“Objection,” Raines called. “This is pure fantasy, supposition.”
“Overruled,” the judge said. “Counselor merely asked the witness whether it was possible to plant evidence if he’d had the desire to. She didn’t accuse him.”
Tyler said, “I would never do that. It’s possible I could have done a lot of things. I could have walked off with the family silver. I could have painted graffiti on her walls. I could have taken a nap. The point is, I didn’t.”
“I see. Detective Tyler, what else was on the boots?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“No, strike that,” Summer said. “You testified on direct that Malcolm Byers, the eyewitness you interviewed, offered a description of the clothes worn by someone fleeing the crime scene?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever find these clothes?”
“She could have ditched them.”
“If she ditched the clothes, why would she keep the boots?”
“Objection,” Raines called. “Calls for speculation.”
“I’ll rephrase the question. Based on your experiences, why would a suspect ditch some articles of clothing, but not all?”
“Maybe she panicked.”
Summer crossed her arms. “She’s not the only one.”
Raines was up in a flash and barked, “Objection.”
Hightower said, “That is unnecessary, Ms. Neuwirth. You’ve made your point.”
“OK,” Summer said, “Let’s try this. Detective Tyler, you’re saying that the boots you found are the boots the killer wore, right?”
“That’s logical.”
“So you’re saying the killer wore the boots, and then stepped on the glass fragments during or after the perpetration of the crime?”
“Yes.”
“Then wore these boots all the way to my client’s residence?”
“Yes.”
“Walked on pavement, up the dirt path leading to the Center’s front door?”
“Yes.
“Then why is it that there is no dirt or mud on the soles of the boots?”
Tyler stumbled. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Summer could see Robinson and some of the other jurors scrawling notes. The electrician held a finger to his lips and seemed to be giving this a lot of thought. The computer magazine editor pursed his lips. Everybody likes a good fight, Summer thought. Good. They were in for a treat.
She was in a rhythm. “Outside of the victim’s home, there’s a concrete path, right?”
“Right.”
“No other way for the killer to have exited the victim’s premises, right?”
“Not that I know of.”
“The windows were locked and sealed, and there was no back door, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So why do you think the glass fragment doesn’t show any wear, no scrapings, nothing?”
Tyler shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“So let me get this straight. The perpetrator wore a pair of boots, somehow gets a glass fragment with a dab of the victim’s blood on it lodged in one of them, wears them the four miles to my client’s home, walks or runs over concrete and dirt, but somehow the soles stay pristine?”
“I wouldn’t say pristine exactly.”
“Oh?” Summer held up the boots and showed the soles. “Pristine, except for this fragment of bloody glass.”
“I suppose.”
“Is it possible the killer skipped the walking part and drove from the victim’s door to the Center’s door, or perhaps flew on a magic carpet?”
“She could have driven.”
“But forensics, to your knowledge, found no trace of physical evidence in my client’s car.”
“That’s correct.”
“Would you say the killer took off his or her boots, put on a different pair to go home, carried them to the Center—yet didn’t notice the glass or blood—and deposited them in my client’s closet?”
Tyler was nettled. “That’s absurd.”
“So if you assume the killer wore the boots home, he or she had to walk in them, at least as far as the parking lot.”
“I’d say you’d have to assume that.”
“Then how do you account for the cleanliness of the soles?”
“I can’t.”
Chapter 27
The next two court days were spent criss-crossing over the testimony of a local martial arts instructor, who offered his opinion that SK, from what he could tell from documentary footage, did possess the skills to toss a 220-pound man through a railing; entering Chantelle’s medical examiner’s report into the record, which, although a dry recitation of the evidence, was extremely damning; and making various motions to Hightower outside the purview of the jury on certain points of evidence.
Normally, when Summer worked a trial, she skipped breakfast, usually too nervous to eat. But today she was ravenous and headed to the cafeteria. She joined the line and grabbed a tray, slowly moving past hot plates containing eggs, waffles, pancakes. She chose cereal, a fruit cup, and coffee, paid for it, and carried her tray out to the sun deck.
Two bites into her meal, a shadow crossed over her.
“Mind if I join you?” Tai asked.
Summer took her briefcase off the chair. “Of course not.”
Tai set his tray down, sat next to her and removed his sunglasses. “I caught your act with Tyler the other day. You made him look like the ass he is.”
“Thanks,” Summer said, taking a bite of canned pineapple. “But even if the jury buys the idea that Tyler planted the bloody glass in the boot, they could easily view it as a cop enhancing evidence to ensure that a murderer is put away.”
Tai dug into his scrambled eggs and talked while chewing. “You always so cheerful? Don’t answer that. I already know.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls.”
Tai swallowed. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I pushed you when I shouldn’t have. It’s just—”
“I can’t do this now.”
Tai scraped the eggs off and began tearing off pieces of toast. While he talked, he tossed the crumbs to the birds. “Have you heard from Marsalis recently?”
“Surprisingly, no.”
“He’s a hard man to track.”
Summer’s cereal settled into the pit of her stomach. “Leave him alone, Tai. I don’t want him riled up.”
Tai tossed the last of the bread. “This psycho threatened you and you don’t want to rile him up? What gives? I can understand why you wouldn’t want the cops in on this, but I’m one of the good guys. Remember?”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with. He’s very dangerous.”
Tai gave her a dismissive laugh. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Please stay away from Marsalis.”
“And from you, right?”
Summer didn’t respond.
“Oh, fuck it.” Tai frisbee’ed his plate into the bushes.
Summer snickered.
“Oh, so you don’t hate me.” Tai said.
She touched his cheek. “Of course not.”
He held her hand there for a moment, and then reached into his daypack and extracted a DVD. “Brought you a little gift. Pizza Boy, the D.A.’s only eye witness, is coming up later today, right? Did you know that he was weenie wagger?”
Summer’s eyes got big. “He exposed himself in public? I checked him for priors, but he didn’t have any.”
“The judge let him go with a warning. Didn’t even get a mark on his record.”
“I wish there were a way I could get that little seed of information to the jury.”
“Seed? Very funny.” Tai tapped the disk with his finger. “But I got something much better. Reread his police interview, then watch this. You won’t be sorry.” He picked up his tray and left.
Summer looked at the title scrawled on the label: Kinky Ninja Sex Girls. She
left her breakfast partially eaten and headed upstairs to view it.
* * *
Rhonda Spellman, Gundy’s building superintendent, took the stand. She was a gray, wrinkly woman with a stooped spine from years of mopping, sweeping, and providing maintenance to Gundy’s fellow condo dwellers. She had dressed up for her moment in the sun, wearing a dress and shoes too modern for her Old World figure. Her hands were leathery, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting a manicure. During Raines’s direct, she peppered her testimony with polite gestures: “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” and “I really couldn’t say, Mr. Raines.”
Spellman said she had encountered “a pretty, redheaded woman” on the condo complex premises the morning of the murder. She didn’t know how old the woman was. Everyone under 50 all looked alike to her, she said. Her testimony culminated with Raines asking her to identify the woman with whom she had spoken.
Without pause, she pointed to SK.
Summer smiled as she approached the witness stand. She could easily impeach Spellman’s credibility—in her interview with Tai, she had said she wore glasses but couldn’t recall whether she’d been wearing them when she encountered SK. But rattling Spellman would only upset the jury. Besides, Summer needed to explain SK’s fingerprints on the crime photos and on the door.
“Did Ms. Killington seem angry when you saw her?” Summer asked.
“No, ma’am,” she said. “Seemed real nice. I said ‘Nice weather’ and she smiled and said, ‘Yes, it is.’ Then, ‘Have yourself a real nice day.’ These days not too many people are that friendly.”
“That does sound friendly. Did she try to hide from you?”
“Oh, no, ma’am.”
“Didn’t try to skulk around the back way, right?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You didn’t see her any other time did you?”
“No, I didn’t. Just the once.”
“Not that evening.”
“No.”
“Did you see where she went after you talked with her?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t,” Spellman said. “I had a lot of work to do.”
“Was she carrying anything?”
Spellman offered Summer an exaggerated shrug. “Couldn’t say one way or the other. I remember what she looked like, but after that, I really wasn’t paying much attention.”
“No further questions, Your Honor,” Summer said. “And Mrs. Spellman, you have yourself a real nice day.”
Spellman nodded. “You too, dearie.”
After Summer sat down at the defense table, SK tapped her knee.
“Good job,” she said.
But Summer knew she had blundered. She had committed a cardinal sin for defense attorneys: asking a question she didn’t already know the answer to. Spellman hadn’t seen SK leave the photos at Gundy’s door. Although it was possible the jury would conclude there was a good chance that SK had left them to remind of Gundy of an egregious error in judgment, it was far more likely they would believe that SK had been casing his condo with plans to return later.
Summer may have inadvertently characterized SK as the merry murderer.
She glanced at Raines, who was smirking at her.
Next in line was Malcolm Byers, a 25-year old local with a life going nowhere fast. He testified that he had been delivering two stuffed-crust pizzas with mushrooms to one of Gundy’s neighbors at the time of the murder.
Byers was pimply and awkward, his hair scraggly, his clothes ill-fitting. Raines led him through his testimony. He claimed he’d seen a “skinny redheaded woman” in black leather tights and a snug halter top run from Gundy’s at 10:10 p.m. “That woman,” he said, pointing at SK.
“You saw her open the door of Mr. Gundy’s condo?” Raines asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Byers said.
“What did you see?”
“The defendant all sweaty, like she’d been working out real hard. She poked her head out to make sure no one was around, but since I was coming out of the house across the way, and I was in the dark, she couldn’t see me.”
“What else, Mr. Byers?”
“I saw her do this weird kung fu action, like, move her hands like this.” Byers curled his elbows in and waved his hands threateningly, accompanying it with a squawk. “Something like that,” he said.
Summer had to shush SK.
“And then?” Raines asked.
Byers’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah, man, it was so cool. She ran off and just before she got to this fence she did this awesome handspring and fuckin’—sorry—leaped over the fence. I was scared, ’cause a woman like that could kill you.”
“You said she was moving quickly; but did you, perchance, notice what she was wearing on her feet?” Raines asked.
“Boots,” Byers said. “She was pretty still when she first left the condo, so I got a real good look.”
Raines held up Exhibit 27B, the boots that Tyler had testified were the ones he’d found at SK’s. “Do you recognize these as the boots she was wearing?”
Byers nodded yes.
“Let the record indicate that Mr. Byers is nodding his head in agreement,” Raines said.
“Got me a pair just like them at home,” Byers added. “St. Croix brand. Good for stomping people, if, that’s, like, what you’re into.”
Summer was so eager to begin her cross-examination that on her way to greet Byers she stumbled. She took Byers through past run-ins with teachers and principals in high school and the jobs he was fired from for stealing or flunking lie detector tests.
When Summer asked about his taste in movies, Raines objected. “What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
“If the court will bear with me for a moment,” Summer said.
The judge looked down imperiously. “A very brief moment, Counselor.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” she responded. “Now, Mr. Byers, what films do you like to watch?”
Byers shifted in the chair. “All kinds.”
“Do you ever rent movies from a store?”
“Yeah. From Smitties Video on Allen Street.”
“Do you ever rent pornographic DVDs?”
Byers looked like he had been shot. “Maybe.”
To make him sweat, Summer took her time walking over to the defense table. She picked up a pile of printouts: a record of every title Byers had rented over the last three years. She handed a set to Raines.
“Maybe?” Summer repeated.
“Sometimes,” Byers said.
Raines, after skimming the list, jumped up. “Objection. I fail to see what relevance any of this has to this case.”
“Judge,” Summer said, “May I have a word with you and Mr. Raines in chambers?”
Hightower leaned back in his chair and consulted the clock. “All right. Let’s take a 20-minute break. Ms. Neuwirth, Mr. Raines, give me a couple of minutes, then join me in chambers.”
Raines was already inside when Summer arrived. Hightower was on a step stool, tossing books into a box. Judging by the tension in the air, it was apparent that the two of them were not speaking. The election was only ten days away. Although he clearly held Raines in disdain, as far as Summer could tell, thus far Hightower hadn’t let this influence him.
“Have a seat, Summer,” Hightower said. “You don’t mind if I continue to clean up a bit while we discuss this, do you?”
Do I have a choice? she thought. “Of course not, Your Honor.”
Hightower dropped more books into the box. “Legal thrillers my wife gave me. She’s quite a fan.”
Summer reached into the box and pulled out a bestseller called Primal Evidence. She read the back: The improbable story of a schizophrenic alcoholic who solves the murder of a child actress and inadvertently stumbles onto an international conspiracy involving the Catholic church.
“Actually,” Hightower said, taking the book from Summer and flipping through it, “this one was kind of good. I heard it’s going to be the big movie at Christmas this year.”
/> Raines said, “Can we get down to business?”
With a meaty sigh, Hightower stepped down and took his place behind his desk. “Now, why did you request this meeting, Summer?”
“I have here a list of every DVD Mr. Byers rented from Smitties over the past year,” she said. “Out of more than 200 of them, 129 of them were porno movies, many of them rented repeatedly.”
“So?” Raines asked.
“Did you corner the market in moral impropriety?” Summer asked. “You dredged up a 20-year old prostitution conviction.”
“That’s different. One is a conviction and the other is—” Raines shut up when Hightower held up his hand.
“Surely you have more to offer me than Mr. Byers’s lust for pornography,” Hightower said.
“Yes, sir,” Summer said. “I have here a DVD that Mr. Byers rented nine times, a porno flick called, excuse my French, Kinky Ninja Sex Girls. May I play a section of it for you?”
Raines snorted, “Judge, you can’t be entertaining the notion that I, or the jury for the matter, has to be subjected to this filth.”
“The scene in question has no nudity,” Summer said, “and it’s brief. Your Honor, I believe you have an obligation to at least view the segment I have marked.”
“This better not be a waste of my time.” Hightower took the disc from Summer and slid it into his DVD player.
Afterward, he said, “I have no choice but to allow this to be entered into evidence.”
* * *
Summer cued up the scene and Sprague hit “play” on the judge’s command. While Byers and the jury watched on a monitor, a man and woman engaged in combat, complete with fists of fury and hokey sound effects. The woman, a ninja assassin dressed in black leather tights and a halter top, kicked the man in the face. He was knocked to the ground. She straddled him as he begged for mercy and snapped his neck cleanly.
Cat-like, she made her way to the door. She peeked once left, then right. After quietly shutting the door behind her, she darted into the night. Just before coming upon a tall chain link fence, she performed a handspring and vaulted over it, disappearing into the night.
Trial and Terror Page 17