Hailey reached down deep. She was a lawyer… He wasn’t. So hit where he was soft…legalities of the arrest.
“Poultry-lifter, Kolker, not poultry knife. And, nice job…but you know I’m right about the interview being suppressed as poisonous fruit. You screwed up, Kolker. Now it’ll all be thrown out of court, and you know it. But forget about that for today. You’ve got plenty of time ahead to worry about your case getting thrown out. There’s something else even more rudimentary.”
Sitting there, she discovered for the first time that Kolker had a tic…in his right eye. It was twitching now, and she knew she had done it. In the space of five short minutes alone in the conference room together…he was pissed.
Kolker snapped off the recorder.
She kept on. “It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure this out, but it seems to me the first thing you should do in a murder investigation, much less a double-murder investigation, is establish times of death. Of course, that’s after determining cause of death, I assume at least that’s been done.”
She paused, desperately wanting a glass of water. The verbal sparring was wearing her down and her mouth was dry.
“But hold on a minute, Lieutenant…didn’t somebody mention there was a crack on the head? Or have you even had the morgue check for head abrasion under the hair? So is it strangulation, stabbing, or blow to the head? Better get that straight before you start comparing MOs from other unrelated cases, no matter how much you want to nail me for this.”
Kolker’s face twisted. She had obviously hit upon something with the possibility of blows to the head as the actual causes of death. Plus, in the Atlanta murders, strangulation and stabbing were causes of death, each lethal enough to cause the death in and of itself. Here, from what she was hearing, one of the wounds was postmortem.
The strangulations here could actually have been staged postmortem, in some sick game. The killer could have posed the bodies as if they’d died by strangulation, or even have strangled them after they were dead, just for the thrill of it.
And then there were the unmistakable puncture wounds to the back…
Her head was spinning. If a blow to the head was the true cause of death, it would only be worse for Hailey, since a crack to the head with a blunt object would take much less upper-body strength than manual strangulation. The same for stabbing.
What was the true cause of death? She’d bet he wasn’t even sure yet…
It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was throwing a wrench in Kolker’s preconceived theory. That was the only prize for Hailey right now…keeping him off balance. And the times of death…there was a weakness here. She sensed it.
“But back to the time of death,” she said, trying her best to wheedle information out of him so she’d have something to go on in her own defense. “I mean, that is step one, wouldn’t you say? Time of death?”
“For your information, we have officially set the time of death for Hayden Krasinski at eight thirty p.m. Melissa Everett died at nine fifteen p.m. the preceding Wednesday. Nice touch playing dumb, Dean, as if you didn’t already know. So while we’re on that topic-”
She cut in coolly. “I’ll continue the interview as long as you keep the recorder going. The trial judge might not like it when she finds out you turned it off.”
The twitch in his right eye went crazy, and Kolker punched the recorder’s red “On” button again.
They both knew it was highly inappropriate to tape only portions of a police interview. If the case made it to a courtroom, such a practice would lead to successful motions to suppress the entire discussion, thrown out on claims police had edited or tampered with the defendant’s statement.
Score two for Hailey.
Sweat appeared on Kolker’s upper lip, and his collar showed dark, damp areas where it met the skin of his neck.
“Where were you at nine fifteen last Wednesday night, Ms. Dean?” he asked crisply. “Or do you need a lawyer to dream up an alibi for you?”
Wednesday…nine fifteen…Where was she?
Where was she on that night, for God’s sake?
Her mind stretched to the limit, but she couldn’t remember.
Then it hit. She leaned forward from the waist, as if she was making sure the recorder picked it up, heavy on the drama for the benefit of the peanut gallery watching from behind the two-way mirror.
“Get this, Kolker. I don’t need a defense lawyer to protect me from you because I don’t need protection. I don’t need a defense lawyer at trial because there will be no trial. And I certainly don’t need a defense lawyer to dream up an alibi…because I know exactly where I was. Check it out. I was at the New York Sports Club on Third Avenue at Fortieth Street. I showed my club ID, the computer read it and logged it. There should be a computer record to verify it.”
“Nice try, but I checked you out… I know your drill. You’re just like clockwork…always the same thing, every night of your lonely little life. When it’s nice, you run the East River, when it’s not, you run the treadmill and lift weights at the gym. Out running alone doesn’t amount to an alibi. And for all I know you could have left that night right after you signed in, just to create an alibi. Would have been a decent story, too. But sorry, no good, Counselor.”
Damn…he had done his homework. Who the hell had told him her workout schedule?
Then the truth hit. Who else could it be but Dana?
Hailey could just see her, drinking in every drop of attention Kolker or any half-decent-looking man was willing to feed her. Dana could talk forever and apparently had.
But it wasn’t over yet.
“Well, normally, that would be correct. If you did your homework instead of listening to office gossip, you’d already know Wednesday night was a little different. Change up in the routine.” She paused for effect, just long enough to get him nervous.
Leaning back into the tape recorder, she went on. “Wednesday night, when I signed in at the Sports Club the weather was bad. Too cold for me, anyway. Check it out, Kolker…call the Weather Channel. And as for the treadmill, that particular night management was redoing the treadmill room to install individual televisions on each machine. I couldn’t use the treadmill, so I signed into an aerobics class-probably two dozen witnesses, maybe more. I got stuck in the very front row and I didn’t know the steps, plus my ribs ached, so I’m sure they’ll all remember me.”
Kolker looked as if he had taken a punch to the gut. If she was telling the truth, and her steady gaze straight into his eyes suggested she was, his “airtight” case against her was falling apart in front of his eyes.
“It was a funk-aerobics class…and it went from eight thirty until ten o’clock that night. Then I took a shower. And, Kolker, I walked out of the building that night with the instructor. I was there when she locked the glass doors in the front of the club. Check the security camera in the gym lobby. You’ll see me, but you’d better hurry. In case you didn’t know, banks, convenience stores, ATM machines…those cameras tape over every seven to eleven days at best.”
Before he could respond, she continued on. “After that, I went across the street to the mini-mart at Thirty-eighth and Third. A few of them are open twenty-four hours, you know that much, right? I bought groceries.”