The Gods of Guilt

by Michael Connelly

  I nodded.

  “How would you explain that Mr. La Cosse had the right name and room number when he called the hotel?”

  Hensley shook his head.

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Is it possible that because of the late checkout given the newlyweds, the name Daniel Price was still on the guest list that the hotel operator uses?”

  “It’s possible. But once they checked out, the name would have been removed from the current guest list.”

  “Is that a human process or a computerized process?”

  “Human. The name is deleted from the current guest list at the front desk when someone checks out.”

  “So if the person handling the assignment at the front desk got busy with other work or other guests, that process might have been delayed, correct?”

  “It could have happened.”

  “It could have happened,” I repeated. “Isn’t three o’clock check-in time at the hotel?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is the front desk generally busy at that time?”

  “It all depends on the day of the week, and Sunday check-ins are usually slow. But you’re right, it could have been busy at the desk.”

  I didn’t know what any of this got me, but I felt that the jury might be getting bored. It was time to open the trapdoor in the Trojan horse’s belly. Time to come out of hiding and attack.

  “Mr. Hensley, let’s move on a bit. You said in your earlier testimony that the hotel’s own investigation confirmed that the victim, Gloria Dayton, had entered the hotel on the evening of last November eleventh. How did you confirm that?”

  “We looked at video from the cameras and pretty soon we found her.”

  “And you were able to track her by different cameras and video as she moved through the hotel, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you bring a copy of the video from the cameras with you to court today?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  He pulled a disc out of one of the pockets of his leather folder and held it up for a moment.

  “Did you ever give a copy of that video record to the LAPD investigators who were working on the case?”

  “The detectives came by early in the investigation and reviewed our raw feeds—this was before we put together a single video that tracked the woman they were interested in through the hotel. We later put that together and made all the material available, but nobody came to pick it up until a couple months ago.”

  “Was that Detective Whitten or his partner?”

  “No, it was Mr. Lankford from the DA’s Office. They were prepping for the trial and he came around to collect what we had.”

  I wanted to turn and look at Forsythe, to try to get a read on whether he ever saw the video—because it sure never showed up on any discovery list I had seen.

  But I didn’t look at the prosecutor, because I didn’t want to give anything away. Not yet, at least.

  “Do you see Mr. Lankford here in court today?” I asked Hensley.

  “Yes, I do.”

  I then asked the judge to tell Lankford to stand, and Hensley identified him. Lankford looked at me with eyes that were as cold and gray as a January dawn. After he was reseated, I turned to the judge and asked if the attorneys could approach. The judge waved us up and she knew exactly what I wanted to talk about.

  “Don’t tell me, Mr. Haller. You didn’t get copied on the videos.”

  “That’s right, Judge. The witness says the prosecution has had this material for two months and not a single frame of video was turned over in discovery to the defense. That’s a direct violation of—”

  “Your Honor,” Forsythe broke in. “I have not even seen these videos myself so—”

  “But your investigator took delivery of them,” the judge said in a tone of incredulity that told me she was going to come down on my side on this.

  “Your Honor,” Forsythe sputtered, “I can’t explain this. If you wish to question my investigator in camera, I am sure there is an explanation. The bottom line is all parties are in agreement that the victim visited that hotel in the hours before her death. It’s not in dispute, so the trespass here is minimal. No harm, no foul, Judge. I make a motion we press on with the case.”

  I shook my head wearily.

  “Judge, there is no way of knowing whether there is no harm and no foul without looking at the videos.”

  The judge nodded in agreement.

  “How much time do you need, Mr. Haller?”

  “I don’t know. There can’t be a lot of material. An hour?”

  “Very well. One hour. You can use the conference room down the hall. My clerk has the key. Step back, gentlemen.”

  As I walked back to the defense table, I raised my eyes to the railing and found Lankford staring back at me.

  38

  I borrowed Lorna’s iPad back from her after the judge broke for the hour. Since I had already studied the Beverly Wilshire videos at length, my purpose in complaining about the prosecution’s discovery violation was actually an effort to conceal my own violation in not providing the same videos to Forsythe. Either way, I didn’t need an hour to study them again. Instead, I used the time to watch the surveillance video from the Stratton Sterghos house once more and to strategize its best use in bringing down Marco and Lankford on the way to a not-guilty verdict for Andre La Cosse. The video was indeed the depth charge I had hoped for. It was waiting below the surface for the prosecution to sail over. When I detonated the charge, Forsythe’s ship would sink.

  My case plan was to take things right up to the bell on Friday and rest my case just before the jury was discharged for the weekend. That would give them two full days to consider things before we moved to closing arguments. This meant I was most likely looking at Friday morning as the introduction point of the Sterghos video. I had plenty of witnesses to present between now and then.

  At three twenty-five, there was a single knock on the door and Leggoe’s courtroom deputy looked in. It said HERNANDEZ on his name tag.

  “You’re up,” he said.

  When I got back to the defense table, the video remote and laser pointer were waiting for me at my place.

  And my defendant was, too. I realized that Andre’s downward spiral could now be measured by the hours instead of days. He had actually deteriorated in the hour I had spent in the conference room and he had spent in the courthouse lockup.

  I squeezed his arm. It felt as thin as a broomstick under his sleeve.

  “We’re doing well, Andre. Hang in there.”

  “Have you decided if I get to testify?”

  This was an ongoing conversation we’d been having during the trial. He wanted to testify and tell the world he was innocent. He believed—not without some merit—that guilty men remain mute and the innocent speak out. They testify.

  The problem was that, while Andre wasn’t a murderer, he was a man engaged in a criminal enterprise. Additionally, his deteriorated physical condition would likely not garner sympathy from the jury. I didn’t want him to testify and didn’t think he needed to. I had come to believe, contrary to my earlier instincts, that our best shot at a not-guilty verdict was to keep him in his seat.

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m hoping that it will be so obvious that you’re innocent that it won’t matter.”

  He nodded, disappointed in my answer. I realized that he had lost so much weight in the two weeks since jury selection started that I needed to think about getting him a better fitting suit. There were only four or five court days left before the jurors began deliberations, but I thought it was the right thing to do.

  I wrote a note about it on my legal pad, tore the page out, and then handed it back over the rail to Lorna just as the judge came out from chambers and took the bench.

  Victor Hensley was recalled to the witness stand and Judge Leggoe gave me permission to position myself in the well while I showed the composite Beverly Wilshire security video and asked
Hensley questions.

  I first established through Hensley the date and time of the video that we would watch and had him explain how video from several different cameras was edited together so Gloria Dayton could be tracked in her movements through the hotel. I also had Hensley explain that there were no cameras on the guest-room floors because it was a privacy issue. The hotel management apparently thought it was bad for business to film who entered what rooms and when.

  I handed Hensley the laser pointer so he could keep the red dot on Gloria as she made her way and he narrated. I realized that the video gave the jurors their first glimpse of Gloria in motion. During the prosecution phase they had seen autopsy photos, mug shots, and screen shots from her Giselle Dallinger websites. But the video was Gloria as a living person, and when I glanced at the jury, I saw that they were fully engaged in watching her.

  That was what I wanted, because my next set of questions to Hensley would take them in a new direction. I retrieved the remote and the laser and stood back in the well. I started playing the video trail from the beginning and then froze the image when Gloria was passing through the lobby and in front of the man in the hat.

  “Now, Mr. Hensley, can you look at the screen and tell the jury if you have any members of your staff there in the lobby?”

  Hensley said the man standing at the elevator alcove was part of the security staff.

  “Anyone else that you can see?”

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “What about this man here?”

  I put the laser dot on the man in the hat, who was sitting on the divan and looking at his phone.

  “Well,” Hensley said. “We can’t see his face in this frame. If you play it until we see his face . . .”

  I hit the play button and the video advanced. I had drawn eyes toward the man in the hat. But he never changed the position of his head and his face was not seen. The video jumped when Gloria went into the alcove and then stepped onto an elevator. There was a black screen for a few seconds and then the video showed Gloria getting back on the elevator on the eighth floor and going down to the lobby.

  When the video jumped again to her exit walk through the lobby, I hit the slow button on the remote and put the laser dot on the man in the hat once again to orient the jurors. I said nothing while all eyes were on the screen. I held the red dot on the man in the hat as he got up and left behind Gloria. I then froze the image a moment before he left the screen.

  “Does that man work for the hotel?” I asked.

  “I could never see the face but, no, I don’t think so,” Hensley said.

  “If you could not see his face, how do you know he isn’t an employee?”

  “Because he would have to be a floater and we don’t have floaters.”

  “Can you explain to the jury what you mean by that?”

  “Our security is post-oriented. We have people at posts—like the man at the elevator alcove. We are posted and we are visible. Name tags, green blazers. We don’t have undercovers. We don’t have floaters—guys who float around and do whatever they want.”

  I started to pace in front of the jury box, first walking toward the witness stand and then turning back to cross the well. With my back turned to Hensley and my eyes on Lankford sitting against the rail, I asked my next question.

  “What about private security, Mr. Hensley? Could that man have been working security for someone staying in the hotel?”

  “He could have. But usually private security people check in with us to let us know they’re there.”

  “I see. Then, what do you think that man was doing there?”

  Forsythe objected, saying I was calling for speculation from the witness.

  “Your Honor,” I responded. “Mr. Hensley spent twenty years as a police officer and detective before spending the past ten in security for this hotel. He’s been in that lobby countless times and dealt with countless situations there. I think he is more than qualified to render an observation on what he sees on the video.”

  “Overruled,” Leggoe said.

  I nodded to Hensley to answer the question.

  “I would bet that he was following her,” he said.

  I paused, wanting to underline the answer with silence.

  “What makes you say that, Mr. Hensley?”

  “Well, it looks like he was waiting for her before she even got there. And then when she comes back down, he follows her out. You can tell when she makes the sudden turn to go to the front desk. That catches him off guard and he has to correct. Then he follows when she leaves.”

  “Let’s watch it again.”

  I ran the whole video again in real time, keeping the laser dot on the hat.

  “What other observations do you have about the video, Mr. Hensley?” I asked afterward.

  “Well, for one, he knew about our cameras,” Hensley said. “We never see his face because of the hat, and he knew just where to sit and how to wear it so he would never be seen. He’s a real mystery man.”

  I tried hard not to smile. Hensley was the perfect witness, honest and obvious. But calling the man in the hat a “mystery man” was beyond my expectations. It was perfect.

  “Let’s summarize, Mr. Hensley. What you’ve told us here today is that Gloria Dayton came into the hotel on the evening of November eleventh and went up to the eighth floor, where she presumably knocked on the door of a room where no one was staying. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, correct.”

  “And that when she went back down the elevator and left the hotel, she was followed by a ‘mystery man’ who was not an employee of the hotel. Correct?”

  “Again, correct.”

  “And just over two hours later she was dead.”

  Forsythe weakly objected on the grounds I was asking a question that was outside the scope of Hensley’s knowledge and expertise.

  Leggoe sustained the objection but it didn’t matter.

  “Then I have no further questions,” I said.

  Forsythe stood for his cross-examination but then surprised me.

  “Your Honor, the state has no questions at this time.”

  He must have decided that the best path out of the “mystery man” debacle was to pay it no mind, give it no credibility, act like it didn’t matter—and then retreat with Lankford and engineer some kind of response in rebuttal.

  The problem for me was that I didn’t want to put another witness on the stand but it was only four ten and probably too soon in the judge’s estimation to end court for the day.

  I walked to the railing behind the defense table and leaned over to whisper to Cisco.

  “Tell me something,” I said.

  “Tell you what?” he answered.

  “Act like you’re telling me about our next witness and shake your head.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean we don’t have another witness unless you want me to go to the hotel where we stashed Budwin Dell and bring him over.”

  He shook his head, playing along perfectly, and then continued.

  “But it’s four ten now and by the time I got back it would be five.”

  “That’s good.”

  I nodded and returned to the defense table.

  “Mr. Haller, you can call your next witness,” the judge said.

  “Judge . . . I, uh, don’t exactly have my next witness ready. I thought Mr. Forsythe would have at least a few questions for Mr. Hensley and that would take us through until four thirty or five.”

  The judge frowned.

  “I don’t like quitting early. I told you that at the start of the trial. I said have your witnesses ready.”

  “I understand, Your Honor. I do have a witness but he is in a hotel twenty minutes away. If you want, I can have my investigator—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We wouldn’t get started until almost five. What about Mr. Lankford? He’s on your witness list.”

  I turned and looked back at Lankford as if I was considering it. Then I looked back at the judge.<
br />
  “I’m not prepared today for Mr. Lankford, Your Honor. Could we just break for the day now and make up the lost time by shortening our recesses over the next couple days?”

  “And penalize the jury for your lack of preparedness? No, we’re not going to do that.”

  “Sorry, Judge.”

  “Very well, I am adjourning court for the day. We will be in recess until nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I suggest you be prepared to begin then, Mr. Haller.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  We stood as the jury filed out, and Andre needed to grab me by the arm to pull himself up.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine. You did good today, Mickey. Real good.”

  “I hope so.”

  The deputies came for him then. He would be taken back to the courtside cell, where he would change from his baggy suit into an orange jumpsuit. He would then be put on a bus and shipped back to Men’s Central. If there were any delays in the process, he would miss chow time in the jail and go to sleep hungry.

  “Just a few more days, Andre.”

  “I know. I’m hanging in.”

  I nodded and they led him away. I watched them take him through the steel door.

  “Isn’t that touching?”

  I turned. It was Lankford. He had come up to the defense table. I looked over his shoulder at Forsythe. The prosecutor was standing over his table, trying to fit a thick stack of files into his thin attaché case. He was not paying attention to Lankford and me. Behind him, the courtroom had emptied. Lorna had gone down to get the car. One of Moya’s men had followed her while the other had moved out into the hallway to wait for me. Cisco and Jennifer had already left the courtroom.

  “It is touching, Lankford,” I said. “You know why? Because that’s an innocent man, and you don’t see too many of those around here.”

  I raised my hand in a who-am-I-kidding gesture.

  “But of course you know that better than almost anybody, don’t you? I mean the part about him being innocent.”

  Lankford shook his head like he didn’t get it.

  “You really think you’re going to get him off with this mystery man defense?”