At the Scene of the Crime (21 page)

“You know how it is, Miles. The news media’ll be bitching because of how we allocate our people, calling us incompetent, making life hell around here top to bottom to sideways.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s suddenly twice as much pressure on us to solve this murder. Pressure on me, pressure on thee.”

“Downhill,” Miles said.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. We’ll keep you informed, Wayne.” Miles broke the connection.

“What was that all about?” Catt asked.

“Pressure,” Miles said.

“Pass the artificial sweetener,” Catt said.

 

Catt was right about the unreliability of witnesses. Six people in the park said they were reasonably sure they’d seen Roger Kerrington on the joggers’ path the morning Mitt was killed. The trouble was that seventeen joggers or walkers would testify they hadn’t seen him that morning. And of course, no one had seen anything relating to Mitt being killed except for the woman who’d noticed the body.

Miles and Catt did run a Department of Motor Vehicles check on Kerrington. A black Ford Explorer SUV was registered to him.

Late that afternoon, a messenger arrived at Miles and Catt’s office with a package. Miles smiled at Catt as he signed for it.

“Blown up sequential photos from that traffic camcorder,” he explained, tearing open the package. “We can at least get a glimpse of every car coming or going at Speeders Park, from an hour before the murder to an hour after Mitt’s body was discovered.”

“That could be a lot of vehicles,” Catt said.

It turned out to be forty-seven. The relatively low number was due to the early hour of the photos, which were time-lapse stills, marked with the precise time and date, taken from the camcorder tape. Trouble was, thirty of the vehicles were SUVs. Fourteen of them could be eliminated because they were too light a color to be Kerrington’s black vehicle. The others were indistinctly shaded in the grainy black-and-white images. They might have been red, blue, green, or black. And because of distance and poor imagery, any number of them might have been Ford Explorers.

“Narrowed down to sixteen,” Miles said, sitting back exhausted from examining the stills with a magnifying glass. “Not enough to implicate Kerrington and prove his wife is lying about him being home in bed.”

“It doesn’t prove his SUV wasn’t in the park’s lot that morning,” Catt pointed out.

“For all your skepticism,” Miles said, “you talk like an optimist.” He pulled his Rolodex across the desk and thumbed through the index cards for a number. He started to peck with a finger on his desk phone, but halfway through the number he hung up the receiver and used his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” Catt asked.

“Worldwide Security,” Miles said.

Catt was surprised. Worldwide was one of the largest private security firms in the world, providing every kind of protection for VIPs and their families, from corporate CEOs to potentates of major nations. “You know somebody there?”

“The president, Willis Burr. We grew up in the same neighborhood, dated the same girls, and made some of the same mistakes.”

“You think Worldwide can enhance those images so we can read a plate number?”

“I doubt that,” Miles said, “but they might have some photos of their own. Worldwide has its own satellite. Three of them, in fact. And there’s a good chance one of them was in range of this city when the murder took place.”

Catt wasn’t surprised when Miles didn’t get through to Burr. He didn’t get through even to an assistant. He left a message and hung up, noticing the expression on Catt’s face.

“Not to worry,” he said.

“Skepticism and worry,” Catt said. “Not the same thing.”

 

When Catt went into the office the next morning, her skepticism disappeared at the sight of Miles’s extra-wide amiable grin. “Your guy came through,” she said.

He nodded. “A messenger will deliver a DVD within the hour. There’ll be a slight angle, but a Worldwide satellite passed overhead just east of the area at the time of Mitt’s murder.”

“Your old pal Willis Burr knows what friends are for.”

“Don’t think I don’t owe him for this,” Miles said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I know what friends are for, too.”

When they viewed the satellite DVD an hour later, they were disappointed to find that, while the vehicles entering and leaving Speeders Park were in sharper focus than on the traffic cam photos, their license plates still couldn’t be read. However, it was possible to identify the make and comparative sizes of some of the SUVs and eliminate eight more. That meant six of them might be Kerrington’s Ford Explorer.

But there was something else on the DVD, something that made it possible to determine the precise time of the murder. The satellite imagery was marked by a date-and-time bug in the lower right corner, ongoing in hundredths of seconds. The video stream enabled them to see Mitt’s murder. Well, almost. The zoomed-in aerial view of the park showed a tiny figure on the jogging trail standing motionless minutes before another, bulkier figure arrived, apparently at jog pace. Mitt. The bulkier figure slowed, moved close to the other figure. Then both disappeared into the darker area of the woods. Half a minute later, one of the figures emerged and began moving at a moderately fast pace along the jogging path, away from the scene. There was no doubt that Miles and Catt had just witnessed the
murder of Mitt Adams.

“After killing Mitt, the murderer jogged away along the trail,” Catt said. “Somebody must have seen him.”

“We do have witnesses who’ll say Kerrington was jogging in the park that morning,” Miles pointed out.

“And a ton more witnesses who say they never saw him there.”

Miles and Catt viewed the video stream again, but from a wider angle. There were other joggers and walkers on the winding path, but none near the point of the murder at the time it happened. And from satellite distance, amazing as the enlarged imagery was, it was impossible to know one small dark moving figure from another. As far as anyone could judge from the DVD, the figure emerging from the woods might be Mitt. Only it wasn’t Mitt, because he was dead on the ground.

“The fact is,” Catt said, “we’ve still only got a lot of circumstantial evidence, and Kerrington’s got a solid enough alibi to walk if there’s a trial. We still don’t have enough to obtain a search warrant for his house. And if we did have a warrant, we might not find anything incriminating unless there are blood stains on Kerrington’s shoes, or maybe the carpet of his car or house.” She stared out the window at a breeze barely moving the trees. “All that circumstance might be enough to get an indictment, but what we really need is something to sell a jury. Otherwise, the defense and prosecution will simply be playing dueling witnesses and paid experts, and you might have noticed our side’s outnumbered.”

“We have enough for a conviction,” Miles said, leaning back in his desk chair almost far enough to tip.

“You’ve figured a way to get Mrs. Kerrington to tell the truth?” Catt asked.

“No,” Miles said, “but I might know how we can nullify the defense’s witnesses and place Kerrington in the park at the time of the murder.”

Halfway through the trial, it didn’t look good for the prosecution. Bo Hastings, the DA who led the prosecution team, was distraught. He was a small man with a barrel chest and a facial resemblance to Napoleon. The resemblance was made stronger by the black helmet of hair he wore Napoleon style. Catt knew it was a wig and figured she probably shared that knowledge with everyone else.

“The fact that we found no blood on the shoes or in Kerrington’s SUV or house has just about killed us,” Hastings told Miles, Catt, and Loman, in his office in the Hall of Justice.

Catt sat up straighter, arching her back. “There’s still a—”

“I know,” Hastings said, “mountain of evidence. Take away the wife’s testimony that Kerrington didn’t leave her sight around the time of Mitt’s murder, and that mountain would bury Kerrington. But the evidence is circumstantial. The traffic camera’s got an SUV like his entering and leaving the park around the time of the murder. The satellite photos show somebody who could be Kerrington accosting somebody who could be Mitt on the jogging path, going with him into the woods, then emerging and driving away in an SUV that might be the same SUV we saw entering and leaving the park at a time that suits our case, while we ignore all the other SUVs.”

“Have we tried to get satellite shots of an SUV leaving and returning to Kerrington’s house that morning?” Catt asked.

“That was going to be our ace in the hole,” Hastings said. “But timing and cloud cover worked for Kerrington. No such shots were taken that we could zoom in on.” Hastings made a tent with his fingers and looked as depressed as if Josephine had left him. “And tomorrow the defense is going to put on an almost endless parade of witnesses who jog or walk every morning in the park and will swear they don’t recall seeing Kerrington there.” He sighed. “We have only three who say they saw him, and three more who think they might have. Who you gonna believe if you’re a juror?”

They all knew the answer.

“Any ideas?” Loman asked.

“I’d like to see some satellite shots of the jogging trail,” Miles said, “to make sure of something I noticed.”

“What part of the trail?” Hastings asked.

“Any part.”

Everyone in the room stared at him.

“I think,” Miles said, “I can give you the something that’ll sell the jury.”

 

The next morning in court was the low point for the prosecution. One credible witness after another testified that he or she hadn’t seen Kerrington in the park the morning of Mitt’s death, lending more and more validity to Kerrington’s alibi. In a largely circumstantial case, the barrage of defense testimony should prove fatal to the prosecution.

It didn’t help that Hastings chose to ask the witnesses only the same, single question in his cross-examinations.

After a two-hour recess for lunch, it was the prosecution’s time for rebuttal.

Hastings began by making a show of strutting before the jury and glancing at his watch. Miles noticed that he’d changed watches during the recess, from his gold Rolex to what looked like a bargain oversized watch with an obviously imitation leather band.

“The prosecution has put witness after witness on the stand,” Hastings said, “regular joggers or walkers in Speeders Park, who testified they did not see the defendant in the park during the time frame of Mitt Adams’s murder.” Hastings tapped his watch’s plastic face several times sharply with a fingernail. “I believe them all.”

There was a notable reaction among the jurors. Not exactly a gasp, but a simultaneous slight shifting of weight. As if maybe the assumed outcome of the trial was shifting.

“The reason for their testimony is here,” Hastings proclaimed. He held up his arm to show them his wristwatch, face out.

“As you know, the jogging trail in Speeders Park circles a large lake.
Anyone wanting to travel in either direction along that path makes a choice before they set out—whether to go clockwise or counterclockwise. In this country we do almost everything physical and requiring circular motion counterclockwise. Racehorses run counterclockwise. Same way with race cars or almost anything else that races. Dancers circle the floor counterclockwise. Track and field runners run along the track counterclockwise. Baseball players circle the bases counterclockwise. And almost every morning former big league catcher Mitt Adams jogged counterclockwise along the park’s path. That was natural for him. First to second to third to home. Only that morning Mitt never reached home.”

Hastings had the jurors leaning slightly forward now. He seemed to become possessed by a kind of fierce joy. This was his game and he was on top of it.

“Anyone else moving that same direction almost certainly wouldn’t have seen Mitt unless they were in sight of each other when they began. Few of the counterclockwise people see each other during their morning exercise.” Hasting stopped pacing and faced the jury with his arms crossed. “But they see virtually every jogger or walker moving clockwise on the path, because they will pass each other.”

Hastings paused. He was good at pauses.

“Every one of the defense witnesses who testified they did not see the defendant in the park at the time of Mitt’s murder ran or walked counterclockwise along the trail—the same direction as the defendant. Of course they’re telling the truth. Of course they never saw him.”

Another dramatic pause. Even better than the first. The earth seemed to hesitate in its rotation.

“The witnesses we the prosecution will call, who will testify that they either saw or thought they saw Roger Kerrington in the park, at the time, in the vicinity, on the morning of Mitt Adams’s murder, will also testify that they traveled clockwise along the trail. They didn’t see Kerrington as a distant figure, or see him only from the back if at all. They saw him face to face as they passed each other. One such witness who saw Roger Kerrington in
the park that morning is worth a hundred who swear they were there but didn’t see him, if that one witness jogged or walked clockwise.” Hastings took a deep breath and tented his fingers. “I will give you six.”

And he did. He even showed them satellite images of a figure in what looked like a white hat, one of the witnesses, passing a figure that might well have been Roger Kerrington on the path near where Mitt’s body was found, and at the approximate time of the murder.

The jury was out less than an hour before returning a guilty verdict.

In exchange for not being charged with perjury, Belinda Kerrington revised her testimony and stated that Kerrington had left the house early the morning of the murder, claiming he had errands to run. He’d confided to her later that he’d driven to the park and jogged as usual until he found the right spot, then slipped into the woods and waited for Mitt. She showed police where stolen diamonds, including the one in Mitt’s ring, and a folding knife with a long thin blade were buried in the flower bed in the backyard. She underwent, and passed, a polygraph examination. It was unlikely that Roger Kerrington would have the slightest grounds for appeal.