Murder One (38 page)

“But you would have this jury believe that someone who had intricately planned a murder—who had planned it so that they knew they were going to swim to the property with the forethought that they had to have some means of keeping dry the weapon they intended to use to kill their victim—didn’t also have the foresight to think about how to keep their shoes dry?”

Wright shrugged. “I can only testify about the physical evidence.”

“Tell me, Detective, when you and Detective Rowe walked the property and discussed the evidence, was it then that you decided to just throw common sense out the window?”

Cerrabone was up. “Objection, Your Honor, it misstates the testimony, and it’s argumentative.”

Sloane didn’t wait for a ruling. “You’re darn right it’s argumentative.”

“Hang on,” Underwood said. “The objection is overruled. Mr. Sloane, you’ll direct your comments to me. Now, did you want Detective Wright to answer your last question?”

Sloane looked at Wright. “I think we all do.”

“I followed the evidence,” she said.

“Even if the evidence led to illogical conclusions?”

“I followed the evidence,” she repeated.

“The shoe prints on the patio, as you have described them, were aligned so that the right foot was positioned about sixteen inches in front of the left foot, was it not?”

“Yes, it was.”

“And if that person was the shooter, as you indicate, would the position of the feet”—Sloane demonstrated—“be indicative of someone shooting left-handed?”

“I can’t speculate.”

“I’m just asking you to follow the evidence, Detective. Wouldn’t the physical evidence dictate that the shooter was more likely than not left-handed?”

“One could draw that conclusion,” she said, “but I can’t say with certainty.”

T
HE
P
ARAGON
P
IONEER
S
QUARE
S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

She saw him enter, though she tried to hide it. Her eyes shifted to the crowd, but her voice betrayed her, a tiny hesitation that caused the next note to be flat. No one else in the club seemed to notice or care. The young men and a few of the women sitting at the mismatched tables in the standing-room-only crowd gazed up at her with unbridled lust. She had that intangible quality—that charisma, an aura. She had “it.”

He waited at the back until she finished her set. The crowd gave him only brief consideration, another testament to her appeal. He had expected the music to be deafening, especially in the small confines, but her voice was not the hard-edged screeching he had anticipated. Melodic and sultry, it was deeper than her normal speaking voice.

Finished, she gave a furtive glance to the doorway to the right of the bar leading to the alley in back—he’d walked the perimeter after his prior visit. Then, resigned, she stepped from the platform, walking among her admirers in tight-fitting black jeans and a blood-red camisole to match the spiked pumps. The other members of the band looked like stagehands at a play, dressed in black clothing—including long black coats—a sharp contrast to their pale white makeup. Everyone still trying to cash in on the vampire craze, he guessed.

Eyes watched as she approached with a sheepish grin. “You’re a better detective than you let on.”

“And you’re a better singer.”

“I didn’t let on I was a singer.”

He put his finger up near his nose.

She smiled at the irony and rolled her eyes. “The tattoo?”

Jenkins touched the tip of his nose. The tattoo—god’s nails, written in Gothic script across her shoulder—had also been on the flyers posted on the bar walls announcing the band and its lead singer, Anastasia. The same script adorned the front of a set of drums in the background of a Facebook picture depicting Joshua Blume playing his guitar.

“So, Claire,” Jenkins said, the use of her given name a subtle hint that he had done his homework and wasn’t the gullible ox she thought him to be, “how long have you known Joshua?”

She looked at her admirers at the tables, who continued watching her. “Do you smoke?”

“Bad for your health,” he said, “and your voice.” But he gestured to the door leading to the alley.

Outside, she bummed a cigarette and a light from a young man and Jenkins followed her down the alley. It smelled of clove cigarettes and marijuana. Others acknowledged her, telling her she sounded great, that they liked the new song. They gave Jenkins sidelong glances. She stood with one arm draped across her midsection, the other arm perpendicular, a trail of smoke wafting up from the cigarette between her fingers.

“Are you cold?” Jenkins said, indicating a willingness to give her his jacket.

She smiled. “Smart and a gentleman. Wow. We don’t get that in here too much. That ring on your finger wouldn’t be just a prop, would it?”

“If it is, it comes with a wife and a son.”

She blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Bummer.” Then she said, “He’s played with us for about six months.”

“Why’d you lie?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “To see if I could get away with it.”

He shook his head to let her know that she hadn’t and still wasn’t.

“He’s what, sixteen?” she said. “That was a problem. He’s not supposed to be in there. But he can play. I mean, he can
really
play—the best guitar player I’ve ever heard. Believe it or not, some people used to come just to hear him.”

“Then he must be really good,” Jenkins said, and she smiled at the compliment.

“But his father’s a bit of a fuck. I figured he sent you to scare us again; he sent his attorney once, another fuck . . . not that you are. I mean, he said he’d sue us because Joshua is underage.”

“What did Joshua say when you called him?” Jenkins guessed they had spoken after his visit.

She drew on the cigarette, causing the end to flare red, then blew another stream of blue-gray smoke skyward. “He said I shouldn’t talk to you. He said his father told him not to. He said his father had him locked down nights, that he’d put in a security system so Joshua couldn’t sneak out.” Something about it amused her, and she glanced at him with the flirtatious eyes that seemed to captivate every person she met. Then she lost the smile. “The asshole busted his guitar, too.”

“But that’s not all Joshua told you, was it?”

She took another drag on the cigarette, dropped what remained on the damp pavement, and crushed the butt with the ball of her pump. She curled her hair behind her ear—which, he was surprised to find, had just one piercing—then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she grinned and touched the tip of her nose.

TWENTY - SIX

T
UESDAY,
D
ECEMBER
6, 2011
K
ING
C
OUNTY
C
OURTHOUSE
S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

C
errabone began the following day with Blume. The young man who entered the courtroom only faintly resembled the Joshua pictured on the Facebook page of the underage lead guitarist for the band God’s Nails. It was not a Madison Avenue business cut, but Joshua Blume no longer hid from the world behind a clump of brown hair. And while they hadn’t adorned him in a suit and tie—Cerrabone no doubt cautioning against making him too much of a choirboy—he did wear a pressed polo shirt and gray slacks, more color than in all of his Facebook pictures combined.

Joshua looked apprehensive, which would give what he had to say even greater credibility with the jurors. His mother and father sat in the front row behind the counsel table, not far from Detective Rowe. The jury noticed their presence and certainly had determined their roles in this production. Sloane would have to tread all the more carefully. No one liked to see a grown man picking on a kid, especially not with his parents watching.

Cerrabone walked Joshua through the preliminaries, where he lived, where he went to school, and where he had been the night in question. The young man had a tendency to mumble, a universal condition for nearly every sixteen-year-old boy Sloane knew, Jake included. Cerrabone reminded Blume several times to keep his voice up and at one point moved the microphone closer to compensate for his soft-spokenness. It caused several of the jurors to lean toward Blume, a few of the women with placid smiles—mothers who,
Sloane knew from voir dire, had children about the same age. The kid’s nerves lent credibility; he did not want to be there.

Cerrabone didn’t hold back, clearly deciding it was prudent to take the wind out of Sloane’s cross-examination and ask Joshua how he got away with being in a club.

Joshua admitted he had a fake ID. “I had one,” he said. “I mean, until my dad took it away.”

That brought a few more smiles and approving nods from several jurors. Richard Blume appeared to sit a little taller in the pew.

“What were you doing in that nightclub?” Cerrabone asked.

“I play in a band. I play guitar,” Blume said.

“And were you playing in that nightclub on Tuesday night, September sixth?”

“Yeah,” Blume said. He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“What time was your performance?”

“We had the late set that night, so it was eleven to one.”

“Eleven at night until one in the morning?” Cerrabone asked.

“Yeah. Normally, bands only get to play one set, but we get two because people like us . . . I mean they did.”

“And what time did you leave the club?”

“Not until maybe two-forty-five, about then.”

“What did you do from one o’clock in the morning until you left?”

“We listened to this other band, and then we talked about band stuff. We were trying to raise enough money to record an album. There’s a recording studio in Belltown . . . if we got the money.”

“Did you drink any alcoholic beverages while you listened to the other band?”

Blume nodded. “I had a couple of beers.”

“How many is a couple?”

“Two or three. I don’t remember, exactly.”

“You don’t remember? Could it have been more than three?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure it was two. I’m not much of a drinker.”

“Did you drink anything else?”

“No.”

“Did you ingest any other drug of any kind?”

“No.”

“And did you drive home?”

Blume related that another member of the band who lived on the east side with his parents had driven him home. Jenkins had confirmed all of this.

“And did he drop you off in your driveway?”

“No, he dropped me down the street; there’s an easement that leads to my backyard.”

Cerrabone moved the easel into place and displayed the aerial photograph for the jurors. “Can you point out the easement on the photograph?”

Blume did, and Cerrabone marked it with a red dot. “And why did you have your friend drop you there?”

“’Cause I wasn’t supposed to be out,” Blume said. “The path leads to my backyard, and I can sneak into my room.” He had a sudden look of alarm, and his eyes flickered to the front row. “But not anymore.”

Cerrabone established that Blume had been dropped off at about three-thirty in the morning. “And on the morning of Wednesday, September seventh, did you walk immediately down the easement to your room?” Cerrabone asked, getting to it.

“Not right away.”

“Why not?”

“I heard something, so I hid in the bushes.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard someone running, footsteps. And then I saw someone coming up the path across the street.”

“Let’s mark that on the photograph.”

Blume did so with a blue line so it was clear to the jurors that the path led to the water. Getting back into the witness chair, he said, “It’s a public easement. It’s not like it’s anybody’s backyard.”

“What did you see this person do?”

“She stopped at the top of the path, and she looked around, like maybe she heard something. Maybe the car. I don’t know. Then she walked over to the bushes and pulled out a bike that was in there and got on it, and rode off.”

“Did she ride off right away?”

“Not right away. She put on a helmet.”

“And during this period of time before the person rode off, as you watched her run up the path, pull out the bike, and then slip on a helmet, did you get a good look at this person?”

“Pretty good,” Blume said.

“Just pretty good?”

“That means good, you know.”

“Wasn’t it dark?”

“There’s a street lamp not that far away. So there was some light, not great, but good enough that I could see her.”

Cerrabone established the street lamp on the aerial photo. “Is the person you saw here in this courtroom?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Can you point to the person you saw?”

“I saw her.” Blume pointed as Cerrabone had no doubt instructed him. But the young man could not keep Barclay’s gaze. After a quick glance, he lowered his hand and retreated to the safety of Cerrabone.

In preparing for his cross-examinations, Sloane had to make several decisions but none more important than how he would handle Blume. Blume was the most damaging witness, and the jury would expect Sloane to challenge the young man’s testimony. It would be an uphill battle. They would have a hard time believing that a sixteen-year-old kid, especially one with Joshua’s demeanor, would lie about something so important; most sixteen-year-old boys didn’t even want to get out of bed, let alone get involved in a murder case. There had seemed no winning, until Jenkins had reported back on his conversation with Anastasia the night before.

Now it was up to Sloane.

“You must be a very good guitar player, Joshua,” Sloane said as he approached.

Blume looked a bit perplexed. “I’m okay.”

“Sixteen years old, playing in a group in which the average age of the other band members is twenty-two, you must be better than okay?”

“I’m pretty good.” He tried to hide a smile.

“Is that what you’d like to do, play guitar in a band?”

“I guess so. I don’t know.”

“Well, it must be pretty important to you.”

“I guess so.”

“How many times had you sneaked out before that night when you say you saw Barclay?”