Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan), page 12
Patsy gave her a wink.
“Hey?” Ella walked in.
Patsy quickly turned and said, “Don’t tell me the Seahawks score. I’m recording the game.”
“Why would I know the Seahawks score? Mom said the two of you are talking shop and to tell you to wrap it up and come for dinner. Are you talking shop?”
“Not anymore,” Keera said.
Shawn, Keera’s oldest brother, appeared behind Ella. “You watching the game in here?”
Patsy opened his mouth to speak.
“The Seahawks are down two touchdowns in the third quarter,” Shawn said.
“No,” Patsy moaned and dropped his head. “Why did you tell me the score? I’m recording the game. You know your mother won’t let me watch it on Sunday dinner night.”
“Who records games anymore?” Shawn said. “You can watch it on your phone.” Shawn held up his phone for Patsy to see.
“Technology is killing me,” Patsy said.
Chapter 13
The following Monday, Rossi stopped at Park 90/5 to meet with the various experts from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. Park 90/5 was the name for the city of Seattle’s two-story industrial complex located on Airport Way South.
The news of Sirus Kohl’s murder and speculation as to his killer had picked up a head of steam over the weekend and become a freight train rolling fast down the social media tracks. Two prominent influencers speculated Kohl’s death was related to the US Department of Justice’s fraud-and-conspiracy action against PDRT’s CEO and COO. They speculated Kohl killed himself rather than go on trial and face at least a decade in prison. Litchfield’s ME report said the location of the bullet hole in the back of Kohl’s head made suicide decidedly impossible, unless he was a contortionist. He wasn’t.
More disconcerting were rumors that Kohl had struck a deal with the US Attorney in exchange for providing damning information about his former business partner and lover, Jenna Bernstein. It was a little too on point for Rossi’s comfort. Neither influencer cited any specific authority to support either theory, but that didn’t stop millions of followers from jumping on the train and enjoying the roller-coaster ride.
SPD’s public information officer held two press conferences to essentially say nothing. The mayor and chief of police held a conference to also say nothing, but to appease those living on Capitol Hill, they assured the public they were working hard to catch the killer. They added that any suggestion the police department was focused on a specific individual was premature. It was a delicate dance, Rossi knew. Say too much and the media would hint the speculation had legs. Say too little and it would accuse the police department of being incompetent and allowing a killer to roam the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
All of which trickled down the brass tree trunk to Rossi and Ford. In private, the message to them was clear. Get their asses in gear and gather information necessary to make an arrest before the public outcry worsened, along with persistent criticism of SPD. Rossi and Ford had met with Bressler and Kennison, the next-up detectives, and they worked the phones all weekend.
Kennison and Bressler had obtained security footage from cameras mounted on several homes on Federal Avenue, but a review did not reveal any unknown person or car in the vicinity of Kohl’s home at the time of the shooting. No neighbor had claimed to have heard the shot or to have seen anything. They turned their attention to expediting receipt of the call detail records, or CDRs, from the various cell phones. Mark Upson worked tirelessly to determine where Jenna Bernstein had gone when she left her condominium building.
Rossi stepped from his pool car and climbed the stairs to the metal door at the back entrance. He entered a code on the keypad, heard the familiar click, and pulled the door open, letting himself in. Rossi had worked a CSI rotation for the better part of two years coming through the detective ranks. He gained valuable experience in the different forensics, including DNA profiling and bloodstain pattern analysis, toxicology, latent fingerprint analysis, procuring and analyzing digital evidence, and identifying firearms and toolmarks.
Rossi greeted those he knew as he walked the hallways. He would meet first with Barry Dillard, head of Washington State Patrol Crime Lab’s firearms and toolmarks division. Dillard came to the crime lab out of college, where he had been, of all things, a literature major. Bright and well read, but largely underqualified for many jobs that paid well, he applied for a crime lab position advertised in the Seattle Times and soon realized he liked to blow things up more than read Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dillard rose through the ranks swiftly. His motto soon became: “Why speculate when you can simulate?” Detectives loved him because he provided fact-based evidence. The years had passed, and Dillard’s once blond hair displayed streaks of gray, and crow’s-feet etched the corners of his eyes and his mouth, but his love for the job had not waned.
Rossi knocked on the section’s door and stepped inside. Dillard and other analysts worked at stations with specialized microscopes and other instruments needed to examine firearms, bullets, and cartridge casings. Ballistics imaging systems captured high-resolution visuals of fired bullets and their casings. Other stations allowed for chemical analysis and detection of gunshot residue, though the latter was now used sparingly and considered largely unreliable. Another station contained a reference collection of firearms and their unique characteristics.
Since they didn’t recover a gun at Sirus Kohl’s home, Rossi had asked Dillard to compare the bullet that killed Kohl to the bullet that killed Erik Wei, hoping to check it off his to-do list. The two greeted one another, and Dillard gave Rossi a tight-lipped grin and handed the detective his multipage report. Rossi, well familiar with the report’s formatting, skimmed it, noting Dillard had microscopically examined the bullet for unique features like rifling marks—distinctive, spiral-shaped impressions—recessed areas called “grooves,” and raised areas called “lands” cut into the surface of a bullet as it spun through the barrel of a particular firearm. Dillard had then measured the width and depth of the lands and the grooves to determine the twist rate—the distance the bullet needed to travel down a barrel to complete one full rotation—as well as noting whether the bullet spun clockwise or counterclockwise. He looked for striations, scratches, and irregularities to the bullet due to imperfections in the gun barrel. All of this made the markings on a bullet as definitive as a human fingerprint, unique to each firearm.
“Mumbo jumbo. Yadda, yadda, yadda,” Dillard said and held out his hands like a magician. “The two bullets match.”
Rossi looked up from the detailed report and felt his pulse quicken. “They match?”
“Visually and microscopically,” Dillard said. “No doubt about it. No question about it. Those two bullets were fired from the same 9-millimeter handgun.”
This changed things.
Dramatically.
Rossi had thought it possible, but unlikely, the bullets would match. That they did match made it ever more likely the person who killed Wei had also killed Kohl. And Jenna Bernstein owned a 9-millimeter handgun and had a motive to kill both men. Problem was, Bernstein had already been acquitted of killing Wei, and double jeopardy prevented the state from prosecuting her twice for the same crime.
Rossi thought of his conversation with Adria Kohl at the home on Capitol Hill. Speaking of Bernstein, Kohl had said, You let her get away with murder once. Don’t let her do so a second time.
“Shit,” Rossi muttered. The brass would be all over him and Ford. Why couldn’t they get a grounder every once in a while? Between the LaRussa investigation and the way Sirus Kohl’s murder investigation was shaping up, he felt like the bull’s-eye on an archery target.
He thanked Dillard and went to the latent fingerprints and DNA department. Neither department had found Jenna Bernstein’s fingerprint or her DNA in the home. Both had been obtained from her following her arrest in the Wei case. They had found Sirus’s and Adria’s fingerprints, which they had obtained to eliminate prints found inside the home, as well as others they could not identify, meaning the prints weren’t in IAFIS—the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI.
Rossi would check in with the other departments by phone. He departed with the ballistics report, driving to the secure parking garage on Sixth Avenue and hurrying into the Justice Center. It was alive with activity, the sound of voices talking: detectives on telephone calls and newscasters on the twenty-four-hour news stations from the televisions mounted to the ceiling. He smelled the roasted coffee beans but ignored the temptation and first stopped to speak to Andrei Vilkotski at TESU.
“Ford beat you in,” Vilkotski said.
“He told you to say that; didn’t he?”
Vilkotski twitched his eyebrows dramatically like Groucho Marx. “I’ll never tell. I gave him the forensic imaging I took off the laptop hard drive you provided, as well as the call detail records for the mobile numbers you provided.”
Though Rossi and Ford did not have both burner phones, Rossi had submitted an expedited search warrant to the service provider for the call detail records for the two cell phones that exchanged text messages the evening Sirus Kohl was killed, as well as for Adria Kohl’s cell.
Rossi exited and hurried to the C Team’s bull pen. Ford sat talking with Chuck Pan.
“What’s going on?” Rossi asked, removing his jacket and placing it in the locker next to his desk.
Pan said, “I’m getting heat from the brass.”
“Tell them to up the police budget and hire more detectives,” Ford said.
Pan ignored him. “They’re getting questions from the mayor’s office, who is getting questions from influential neighbors and organizations on Capitol Hill.”
“Tell them we’re making progress,” Rossi said diplomatically. He leaned against the workstation table in the center of the four desks. Cubicle walls separated their bull pen from the other three Violent Crimes bull pens. “We don’t want this to look like a rush to judgment. We need to be careful, given what transpired in Wei. Tell them that also.”
“I’m just letting you know,” Pan said. “But given the outcome in Wei, let’s be sure to dot all our i’s and cross our t’s.”
“But still make an arrest quickly,” Ford said, shaking his head, his tone cynical.
“Stopped by the firearms section on the way in,” Rossi said, deciding to pull off the Band-Aid quickly and get past the pain. “Barry says the markings on the bullet that killed Sirus Kohl match the markings on the bullet that killed Erik Wei. Same gun. No doubt about it. He’s one hundred percent certain.”
Pan and Ford did not immediately respond. They, too, knew this piece of evidence complicated matters—a lot. Not only could they not prosecute Jenna Bernstein a second time for the murder of Erik Wei, if they did prosecute her for the death of Sirus Kohl, the defense would, in all certainty, bring a motion to prevent the introduction of any evidence from—or even the mention of—the Wei trial, rightfully arguing it to be irrelevant and highly prejudicial. In other words, Dillard could comment on the markings on the bullet that killed Kohl, but he would be prevented from saying those markings matched the markings on the bullet that killed Wei.
That was the technical fallout.
Even more troubling was the conclusion Rossi had reached on his drive into the office, a conclusion that Ford and Pan were now reaching, based on their facial expressions. It seemed more than likely Bernstein killed both men, if the gun was the one that had belonged to her.
The question was, where was it?
Perhaps not wanting to dwell on the matter, Pan said, “Well, we’ll have to deal with that. What else do we have?”
“The daughter sent over emails between her and the US Attorney prosecuting Kohl and Bernstein for wire fraud,” Rossi said. “Billy and I went through them over the weekend.”
“Anything?”
“The emails confirm the daughter was in contact with the attorney and looking to make a deal for her father.” Ford handed Pan a thick packet and offered a summation. “She also sent over the messages her father intended to turn over. The messages aren’t exactly clear Jenna Bernstein knew the LINK could not perform as she was representing. Certainly not definitive. They indicate Bernstein was being told TNT could treat chronic wounds and reprogram the skin cells of mice into heart cells.”
“But I also read Bernstein’s testimony in Wei,” Rossi added. “And she made it very clear she wasn’t a scientist and relied on them heavily.”
“So she could plead ignorance,” Pan said.
“Basically,” Ford said. “The daughter, Adria Kohl, was probably pitching to the US Attorney that her father’s testimony would be instrumental in explaining the documents and in implicating Bernstein.”
“Making it more urgent to his killer that he be prevented from making that deal and testifying,” Pan said, flipping through the packet of documents, skimming most but stopping to read a few. “What kind of deal was Kohl seeking?”
“In exchange for her father’s testimony, she wanted the US Attorney to agree to her father serving one year of home confinement,” Rossi said.
“And the US Attorney’s response?”
“She confirmed Adria Kohl set a meeting for that morning, but she had not yet seen any documentary evidence, and was anxious to speak to Sirus Kohl and hear what he had to say,” Ford said. “She said from her perspective the meeting’s purpose was to determine what Sirus Kohl had in mind, and get a better idea about the information he possessed, whether it was good enough to convict Bernstein.”
Pan put down the packet. “Adria Kohl needed the US Attorney to hear from her father.”
“While the emails and texts don’t implicate Bernstein per se, they do indicate Bernstein pushed Kohl, and not the other way around,” Ford said.
“How so?” Pan asked.
“On more than one occasion, Kohl told Bernstein to slow down and pull back what she was telling investors, without specifics. He told her the human trials could take years, as could regulatory approval.”
“And her response?”
“To paraphrase—that was his problem. Her problem was securing more financing to pursue more research and conduct those human trials,” Ford said.
They turned to Upson, who walked into their bull pen smiling like the Cheshire cat.
“You smiling because you got lucky this morning?” Ford said. “Or do you have some good news for all of us?”
“Conference room. Thompson will be there. I called him.”
“What’s going on?” Ford asked.
“It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises,” Ford said.
“You’ll like this one.”
“Okay, but nobody better jump out from behind anything wearing a clown mask.”
“No jumping,” Upson said. “No clowns.”
Chapter 14
Harrison held the passenger door of his BMW open for Keera in the parking lot of Duggan & Associates’ Pioneer Square offices. “You know this is the independent woman era,” she said. “You don’t have to open the door for me.” He didn’t have to, but Keera loved his chivalry and would have been disappointed if he didn’t.
“Bite your tongue,” Harrison said. “My mum would have me boiled in oil if she ever saw me disrespect a woman in such a way.”
“Well, we can’t have that; can we?” Keera said sliding in.
Keera listened to jazz, a saxophonist, as Harrison closed the door and moved to the driver’s side. The inside of the car smelled like vanilla and reminded her of her mother baking cookies after school.
“This music is beautiful,” Keera said.
“Kamasi Washington,” Harrison said. “My respite from the insanity of this world.”
In addition to Harrison holding open her car door, Keera had never seen him put his feet up while wearing shoes, even if they were working late in the office. He said no shoes on furniture was a superstition that dated to the Black Death, the devastating fourteenth-century pandemic that killed millions in Europe. Much later, scientists learned the plague had been spread by fleas and ticks.
Harrison had arranged for Keera to speak with one of PDRT’s former employees. Keera had also asked him to track down PDRT’s biggest investors and determine their whereabouts the night and morning of the murder. She was anticipating that Rossi would learn of Jenna’s walkabout, and Thompson would charge her. If so, she hoped to find others for a possible SODDI defense—Some Other Dude Did It—though she continued to wrestle with whether to represent Jenna at all. She moved forward with the knowledge that she could work the investigation, then turn everything over to another defense lawyer—should she decide to bow out. But she was already steeling herself to the idea of taking the case. She wasn’t sure why, not 100 percent. She respected what Patsy said, about learning more about himself defending the difficult cases, but that wouldn’t be the reason she took it, not entirely. Nor would the reason be because the firm needed the case financially. Keera also didn’t want to back down from the challenge, much like she’d never backed down to opponents in chess tournaments, but that desire wasn’t entirely her motivation either. She couldn’t deny the fact that a part of her wanted to defend Jenna because it would mean that, for once, Jenna would have to shut up and take someone else’s advice. For once Jenna wouldn’t be in charge. Keera would run this show. And, maybe, a part of Keera wanted Jenna to know that while her life was once again spiraling down the toilet, Keera’s was succeeding, quite well, thank you. Ego? Sure. Retribution. No doubt.
Maybe Patsy was right. Maybe Keera was already learning more about herself than she cared to admit.
As they drove, Harrison told her he’d spoken to half a dozen PDRT investors, all of whom professed to have airtight alibis he continued to check out.
They crossed the 520 bridge over Lake Washington and traveled the 405 freeway to the city of Kirkland, a residential neighborhood in transition, like most cities in the region. Newer, larger, and more modern homes existed among the original two-bedroom bungalows that housed workers when Kirkland had been an industrial town focused on shipbuilding.
