At six o’clock, the guard rings me, says there’s someone here to see me. I tell the guard to send him up. I’m standing by the front door to our suite when I hear the ding as the elevator doors open. After a minute, Devlin Walker turns the corner and moves toward me down the hallway. Even from a distance, I can see that he hasn’t slept a wink. When Devlin approaches, I hold open the door for him, then lock it behind us. Neither of us says a word as I lead Devlin to my office, nod to one of the visitors’ chairs, which I’ve faced toward the TV. As soon as he’s seated and I’m behind my desk, I press the “Play” button, and the image of Jennifer’s back door appears on the screen.
The clock at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen reads 11:50 a.m. when someone appears on the screen: Devlin Walker, the first of the three men who visited Jennifer Yamura that day. He moves around Jennifer’s car, approaches the door, and knocks. Jennifer opens the door and lets him in. After a few seconds, the screen turns to fuzz. In another second, the image of Jennifer’s backyard reappears. Devlin is halfway through the back door on his way out of the house, the motion of the door opening having triggered the camera to begin recording again. The clock reads 12:25 p.m., meaning that thirty-five minutes have elapsed between Devlin’s entering and leaving the house. Devlin walks away, and a few seconds later, the camera turns to fuzz, then black. Thirty-two minutes later, the camera captured me appearing at Jennifer’s back door, but of course I don’t show that part of the video to Devlin. Nor do I show Devlin the portions of the video showing David Hanson arriving thirty minutes after I left.
“The rest of the tape shows what everyone in the courtroom already knows happened,” I say. “It shows David arriving that night. After about an hour, he runs out the back door. From that point on, the tape plays almost without a break until sunrise, what with all the patrolmen and CSU guys.”
Devlin stares at me, his eyes betraying a mind in the grip of panic.
I wait a moment, then lean across my desk. “You prick. You murdered that poor girl. And then you did everything in your power to frame an innocent man.”
“No,” Devlin says, his voice almost a whisper.
“Here’s my guess. You slept with her, maybe even had a full-blown affair. You let it slip about the grand-jury investigation. You tipped off a young reporter to a story that could make her career. Somehow, she got on your computer, copied your files to her laptop. That’s how she knew so many of the details—which cops had spilled the beans, and what they’d said. Then one morning you open the paper and there it is, laid out in black and white—details that only someone close to the investigation could know.”
Devlin’s head is down now, his eyes closed, his jaw clenched. His arms are wrapped around his chest. My words are body blows, and he knows there’s nothing he can do to deflect them.
I go on. “Now comes the ironic part. As the DA running the grand jury, you’re professionally obligated to subpoena Yamura to appear and testify, disclose her source—you—and testify to what else she knows. But her doing so would ruin you. So you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. You issue the subpoena, and you know that, sooner or later, she’s going to have to show up or face a contempt charge. So you go to her house and beg her to lie under oath and not reveal you as her source. She laughs in your face, tells you that she won’t go to prison to protect you. It’s all too much for you, so you throw her down the stairs. When you see she isn’t dead, that she’s able to crawl off the steps, you follow her down, carry her back to the stairs to bleed out and die. Then you search the house for the laptop but can’t find it. So you take a few minutes, try to clear your head, figure out what to do. That’s when you come up with the idea of taking the money out of her wallet and her jewelry and phone, to make it look like a burglary gone bad. I have to hand it to you, Devlin, you were always good on your feet.”
Devlin shakes his head. “No, no, no,” he moans.
“You left the house without the laptop, but you knew you had to get it somehow. With Jennifer dead, the copies of your files on her computer were the only things that could link you to her story. That’s why you pressed me again and again for the laptop. Why you stressed that my turning it over was a condition of David’s getting a plea deal. It’s also why you warned me not to open the files on the computer.”
Devlin puts up his hands to stop me. “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Why would I think David Hanson had the computer, if I, not he, was the one who killed Jennifer?”
“Because during your affair, Jennifer told you that David owned the house. You figured there was a hiding place in the house, maybe a secret safe that the police didn’t find, and that’s where Jennifer had put the laptop. You decided that David opened the safe and took it after you murdered Yamura.”
Devlin closes his eyes.
“Tell me, Devlin, was she crying like the medical examiner said? Did she beg you for her life as she crawled away—like you insinuated to the jury? Is that how you came up with that question—because you saw it play out in real life?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“How did you hold yourself together all these months? Did you lock it away in some remote dungeon in your brain? Did the memory of it all fade over time until it all seemed like just a bad dream? They could write whole psychology books on you, man.”
Now it’s Devlin’s turn to lean across the desk. “I did not kill that woman! I did not!”
I return Devlin’s stare, my eyes cold with accusation and contempt. “You were going to take everything from David. His reputation, his life’s work. His freedom. Well, now I’m going to take everything from you. This morning, when the judge asks me to call my first witness, guess who I’m going to name? You. And when Bill Henry calls us both up to sidebar, I’m going to tell him I have a videotape that shows you were the one who killed Jennifer Yamura. And just like that, your career will be over. Your marriage will be over. You will be over.” I sit back and wait.
Devlin shrinks in his seat. After a minute, he lays it all out. “It was months ago, and only a few times,” he starts. “She came on to me at some political function when my wife was out of town. She was so good-looking, and I was long past sober. So I followed her back from the hotel, the Warwick, to her house. An hour of drunken, sloppy sex, then I was out of there and swearing I’d never go back. But the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And the day after that and the day after that. I called her one morning, asked if she wanted to meet me for a cup of coffee. I was thinking Starbucks. But she suggested I come to her place, said she’d make a fresh pot. That was the second time. After we were done, lying in bed, we got to talking. I asked her about her family, where she came from, what her goals were. She asked me what I was working on. And like an idiot, I told her. The grand jury, the police drug ring. I made her promise not to share it with anyone, and she did.”