A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  “And finally…” He paused for a moment, to give the coup de grace its proper weight. “We will present irrefutable evidence, backed up by unimpeachable experts, that the bullet that killed Maria Estrada came from a gun that had Steven McCoy’s fingerprints on it.” Another pause. “As well as the victim’s.”

  Alex stepped back for a moment. He glanced over at Elise, who gave him a supportive smile.

  “Maria’s killer’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. That’s absolutely unassailable. Now I know that his lawyer will come up with a cockamamie story about how they innocently got there, and aren’t connected to Maria Estrada’s murder. And I know, when you hear this fable, that you will be astounded that it’s the best Mr. Garrison and his client could come up with. And I’ll let you judge whether it’s an insult to your intelligence.”

  He leaned forward on the podium, resting on his forearms, as if he was your next-door neighbor leaning on the fence that divides his property from yours, so the two of you can have a friendly Saturday morning chat about the prospects of this year’s UCSB basketball team.

  “I know Luke Garrison well,” Alex continued. “He used to be my boss. I learned my craft from him, and let me tell you, he was one terrific teacher. He’s about as good a lawyer as you can find. If a member of my family or one of my friends got into trouble and needed a great defense lawyer, Luke would be the first one I’d call. But folks…no one bats a thousand. Not Barry Bonds, and not Luke Garrison. Even the greatest hitter will sometimes strike out. And that’s what my esteemed adversary is going to do here, with that desperate flimflam he’s going to try to fake you out with. Because that’s all he has—smoke and mirrors. He won’t have a real defense for Steven McCoy, because there isn’t one.”

  Alex took a quick sip of water, then pushed forward. “Maria Estrada is dead. She was buried six months ago, the pitiable remains of what was left of her. Nothing that anyone can do will bring her back to life. Her family will grieve for her forever, and there is nothing we can do to ease their pain.”

  He stopped and looked off past the prosecution table to the spectators who were sitting in the rows on his side of the aisle. Maria’s entire family had come for this. They sat mutely, watching and listening, their faces contorted with grief and anger. Mrs. Estrada was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief. Women on either side of her were trying to comfort her, although they, too, had tears in their eyes. Hector Torres, sitting apart from them, was a smoldering force. All his attention was on Steven McCoy’s back.

  Alex stared at them for a long moment. Then he turned to the jury again. “We must do what the law requires us, mandates us, to do. We must convict Maria’s murderer and put him in prison for the rest of his life, so that he can’t kill again. So that the body of another Maria Estrada will not be found rotting under a merciless sun. So that justice, at last, will be served.”

  “Good morning,” Luke began. He looked at each juror individually for a second, smiling at each one. A friendly smile, meant to put them at ease.

  “I liked the way the District Attorney talked to you at the beginning of his opening,” Luke told them. “Reminding you that one of the bedrock tenets in this great and free country of ours is the right to an impartial and fair trial. It’s what he said afterwards that made me sit up straighter in my chair. That after you give Steven McCoy his fair and impartial trial you’re going to summarily convict him. And that his evidence is foolproof, while anything I say or show you is—how did he put it?—some kind of flimflam. A carny trick. Sleight of hand. Sizzle, but no steak.”

  He looked over at the prosecution table. Alex turned away reflexively. Elise stared at him fiercely, her eyes locked onto him. He smiled at her. Her face turned dark, an instinctive scowl.

  Luke brought his attention back to the jury. “I’m not going to get into specifics with you now,” he told them “and I’m not going to make you any promises. I know that Steven McCoy is innocent, and I’m confident that when the steak stops sizzling and the smoke clears, you’ll agree with me. Because contrary to what Mr. Gordon told you, his case isn’t as strong as he’d like you to believe it is. As you will see, it’s all circumstantial. And we will rebut every single piece of evidence the prosecution will throw at you. And we will also show you, with real witnesses and real evidence, that any number of men, known and unknown, could be Maria’s real killer.”

  He left the podium and walked to the jury-box railing. Gripping it lightly with both hands, he looked up and down the double row. “I ask one thing of you,” he told the jurors. “Keep an open mind. Examine the evidence carefully, and objectively. And when you have, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that you will do the right thing. You will find Steven McCoy innocent of the crime for which he’s been charged.”

  An aerial view of the section of the ranch, encompassing the old house and the location where the body had been found, was projected onto a large overhead screen, positioned so that everyone in the courtroom could see it. It covered an area about half a mile square. The house was in the bottom quadrant of the slide. Near the top was the culvert where Keith Morton had stumbled upon Maria’s remains.

  Keith was on the stand. He was wearing city clothes, but he still looked like a cowboy. Even in the middle of winter, his face was the color of burnt amber. He flexed his large hands as he looked back and forth from the image on the screen to Alex Gordon.

  Alex walked Keith through the process of how he had found the body. Keith described his revulsion and horror at what he had seen. He then told of how he had called the police, and waited until they arrived, to show them what he had found. As he was telling this to the jury, other slides were projected onto the screen, closer versions of the initial overlay—the house, and in particular, the area where the body was discovered.

  Alex brandished a handful of eight-by-ten photographs. “People’s exhibits seven through eighteen. Pictures of what we are seeing up on the screen, with some others showing closer detail,” he explained. “Taken by a sheriff’s detective at the time the body was seen by the sheriffs who arrived on the scene.”

  Luke, rising briefly, stipulated that the pictures were acceptable. Alex handed them to the members of the jury, who passed them around to each other. A few turned away in disgust.

  Another series of slides came up: the living room of the old house, a full shot made with a wide-angle lens. With Alex’s prompting, Keith identified what they were looking at. Next came a picture of the gun case. Then a tighter one, showing where the murder weapon had been found. Then a photo of the revolver itself.

  “Detective Perdue pointed that weapon out to you, is that correct?” Alex asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew right away there was something wrong with what you were looking at?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why was that?”

  “The pistol was in the wrong place. Someone had moved it. If you knew where the different guns were supposed to be, it was easy to spot.”

  Alex walked over to the evidence table. He picked up the Colt revolver, which had been tagged. “Is this the gun he showed you?” He handed it to Keith, who turned it over in his hands.

  “Yes, it is,” Keith answered.

  Alex took the gun from Keith and walked it over to Luke, who glanced at it, but didn’t touch it.

  “No objections,” he said mildly.

  “People’s exhibit J,” Alex announced; He walked over to the jury box, held the revolver up so they could all get a good look at it, then placed it back on the evidence table.

  He returned to the podium. “Approximately how often do you check the placement of the pistols and rifles in those cases?” he asked. “They are locked, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re locked up. It depends,” he said, responding to the first part of Alex’s question. “Whenever I’m in the old house, I check to make sure everything’s where it’s supposed to be. Especially the weapons. About once a month or so.”

  �
�So we can say with a strong degree of certainty that the murder weapon had been out of its proper place in the gun cabinet for a month or less.”

  Luke got to his feet. “Your honor. We can cut through this. We will produce a witness who will testify under oath that she took the gun out earlier on the day that my client arrived at her ranch, which is the same day the victim was last seen.”

  He wanted to take the jurors’ attention off the gun. Guns are powerful tools, not only physically, but symbolically. The more you brandish a gun in peoples’ faces, especially one that is connected to a murder, the larger it looms in their consciousness.

  Martindale looked at Alex, who nodded reluctantly. “Fine,” he said. He turned to the court aide who was running the slide projector. “Next set of slides, please.”

  The slides that now came up showed the entrance to the property, from both outside, taken from the road, and inside, shot back toward the road. In both pictures, the gate was closed.

  Alex walked over and stood at the side of the screen. Using a pointer, he touched both pictures, first outside the gate, and then inside. Remaining at the screen, he asked Keith, “Is this the entrance to the section of the property where the body, and later the gun, was found?”

  Keith nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  “Is this the only road that leads in and out of that section?”

  Another nod. “Yes.”

  “So this is the only way to drive to that old house.”

  “Yes.”

  Alex nodded, as if Keith’s reply resolved a particularly important question. “Next slide, please,” he requested.

  A slide of the gate, taken from outside the property, came up on the screen. “Is this gate normally kept closed and locked?” Alex asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So when the gate is closed, you can’t get in.”

  “Not with a vehicle,” Keith answered. “You could get around it on foot, but you couldn’t drive in.”

  “Is the purpose to keep out intruders? Do you have No Trespassing signs posted on the gate?”

  “We sure do. And that is the reason, to keep people out.”

  “Does it work? Does the locked gate keep unwelcome people out? Poachers, hunters, birdwatchers, whoever?”

  “Very well,” Keith answered. “It’s solid. You’d have to be driving a tank to bust through.”

  “Next slide, please.”

  A tighter shot came up, featuring the combination lock. Alex touched the lock with his pointer. “Do you know how many people have the combination to this lock?”

  “Just me and Mrs. McCoy,” Keith answered. “And my wife. Mrs. McCoy would know if anyone else does. You have to ask her.”

  “But to your knowledge, only you and your wife, who are long-time employees of Rancho San Gennaro, and Mrs. McCoy, the owner, know the combination to that lock.”

  “To my knowledge, yes. But like I said, you need to check with Mrs. McCoy.” He looked out into the audience, past the defense table, to where Juanita was sitting with Steven’s parents. “I don’t want to say anything I don’t know about for sure,” he added defensively, feeling her disapprobation. “I work for her. She’s the boss.”

  The screen went blank. The courtroom lights came back up. “Thank you, Mr. Morton,” Alex said. As he returned to the prosecution table he looked at Luke and said, “Your witness.”

  Luke stood up. He glanced down at his notepad, then strolled to the podium. “Good morning, Mr. Morton,” he said pleasantly.

  Keith greeted him cordially.

  Luke turned to the aide who was manning the slide machine. “Would you put up that overview again?” he requested. “The one that shows the house and the ravine where the body was found.”

  The courtroom lights dimmed as the slide came up again. Luke stared at it for a moment. He crossed the room to the screen and picked up the pointer. “From here to here,” he said, touching first the house, then the ravine, “how far would you say it is?”

  “About a quarter mile,” Keith answered. “Maybe a bit longer.”

  “Fairly flat, the layout between the two?”

  “Pretty flat,” Keith agreed. “Slight upgrade.”

  “Walking it, how long would it take? In dry weather.”

  “Five or six minutes.”

  “What if you were carrying something heavy?” Like a body, which he left unspoken.

  The jury reacted to that. They sat up straighter, leaning forward.

  “Another couple of minutes, I suppose,” Keith answered.

  “Double? Ten minutes? If it was someone like you, in good condition.”

  Keith nodded. “I’d think so. Ten, twelve minutes, tops.”

  Luke turned to the projectionist. “Could you put up the slide of the location where the body was found?” he asked. “One that doesn’t have any people in it.”

  The first slide came off the screen, the requested one came on. Luke turned to the bailiff deputy sheriff. “Would you get me the evidence picture that corresponds to this slide, please?”

  The deputy, a solidly built woman whose hair was pulled back in a tight French braid, crossed to the evidence table. She sifted through the photographs until she came up with the right one. Crossing the room, she handed it to Luke, who thanked her. He looked at the picture, at the screen, at the image in his hand again.

  “This location where you found the body. It’s out in the open, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much. It was under some heavy brush.”

  “But it wasn’t buried, was it? It was more like it was just put there. In a hurry.”

  “Objection!” Alex called out, rising from his seat. “Calls for conjecture.”

  “Sustained,” the judge agreed.

  Luke crossed the room to the jury box. He handed the picture to juror number one, who looked at it closely for a moment, then passed it on. While the jurors were examining the photo, one after another, he returned to the podium. “Except that the remains were in a patch of brush, they were visible. Is that right?” he asked. “It didn’t look like there was any attempt to bury them, or to hide them, did it?”

  “No,” Keith answered. “It didn’t appear that there was.”

  Luke looked at the jury, then back to Keith. “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Marlon Perdue, the forensic detective from the coroner’s office, sat comfortably on the stand. This was nothing new to him—he had testified in dozens of trials, including several murder trials.

  After establishing Perdue’s bona fides, Alex walked him through the sequence of events from the precise time he arrived at the ranch, supervised the transfer of the remains to the autopsy room at Cottage Hospital, and learned that the victim had been shot. Several slides and photographs clarified his testimony. Then Alex took him back to the day when he returned to the ranch to continue his investigation, noticed that the Colt revolver was out of place in the gun case, discovered that the case was unlocked, discussed with Keith Morton the suspicious nature of that, and took the gun into evidence and delivered it to the testing lab in Goleta. It was a straightforward presentation, unemotional, clinical. A professional doing his job.

  When Alex was finished, Luke walked to the podium. “Good morning, Detective Perdue,” he greeted Marlon cordially.

  “Good morning, counselor,” Perdue replied.

  “We’ve known each other for some time, haven’t we?”

  Perdue nodded and smiled. “Going on two decades.”

  “You were one of my favorite detectives,” Luke told Perdue. “A straight shooter and a total pro. I told you that on more than one occasion, didn’t I?” It was a statement, not a question.

  “You did,” Perdue confirmed. “And I appreciated it.”

  Alex rose from his chair. “With all due respect to the mutual admiration society these men have for each other, where is this going?” he asked. “What does it have to do with this trial?”

  Judge Martindale peered down from the bench to Luke, as if to ask
, “What does it?”

  “It doesn’t,” Luke said affably. “I just want everyone to know that I think Detective Perdue is first-rate, and that I have never, or almost never, questioned his veracity.”

  At the prosecution table, Alex and Elise exchanged a glance. Where is this going, they wondered. Alex thought about getting up again to move this along, but decided to wait it out and see what developed.

  Luke turned to the court aide who was manning the slide projector. “Would you put up the slides that show where the remains were discovered,” he asked.

  The lights dimmed slightly as the slides were projected onto the screen. Luke looked at them for a moment, then turned back to Perdue.

  “How many situations such as this one have you been involved in, detective?” he asked. “Finding the remains of a body that turned out to have been deliberately killed, rather than having died by accident.”

  Perdue thought for a moment. “About a dozen, I’d guess.”

  “So you’re an expert on the subject, as the District Attorney earlier proclaimed.”

  “I think I know what I’m doing, after all these years,” Perdue responded modestly.

  Luke turned to the screen. “Take a look at these pictures for a moment, will you? The remains are clearly visible, aren’t they.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “There wasn’t much attempt to conceal them, was there? The body was just dumped there.”

  Alex half-rose in his chair, as if to object that this was speculation, but thought better of it—Perdue was his witness. He didn’t want to disparage his own witness’s credibility. It could undercut the credibility of his other expert witnesses. He eased back into his chair.