Judgment Calls (27 page)

I was burnt out and dying to leave, but I checked my voice mail before heading out. Among the usual junk was a message from Dan Manning. “Samantha, it’s Dan Manning from the Oregonian. I was calling to see if you had any response to today’s events at trial and the alleged connection between your case and Jamie Zimmerman. Also, I’d like to talk to you about whatever role you might have in the Zimmerman investigation. Give me a call.”

I wrote down the numbers that he rattled off and hit the button to save the message as a reminder, but I couldn’t summon the energy to call him back. Besides, what was I going to say? I’m getting my ass handed to me in trial and am going to have to cut a deal, but I think he’s guilty anyway? Not exactly spectacular spin.

The Jetta and I were crossing the Willamette River over the Morrison Bridge when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number as Kendra’s and answered.

“You rang?” It was Chuck.

“You’re at Kendra’s?” I asked.

“Just pulled up. I guess you called Ray, trying to track down where Kendra’s purse came from?” he said.

“Yeah. Did he tell you why?”

“Not really,” he said.

I struggled to think of the quickest way to describe what had been a draining day in court. It’s not easy to explain how the momentum of a case can shift with just a few hours in trial. I had to jerk the steering wheel back into line as I realized I’d been zoning out on the lights reflecting off the river. I waited until I was over the bridge and had merged onto the 1-5 to launch into it.

“The case fell apart today,” I said. “Lopez brought in a guy from the Collision Clinic. Turns out Derringer arranged to have the car work done before the attack and the shop couldn’t get it done until that Sunday, so our theory about doing it to get rid of the physical evidence is gone.”

Chuck tried to assuage my concerns. “I don’t think that part of the evidence was that important, Sam. It made a nice icing to the cake, but you should be alright without it.”

“You’re right that it wasn’t the heart of the case. The problem is that putting a theory out there and having it torn apart by the defense is a lot worse than if we’d never floated it in the first place. It gives the defense the momentum. And losing that piece of circumstantial evidence makes the fingerprint even more important,” I said.

“I still don’t know what the problem is there,” he said.

I filled him in on Derringer’s temp job doing inventory at Dress You Up. “Without the print, all we’ve got is Kendra’s ID and Renshaw’s testimony about the pethismograph.” I had a tough time holding back tears as I heard myself admit how bad things had turned in just one day. “That’s why I really need to know where Andrea got that purse. How’s it looking so far?”

“It’s a long shot. I finally got hold of Andrea at work. She’s not supposed to get calls at the restaurant, so she was distracted and I was having trouble explaining to her why it was important. Add the fact that she freaked at the mention of Dress You Up, going off about how they falsely arrested her well, you get the picture. Anyway, she thinks she bought the purse at Meier & Frank. If not there, one of the other big department stores, not Dress You Up. Problem is, she doesn’t have any credit cards and usually just pays cash.”

“Any chance she’s still got a receipt?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m doing now. She says she usually just throws them out, but sometimes she tosses them into a couple different drawers around the house. I’m going to go through them. If I don’t find anything, I’ll swing by the restaurant on the way home so she can sign a consent form for me to get her old checks from the bank, just in case she happened to pay by check. Other than that, I can’t think of anything else.”

Neither could I. “OK, let me know if you find anything.”

“You going to be OK tonight, Sam?” he asked.

Darn blasted tears were back again. “I don’t know. It’s just too much, you know?”

“Then let me help you. If you need follow-up, I’m free.”

What I really wanted was company. “Will you stay with me tonight when you finish up?”

“Definitely. Easiest request I ever got from a DA. I’ll call you on my way out.”

“And can you bring some pancakes?” I added. “The Hot-cake House makes them to go.”

Twelve.

It was almost midnight by the time Chuck got to my house, and we were both exhausted. Not too exhausted to talk about the case while I devoured my pancakes, or to have as good a round of hot and steamy sex as a post-pancake lull will allow, but we were pretty exhausted all the same.

Chuck had looked through the junk drawers at the Martin house, but, as Andrea had thought, there was no receipt for the purse. Andrea signed a release for her account information, and Chuck was going to check with the bank in the morning for any checks that might match with the purchase. He was also going to contact Meier & Frank to make sure they stocked that purse before Christmas. That would at least verify Andrea’s recollection, and I could recall her to the stand along with a Meier & Frank rep in rebuttal.

I must’ve killed the alarm the next morning, because I overslept. Even though I let my hair dry in the car and parked at the expensive garage across from the courthouse, I didn’t have time for Starbucks. Now I’d be having my ass handed me in trial with bad hair and office coffee. Terrific.

When I ran into my office to grab my trial notebooks, I was greeted by a nice big Post-it note on my chair: Sam Where are you? Don’t bother calling Lesh he knows you’ll be late. Get down to Duncan’s office

ASAP. TOD.

Now what? I grabbed my notebooks and took the stairs down two flights to Duncan’s office. I’d doubled my total number of visits there in just two days. Not good.

When I arrived, Duncan’s secretary waved me in and hollered, “Samantha Kincaid’s finally here.”

Duncan sat alone at his desk. “Tim took off. Have a seat,” he said.

“Sir, I’m sure this is important, but I’m still in trial,” I said, gesturing down with my head at the stack of books I was carrying for court.

“Please, Sam, just have a seat. We called Lesh earlier.”

I did as he said.

It was the first time I’d ever seen Duncan Griffith without a smile. He looked worried. And mean. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday you had a rotten case?” he asked.

My heart started to race as I struggled to collect my thoughts. Why was he asking about my case again when we’d resolved everything yesterday?

“First of all, I don’t think it’s a rotten case. The defense has had some surprises, so it’s no slam dunk, but I’ve still got a good enough case to fight. Second, I was under the impression that we met yesterday about the case as it relates to the Zimmerman issue. I didn’t realize that you wanted an update about the general status of the trial.”

“Sam, that kind of answer does squat for me right now.”

I blinked and felt my lips separate but nothing came out. “Excuse me?” I finally said.

“Jesus, Kincaid.” Griffith shook his head at me. “Tunnel vision. A real tunnel vision problem. You didn’t get my point at all yesterday, did you?”

“Yes, sir. Keep the eye on the ball. The big picture. The greater good.” Usually, I can manage to sound earnest even though I know I’m being snide. This time, I just sounded snide.

“Damn it. Yes, the strength of your case matters when your bad guy’s telling everyone who will listen that he’s the innocent victim of the Keystone Kops and that some serial rapist is on the loose. It matters even more when there’s another guy on death row saying the same thing, and a little old lady serving a life term backing him up. Jesus. You made it sound yesterday like your guy was just taking advantage of the publicity with Taylor. Now I’ve got to find out from the papers that there’s something to it.”

Shit. I hadn’t read the papers this morning, and I’d blown off Manning’s call last night. I decided it was better not to interrupt Griffith’s diatribe with information that made me look even more inept and uninformed.

“Jesus, I started with the Softball, Kincaid, when I asked you about your case. The bigger question is why the hell you didn’t bother to mention your little tryst with Chuck Forbes. You sat here in my office and acted like this was a routine case with some incidental mention of the Zimmerman matter. Now I’ve got this.” He picked up a folded Oregonian from his desk and slammed it down for emphasis.

When in doubt, bluff. It usually works. “Sir, I’m not sure how it would have been relevant during our meeting yesterday for me to start discussing my personal life, whatever that may be.”

“And you still think that today?” he asked. Again with that damn newspaper.

My only choice was to ‘fess up. “I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to see the paper this morning yet, sir. Like I said, I’m in trial, and I was running late.”

Griffith stared at me for a second. Then he started laughing.

“Oh. Well then, let me have the pleasure of being the first to introduce you to the story that may very well end your career and mine. Please, be my guest. Go over to the sofa if you’d like. It’s quite comfortable, and, I guarantee, that’s quite an article. It might take awhile.”

I thought about rewarding the sarcasm by lying on the sofa as he suggested, but I wanted to keep my job.

I unfolded the paper to a banner headline that read, Does Portland Have a Serial Killer? A smaller line beneath it explained, Letter from “The Long Hauler” Supports Theory Linking Current Sex Trial to Murder of Jamie Zimmerman. There was a large photograph of a smiling Jamie Zimmerman, with smaller booking photographs of Taylor, Landry, and Derringer. The text below the pictures explained that, despite claims of innocence, Taylor was on death row and Landry was serving a life sentence for the rape murder of Zimmerman, and that Derringer claimed that whoever killed Zimmerman must have committed the crime he was accused of.

I had to read the article quickly, since Griffith was obviously growing impatient:

Like the letter first disclosed by the Oregonian last week, the one received yesterday arrived in an unremarkable white envelope bearing a Roseburg postmark. The writer again claims that he and not Jesse Taylor and Margaret Landry strangled Jamie Zimmerman. In this new letter, however, the writer maintains that Zimmerman’s murder was just the beginning in what has become a string of grisly murders, scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest and previously believed to be unconnected. He also claims responsibility for a brutal rape that is the basis of the trial of Frank Derringer currently being held in the Multnomah County Courthouse. Calling himself the Long Hauler, the writer identifies himself as a long-haul truck driver from Oregon whose travels across the country have made it easy for him to kill five women undetected.

I was surprised by the graphic detail reprinted verbatim in the paper. At one point, the author explained that killing Zimmerman had ignited an insatiable desire in him to kill. Six months after he strangled Jamie Zimmerman, he couldn’t withstand the temptation anymore, so he picked up a prostitute at a truck stop in Ellensburg, Washington, and strangled her with a leather belt while he orally sodomized her. I kept reading.

Explaining his self-declared pseudonym, the writer says, “All the good ones had a name. Son of Sam, Boston Strangler, Green River Killer. Unless you think of something better, you can just call me the Long Hauler.”

In addition to detailed descriptions of the murders of Jamie Zimmerman and four other women, the writer also describes his involvement in a violent sexual assault upon a victim he refers to as “the girl who was dumped in the Gorge last Feb[ruary].” He claims that, as he had done prior to and since Zimmerman’s murder, he went with a friend to look for a prostitute to share.

He says, “I knew we were going to kill the girl when my friend couldn’t [achieve an erection]. He started working her over and it brought out the urge in me. Maybe the Gorge is my lucky spot. That couple took the fall for me after I did Jamie, and now the cops think some other guy did the other girl. I guess the bad luck is that this time she lived. (Ha-ha.)”

The writer’s description of the incident closely matches the crime for which Frank Derringer is currently on trial. Derringer is accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl and leaving her for dead in the Columbia Gorge with an unidentified accomplice. During his trial, Derringer has claimed to be the victim of a mistaken eyewitness identification. Because of similarities between the offense and Zimmerman’s murder, Derringer has suggested that the crimes were committed by the same person or persons.

I reached the end of the front page text of the feature story and opened the paper to jump to the continuation. Apparently, the writer gave detailed descriptions of the five murders, but the Oregonian was declining to publish any potentially identifying information until law enforcement officials verified its authenticity.

An exasperated sigh from Griffith reminded me that I was supposed to be rushing. I closed the paper back to the front page and looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, Sam. Was I disrupting your reading?”

“I was getting through it as quickly as I could,” I said. “So the paper agreed to keep the details quiet until we figure out if this guy’s for real?”

Griffith didn’t hide his annoyance. “Yeah, IA’s trying to find any cases matching up to what this guy says. But I wouldn’t concern yourself with that right now.”

I wanted to ask him why the bureau’s Internal Affairs Division would be investigating a potential serial killer, but I could tell Duncan wasn’t in the mood to answer any more of my questions.

“What are you willing to tell me about this thing with Forbes?” Duncan snatched the paper from my hand and gave it a couple of hard creases, exposing a smaller sidebar on the front page, then handed it back to me. “That,” he said for emphasis.

Dan Manning was a little shit. That was all I could think when I found myself staring at the headline:

DA-DETECTIVE RELATIONSHIP CLOUDS DERRINGER CASE

The deputy district attorney prosecuting Frank Derringer is involved in a romantic relationship with a lead detective in the investigation of the murder of Jamie Zimmerman and the rape of which Derringer is accused, the Oregonian has learned.