Blood Defense (8 page)

“Her dad’s dead. Got killed in a drunk-driving accident about three years ago.”

“Only three years ago? Then how come he wasn’t around when—”

“She was the star on
All of Us
?” I nodded. His eyes had been darting around the room, but now he looked directly at me. “Maybe because he was a fuckup, but he wasn’t a big enough jerk to think he could just waltz back into her life when she got famous.”

He looked into my eyes for a long beat. I was about to ask him if there was more to it than that when the deputy came over to us. “Time to roll it up. Next batch is coming in.”

I patted Dale’s arm. “I’ll come by tomorrow, after I’ve checked out the discovery. Be safe.”

He gave me a serious look. “You, too.”

He really meant it. That was a first, a prisoner worrying about me.

THIRTEEN

I
hurried out to catch
the press. Trevor’s head stuck up above the crowd. I’d give him a quote, but right now I needed cameras. I spotted Brittany and Edie near the front steps. They were doing stand-ups and had their backs to me. I slowly headed their way. Brittany’s cameraman pulled his head up from the lens and said something to her. She turned around and hurried toward me. Edie and a few others noticed and followed.

Brittany got to me first. “The DA gave you a pretty good chunk of discovery. Can you tell us what you know so far?”

I spoke straight into the camera. “I haven’t had the chance to get into it yet. But I can promise you, we will be working day and night to bring out the truth: that Dale Pearson is innocent.”

Trevor was right behind her. “Do you have any other suspects in mind?”

“We’re certainly looking into that burglar.” I didn’t want to get into any specifics until I saw what Zack had given me.

Edie jumped in. “But the police are saying they don’t believe it was a burglar.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time the police have made a mistake. They didn’t spend five minutes looking into the possibility that the burglar was the killer. In fact, they never even tried to find him. As usual, they jumped on the easiest target—the boyfriend—and ignored all the evidence that pointed to someone else. So since the police won’t do their job, we’ll have to do it for them.” I looked around at the crowd that’d gathered. “That’s all for now, folks.”

I let the cameras follow me as I got into the limo. It was a much classier exit than trudging up the hill to the cheapest parking lot. I hoped it sent the right message: successful lawyer = innocent client.

This time I had a different driver, an older, balding man with a round face and a Brooklyn accent. He pulled away right on cue, as I was rolling up my tinted window. “Hey, I saw you on TV. Actually, on this thing.” He held up his cell phone.

I looked at the image on his screen. “That was yesterday. At the Twin Towers jail.”

“So you’ll be coming to court a lot, then?”

I could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. “Yeah. And I love this, but I can’t afford it.”

“I think the boss might be able to work something out for you.”

I had a feeling the boss was very nearby. “Like?”

“Like how about we give you fifty percent off and you plug us on your website?”

“That’s a good deal, but I still can’t afford it, and my website’s only for legal services. But thanks, I appreciate it.”

He concentrated on navigating through the crowded streets until he got to the freeway. “Tell you what, you pass out my cards, I’ll drive you for free.”

“Seriously? For how long?” I could spare Beulah, save on gas . . . it was too good to be true.

“For the next month. But just for court. What do you say? Deal?”

“Deal.” He pulled a stack of cards out of the glove compartment and held them over his shoulder. I took them and smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Your boss really knows how to work it.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, he’s a pretty sharp guy. Besides, any friend of Alex’s is a friend of mine. He’s good people.”

“He sure is.” I looked at his cards. “Nice to meet you, Xander.”

“You too, Ms. Brinkman.”

“Samantha.”

“Samantha. You got it.”

The morning had given me only a glimpse of the shit storm that was heading my way. Freebies like this were the lonely pockets of sunshine. I took a few minutes to lean back and enjoy the scenery, then took out the discovery Zack had given me.

It was time to find out exactly what I’d gotten myself into.

When I walked into the office, Michelle was on the phone. She rolled her eyes as she spoke into her headset. “All I can do is give her the message; I can’t promise when she’ll get back to you.” As she ended the call, the phone rang again. “Brinkman and Associates.” The other line rang. Michelle put the first one on hold, answered the second one, then put it on hold, too. She blew her bangs off her forehead and looked up at me. “It’s been like this all morning. Ever since they saw you in court.”

“They who?”

“The press. And hopefully a few paying clients. Fingers crossed.”

I handed Michelle the discovery for scanning. “Study time. I’m changing into my sweats.” We had to get on top of the reports immediately, because we were about to get buried in them. The phone lines kept ringing as I headed into my office. Day one and it was already crazy. I changed into my sweats, then opened the door. The phone was still ringing nonstop. “Michelle? Let the service pick up, and get Alex.”

They plopped down in the chairs in front of my desk. Alex opened his iPad.

Michelle flipped to a clean page on her legal pad. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing it’s worse than we thought.”

I sighed. “According to the reports, the neighbors said Dale and Chloe fought a lot in the past few weeks. And a couple of witnesses in the building next door thought he was stalking her.”

Alex looked up and frowned. “Dale warned us about that, didn’t he?”

“Not the stalking part. But that’s not our biggest problem. They did a video of the crime scene—for our viewing pleasure.” Or rather, for the jury’s. It was a painfully effective tool, and from what I’d read in the crime-scene reports, this one in particular was going to be graphic. I popped the DVD into my computer and turned the monitor so we could all watch. “And I took a look at the autopsy report. I’ll tell you about it when we get to that part.”

I hit play.

It was a small apartment. The kitchen and dining areas were on the right, and the living room, which led to a tiny balcony, was straight ahead. A short hallway between the living room and kitchen led to a bathroom on the right and two bedrooms on the left.

The video zeroed in on a set of knives in a butcher block on the kitchen counter. One slot that looked about the size of a carving knife was empty. I pointed to it. “They think that’s where the killer got the murder weapon. The coroner says the perp used the same knife for both victims. The cops never found it.”

The living room was neat. No drawers pulled out, no couch cushions thrown around. The camera moved down the hall and into the first bedroom on the left. Chloe lay on the floor, faceup, eyes half-open, her body twisted to the right, knees bent and turned to the left. I paused the disc and studied the scene. She was dressed in jeans and a white long-sleeve T-shirt—which was now soaked in blood. One hand was stretched out to the side, and the other lay just below her stomach, as though it had been clutched at her chest and then fallen. She looked so small and crumpled—like a marionette whose strings had been cut mid-dance.

“Jeez,” Alex said. “That’s a lot of blood. How many times did he stab her?”

“Coroner counted four stab wounds. Two nonfatal, two very fatal strikes that went straight to the aorta.”

I hit play, and the camera pulled back to scan the room. All of the dresser drawers were open, and it looked like someone had gone through them in a hurry. Two pairs of jeans and a few camisoles were on the floor. The lamp on the dresser had fallen on its side, and three small silver-framed pictures lay on the floor next to a broken flower vase. The camera zoomed in on a hoop earring that’d come off Chloe’s ear and landed on the floor next to her head. “Looks like she fell against the dresser when she and Dale were fighting.”

“But why the ransacking? What was he looking for?” Michelle asked.

“I’ll be saying that’s a sign the burglar did this and he was looking for more jewelry.”

Michelle gave me a skeptical look. “And they’ll be saying Dale was trying to make it look that way. Awfully violent for a burglar.”

Alex pointed to the blood that’d run down Chloe’s arm. “And it looks like he stabbed her while she was on the floor.”

I countered. “So the burglar panicked. He’s high on . . . whatever. The girls come in, surprise him, he freaks out . . .” I looked from Alex to Michelle.

She shrugged. “I guess. But I don’t love it.”

Alex raised his eyebrows. He didn’t say anything, but his expression said he agreed with her.

I hit play again. The camera moved out of Chloe’s room, down the hall, and into Paige’s bedroom. The eerie quiet made it feel as though we were following in the murderer’s footsteps.

There was similar ransacking here. All the dresser drawers had been pulled out; a brassiere spilled over the edge of one drawer, and some T-shirts had been thrown to the floor. The drawer in Paige’s dressing table had been yanked out and lay upside down on the floor, and the closet door stood wide open. We didn’t see a body until the camera moved to the far side of the bed. Paige lay on the floor, facedown. She was in a white robe, and a towel partially covered her head. She’d probably had it wound around her hair, turban style, before the attack. According to the crime-scene and autopsy reports, she’d been freshly showered. Blood had seeped through the back of her robe, and there was a huge pool of blood under her head. A cell phone lay a few feet away.

Michelle blew out a breath. “Stabbed in the back? And what’s with all the blood under her head?”

“He cut her throat. Twice.”

Bad as it’d sounded in the reports, seeing it was a hundred times worse. The attack was gruesome—and the girls looked painfully young and defenseless.

Alex pointed to the cell phone. “Think she was trying to call the cops?”

I nodded. “Seems so.” I studied the rest of Paige’s room. “The only good news is that there’s a fair amount of ransacking here, too, so that might give our burglary theory more traction.”

“Anything missing?” Alex asked.

“According to the reports, no. But how would the cops know? It’s not like there was an empty TV stand. If the burglar took cash or some other small stuff like jewelry, the only way they’d know something was missing is if someone close to the girls told them. And from what I’ve seen so far, no one did.”

I hit play again. The camera zoomed in on blood impressions near the foot of Paige’s bed. It slowly followed a short, faint blood trail to her body. I paused the DVD. “According to the autopsy report, she fell near the foot of the bed first, then dragged herself to the side of the bed.”

It was a hideous mental image, the victim bleeding out and desperately trying to crawl away from her killer. The image of Dale’s face came back to me, his eyes warm and smiling. If he’d done this, he was one hell of a sociopath. In which case there might be—no, probably were—other victims. Jeezus. It was a whole new reason to get this case to court as fast as possible. Before any more bodies turned up.

“Where was Paige when the killer cut her throat?” Michelle asked.

“The coroner says she got cut once where she fell, but it was a superficial wound. Just enough to bleed out a little. The final, fatal cut to the throat was done at the side of the bed.”

Michelle shook her head. “Sorry, this feels a lot more personal than a freaked-out burglar.”

I sighed. It really did.

The next frame clicked over, and we were back in Chloe’s room. The camera zoomed in on a crime-scene tech who was holding a print brush and pointing to two black spots on her dresser. I hit pause. “Dale’s prints. Just the pinkie and ring fingers on the left hand. But since they’d been dating for two months, those prints don’t worry me.”

I clicked through the frames until the camera moved back into Paige’s room. “These prints do.” The camera focused on the same crime-scene tech, who was now pointing to black spots on top of Paige’s nightstand, which was just a foot away from her body. I let the disc play as the camera followed the crime-scene tech to the drawer of the dressing table that’d been thrown to the floor. He was pointing to three more black spots. “And especially these.”

I paused the disc again. “I know Dale might’ve gone through their apartment with the crime-scene tech back when he took the burglary call. But prints on that drawer and the nightstand probably mean he was in that room recently, because those areas get a fair amount of use.”

Michelle sighed. “And I’d think Paige would’ve cleaned that nightstand fairly regularly.”

Alex shrugged. “Even if she didn’t, that burglary happened two months ago. If Dale left his prints there when he was investigating the burglary, wouldn’t you think they’d have rubbed off by now? A nightstand, a dressing table—they get a lot of use.”

I nodded. “Though prints can hang around for a long time if the conditions are right.”

“Did they get any of his prints on that butcher block in the kitchen?” Michelle asked.

“No. But he wouldn’t have to touch it to pull out a knife. And a cop would know better.”

Alex frowned. “So wouldn’t a cop know better than to leave those prints in the bedroom? How come there’s no evidence the place was wiped down?”

I pointed to him. “Exactly. And that’s one of the points we’ll make. But keep an eye out for follow-ups from the crime-scene tech saying he went back for a second look and found wipe marks.”

Michelle scanned her notes. “What about DNA?”

“They’ve got Dale’s skin under Chloe’s nails, his sweat on her arm, and a trace of his blood on her right index finger. That all fits with them having a fight.”

“Any on Paige?”

“No. Which I’d call good news, except she got stabbed from behind. There was no sign of a struggle, no bruising or scratching on her body. The coroner’s theory is that she was stabbed in the back first, then stabbed in the throat after she fell. So there wasn’t much contact. And Dale’s hair is short. He wouldn’t shed much.”

Michelle nodded. “Makes sense. Paige was just a witness who had to be killed. Wrong place, wrong time. Not a girlfriend who’d been driving him crazy. He’d have known to be careful.”

Alex rubbed his neck. “So we can use the ransacking to say the burglar did it, and if there’s no evidence anyone tried to wipe the place down, we can use that to say the killer couldn’t be a cop. Any other good news?”

“We have the usual stuff that doesn’t fit.” Every crime scene has it. The cops pick up everything in sight, so there are always pieces of evidence that don’t match up to anything—or anyone. “They got some stray hairs on Paige’s robe that don’t look like hers or Dale’s. But there were no roots, so there’s no DNA. Can’t even tell what gender the hairs are. And it’s a terry-cloth robe, so hairs would stick to it for some time. They could belong to anyone—the cleaning lady, a friend who borrowed the robe, someone who used the dryer in the apartment building before she did.”