“Actually, there’s a man out there I’m hoping to avoid. Is there a back way out? I’m Robin Starling, by the way.”
“Peter Davidson,” he said, taking my offered hand. His own had a skeletal feel to it. “I think I can help you. If you go this way, you’ll wind your way through the clerk’s office and end up in the lobby right in front of the main door to the courtroom. On the other hand, that door at the other end opens into a hallway that leads to a back staircase.”
“That would be perfect. Thanks.”
There are easier things than going down a flight of stairs in heels, so I sat on the top step to switch out my pumps with the sneakers in my shoe bag. On the ground floor, I still had to go out through the main lobby to the front doors, but Carter Fox was nowhere in evidence. I felt a pang of guilt at the thought of him waiting in the courtroom for a lunch date that would never materialize—though maybe I was flattering myself, maybe he just wanted to pass on a few words of encouragement—but I squelched the guilty feeling and pushed out through the revolving doors.
The question was what to do next. I wasn’t really hungry for anything, and my usual haunts were across downtown. I needed fuel, though, so I walked over to the convention center and got a salad with grilled chicken. Having a salad for lunch would allow for a bigger supper in the event that a day in trial put me in need of comfort food, which for me was on the order of a burger and a milkshake.
Though I didn’t think the prosecution’s case was particularly strong so far, it was hard to say the preliminary hearing was going well for Willow and me. Chris had been killed with Willow’s gun in their home in his boxers. There was no evidence of anyone else having been in the house or even having access to the house. I’d left Peyton Shilling hobnobbing with Aubrey Biggs, probably telling him all about her affair with Chris, assuming he hadn’t known already.
I ate my salad, chewing methodically, sipping from my cup of water, idling watching the conventioneers around me with their lanyards and badges. Eventually, I had an idea and dug out my phone.
I punched Rodney’s name on my favorites list.
“Rodney Burns,” he said.
“Hello, Rodney Burns. What are you doing right now?”
“Robin? Have you been drinking?”
I laughed, feeling suddenly better. “No, just thinking. I’m in court for Willow Woodruff’s preliminary hearing. Well, right now I’m at lunch, but. . .”
“How’s it going?”
“So so. Have you ever heard of the South of Main limited partnership?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“It’s the only loose end I can think of to tug on. I’ve been on the web, looked around at their properties. . .It bothers me that I haven’t been able to find any of them in the deed records. Actually, I did find one property, but that just confirms I know to use the record books in the deed room. Anyway, Chris Woodruff was one of the limited partners in South of Main. The general partner is a corporation of some kind, though I can’t remember its name.” I paused for breath.
“Uh huh,” Rodney said.
“Do you have some time this afternoon to go to the Corporation Commission, get copies of whatever documents there are about the limited partnership? Documents about the general partner, too, and anything else that seems of interest.”
“Sure.”
“The odds are pretty good of our getting paid, I think.”
“Oh, well then. Definitely.”
I ignored the sarcasm. “Good. See what you can find. If you leave for the day before I get back, get Carly to let you in my office and leave the papers on my desk.”
“Roger Wilco.”
I punched off, smiling. I liked Rodney.
At two o’clock, Tom McClane returned to the witness stand. “Officer McClane,” Biggs said. “Tell us how you came to be digging in a trashcan at the Valero gas station out on Parham Road.”
“We got a tip, an anonymous phone call to police headquarters.”
“Did you manage to trace the call?”
McClane smiled. “We checked our phone records. The call came from the pay phone just off the food court at Regency Square Mall.”
“Was it made by a man or a woman?”
“Man. At least, that was the notation made by the officer who took the call.”
I half-stood. “Objection. Hearsay.”
Biggs smiled. “The answer may be stricken. I’ll even withdraw the question. Officer McClane, a call came in, and as a result of that call, you went out to a gas station on Parham Road. You personally?”
“Yes. Matt Tarrant, my partner, and I went. We found the gun in the second trashcan we checked.”
“Where was this trashcan?”
“At the pump island with pumps five through eight.”
“What day was this?”
“April the 18th, right at twelve noon.”
“What did you do after you found the gun?”
“We bagged it, then went into the store to talk to the clerk.”
“What did you learn from the clerk?”
I stood. “The question seems to call for hearsay.”
Biggs said to McClane, “Did you ask whether he had observed a woman matching the description either of the defendant or her attorney at any of the pump islands that morning?”
“Objection. Leading.” Lawyers weren’t supposed to ask their own witnesses questions in a way that suggested the answer.
“Sustained.”
Biggs took a breath. “Officer McClane, did the clerk give you a description of anyone he had been seen at any of the pump islands that morning?”
“He did not. The clerk couldn’t even describe anyone who had been in the store that morning.”
“So what did you do next?”
“We asked to see the records of that morning’s credit transactions. It took a bit of doing. The clerk had to bring in the store manager, and the store manager had to bring in the district manager, but eventually we got them.”
“And then?”
“We contacted some of the people on the list.”
“Not all of them.”
“No. We struck pay dirt on our second call.”
“To whom was that call made?”
“Colton Jeffries.”
“He had purchased gas that morning?”
“Yes, he had. At pump number eight.”
“Did you subsequently conduct a lineup of people for Mr. Jeffries to identify?
“I did.”
“Who was in the line up?”
McClane looked at his notes. “Six women under the age of forty ranging in height from five-six to five-eleven.”
“Did Mr. Jeffries identify any of these women as a person he had seen at the Valero station?”
“He did.”
“Thank you, Officer McClane. Those are all my questions at this time.”
Biggs had fashioned a big ol’ mud ball and was about to fling it my way, but for the moment I ignored it. I had a lot of ground to cover. I started with the crime scene—the body, the blood evidence, the 95-grain bullet embedded in the wall. I followed the chain of custody for the blood and the bullet. I walked him through the ballistics tests that had been done on the fatal bullet and the test bullets that had been fired both from the gun I had given him and the gun recovered at the Valero station. He presented photographs made with a comparison microscope, and I took some time to look at them.
“How about fingerprint evidence?” I asked him. “Did you check for fingerprints at the Woodruff home?”
“Of course.”
“Did you find any that didn’t belong to one of the Woodruffs?”
“We did not.”
“Did you check for fingerprints on the two semiautomatic pistols you’ve been talking about?”
“We did. There weren’t any. Both guns seemed to have been wiped clean after they were last handled.”
“You didn’t find my fingerprints, did you?”
“No.”
“You presented it to us in a plastic bag. Either you’d been careful about handling it, or you had wiped it clean.”
“You didn’t find Willow’s fingerprints on either gun? Not even on her own gun?”
He hadn’t.
“Did you check for gunshot residue on her hands and forearms?” When a gun is fired, gunshot residue particles are emitted from the back of the weapon as well as from the muzzle. It sticks to the skin and is almost impossible to wash off.
He shifted in his chair. “She was checked.”
“But you didn’t do the testing?” I said.
“I did not.”
“Do you know the results?”
Biggs said, “Objection. Calls for hearsay.”
I nodded, frowning at McClane. “Had you yourself discharged a firearm in the previous twenty-four hours?”
“I had qualified with my firearm during my prior shift.” So there was the possibility of contamination, I thought.
“Where was the defendant tested? At the scene?”
“She was.”
“Gunshot residue would have been present on the victim’s body, wouldn’t it, given the range from which the shot was fired?”
He nodded. “I imagine.”
“The body wasn’t tested for residue?”
“I didn’t test it.”
“Officer Ahern testified about blood on the defendant’s hands. That would mean she had been in contact with the body, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
I had some work to do here before trial. I needed to get particle counts, a breakdown of the residue on Willow’s arms and hands, maybe information about the composition of the residue that would be produced by the particular ammunition found in the pistol.
“When you found the handgun in the trashcan, was it loaded?”
“There were five rounds still in the clip.”
“How many would it hold if it were fully loaded?”
“Six, plus one in the chamber.”
“Had the weapon been fired recently?”
“It had been fired since it was last cleaned.”
“Can you tell us how long it had been in the trashcan?”
“The clerk told us. . .” Biggs stood, and McClane stopped. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Did you ask the clerk when the trashcan had last been emptied?” I asked.
“Yes. I did.”
I was thinking it would have been early that morning, but for confirmation and an approximate time I was going to have to talk to the clerk. Not that it mattered. I knew how long the gun had been there.
“What was the name of this clerk?”
McClane gave it to me, and I wrote it down.
“How full was this trash barrel where you found the gun?”
“Halfway. Two-thirds.”
“What was in it other than the pistol?”
McClane shrugged. “Trash.”
Someone in the gallery thought that was funny, judging by the sudden bray of laughter.
I suggested, “Cups, fast food sacks. . .”
“There was a bag from McDonalds. Some grocery bags full of trash and some drink cups. A lot of little stuff.
“Was the handgun resting right on top of all this?”
“No. It had worked its way to the bottom.”
“Or perhaps it was thrown in first,” I suggested. “Right after the trash was last emptied. Isn’t that a possibility?”
“No. Based on what our witnesses told us. . .”
“As far as the physical evidence of the trashcan goes, the gun could have been thrown in first,” I said.
McClane shrugged again. “I suppose it could have.”
“Let’s talk a little about this lineup you did. I take it that you yourself conducted it?”
“I did.”
“You had a suspect, didn’t you? Someone you suspected of disposing of the gun at the Valero station.”
“Naturally.”
“Are you aware that Department of Justice guidelines call for lineups to be conducted by someone who does not know the suspect?” Since appearing in McClane’s lineup as the suspect du jour, I’d done a little reading up on the subject.
McClane glanced away from me, then back. “I am aware that there are conflicting opinions on how to conduct a lineup.”
“Was this a sequential lineup or a simultaneous lineup?”
“Simultaneous.”
“Are you aware that some studies find that the simultaneous lineup leads to more false positives than sequential lineups where the witness is presented with potential suspects one at a time?”
“Yes, and I’m aware that other studies show that simultaneous lineups are more accurate.”
“Was the attorney for the defense present with you and the witness during the lineup?”
His lip curled. “She was not. Under the circumstances—”
I stopped him with a raised hand. “After the witness made his identification, did you ask him his degree of confidence?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He said he was pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure? Did he subsequently become more confident in his identification?”
“You’ll have to ask him. I think he did.”
“After you encouraged him in his identification, or possibly even confirmed it?”
“I don’t think so. Again, you’ll have to ask him.”
“He’s the only one to ask, isn’t he, since no one else was present as a witness to how the lineup was conducted.”
“There was a uniformed officer present, an Officer Hill.”
“What is Officer Hill’s first name?”
“John.”
I made a note of it. “Did you warn the witness that the person he’d seen at the Valero station might not be in the lineup?”
“I don’t remember. I think I probably did.”
At some point, I’d be arguing that the lineup was tainted, and McClane had given me at least some ammunition. “Thank you, detective. That will be all.”
Biggs next witness was Colton Jeffries, a big, rangy guy with short brown hair who came to the stand wearing Wranglers and a striped shirt with the cuffs turned up. Biggs got his name and address along with his age, education, and occupation. He was twenty-six, had a B.B.A. in information systems, and worked as a process-controls engineer at Phillip Morris.
“Do you remember buying gas at the Valero station on Parham Road on the day of Friday, April 18?” Biggs asked him.
“Sure.”
“When was that? What time of day?”
“Sometime in the morning. I’d been out at corporate headquarters and was headed back to the manufacturing plant.”
“Would this have been around 10:16?”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “I understand that was the time stamp on my receipt, so I guess it must have been.”
“You kept a copy of this receipt?”
“Yeah, I found it in my truck.” He produced it, and it was marked for identification.
“What kind of truck were you driving? Was this a company truck?”
“A pickup. It’s my own vehicle, a Ford F-150.”
I remembered the big white truck that had pulled in behind us as we pulled away from the pumps. I didn’t like the way this was developing. When you’re going to have to do your best to discredit a witness, it’s nice not to know he’s telling the truth.
“Could you tell us about the person who was in the vehicle just ahead of yours?”
“There at the pumps? The only one I saw was a tall woman with straight blonde hair. She got into the passenger side of the car, and it pulled away.”
“So there was more than one person in the car?”
“I assume so. Somebody would have had to be behind the wheel.”
“But you just saw the woman with straight blonde
hair.”
“That’s right. She threw something into the trash can and got in the car.”
“That’s the trash can at the pump island?”
“Yes.”
“The pump island where pump number eight is located?”
He nodded. “That’s the pump on my receipt.”
“And this woman was at the same pump island where you got your gas?”
“She was.”
“Did you ever see this woman again? This tall woman with the straight blonde hair?” If there was a less attractive-sounding description of a woman, I couldn’t think what it was.
“I did,” Jeffries said.
“Where?”
“I picked her out of a lineup at the police station on Grace Street.”
“Who was she?”
He glanced at me, then away. He took a breath. “Robin Starling.”
“Who?”
“Robin Starling, the attorney right over there.” He pointed.
“The attorney for the defense was in this lineup?” Biggs’ incredulity was way overdone, I thought, given the build-up.
I half-stood behind my table. “Asked and answered.”
Judge Cheatham frowned at me.
“Never mind,” Biggs said. “Those are all my questions.” He gathered up his papers and gave me a smile as he tapped them on the podium to straighten them. His expression was triumphant.
I went to the podium, laid down my legal pad and straightened it. I laid my pen beside it, perfectly parallel to the long edge. It was time for me to do my magic, and my bag of tricks was pretty empty. I looked up at the witness.
“You said you saw this woman throw something away,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“You didn’t say what.”
“I didn’t see.”
“Didn’t see sunlight flashing off a chrome surface?”
“No.”
“A glint of blued steel?” The gun I’d thrown in the trashcan didn’t meet either of those descriptions, and I’d carried it in a wad of blue paper towels, so the questions seemed pretty safe.
“No. I didn’t see anything.”
“So she could have thrown away a candy wrapper, as far as you know?’
“She could have.”
“Or something as small as a piece of gum.”
“I didn’t see what she threw away.”
“Detective McClane testified that at the time of the lineup, you were ‘pretty sure’ about your identification of the woman you saw.”
Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 17