it. We didn't tell her that Kendra had told me that they were friends
or that I had pictures of her getting it on with the Tasmanian Devil
guy. She stared at us through hard eyes, lips pressed into a straight
line, as we described the violence inflicted upon Kendra. I thought I
saw her take a quick downward glance and a small swallow when Tommy
told her that a man named Frank Derringer had been arrested and
charged.
Tommy made a soft play to get information from her. "Anyway, I've
asked around the patrol officers and they tell me you know about as
much as anyone does about what goes on with the kids down here. If you
can give us anything on this guy Derringer, or any other guys who might
be into doing this kind of thing to a girl, we'd keep your name out of
it."
"I don't believe you, but since I don't know nothing about it, it don't
make a difference, does it?" Haley pulled the twenty bucks Tommy'd
given her from her front pocket and shook it in front of her as she
stood to face us. "Thanks for the twenty bucks, though. Losers." She
made the shape of an L on her forehead with her thumb and forefinger,
just in case we missed her point.
We didn't try to stop her as she walked away. It was clear that we
didn't have whatever it might take to get Haley Jameson to betray the
life she'd committed herself to.
"Lost cause" Tommy sighed "but, hey, at least we gave it a shot. I'll
flag it in PPDS for someone to call me if she gets popped for anything
down the road."
"Tommy, I know we were only using the case to get a conversation going
with her about vice, but I got the impression she knew something."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Possible. Guy like Derringer might get
around. But if there's something there, we're not getting it from that
girl."
Six.
I usually spend the day before a trial at my dining room table,
reviewing the entire file and practicing my open. I broke from habit
for Derringer. The case centered around Kendra Martin, and anything I
could do to boost her confidence on the stand would do far more for us
than a review of the file.
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
Kend
ra 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
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 transpl
ant, 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