two years ago, meaning they weren't there when Zimmerman was killed. So
he gets everybody clearing out blackberry bushes all night. They found
it early this morning," he said, sounding more excited. "They actually
found Jamie Zimmerman's purse, and it's pretty much where the guy said
it would be. Still has a bunch of stuff in it. Cigarettes, makeup,
and, most critically, a fake ID issued to one Jamie Zimmerman. A
detective told me he got chills when he found it. Her real ID was in
the pocket of her jeans along with a condom and a lipstick, and we
figured that was all she carried. We never even knew to look for a
purse."
"So we've got him tied to everything now," Duncan said. "Jesus, five
dead women, Sam's vie, God knows how many others. Do the police have
any leads on this guy?"
"No. Whoever he is, his luck is unbelievable. Crime lab says there's
no DNA on either letter. The Cold Case Databank entries for all four
of the other cases indicated there was too much deterioration for
testable DNA samples, just like with Zimmerman. I had IA call the
hometown police agencies to verify the computer information, and I
heard from them right before I came down. Nothing."
"Were there any other strangling cases in the database without DNA
evidence?" I asked.
O'Donnell paused. "No, just the ones from the letter."
"What's the FBI doing?" Duncan asked.
"They're interested but haven't taken over yet. They've got a profiler
studying the cases. Can't give me a time line on when they might have
something."
Duncan gave a dismissive wave. "Useless anyway. Let me take a wild
guess. Guy in his mid-twenties to forties, loner, no meaningful
relationships with women, with a job or lifestyle that takes him
through the Pacific Northwest. Likes to type letters and call himself
the Long Hauler. Yeah, real science."
He looked down at his desk and picked up a file.
"Alright, folks, here's what we're going to do. We're dumping the case
against Derringer." Duncan put up a hand to silence me before any
words came out of my open mouth. "No, Sam, we're dumping it. Your
evidence has gone to shit. You've got nothing but the vic's ID. Now,
I know you've got a personal interest in the girl, and it's admirable.
It really is. But the girl was coming out of a heroin OD. Plus you've
got a nearly identical crime committed by a different person same type
of victim, same location, both with missing purses. Oh, and don't
forget that the different person is confessing to both crimes. You
don't have enough to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt. Hell,
Sam, you don't even have probable cause."
"Duncan, the man's a convicted sex offender with shaved pubic hair.
That, combined with the confession "
He interrupted me. "You know damn well the jury can't hear about the
sex offense. Plus we had that defense attorney in here a couple days
ago about that, because the shaving was bothering me too. I can see
why you butt heads with her," he said, smiling. "What's her name
again?"
"Lisa Lopez," I said.
"Right, Lopez. Real firecracker, that one. But she made a good point.
She says Derringer shaved his privates because he was due for a second
pethismograph the Monday after the assault. I guess the wires pulled
at him on the first one." Duncan and Tim both made faces like even the
thought was painful. Wusses. They should try a bikini wax. "We
confirmed it with the PO what's his name "
"Renshaw," O'Donnell reminded him.
Griffith nodded. "Renshaw checked his calendar. Derringer was due in
on Monday, just like Lopez said. She couldn't find a way to bring it
out at trial without letting the jury know her guy was a pervert, so
she had to leave it out. Anyway, all you've got left is the ID, Sam,
and it's not enough."
But I had more than that. I had solid reliable Jan. I told them about
my visit to Meier & Frank. Surely it would be enough. It meant that
the fingerprint was back. The print had always been the best evidence.
So why weren't they excited?
"No dice, Sam," O'Donnell said, shaking his head. "I saw your note in
the file that the mom thought she got it from Meier & Frank. Just to
be safe, I called Staffpower, the temp agency that Derringer worked
for?"
I nodded.
"They faxed this over," O'Donnell said, handing me a piece of paper
from his file. "Turns out most stores do inventory before the holiday
shopping frenzy, and a lot of them use Staffpower. Derringer did
inventory at Meier & Frank last October also."
The paper he'd handed me was a list of all of the jobs Derringer took
through Staffpower last year. In the two months before Thanksgiving,
he must've worked inventory for half the stores in the mall.
"You could've saved yourself some time if you'd talked to me before you
went running around Meier & Frank on your own after you got taken off
the case," Tim said.
"I didn't 'run around," " I said, making air quotes with my hands. I
was seething. And I hate air quotes. "It's on my way home and "
Griffith put a hand up to silence us. "Sandbox. Remember, kids?" Tim
and I stopped. Duncan was right. It didn't matter anymore.
"Sam, you'll explain the situation to the family?" Griffith asked.
I nodded. Yes, I would have to. I couldn't pretend any longer that
the case was winnable. It rested entirely on Ken-dra's ID. Eyewitness
ID is always questionable, but I had a child victim who had suffered a
horrific assault and was under the influence of heroin. And if I
couldn't maintain that the case was winnable, I couldn't argue with the
decision to dismiss it. I hated the thought of breaking the news to
Ken-dra, but I couldn't stomach the idea of anyone else doing it
either.
"What do you want to do with Taylor and Landry?" O'Donnell asked.
"That one's trickier," Duncan said, pressing the pads of his fingertips
together to make something resembling a filleted crab, an annoying male
gesture that seemed popular in the power corridor. "Juries heard the
evidence and found Taylor and Landry guilty. Even now, the evidence
we've got on them isn't so bad, a lot better than we've got on
Derringer. There's no way around the phone number and earrings that
Landry planted on Taylor. But now we've also got ironclad proof that
the Long Hauler is involved."
"We've basically got proof beyond a reasonable doubt of two separate
theories," I said.
"Right," Griffith said, "unless we buy Landry's explanation for how she
knew so much. So if we say she didn't do it, we're basically admitting
that a cop helped her with the set-up on Taylor and then lied about it
on the stand. I want to be careful here."
He turned to Tim. "Call the FBI. See if they'll make a polygrapher
available to us. Then see if Landry and Taylor will agree to polys.
You'll have to discuss the questions with the FBI examiner, but what I
really want to know is whether they did the Zimmerman girl, and whether
they kn
ow the Long Hauler."
The results of a polygraph examination aren't admissible in court, but
the examinations are used by law enforcement all the time. Sometimes
you hook a suspect up to one so he'll confess after he fails it. The
failed poly doesn't come into evidence, but the confession does.
Polygraphs also help clear someone you already want to cut loose, based
on your instincts: the missing kid's parents, the dead woman's husband,
the suspects who become suspects merely because of their status. If
you don't have any other reason to suspect them, a passed poly lets you
stop looking at them and move on to less obvious theories. Griffith
would feel more confident about exonerating Landry and Taylor if they
passed polygraphs first.
"Isn't there also the possibility that someone connected to Landry or
Taylor wrote the Long Hauler letters?" I asked. It couldn't be Landry
or Taylor themselves. As O'Donnell had pointed out, outgoing prisoner
mail is strictly monitored.
"I thought that was a possibility with the first letter," Tim said,
"but I can't see it with this new one. First of all, I don't think
Landry knew about Zimmerman's purse, or she would have mentioned it
when she was trying to set Taylor up for the fall. More importantly,
whoever wrote the Long Hauler letter had to know not just about the
Zimmerman murder but the four other murders, plus your case. No way
some friend of theirs could cook this up. But, like Duncan said, we
should make sure with the poly that Taylor and Landry aren't somehow
wrapped up with the Long Hauler."
"So there's the plan, team," Duncan said. The filleted crab fingers
were gone and the capped smile was back. "Sam, you take care of the
dismissal on Derringer. Any calls from the press, you give 'em some
bullshit about new evidence produced by the defense. Don't tie it to
the Long Hauler, or we'll get even more pressure to cut Landry and
Taylor loose. And talk to the victim today. The family needs to be on
board for this. Let them know we're going after this guy and her case
won't be forgotten. Tim, get me those polys. I need to get back to
Governor Jackson."
So that was it. The case was gone, and I was the one who had to
dismiss it and deliver the news to Kendra.
Part of me wanted to call her immediately. Get it over with. Rip the
bandage off. But she was in school, so I worked my hardest to keep my
mind occupied, trying not to think about how much the case's dismissal
would hurt her.
I used the morning's custodies as an excuse not to complete the
dismissal order for Derringer. And not to call Chuck. He'd already
left me two messages asking why I'd been so cold the night before. As
much as I knew that I'd eventually have to answer that question, it was
the last thing I wanted to think about right now. So, I stayed cold
and worked on custodies.
Today's custodies were typical. Thirty-two new cases,
almost all of them identical. Knock and talk, traffic stop, jaywalking
ticket. Something small usually a ruse starts the encounter between
police and someone who looks like they're up to no good. Sometimes the
no-goodnik consents to the search. Sometimes it's a pat-down for
officer safety reasons, or maybe the officer claims exigent
circumstances. Whatever the basis, the search always occurs, and the
police find either heroin, coke, or meth. I timed it out once and
figured I spend an average of seven minutes to review and issue the
typical drug case. Nothing to be proud of, but, like I said, they're
all the same.
When I finished up, I changed into my running gear and headed out into
the drizzle. The loop around the downtown and east side waterfronts of
the Willamette is almost exactly three miles. I ran hard, trying to
chase visions of Kendra and Chuck from my head, and I finished in
twenty-two minutes. Not quite as fast as our current president, but I
work a lot harder at my day job.
Back at the office, I bought myself some more time, drafting a
procrastinated response to a motion to suppress. But I couldn't ignore
the clock's reminder that my time to write the dismissal order for
Derringer was running out.
It's surprisingly easy to make a criminal case go away. I prepared a
one-sentence motion and order stating that the case was dismissed in
the interests of justice in light of exculpatory evidence produced by
the defense at trial. Lesh signed and filed it, and I faxed copies to
Lisa Lopez and the jail. Derringer would be out in a couple of
hours.
By the time I finished, I was pretty sure that Kendra would be home
from school.
After a couple of minutes of small talk, I told her I wanted to come
an idea of what was coming. "Go ahead and tell me," she said. "God or
Edison or whoever invented the phone for a reason, you know."
This wasn't going well. When I insisted on driving out, I got a
"whatever" in response. I signed myself out on the DVD board, grabbed
the file, and made it to Rockwood in record time. When I knocked on
the door, I heard what I recognized as Puddle of Mudd blasting from
Kendra's CD player. In my neighborhood, that kind of volume would
trigger a call to police. In Rockwood, it was background music.
She apparently didn't have any plans on answering the door for me. I
banged on it and pressed the bell for a full two minutes before walking
around the back of the house to knock on her bedroom window. "I know
you're in there, Kendra. I'm not leaving until you open the door." I
rapped the bottom of my fist against her window with the beat of her
music for a couple of songs until she finally turned it off.
A few seconds later, I heard her holler from the front door in a
singsong voice, "I don't know how you expect to get into the house if
you're not here when I open the door." I sprinted around the house
like a famished cat responding to a can opener, before Kendra could
change her mind. When she didn't say anything about making me wait, I
pretended like she hadn't.
"You really didn't have to drive all the way out here, you know," she
said, sitting on her bed and going through her CDs, probably searching
for the one most likely to give me a headache.
"I know," I said, even though it wasn't true. "But I wanted to see
you. You hungry?"
"You trying to give me an eating disorder or something?
French fries and a milkshake don't make everything OK, Sam."
Since when? "Fine," I said. "I want to talk to you about the case,
though."
I started by showing her the Oregonian articles about the Long Hauler.
Andrea didn't subscribe to the paper, and I suspected Kendra had never
seen the articles themselves. "What are these?" she asked.
"Please, just read them, and then we'll talk."
She took them from me and spread them out in front of her on the bed,
but I could tell she wasn't really reading them.
"Do you mind if I get a glass of water from the kitchen? I
'm kind of
thirsty," I said, backing out of the room. I got another "whatever" in
response, but it gave me a way to leave her alone in her room with the
articles for a few minutes. When I returned, she was clutching a
pillow on her lap and staring at the photographs on the front page.
"I could've sworn it was him," she said.
"You're not sure anymore?" I asked.
She held the paper up to her face, staring at the photograph of
Derringer. "I still think it looks like him, but it can't be him, can
it?"
I should've given Kendra more credit. I had been clinging to our
theory of the case because I was too stubborn to admit we were
mistaken. Here she was, five minutes after reading the article,
accepting the unavoidable conclusion. We had the wrong man.
"No, Kendra, I don't see any way it can be him. I know that the
newspaper only says the Long Hauler letter had details about your case,
but it actually had a lot of information that no one could have had
without being one of the men who did this to you."
"So does everyone think I'm a liar now?" she said.
"No one thinks you lied about anything." Looking at her, knowing she
was doubting my faith in her, made me want to cry. "We know you told
the truth about what happened to you, but you might have made a mistake
about who did it. You shouldn't feel bad. You had just been through a
horribly traumatic experience. Plus, there was a lot of other evidence
pointing to Derringer. Even if you hadn't identified him, we would
have wound up focusing on him anyway after his fingerprint came up on