21st Birthday by Patterson, James (mystery books to read txt) 📗

“That Saturday morning when Burke appeared in our squad room, he was a suspect in more than one murder, and the victims all had close association to him.

“Still, we had held him for twenty-four hours, we had searched his premises, and CSU had gone through his devices. We had reasonable suspicion that he had killed at least two people. At that time we had no direct evidence against Lucas Burke for anything.”

Newt Gardner stood to cross-examine Inspector Conklin.

He made it short.

“So you’re still prepared to swear that the man on the parking lot video, the man who presumably killed Melissa Fogarty, is in fact, Mr. Lucas Burke?”

“I am, now,” said Conklin.

“Well,” said Gardner, “I’m equally sure that he is not. Ms. Castellano, let’s go to the tape.”

CHAPTER 90

YUKI TURNED THE whiteboard around so that it was again a plain white screen. Behind her, Nick Gaines pulled up the parking lot video on the laptop. And then there was the sea-spray sound of static as the tape rolled.

Yuki said, “Inspector Conklin, will you please describe what you see on the screen.”

“I’ll do my best,” Conklin said. “It’s the typical low-quality video we often see from retail-type cameras. It was dark in a virtually unlighted lot. There’s Ms. Fogarty getting out of her car. She’s standing, then pacing, unmistakable because she’s in the one beam of the one light in the lot.

“Now, if we can fast-forward …”

Nick skipped to the part where a man entered the lot on foot.

Conklin said, “There. That’s Burke. He’s in black, keeping to the shadows as he comes toward Ms. Fogarty. She says something to him, but there’s no audio on this security camera. But we can see that Ms. Fogarty’s last living acts were to turn her back on the defendant and get into her car. She starts up the engine and turns on the headlights,” Conklin said, “but her assailant opens the back door of her SUV and gets inside. A minute later, out he goes. Watch as he sticks to the shadows as he leaves camera range. The car remains in place until the next morning when Ms. Fogarty’s body is discovered. I witnessed her slashed throat and evidence that she bled out in the front seat of her car.”

Yuki asked “How did you determine that the killer was Mr. Burke from watching this video?”

“As I said, it was dark. The man in the parking lot was wearing dark clothes and a hat. That big tree, right there, is growing on the adjacent property, leaning over the fence, throwing shadows over everything. But on the eighth viewing of this video, a member of our task force pointed out an odd movement on the part of the assailant.”

Yuki asked, “Can you demonstrate that movement?”

“Like this,” Conklin said, brushing at his forelock of hair, moving it a little off his forehead.

He said, “I couldn’t quite make out if he was touching his hat or brushing leaves away, but when it was suggested that this individual may have been flicking something over the fence and that it was perhaps the murder weapon, we asked for those particular frames to be enlarged. Our facial rec couldn’t match the man in the lot to Mr. Burke because the video quality sucked. Sorry. So CSU brought in a forensic photographic analyst to examine and compare this enlargement with Mr. Burke’s photo. There was a 90 percent match even with the crappy quality of the video.

Yuki said, “Mr. Gaines, could you back up the video to the point where the man in the frame makes a motion with his hand?”

Nick did it and Yuki said, “Pause it right there. Thanks.”

Conklin said, “See, the fence divides the school parking lot and an overgrown, largely vacant lot behind an old gas station. Weeds are four feet tall and old car parts hidden by weeds are a hazard. Well, it isn’t school property. We didn’t have a warrant for that field of weeds. We searched every inch of the school parking lot, took the Subaru down to the tires at the crime lab, but it didn’t occur to anyone to search the lot earlier.”

“And why was that?”

“Because we had a new body.”

Yuki said, “Please tell the court about that.”

“Sure,” Conklin said. “It was a Sunday, and at Chief Clapper’s request we were working through the weekend. Tara Burke’s car and body rose up in the ocean around China Beach, and we were all over that.”

“Was the weedy vacant lot eventually searched?”

“Yes. Not until a couple of months later, but the murder weapon was waiting for us, four feet deep in weeds about an arm’s length from the base of the tree.”

Yuki showed him an array of photos taken during the search of the field: ten men in white hazmat suits, and last, the photo of a gloved hand holding up a razor.

Yuki asked, “Is this the murder weapon?”

“Yes, a hundred percent.”

Yuki looked at the faces of the jury. She had every bit of their attention. The picture of the razor was entered into evidence and then shown to the jury. Yuki also entered Rich Conklin’s report on the meetings with Lucas Burke and his ex-wife.

She thanked Rich and told Gardener that the witness was his. Yuki would bet her IRA that Gardner wasn’t going to ask Conklin how the razor could be linked to his client.

Lucas Burke was innocent until proven guilty.

Yuki had every intention of doing just that.

CHAPTER 91

OUR MEAL AT LAGO was wrapping up.

The dessert plates had been cleared and our waiter brought Berney the check.

I said, “Let us expense this, Berney.”

He declined the offer and read the tab carefully, almost as if he was decoding a message. For all I knew, he may have been.

His plan, as I understood it, was to leave Burke’s capture to Alvarez