGivern was on patrol, but the officer he spoke to promised to have him called on his car radio. Twenty minutes later McGivern was on the phone. At five-thirty that evening, he was seated in a booth in a coffee shop several blocks from the courthouse sipping coffee while Caproni explained a confidential project he wished him to undertake.

“I remember this case vaguely,” McGivern said, after studying the copy of the police report that Caproni brought with him. McGivern was young, tall and well built. He had blue eyes, a nice smile that revealed a set of perfect teeth and sandy blond hair that was balding prematurely. “Whatever happened to him? It never went to trial, did it?”

“No. Heartstone was recoged and never showed for trial.”

“I’m not surprised he missed his court date. Probably forgot he was arrested by the time the booze wore off.”

“Do you think you could find him for me?”

“I can try, but it might take some time. The guy looked like a transient. He might not even be in town.”

“I realize that, but it’s very important.

“There’s one more thing. I want this kept confidential. I don’t want you telling anyone what you are doing or who you are doing it for and that includes police officers, district attorneys, anyone.”

McGivern’s brow furrowed and he looked at Caproni suspiciously.

“This isn’t something illegal?”

“No, it’s not illegal, but the work I am doing is very sensitive. If word of this leaked to the wrong people, there could be plenty of trouble,” Caproni said, failing to add that he was the one who would be in trouble.

Caproni took out his business card and wrote his home phone number and address on the back. He handed the card to McGivern.

“As soon as you locate Heartstone, I want to know. Day or night.”

McGivern fingered the card and placed it in his wallet. They shook hands and Caproni left.

Bobby Coolidge was standing on the second-floor balcony of a manor house of a great estate. The manor house was constructed of an odd combination of Ionic columns, stark concrete blocks and unpainted wooden planks. The house was incomplete and furnished rooms, carpeted with Persian rugs and lighted by Tiffany lamps, opened into bare rooms whose western walls did not exist and whose ceiling was the sky.