Empty Promises

trial.
    The Oregon State Police Crime Lab’s study of gunshot residue turned out to be a godsend for Keutzer and Hamilton. It gave them solid physical evidence they badly needed. Laser evaluation of the two tiny exemplars of the tissue from Hank Marcus’s wounds revealed no gunpowder residue at all. That meant that Hank could not have died the way Tom Brown said he did. He said they were exchanging rifles when the gun went off. For this to be true, the rifle would have been so close to Hank’s face that his wound would be nearcontact and gunshot residue would certainly have been present. The crime lab tests proved that Tom Brown must have been standing at least a foot and a half away from Hank when the gun went off, and probably even farther away.
    Secondly, if the shooting happened the way Brown described it, the trajectory of the bullet would have been at an upward angle. It was not; autopsy findings indicated that the wound was almost horizontal, with a variation of only an inch or so from a straight, flat path.
    Unfortunately, Rusty was long buried in a mass grave, and they would never be able to find out whether the bullet had entered the dog head-on, as Brown said, or from the rear, as Robin claimed.
    There were no bullets to test, only fragments. Bob Hamilton spent two weeks trying to find similar ammunition for the near-antique 1932 rifle and finally came up with a precious few from a gun buff. Their makeup matched the fragments found in Hank’s neck.
    Robin Marcus’s polygraph tests had gone from “failed” to “inconclusive” to the point where she passed cleanly. After profound brainwashing, psychiatrists explain that memory returns slowly, but it does come back. Finally, Robin knew exactly what had really happened. But how would a judge or jury react to the information that it had required a series of polygraph tests to elicit the truth from Robin? And even if she did make a believable witness, she had not actually seen the killing; she had only heard the gunshot that killed her husband.
    Jim Byrnes, one of the attorney general’s criminal investigators, was given the task of obtaining the seventh, and final, statement from Robin Marcus. Byrnes was the chief of detectives of the Marion County sheriff’s office when he was asked to join the A.G.’s staff. He was a highly skilled interrogator, and if anyone could gain Robin’s trust, it would be Jim. He knew he would have to spend days with her as he explained why it was essential she give just one more statement.
    Finally he hit on the right approach. “Robin, I won’t ask you to give me a statement,” he said. “I want you to write it out yourself. Take as much time as you want. You write exactly what happened, everything you remember, and when you’re ready, call me.”
    Robin had not been in control of her own life for a long time. And Byrnes believed that, for a time, she had actually allowed Tom Brown to take over the thought patterns in her very brain. By letting her write her own statement, he was allowing her to ask herself the questions and to pick the time when she was willing to hand her statement over to Jim Byrnes. She liked him—he had daughters close to her age. She wanted to trust him, but it was hard for her to trust anyone anymore.
    Byrnes had guessed right. Robin Marcus wrote an eighteen-page statement from her own memory and it was one of the most frightening and incredible statements Jim Byrnes, Bob Hamilton, and Steve Keutzer had ever read. Robin Marcus had forgotten nothing. The truth had been locked up in her subconscious mind and now came spilling forth. Her statement detailed exactly how her husband’s savage killer had brainwashed her, causing her to forget her ordeal.
    Robin wrote how she begged Tom to leave her in the woods after he killed Hank and Rusty, but he answered, “If I leave you here, it won’t be alive.”
    Then he forced her to drag Rusty off the trail and wipe the dog’s blood off her hands with dirt and ferns. She thought Rusty might still be alive because his feet were still moving, and she wanted to take care of him. But Tom told her, “Those are his reflexes. I never have to shoot anything more than once. I don’t like to see anything suffer.”
    Tom told Robin it wouldn’t do her any good to run. His gun could shoot 500 yards. She didn’t know anything about guns, and she believed him. She pleaded with him not to kill her, but all he did was smile that same odd grin. He then