“Strickland is alive.”
Before falling, Summer leaned her hands on the back of the chair and slipped her leg around the side. She sat. When Tai made a made to help, she waved him off. “I’m OK.”
Tai continued. “Strickland’s alive, but no way he murdered Gundy. He has full-blown AIDS, been living in an AIDS hospice. He’s bedridden, about to kick the bucket. I saw him.”
Summer buried her head into the crook of her arm, muffling her voice. “Then whose body did they find in the car?”
“It belonged to a hitchhiker. Apparently Strickland murdered more people than we thought. The only ones he left calling cards with were in law enforcement, though. A neat little game for him.”
Summer wondered what Mahakavi would think of Strickland now. She looked up and sighed. “That means I’m back to trying to shoot holes in the D.A.’s case.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You did good work.”
“You have, too. I heard what you did during jury selection the other day. If I were still a cop, I’d curse you from here to eternity.”
“Kinder words were never spoken. But I got lucky. Next time Raines will be more careful.” Summer felt the blood swish around her head. “Can I lie down a few minutes? It’s been a rough life—day, I mean.”
Tai led her past the living room and slid open some rice-paper doors. She entered a room with mat floors. Tai opened the closet and pulled out a futon, sheets, a blanket, and pillows. He made the bed and Summer crawled into it.
She felt so weak, as if she were leaking through the futon and into the floor. Tai settled himself at a two-foot high table across the room. He squirted hot water through green tea leaves and into a cup and flipped open a laptop, which he rested on his knees. “Gonna catch up on the news,” he explained.
Summer watched him read, how he tilted his head when looking at a photo, smiled when something struck him as funny. She took a series of deep breaths, encouraging the oxygen to restore her strength. She realized that even though she was exhausted, knowing Tai was near made her feel safe.
She reached out a hand. “Tai. Could you come here?”
He smiled and shut the lid of the laptop. He uncurled his legs from under the table and approached, squatting near her. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.
She took his hand. “Stay.”
While he snuggled beside her, she turned away and they lay, her back to his front. Outside, she could hear birds, a light wind. The first peace she’d had in months. Tai seemed to mold himself to her shape. He was almost weightless. All she could feel of him was his breath, which stuck to the nape of her neck.
She turned toward him and found herself smiling back at him. Their breaths intermingled, the faint scent of orange juice. She ran her hand through his hair. He took it and kissed it gently.
When she pulled him closer for a kiss, he said, “Shhhh. There’s no rush, Summer. I’m happy just to be here with you. I don’t want you to feel any pressure. I just want you to feel happy, secure.”
She leaned into him and they brushed lips, first lightly, then with hunger. She hugged him hard. He whispered, You’re so beautiful, over and over.
When she felt his fingers lightly skim her back, she said, “Wait.”
Tai stopped.
Summer sat up. “I have to show you something.”
He sat up with her. “You can tell me anything.”
“I was raped, and it left some scars.”
Tai waited for her to continue.
“I haven’t been with anyone since. So, I want you to see my back before you make up your mind whether you want to be with me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Later. First, I want you to see.”
She turned away and lifted up her shirt.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“They’re there. Look.”
She felt him lightly run his hand down her spine. She shivered.
“Summer, the scars are inside you, not on your back. Your back is as smooth and velvety as the rest of you.”
She felt a crying jag on the way. She turned and hugged him, overcome with yearning. But this triggered the memories: being blinded, having her insides ripped apart by his savage thrusting, the fear of not knowing whether she would live, the pain when he burned her back with a knife he had heated on the stove.
She pushed Tai off. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
She rehooked her bra as she ran from the room, away from Tai’s pleadings, out to the porch, leaving her shoes behind. She jumped into her truck, flooring it when Tai emerged from the house.
Chapter 26
Raines was questioning the State’s first witness, Detective Doyle Tyler, a thirty-year veteran of the force. He had a small, hard face and a beaky nose, but a body of beef, his suit straining to hold all of him in. He reminded Summer of a kindergartner’s drawing, all his parts out of proportion—short arms but hammy hands, wide shoulders but wider waist, eyes that were big and round but too close together.
Lead-off witnesses make the strongest impressions in the minds of juries, which is why detectives, because they spend much their time in court, usually make good ones. But not Tyler. He had a bland personality, not the kind a jury could bond to; he often answered questions without thinking; his record was merely adequate. But he was predisposed to help the prosecution, which was the main reason, Summer assumed, that Raines put him on the stand first.
Originally, Raines had ordered his witnesses differently, beginning with Chantelle Jones, the medical examiner. But Summer had hammered out an arrangement with Raines: the defense would stipulate to the medical examiner’s findings, which meant at a certain point in the trial, Chantelle’s testimony would simply be read into the record, as long as an addendum was added stating that other than the fingerprints on the pictures and exterior portion of the door, no other physical evidence—hair fibers, blood, skin cells—tied SK to the crime scene.
For the defense, this defused the power of the evidence, particularly the gruesomeness of the crime, and took away the D.A.’s best witness. The prosecution benefitted as well. Anything could happen when a witness took the stand, especially in the dense realm of medical science, where juries often stumbled over the arcania and missed the important points. Stipulation also meant that the trial would be at least two days shorter, giving Summer fewer opportunities to poke holes in the D.A’s case. Taking no chances, Raines had eagerly agreed.
Tyler testified that Hightower’s clerk had called the police after Gundy didn’t show for the Marsalis verdict. A patrolman found his door unlocked and Gundy’s head caved in, blood-stained carpeting, a shattered table, and police photos, some pinned under the body and others strewn about the room. He immediately called homicide. Tyler was the one to respond.
Raines was wearing a designer-brand suit that contrasted with his off-the-rack personality. He set his foundation, questioning Tyler on what the detective had encountered at the crime scene. Tyler said he’d called in the forensics team and they informed him of the fingerprints on the photos and on the lower-left hand corner of the front door. When Tyler had them cross-matched, he discovered that they belonged to Stephanie Killington.
“Are every citizen’s fingerprints on file with the police?” Raines asked.
“No,” Tyler said.
“Then how is it that the police would have the defendant’s fingerprints on file?”
“Fingerprints are kept on file from anyone who is a legal alien, applies for a job with the county, or has a criminal record.”
“Which group does the defendant fall into?” Raines asked, fully aware of the answer.
Objection,” Summer said. “Irrelevant.”
“Well,” Hightower drawled, “perhaps not irrelevant, but why don’t you find a less broad way to ask that question, Counselor?”
“Certainly,”
Raines responded. “To your knowledge, Detective Tyler, is the defendant a legal alien?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Has she ever applied for a job with the county?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh,” Raines said in mock dramatic fashion. “You mean to say she has a criminal record?”
Summer objected again on the grounds that it would unfairly prejudice the jury. She knew there wasn’t a chance her objection would be sustained, but to set up grounds for a possible appeal she had to aggressively object throughout the trial—even at the risk of alienating the jury, who might suspect her of trying to cover up the truth.
“Overruled,” the judge said. “You may answer the question.”
“Yes,” Tyler testified. “The defendant has a criminal record. Prostitution.”
It wasn’t yet 10 a.m. and Raines had found a way to inject moral impropriety into the minds of the jury.
“How long did it take for you to receive positive identification on these fingerprints?”
“Two days,” Tyler answered. “There was a backlog of requests.”
“Who else was at the scene with you?”
“The police photographers. I instructed them to take pictures of the crime scene, and I remained there for the duration.”
At the beginning of the trial, Summer and Raines had offered arguments as to which pictures should be allowed into evidence. On this point, Hightower was surprisingly squeamish, ruling that only three shots of Gundy’s body, including the Jonathan Sadbury crime scene pictures trapped underneath him on which SK had scrawled the word “shame” and one close-up of the fatal head wound, were necessary.
Raines plucked the photos from the evidence cart, showed them to Summer, and then to Tyler, who in a bland monotone described each of the pictures as being accurate representations of the murder scene. Hightower glanced at them and then had Sprague pass them to the jury. There was a lot of blood. Summer could see the retired minister recoil. Robinson, too, blinked in horror.
“Were you suspicious of the defendant before the physical evidence was in?” Raines asked.
Tyler answered dryly. “The victim was holding photos of the defendant’s husband when he died. I thought this might be a clue to the identity of his attacker. I was also present when the defendant threatened Mr. Gundy in the past.”
This opened the door for Raines to dredge up motive: the Sadbury case, on which Tyler and Gundy had worked together. Tyler testified that after Gundy let her husband’s murderer plead insanity, SK threatened to kill Gundy the day Brauer walked through the gates of the asylum.
“Does Mr. Brauer still reside in the State psychiatric hospital?” Raines asked.
“He was released two days before Mr. Gundy was murdered.”
Raines let that soak in. Then he asked, “When you were told the defendant’s fingerprints matched those on the victim’s front door and on the pictures, what did you do?”
“I got a warrant to search the defendant’s home.” Tyler told the court how he had shown up at her door with a search team and entered SK’s top-floor residence. “The defendant walked in part way through the search.”
“What did you find?”
“A pair of boots with a fragment of glass embedded in the sole of one, stained by blood.”
“How did the defendant react?”
“She fled.” Tyler told the court how SK had surprised him by racing out, jumping a fence, and sprinting into the adjacent woods. Tyler put out a warrant for her arrest and she was collared by police in an abandoned industrial park.
Raines concluded his questioning with: “You have put more than 30 years into being a homicide detective. Is it your experience that innocent people run?”
Summer objected on the grounds that it was speculative.
Hightower took a moment to scroll the testimony on his computer monitor. “Overruled. The witness is being asked for his opinion based on his experience.”
“No. Innocent people don’t run.” Tyler added “in my opinion” for good measure.
Raines turned to Summer. “Your witness, counselor.”
Summer took a sip of water and psyched herself for the cross. She summoned her own experiences—the callous way the detectives had treated her rape, the corrupt way some cops had acted, the way they’d lied to cover up their behavior. By the time she approached Tyler, she wanted to obliterate him.
“Detective Tyler,” she said, “you just testified that, in your experience, innocent people don’t run. Is that correct?”
“Correct.” Tyler itched his nose.
“Have you arrested many innocent people?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what experiences do you draw on when you say that innocent people don’t run?”
Raines jumped up. “Your Honor, the defense is badgering this witness.”
“Is there an objection in there somewhere, counselor?” Hightower asked sarcastically. He was a stickler for form, especially at the start of a trial.
“Objection,” Raines said automatically.
“Overruled.” Hightower used a voice that sounded like “Nah-nah.” He was laying down the law in his court: Object at your own risk. “The witness is instructed to answer the question.”
Tyler shook his head. “Experience? More like logic.”
“So, are we to conclude that you based this assumption not on experience but on something else entirely?”
Tyler appeared confused. “I guess you could say that.”
“Are you precise with the language you use, Detective Tyler?”
Summer heard Raines start to object but hold back. He was waiting to find out what tack Summer was taking.
“Yeah, sure, I mean, when I’m on the job. When I’m off-duty, I don’t really think about it.”
“That’s fair,” Summer said. “So when you said that, based on your experiences that—”
Hightower cut her off. “You’ve already established this point.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” Summer said. “Detective Tyler, you testified that forensics found fingerprints on Mr. Gundy’s front door. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Which side? The inside or outside?”
“The outside.”
“It doesn’t bother you that your earlier testimony implied that the fingerprints were on the inside?”
“I didn’t imply anything. I said they found fingerprints on the door.”
Summer let it go. She had established that anything Tyler said should be taken with a grain of salt. She changed direction and brought up Tyler’s record. He had come up empty on the three cases he had worked on prior to collaring SK. He admitted that the failure to catch these culprits had resulted in intense pressure from his superiors. But after arresting SK, this pressure lessened.
“What are your feelings regarding my client?” Summer asked.
“I have no feelings one way or the other,” Tyler responded. “A case is a case, and a suspect is a suspect.”
“And you had no feelings regarding my client’s late husband, Jonathan Sadbury, and his work, did you?”
“None.”
“Nor the fact that he performed abortions?” Since Raines had already worked this nugget into his opening statement, Summer knew she couldn’t work around it.
“Right,” he said in a clipped voice.
Summer removed a photocopy from a folder. “Do you remember writing a check for $750 to the Anti-Abortion Crusade?”
Tyler was clearly ambushed. Summer had to hand it to Tai. He really did know how to investigate. She let Tyler’s silence hang in the air.
“Time’s a-wasting, Detective Tyler,” Summer said in a noisy whisper. “If you’re not careful, you’ll anger Mr. Raines. You know what a stickler for time he is. He even carries an alarm clock with him wherever he goes.”
Over the laughter, Hightower said, “That’s quite enough, Ms. Neuwirth.”
“My apologies, Your Honor. Well, Detective Tyl
er? Yes or no?”
“That was a long time ago,” he said.
“Yes, eight years ago, not long before Jonathan Sadbury was slain.” She showed him the photocopy. “Is this your signature?”
He fumbled for his eyeglasses. “It is.”
“But you’re telling the court that you don’t have feelings regarding Jonathan Sadbury’s work one way or the other. Is that correct?”
“I would never let it affect my judgment on the job.”
“I didn’t ask that.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m against abortion and believe Jonathan Sadbury’s work was immoral. But that doesn’t mean—”
“After Mr. Sadbury was murdered, did you say that God was just evening the score?”
Tyler took a sip of water. He was sweating and his eyes were red. “I don’t recollect ever having said that.”
“If I could produce a witness who would swear that you had, would he be lying?”
Tyler answered before Raines could object. “I don’t know.”
Summer withdrew the question. Haze County was in the heart of Right To Life, U.S.A. She wasn’t sure how much damage this would cause Raines’s case—hell, she thought, three-quarters of the jury probably agreed with Tyler’s stance. But she was laying the foundation for their mistrust.
She moved on to the crime scene. “Were you the first one to search the bedroom where the boots were found?”
“No. Another member of the search team had already searched.”
“Where was he when you were in the bedroom?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Your colleague searched the room?”
“He did.”
“And yet it was you who found the boots.”
“Yes.”
“While he was not present.”
“Yes.”
“How long were you unsupervised?”
Tyler sucked in some air. “About, oh, five minutes, give or take.”
Summer approached him. “You didn’t plant evidence, did you, Detective Tyler?”
Tyler’s face narrowed. His pupils were little beads. “Absolutely not.”
“If you had wanted to, however, it is possible that you could have transported a glass fragment with a drop of blood on it to my client’s home and planted it.”
Trial and Terror Page 16
