A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  The rest of the interrogation went as Alex and Elise had planned it—the confirming of the fingerprints, and the other damning pieces of evidence that led to Steven’s arrest. The most damaging items, aside from the fingerprints on the murder weapon, were Tyler’s initial statement that the gate leading to the property had been locked, his obvious, reluctant acquiescence to Steven’s insistence that it wasn’t, and the information that had come in later from Katrina, who had seen Maria and somebody who looked like Steven McCoy get into a dark SUV that matched Steven’s.

  It was past noon by the time Elise was finished with Rebeck. Cross-examination would begin after lunch. Rebeck climbed down from the stand and walked out the side door. Before she left, she couldn’t help but throw a parting look back at Steven. He was still staring at her.

  Luke ushered Steven into a small conference room off the courtroom that was reserved for defendants and their lawyers. They sat across from each other at a square metal table that had been rescued from the pits of the basement.

  “She’s full of shit,” Steven complained. “They were trying to pin this on me from the minute I stepped foot in the station. Did you see the way she was showing off her body? She was like that when she interviewed me. I was wondering if she was going to put the make on me. Which wouldn’t have been that hard to take, she’s a fox. But cops aren’t supposed to act like that, are they?”

  “No, they’re not.” Was there anything to this, for real? Rebeck had shown a lot of skin, but that was her style. Luke knew more than one man who had tumbled into bed with her. She got A’s across the board. That didn’t make her any less of a detective, though. She got high marks in that department, too.

  “Did anything physical actually occur between you and her, when the two of you were alone?” he asked.

  “She touched me a couple of times. A very friendly kind of touch.”

  Why hadn’t this come up before? Was this a product of Steven’s imagination, or was there some truth to it?

  “What kind of touching?” he asked. “Where?”

  “Her fingertips on the back of my hand. To make me feel at ease, so she claimed. I’ve been around enough women to know when they’re coming on to me. She was,” he said emphatically.

  “But nothing happened? No sexual contact of any kind? Nothing more than a few friendly touches, to put you at ease?”

  “Nothing sexual, that’s right,” Steven said. “But I’d bet you if I hadn’t been arrested she would have been happy to meet me for a drink later on.” He leaned back in his rickety metal chair, which threatened to come out from under him.

  “Well, she didn’t, so it doesn’t matter. But that’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Me and the lady cop?” Steven asked. “There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “You and women in general. You have to stay away from them. Completely away,” he said with emphasis.

  Steven’s face screwed up. “Like my grandmother? My mother? How could I avoid them? I don’t want to, anyway. My grandmother’s been a rock for me. I’d be up shit’s creek without her. I’m not going to stay away from her. Or my mom, either. Why should I?”

  “I’m not referring to them. I’m talking about other women.”

  “Like who?” Steven asked. He looked past Luke to the door that led to the outside.

  “Sophia Blanchard, for openers. I don’t want you near her. Which you were yesterday, at dinner.”

  He had hit a nerve—he could see it in Steven’s face. Riva had been right. Her intuition was unfailing.

  “We happened to wind up sitting next to each other,” Steven protested feebly. “What’s the harm?”

  “It looks bad, that’s the harm,” Luke scolded him. “You’re on trial for murdering a girl her age, in case you’ve forgotten. And it could be a technical violation of your parole.”

  “I didn’t murder anybody,” Steven shot back.

  Luke fought the temptation to slap Steven across his face. “I said on trial. Which is exactly the truth. So don’t get wise with me, it doesn’t play. And it looks bad, you and her together. Let’s not give the police or the press any more fodder for their cannons.”

  Steven shook his head as if to imply that Luke was a hopeless relic. “Fine. But you’d better lay down the law to her, too. Tell her to stay away from me.” He smiled thinly. “If she can.”

  Luke’s hand slammed down on the table. The impact reverberated in the small room. “Listen to me, Steven, and listen damn well,” he said with heat. “I’m not here to facilitate you, or be your friend, or your stooge, either. I’m here for one reason—to get you acquitted.”

  “I’m the one who was arrested,” Steven snapped back with equal force. “I’m the one who’s had a year of his life stolen. I’m the one whose reputation will be doubted forever, even after I win. So don’t come on salty to me. If seeing Sophia is going to hurt my chances of getting off, then I won’t see her. It’s only a few more weeks, I can handle that.”

  “See that you do.” Luke looked at his watch. “Go have some lunch. I need to prepare for my cross of your imagined conquest. Just remember what I told you. You don’t want me talking to your grandmother about this.”

  Steven nodded—that would rip it, and they both knew it. “Don’t worry. I won’t go near Sophia.”

  By the time the afternoon session got underway it had started raining again. Outside, seen through the high south-facing windows, the sky was dark. Pellets of rain slammed against the glass. Luke stood at the podium in front of Cindy Rebeck, who was back on the witness stand.

  “Good afternoon, detective,” he greeted her.

  “Good afternoon,” she replied. She stared at him calmly, almost aloofly.

  Luke looked at the material in front of him. Besides his own notes, he had the transcripts of the interviews that Steven and Tyler had given the deputies when they had returned to Santa Barbara for questioning.

  Months ago, when he had started preparing for this trial, Luke had considered asking the court to exclude everything the boys had told the police from the record, and that it not be allowed in at the trial, because their Miranda rights may have been violated. But after he debated with himself about whether or not to take that route, which under most circumstances would have been standard procedure in a situation such as this one, he decided not to. Ultimately, Steven hadn’t been arrested because he gave the cops any damaging information. That had only hastened the process. He was on trial because his fingerprints were on the murder weapon, and he had the means and the opportunity to kill Maria. So it would be better, he had concluded, to keep this stuff in the record, and try to turn it against the prosecution.

  “When Steven McCoy and Tyler Woodruff came to Santa Barbara last September to discuss this case with you, they did so voluntarily, isn’t that right?” he led off.

  She nodded curtly. “That’s correct.”

  “They were not suspects, either of them. They came to Santa Barbara from their home in Tucson, Arizona, to help your department try to solve an important case that hadn’t produced any acceptable leads. Which was putting a lot of pressure on the department.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “That was why we brought them out. To help us, if they could. Not because of any pressure.” She turned to the jury box. “We don’t allow outside pressure to affect our work.”

  “That’s commendable,” Luke deadpanned. “You and your partner, Detective Louis Watson, interviewed them, is that right?”

  “Yes,” she answered comfortably. “We were the lead detectives assigned to the case.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Initially.”

  “Initially,” Luke repeated. “We’ll get back to that in a moment. Where did you interview them, Detective Rebeck?”

  “In our conference room, in the detectives’ area. We normally interview people in there, particularly when there is more than one person. It’s the roomiest space.”

  “And because you ca
n videotape them, is that right? That room is set up for taping, video and audio.”

  She looked at him evenly. “Yes.”

  “When you started questioning them…” He paused. “Before you started interrogating them…”

  “We were questioning them, not interrogating them,” she corrected him.

  “Questioning, okay,” he replied. “Before you started, did you tell them you were taping them?”

  Rebeck shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Why would you tape someone and not let them know they were being taped?” He glanced over at the jury. A few of them were writing in their notepads.

  “It’s standard procedure,” she answered. “There’s nothing illegal about it,” she added, turning to the jury as she spoke. “We do it with everyone. It’s for their protection as well as ours,” she added. “Sheriff Griffin runs a transparent department. We don’t want anything to be secret. We think that’s the right way to do it,” she said with a tight, self-satisfied smile. “Nothing hidden.”

  “But why didn’t you tell them? What harm would it have done?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just how we do it. As I said, it’s completely legal. The courts have ruled that way, many times.”

  “I know, thank you,” he told her. “But isn’t that normally when you are dealing with suspects? These men were there voluntarily.” He paused. “Unless you thought they might be suspects.” He leaned forward, toward her. “Did you?”

  “We did not,” she answered strongly. “They weren’t suspects then.”

  Luke leafed through the papers in front of him. “When did you first think Steven McCoy might be a suspect?”

  She shifted in her chair, recrossing her legs. They are damn nice, Luke observed. He wondered if the judge was sneaking a look from up high. Hard not to. “It was a gradual development,” she said. “Until, or if, we got more substantial evidence, we weren’t going to consider Steven McCoy or Tyler Woodruff as suspects.”

  “Considering, or thinking?” he pressed. “I’m asking about what you were thinking, detective. You’ve been in the department for several years. You were assigned this important and sensitive case because of your skill and know-how. You’ve developed a strong sense of intuitive feel, haven’t you? From my experience, most good cops do. So let me ask you again—did you have any intuitive feelings that Steven McCoy might be a suspect, before you formally charged him?”

  “No,” she answered firmly.

  “You didn’t look at him when he first walked through the door to your office and think, ‘He looks like the description we got from the girl at the jewelry store’? That didn’t set off any internal alarms? Since you knew he had been at the location where the deceased’s body was found?”

  Again, she decisively answered, “No. I did not think that. No alarms, not even false ones,” she added.

  “Neither you nor Detective Watson said anything about that.”

  “I’ve already answered that question. The answer is no.”

  Luke stood at the podium for a moment, staring at her. She rearranged herself in the chair.

  “If that’s your answer, then fine,” Luke told her, in a tone that clearly implied that he didn’t believe her. He picked up another sheet of paper. “Did Steven McCoy tell you that he knew the combination on the lock for the gate that guarded the entrance to the McCoy ranch?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “He volunteered that information. You didn’t have to pull it out of him.”

  “He told us without prompting, that’s correct.”

  “Did that upset you and Detective Watson? That he knew the combination to the lock, and you didn’t know that he knew it?”

  She flinched, just for a second. Luke didn’t think any of the jurors had noticed it, but he had. He looked back at the prosecution table. Alex and Elise had seen it, too.

  “We were surprised, yes,” Rebeck admitted.

  “And when you found that out, he still wasn’t a suspect?”

  “No,” she said reluctantly.

  “What does it take to arouse your suspicion, Detective Rebeck?” Luke asked sarcastically. “A smoking gun and a body on the floor?”

  “Objection!” This time it was Alex who jumped up. “This is completely out of line!”

  “Sustained,” Martindale agreed. He leaned over the top of his perch. “Don’t force me to cite you, Mr. Garrison. You know better than that.”

  “Sorry, your honor,” Luke apologized. “It just slipped out.”

  “No more slips,” Martindale admonished him. “Strike that comment,” he instructed the court reporter. Turning to the jury, he told them, “Forget you heard that. It won’t be part of the record.”

  Luke looked behind the defense table, where Kate was sitting, in the first row behind Steven. She was grinning. He gave her a quick smile back. Then he turned to Rebeck again.

  “At a particular point during this interview, you and Detective Watson decided to question Mr. McCoy and Mr. Woodruff separately, is that correct?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “When…” She seemed to be temporarily flummoxed. “When it seemed appropriate.”

  “And I am asking when that was,” he repeated. “Why it was, to be more precise. Why did you and Detective Watson decide to question my client and Mr. Woodruff separately, instead of together, as you had been doing. Since they weren’t suspects, but rather volunteer witnesses. They still weren’t suspects, right? You still didn’t have any feelings in that direction?”

  Rebeck shifted in her chair. “No,” she answered stubbornly. “We still didn’t think of them as suspects.”

  “So you felt there was no need to advise them of their Miranda rights,” Luke went on. “Because they weren’t suspects. There was no doubt about that.”

  She stared at him. “That is correct,” she answered stiffly.

  Luke turned to Martindale, on the bench. “I want to read something out loud. It’s part of the prosecution’s exhibit, but I want the jury to hear it.”

  He put on his reading glasses and picked up a transcript of the interview Watson and Rebeck had conducted with Steven and Tyler. “At this point in the questioning, the detectives have shown Mr. McCoy and Mr. Woodruff a picture of the deceased,” he told the jurors. “Detective Watson asks, and I’m quoting here, from their transcript, ‘So now you’re at Paseo Nuevo. Did you see her? Any chance at all?’ Mr. Woodruff answers first. His direct quote is, ‘I didn’t see this girl. I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize her, at all.’ Then Watson asks Mr. McCoy the same thing. ‘What about you?’ And Mr. McCoy answers, ‘No. I never saw her.’”

  Luke looked up. Brandishing the pages, he said, “On the record, both of these men have told the detectives that they hadn’t seen Maria Estrada. Ever. So Watson changes direction in his questioning, because he isn’t getting anywhere. He asks, and again, this is a direct quote, ‘So how long were you there…’—meaning the Paseo Nuevo Mall—‘What did you do, where did you go after that?’ And Woodruff replies, ‘Which one of us?’ Watson then asks, ‘What do you mean?’ And Woodruff replies, ‘We split up.’”

  Luke took his glasses off and looked at Rebeck. “Now Detective Rebeck,” he said. “Is this not the precise moment when you and Detective Watson decided to question the two men separately? To split them up, so they wouldn’t be in contact with each other?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said tightly. “It was.”

  “Which meant, of course, that one or the other was now under suspicion. Correct?”

  Rebeck looked at the prosecution table. Then she turned back to Luke again. “No,” she answered. “They were not suspects at that time.”

  Luke regarded her with incredulity. “How is that possible? That still didn’t ring any bells?”

  “No, it didn’t,” she said doggedly. “They were not suspects at that time.”

  “Then why did you separate them?”
r />   Rebeck’s top leg began to jiggle involuntarily. “To speed up the process.” Her voice sounded strangled.

  Luke’s look to her could have shattered glass. “Do you expect anyone in this courtroom to believe that?”

  “Objection!” Alex and Elise both jumped up. “That is prejudicial and inflammatory, your honor,” Elise cried out.

  “I’m inflammatory?” Luke fired back. “This witness is testifying under oath that she disregarded; strike that—that she and her partner deliberately violated one of the most fundamental rules of law, your honor. They had to have had suspicions by that time, but they didn’t offer Mr. McCoy or Mr. Woodruff their right to counsel.” Before Martindale could rule on the prosecution’s objection, he fired his next question at Rebeck. “Why didn’t you Mirandize them?”

  “Your honor!” Alex yelled. “Are we going to…”

  Martindale put up a restraining hand. “One thing at a time. Answer the last question first, Detective Rebeck. Why didn’t you and Detective Watson apply Miranda at this point?”

  “Because we didn’t consider that they were suspects yet,” she answered doggedly. She slumped in her chair. Her legs splayed out in front of her. She tugged at her skirt.

  She should have admitted they fucked up and taken her lumps, Luke thought. Now she’s in a snare of her own making. “I’m sorry, detective,” he told her, “but you can’t have it both ways. Either they were suspects, or they weren’t. If they weren’t, why did you separate them? And if they were, why didn’t you Mirandize them? It can’t be both. It has to be one or the other.”

  She stared at him sullenly. “They were not yet suspects,” she repeated. “And we felt it would be better to interview them separately. We made that decision. We make decisions like that every day. Don’t read more into it than is there.”

  “I’m reading into it what you’re telling us,” Luke retaliated. “Your words, not mine. Let’s move on,” he said crisply. “We’re not going to get any further with this.” He put his notes aside and walked toward her, stopping a few feet from the witness stand.