I say his name aloud, feeling suddenly sad for him, close to him.
I take my eyes away from his photograph and scan the other two. Lipinski I know but wish I didn’t. A bad actor. I’ve never met Terrance Johnson, who appears to be much younger than the other two. I wonder what bad break or twist of fate motivated him and Lawrence to betray themselves, their families, the police force. What surprise did life spring on them at exactly the right moment to make two good men go bad?
6
MONDAY, JUNE 11
The following Monday, the prosecution’s case materials arrive in my office. The documents include the incident reports, a compilation report, the arrest memo, and the property receipts of the items that were taken from David on his arrest, along with the CSU log. Because David’s case is so high profile, it has been rushed through the system, which means that I also receive the crime-scene photos, autopsy report, and photographs—they usually take more time. Still, it will be a while before I get the fingerprint and DNA analysis.
I go right to the crime-scene photos. I quickly scan the shots of Jennifer Yamura’s house: outside, front and back, and the first and second floors. Then I focus my attention on the photographs of the basement steps and her body. My heart quickens as I look at her face, eyes open, seeming to stare up at me. I spot the blood spill on the sixth and fifth steps from the bottom, the steps her head must have struck when she fell. I study the massive pool of blood on the concrete block at the bottom of the steps, where her head is lying. And it strikes me that this is wrong.
Her head should be higher on the steps. And there are fresh abrasions on both of her knees. She’s lying on her back, but her knees are bloodied.
This isn’t making sense.
I grab the police reports, which make mention of the head wounds, the knee injuries, and some lighter abrasions to the palms of her hands—all injuries that the investigating officers would have been able to see with their own eyes. Deeply confused, I reach for the autopsy report and learn that the cause of Jennifer’s death was exsanguination from a ruptured artery in the back of her head resulting from blunt-force trauma caused when her head collided with the steps. Going back to the police reports, I read that the basement floor had been scrubbed with a cleaning agent but that luminol testing revealed trace amounts of latent blood.
There can only be one explanation for all of this, and it hits me like a bolt of lightning: Yamura must have survived the fall down the stairs!
She made it off the steps, crawled along the basement’s rough concrete floor, scraping up her knees and her hands. Someone—whomever she was crawling away from—then took her back to the stairs and kept her there until she bled out.
“Jesus Christ.” I spring from my chair, close the door to my office. I pace and think. Then pace some more. A million questions flood my brain. I sit down at my desk again, study the crime-scene photos, the police reports, the autopsy report, over and over. “Jesus Christ,” I repeat. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
After lunch, and after I’ve spent several hours reviewing and summarizing the prosecution’s evidence, I receive a call that I’ve been expecting from Devlin Walker. He offers the kind of deal that Detective Tredesco suggested he might: David pleads to first-degree manslaughter, “Man One,” and Devlin will urge the Court to impose the minimum sentence. “But,” Devlin is quick to add, “any plea agreement has to include producing that laptop. No laptop, no deal.”
I chuckle. “David plead? Are you serious? I’ve just finished reading all the police reports, and I found more than enough to make reasonable doubt a lock.”
“Like what?”
“Like the stolen computer you just mentioned. Along with stolen jewelry and cash. So, what, you’re going to argue that my millionaire client emptied Ms. Yamura’s wallet, then took her laptop and jewelry so he could pawn it, because he needed the money to buy that double-wide he’d always dreamed of owning?”
“Please. Your client’s a smart man. He took the computer and the money and jewelry as a smoke screen to make it look like a robbery gone bad.”
I let his theory hang in the air for a moment. “Why are you involved in this case at all, Devlin? You haven’t tried a murder case in years.”
“That’s easy. I’m running the grand jury looking into the police drug syndicate. The decedent had information critical to the investigation. I had a vested interest in getting Ms. Yamura in front of my grand jury and questioning her. Her murder prevented me from doing that.”
“It’s that simple?”
“It’s that simple.” Devlin waits a beat. “Hanson killed that young woman, Mick. Something obviously went wrong with their affair. He got pissed, pushed her down the stairs. Then when it was clear she wasn’t going to die, he made sure she did. That’s cold. And a jury will crucify him for it. He’ll rot in prison forever. But he can avoid all that by pleading to Man One. If he produces the laptop. And it better not have been opened. Not a single document read. Our forensics guys will know it if Hanson or anyone else has even looked at the files. Please make that very clear to your client.”
Not long after I hang up with Devlin, Angie buzzes to tell me that David has shown up at the firm and wants to see me. I have her bring him back to my office. David appears haggard and tired. Still not as bad as he looked the morning after his arrest, but close.
“How are things with Marcie?”
“Hell,” he says. “Half the time, she’s screaming at me. Half the time, she’s giving me the silent treatment. Stomping around the house, slamming doors, ignoring me. The boys know something’s wrong between us. I don’t know what to tell them.” David pauses here, looks past me out the window. “Her family hates me. Her sister called me on my cell phone the other night for the sole purpose of telling me what a piece of shit I am.”
David’s looking at me now. “My own family’s hardly on speaking terms with me, either. Except Edwin, of course. He has plenty to say.”
Eighteen years David’s senior, his half brother, Edwin, is the CEO of Hanson World Industries. Groomed from an early age to take control of the family business, Edwin is reputed to be both brilliant and ruthless.
“Such as?”
“He just told me to take a leave of absence from the company. It was all I could do not to hit him in the mouth. I came here instead, to blow off steam.”
“Are you going to do as he says?”