A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  “I’d say that’s right,” Perdue answered. “Whoever tossed it there didn’t try to cover it up.”

  “Somebody carried the body out there from somewhere else, tossed it into the bushes, and took off. Would that be how you’d imagine it happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you arrived on the scene…” Luke paused. “Let me take a step back. Were you the first officer on the scene?”

  Perdue shook his head. “No. Some sheriffs from the local office got there before I did.”

  “Had they secured the crime scene?”

  Perdue frowned. “More or less.”

  “More or less?” Luke pounced. “What does that mean?”

  Before Perdue could answer, he continued, “Was it secured as tightly as you would have liked? As you would have done, if you’d gotten there first?”

  Perdue shook his head. “No.”

  “There had been a fair amount of milling around, wasn’t there.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you weren’t able to check the area for distinctive footprints, were you? Because too many people had already tramped around on the ground.”

  Unhappily, Perdue answered, “That’s correct.”

  “So you were never able to match up any footprints to any of Steven McCoy’s shoes. Or anyone else’s.”

  “No,” Perdue acknowledged. “We didn’t get any.”

  “Did you get any footprints that led from the house to where the remains were discovered?”

  Again, a shake of the head. “No.”

  “That would have been helpful, wouldn’t it?” Luke asked. “If you had found footprints leading from the house to the ravine? If they had matched up with the defendant’s that would have been a solid piece of evidence, correct?”

  “It would have been, yes,” Perdue answered.

  “Or conversely, if a different set had been found, it would have been pretty good evidence that someone else carried that body out there.”

  “That would have been a possibility,” Perdue conceded.

  Luke leaned back from the podium. “No further questions. At this time.”

  He walked back to the defense table. As he passed Alex and Elise, he noticed, to his enjoyment, that they were slumped down in their chairs.

  “I want to caution you in advance,” Alex Gordon warned the jurors. “The pictures I’m about to show you are graphic and horrific. I doubt that any of you have ever seen anything this disgusting, but unfortunately you’re going to have to now.”

  Judge Martindale intervened. “I want to throw in my warning, too,” he said, looking first at the people sitting in the jury box, then out to the spectators, particularly the members of Maria’s family and her supporters. “If you can’t handle this, leave now. I won’t tolerate any outbursts in this courtroom.”

  The room went dark as a series of images of Maria Estrada came up, taken first where she was found, out on the ranch, and then at the autopsy room at the hospital. She looked more like a collection of protoplasmic slime that had been thrown into a bag than a human being. Her arms and legs were like cooked strands of spaghetti. You could barely tell there was a face.

  There was a moment of hushed silence, a collective gathering of breath: then a wail erupted from the section behind the prosecution table. Maria’s mother was shrieking, her body rocking back and forth.

  She’s never seen these, Luke thought in anger. Alex hadn’t shown them to her. He had sacrificed any shred of decency toward this grieving mother to make sure he’d get maximum outrage now.

  You want to win this too badly, he thought. There are lines you don’t cross. You just crossed one.

  He felt Steven slumping next to him. He put a hand on his shoulder. “Hang in,” he whispered. “This is as bad as it’s going to get.”

  Throughout the courtroom there was muted sobbing and murmuring, but the only loud noise came from Maria’s mother. Judge Martindale tolerated her outburst for a few seconds, then he brought down his gavel.

  “I can understand how terrible this must be for you, Mrs. Estrada,” he said, addressing her. “But you have to control yourself, or I’m going to be forced to remove you from my courtroom.”

  The distraught woman either didn’t hear him, or was incapable of stopping. Her sobbing became louder, more pitiable. As if to further punctuate the darkness and despair of the moment, a rolling clap of thunder boomed into the room.

  Martindale rapped for order. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have you taken out, Mrs. Estrada,” he told her. He signaled to a couple of courtroom deputies who were standing against the wall.

  Luke stood up. “Your honor,” he called out over the commotion.

  Martindale looked at him. “What is it?”

  Luke glanced at the prosecution table. Oh, how you’re loving this, he thought. “We don’t object to this show of emotion,” he told the judge. “Any mother would react the same way. If I may suggest a five-or ten-minute recess, so she can regain some composure, I think we could move on. It’s her daughter. More than anyone, she deserves to be here.”

  The mood was muted. The slides were no longer projected onto the screen. Mrs. Estrada was still crying, but quietly, into a handkerchief. Her friends and family hovered around her, forming a protective cocoon.

  Alex walked Dr. Atchison through the autopsy process. The condition of the body, how he had quickly found the bullet, the events that transpired after that. When he was finished his questioning he walked back to his seat without looking at Luke.

  Luke, sitting at the defense table, leafed through some notes. A feeling of antsiness pervaded the chamber as he paged through them, his face down. “Are you going to cross-examine this witness?” the judge finally asked him.

  Luke looked up. “Of course I am, your honor.” He found what he was looking for. He approached the podium, carrying a few pages in his hand. “When you examined the victim, did you check to see if she had ingested any drugs prior to her death?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did,” Atchison answered.

  “What did you find?”

  “There were traces of Tetrahydrocannabinol in her system.”

  “Which is commonly known as THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is that correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So shortly before she died, Maria Estrada smoked marijuana.”

  “That would be my conclusion, that’s correct,” Atchison answered.

  “What about semen?” Luke continued. “Did you find any samples of semen in the body?”

  Alex stood up quickly. “Objection, your honor,” he said forcefully. “The victim’s sexual conduct isn’t relevant. We are not alleging rape, or any other sexual activity in conjunction with the charges.”

  Martindale gave Luke a “show-me” look.

  “Her sexual conduct is important, for two reasons, your honor,” Luke argued. “First, it shows a pattern of promiscuity. An eighteen-year-old girl who had semen DNA in her remains, particularly if there were multiple samples, could be characterized as someone who had easy dalliances with men, any one of whom could be as strong a candidate for having killed her as my client. And second, if none of those samples matched up with his, that would exonerate him as having had sex, and would cast aspersions on whether he was ever with her at all.”

  Martindale looked at Alex, then back at Luke again. “I assumed this might come in, so I’ve already thought about it,” he said. He looked at the jury. “I’m going to overrule the prosecution’s objection and allow this line of questioning.”

  Alex shook his head angrily. “Exception,” he barked.

  “Noted,” Martindale answered calmly. “You may proceed,” he told Luke.

  “Thank you.” Luke turned to Atchison again. “Did you find semen samples in the victim?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” Atchison answered.

  “How may different strands of DNA did you find, doctor? In other words, how many different men did Maria Estrada have sexual int
ercourse with shortly before she was killed.”

  Atchison glanced at his notes. “I found three distinct samples.”

  “So she had sex with at least three men shortly before she died,” Luke pressed.

  “Yes. There could have been more,” Atchison amplified. “If she had sexual partners who used a condom, their DNA would not be present.”

  Luke stepped back for a moment. “You seem to be saying she didn’t practice safe sex, is that right?” he asked. “Having sex with multiple partners and not using protection isn’t very smart, is it?”

  Alex jumped up again. “Objection!” he called out. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained,” Martindale ruled. “Strike the question. Do you want to rephrase?” he asked Luke.

  Luke shook his head. “No, that’s all right.” The jury had heard it—that was all he cared about. “Getting back to the DNA,” he said to Atchison. “Where you able to match the DNA you recovered from Maria Estrada to anyone?”

  “No,” Atchison answered. “We weren’t.”

  “Did you take a DNA sample from Steven McCoy?”

  Atchison nodded. “We did that immediately after his arrest.”

  Luke gathered his notes. “Did his DNA match up with the samples you got from the victim?” he asked.

  “No,” the doctor answered conclusively. “There was no match.”

  The other technicians made their brief appearances: the expert who took and matched Steven’s fingerprints to the murder weapon, and Dana Wiseman, the bullet expert. They gave their findings crisply, concisely, professionally. Luke’s cross-examinations of them were perfunctory—you can’t argue hard facts, so you don’t. Get the witnesses off the stage as fast as you can. At a quarter to five in the afternoon, Judge Martindale brought the trial to a close for the day.

  Overnight, the rain had stopped. The sky was still low and leaden, but for the moment, the city was dry.

  The redheaded salesgirl who had sold Maria the earrings fidgeted as she sat on the witness stand. She was overdressed and had too much makeup on; she looked like a runner-up from a television reality show. She described the events as she had told them to Detective Rebeck. She knew Maria Estrada by sight—Maria was a frequent shopper, and sometime shoplifter, from their store. They kept a sharp eye on Maria whenever she came in.

  When Alex was finished, Luke got up and took the podium. “How’re you doing, Ione?” he asked. Her name was Ione Skye Purcell. Her parents had been Donovan fans, Luke assumed. A piece of particularly obscure trivia from the rock ’n’ roll memory shelf of his brain.

  “Okay,” the girl answered.

  “I only have a few questions,” he told the girl, giving her a friendly smile to put her at ease. “I know how you can get nervous sitting up there, especially if you never have before.”

  “No kidding,” the girl answered with a shy smile of her own, as if to say, at least somebody knows what this feels like.

  “When Detective Rebeck first interviewed you, did she ask you if you could identify the man who was with Maria?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she recalled.

  “And did you tell her you couldn’t?”

  The girl nodded affirmatively. “Uh huh.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “Because I wasn’t paying as much attention to him as I was to her.”

  “Because of her history of theft in the store.”

  “You got it,” the girl answered sprightly.

  “Before or after Steven McCoy was arrested, did anyone in law enforcement show you a picture of him and ask if you could identify him as the man who had been in the store with the man they’d arrested.”

  “Yes, after,” the girl said. “The lady cop came in with a picture and asked me if it was the man who was with Maria.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I didn’t know. It kind of looked like him, but I wasn’t going to swear to it.”

  “And you still wouldn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

  “Did the police ever ask you to come down to the jail and look at a lineup of possible suspects?”

  “No. I was never asked to do anything like that.”

  “So to this day, you couldn’t swear that Steven McCoy was the man who bought Maria Estrada the earrings.”

  She stared at Steven. He gave her a blank stare. “No,” she said steadfastly. She looked at the prosecution table for an instant, then turned back to Luke. “No matter how hard they wanted me to.”

  Ione the shopgirl had at least tried to come in with what she thought was the proper attire for a murder trial. Katrina, the girl who had seen Maria get into the SUV with a man who resembled Steven McCoy, didn’t care about protocol. In the fall, when she had met with Rebeck and Watson, she’d been a typical Jennifer Aniston wannabe. Now she was in full Goth attire and makeup. Black-on-black clothes, featuring lace-up-to-the-knees boots. Black lipstick, black mascara, black and red eye shadow, black eyeliner. Each ear had at least half a dozen piercings, along with her nose (and God knows where else, Kate thought, looking at the girl from her seat behind the defense table). With the darkness around her eyes and mouth, contrasted with the white heat she’d applied to the rest of her face, and her punk-spiked hair, she looked tike a raccoon on a drug cocktail. She was, however, alert and coherent in her remembrance of what she had seen, as Elise questioned her about it.

  When Elise sat down, Luke took over. He had a sheaf of eight-by-ten glossies in his hand, which he gave to the bailiff to be marked for exhibit. He handed a set to the judge, and put another down on the defense table.

  Alex and Elise looked at them for a moment. “What are these?” Alex asked, looking at Judge Martindale, who was leafing through his own set. The judge gave Luke a questioning look.

  “They’re for the purpose of trying to make an identification,” Luke said, somewhat cryptically.

  Both Martindale and Alex could see where this was going. “In my chambers,” Martindale said, standing up. “Ten-minute recess.”

  “What the fuck is this?” Alex exploded.

  “Exhibits,” Luke answered calmly, leaning against the side of the judge’s desk. He suppressed the urge to smile.

  “Lame look-alikes of your client? Except there aren’t any front shots, only sides and backs,” he complained. Elise, standing so close to him they were touching at the shoulders, had a scowl plastered on her face. “What kind of game are you running with this, Luke?” Alex asked aggressively. “What is this, judge?” he fumed.

  Judge Martindale was the senior judge of the Santa Barbara Superior Court. He had been on the bench for over twenty years. He had known Luke when Luke had the job Alex occupied now, so he was inclined to give Luke more rope than he gave most other lawyers, since Luke usually delivered. Still, he expected a sound answer.

  “Some of the most important pieces of this case hinge on identification, your honor,” Luke responded. “This is going to be the second witness who will testify that she saw Maria Estrada with a man who looked like Steven McCoy. I don’t know how credible this girl is. So I want to test it.”

  “What do you mean, how credible?” Elise asked. She looked at Alex—what was this all about?

  “Listen and learn,” Luke threw back at them. “Give me a little space, judge,” he implored. “If my line isn’t working, you can cut me off, no arguments.”

  Martindale thought it over for a moment. He looked at the pictures again. “I’m going to let you introduce this,” he told Luke, to Alex and Elise’s disgust. “But I’d better see a clear path, or I will stop it in its tracks.”

  “Katrina, how are you?” Luke asked the witness from the podium.

  “Okay,” she answered. “How about you?”

  There were a few titters from the gallery. Luke smiled. “Doing good,” he told her. “Thanks for asking.” He squared the photographs on the stand. “Do you go to the high school?” he asked. “Santa Barbara High?”
/>   “Uh huh,” she confirmed. A feral tongue darted out to lick the dark lips. Luke caught a glimpse of a tongue stud.

  “Senior?” he asked. “Close to graduating?”

  “Glory be, yes!” she sang out.

  “Going to college in the fall?”

  She nodded. “Design school, in L.A. I’m into fashion.”

  “So I see,” Luke answered dryly. He looked at a typed page of notes. “You’ve been at the high school for four years, since ninth grade?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So you were a classmate of Maria Estrada’s for the whole time she was there.”

  The girl’s face darkened. “Yeah, I was, from way back. Before high school. Junior high, too.”

  Luke glanced at his notes again. “Were you friends?”

  She snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Why was that? Because she was Latina, and you aren’t?”

  Katrina shook her head heatedly. “No way! I got plenty of friends who’re Mexican. I ain’t prejudiced, like some of the dorks from Montecito who don’t know any Mexicans at all, except for their maids and gardeners. That’s bogus, judging people by where they come from, or what they look like,” she said righteously.

  “Commendable of you,” Luke congratulated her. “So what was it about Maria you didn’t like?”

  The girl fidgeted in the chair. “Lots of stuff.”

  “Would poaching other girl’s boyfriends be one of them?”

  She drew back, scrunching down in the chair. “What do you mean?”

  He looked at his notes, not that he needed them. “Did you date a boy named Eli Herrera last year? Go steady with him for three or four months?”

  Alex Gordon got up. “Your honor, what’s the point of this?” He looked at Elise, who was as baffled as he was.

  “You’ll see in a minute,” Luke answered quickly, not waiting for the judge to answer. “Did you?” he pressed Katrina.

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “So what?”

  “He dumped you for Maria Estrada, didn’t he?”

  She shot daggers at him with her dark-ringed eyes. “We were breaking up anyway.”