Murder One (32 page)

“Yes, the prosecution has evidence of shoe prints in Mr. Vasiliev’s backyard, a size-seven women’s running shoe. And from this they will ask you to deduce that, because Barclay wears the same size shoe, she must have made the shoe prints. But the prosecution will produce no witness who saw Barclay’s feet in those shoes, let alone in Mr. Vasiliev’s backyard.” This brought a few poorly concealed smiles.

Sloane shrugged. “The best
direct
evidence the prosecution has to offer, ladies and gentlemen, is the testimony of a young man sneaking home at three-thirty in the morning, after a night partying at an underground club, who claims that on a dark and stormy night, as he hid in some bushes, he could make out the face of a person twenty-six and a half feet away.” He shook his head in doubt.

“The prosecutor called Barclay a ‘crusader.’ That was a term used to describe her efforts to rid the streets of Seattle of drugs. She
is
a crusader.” He let that statement hang, knowing again that Cerrabone would be hard-pressed to object. “She is not a vigilante. The evidence will not prove that she killed Filyp Vasiliev. What the evidence will reveal is that because of her efforts, Barclay received threats—threats that she reported to the police. The evidence will reveal that she was followed, which she also reported to the police.

“So, who did kill Mr. Vasiliev?”

Sloane had heard other attorneys in civil cases argue that the opposing side had the burden of proof and had failed to meet that burden. He had always thought that argument to be a cop out, tantamount to a kid in a playground accused of doing something wrong responding, “Prove it.”

Instead, he looked at each of the jurors, gave a simple shrug, and said, “But I am confident, after you hear all of the evidence, that you will conclude it was not Barclay Reid.”

They were under way.

Underwood instructed Cerrabone to call his first witness, and the prosecutor obliged, calling the county medical examiner Stuart Funk. He retrieved Funk from the hall outside the courtroom. Witnesses could not sit in the proceedings until after testifying.

Funk entered looking like a slightly off high school science professor in a brownish-orange tweed jacket complete with elbow patches, a pale green shirt, and a brown tie. Tall and gangly, with thick gray hair and glasses, Funk carried a file under his arm, the pages sticking out one end. But he knew his way to the witness chair, having testified more than four hundred times. He did not remain seated for long. After soliciting Funk’s considerable education and work history, as well as the inner workings of the King County medical examiner’s office, Cerrabone sought Underwood’s permission that Funk be permitted to testify from the area between his easel and the jury box.

Using an antenna pointer, Funk educated the jury on how he was called to Vasiliev’s home, waited until CSI had completed its investigation, then proceeded to process the body, which took a little under thirty minutes. His direct examination had been well orchestrated and rehearsed offstage, Cerrabone smooth at introducing the testimony and the evidence. Funk gave Sloane few reasons to object.

As Funk testified, Cerrabone used the television to display documents and photographs taken at the crime scene and during the autopsy. Several jurors winced at a photograph showing the back of Vasiliev’s head, a portion of the skull blown away. This was the moment when reality hit, after the initial excitement and anticipation of serving as a juror in a murder trial subsided. The brutality of the wound clarified that this was not a television show and the people before them were not actors. This was real. It was a crime of violence intentionally inflicted and with the single purpose of taking another human being’s life.

Funk’s testimony continued for nearly two hours before Cerrabone arrived at the single reason he had come to the courtroom that day—to offer his opinion on the cause of death.

“And did you reach a conclusion of whether the death was accidental, a suicide, natural, or a homicide?” Cerrabone asked, again duty-bound.

“It was a homicide,” Funk said.

Sloane had interviewed Funk prior to the trial, with Cerrabone present, and found him to be forthright. There was not much Sloane could do on cross-examination concerning the cause of death, but experience had taught him that jurors expected counsel to ask questions, especially of the first witness. So when Cerrabone passed Funk, Sloane stood and obliged.

On cross-examination, Sloane wanted to be center stage and asked Funk to return to his seat while Sloane stood directly in front of the jury.

“Dr. Funk, you have no interest in the crime scene, do you?”

“No,” Funk said. “Our concern is only the condition of the body.”

“And based upon your testimony and the photographs, you examined that body in great detail from head to toes to fingertips, correct?”

“That is our practice, regardless of the cause of death.”

“And looking at the notes you made during your examination, you noted the presence of multiple wounds on the body, did you not?”

Funk retrieved his report from the file in his lap and flipped it open. “I did.”

“Now, to be clear, these were not wounds that, in your opinion, contributed to Mr. Vasiliev’s death, correct?”

“That’s correct. The cause of death was the single gunshot wound to the back of the head.”

“But this is not the only gunshot wound on the body?”

Cerrabone looked like he might stand, then thought better of it and remained seated. An objection could draw more attention to a question, and a good attorney had to pick his spots, for that reason. He also likely had confidence in Funk.

“No, it is not. There is evidence of a healed gunshot wound just above the right pectoral muscle.”

“Could you show this bullet wound to the jury on one of the photographs or diagrams Mr. Cerrabone used today?” Sloane walked back to his table, grabbing the stack of photographs, though he already knew the answer. When Funk did not respond, Sloane turned and waited, the jurors watching him. “Dr. Funk?”

“I don’t think we showed any photographs or diagrams depicting that wound to the jury. It’s not our practice—”

“I think Mr. Cerrabone already went into great detail with you concerning your practice, Dr. Funk. What I want is a photograph used by Mr. Cerrabone that depicts that wound.”

“He didn’t use any,” Funk said.

“So I’m clear, that wound is not depicted on any of your diagrams or any of the photographs Mr. Cerrabone showed the jurors, is it?”

“No, it is not.”

“Did you note any
other
wounds on the body?”

An intelligent man, Funk knew Sloane’s direction. “Yes, there is a scar just below the rib cage on the left side.”

“And did you reach a conclusion as to the cause of that scar?”

“It is a healed knife wound.”

“And that also has not been depicted on any diagrams or in any photographs displayed for the jurors today, has it?”

“No.”

“Any other wounds?”

“I found evidence of healed lacerations—multiple lacerations on the victim’s forearms—as well as scarring of tissue on the knuckles of the right hand.”

“Again, do you have any opinions as to what caused the lacerations?”

“They are also healed knife wounds.”

“More knife wounds,” Sloane said. “And the injuries to the knuckles on the right hand?”

“I can’t definitively say.”

“Do you have a hypothesis based on your training, education, and expertise?”

Funk adjusted his glasses. “They are consistent with the type of injuries one would associate with blows administered by fists, like a boxer, someone who used his hands to inflict blows.”

“Was Mr. Vasiliev a boxer, Doctor?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did your direct examination introduce any photographs or diagrams to show the jury these injuries?”

“No.”

After Sloane sat, Cerrabone spent twenty minutes on redirect, but Sloane asked no further questions. He’d accomplished what he
intended. He’d established that Vasiliev was a violent man who had lived a violent life and had nearly been killed before. In the process, he’d implied that the prosecutor had kept that information from the jury. It wasn’t a home run, not by any means, but it was a sharp single, and on cross-examination, that was often as good as it got.

When they returned from their lunch break, Cerrabone called his next witness, Officer Darius Adderley, the first responding officer to the crime scene. A good-looking black man, Adderley entered the courtroom in full-dress blue uniform, complete with body armor beneath his shirt and a utility belt strapped about his waist containing a gun, pepper spray, handcuffs, and radio. Keys on a key ring jingled as he made his way to the witness stand and sat.

After Cerrabone solicited Adderley’s education and training, which included a tour in the Gulf War as an Army Ranger, and which Adderley recounted in a commanding baritone voice, Cerrabone got down to the business at hand. Adderley advised that he had received a 3:03
A.M.
call from dispatch the morning of September 7 of a possible prowler at an address in Laurelhurst. He had arrived at the residence ahead of other units and waited for backup.

Using a diagram of the house, Adderley relayed how he mentally labeled the front of the house side A and proceeded in a clockwise direction, the south side being B, the rear C, and the north D. He explained that side C included a sliding-glass door, through which he and the second officer to arrive first viewed the victim.

“And what did you do?” Cerrabone asked.

“I called it in as a person down and held for more resources.”

“How’d you call it in?”

“Cell phone.”

“Why a cell phone?”

“Media can’t monitor it.”

That brought a few chuckles from the gallery, and Cerrabone, relaxed in his delivery, acknowledged them with a smile of his own.

“Did you attempt to enter?”

Adderley shook his head. “No reason,” he said. He noted that the door was shut, pierced by a single concave hole that caused a
spiderweb of cracks, though the door had not shattered and the glass had not crystallized.

With Rowe’s assistance, Cerrabone had the door wheeled front and center for Adderley to identify. He then used one of the crime-scene diagrams for Adderley to explain the physical location of the body on the sofa, head slumped on the arm, a pool of blood on the hardwood floor.

As Sloane listened to the testimony, something bothered him, though he could not determine what. Still, having learned to trust his gut, he opened his file and pulled out Adderley’s report, studying it yet again, wondering what he might be missing. What didn’t quite make sense?

Barclay picked up her pen and scribbled a note on the yellow pad.
Everything all right?

Sloane nodded but remained unsure what had caused his visceral reaction to the testimony. He’d had similar experiences, when the cause for his concern would suddenly come to him later, at an odd moment—driving, exercising, or in the middle of the night.

Cerrabone asked Adderley whether he and the second officer attempted to enter through the sliding-glass door, but again Adderley said that they had concluded the victim was dead, so they did not even touch the door.

“What did you do next?” Cerrabone asked.

Adderley described how he stationed himself at the back of the house while the second officer waited at the front for SWAT.

“When SWAT arrived, we cleared the house . . . looked to make sure no one else was inside,” Adderley explained.

“And did you find anyone else inside?”

“No. Just the victim.”

“You didn’t disturb anything inside?”

“Tried not to. Once we cleared the residence, we taped it off, secured the perimeter, and waited for the detectives.”

“Did you do anything else? Talk with anyone? Go anywhere else on the property?”

Adderley shook his head. “When Detective Rowe arrived, I turned over the site to him.”

When Cerrabone sat, Underwood looked at the clock. There were just fifteen minutes remaining in the day, and Sloane would have preferred to have the evening to let the unknown thought that Adderley’s testimony had summoned percolate further, but that wasn’t an option. Underwood was not about to waste a minute. “Mr. Sloane, cross?”

Sloane remained seated. “Officer Adderley, you testified that when you arrived at the back of the house, you considered the sliding-glass door and it was closed, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“Closed all the way, as it is displayed here in court, with no opening at all between the edge of the door and the vinyl doorjamb?”

Adderley looked at his report. “I didn’t note that, but that is what I recall.”

“You didn’t attempt to slide the door open?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know if it was locked.”

“I don’t.”

Sloane stood and approached. “Now, you testified that you received a call from dispatch of a suspected prowler, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“It wasn’t ‘shots fired’?”

“No.”

“In your line of work, you get reports of shots fired fairly frequently, do you not?”

Cerrabone objected to the use of the words “fairly frequently” as vague, and Underwood sustained it.

“You receive those calls, do you not?” Sloane asked. He knew the answer from conversations with two retired King County police officers.

“Yes,” Adderley said, then, apparently feeling in the mood to educate, offered, “They are more common than the average person might suspect.”

Sloane silently thanked the officer. “Why is that, Officer Adderley?”

“Most of the time the calls turn out to be false alarms—maybe a car backfiring or a firecracker or something. I had one when a tree branch cracked and two neighbors called it in as a gunshot.”

“Would it be fair to say, given that most of these calls turn out to be false alarms, that you and your fellow officers have become a bit desensitized to them?”

Adderley became cautious. “We treat all calls seriously.”

“I’m sure you do. But would it be fair to say that a report of a suspected prowler would generate, let’s say, greater interest?”