Proof of Intent by William J. Coughlin Page B

as a whole again, and in the context of my experience as a trained investigator, blah blah blah, all the legal verbiage you need to qualify why I’m making this judgment—what I’m saying is, I smelled a rat.”
    â€œI object, Your Honor,” I said. “This is not testimony as to probable cause, it’s an attempt to tar my client with—”
    â€œStow it, Mr. Sloan, before you get rolling on one of your fourteen-minute objections. I get the drift of your objection, and I’m ruling against it. You know as well as I do that this is not a trial. Hearsay and hunches and so on are perfectly admissible in this venue.”
    Stash moved on quickly. “Did you arrest Mr. Dane at that time, Detective?”
    â€œCertainly not. I don’t arrest on hunches. I waited until we got hard evidence.”
    â€œTell us about that.”
    â€œWell, first, I got the initial autopsy findings from the medical examiner. Dr. Rey’s report confirmed the results of my initial examination of the body. There were no defensive wounds.”
    â€œAnd that was enough for an arrest?”
    â€œNo it was not. At that point I still didn’t have any sort of motive.”
    â€œDid you come to find any sort of motive?”
    â€œYes, I obtained Mr. Dane’s financial records. At that time I found that Mr. Dane was in very poor financial shape, with a large amount of debt and dwindling income. He held a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on his wife. In addition his wife apparently had a small trust fund that Mr. Dane appears to have stood to benefit from on her death. In my view these provided a financial motive.”
    Stash Olesky nodded, then reached into a large canvas gym bag and came out with a long black object with the slight but unmistakable curve of a Japanese sword. “Did this play into your decision to arrest Mr. Dane?”
    â€œYes it did. I’ll identify that object, by the way, as a stick made of ebony wood, carved in the shape of a sword. As I mentioned earlier, martial artists apparently refer to such an item as a bokken. On our first examination of the property we were unable to locate the murder weapon. So we expanded the scope of our search last week, examining a location near the victim’s home—specifically a boat owned by a neighbor of Mr. Dane’s, which was docked a few hundred feet upriver from Mr. Dane’s house. With permission of the owner, I opened a locker on that boat and found the bokken. The bokken was covered with a substance resembling blood.
    â€œI secured the item, placed it in a paper bag, and using customary chain-of-custody procedures I personally transported it to the state crime lab. The state crime lab ran tests on the bokken. The results of those tests were as follows. First, the bokken was indeed covered with blood, and that blood was a DNA match with the blood taken from Diana Dane at her autopsy. Second, several hairs were found on the bokken. Again, DNA tests on the follicles of one of those hairs showed a match to Diana Dane. Third, several latent fingerprints were revealed by cyanoacrylate fuming. According to the state crime lab fingerprint specialist, those fingerprints were a match with those of Mr. Dane.”
    Stash Olesky took out another paper bag, set it on his table.
    â€œLast line of questioning, Detective. During your conversation with Mr. Dane in his home on the morning of his wife’s murder, what was he wearing?”
    â€œA robe. A white robe. With white pajamas underneath.”
    â€œAnd did you see any visible evidence of blood on those clothes?”
    â€œNot a speck.”
    â€œDid you ask him if he had touched his wife after he found her?”
    â€œHe indicated he had not.”
    â€œDid he say whether or not he had changed clothes between the time he discovered her and the time you arrived?”
    â€œHe indicated he had not.”
    â€œCan you tell us if you found