The Hallows, page 13
His face went stern, and he put the photo down on the desk. He ran his hand along the stubble on his face. “Helluva thing to think your life is going one way and in just a few minutes it’s all gone. That’s all it was, just a few minutes.”
I stared at him a second while he took a deep breath. “Was she out for the funeral?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know where she is. For the first few years, the kids would get cards on their birthdays, but then that stopped. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, or has another family. People say change is a good thing, but it sure ain’t for the people you leave behind.”
“If she was the type of woman to run out on her kids, maybe it’s for the best.”
He glared at me. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Look, um, I just came by to tell you we’re doing everything we can. We may have a witness.”
“A witness? What the hell are you talking about?”
“There may have been a family up there at the time, and their child may have seen something.”
Anger flashed across his face. “Why didn’t the cops tell me?”
“They didn’t know.”
He was silent a second, fury building in his face. “You telling me they missed someone that saw my little girl get killed?”
“In their defense, Hank, they’re not experts in this. This type of thing just doesn’t happen out here, and these investigations are very complex.”
He calmed and nodded. “Well, you’re here now, and I know you’re gonna do everything you can for Patty.”
I swallowed and had to look away. The pain he was going to experience when it finally went public that she was escorting would be excruciating. He would blame himself for not knowing, and by extension, for her death. I wanted to just tell him now and get it over with but knew I couldn’t.
“Yeah . . . I promise I’ll do everything I can,” I said. “Um, look, Hank, did Patty ever mention anybody maybe following her around?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like someone that maybe was following her around that she didn’t want following her? Or did you ever notice someone around the house? Maybe just waiting outside in their car?”
I wanted to add, Someone like our dear mayor, but held my tongue.
“No. Why?”
“Just following up on everything. I gotta be thorough. Look, I gotta run. Duty calls. Call me if you need anything.”
I turned to leave and he said, “Tatum? Thanks for coming here. I mean, to the town, but also here today. It’s nice to talk about it sometimes. Everybody else in town walks on eggshells around me.”
I nodded and left.
38
A lineup could be done in one of two ways: a photographic lineup or an in-person lineup. The Art of Jury Trial as War, chapter 20: “Always, always, always—if you have the choice as a defense attorney—go with a photographic lineup.” Human memory is enormously fallible, and false identifications happened all the time. A photographic lineup was the best way to confuse the witness since people rarely look the same as in a photo. A lot of times, lazy cops didn’t even take new photos. They just used old booking photos or even crappy DMV photos from years ago.
So as a prosecutor, I wanted a live lineup, and I worked fast enough that Pritcher couldn’t file a motion to object. It would be fruitless to do so, since he’d for sure lose, but stalling tactics to wear down the prosecution worked more times than not. But he’d never been up against someone like me before.
I got to the station in the morning, and Jia was waiting for me outside. Her arms were folded as she paced, completely lost in thought. She struck me as someone who lived mostly inside her own head, for which the outside world was almost a distraction.
“Is the party ready to start?” I said as she followed me inside.
“Everyone’s here. Russell’s threatening to file a motion objecting to a live lineup.”
“Of course he is.”
“Can he even do that? Seems frivolous.”
“There’s a Supreme Court case that says he can object on the grounds that it’s overly suggestive, which violates the accused’s due process. So let me do the talking. One misstep and Russell will get the entire lineup tossed.”
We went inside the station, and near the back I saw Russell sitting with two other people in expensive suits. A tall woman with brunette hair and flashy earrings, and a younger man with a gold Rolex that gleamed in the sunlight coming through the windows. I caught a few of the officers glancing at them when they thought no one was looking.
“Tatum,” Pritcher said. “Looking sharp as ever. Did you raid your father’s closet?”
“Funnier every time. Let’s do this.”
“I haven’t made up my mind whether to file an objection yet.”
“You’re going to file one after the lineup saying I was overly suggestive, so let’s not bullshit each other. Shall we begin? I’m sure you’ve got flies to pick the wings off of or puppies to kick.”
We headed back to the lineup. The viewing room was darkened, and Lyle and Nikyee were there, as was Detective Vail, who was standing with his arms folded in the center of the room. Lyle was hugging his mom’s leg.
“Where’s Howard?” I asked Vail.
“Car theft uptown. We still have other cases, ya know.”
I turned to Lyle and said, “Hi, Lyle.”
“Hi.”
“You ready to do this, pal?”
He glanced at his mother and then nodded.
I looked to Vail and he left the room to bring in the men.
When the first group walked into the room on the other side of the two-way mirror, I stood next to Lyle, blocking him from Pritcher’s view in case ole Russ got the idea that maybe he could intimidate the little guy.
Seven men came in. All white, all with dark hair and builds like linebackers. On the far right was Steven Brown. The kid was taller than the rest and had a thicker body, probably from football or wrestling. He was unshaven and, I could see it from a mile away, scared. He was fidgeting and kept glancing around.
Vail looked to Lyle and said, “Do you recognize anybody standing here?”
He clutched his mother’s hand and buried his face in her leg. I looked to Nikyee, who I could tell understood that I couldn’t be the one to help him.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “Tell him if you recognize anyone here.”
Slowly, he turned his head and shook it.
“Are you sure?” his mother said.
“It was dark. There were two of them. I don’t know.”
Crap.
I looked to Vail, who led the men out and brought in the next group.
In the middle was Anderson Ficco. Seeing him in person was something . . . different. I felt anger, and I didn’t want to. Anger was temporary insanity, and it was the worst of all the emotions for a trial attorney to feel, since it blocked all reason and clearheadedness.
Unlike Steven, Anderson had a smirk on his face. No fear at all. Steven was the weak link, and I made a mental note of that.
Lyle glared at Anderson. It was clear, I’m sure, to everyone in that room that he was terrified of him, and I wondered just how much Lyle had seen that night.
“Do you recognize anyone, son?” Vail said.
He buried his face in his mother’s leg again, and this time, he nodded.
“Which number is he holding?”
He slowly turned and looked at Anderson and then dug his face back into his mother’s thigh. “Three.”
Pritcher stepped forward and said, “Lyle, are you sure you recognize number three? It seems like you hesitated a little bit.”
He gripped his mom’s leg tighter. “Yes. Three.”
I nodded and turned back to Detective Vail, who left the room again to take the men in the lineup away.
“Thank you,” I said to Nikyee as everyone filed out. Only Pritcher, his two associates, and Jia and I were left.
“Agg homicide,” I said, “and I’ll take the death penalty off the table.”
He chuckled. “You’re kidding, right? They’d never let him out. That’s as good as a death sentence.”
“Russell, we’re not in downtown Miami or Compton. This is rural Utah. The cops here are treated like saints, and everything they say is scripture. That jury’s gonna want to fry him the second I rest my case.”
“Manslaughter, five to fifteen.”
“Get outa here. I’m not giving him manslaughter. He tortured and murdered a seventeen-year-old girl.”
“Now don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten the use of the word allegedly, Tatum. You gotta prove that before you start throwing it around. And you’re right. We’re in rural, pro-police, pro-prosecution Utah, which means the jury’s already going to be against us before my client even sits down in that chair. But it also means these detectives botched this homicide investigation, your coroner doesn’t have a medical degree, and I’m just willing to bet there were tidbits the detectives left out of the report or overlooked. And when I find them, I’m going to tear you and this case apart.”
One of his associates opened the door and held it for him. “See you in court.”
He left, and I clicked my tongue against my teeth.
“He’s right you know,” Jia said. “We got a botched case. If I were to bet—”
“If you were to bet, always bet on me.”
I texted Will. Anything?
Yes. Texting you an address now. Get down here, and get that forensic team here.
39
The forensic unit had been put up in the only motel in town by the taxpayers of Ute County. They reached the scene in about half an hour: an apartment complex in the nearby town of Glassdale, about twenty miles south of River Falls, over the Nevada border. A detective from the local sheriff’s office had come out, but he was sipping coffee with some of the other cops and didn’t seem to care about what was happening.
As Jia and I stepped out of my car, Will came up to us and said, “Bebe Stewart, her real name, dated Anderson for four months. He’d bring her here most nights because he said his dad would beat the sheesh out of him if he brought, in his words, white trash to the house.”
“Would beat the what out of him?”
He glanced at Jia and said, “I, um, don’t use profanity. Just a personal choice.”
I shook my head. “Utah, man. Okay, where’s Bebe?”
“At her house. Told her we would be stopping by.”
I looked toward the complex. Didn’t appear especially upscale. They were three-story townhomes for sale, and on a purchase sign up front, I saw what I needed to see: one of the bullet points said they had large basements.
We entered the unit. The townhome was sparsely decorated, really just a couch with a TV and an Xbox next to it. The stairs leading down to the basement were off to the right. I got some paper booties from one of the forensic techs and slipped them over my shoes and made Jia and Will do the same.
Vail and Howard showed up, too, and stood at the door. Vail said, “Be nice if you called us first since this is our case and all.”
“Hey, back when I was a defense attorney, we were enemies, and I would do anything to win. But now I’m on your side, and I’m still going to do whatever I can to win. So cut the whining and be glad I called you at all after you hid evidence.”
Howard stepped right up to my face and said, “You know, I might get sick of your bullshit one day and decide to do somethin’ about it.”
“Well, until that time, Detective, please put some paper booties on your feet before you kick another crime scene in the balls.”
I went into the living room and watched a tech spray something on the couch and then go over it with a heat lamp. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto a small patio. The air was hot and dusty, and a fence blocked the view of the neighbors. A bag of charcoal lay on the ground against a wall, but I didn’t see a barbecue.
Back inside, the techs were working feverishly to finish up a scan of the house, and I watched them for a while to make sure the speed wasn’t interfering with the quality, and it didn’t seem to be. One tech, a woman in a blue jumpsuit with CRIME LAB emblazoned in bold lettering on her back, was vacuuming a section of carpet with a small handheld vacuum.
“Why you guys in such a hurry?” I asked.
“We’re not really,” she said without looking up. “None of us expected to have to stay the night, so it’s throwing a little bit of a wrench into some of our other cases, but we’ll deal. That’s why they pay us the big bucks, right?”
Jia was speaking with Howard, and the detective glanced at me before leaving.
“Where’s he going?” I said.
“Talk to the neighbors. See if anyone heard or saw anything.”
“You mean he’s actually doing his job? I’m impressed.”
“He’s not so bad. You guys might actually get along if you talked to him.”
“Doubtful, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Detective,” one of the techs shouted from the basement, “we got something.”
Since Vail had left by then, too, Jia and I headed down. Prosecutors had to be enormously careful at crime scenes, since, at the very least, they were witnesses to the scene itself. If the defense wanted to disqualify a prosecutor from a case, all they had to do was say that a conflict was created because the prosecutor is both the prosecuting attorney and a witness. It was easily avoided, though, if it could be shown that another witness could provide the same testimony without the prosecutor’s involvement. There were enough people here that it wouldn’t be a problem if I was careful.
“What we got?”
The tech, a burly guy in a coat, flipped on his black light. The basement didn’t have any windows and was naturally dark. The blue-tinged light lit up a space of about four feet, revealing dark splotches that ran in a horizontal line along the floor.
“What am I looking at?” I said.
“Blood. It pooled here before someone cleaned it up. Looks like probably with bleach. It’s a common mistake: bleach doesn’t actually destroy the blood. But they probably used something more powerful, too. It’s really degraded.”
“You got enough for a DNA match?”
“Doubtful. Bleach contaminates the blood. Only one of the three types of blood tests could work with stains this old anyway, what’s called PCR.”
“Polymerase chain reaction, yeah, I know it. It got one of my former clients falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Well, no method’s perfect, but that’s a pretty good one. Anyway, I’ll keep looking. There might be some arterial spray or something that got elsewhere that they didn’t use bleach on. But keep in mind, these stains are months old. My guess is nothing usable’s left.”
“Well, good work nonetheless.”
“Thanks. And who are you again?”
“I’m the babysitter for this investigation, apparently. Just keep me posted on what you find.”
We left the basement, and I went outside and called Gates to give her an update, but she didn’t answer. I looked back to the town house as Will came out. He slipped his booties off and said, “I was going to head over to Bebe’s.”
“I’ll come with. These guys might be a while.”
The three of us drove to a house in River Falls that I recognized. A girl I’d had a crush on growing up had lived there. The house was run down, to the point that it looked like it could fall over, and a car that was missing its two rear tires was up on cement blocks, which I didn’t know was actually a thing that happened outside of movies.
“You guys stay here,” I said.
Will nodded and Jia was already lost on her phone. I got out of the car and headed for the house. Just in case Pritcher decided to try to get me off the case by saying I coerced or intimidated a witness, I opened the recording app on my phone and hit the record button before slipping it back into my pocket.
I knocked and a beautiful—stunningly beautiful, really—brunette wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt answered. She must’ve been twenty-two or twenty-three, and she said, “Yeah?”
“Bebe?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Tatum Graham. I’m a deputy county attorney.” I took out the badge for the first time and flashed it, felt like I was on some terrible seventies cop show, and quickly put it away. “I’m prosecuting the Patty Winchester case.”
“Oh.”
Huh. That’s it? Conversation was not going to flow easily with this girl. “Can I come in?”
“I guess.”
The house looked like a hoarder’s dream. Piles of everything from toys to letters filled boxes stacked on top of each other against the walls. The orange carpet was shaggy and thick, with stains spread out through the room. The walls were the fake wood wallpaper, and duct tape held together one of the lamps.
“You live alone?”
“Nah, my mama lives here, too, but she’s at work.” She sat down on the couch and curled one leg underneath her. “Anderson didn’t do it, you know.”
I went to sit down across from her, but the sofa had dried food on it, at least what I thought was dried food, so I stood and folded my arms instead. “Oh yeah? Why do you think that?”
“Because he ain’t nothin’. I dumped him and he was cryin’ and stuff, wouldn’t let it go. Kept showin’ up at my work and almost got me fired. He’s a chickenshit, couldn’t kill nobody.”
“You dumped him? See, because I got the impression that he was a bit of a player.”
“Yeah, he gets girls ’cause’a his money and all, but he ain’t no player. He’s weak as a turd. Like a little kid.”
“Really? Because that’s not what I heard.”
She shrugged. “Believe what you want. I’m just tellin’ you. He ain’t nothin’. Steven, though, that fool’s an idiot.”
“How so?”
“Just gettin’ all stupid wherever we go, you know? Pickin’ fights with Hells Angels and all sorts’a people. He’s got that temper.”
