Judgment Calls Read online

  Everything had gone well in front of the grand jury. I got the indictment in less than an hour, and Kendra did a good job with her testimony. Afterward, to prepare her for the actual trial, I had shown her a courtroom and even put her in the witness chair to run through her testimony. But to make her feel as comfortable as possible tomorrow under the circumstances, I wanted her comfortable with me.

  It was an unusually warm day for the beginning of March in Portland, so I decided to take Kendra to the zoo. I invited Grace, too. Kendra seemed a little skittish about leaving her house, but she and Grace seemed to hit it off from the start, and it was hard not to enjoy the warm sun after months of chilling rain.

  The Portland zoo is a natural habitat zoo. The advantage is obvious: Instead of being confined in concrete bunkers surrounded by metal bars, the animals get to roam freely on acres of land designed to replicate their environments of origin. The downside is that the animals use their oasis just as any reasonable person would if given the option: to avoid any unnecessary contact with meddlesome humans.

  As a result, our visits to the giraffe and lion areas were unproductive. After staring at a boring mound of rocks for fifteen minutes without a single indication of a lion’s presence, I was ready to pack it in to visit lizards, snakes, anything that was stuck in a cage the old-fashioned way so that stupid humans could gawk at it, whether it liked it or not.

  Something passed through my field of vision, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. Turning around, I saw a man on a cell phone standing outside the rain forest building. He wasn’t looking in our direction, but I realized I had seen him earlier at one of the other exhibits and, come to think of it, he’d been alone then too.

  I gave Kendra some money to buy us all red-white-and-blue ice pops shaped like rockets. As I watched her walk over to the concession stand, I lowered my voice. “Don’t make it obvious that you’re looking, Grace, but you see that guy by the rain forest? On the phone?”

  She snuck a little peek. “Sweetie, you do need to get yourself a man if you’re stooping that low.”

  I looked at the guy again. “Grace, no. Yuck. It’s just—isn’t it a little weird for a man to be at a zoo by himself?”

  “Maybe his family’s inside, and he left to make a call.”

  “I saw him earlier, though, and I think he was alone then too. It didn’t stand out at the time, but now I think he was looking at us over by the lions.”

  “What lions?” She laughed.

  “I’m not kidding, Grace. Maybe he’s a little pervert who’s at the zoo to watch all the kids.”

  “Or maybe he’s just some suburban dad who’s trying to keep up with the office while he’s on daddy duty at the zoo, and he was looking at us because we aren’t so hard on the eyes.” She slipped into a Mae West routine.

  “Hey, knock it off. I’m serious.”

  “No, Sam, you’re paranoid. You’ve got crime on the mind, and you’re especially uneasy about Kendra today. If you’re really worried, we can go say something to security. Tell them to keep an eye on him.”

  I thought about it. “Nah, you’re right.” I looked back at the guy. He was putting his phone away and walking into the rain forest. “I’m sure he’s harmless.”

  We polished off the rocket pops and headed toward the polar bears. Grace and I were entranced, as usual, by Portland’s swimming polar bears, but I noticed that Kendra seemed a little distracted.

  “You holding up OK, kiddo?” I asked.

  She looked at me like I’d offered her broccoli, and then spoke extremely slowly in the event I’d suddenly become extremely stupid. “Um, yeah. Unless I’m missing something, the zoo’s not exactly a high stress kind of thing, Samantha.”

  She was playing tough, but I knew the trial was weighing on her mind at least as much as on mine. “Very funny, wiseacre. Last time I checked, I was going to be picking a jury tomorrow, and you were scheduled to testify in a couple days. Do we need to talk about that?”

  “No. I understand how everything will go. I’ll be OK.”

  I was worried. I’d prepped her, but the trial would be her first face-to-face with Derringer since the assault, and I suspected that she had no idea of what was coming. I’d advised her that Lisa Lopez would cross-examine her. She knew that Lopez undoubtedly would ask her about her drug use and prostitution. We ran through a mock cross together, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rough with her on the issues of drug use and promiscuity. I was hoping Lisa would pull her punches on these issues. If she did hit Kendra hard, the jury might hold it against the defense.

  I gave Kendra’s arm a little squeeze and said goodbye. “You take it easy this week, OK? You’re going to be fine.” Grace was going to give Kendra a ride home, but first they were going to make a stop at Lockworks, Grace’s salon.

  It would be good for Kendra to see other women in careers more satisfying than her mother’s, and Grace has all the stuff good role models are made of. She graduated magna cum laude with a business degree from the University of Oregon. About two years into a marketing job with a big company in town, she foresaw that Portland was attracting a more cosmopolitan population than the city was capable of servicing. She had been cutting her friends’ hair since high school, she had a great mind for business, her taste had always been impeccable, and people had always been drawn to her. She took out a loan, bought part of an old warehouse, and opened Lockworks in the Pearl District. She lured the best stylists in the city by offering them good benefits and a piece of the profits, and used her contacts to recruit customers while she went to cosmetology school at night.

  Lockworks is now the swankiest salon in town, and customers wait weeks to get an appointment with Grace. Luckily, she still cuts my hair like she did in high school, in her kitchen while we eat raw cookie dough.

  As I pulled out of the parking lot, I noticed the cell phone dad leaving, too. Except he still didn’t have anyone with him. And he was driving a brown Toyota Tercel. Did they let dads drive those things? As he left the lot, I dug through my purse for a piece of paper. Normally my bag’s full of old receipts, but I’d just cleaned it out. I pulled out the edge of a dollar from my wallet and scribbled down the guy’s plate number before I lost sight of him. Maybe I’d run it later to make sure he wasn’t a fugitive pedophile.

  * * *

  I had just enough time to drive back downtown to make the meeting I’d scheduled with MCT. Immediately before a trial, I like to get the principal investigators together to run through all the evidence and review what we can expect from the defense. It was a practice I’d followed in the federal system, where the agents support the case all the way through the trial. Unfortunately, the local police are so busy that it’s hard to get investigative time on a case once it’s been indicted by the grand jury.

  Lisa had given me a copy of her witness list just a few days ago. In an ideal world, I would have asked the police to interview each of the potential defense witnesses so we could lock in what they might say at trial. All I was hoping for in the real world was an idea of who each person was. From there, I would have to guess what the purpose of their testimony would be.

  I had finally broken down and bought a cell phone, and I was still in that phase every new cell phone owner goes through, finding reasons to use my fancy new gadget. On my way to central precinct, I called MCT to make sure everyone was assembled as planned.

  It took awhile for an answer. “Walker.”

  I had to raise my voice to be sure he heard me over all of the whooping and hollering in the background. “Detective Walker, it’s Samantha Kincaid. I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for today. Any news?”

  “Hell, yeah, we’ve got news. Haven’t you heard?”

  I obviously hadn’t, so he continued. “Oregon Supreme Court ruled in a special session this morning that the State can stick the big needle to Jesse Taylor. I wouldn’t have thought those libs had it in them, but we’re finally gonna have an execution around here.”

>   I said something about the state court being just the beginning. Even though Taylor had waived appeals, his prior attorneys would still try to go to federal court on their claim that Taylor was incompetent to fire them and waive his rights. But, as the words came out, I could think only of Chuck, having to nod politely as the rest of the guys celebrated the ruling that brought a man he had investigated one step closer to state-sanctioned death.

  It probably didn’t help that this was the case that got Chuck onto MCT. After Margaret Landry confessed to Forbes, the police brought in MCT, but Chuck stayed involved in the investigation. They must’ve liked him, because they added him to the team about a year later.

  At least he didn’t need to worry about whether the police got the wrong man. And it wasn’t as if the defendant was possibly a redeemable guy who made a split-second mistake during some robbery-gone-bad. Both Taylor and Landry were unrepentant sadists. When Landry finally confessed to Forbes, she admitted that she and Taylor wanted to find a woman for a three-way. Taylor went to a biker bar and picked up Jamie Zimmerman, whom Landry described as “a ’tard of some sort, but a hot piece of ass.” Back at their house, Taylor got rough with both women and then began strangling Jamie with his belt. Landry helped him by holding Jamie down while she was fighting. After Jamie was dead, Landry performed oral sex upon her while Taylor masturbated. Then they wrapped her body in their shower curtain and dumped her near the Gorge.

  And, despite Margaret’s subsequent statement that she fabricated the entire story to get her abusive boyfriend in trouble, I had no doubt that she and Taylor were guilty. Her confession contained accurate details that she couldn’t have known unless she was involved somehow.

  She had tried to explain the details away by saying that Chuck had coerced her confession and had fed her the details she was missing. But the jury had seen that the son of a former governor didn’t need to set up innocent grandmothers to get a good job in the bureau.

  Although Landry never repented for Zimmerman’s murder, she had avoided the death penalty by agreeing to testify against Taylor after the jury convicted her. She depicted herself as a do-gooder who volunteered teaching ceramics at hospitals and treatment centers. She claimed that she would’ve remained a law-abiding grandmother if it weren’t for her abusive younger boyfriend.

  Jesse Taylor, on the other hand, had little to say in his defense. A chronic alcoholic who suffered frequent blackouts, Taylor said he couldn’t remember anything he’d done that night, but didn’t think he ever met Jamie Zimmerman and didn’t think he would ever kill anyone. But he didn’t think he’d pass up a chance at a three-way either. Great defense.

  That said, the certainty of Taylor’s guilt and the pure viciousness of the crime apparently were of little comfort to Chuck. When I arrived at the Justice Center, he was waiting with Jack Walker, Ray Johnson, and Mike Calabrese. The celebration over the Supreme Court’s Taylor ruling had died down, but Chuck still looked unnerved. I wanted to say something about the news but had to settle for an empathetic glance that I hoped he caught before I launched into new business.

  “Hi, guys. Thanks for making time to go over the case. It helps me if we’re all on the same page before we start the trial.”

  Mike Calabrese shook his head and told me with a wave of his hand that he wasn’t bothered. He was a New York transplant, and eleven years in Portland hadn’t changed the accent a bit. “Listen, Sammie, I can’t speak for these guys, but me? I say there’s no one better than you. I’m tired of these DAs who stick us up there on the stand and assume we know how it’s gonna go. Most of them don’t want to take time away from their weekend, so me? I appreciate it, is what I’m sayin’.”

  I pulled out my trial notebook. “I thought we could start by running through the evidence that each of you will be covering. Then we’ll go over the likely defense theories. You can help me out by making sure I know who these defense witnesses are. Any questions before we start?”

  Jack Walker held up a hand. “Yeah. I don’t mind or anything, but our LT was a little peeved about all four of us being out to testify. Usually they just have one from each pairing go to court.”

  The bureau has to pay cops time and a half for all off-duty work, so this meeting wasn’t cheap. “I want all of you to testify for a couple of reasons. One advantage to this approach is that, subconsciously, we’ll defeat any kind of Who Cares attitude the jurors might have in the back of their mind. Remember, they’re not going to hear about Derringer’s prior unless he testifies, so they’ll be seeing him on his best behavior, in a suit, leaning over and writing notes to his attorney. And, as much as we all like Kendra, some jurors might see her as getting what a girl should expect when she’s turning tricks for dope. By having all of you testify, we’ll be telling the jury that the bureau cared about this case and put a lot of resources into it to get a thorough investigation.

  “By having each of you testify about a separate aspect of the case, we’re also distributing the credibility of the police investigation among all four of you. If no single detective is seen as the lead, Lopez can’t get any mileage out of ripping one of you guys a new one. If she tries doing it to all of you, the jury will see that it’s dirty.”

  Walker nodded. “Got it. I’ll tell the lieutenant so he gets off our backs.”

  “As far as the order of your testimony goes, I’ll be spreading your statements out around Kendra’s, so she will be the highlight of the show. But I don’t want to end with her testimony just in case she winds up taking a beating on cross.

  “The first witnesses will be the two kids who found Kendra in the Gorge. That’ll set the scene for the jury. Then I’m going to call Mike.” Calabrese would cover Kendra’s condition when they got to the scene and the processing of the crime scene.

  The fingerprint on Kendra’s purse would be a critical piece of evidence. To get it before the jury, I’d need to show that the purse examined by the crime lab was the same one Mike found near the crime scene. We went through the purse’s chain of custody. Mike placed it in a sealed and marked bag at the Justice Center and then brought it to the crime lab without opening it. Later, Heidi Chung would explain that she removed the purse from the sealed bag that had been marked by Officer Calabrese. It’s the kind of testimony that puts jurors to sleep, but, unfortunately, lawyers have to jump about six evidentiary hurdles to get to the good stuff.

  After Mike, I’d call the EMTs who drove Kendra to the hospital. They’d help show how bad Kendra looked at first. Then we’d get into what actually happened to her.

  I was especially concerned about Kendra’s initial lies to the police about why she was in Old Town and whether she used heroin. I walked them through how I was planning to deal with this. First, Ray would testify about the initial interview with her. The bar against hearsay would keep him from repeating most of Kendra’s statements, since they weren’t made in court. But I could ask him about statements that were eventually determined to be false. Out-of-court statements are only hearsay if offered for their truth. He could also testify about Kendra’s demeanor.

  I’d follow Ray with the ER doctor. If the jury didn’t understand Kendra’s explanation for why she lied, they might hang their hats on the Narcan if an MD explained the effects of the drug.

  After the doctor, Jack Walker would testify about the second interview with Kendra. I wanted him to talk about the change in Kendra’s demeanor from the first interview to the second and what he said to Kendra to get her to open up with him. “Explain it to the jury just as you did with me,” I told him. “If they’re going to understand why she was initially dishonest, it’s going to come from you, followed directly by Kendra.”

  After Kendra, I’d call Andrea Martin to describe Kendra’s recovery since she’d been home. Then Deputy Lamborn and Dave Renshaw would testify about Derringer’s shaved body hair, followed by Chuck’s testimony about the car overhaul.

  “Chuck, be ready to go over the contents of the work order from the Collision Cli
nic.” The only bone Lopez threw me was on that order. The document was admissible under a hearsay exception for business records, but technically I should bring in an employee to establish the foundation. I’d included the shop’s custodian of records on my witness list just in case, but Lisa had agreed to stipulate to admissibility. Stipulating for business records was the usual professional courtesy, but with Lisa it could’ve gone either way.

  After Chuck, I’d call Heidi Chung, closing on the strength of the fingerprint evidence.

  When I’d finished, the detectives were clearly impressed.

  Ray Johnson nodded his head. “Man, that’s classy, Kincaid. You’ve got him smack down, girl.”

  “Hey, you guys did all the work. I just put it together in a way that gets it all in front of a jury.”

  “You think he’s going down on all counts?” Walker asked.

  “To be honest, I’m not so sure. If Derringer were smart, he’d abandon this whole identity defense, especially since we got that fingerprint. If he’d focus on the actual legal charges instead of denying identity, he could beat the attempted murder and try to get out from responsibility for the sex acts of Suspect Number Two. But the jury’s likely to get so pissed off by his lame-ass alibi defense, they’re not going to split the legal hairs in his favor. They’ll convict him of the whole damn thing once they decide he was the one who did it.”

  Mike Calabrese liked that possibility. “Why shouldn’t the loser get smacked for lying his ass off? Would be nice for a jury to call something in our favor for once.”

  We turned to the defense witnesses next. Lisa had given me the bare minimum, names and addresses. She had even listed the five witnesses in alphabetical order so I wouldn’t know who was most important.

  Jack Walker started with the top. “Well, you know who Derrick Derringer is. He’s the scumbag’s brother slash alibi.”

  “Last time we talked about him, we hadn’t found anything to prove they weren’t together. I’m assuming that hasn’t changed.”