Free Flat Lake in Winter by Joseph T. Klempner Page B

transcript of the testimony of any trial witness who had appeared before the grand jury, Cavanaugh, like any good prosecutor, would want to call as few witnesses as possible, ask them the smallest number of questions necessary, and restrict even those questions to the highly suggestive (or “leading”) variety, ones that could easily be answered with a simple yes or no: “Now, is it a fact, Officer, that the defendant appeared to have blood on his forehead when you first observed him?”
    Gathered with Cavanaugh in his office that afternoon were two assistant district attorneys, a paralegal, and four investigators from the state police - Deke Stanton, Hank Carlson, Gerard LeFevre, and Everett Wells. Stanton and Carlson, of course, had been the first officers on the scene, and it was Stanton who had done the initial investigation, claimed to have elicited an oral confession from Jonathan Hamilton, and subsequently arrested him. Wells and LeFevre had arrived at the scene first thing Tuesday morning, carrying a search warrant that had been signed by Judge Arthur Summerhouse in his living room late Monday night. While the judge, the prosecution, and the defense had been busy arguing in court the following morning, Investigators Wells and LeFevre had driven to the Hamilton estate, entered the cottage in which Jonathan had lived, and gone over every inch of it, taking photographs, collecting blood, hair, and fiber samples, and seizing physical evidence. They had returned to Cedar Falls and gone straight to the meeting at Cavanaugh’s office with the fruits of their labors. It would take some time for the photographs to be developed, enlarged, and catalogued. The samples would have to be submitted to various crime and forensic labs for analysis and comparison. But the items of physical evidence would pay much more immediate and obvious dividends. Topping the list were two badly blood-stained towels, retrieved from behind a vanity compartment underneath the sink in Jonathan’s bathroom. Wrapped in one of the bloody towels was a hunting knife. It had a genuine staghorn handle, and a five-inch tempered-steel blade that was smooth near the point and serrated near the handle. It appeared to have been wiped clean of any blood or fingermarks.
    Cavanaugh and his team met for the better part of two hours. The bare-bones presentation they finally settled on consisted of the calling of four witnesses: Investigator Deke Stanton, for the arrest and confession of Jonathan Hamilton; Medical Examiner Frances Chu, to describe the wounds sustained by the victims, the probable time of death, and the nature of the weapon that appeared to have been used; Investigator Gerard LeFevre, to introduce the knife and describe the circumstances of its recovery; and one civilian witness, Bass McClure, to relate his early-morning phone call from the defendant, and his subsequent discovery of the bodies.
    ACCORDING TO ENTRIES in the visitor’s log book, Matt Fielder’s first sit-down interview with Jonathan Hamilton lasted a little bit over two hours. Yet by his own admission, Fielder learned very little of substance during the meeting, and later calculated that if he were to add up the actual words said, they would have filled up less than a half an hour, all told. He’d come to think of the experience, in fact, as something like watching a ball game on television: You got about three minutes of commercials for every minute of actual play. With Jonathan, you got about three minutes of silence for every minute of conversation.
    To begin with, Jonathan’s demeanor was such that Fielder believed him to be in a virtual state of shock. He seemed aware of his surroundings, but barely so. The word that keeps coming back to Fielder, even today, is bewildered. Having already noted Jonathan’s apparent inability to project into the future beyond the very day and night in which he found himself, Fielder was now struck by the flatness of Jonathan’s affect - how