A Killing in the Valley (48 page)

“Okay,” the girl answered.

“I only have a few questions,” he told the girl, giving her a friendly smile to put her at ease. “I know how you can get nervous sitting up there, especially if you never have before.”

“No kidding,” the girl answered with a shy smile of her own, as if to say,
at least somebody knows what this feels like.

“When Detective Rebeck first interviewed you, did she ask you if you could identify the man who was with Maria?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she recalled.

“And did you tell her you couldn’t?”

The girl nodded affirmatively. “Uh huh.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“Because I wasn’t paying as much attention to him as I was to her.”

“Because of her history of theft in the store.”

“You got it,” the girl answered sprightly.

“Before or after Steven McCoy was arrested, did anyone in law enforcement show you a picture of him and ask if you could identify him as the man who had been in the store with the man they’d arrested.”

“Yes, after,” the girl said. “The lady cop came in with a picture and asked me if it was the man who was with Maria.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I didn’t know. It kind of looked like him, but I wasn’t going to swear to it.”

“And you still wouldn’t?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

“Did the police ever ask you to come down to the jail and look at a lineup of possible suspects?”

“No. I was never asked to do anything like that.”

“So to this day, you couldn’t swear that Steven McCoy was the man who bought Maria Estrada the earrings.”

She stared at Steven. He gave her a blank stare. “No,” she said steadfastly. She looked at the prosecution table for an instant, then turned back to Luke. “No matter how hard they wanted me to.”

Ione the shopgirl had at least tried to come in with what she thought was the proper attire for a murder trial. Katrina, the girl who had seen Maria get into the SUV with a man who resembled Steven McCoy, didn’t care about protocol. In the fall, when she had met with Rebeck and Watson, she’d been a typical Jennifer Aniston wannabe. Now she was in full Goth attire and makeup. Black-on-black clothes, featuring lace-up-to-the-knees boots. Black lipstick, black mascara, black and red eye shadow, black eyeliner. Each ear had at least half a dozen piercings, along with her nose (and God knows where else, Kate thought, looking at the girl from her seat behind the defense table). With the darkness around her eyes and mouth, contrasted with the white heat she’d applied to the rest of her face, and her punk-spiked hair, she looked tike a raccoon on a drug cocktail. She was, however, alert and coherent in her remembrance of what she had seen, as Elise questioned her about it.

When Elise sat down, Luke took over. He had a sheaf of eight-by-ten glossies in his hand, which he gave to the bailiff to be marked for exhibit. He handed a set to the judge, and put another down on the defense table.

Alex and Elise looked at them for a moment. “What are these?” Alex asked, looking at Judge Martindale, who was leafing through his own set. The judge gave Luke a questioning look.

“They’re for the purpose of trying to make an identification,” Luke said, somewhat cryptically.

Both Martindale and Alex could see where this was going. “In my chambers,” Martindale said, standing up. “Ten-minute recess.”

“What the fuck is this?” Alex exploded.

“Exhibits,” Luke answered calmly, leaning against the side of the judge’s desk. He suppressed the urge to smile.

“Lame look-alikes of your client? Except there aren’t any front shots, only sides and backs,” he complained. Elise, standing so close to him they were touching at the shoulders, had a scowl plastered on her face. “What kind of game are you running with this, Luke?” Alex asked aggressively. “What is this, judge?” he fumed.

Judge Martindale was the senior judge of the Santa Barbara Superior Court. He had been on the bench for over twenty years. He had known Luke when Luke had the job Alex occupied now, so he was inclined to give Luke more rope than he gave most other lawyers, since Luke usually delivered. Still, he expected a sound answer.

“Some of the most important pieces of this case hinge on identification, your honor,” Luke responded. “This is going to be the second witness who will testify that she saw Maria Estrada with a man who looked like Steven McCoy. I don’t know how credible this girl is. So I want to test it.”

“What do you mean, how credible?” Elise asked. She looked at Alex—what was this all about?

“Listen and learn,” Luke threw back at them. “Give me a little space, judge,” he implored. “If my line isn’t working, you can cut me off, no arguments.”

Martindale thought it over for a moment. He looked at the pictures again. “I’m going to let you introduce this,” he told Luke, to Alex and Elise’s disgust. “But I’d better see a clear path, or I will stop it in its tracks.”

“Katrina, how are you?” Luke asked the witness from the podium.

“Okay,” she answered. “How about you?”

There were a few titters from the gallery. Luke smiled. “Doing good,” he told her. “Thanks for asking.” He squared the photographs on the stand. “Do you go to the high school?” he asked. “Santa Barbara High?”

“Uh huh,” she confirmed. A feral tongue darted out to lick the dark lips. Luke caught a glimpse of a tongue stud.

“Senior?” he asked. “Close to graduating?”

“Glory be, yes!” she sang out.

“Going to college in the fall?”

She nodded. “Design school, in L.A. I’m into fashion.”

“So I see,” Luke answered dryly. He looked at a typed page of notes. “You’ve been at the high school for four years, since ninth grade?”

“Uh huh.”

“So you were a classmate of Maria Estrada’s for the whole time she was there.”

The girl’s face darkened. “Yeah, I was, from way back. Before high school. Junior high, too.”

Luke glanced at his notes again. “Were you friends?”

She snorted. “Hardly.”

“Why was that? Because she was Latina, and you aren’t?”

Katrina shook her head heatedly. “No way! I got plenty of friends who’re Mexican. I ain’t prejudiced, like some of the dorks from Montecito who don’t know any Mexicans at all, except for their maids and gardeners. That’s bogus, judging people by where they come from, or what they look like,” she said righteously.

“Commendable of you,” Luke congratulated her. “So what was it about Maria you didn’t like?”

The girl fidgeted in the chair. “Lots of stuff.”

“Would poaching other girl’s boyfriends be one of them?”

She drew back, scrunching down in the chair. “What do you mean?”

He looked at his notes, not that he needed them. “Did you date a boy named Eli Herrera last year? Go steady with him for three or four months?”

Alex Gordon got up. “Your honor, what’s the point of this?” He looked at Elise, who was as baffled as he was.

“You’ll see in a minute,” Luke answered quickly, not waiting for the judge to answer. “Did you?” he pressed Katrina.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “So what?”

“He dumped you for Maria Estrada, didn’t he?”

She shot daggers at him with her dark-ringed eyes. “We were breaking up anyway.”

“Didn’t you tell your friends that you were going to get her?”

She was clearly uncomfortable now. “Maybe I did. People say shit like that all the time. It don’t mean nothing.”

Martindale’s gavel came down. “There will be no profanity in this courtroom,” he admonished Katrina. “Do you understand?” he asked harshly.

She nodded meekly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

Luke pressed on. “After Maria’s death became known, didn’t you say to a friend…” he looked at Martindale. “Excuse me, your honor. I know you don’t like profanity in your courtroom, but I have to get this quote exact.”

“Go ahead,” Martindale allowed him.

“Didn’t you say, ‘The cunt deserved it’?”

Katrina was slumping lower and lower in her chair. “I didn’t really mean it. I didn’t want her to get killed,” she whimpered.

Luke paused. “I’m sure you didn’t. It was an expression. Because your feelings had been hurt.”

She grasped the straw. “Yes.”

“But until then, you were angry at her. You wanted to get back at her. You wanted her to look like she was…how shall I put it? Loose. A whore, I believe you said about her.”

“She was one!” the girl answered darkly.

“If people found out she had just picked up some guy at random and gone off with him, that would make what you said true, wouldn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

Alex got up again. “This is pointless,” he protested. “I move this entire testimony be stricken, and the jury instructed to ignore it.” He turned to Luke. “Give it up. This isn’t a fishing expedition.”

“I’m getting to my point,” Luke insisted. He looked earnestly at Martindale.

“Make it now, or move on,” Martindale admonished him.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do, your honor.” Luke picked up the photographs and walked them over to Katrina. A court aide carried a cork-backed easel to the witness area and set it up in front of Katrina, while also making it easily visible to the jurors.

“You’re sure it was Maria Estrada you saw that day at the mall,” he began.

“Absolutely,” Katrina responded firmly.

“You were watching her closely, weren’t you. To see what she was up to.”

“You bet I was.”

“So you would have had a good look at the man she was with, since you were tracking her. You stalked her all the way from the mall out to Chapala Street, didn’t you?”

Katrina was clearly discomfited by Luke’s use of the term
stalked,
because that was precisely what she’d been doing, and now he had publicly busted her.

“Yes,” she answered resentfully.

“You watched her walk up the street with this man, until they got to a car, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Until they got in the car—together—and drove away.”

“Yes! Okay?” she blurted out. “I spied on them the whole time!”

Luke turned away from her for a moment and thumbtacked the pictures onto the easel. They were pictures of young men, taken from behind. All had longish dark-blond hair. Luke pushed the easel closer to Katrina.

“Take a look at these,” he instructed her. “Look at them carefully.”

She leaned forward, looking at the pictures. Above her, Judge Martindale looked down on them as well. Luke positioned himself next to the easel.

“Can you pick out which of these men was the one with Maria that day?” he asked.

“Objection!” Alex called out. “Your honor, this is a fishing…”

Martindale cut him off. “Overruled,” he said curtly. He peered down at Katrina from above. “Answer the question, if you can,” he directed her.

She squinted hard at the photographs. “I think…maybe…” She slumped back. “I can’t tell. It’s the back of their heads.”

“Because you never saw the man’s face, did you?” Luke pushed her. “This angle, from the back, is all you saw, isn’t that true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” she answered in a soft, barely audible voice.

“You followed Maria Estrada clear across the mall, out of the mall, and watched her go down the street and get into a car, but you never saw the man’s face?” he asked, clearly not believing her. “How is that possible?”

“It just is,” she answered stubbornly. “He never turned around.”

“But she did? Enough, certainly, that you could see her, and know for sure that it was her you were watching? For sure?” he repeated.

“Yes, for sure,” she answered doggedly. “I wasn’t paying him any attention,” she said in a rising tone. “I didn’t care about him. I wanted to see what that bitch was up to, screw whoever guy she was with!”

SLAM! The explosion of Martindale’s gavel was like a rifle shot. “Do not use words like that in this courtroom,” he warned her again. “It isn’t acceptable. Do you understand.”

“Yes, I understand. Jesus,” she muttered under her breath.

“How far did you follow them, once you spotted Maria?” he asked.

Sullenly: “I don’t know.”

“From near Elaine’s, the earring store?”

“Near there, yeah.”

“Through the mall, out the mall to the street, and then to the car they got into.”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” she answered.

“How far was that?” he asked.

She shook her head. “How should I know? Who cares?”

“I do,” he answered. “Because it’s a pretty good distance. I went down there the other day and paced it off myself.” He turned to Judge Martindale. “From outside Elaine’s to the entrance to Chapala Street is over a hundred yards. A darn long distance to be following someone and never once see his face.” He turned back to Katrina. “You saw Maria with a man, who you can’t identify, except for the color of his hair and his general height, because…” he dropped his voice dramatically. “…
He never once looked around.
But you followed them all the way through the mall, out to the street, and watched them get into his car, which you described in some detail. The only thing you didn’t get was the license number and the make of the car. But you knew the color, and the style.” He stopped for brief moment. “That’s what you’re telling this court? Under oath? You’ve sworn that is the truth?”

“It is!” she insisted.

Luke turned away from her to face the jury. “You saw Maria Estrada, who you had a real problem with.” His eyes were on the jurors, and theirs were on him. “You followed her all the way through the mall to the street, where she got into a car with a man. You watched them drive off. You were able to see what kind of car it was.
But you couldn’t begin to describe the man, except that he had blond hair
,” he ranted. “A detail, I’ll bet, people had been talking about at school, since Steven McCoy, who has blond hair, had already been arrested.”

“No!” she cried out. “That’s not true.”

“It wouldn’t have been hard to find out what kind of car he was driving, either,” Luke pressed. “So it would have been easy for you, long after the body was discovered and a man was arrested, to tailor your story to fit some angry agenda of yours, wouldn’t it! You even told your friends, after she was killed that she deserved it, didn’t you? You wanted to get back at Maria in the worst way. But since she had been killed you couldn’t get it directly, you could only get it by smearing her memory.” He turned to face her. “Which is what you did, isn’t it, Katrina?”