Witness for the Defense

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “But she wasn't, was she? She was Bram's little girl.”

  “She wanted the baby,” Steven said. “That doesn't mean she killed Weaver.”

  “The cops think she did.” Roemer glanced in the direction of the stairway. “If that tight-assed bitch Melissa had told him about the baby in the beginning, none of this would have happened.”

  Steven scrunched up his forehead. “Why do you think she didn't?”

  “Because she didn't think about Bram, that's why. It's like that with a lot of women, so cocky and full of themselves. About time somebody put them in their place.”

  It sounded like a line from one of Bram's radio shows. It also echoed Hank.

  “There's some chance Terri Harper isn't Weaver's killer, you know.” Steven was trying his best to sound nonchalant. “If we could just ask a few questions.”

  “Nuh-uh. Like I told you. I know it was her.” Roemer stepped back and slammed the door in our faces.

  “Well, that was useful,” I said. We headed down the stairs.

  “It does tell us something about Weaver's choice of friends. Was the guy you spoke to yesterday of the same ilk?”

  “Not as rude, but about as unappealing.”

  “It'll be interesting to see how Clyde Billings compares.”

  <><><>

  Clyde Billings wasn't home, his wife informed us in a voice so soft-spoken I had to lean forward to make out what she was saying.

  She was Asian, probably Vietnamese, although I couldn't be certain. A good foot shorter than me, with straight black hair that hung below her shoulders. A boy about seven and a girl about three clung mutely to their mother's legs.

  “We're investigating the murder of one of your husband's friends,” Steven said. “A man by the name of Bram Weaver.”

  The investigating part was technically accurate but misleading. I didn't bother to clarify.

  “Did you know Mr. Weaver?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I know he was a friend of my husband's. From many years ago when they were children. I didn't know him myself, however.”

  “Do you know when your husband last spoke to Weaver?”

  The little girl gave a shy smile and hid her face in her mother's leg. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steven smiling back.

  “I think it was the day of his death,” Mrs. Billings replied. She spoke slowly, looking between us. “Is there a problem?”

  I hastened to reassure her. “No problem. We're trying to fill in Weaver's activities in the days before his death.”

  “He and my husband had dinner that night.”

  “In the city?”

  She nodded.

  “It's a long drive coming home,” I said.

  “Oh, he stayed the night. Clyde has an apartment there because he's up a lot on business.”

  Monkey business, I suspected, having met Bram's other buddies. But maybe I was misjudging the man.

  “Will he be home this afternoon?” Steven asked.

  She shook her head. “He'll be in Seattle all weekend.”

  On business, no doubt. The question was, what kind?

  CHAPTER 18

  Wednesday afternoon, while summer beckoned from outside, Jared, Steven, Nick, and I sat around the office conference table discussing strategy. I'd left the window open so we could enjoy an occasional caress of fresh air. A small pleasure denied to Terri in her jail cell.

  Yesterday we had received another installment in the continuing flow of discovery material. Several stacks' worth. We'd also begun to amass our own collection of reports and files. It sometimes felt as though preparing for trial was nothing more than an exercise in organizational dexterity.

  “We've got a tentative trial date of September 15,” I said. “That gives us under seven weeks to pull together a defense.”

  Nick groaned and rubbed a palm along his jaw. “You couldn't convince Terri to go for a later date?”

  I shook my head.

  “I tried, too,” Steven added. “She won't listen.”

  I wasn't sure how strong a case Steven had actually made. He seemed torn between professional judgment and brotherly compassion. Though he knew waiting would give us more time to prepare, he was more than sympathetic to Terri's desire to be out.

  “That leaves us with a lot of ground to cover,” I said, “and not much time to do it.”

  Nick was sitting in the chair we'd pulled in from the front reception desk, the one with rollers. He'd been using his long legs to propel the chair forward and back in a kind of rocking pattern. Now he scooted the chair over to the window and gazed longingly toward the small city park across the road. Nick was a runner, with a runner's lean build, and I suspected it was near torture for him to be inside on such a lovely day.

  He pulled his gaze back into the room and turned to me. “You got a game plan?”

  “No specifics. My feeling, though, is that we should take the two-pronged approach.”

  “Assuming we can pull it off,” Steven said. He seemed edgy, and I didn't know if it was because of his personal involvement in the case or something else.

  Jared unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. Even with the open window, the room was warm. “Which two prongs we talking about, boss?”

  “We'll chip away at the prosecution's case—with luck, even undermine it—but we should also try to come up with our own theory about what happened.”

  “Give 'em a substitute killer?”

  “Right.” That was the hard part. But jurors, whose legal sensibilities were often influenced by film and television, expected answers. If you wanted them to acquit, you'd better hand them another suspect and a plausible explanation.

  “What if we can't come up with one?”

  “We can still raise reasonable doubt,” Steven explained. “In theory, that's what it's all about.”

  Nick snorted. “Jurors believe what they want to believe. Witness the OJ trial. The real trick is to win the jurors' hearts.”

  It was a trick all right. The key to winning at trial was weaving a magic spell that would captivate the jury. And it usually had very little to do with evidence or logic.

  Jared hefted a plastic tub of files onto the table. “So, where do we start—with the case against Terri or the search for a different killer?”

  “Let's start with what the prosecution's given us,” I said.

  What they'd given us was, at this point, largely what the police had given them. In due time we would get transcripts of the grand jury testimony from the witnesses they intended to call at trial, as well as their own witness lists, but the prosecution wasn't inclined to hand over anything more, or sooner, than they had to.

  Jared grabbed a clipped sheaf of papers and a manila envelope. “Coroner's report and crime scene photos.” He spread the photos on the table. “You guys seen these?” He was addressing Nick and Steven.

  “Yeah,” Nick said.

  “Me too,” Steven added, although he picked up one of the photos and studied it anew.

  It was one of the least bloody ones—black and white rather than color, offering a wide-angle view of the foyer. Weaver's body occupied only a small part of the print. Still, the photo was disturbing. Especially when you knew what the dark splotches and spatters were.

  Steven's face was a mask of detachment, but his gray eyes studied the image intensely.

  “Nothing jumps out from the autopsy report,” Jared continued. “Seems Weaver was shot twice. Once in the abdomen and once in the head. The shot to the head was at close range.”

  Nick grimaced. “Ouch.”

  “Weaver had a blood alcohol level of point zero eight.” Jared ran his finger down the page as he read. “He was buzzed but not flat-out drunk, for what that's worth. Last meal, some six hours earlier, consisted of a burger and fries.”

  “He went out for dinner with his friend Clyde Billings,” I noted.

  Steven tossed the photo back onto the table and picked up another. “He's on the air what—s
even to ten? So they must have eaten first.”

  I shot Steven an amused look. “Don't tell me you're one of Weaver's fans?”

  “Hardly a fan, but I tuned in now and then. Especially after he made a stink about the adoption.”

  Steven was examining an eight-by-ten color shot of Weaver's front room. I looked over his shoulder for a moment in the hopes that something would jump out. It didn't. Couch, chairs, glass tables. Ultra modern. Ultra neat.

  I turned to Nick, who'd positioned himself in line with a ray of sunshine that angled through the window. “Weaver's son says he overheard an argument between his father and his friend Len Roemer. It might be worth checking into.”

  “Will do.”

  “You might talk to a couple of other friends, Hank Lomax and Clyde Billings as well.”

  “It's one thing to argue with a friend,” Jared observed. “Another to blow his face away.”

  Steven picked up a different photo. A close-up of Weaver's body. “Guess it depends on how impassioned the argument was,” he said. “From the looks of this, I'd say the killer had some strong personal feelings about Weaver. Friend might fit that profile better than stranger.”

  “What about someone from the Women's Alliance?” Nick offered. “They've battled with him before, and they're certainly full of fire.”

  I rocked forward in my chair and looked at Nick. “They're what?”

  He grinned. “You aren't one of them, are you?”

  “No.” And he was right that they were a vocal and militant bunch, but I felt stirrings of gender solidarity. “It seems to me more like a crime a male would commit than a female.”

  Steven raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

  “The shot to the face at close range.”

  “You think women aren't capable of close violence?” It was a rhetorical question and he didn't wait for a response. “Let's just hope the jury shares your bias.”

  “Besides,” Jared pointed out, “the police arrested Terri, and she's a woman.”

  “It's something we should definitely follow up.” Nick tapped his fingers on his knee. “You want me to see what I can find out?”

  “Good idea.” I turned back to the task at hand. “What about blood at the scene? Any that wasn't Weaver's?”

  “Doesn't mention any, boss.”

  Steven tucked the photo back into the stack. “Doesn't look like the killer gave Weaver much chance to inflict damage.”

  “Did the police find any blood in Terri's car?” I asked.

  Jared scanned the file. “Appears not.”

  “Can you shoot someone at close range and not get blood on yourself?” Steven addressed the question to all of us.

  I deferred to Nick, who scratched his cheek. “Good question. Maybe, if you were careful. I'll ask around.”

  Jared flipped the page of the report. “We've got a fuller description of the glasses here. Purple frames. Women's styling, whatever that is. An eight-inch blond hair caught in the hinge.”

  “But they are definitely dark glasses?” I asked.

  “That's what it says.”

  “Weaver was killed at night. Why dark glasses?”

  He shrugged. “Someone who's watched too many old movies.”

  “Or they weren't dropped by the killer,” Steven said.

  “Except they were on the floor, right inside the door near where Weaver's body was found.” I made a note to ask Terri what kind of dark glasses she wore.

  Nick stood up, stretched. “Let's just hope the hair doesn't have enough root to run a DNA match.”

  “Or that it does,” I said, “and points to someone besides Terri.” I turned to Steven. “By the way, does Terri chew gum?”

  He looked surprised. “I imagine so. Doesn't everyone, at least once in a while?”

  “What flavor does she prefer?”

  He laughed. “I haven't the foggiest idea. She liked that fruit stuff as a kid. Why?”

  I explained about the Doublemint gum wrapper found near the walkway to the house. “Of course, it could have been dropped by the paper boy, or Weaver himself.”

  Steven nodded thoughtfully.

  In cases like this where the police had no hard proof, they had to rely on cumulative bits of evidence pointing in the same direction. If we could show that some of their pieces pointed to others as well as Terri, that was good. If we could show that they didn't point to Terri at all, that was even better.

  “I don't recall her chewing Doublemint,” he said after a moment. “I'll check with Ted if you like.”

  “Okay.” I turned back to Jared. “Anything more on the white sheep wool?”

  “Nothing.”

  With luck, that was because they didn't have anything. But it might be that they were holding disclosure for a time closer to trial. Particularly if they had something damaging like a dye lot match.

  For all I knew, they might even be able to do a DNA test based on perspiration. The recent advances in forensic testing were phenomenal.

  And frightening. Move a decimal point one way or the other and you were talking the difference between iron bars and curtains on your windows.

  “I'm working on getting some statistics for us,” Nick said. He leaned against the wall. “We're not going to get hard-and-fast numbers because there are several manufacturers of those seat covers and hordes of distributors, including mail order catalogs. But we'll definitely have ammunition to throw to the jury showing they are far from rare.”

  “What else?” I asked Jared.

  “There's the neighbor who heard Terri leave in her car sometime before midnight. What does Terri say about that?”

  “That she didn't go out.”

  “So maybe the neighbor is mistaken,” Steven said. “That ought to be an easy one to undercut.”

  “I hope so.” I could feel my chest growing tighter as the evidence against Terri mounted. “We've also got the witness who saw a woman fitting Terri's description and an Explorer with a plate that's a partial match to Terri's.”

  “Do we have a transcript of her testimony?” Steven asked.

  “Not yet, for either witness. We've got their names but I don't want to muddy the waters by questioning them until I know what they've already testified to. Jared, you're working on the order for discovery, right?”

  “The draft is on your desk.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Nick, any luck with your own canvass of Weaver's neighbors?”

  “It's a monkey jungle. Nobody saw anything or heard anything, and if they did, they don't want to talk about it.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyes, ears, and mouth. “Except for one kid, about ten. Says he saw a man leaning against a lamp post a couple of houses down, smoking.”

  I rocked forward. “What time?”

  “Right around midnight.”

  “Did the kid get a good look at the guy?” Steven, too, had grown more intent.

  “Yeah, he knows him. Seems the man delivers pizza to the woman down the street on a regular basis.”

  “She ordered a pizza at midnight?”

  Nick shrugged. “I'm just passing on what the kid told me. But he's a pretty sharp kid. And he's apparently talked to the pizza man some in the past. Says the woman's real old. He didn't think she'd be the type to eat so much pizza. Has it for lunch every Sunday.”

  “And Friday midnight, on at least one occasion.” I felt the ember of hope. “We may have found our other suspect.”

  “Afraid not,” Nick said. “The kid heard the same two shots as the couple down the hill from Weaver. He says the pizza man was there, smoking, at the time of the gunfire.”

  “He's a potential witness, then.” Not as good as being able to point a finger at him as a possible killer, but useful all the same. Assuming he hadn't seen Terri leaving the crime scene. “Which house is the old lady's?”

  “Down the block. I got the address.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “I tried. She's deaf. Unfortunately, sign lang
uage isn't one of my strengths.”

  “Which pizza company?” Steven's voice was tight. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was, that a witness was useful only if he didn't identify our client.

  “Pizza Pizazz,” Nick said. “The drivers stick those little plastic cones on the roof of their cars when they're making a delivery.”

  “Will you follow up on it?” I asked.

  “I already have. None of it rings a bell with either of the Pizza Pizazz franchises closest to Weaver's neighborhood. I thought I'd hang around there this next Sunday. See if I can talk to the guy myself.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Do we know who inherits?” Steven asked.

  “A couple of right wing causes get some,” I told him. “So does the son, in trust. Most of it goes to the American Cancer Society, however.” The faces around the table registered surprise. “Weaver's father died of the disease,” I explained.

  “Guess we're not going to find motive there,” Steven said. “What about his girlfriend?”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Nick corrected. “Ranelle Mosher. She moved to Boston two months ago.”

  “Have you got a phone number? I'll call her anyway. She might be able to give us some useful background on Weaver.”

  “Who's that leave us with then?” Steven looked around the table. “Weaver's buddies, on the basis of an alleged argument. His public persona, on the basis of the guy was a prick.”

  “His ex-wife and son weren't crying tears over his demise,” I pointed out.

  “How about Melissa Burke?” Jared asked. “She didn't want Weaver to have Hannah. And she was driving Ted's Explorer for a while. Maybe she had access to it that night.”

  I remembered what Steven had told me about Ted and seat covers. “Does that car have sheepskin covers?” I asked him.

  “I think so.”

  I wondered what flavor of gum Melissa chewed, and whether she'd recently lost a pair of dark glasses.

  CHAPTER 19

  “No, absolutely not,” Terri protested, repeating what she'd said at least half a dozen times already.

  We were again seated in one of the glass-partitioned interview rooms. Terri's hair had lost its luster and her skin was sallow. She clutched the phone in her left hand, revealing nails bitten to the quick.