Key Witness (64 page)

“What time was that?”

“About eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Where were you?”

“I was at home.”

“You were asleep?”

Marlow nodded. “Yes. I’d been out late the night before.” He smiled at the jury. “One of the detectives in our division was getting married, so we had a bachelor party for him. It went pretty late.”

“So you went right over? What time did you arrive at the crime scene, Detective?”

“About nine-thirty, quarter to ten. I showered first and grabbed a cup of coffee on the way.”

“You don’t record when you arrive on a crime scene? The exact time?” He looked at Marlow’s report. “It says here you got there at nine-fifty-five a.m.”

Marlow pursed his lips. “That sounds right.”

“Okay. So you went over there and you met your partner”—he looked at his notes—“Detective Conners. At five to ten. Was he already there?”

“I picked him up. We’d both been to the same party.”

“So you took a shower. Got dressed. Shaved?”

Marlow nodded. “Yes.”

“Stopped on the way for coffee. Picked up Detective Conners—is my chronology right? Did you get the coffee before you picked up Conners?”

“Yes.”

“You figured if you needed an eye-opener, he would, too?”

“Objection,” sang out Abramowitz from behind him. “Irrelevant and trivial.”

“Detective Marlow made several acute observations when he got to that crime scene, Your Honor,” Wyatt explained. “I’m trying to establish his mental acuity at the time.”

Grant nodded. “I see your point. Overruled. You may answer the question,” he said to Marlow.

“I wanted a cup of coffee and I knew Conners would, too. I wasn’t hungover, if that’s what you’re implying,” Marlow said testily.

“I’m not implying anything,” Wyatt returned. “Now when the dispatcher from homicide called you, Detective, did he—”

“She,” Marlow interrupted. “The dispatcher is a woman.”

“Sorry. She. Did she give any indication that this murder victim you were going to look at was an Alley Slasher victim?”

“No,” Marlow answered quickly. “It was a murder victim. I’m a homicide detective, sir. I investigate murders.”

“So why did she call you?”

Marlow looked at him quizzically. “Because that’s what I do. I just said that.”

“I meant you specifically. How many detectives are there in the homicide division, Detective Marlow?”

Slowly, Marlow answered, “Forty.”

“Forty detectives. So out of those forty detectives why were you called, if it wasn’t pertaining to one of your active files? Are you saying you just happened to be the one that was called? What do they do, pick the names out of a hat?”

Marlow glowered. “No. We go by roster.”

“So you and Conners were next up.”

Marlow started to answer, then hesitated. “No, we weren’t.”

“Then that leads me back to my initial question. Why were
you
called? You in particular?”

Marlow’s eyes darted to the prosecution table for a moment. He looked at Wyatt again. “I guess because maybe they thought … maybe they thought it was connected with the Alley Slasher murders,” he admitted. “
Might
be connected,” he amended.

“They?”

“The lieutenant who was commander of the watch at that time.”

“So it wasn’t an accident you were called. A roll of the dice.”

“I guess not, no.”

“It was another one like the ones you’d been investigating for almost two years.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad we cleared that up. Finally.” He shuffled through some notes. “This was the biggest case you were working on at the time. The most important one.”

“Definitely.”

“You wanted to apprehend whoever did this really badly, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“You wanted to catch him so badly that upon hearing the news that another Alley Slasher victim had been found, you got up out of bed, took a shower, shaved, got dressed … did you take time to polish your shoes?”

“Objection!” Abramowitz called out. “Mr. Matthews is badgering the witness.”

“Sorry, Your Honor,” Wyatt apologized before Grant could sustain her. “I withdraw that last part.”

“Stay on track,” Grant admonished him.

“Yes, Your Honor.” He returned to his questioning of Marlow. “You got out of bed, you took a shower, you shaved, got dressed, drove to pick up your partner, on the way stopping for coffee—two coffees, one for each of you … did you pick up something to eat, too?”

“A couple of bagels,” Marlow said.

“Stopped for coffee and bagels, picked up Detective Conners, and drove to the murder location. Where the body was waiting for you two hours after you got the call. Is my chronology correct, Detective?”

“The body wasn’t going anywhere,” Marlow answered curtly.

Wyatt couldn’t hear it, but he knew Abramowitz was groaning to herself.

“Not on its own,” he shot back. “But isn’t it important—imperative—to get to a murder site as quickly and expeditiously as possible? Isn’t that what you just told us? How important it is to get there fast?”

“Yes,” Marlow admitted.

“Because every minute that goes by—every minute that is lost—is precious, isn’t it? The trail grows colder, vital evidence gets lost, gets tampered with, compromised, tainted, there’s more of a possibility of contamination of the crime scene. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” Marlow said again.

Tacking away, Wyatt asked, “Who calls the medical examiner to the scene?”

“The detective in charge, usually,” Marlow answered.

“In this case, that would have been you?”

“Yes. I called the examiner. The coroner.”

“Does the coroner’s office come to every crime scene where it’s suspected a murder took place?”

“Yes. They have to, legally. Also it’s in the police code of regulations.”

“But the coroner himself doesn’t usually come, does he? Usually it’s one of his minions, isn’t it?”

Marlow nodded his head in agreement. “It’s usually an assistant, or sometimes paramedics with special training for it, yeah.”

“But this time Coroner Ayala himself came, didn’t he? Because of the prominence of these cases.”

“Yes.”

“But he couldn’t come until you called him, right? He lost valuable time, didn’t he.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Abramowitz spoke up. “Calls for conjecture by the witness.”

“Sustained.”

Wyatt looked at his notes. “You canvassed the area pretty thoroughly, didn’t you?” he asked. “ ‘You’ meaning several policemen by this time? Once you got there?” he added.

“Extremely thoroughly,” Marlow answered, not rising to Wyatt’s gibe.

“Did you find the murder weapon?”

“No.”

“You looked for it.”

“We fine-tooth-combed that neighborhood, looking for any evidence. The murder weapon, of course, but anything that might give us a lead. We handpicked through the contents of that entire garbage truck, looked into every trash can in a two-block radius, swept the streets clean. We also talked to anyone we could find who had been in the club at the time, might have seen her with the victim, and so forth. We were damn thorough, believe me.”

“I do.” He riffled through his notes again. “Did you come up with anything?” he asked. “Any concrete leads?”

“No, I’m sorry to say. The killer had been very good at covering his tracks. He didn’t leave anything we could find.”

Wyatt made a note regarding that. Then he looked up. “You’ve given a very good and complete recitation here, Detective Marlow. I guess a policeman gets trained to remember his facts.”

“It’s an important part of the job,” Marlow stated blandly. “A good memory is one of the most important things a good detective has.”

“And you’re a good detective.”

Marlow shrugged modestly.

“You have a good memory.”

“It’s pretty good.”

“But it isn’t that good that you wouldn’t refer back to your notes and reports when you’re investigating a case, is it?” Wyatt asked.

“I’m not going to trust my memory for things that are important,” Marlow said. “I go back over them, especially in a scenario like this one, where you have one murder following another in a particular pattern.”

“You want to see what the consistencies are. Or inconsistencies.”

“That’s right.”

“And when you come to testify in a trial—as you’re doing now—you’d go back over your notes, to refresh your memory, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You went over your notes before coming in here to testify this morning, didn’t you.”

“Yes,” Marlow admitted. “I looked them over.”

“How did you go about doing that?” Wyatt asked. “What was the process?”

“Well, I have my own handwritten originals,” Marlow explained. “I looked them over. And I went down to the Police Department of Records and pulled the computer data that I’d entered on the different murders, including the most recent one.”

“All the computer records are kept there? In one central location?”

Marlow nodded. “So everyone knows where they are, so that they can access them easily.”

“How does someone access a file?” Wyatt asked. “Can anyone do it?”

“Not anyone can do it,” Marlow said. “They’re privileged. You have to have the authority to get into the files. If you’re a policeman, like me, you have to give your name, badge number, and so forth.”

“So it would be difficult for someone who wasn’t authorized to look at a police file to do so, is that right?”

“Almost impossible,” Marlow answered firmly.

“You go down there and what? You fill out a form, give it to the clerk, he goes back and gets the file. Like that?”

“Exactly like that.”

“You’ve done that several times, haven’t you? Gone down to the records department and pulled files on these cases?”

“I’ve pulled some files from time to time, yes.”

“And each time you went down to the records department and filled out a form? There’s no other way?”

Marlow thought for a moment. “Well, there is another way.”

Wyatt paused before asking his next question. “What’s that?”

“You can do it through a computer. More and more, officers do that, especially the younger ones. You access it through the modem. It saves a lot of time.”

“But you still need authorization. You have to be in the loop, so to speak.”

“Absolutely. It’s still the same procedure.”

Wyatt walked back over to the defense table. He picked up a handful of papers, brought them back to the lectern. “I have your handwritten reports here,” he said, “and I’m comparing them to the reports you filed into the police computer. There seem to be some discrepancies. Some items have been left out. Could you explain why that is?”

Marlow nodded. “Sure. I can’t put everything in. It’s not always relevant, sometimes there are redundancies, you could call them, I just don’t have the time. It’s like any other organization—the paperwork can kill you; if that’s all you’re doing, you’re not doing the job.”

“I sympathize with you there,” Wyatt said. “But doesn’t using your computer make the job easier rather than harder?”

“I guess if you’re good on computers it could,” Marlow told him. “I’m not much on computers, to tell you the truth. I’ve never quite gotten the hang of them. I’m an old-fashioned handwriting kind of cop, I guess. But like I said, I’ve always got my handwritten originals to back me up.”

“Okay,” Wyatt said. “I think that’s it.” He started to leave the lectern, then turned back. “One more thing. Have you ever met Dwayne Thompson? One of the state’s witnesses in this case?”

Marlow shook his head. “No.”

“Never spoke with him, never been in contact with him in any way?”

“No.”

“Did you read his grand jury testimony, by any chance?”

“No. I never had contact with him. Directly, indirectly. No way at all.”

Wyatt stared at the detective for a good, long beat. Then he turned away. “That’ll be all, Your Honor.”

D
R. ROBERT AYALA HAD
been the county coroner for seven years. He was a trim, dapper, middle-aged man who sported an out-of-style pencil mustache, the kind Clark Gable wore. He was a competent-enough pathologist; there hadn’t been any major scandals involving his office since he’d come aboard.

What he was particularly good at was dealing with the politics of his job, an indispensable quality given the politically charged atmosphere of the county’s labyrinthine, backbiting system. He was comfortable in the courtroom—he testified in over a dozen trials every year, and occasionally journeyed out of state in the capacity of “expert witness.” He sat now in the witness chair, one leg crossed casually over the other. He was wearing a dark, conservatively cut suit, white starched shirt, and dark tie. His oxblood shell cordovans were shined to a high gloss.

Abramowitz walked him through his bona fides, which were solid. Then she got down to the job at hand.

“You have been the coroner during the time period that all these murders known as the Alley Slasher killings have taken place, is that true?” she led off.

“Yes.”

“Were autopsies done on all seven victims?”

“Yes, that’s SOP in any murder case. But at that time we hadn’t formed a nexus linking them up; those initial ones seemed like random killings, particularly since the victims’ lives exposed them to more than a normal share of violence. It wasn’t until the third victim turned up that we realized we had a serial killer on our hands.”

“And what brought about that realization?” she asked.

“The method of killing,” he stated unequivocally. “The types of wounds inflicted, the ways in which the victims had been assaulted. And the fact that they were all prostitutes showed a consistent pattern.”

“So at the time the third murder occurred you came to the conclusion that they were all the work of one man.”

“That is correct,” he stated. “The knife wounds in particular, and some of the ways in which the victims had been sexually abused, caused me to conclude that it was the same person who had done them all.”

“And that followed through for the rest of the killings?” she asked. “Up to and including the last one?”

“Yes. They were all done by the same man. I have no doubts about that.”