He pauses, and we all nod our understanding.
“Anyway, it all got to me. The stress. The worry. I needed to escape, somehow. I was weak. I ended up making a big mistake . . . with Jennifer.”
David stops here, looks at me, at Susan, at Vaughn.
Susan glances at me, then says, “So you had an affair . . . because your wife got cancer?”
David snaps, “Don’t judge me. You don’t know what it’s been like. I wanted to be there for Marcie. I was there for Marcie.”
Susan closes her eyes. She’s biting her tongue so hard I won’t be surprised if it starts bleeding.
“I know it’s wrong, what I did. I’ve hurt Marcie terribly. And I feel awful.”
“How long,” I ask, “were you seeing Jennifer Yamura?”
“Not long at all. A month, six weeks. We met at that charity event in January or February. We got together a few times after that. It was just a casual thing.”
“What’s a few times?”
“I don’t know. A handful. Five, ten.”
“Ten is two handfuls,” Susan pipes in.
David pretends not to hear her.
“Where did you get together?” I ask.
“Always at her house. Never in public. And I came in the back door, through the alley, so no one would see me.”
“When is the last time you saw Jennifer Yamura alive?” asks Susan.
“Maybe a week before she was killed. We got together.”
“Not on Thursday, the day of the murder?” I ask. “You’re certain?”
“Absolutely.”
I wait a beat, then say, “I have a friend in the crime-scene unit. He said the official time of death won’t be determined until the autopsy, but based on the rate of body cooling, CSU estimates that Yamura was killed sometime between one and three o’clock Thursday afternoon. So here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: Where were you between one and three o’clock on Thursday?”
“I was at work all morning.” David pauses here. “Then I left the office. And, well, who’s to say I didn’t just drive home?”
Vaughn speaks up for the first time. “Your parking card, for one.”
“My parking card?”
“Your office is in the Comcast building,” Vaughn says. “I’m guessing you park in the lot and that you’re a monthly. There’s a computer record showing every time you enter or leave the lot. So you can’t claim you drove out at lunchtime unless you actually did.”
Vaughn Coburn’s got a great street sense, an awareness of the nuts and bolts of life in the big city. Vaughn grew up in one of Philly’s toughest neighborhoods. A fair-haired kid of middling height and weight, Vaughn probably would have had a hard time except that his uncle was an ex-boxer who operated a gym where he trained up-and-coming fighters. Vaughn spent a lot of time there, working out and sparring, and he got to the point where he could handle himself anywhere. After high school, Vaughn went to Temple for both undergrad and law school. Spent two years with the public defender’s office before joining the firm last year.
“I didn’t say I did,” David says, suddenly testy. “But isn’t it the prosecution’s burden of proof to show where I was when Jennifer was murdered? Rather than my burden to show where I wasn’t?”
Vaughn, Susan, and I all exchange glances. “David, let me be frank,” I say. “The police have you inside a young woman’s house late at night for who knows how long while the woman’s body lies on her basement steps. Instead of calling the police like an innocent person would do, you decide to try and erase all history of your presence in the house. Then when the police do arrive, you don’t open the door for them but run out the back door and down the alley. So, prosecutor’s burden of proof or not, you’d damn well better have an alibi showing that you were nowhere near Jennifer Yamura when she was murdered.”
I pause to pour myself a cup of coffee.
“Remember, you already have one strike against you. On the night of your arrest, you told Detectives Tredesco and Cook that you were at work all afternoon. By now, they’ve already spoken to your staff and found out that’s not the case. So you better have at least one witness who can place you far away from Addison Street between one and three o’clock.”
David stares at me for a long minute, then looks to Susan and Vaughn almost defiantly. “There must have been hundreds of people who saw me. I was on Kelly Drive. I went for a walk.”
Susan’s mouth opens. Vaughn rolls his eyes.
David continues, “I left the office about 1:15. It was beautiful outside, so I thought I’d get some air. I walked to the parkway and decided to take in the Chagall exhibit. But when I reached the museum, it was so nice out I decided to keep walking toward the boathouses. I guess my mind wandered, and I ended up walking the whole way to the Falls Bridge. That’s where I turned around. I walked back to Center City, made my way to Rittenhouse Square, and took in the art show. Then I walked back to my office, got in my car, and drove home. By then it was about six o’clock.”
I look down at my still-blank legal pad. “I run the river drives a lot. The round trip from Center City to the Falls Bridge and back is about ten miles.” I look up and give David a hard stare. “And another mile or so to Rittenhouse Square and back. All in your business suit?”
“Like I said, it was really nice out. There was no humidity. I didn’t even sweat.”
“And your work shoes . . . ,” I add.
“I wasn’t running, Mick. It’s not like my feet would have gotten hurt.”
“Did you run into anyone you know?” asks Susan.
David thinks. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
“So lots of people saw you,” says Susan, “but none who would remember.”
“Why don’t we take a break?” I say. “I need to make a couple calls.”
Susan, Vaughn, and I file out of the conference room and go directly to my office. I sit behind my desk. Susan and Vaughn take the visitors’ chairs.
“Am I missing something,” asks Vaughn, “or is he trying to follow your advice by telling us he did it without actually saying the words?”
I look at Susan. “What do you think?”
“I’m with the Boy Wonder on this one, Batman.”
The door to my office opens, and Tommy walks in. “I didn’t get your messages until this morning. How you guys doing?” he says to Vaughn and Susan, who sense my irritation and leave.
“I left you five messages,” I say when Tommy and I are alone, my voice thick with anger.
“Hey, don’t jump all over me. I said I didn’t get them.”
“How can you not get my messages? I left them on your cell.”
“I went camping for a couple days.”
“Come on, man. I get through to you at your trailer all the time.”
“I wasn’t at my trailer. I just told you, I went camping. In my tent. Up at Hickory Run State Park.”
“Since when do you go tent camping?”