Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan), page 14
Why would she do it?
Why would she put herself in the crosshairs with a flimsy disguise and walk to a park so close to the home, and allow herself to be photographed at a food truck? Maybe she had no other plan and, upon receiving Kohl’s text messages, she panicked?
“What about her path home? Can it be documented?” Pan asked.
“Not the path,” Upson said. “But the building security tapes document her return at roughly 10:17 p.m.”
Rossi struggled to slow his thoughts and assimilate the information. He knew Ford was doing the same. Homicide investigations needed to proceed step-by-step to prevent overlooking something and making a fatal mistake.
“There’s more,” Upson said. “We also got the GPS records for Bernstein’s cell phone for that evening.”
Upson put up a map with a red dot signifying the condominium building, then a photograph of the same red dot in the same location at 8:00 p.m., then 8:30 p.m., 9:00 p.m., 9:30 p.m., and 10:17 p.m.
“Her phone never left the building?” Ford asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Upson said.
“Who doesn’t bring their cell phone with them when they go out walking?” Pan said. “Especially a woman, alone at night.”
“Who could be a target, given recent news of fraud and misrepresentation,” Ford said.
Rossi looked at the check mark he’d placed beside Adria Kohl’s name. It was the same reason he hadn’t scratched her name off the list. Her phone stayed home that night, but that didn’t necessarily mean she had.
“Bernstein knew her cell phone records can be checked for GPS coordinates from the Erik Wei trial, learned from it, and left her phone behind,” Thompson said, offering an explanation.
It wasn’t a bad answer, but if that was true, couldn’t Bernstein have come up with a better plan than to put on a ball cap and glasses and walk to Capitol Hill? Rossi shook his head. “Does anyone else feel like this is too easy?”
The other four in the room turned and looked at him.
“I mean she had to know her building had security cameras; didn’t she? She’s smart. She knew she couldn’t evade them.”
“That’s the reason for the disguise,” Ford said.
“She’s six feet tall,” Rossi said. “A ball cap and glasses don’t exactly hide her identity, Billy, any more than they would hide yours. Especially when the tape shows her exiting her condominium unit. And Duggan will dismiss the disguise. She’ll say Bernstein wore the hat and glasses to conceal her identity because of the recent indictment for fraud. That she was a target.”
“Maybe,” Pan said.
“No maybe. You can count on it,” Rossi said. Keera would never let something like this go unexplained.
“I agree,” Thompson said. “If she’s anything like her father.”
“Then Bernstein goes to the one food truck that happens to have a camera documenting its customers?” Rossi said.
“Is it the only truck that had a camera?” Pan asked Upson.
“Appears to be. I didn’t check them all after I found the one.”
“All I’m saying is you might be overthinking this. You might be giving her too much credit,” Pan said to Rossi.
“Am I?” Rossi asked. “We just speculated she knew her phone could be traced so she left it in her apartment, but she didn’t know we could document her leaving the building using the security footage?”
“We aren’t the only ones who know about her walk to Volunteer Park,” Upson offered. His comment again got everyone’s attention. “The owner of Bitchin Burritos said I was the second person to ask about the same woman. He said the first person asking was a well-dressed Black man who came by the business the day after the murder, asking the same questions about whether the food truck had cameras and kept the recording.”
“JP Harrison,” Rossi said, familiar with Harrison from the Vince LaRussa trial. “He’s a PI for Duggan & Associates.”
“Former SPD. Good detective,” Pan said. “We worked together.”
“Then Duggan knows what we know,” Thompson said. “She knows her client received text messages from Sirus Kohl, and she knows Bernstein left her building and walked to Volunteer Park shortly thereafter.”
“Almost as if Bernstein is baiting us, daring us to charge her again,” Ford said, looking at Thompson.
Rossi weighed the ramifications of what Upson had found. He knew the others were as well. They could put Jenna Bernstein close to the murder scene, though not at the scene. They had documentary proof Sirus Kohl reached out to her, even hinted at what he intended to do, though the text string did not provide specifics. Still, Bernstein—if it had been Bernstein who responded on the cell phone text string, and that certainly appeared to be the case—was clearly worried and asked to get together and talk.
Had that been the reason for Bernstein’s walkabout? Was he overthinking it? Had she put on a hat and glasses because it was the best she could do given the time constraints? Had she walked to Kohl’s home to convince him not to strike a deal with the US Attorney and, when she failed, shot and killed him?
“Who did he call after that text string?” Thompson said, going through the documents Upson had provided. He recited the number when he found it.
“That was the call he made to Adria Kohl,” Ford said, also flipping pages. “She told us her father called her that night between nine thirty and ten to confirm the meeting in the morning with the US Attorney.”
“Proof he intended to go forward,” Thompson said. He took a breath and sighed. Thompson now had evidence Jenna Bernstein had both a motive and an opportunity that fit within the medical examiner’s window of time for when the murder had occurred.
The question on everyone’s mind, but which no one would say, was whether Dan Butcher, the King County prosecuting attorney, would have the cajónes to pull the trigger and again charge Jenna Bernstein with murder.
Rossi thought about what Ford had said, about Jenna Bernstein possibly baiting them. Ordinarily he would have dismissed that thought. But he’d also read the Wei trial transcript, and he wondered whether Patsy Duggan put Jenna Bernstein on the witness stand or whether Jenna Bernstein had insisted. If the latter, it made Ford’s hypothesis all the more probable. Jenna Bernstein, emboldened by the outcome in Wei, thought she was smarter than everybody else.
And that was a trait held by most sociopaths.
Chapter 16
Isabelle Blowers made a phone call, and Lisa Tanaka was indeed eager to meet Keera and Harrison. She suggested the 203°F Coffee Company at The Village at Totem Lake. Keera hadn’t been to Totem Lake in years and was amazed by its transformation, which centered around The Village, a high-density residential and retail complex that took the place of what had been a strip mall. They drove past multiple apartment complexes with ground-floor bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, retail shops, a movie theater, banks, a pharmacy, and workout and health-care facilities.
“I never understood the appeal of living, working, eating, and exercising on top of each other,” Harrison said. “Makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it.”
“Convenience,” Keera said as Harrison maneuvered up one parking aisle and down another, looking for a safe place to park his baby, so it didn’t get dinged.
“Convenience is boring. Give me chaos,” Harrison said. “Only thing missing is a funeral parlor and cemetery. It reminds me of that movie The Truman Show.”
Keera knew the movie. Jim Carrey lived inside a fake reality where everything was convenient. “Is that why you’re parking far enough away to hail a cab to the coffee shop? Chaos?”
“A little exercise will be good for both of us.”
“A little?”
“Humor me.”
The coffee shop interior was white, neat, and orderly. The glass counter displayed quiche, croissants, and muffins, and the smell of the baked goods and the coffee was more than a little tempting to Keera. A board on the wall advertised espresso macchiatos, cappuccinos, cortados, and Americanos. Keera, who had given up caffeine, detected the rich, bitter aroma and was tempted to order a decaf but declined when Harrison asked.
“Bet you they serve the coffee with designs in the foam,” he said.
A woman stood from a rough-hewn wooden bench in the corner and maneuvered around a small table to greet them. “I saved a couple of chairs,” Lisa Tanaka said after introductions.
“Thank you for making time to speak to us,” Keera said.
“I work in one of the buildings here and have an apartment close by.” Tanaka had black hair showing strands of gray and falling to her shoulders. She was petite, her hands almost girlish in comparison to the large mug of coffee.
Harrison gave Keera a look.
“They have good coffee, if you’d like a cup.”
Keera again declined. Harrison went to the counter.
Keera and Tanaka sat across from one another. Tanaka set her cup of coffee on the table between them. Steam wafted off the surface.
“Isabelle said you represent Jenna Bernstein. Is this for the US Attorney’s suit for fraud?”
“No,” Keera said.
“Sirus Kohl’s murder, then?”
“There have been no charges against anyone, but given the circumstances, we are involved. Our firm represented Jenna in the Erik Wei trial.”
“Oh,” Tanaka said with a clear bite to the word.
Keera decided to bring out the elephant in the room. “We understand you don’t care for Jenna.”
Tanaka smiled. “No, I really don’t.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” Keera almost said, Neither do I.
“I think she’s a spoiled, narcissistic bitch who, when she doesn’t get her way, attacks.”
Keera wasn’t going to argue. “You had some specific run-ins?”
Tanaka sipped her coffee and set the mug down. It looked from her reaction like the coffee was hot. “I did. I quit. I grew tired of the corporate paranoia, the unreasonably long hours, and the lack of appreciation. I also couldn’t stand the lying.”
“Let’s start at the beginning. You were the controller?”
“That was the position I was hired to perform, but it’s hard to prepare financial statements, estimate cash flows, and provide accurate and timely information to investors when you can’t get the information out of corporate management.”
“Who in particular?”
“Jenna Bernstein and Sirus Kohl. If you talked to Isabelle, then you know how tightly they controlled every aspect of the company. Especially the financing. I was given piecemeal financial information on a need-to-know basis but asked to prepare these rosy financial projections for distribution to PDRT’s investors and board of directors.”
“Who did the asking?” Keera asked.
Harrison returned with his coffee and a smug smile indicating he’d been right about the design in the foam.
“Kohl provided me with financial profiles, but Jenna had her hand in it. She’d review my financial analysis and practically rewrite the whole thing, making it look a lot more positive, but then she wouldn’t sign it. She wanted me to sign the analysis. She said it was part of my corporate duties. If I balked or called the document into question, she’d say every start-up goes through rough patches at the initial stage, and it’s common to ‘fake it until you make it.’ She said PDRT investors were sophisticated, that she’d spoken to each and every one of them and had conveyed the financial picture clearly and honestly. She said all were aware the financial analysis was brighter than reality, but necessary for the company to continue to bring in additional investors to move the LINK to production. That, of course, was a lie, as the US Attorney’s suit can attest.”
“You didn’t agree?”
“Making the projection brighter is one thing. Creating a supernova is another. I got tired of fighting her on it and finally refused to sign the documents. If she wanted to put her ass on the legal line, fine, but I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t care what they paid me. I was constantly stressed out. When I started losing my hair in the shower, my husband took me to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with situational anxiety. He recommended I quit for health reasons. I advised Jenna and Kohl in an email, told them I would be making a disability claim, and gave them my two weeks’ notice. When I showed up to work the next day, security told me I’d been locked out. I couldn’t even retrieve my personal belongings. I was told they would be delivered to me after they’d been gone through to ensure I wasn’t taking any corporate secrets.”
“Why did you get sued?”
“Because I got pissed and fired off an email telling them if I didn’t get back my personal belongings immediately, and my severance package in full, I’d let our investors know the financial analysis they had been receiving was utter bullshit, and I’d alert the regulatory authorities, and file a claim for discrimination and retaliatory firing.”
“I take it that didn’t go over well,” Keera said.
“They sicced Kohl’s daughter on me, the pit bull. I received a multipage letter telling me they would sue me for breach of my employment agreement, claim my disability was manufactured, and, if I went to any regulatory agencies, they would respond that I had prepared the financial analysis and signed those statements verifying they were accurate and that PDRT management and investors had relied on them as accurate. The letter came from Adria Kohl, but it had Jenna Bernstein’s fingerprints all over it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I worked closely with her and saw her do similar things to other people. I knew her buzzwords. She insulated herself by setting things up to make it look like mistakes were always some other person’s fault. Never hers. Right down to blaming Sirus Kohl for Erik Wei’s death. That was quintessential Jenna. The minute I read of her testimony in the newspaper I cried because it brought back memories of everything she did to me. All the threats.”
“You think she set Kohl up?”
“I have no doubt that’s exactly what she did, because she’d done it to me and to others. I read about the . . . what was her defense again?”
“Svengali,” Keera said.
“Yeah. Such bullshit. Such utter bullshit.”
From behind the counter a woman called out a name for an order.
“You don’t think Sirus Kohl controlled and manipulated her?” Keera asked Tanaka.
Tanaka’s eyes expanded. “From my perspective? Not a chance. From my perspective Jenna controlled Kohl. He doted on her. He was always at her side, making sure she was okay. He made sure she ate, she worked out, and she went home at a reasonable hour.”
“Some might say that was evidence he was manipulating her by controlling her.”
Tanaka shook her head. “Some might, but those of us who actually worked there, and who saw their interaction, called Kohl her labradoodle. Not to be unkind, but Sirus was short, overweight, and not exactly good looking. Jenna was tall, had a knockout figure, and a multi-billion-dollar idea.”
“You didn’t see the two of them as compatible,” Keera said.
“To the contrary. Kohl was exactly Jenna’s type—rich. Rich and vulnerable. People thought Kohl was this tough guy, but the tough guy was just a façade Jenna made him wear around the employees. Hell, her personality was also a façade.”
“In what way?”
“In every way. The way she dressed, wore her hair, all her buzzwords.” Tanaka spoke with an affected voice. “‘Start-ups don’t start up on their own. They take a team of dedicated employees.’ It was all to create an image that she was important and about to forever change the face of medicine.”
“But once she had Kohl’s money, why continue the charade? Why move in with him?”
“It wasn’t just the money. She was this twenty-two-year-old woman with an undergraduate degree and a billion-dollar idea. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. She needed Kohl’s knowledge, his resume. He’d invested in biomedical companies and hit it big. She needed investors to believe if Kohl thought this highly guarded product had legs, then it must be something groundbreaking.”
“Why do you think he put up with her then?” Keera asked.
“If he was in for a penny, he was in for a pound. Do you follow me?”
“He was in too deep to pull out,” Keera said. “Too much money invested.”
“Once Jenna had his money, she had all the control. He needed to make the company work or he was going to lose a fortune. If she told him to do or say something, he was going to do it and say it. But not just because his money was at stake.”
“What other reason?”
“I think he genuinely loved her.”
“Then you don’t believe he manipulated her?”
Tanaka made a face like her coffee had turned bitter. “No one manipulated Jenna Bernstein. No one. In my opinion? I think she did a number on Kohl, made him believe she was too good for him, and he was lucky to have her. In my opinion he was like a lovesick teenager trying to appease his sociopathic girlfriend.”
“You believe she’s a sociopath?”
“Yeah. I do. And other former employees would agree with me. When we learned Jenna had moved into Kohl’s home, we figured Kohl was done for. She’d have her claws in every aspect of his life, and Sirus would have no respite from the psychological abuse.”
“Like what?”
“I believe she constantly made him think if he didn’t do as she demanded, she’d leave him. Rumors of other men were persistent throughout the time I worked there.”
“Any in particular?” Keera pushed, noting Tanaka had said “I believe.”
“Yeah. The guy who owned the security company. He was with Jenna seemingly twenty-four seven and had the perfect excuse if anyone called him or her out. He could say he was just doing his job staying close to Jenna—a job Sirus had asked him to perform. What better cover was there?”
Keera again pushed for specifics. “Any incidents in particular to support your conjecture?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Tanaka said, and she sounded like she had been waiting for Keera to ask. “I was at the office late one evening . . . most evenings. Anyway, I went down to Jenna’s office to talk with her and I heard soft voices inside. Moaning and groaning. I froze at first. Thought it was Jenna and Sirus. Then curiosity got the better of me and I just listened for a moment. The next thing I knew the door opened and there stood Thomas Martin, the head of security at TMTP, an independent contractor that provided security services. He served as Jenna’s bodyguard. Both he and Jenna looked more guilty than a dog with your chewed-up shoe. Martin was tucking his shirt into his pants. The buttons were undone down to his navel and his hair was mussed. Jenna looked like she’d been ridden hard. She said something like ‘Oh. You’re still here.’ As if I would be anywhere else.”
