your purse."
"My mother did not steal that purse," she said.
"I know that. It looks like it came from Meier & Frank. The problem
is that Derringer worked there too."
Kendra gave what I thought was a growl of exasperation into the pillow.
But when she didn't lift her head, I realized she was crying. I held
her and patted her on the back. There was nothing to say.
Once the tears had stopped and she was breathing regularly again, she
wanted details on where the Long Hauler investigation stood.
"Well, you already knew that a girl named Jamie Zimmerman was killed a
few years ago. Her body was found in the Gorge, not too far from
where" I didn't know how to refer to what happened to her with her: Not
too far from where you were dumped? were found? "from where the
ambulance picked you up. Like the paper says, a couple named Margaret
Landry and Jesse Taylor were convicted of killing Jamie, but they claim
they're innocent. You knew that Derringer's attorney was suggesting in
your trial that whoever did the bad things to you had also killed
Jamie. With these letters, it's starting to look like one person,
someone other than Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor, killed not only
Jamie but four other women. And he's claiming he was one of the people
involved in what happened to you."
"Will the police be able to find out who the Long Hauler is?" she
asked. I wanted so much to assure her that they would, that we'd nail
him and justice would be served. But I learned a long time ago that
you should never make promises to victims unless you don't mind
breaking them.
"I know they're trying. They've got the FBI involved. The police
chief and the DA are making this a top priority. The feeling is that
if the guy's writing letters to the newspaper and naming himself, he's
escalating."
I could tell from the way she looked at me that she didn't know what I
meant.
"The suspicion is that he'll start to kill even faster," I explained.
"That he'll come up with a signature or something now that he's
interested in notoriety."
"Oh, so that's why they want to catch him, to keep him from getting to
anyone else. They don't actually care about the people he already
hurt," she said.
"Hey, you know that's not what I meant. Kendra, the man has killed
five women. Of course they want to catch him. I was just trying to
tell you how much this matters to the police."
She was quiet while it all sank in. "I guess I wasn't really thinking
of it like that. That guy killed other people. And he meant to kill
me." She looked dazed. "I knew you'd charged him with attempted
murder and all, but I never thought of it as someone trying to kill me.
That I'm lucky I lived through it."
"Shows you're a survivor, kiddo. You're tougher than him; you beat
him."
"Do the police know anything yet?" she asked.
"Well, enough to think that this guy did the things he said he did. The
paper didn't mention all the details, but the letter included pretty
specific descriptions of all the attacks. The information he provided
about what happened to you and Jamie was accurate, and it's stuff he
couldn't have taken from a newspaper or something. Also, the police
have found unsolved homicides that match the other murders."
"Did they find anything when they searched the Gorge?" she asked.
"Yes, I was going to get to that. Again, the paper didn't publish this
detail, so it's important that you keep this between us for now. But
the Long Hauler told police he'd taken Jamie Zimmerman's purse and
thrown it off the side of the road in the Gorge. Using that
information, the police were able to find the purse, and it's
absolutely Jamie Zimmerman's. It even had her fake ID in it."
"I guess that's another thing that makes her case like mine, huh? That
he left us in the Gorge and took our purses?"
I hadn't thought about that before. Lisa Lopez had had the prescience
Zimmerman, but what exactly had she said about it?
I went out to the Jetta to grab what had grown into several volumes of
files on the Derringer case. I knew I'd seen the trial transcripts in
a binder somewhere. After Duncan turned the case over to O'Donnell,
O'Donnell must have ordered them so that he and Duncan could get up to
speed. Something was nagging at the forefront of my brain, something
someone had said during the trial. I flipped through the transcript
pages frantically. It was going to be lost if I didn't find a trigger
to pull it forward.
Then I spotted it.
"What's going on?" Kendra asked.
"Wait a second, Kendra." What else had I missed? I started from the
beginning of the file and reread everything. When I was finished, I
knew exactly where I had gone off track. It wasn't just what someone
had said at trial. I'd also missed the Tasmanian Devil.
I looked up at Kendra. "Tell me more about Haley."
I looked for her first outside of the Pioneer Place Courthouse, the
waterfront, the Hamilton motel, all the places I could think of. I
finally found her at midnight, standing on the corner of Burnside and
Fourth Avenue. She had her thumb out and looked like she'd just shot
up.
I stopped the Jetta in front of her, and she walked over to the
passenger side and opened the door. Guess she couldn't see through the
tinted windows at night.
"Hey, Haley. Want a date?" I said.
"What the fuck are you doing out here?" She looked around. Not seeing
any police, she said, "Nothing you can do to me without a cop
around."
All those Law & Order shows had done some serious damage to my image
out there. Now that everyone understood that whole "separate but
equally important parts of the criminal justice system" thing, no one
is afraid of being arrested by prosecutors anymore. Sometimes it's
just a matter of reeducation.
"Not today, maybe. But I can go drive my little Volkswagen back to the
courthouse, type out an affidavit, and have an arrest warrant for you
in the system by tomorrow morning. It's not like it takes the cavalry
to find you or anything."
She thought about that for a while. "Yeah, well, I can handle another
loitering pop. Nothing but a thing at juvie." Her eyes were barely
open. It's probably hard to care about being arrested when you're
pumped full of heroin.
"I'm not talking about juvie this time, Haley. I'm talking Measure
Eleven time."
She might not know the details, but anyone on the street as long as
Haley knew the gist of Measure 11. It meant being charged as an adult
and getting real time. The threat was enough to fire her up as much as
could be expected in her current state.
She pretended to laugh. "You ain't got shit on me. Now you better
move along, bitch. I got work to do."
I suppressed the impulse to mow her down with the Jetta. I would've
opened a six-pack of Fahrfegnugen on her ass over the c-word, but un
der
the circumstances I could handle the b-word.
"I'd be careful about how you choose to work, Haley," I said. "From
where I sit it's called promoting prostitution, not loitering. And
promoting prostitution for a thirteen-year-old lands you under Measure
Eleven."
"Pimping? Lady, you got me confused with some Cadillac-driving,
purple-velour-wearing, platform-shoe-stomping dude." She was laughing
uncontrollably now, rattling off some more descriptors I couldn't
understand.
"Haley, listen to me. You're in major trouble here, and I'm not
fucking around." My tone got her attention. "You arranged dates for
Kendra in exchange for a cut of the fee. You set her up at the
Hamilton, knowing she was using the room to work. You sold her condoms
when she ran out, again at a profit and knowing she was using them for
prostitution. Plus, you knew she was only thirteen years old. All I
have to do is go down to the Hamilton, and I suspect I'll find several
other girls who'll say you do the same things for them. Guess what,
Haley? That's promoting prostitution, even if you don't wear purple
velour."
"That's bullshit. I was helping her out, is all. Safer to work at the
Hamilton than out of cars. And, big deal, I hooked her up with a few
guys who liked younger girls and who I knew were all right."
"Too bad, Haley. I'd heard you were smart. At this point, I'd advise
you to shut up until you've talked to a lawyer, because what you just
said amounts to a confession to a Measure Eleven charge."
I rolled up the window and hit my turn signal like I was going to pull
out into traffic on Burnside. I was beginning to think she was going
to let me leave when I heard the tap on the window. I rolled it down
again.
"So what do you want?" she asked.
"Now that's more like it. Get in."
Fourteen.
When I finally got home it was nearly two in the morning.
Chuck's Jag was in my driveway, and Chuck was asleep in the backseat. I
tapped on the window, and he reached over his head and unlocked the
front door.
"This piece of crap chose my driveway to break down in?" I said.
"Cute. Where have you been?" he asked, sitting up and pushing his
hair down from sleep.
"Another late one," I said.
"A late one where? I've been leaving you messages all night."
"Sorry. I got busy. I would've called you tomorrow."
"So, again, where have you been?"
Shoot. He'd learned something about interrogations over the years.
"Working. Griffith told me I had to dismiss the case against
Derringer, so I went out to Rockwood to break the news to Kendra."
"You were at Kendra's until two in the morning?" He sounded
appropriately skeptical.
"I had some follow-up. I'll tell you about it later. Right now I'm
exhausted." I headed toward the front door.
He grabbed my arm as I was walking up the steps to the porch. "Dammit,
Sam. What kind of follow-up? Where the hell have you been?"
I pulled my arm from his grip. "Jesus, Chuck. The stalking routine
really isn't becoming. Is this jealousy? Do you actually think I was
with someone else?"
He shook his head.
"What?" I asked.
"You scared the shit out of me. I thought something happened to
you."
"Well, nothing happened to me. With Derringer's charges dismissed, he
doesn't have any reason to try to scare me off anymore, so stop
worrying. I told you, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Please respect
that."
"Don't do this, Sam. You were distant last night, you blew off my
calls all day, and now you're out till whenever and won't tell me where
you were. I know you. The only thing I have to compete with is your
job, so something must be happening on the case. What's going on? My
guys tell me the governor's cutting Landry and Taylor loose. You tell
me you've dismissed the case against Derringer. So why were you out so
late?"
I looked at him but didn't say anything.
"You don't trust me, do you, Sam?"
I knew I should say something, but I didn't. I couldn't get my mouth
to work.
I finally spoke up when he started walking toward his car. "Explain it
to me, Chuck. How did Landry know so much about Jamie's murder if she
wasn't a part of it? And if she was a part of it, how come she passed
a polygraph while some guy tells the Oregonian where the police can
find Jamie's purse? Explain it to me. Come inside and talk to me
about it."
He turned his head just long enough to say, "You're really
unbelievable, Kincaid. You don't know me at all."
I stopped myself from pulling out my cell phone as I watched him drive
away. Part of me wanted to apologize; another part wanted to scream at
him.
Instead, I decided to get to sleep so I could wake up and work on what
I'd learned from Haley.
Two days later, my ducks were finally in a row.
Sneaking around hadn't been easy. Once the charges against Derringer
had been dropped and the news had been broken to Kendra, my role in the
matter was officially over. I was taking a big risk by jumping back
into it again without notifying Duncan and O'Donnell.
I had reserved a block of time in front of the grand jury without
indicating a specific case name. Anyone looking at the schedule would
just assume I was presenting several drug cases together. Actually, I
was trying to indict Derrick Derringer.
Getting an indictment's much easier than getting a conviction. The
grand jury's only role is to decide if there's enough evidence against
the defendant to warrant a trial, and in practice grand jurors "true
bill" almost every case presented to them. Because the grand jury
doesn't actually determine the defendant's guilt, the proceedings are
considerably less formal than at trial. No judge, no defense attorney.
Just the prosecutor and seven trusting grand jurors. We rarely even
kept a record of grand jury testimony in state court, but I'd gotten a
court reporter for this particular session. At least if I got fired,
I'd have a transcript to show for my hard work. It wouldn't be a great
trade, but it was better than nothing.
"Members of the grand jury, today's proceedings will not be typical of
the hearings you have experienced so far as grand jurors. By now, you
have figured out that most criminal cases are cut-and-dry. The
prosecutor says hello, calls in a police officer or two, and asks for
an indictment. No one gives you the other side of the story, the
evidence that complicates the picture, what the defense will say at
trial.
"Today, I will ask you to indict Derrick Derringer on charges of
obstruction of justice, perjury, statutory rape, and conspiring with
his brother to rape and murder a thirteen-year-old girl named Kendra
Martin. This will not be a straightforward story. You will learn, if
you do not already know from the news, that the State has already
dismissed charges against Derrick Derringer's brother, Frank Derringer,
for raping and attempting to murder Kendra Martin. To complicate
things further, someone has written anonymous letters to the Oregonian,
claiming that he and an unnamed accomplice, and not Frank Derringer,
are responsible for the attack on Miss Martin.
"I'll be honest with you. I am currently unable to offer a single
theory that explains both the evidence against Mr. Derringer and his
brother, and the anonymous letter that would appear to exonerate the
Derringers. I suspect that you will also find it difficult to
reconcile the evidence against
Mr. Derringer with some of the State's other evidence. That's why
your role today is so important. At the end of the presentation of the
evidence, I will ask you to decide for yourselves whether the evidence
against Mr. Derringer warrants an indictment, regardless of the
exculpatory evidence."
I started with a thorough overview of Frank Derringer's trial, the
Jamie Zimmerman case, and the Long Hauler letters. The rules of
evidence do not apply during grand jury proceedings, so I didn't have
to use live testimony to establish this background. Instead, I offered
it in summary form, using the white board to make a list of the central
characters in the case and the important points for them to remember. I
ended with the discovery of Jamie Zimmerman's purse.