Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  “I was.”

  “You spent time in jail.”

  “I did.”

  “So we know the court didn’t consider it a fantasy.”

  Cerrabone rose. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “Sustained.”

  “And as part of your release, Judge Corliss issued a restraining order against you.”

  “He had no choice under the circumstances. He had to respect the allegations. I was never convicted of any crime, and I maintain my innocence.”

  “You were never convicted because Barclay convinced the prosecutor to drop the charges against you. Isn’t that true?”

  “She dropped them after I agreed to give up my custody battle for Leenie; she used our daughter as a bargaining chip.”

  “What are you suggesting, Dr. Oberman, that Barclay rammed her face into a meat tenderizer to gain leverage in the divorce?”

  Oberman’s voice rose. His eyes became animated. “She wanted full custody of Carly. She told me if she didn’t get full custody, she would destroy me. She succeeded. As I said, my ex-wife usually does what she says.”

  “And you had no part in your own demise?”

  He clenched his jaw. “She ruined my business, my ability to make a living.”

  “I was under the impression that your business was ruined because you chose to have a relationship with one of your psychiatric patients, something the State of Washington Medical Board frowned upon and which resulted in the suspension of your license to practice. Isn’t that true?”

  Oberman pointed at him. “I did not have an affair with any of my patients, and the medical board’s inquiry never held such to be the case.”

  Sloane nodded as if accepting Oberman’s explanation, then held up a document. “Never held that to be the case because the medical board also dropped the charges when the patient failed to appear and testify against you, isn’t that correct?”

  “It was one of the reasons. It was not the only reason.”

  “Another condition of your parole was that you refrain from the use of alcohol and that you attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; isn’t that also true?”

  “That is true.”

  “But alcohol played no part in your demise, either, did it, Dr. Oberman?”

  “I acknowledged my drinking.”

  Sloane let it go. “Now you indicated that your daughter’s death had a—how did you put it . . .” He walked to the table, and Pendergrass handed him his notes. “‘A sobering effect on us both, you know; made us realize life is too short.’ Is that accurate?”

  Oberman calmed. “I believe so, yes.”

  “Isn’t it true, Dr. Oberman, that after your daughter’s death, you began to leave Barclay messages accusing her of being an absentee mother and blaming her for not being more diligent, that if she had been more diligent, she would have seen the signs that Carly was using drugs?”

  Reid had recorded the messages and phone calls. Sloane had the tape if Oberman denied it.

  Oberman took a breath, gathering himself. “I was angry and upset when I received the news of my daughter’s death, as any father would be. I said some things that I regret, I said them in the heat of the moment,” Oberman blurted, anger seeping into his response.

  “Sort of like ‘I would have just put a bullet in the back of his head and been done with it’ could be said in the heat of the moment?”

  “No, it’s not the same.”

  “I’m sure it’s not,” Sloane said. He turned his back, walking to the counsel table.

  “You don’t understand,” Oberman said. Sloane wheeled and looked to Underwood to admonish Oberman and to strike his unsolicited comment. Underwood had already raised his hand, but before the judge could speak, Oberman looked at Sloane, his brown eyes hooded and tired.

  “But you will,” he said.

  THE JUSTICE CENTER

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Rowe reached for the phone on his desk. He had a few minutes to change into more comfortable clothes, grab his materials, check his messages, and call home to reacquaint himself with his wife’s voice. Then he would head back to the courthouse to meet with Cerrabone for what would likely be a very long evening. Sloane had lived up to the hype. He seemed to have an innate sense of the best way to attack each witness. With Joshua Blume, he had been compassionate and sensitive, and it was clear from the expressions on the jurors’ faces that they had appreciated it. With Oberman, that compassion was nowhere to be found. Sloane took the man head-on, provoked him, and again his style seemed to resonate with the jurors. And yet—to Rowe, anyway—Sloane seemed to be holding back, perhaps saving his best shot for last, and that last shot was Rowe. He would have to be better prepared than he had ever been.

  After speaking to his wife and each of his three sons—his oldest had a baseball game that evening—Rowe grabbed his materials and headed for the elevator but heard someone call his name.

  “Sparrow. Hey, Sparrow?” Bernie Hamilton chased after him, a document in hand.

  “What’s up, Bernie?”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Meeting with Cerrabone. I’m on the stand tomorrow first thing.” Rowe looked down at the document. “I’m late.”

  “Not for this. Ballistics are back from the cold case that big PI told us to pull. Zach Bergman.”

  LAW OFFICES OF DAVID SLOANE

  ONE UNION SQUARE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Half a turkey sandwich grew stale on a piece of white butcher paper, and the tea Carolyn had made for him had long since grown cold. The door pushed open and Reid walked in, looking exhausted. “How much longer do you have?” she asked.

  “More than I have time for,” he said.

  “Isn’t it always that way.”

  “Rowe’s their last witness,” he said. “I want to make sure we finish strong before we begin our case in chief.”

  “Where’s Tom?”

  “Drafting our motion for a directed verdict.”

  The motion was routine, brought by the defense at the end of the prosecution’s evidence—a request that the judge dismiss the case because the state had failed in its burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Reid was guilty. Judges were reluctant not to allow a case to go to a jury. Sloane and Pendergrass gave the motion no chance.

  “I won’t get my hopes up,” Reid said.

  “Why don’t you go home?” Sloane said. “I’ll get in a few more hours and grab a room at the Club.”

  “You’re not coming home?”

  Home. Sloane hadn’t thought of Barclay’s house as his home, but he supposed it had become that. Many of his clothes now hung in her closet, and she had cleared space in the top two drawers of a dresser for him. He’d spent far more time at her house recently than at Three Tree Point.

  “If I did, it would be very late and I’d just wake you, or you’d wait up for me, and you need a good night’s sleep.” He smiled. “I’ll bill the room to the client.”

  “Then get a good room,” she said. Her kiss lingered. When their lips parted, she did not pull back. Eye to eye, she asked, “Is everything okay?” He nodded, but she didn’t buy it. “Sorry, but you don’t get off that easy. Something is bothering you. I sensed it over the weekend. What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “David, tell me.”

  “I’m worried,” he said.

  Her brow furrowed, but her voice was light. “The lawyer who does not lose, worried?”

  “I’m not getting an impression from the jury; what they’re thinking and feeling.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, remaining close. “You’ve been brilliant, just as I knew you would be.”

  They kissed again before she departed. When the door closed, he turned and looked out his office window. In his head, he heard his conversation with Jake as the boy left for the airport.

  It’s how we heal, you know?

  What’s that?

  The pain.

  What about it?
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  Feeling it every day . . . it’s not a bad thing. That’s how we heal.

  TWENTY - SEVEN

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011

  KING COUNTY COURTHOUSE

  ESATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Cerrabone spent the morning doing cleanup, putting on additional members of the CSI team as well as witnesses to testify that Reid was intimately involved in Vasiliev’s federal prosecution. It set the stage for Rowe.

  That afternoon the detective took the stand in a pin-striped suit, blue shirt, and silver tie. Rowe testified that he received the telephone call from Felix Oberman after returning to his office following the daylong investigation of the crime scene. “The first thing I did was run a data check to determine if Ms. Reid owned a handgun, as her ex-husband claimed.”

  “And what did you determine?”

  “I determined that Ms. Reid had purchased and registered a handgun.”

  “Of what caliber?”

  “A thirty-eight. A Smith and Wesson revolver.”

  “What did you do next?”

  Rowe related how he and Crosswhite had gone to Reid’s home and asked to see the weapon, and how the gun was not in the safe on the floor of her closet.

  “Did Ms. Reid have any explanation?”

  Rowe shook his head. “She said she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t opened the box since taking shooting lessons some time after her daughter’s death. She said she had no idea why it wasn’t in the box.”

  “She didn’t know where it was?”

  “She did not.”

  Rowe discussed the search warrants and what they had removed from Reid’s home, including the five pairs of running shoes. Cerrabone had him identify and authenticate each pair so they could be admitted into evidence.

  “What size are the shoes?” Cerrabone asked.

  Rowe dutifully pulled out the tongue of each of the pairs as if considering them for the first time. “Seven,” he repeated five times, like a bell tolling.

  “What is the brand of each pair?”

  “Nike AS300,” he repeated.

  “Did you interview Ms. Reid about her collection of shoes?”

  “I did.”

  “Why so many pairs?”

  “She said she was training, that she did triathlons, and that included running long distances.”

  “Did she say what else triathlons included besides running?”

  “Swimming and riding a bike.”

  Cerrabone asked about Reid’s training, how far she swam, ran, biked. Then he had Rowe tell the jury the distance from the public easement where Joshua Blume claimed he saw Barclay to the back of Vasiliev’s house, as well as the distance from her home to the public easement. Both distances were well within what Reid had told Rowe to be her regular training regimens.

  Despite his best efforts with Blume and with Oberman, Sloane could see some of the jurors nodding as Cerrabone and Rowe methodically laid out the evidence that had led Rowe to arrest Reid. No matter how good Sloane’s cross-examinations had been to that point, there remained the unspoken question—if Barclay had not killed Vasiliev, then who had? It was not his burden, but human nature being what it was, several jurors would be asking that question in the jury room.

  Sloane approached. Ordinarily, he did not ask open-ended questions on cross-examination, but felt comfortable if he knew the answers. “Detective Rowe, did Barclay advise you when she began to train for triathlons?”

  “She said it was shortly after her daughter’s death.”

  “Did she say why she took up triathlons?”

  “She called it her therapy.”

  “Did she explain that further?”

  “She said that after her daughter’s death, she was depressed, and rather than go on prescription medication, as the doctors had recommended, she began to exercise and eventually began to do triathlons.”

  “She didn’t say she began training so she would be in shape to bike, swim, and run far enough to go and shoot Filyp Vasiliev a year after the fact, did she?”

  Rowe couldn’t hide a smirk. “No. She didn’t.”

  “You asked Ms. Reid how she heard of Mr. Vasiliev’s death, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “And she told you that I had informed her, didn’t she?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “She told you that she had sought to retain me the day before Mr. Vasiliev was shot; that she wanted to file a wrongful-death civil action against Mr. Vasiliev to recover monetary damages against him, didn’t she?”

  “She said that, yes.”

  Sloane would leave it for his closing argument to point out the inconsistency of someone intent on killing Vasiliev also hiring an attorney to sue him for money the prior day.

  “Let’s talk about the shoes you took from Barclay’s home,” Sloane said. “You took every pair of athletic shoes in the house, did you not?”

  “Every one we could find.”

  “You searched her office and car as well, I presume?”

  “We did.”

  “You’re confident you have every pair of athletic shoes from her house, car, or office?”

  “Reasonably confident.”

  “You and Detective Cerrabone were present when each of the search warrants were executed, were you not?”

  “We were.”

  “It was a very thorough search, was it not?”

  “It was thorough, Mr. Sloane. We took every athletic shoe we found.”

  “And so we have these five pairs, correct?” Sloane placed each of the five pairs on a table.

  “That’s correct.”

  “As part of a separate subpoena, you also sought Barclay’s financial records—records of her credit-card and debit-card purchases—correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you went through those financial records carefully?”

  “I went through them, as did my partner, Detective Crosswhite.”

  “Did you note credit-card purchases of athletic shoes?” Sloane knew they had.

  “I believe we did.”

  “In fact, you highlighted each of the purchases on a copy of the documents produced in this litigation, did you not?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “You highlighted six purchases of running shoes?”

  Rowe didn’t immediately answer. “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, let’s be sure, Detective.” Sloane handed Rowe a stack of the records, the same documents Reid had found in his office and said, I think we may have something.

  Rowe went through them, hesitant. “There are five purchases.”

  “On the credit card statements, yes. But there is also a receipt for a cash purchase, isn’t there?”

  Rowe flipped the pages and reconsidered the documents. Though the jury likely did not detect the brief moment Rowe’s eyes closed, Sloane did. “Yes, there is,” Rowe said.

  “So the total would not be five.”

  “The total would be six.”

  “I suppose that, as an experienced investigator, you could infer from that evidence that Barclay, as the perpetrator of this crime, disposed of the pair of shoes she wore the night when she biked and swam all the way from her house to Vasiliev’s house to shoot him.”

  “I accounted for five pairs of shoes. But to answer your question, yes, a sixth pair could have been worn and disposed of.”

  “Just as you would like the jury to infer that Barclay disposed of the gun she used to kill Mr. Vasiliev, right?”

  “I’m just here to testify about the evidence.”

  “And the inferences you made from that evidence that led you to arrest Barclay, correct? I mean, you wouldn’t have arrested her unless you inferred that she had biked to the easement, run to the water, swum to the house, shot Vasiliev, and returned home, disposing of the weapon somewhere along the way, right?”

  “As an investigator, I do make inferences from the evidence.”

  “But you also keep an open mind, don’t you? You do
n’t rush to conclusions, right?”

  “You consider all the evidence.”

  “Just like you considered me a suspect at one time, didn’t you?”

  “We thought it prudent to talk with you.”

  “Because I had been in Ms. Reid’s home the morning before Mr. Vasiliev was shot, correct?”

  “Ms. Reid told us that you had been present.”

  “And so you contemplated the possibility that I might have taken her gun and used it to kill Vasiliev, didn’t you?”

  “We followed up on several leads.”

  “I’m sure you did, including the possibility that someone other than Barclay, perhaps even me, somehow got ahold of her gun and used it to kill Vasiliev?”

  “We had no such evidence that was the case.”

  “And yet you interviewed me about it for two hours in my home, didn’t you?”

  “We did.”

  “So you had to have at least thought that a possibility, right?”

  Rowe shrugged. “As I said, we try to follow up on every lead.”

  “Did you suspect anyone else besides me could have taken the gun and used it to kill Mr. Vasiliev?”

  “No, we did not.”

  “But if someone had taken and used the gun to kill Vasiliev, couldn’t that same person have taken the sixth pair of athletic shoes that cannot be accounted for?”

  “I wasn’t aware of the sixth pair of shoes.”

  “So you didn’t have all the evidence when you decided to arrest Ms. Reid?”

  “We believed we had sufficient evidence to warrant Ms. Reid’s arrest.”

  Sloane held up the financial records. “But not all the evidence.”

  Rowe tilted his head, a tacit acknowledgment.

  Cerrabone’s redirect took up the rest of the afternoon. When he had finished and Underwood asked him to call his next witness, Cerrabone stepped forward. “The state rests, Your Honor.”

  Underwood dismissed the jury with a warning that the weathermen were predicting snow flurries that could persist throughout the night. He advised them to give themselves plenty of time in the morning to arrive by nine and to not leave for the night without his bailiff’s cell phone number in case they had difficulty. After the jury departed, Underwood heard Sloane’s motion to dismiss and promptly denied it.