The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5) (38 page)

“They don’t have video on the guest floors. But from what we did see of the lobby and elevators videos, we concluded that there was no one in the room she was sent to. She even checked at the front desk and they told her no. You can see it on the video.”

“Why didn’t the state present this video to the jury during the prosecution phase of this trial?”

Forsythe objected, saying the question was argumentative and irrelevant. Judge Leggoe agreed and sustained the objection, but again the question was more important than the answer. I wanted the jurors to wish they had seen the video, whether it was germane to the murder or not.

I moved on.

“Detective, how do you account for the discrepancy between Andre La Cosse setting up the date at the Beverly Wilshire and Gloria Dayton going there and finding the room unoccupied?”

“I don’t account for it.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Sure it bothers me but not every loose end gets tied up.”

“Well, tell us, what you think happened that could explain what seems to be some kind of mix-up on Andre La Cosse’s part?”

Forsythe objected, saying the answer called for speculation. This time the judge overruled, saying she wanted to hear the detective’s answer.

“I really don’t have an answer,” Whitten said.

I checked my notes to see if I had forgotten anything and then glanced at the defense table to see if Jennifer had any reminders. It looked like I was clear. I thanked the witness and told the judge I had no further questions.

Forsythe went to the lectern to see if he could bandage the wounds I had opened in the prosecution’s case during the morning session. He would have been better off passing, because it came off—at least to me—as though he was more worried about semantics than content. He brought out that Whitten had been an undercover narcotics officer in an earlier part of his career. As such he had several confidential sources that fed him tips. None of them, he testified, contacted him through the main number of the police station. That would have been highly unusual and dangerous. They all were given private numbers with which to make contact.

That was all well and good, but it did not speak to Gloria Dayton’s circumstances and gave me an easy setup when it was my turn for redirect. I didn’t even go to the lectern with my legal pad.

“Detective Whitten, how long ago did you work as an undercover narcotics officer?”

“I did it for two years—two thousand and two thousand and one.”

“Okay, and do you still have the same cell phone number from those days?”

“No, I’m in homicide now.”

“You have a new number.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so what if one of your informants from two thousand and one wanted to call you today because they had information you needed to have?”

“Well, I would direct this person to current narcotics investigators.”

“You’re missing the point of the question. How would that old source of yours reach out to you, since the old established method of contact is no longer in existence?”

“There are a lot of different ways.”

“Like calling the main number of the police station and asking for you?”

“I don’t see an informant who wants to stay an informant doing that.”

Whitten understood what I wanted and obstinately didn’t want to give me the point. It didn’t matter, though. I was sure the jury understood. Gloria Dayton had no way after so many years to contact Agent Marco but to call the DEA’s main number.

I gave up and sat down. Whitten was dismissed and I called my next witness, Victor Hensley.

Hensley was a Trojan horse witness. His was the sixteenth name on the original witness list that the defense turned in before the start of trial. In keeping with court protocol, each name on the witness list was followed by a brief description of who the person was and what his or her expected testimony would be. This was to help the opposing side decide how much focus and time to apply to vetting and preparing for the witness’s testimony. However, in placing Hensley’s name on the list, I didn’t want the prosecution to know my true purpose—which was to use him to enter the Beverly Wilshire’s security videos as defense exhibits. So I listed Hensley’s occupation and simply described him as a corroborating witness. My hope was that Forsythe and his investigator Lankford would view Hensley as a witness who would confirm that no one had rented the room that Gloria Dayton had gone to on the night of her death.

As it turned out, Hensley reported to Cisco during a check-in phone call that during the run-up to the trial, he’d had only one brief visit at the hotel from Lankford and had never spoken to Forsythe at all. All of this boded well for me. I realized as Hensley took the stand, carrying with him a smart-looking leather folder with his notes inside, that I stood a good chance of not only maintaining the momentum begun that morning with Whitten but increasing it.

Hensley was in his late fifties and looked like a cop. After he was sworn in, I quickly ran down his pedigree as a former detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department who retired and took the job in security at the Beverly Wilshire. I then asked him if the hotel security staff had conducted its own investigation of the part the premises had played in the hours before Gloria Dayton’s murder.

“Yes, we did,” he answered. “Once we became aware that the hotel played a tangential part in the situation, we looked into it.”

“And did you take part in that investigation yourself?”

“Yes, I did. I was in charge of it.”

I then led Hensley through a series of questions and answers that outlined how he had worked with LAPD detectives and confirmed that Gloria Dayton had entered the hotel that evening and knocked on a guest-room door. He also confirmed that the room where she had knocked was empty and that no guest was staying in it.

My Trojan horse was now inside the gate and I got down to work.

“Now, from the very start, the defendant has claimed to police that a prospective client had called from the Beverly Wilshire and said that he was in that room. Is that possible?”

“No, it’s not possible that a guest was staying in that room.”

“But could someone have gotten in that room somehow and made the call?”

“Anything’s possible. It would have to be someone who had a key.”

“Is it an electronic key?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check to see if someone stayed in that room the night before?”

“Yes, we checked, and someone did stay in that room the night before. That would have been Saturday night. We’d had a wedding reception in the hotel, and the bride and groom stayed in that suite that night.”

“When is checkout time?”

“Noon. But they asked for late checkout because they had an evening flight to Hawaii. Since they were newlyweds, we gladly accommodated them. They left at four twenty-five that afternoon, according to our records, meaning they probably left the room at four fifteen or so. We covered this in our investigation.”

“So the room was occupied until four fifteen or so and then not rebooked for Sunday night.”

“That’s correct. Because of the late checkout, it was not put on the availability list because housekeeping wouldn’t have it ready until much later.”

“And if someone somehow got access to that room—got in somehow—then he would have been able to use the phone to call out, is that right?”

“That is correct.”

“Would a call from outside the hotel be put through to that room if the caller requested it?”

“The policy at our hotel is that no call is transferred to a room without the caller asking for the guest by name. You cannot just call up and ask for room twelve-ten, for example. You have to know the name, and it has to be a registered guest. So the answer is no. The call would not have been put through.”

I nodded thoughtfully before continuing.

“What were the names of the newlyweds who had the suite the night before?”

“Daniel and . . .”

He opened his yellow folder and checked his notes from the investigation.

“. . . Laura Price. But they were checked out and on their way to Hawaii when all of these events were supposedly happening.”

“Earlier in this trial, the prosecution introduced a video of the police interrogation of the defendant, Andre La Cosse. Are you familiar with it?”

“No, I have not seen it.”

I got permission from the judge to reshow a portion of the interrogation on the overhead screen. In the segment, Andre La Cosse told Detective Whitten that he received a blocked call from someone named Daniel Price at about four-thirty the afternoon before the murder. As a security measure, he then asked for a callback number and the caller provided the phone number and a room number at the Beverly Wilshire. La Cosse said he called the hotel back, asked for Daniel Price’s room, and was put through. They made arrangements for escort service at eight p.m., with Giselle Dallinger being the provider.

I turned the video off and looked at Hensley.

“Mr. Hensley, does your hotel keep records of incoming calls to guest rooms?”

“No, only outgoing calls, because those are charged to the guest account.”

I nodded.

“How would you explain that Mr. La Cosse had the right name and room number when he called the hotel?”

Hensley shook his head.

“I can’t explain it.”

“Is it possible that because of the late checkout given the newlyweds, the name Daniel Price was still on the guest list that the hotel operator uses?”

“It’s possible. But once they checked out, the name would have been removed from the current guest list.”

“Is that a human process or a computerized process?”

“Human. The name is deleted from the current guest list at the front desk when someone checks out.”

“So if the person handling the assignment at the front desk got busy with other work or other guests, that process might have been delayed, correct?”

“It could have happened.”

“It could have happened,” I repeated. “Isn’t three o’clock check-in time at the hotel?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is the front desk generally busy at that time?”

“It all depends on the day of the week, and Sunday check-ins are usually slow. But you’re right, it could have been busy at the desk.”

I didn’t know what any of this got me, but I felt that the jury might be getting bored. It was time to open the trapdoor in the Trojan horse’s belly. Time to come out of hiding and attack.

“Mr. Hensley, let’s move on a bit. You said in your earlier testimony that the hotel’s own investigation confirmed that the victim, Gloria Dayton, had entered the hotel on the evening of last November eleventh. How did you confirm that?”

“We looked at video from the cameras and pretty soon we found her.”

“And you were able to track her by different cameras and video as she moved through the hotel, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you bring a copy of the video from the cameras with you to court today?”

“Yes, I did.”

He pulled a disc out of one of the pockets of his leather folder and held it up for a moment.

“Did you ever give a copy of that video record to the LAPD investigators who were working on the case?”

“The detectives came by early in the investigation and reviewed our raw feeds—this was before we put together a single video that tracked the woman they were interested in through the hotel. We later put that together and made all the material available, but nobody came to pick it up until a couple months ago.”

“Was that Detective Whitten or his partner?”

“No, it was Mr. Lankford from the DA’s Office. They were prepping for the trial and he came around to collect what we had.”

I wanted to turn and look at Forsythe, to try to get a read on whether he ever saw the video—because it sure never showed up on any discovery list I had seen.

But I didn’t look at the prosecutor, because I didn’t want to give anything away. Not yet, at least.

“Do you see Mr. Lankford here in court today?” I asked Hensley.

“Yes, I do.”

I then asked the judge to tell Lankford to stand, and Hensley identified him. Lankford looked at me with eyes that were as cold and gray as a January dawn. After he was reseated, I turned to the judge and asked if the attorneys could approach. The judge waved us up and she knew exactly what I wanted to talk about.

“Don’t tell me, Mr. Haller. You didn’t get copied on the videos.”

“That’s right, Judge. The witness says the prosecution has had this material for two months and not a single frame of video was turned over in discovery to the defense. That’s a direct violation of—”

“Your Honor,” Forsythe broke in. “I have not even seen these videos myself so—”

“But your investigator took delivery of them,” the judge said in a tone of incredulity that told me she was going to come down on my side on this.

“Your Honor,” Forsythe sputtered, “I can’t explain this. If you wish to question my investigator in camera, I am sure there is an explanation. The bottom line is all parties are in agreement that the victim visited that hotel in the hours before her death. It’s not in dispute, so the trespass here is minimal. No harm, no foul, Judge. I make a motion we press on with the case.”

I shook my head wearily.

“Judge, there is no way of knowing whether there is no harm and no foul without looking at the videos.”

The judge nodded in agreement.

“How much time do you need, Mr. Haller?”

“I don’t know. There can’t be a lot of material. An hour?”

“Very well. One hour. You can use the conference room down the hall. My clerk has the key. Step back, gentlemen.”

As I walked back to the defense table, I raised my eyes to the railing and found Lankford staring back at me.

I
borrowed Lorna’s iPad back from her after the judge broke for the hour. Since I had already studied the Beverly Wilshire videos at length, my purpose in complaining about the prosecution’s discovery violation was actually an effort to conceal my own violation in not providing the same videos to Forsythe. Either way, I didn’t need an hour to study them again. Instead, I used the time to watch the surveillance video from the Stratton Sterghos house once more and to strategize its best use in bringing down Marco and Lankford on the way to a not-guilty verdict for Andre La Cosse. The video was indeed the depth charge I had hoped for. It was waiting below the surface for the prosecution to sail over. When I detonated the charge, Forsythe’s ship would sink.