Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  “So are you guys, like, dating?”

  Sloane handed Jake a slice of cheese. “How would you feel about that?”

  “The newspapers said you were.”

  “Yes,” Sloane said. “We’re dating. You okay with that?”

  “Kind of hard, you know?”

  Sloane stopped making the sandwich. “Yeah, I know. It has been hard,” he said. “I miss your mom every day. I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life. No one will ever take her place. But you get to the point”—how to say it?—“you don’t want to feel bad every morning you wake up. You just want to smile and mean it . . . laugh, feel good, and not feel guilty because you do. You know?”

  Another nod.

  “So what do you think of her?”

  Jake stared at the floor. Then he looked up at Sloane. “What if she’s convicted?”

  TWENTY - FIVE

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2011

  KING COUNTY COURTHOUSE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Sloane entered the courtroom Monday morning not as prepared as he would have liked but a great deal more refreshed than how he had felt Friday afternoon. Jake spent Saturday morning at the office doing his homework, studying for a calculus test, and hanging out with Alex and Charlie. Barclay had not come in, telling Sloane she had taken a box of documents home and would continue to go through them. Jake and Sloane left early and took the boat out trolling for salmon, without any luck. They ate dinner at a restaurant in Burien and watched a screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the Tin Room’s new movie theater adjacent to the restaurant.

  When Sloane took Jake to the airport Sunday morning, the boy’s hug lingered.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Sloane said.

  Jake entered the line for preboarding screening without a response but teary-eyed. Sloane waited until he reached the conveyor belt, about to leave, when Jake turned. “It’s how we heal, you know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The pain.”

  “What about it?”

  “Feeling it every day . . . it’s not a bad thing. That’s how we heal,” he said. Then he slipped through the detector and did not look back.

  Sloane had considered the comment much of Sunday. He knew Jake had been in counseling for over a year, and he deduced the comment to be something his counselor had told him—that it was better to feel the pain and deal with it than to bury it. Given the trauma Sloane had endured as a result of burying the recollection of his mother’s murder when he was a boy, he agreed. Still, it seemed an odd comment, and Sloane wondered why Jake had chosen to bring it up just then.

  Cerrabone began Monday morning with additional witnesses to confirm Carly had died of an overdose of heroin, that Reid had been upset that the police had not done more to find and charge the dealers who supplied Scott Parker, and that she had begun training for and participated in triathlons. The witnesses were largely uneventful, and Pendergrass handled the cross-examinations. That left Sloane to concentrate on the next witness, Earl Perkins, one of the King County sheriffs who worked with Freddy, the Belgian Malinois brought to the crime scene.

  A small-framed man with a Scandinavian accent, Perkins testified that Freddy’s olfactory gland was the size of a walnut—as opposed to a human’s gland, which was no bigger than the tip of an eraser. He explained that this allowed the dog to track the fifty thousand skin cells humans shed every hour, cells that contained trace scents from the person’s eccrine gland—the human sweat gland—and the apocrine gland, which was activated by stress, fear, or anxiety and was sometimes referred to as a person’s “fear scent.”

  Using the diagram of the property, Perkins explained that Freddy had picked up a scent at the water’s edge, trailed it to the back of the house, then followed it from the patio to a stand of trees before it continued back to the water.

  “And is that where the scent ended?” Cerrabone asked.

  Perkins used the diagram to explain his testimony. “Freddy continued to track the scent south along the beach until he reached this wall of the adjacent property and couldn’t go any farther.”

  “What was Freddy scenting in the water?”

  Perkins advised the jury that the dog continued to track the person’s skin cells, those that had floated to the shore on plant material and other debris. The jury looked duly impressed.

  “And what conclusion can you draw from the evidence that the scent trail continued along the beach, though you found no further footprints in the sand?” Cerrabone asked.

  “That the person entered the water and swam south, parallel to the shoreline.”

  The information set up the testimony of Detective Kaylee Wright, who followed Perkins to the stand.

  Wright had the healthy look of someone who spent much of her time outdoors, which most people in the Pacific Northwest would equate to pleasure activities such as hiking and mountain climbing, or snow skiing in the winter. And though Wright may have participated in some or all of those activities, it became quickly apparent, as she recounted her employment history and training, that her muscular build and tan complexion had little to do with how she spent her leisure time. Wright spent her time outdoors searching for bodies, like some of the bodies Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and other psychopaths, dumped in ravines, wooded areas, and other places not easily accessible.

  “And how many officers work for you at present?” Cerrabone asked from his customary spot at the end of the jury box farthest from the witness chair.

  “Fourteen duty officers.” She explained that the King County special operations unit consisted of multiple units with particular specialties—hazmat, bombs, marine, mountain climbing, and others.

  “And what is it that your unit specializes in?”

  “We’re sign cutters,” she said.

  “What does it mean to have achieved the ranking of a sign cutter?”

  “A sign cutter is someone who has spent a minimum of twelve hundred hours and ten years studying and training to see the physical evidence that a person leaves when they enter or exit a particular environment.”

  “Can you explain the principle behind that?” Cerrabone asked.

  Wright discussed the science of Locard’s principle—how a person cannot move around his environment without taking evidence of where he has been and transferring it to where he goes. Cerrabone eventually progressed to the morning Wright was called to Vasiliev’s home.

  “And what were you looking for?” he asked.

  “Signs of someone doing something different than the investigators at the crime scene—footprints positioned in such a way to indicate a person making ingress or egress, lying in wait, trying to gain entry into the house through a window or a door.”

  “Did you find any such signs?”

  “I did,” she said. With prompting from Cerrabone, Wright left the witness chair and used diagrams, photographs, and charts to explain that she had located footprints that corresponded with the scent trail Freddy had traced from the water to the patio and back. She explained that the footprints had “flagged” the grass, meaning the blades had been flattened where the person had walked and lay with the tips pointing in the same direction.

  Using her hand to demonstrate, Wright said, “Over time, the blades, if not broken, will begin to rise. Based upon my examination of the blades, these footprints were made within four hours of my arrival at the site.”

  “And you arrived at roughly six in the morning?”

  “Correct.”

  “Did you find any similarities in the footprints?”

  “The footprints were of the same size, shape, and tread pattern,” she said. “The distance between each print was also consistent.”

  Cerrabone asked that his paralegal post a photograph on the television depicting a series of yellow flags leading from the beach to the patio. “Did you draw any inferences from this particular path of footprints?”

  “The person who made those footprints was walking with a pu
rpose and intent.”

  Sloane stood. “Objection, Your Honor, speculation and lack of foundation.”

  Underwood sat at an angle, listening to Wright with his index finger just beneath his nose, hand covering his mouth. “Explain your objection, please.”

  “Purpose and intent necessarily relates to a person’s state of mind. While Detective Wright is within her expertise to explain to the jury the physical evidence—what she saw and her conclusions from what she saw—with all due respect, there has been no testimony she is a mind reader.”

  A few of the jurors smiled.

  Underwood nodded but said, “I’m going to withhold my ruling. Mr. Cerrabone, please lay a foundation for Detective Wright’s prior answer.”

  Cerrabone asked, “Detective Wright, how is it that you can conclude the person walked with a purpose or intent?”

  Wright suggested that certain photographs would assist her testimony. Cerrabone obliged her by displaying another photograph of the lawn leading from the water to the back of the house, taken from an angle low to the ground. She said, “You can see that the stride intervals between the prints are consistent. They don’t veer off course or meander. I measured the distance between each print and found that distance to be consistently twelve inches.”

  “What does that tell you?” Cerrabone asked.

  “It tells me several things—the person’s stride did not deviate in direction or pace. Also, the person who made these prints impacted the ground consistently with more of a toe dig than a heel dig, indicating the person was walking.”

  “And all of these physical signs allow you to conclude what?”

  “That the person moved with a purpose—in this case, to get to the back of the house.”

  Underwood looked at Sloane. “The objection is overruled.”

  Cerrabone had Wright discuss the particular footprints that she studied, measured, and photographed. She explained that each footprint equated to a size-seven shoe. After returning to her office, she used several resource materials, including the website called Zappos, which allowed her to access and view hundreds of different shoe treads.

  “Did you find the make and model of the shoe that made the imprints leading from the water to the back of the house?” Cerrabone asked.

  “The tread pattern is consistent with the tread pattern for a Nike AS300 cross-trainer,” she said.

  “And does the manufacturer market that type of shoe for a particular purpose?”

  “It’s marketed as a woman’s athletic shoe,” she said.

  Cerrabone then solicited, and Wright explained, how the person who made the footprints had “stood on the patio for some time before the right leg extended forward, the heel sixteen inches to the front, weight distributed on the ball of the foot.”

  “And what evidence is there that allowed you to make that deduction?” Cerrabone asked.

  “The footprints on the patio include grains of sand and bits of lawn, and the imprint is wider than the other imprints measured.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “That the shoe was saturated with water, and when the person transferred their weight to the ball of their foot—pressed down—water oozed onto the patio, increasing the dimensions of the print.”

  Again, the testimony supported that provided earlier by Barry Dilliard—that the person on the patio had assumed a shooter’s stance.

  Cerrabone then asked Wright about the footprints she marked with red flags that ultimately led back to the rock wall. Wright said those prints differed from the yellow-flagged prints in that her examination revealed more of a heel strike and a longer stride.

  “A pronounced heel strike is indicative of a person running,” she said.

  “Where do those prints end?”

  “The last print was two inches from the rock wall.”

  “And did you note a pronounced heel strike in that print as well?”

  “Actually, that print had a pronounced toe dig.”

  “Were you able to draw any conclusions from that physical evidence?”

  “That the person pressed down in order to push off with that foot.”

  “To do what?” Cerrabone asked.

  “The logical assumption is the person dove or jumped into the water.”

  Just ask Freddy, Sloane thought. Cerrabone finished up and Sloane made his way to the witness chair.

  “Detective Wright, you testified that your measurements equate to a size-seven shoe print, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But you can’t tell us if the person who made the print has a size-seven foot, can you?”

  “I cannot.”

  “The person making the prints could very well have been wearing a shoe too big or too small for their feet, right?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And you can’t tell us if the person was a man or a woman, can you?”

  “I cannot.”

  “It could have been a man wearing a woman’s athletic shoe.”

  “It could have been.”

  “You were asked to compare the make and model of the shoe you identified with the shoes taken from Barclay Reid’s home. Do you remember that testimony?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you testified that the shoe tread of the five pairs taken from the home were all consistent with the shoe tread of the prints you identified at the scene, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you cannot say with certainty that the person who made the prints at the back of the house wore any of those five pairs of shoes, can you?”

  “I cannot.”

  “There was no anomaly in the shoe tread of the prints you studied, for instance, that allowed you to say it was a particular shoe; only that it was a particular brand of shoe, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you didn’t find any of the physical evidence you talked about—evidence you said we all take with us when we pass through our environment—on any of the five pairs of shoes, did you?”

  “I didn’t examine them for that purpose.”

  “What I asked was, on your examination of each of the five pairs of shoes, you didn’t find any grains of sand or blades of grass or lake soil, anything like that, on any of those ten individual shoes, did you?”

  “I didn’t note the presence of anything, no.”

  “Were any of the five pairs saturated with water?”

  “Not that I noted.”

  “Did any smell like they had been wet?”

  Another smile. “I didn’t note that to be the case.”

  “You do know what a tennis shoe that gets wet can smell like?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  The jurors smiled again.

  “You testified that the person who made the shoe prints leading from the water to the back of the house was walking with an intent and purpose.”

  “I did.”

  “That purpose being to get to the back of the house?”

  “That’s the logical conclusion.”

  “Beyond that, you have no way of knowing what the person was thinking, do you?”

  “I do not.”

  “It could have been a person who heard a gunshot and ran to the back of the house out of curiosity.”

  “I don’t agree with that hypothesis,” she said, and before Sloane could move on, she explained. “If it had been, then I would have expected to find two sets of prints, one by the person you’ve suggested, and a second by the shooter, who preceded that person.”

  “If the shooter came out of the water and up the lawn, as you’ve suggested, and did not gain access to the back of the house by some other means, correct?”

  “I found no evidence to suggest that a person came by any other path.”

  Cerrabone looked ready to stand, as if he suspected Sloane was about to violate the judge’s order and ask about the other two sets of shoe prints.

  “But isn’t it true that your focus when you arrived
was the back of the house?”

  “Not initially, no.”

  “It wasn’t?” Sloane asked, his voice rising. “So you and Detective Rowe discussed that the killer could have gained access to the property other than by water?”

  She recognized the trap. “We did not have a set theory when I started.”

  “But it seems so obvious now that you’ve testified; wouldn’t you at least say that the backyard was your primary focus?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “So it’s not as obvious as you’ve made it seem, is it?”

  Growing frustrated, Wright said, “When I started my investigation, I walked the entire property with Detective Rowe. It was not until after we walked the entire property that I focused on the continuous lines I noted in the backyard.”

  “But you did find footprints throughout the property, did you not, on all four sides?”

  “Yes, but I was able to eliminate almost all of those prints as belonging to law enforcement officers who responded to the scene.”

  “Almost all, but not all.”

  “Not all, but I also did not find a continuous line of footprints such as the prints on the lawn, to suggest ingress and egress to the patio.”

  Sloane wasn’t going to get anything better and moved on. “The make and model of the shoe to which you referred, that’s a very popular brand and model of shoe, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not aware that it is one of the most popular brands of shoe sold in the Pacific Northwest?”

  “No. That is not important to my analysis.”

  “It’s common.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You testified that the shoe prints on the concrete patio were wider than the other prints you measured, and you attributed that to the person standing in that location, water oozing from the saturated shoes onto the patio.”

  “Yes.”

  Using a photograph taken from the water looking at the back of the house, Sloane asked, “By the way, you found no physical evidence that a person sat down on the beach or the rock wall, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “So your theory requires that we presume the person who came out of the water did so wearing the shoes, right?”