“You interrogated Steven McCoy privately, is that correct?”
“Yes, that is correct,” she replied. “I interviewed McCoy, Detective Watson interviewed Woodruff.”
“How long was your interview with Steven McCoy?”
“About twenty minutes. Half an hour at the most.”
“You were alone with him? It was just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tape that part of the interview?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?” Luke asked. “You just testified that you tape everything.”
She squiggled around in her seat some more. “That room wasn’t equipped for taping.”
“Was the door open? Was anyone observing you?”
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
“To both questions,” he said, making sure to pin her down.
“Yes. The answer is no to both questions. The door was shut, so no one could have seen us.”
“So anything could have gone on in there.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.
“I don’t know,” he parried. “What should I mean?”
“You seem to be implying something,” she spat out at him.
Luke felt like giving her a hug. That was a big mistake, lady. You just opened up a nasty can of worms. He looked back into the room. Alex was massaging his temples. Elise was staring fiercely at Rebeck, her eyes two black accusers.
“I’m not
implying
anything,” Luke said. “Let me put the question to you directly. Did anything go on between you and Steven McCoy, while you were alone in the room with him?”
Rebeck flushed red. “That’s preposterous!”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Luke came back calmly. “Was there any physical contact between you and the defendant?”
“No,” she answered tightly. “There was not.”
“Nothing?” he pressed. “Not a touch, an accidental bump, a handshake? There was zero contact between the two of you?”
He was close enough to her to see that she was shaking. So Steven hadn’t been lying about that after all. Something had happened between them. Maybe they had done nothing more than exchange implied signals. But there had been something.
All twelve members of the jury were looking intently at Detective Cindy Rebeck. She sat up in the witness chair, and faced Luke directly.
“I touched him,” she admitted.
A low murmur went through the courtroom. From the corner of his eye Luke could see Steven. He was locked into Rebeck.
“Where?” Luke asked her. “How?”
“On the arm and shoulder. I may have brushed his neck accidentally with my fingers. I was trying to put him at ease,” she said quietly. The fight was out of her now. “He was becoming agitated, and uncommunicative. I was trying to calm him down.”
“By stroking his neck? I’m sure he reacted to that, but I don’t believe it would have calmed him down. More the reverse, I’d think.”
Someone in the large room tittered. Rebeck sat up straight. “My intention was to calm him down. Nothing more.”
Elise tried to apply damage control on redirect. “When did you read the defendant his Miranda rights?” she asked Rebeck.
“As soon as I finished interviewing him.”
“That was before a gun had been found at the murder site that had his fingerprints on it?”
“Yes. I didn’t know anything about the gun at that time.”
You’re lying, Luke thought darkly. You damn well knew about the gun by then. He made a note to check the logs for the exact time Steven’s interrogation had ended, as well as when Perdue had found the weapon and taken it to the lab for testing.
“Why did you read the defendant his Miranda rights, and not Tyler Woodruff?” Elise asked. She knew Luke would hammer Watson with that, and she wanted to beat him to the punch.
“Woodruff had an alibi for what he had done that day, and where he had been,” Rebeck explained. “McCoy didn’t.”
“You did everything by the book, didn’t you?” Elise asked.
“Objection.” Luke didn’t bother getting up. “Leading the witness.”
“I’ll rephrase, your honor,” Elise said, before Martindale could sustain Luke’s motion. “Did you follow proper and established police procedures in your handling of Steven McCoy, in regards to informing him of his Miranda rights on a timely basis?”
“Absolutely,” Rebeck answered resolutely. “To the letter.”
Watson followed Rebeck. He didn’t have anything new to add, although he did admit that Tyler’s knee-jerk reaction to whether the gate had been open or locked when the boys left the ranch to go to town had rung a bell in the back of his mind; but he had ignored it, because McCoy had insisted the gate had been open, and Woodruff had agreed. It was only later, when the gun and the other hard evidence came in, that he thought Woodruff’s initial reaction had validity.
Luke didn’t spend much time on cross. Watson didn’t have anything to add that he hadn’t already gotten from Rebeck, and he wanted the jury to keep his interrogation of Rebeck as fresh in their memories as possible.
The rain let up overnight, but by morning it was coming down in sheets again. The courtroom smelled of wet clothes. Umbrellas were stacked outside in the hallway like sentries.
Tyler was sworn in and took the stand. As he sat down he gave Steven a hangdog look, as if to say “I didn’t want to be here. They made me.”
The two friends hadn’t seen each other since Steven’s arrest. During the fall they had spoken on the phone and had exchanged e-mails, but after the first of the year there had been no communication: once Tyler reluctantly agreed to testify as a prosecution witness, the two weren’t allowed to have any contact.
Alex Gordon strode forward to the podium. Tyler was the prosecution’s key witness. He was the only person who could physically place Steven at the ranch (except for the brief interlude with Juanita, which had taken place hours before Maria Estrada was last seen), the only one who had gone from the ranch to Santa Barbara and back with Steven, and had been with Steven after they returned. He had driven in and out of the security gate with Steven, and had been inside the house when Steven supposedly handled the revolver that turned out to be the murder weapon.
Alex squared his notes. “Thank you for coming out here from Tucson and testifying in this matter,” he began, as if Tyler was here of his own free will.
Tyler nodded and muttered, “You’re welcome.”
Alex’s questioning was brisk. “When you arrived at the ranch, the security gate was closed and locked, is that correct?” he asked Tyler.
“Yes. It was locked,” Tyler answered.
“And how did you get it open?”
“Steven opened it.”
“With a key, or was there a combination lock?” Alex asked.
“A combination.”
“Which Steven knew? He knew the combination to the lock?”
Tyler nodded. “Yes.”
“Did he tell you how he had got the combination?”
“He said he remembered from the last time he had been there, over the Christmas holidays.”
“He unlocked the gate and you drove in. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you close the gate behind you and lock it back up?”
“No. We left it open.”
“So between eleven o’clock in the morning and noon on the day in question, the security gate was unlocked and open. A vehicle could drive in and out.”
Tyler nodded, and answered, “Yes.”
“What did you do after you entered the property?” Alex continued. He pointed to a map of the ranch that was mounted on an easel between the witness stand and the jury box. “Did you drive along this road?” He picked up his baton and ran it along the access road. “To here? This house?” He touched the picture of the old house with the pointer.
“Yes.”
“And when you got there, did you see anyone?”
“Steven’s grandmother was there.”
“At the old ranch house? Inside the old ranch house?”
“Yes. She was inside. She came out when she heard us drive up.”
“Was she expecting you?”
“No. She was surprised.”
“Steven McCoy hadn’t called ahead to let her know you were coming?”
Another “No.”
“Did she express surprise that you had been able to get through the security gate?”
As he waited for the answer, Alex looked over at the jury box. The jurors were paying close attention.
“At first,” Tyler answered. “She was worried that it had been left open. Steven had to tell her how he knew about the combination. Then she was okay.”
Alex shuffled through his notes for a moment. “About how much time did you spend on the property that morning?”
“Hardly any,” Tyler told him. “Ten or twenty minutes.”
“Did you go inside the house?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“Steven and Mrs. McCoy talked. He told her we were going into Santa Barbara, and that we wanted to come back at night and stay there, at the old house. He had good memories of it.”
“All right. You and Steven McCoy were there for a few minutes, then you drove into Santa Barbara.”
“Yes.”
“You left the property the same way you came in? Through the security gate?”
Tyler nodded. “I think it’s the only way in and out.”
“Did Mrs. McCoy say anything to you about the gate?”
“She asked us to close and lock it behind us. She didn’t like people having access to her property.”
“Okay,” Alex said. He’d come back to the gate later, so it would have the maximum impact on the jury. “What happened when you got to Santa Barbara?”
Tyler explained that they had gone to Super Rica for lunch, then drove to the mall. They had wandered around for a short time, and he then bumped into Serena Hopkins, an old girlfriend of his, who was starting her last year at UCSB.
“You and this girl took off together?”
Tyler nodded. “Yes.”
“Leaving Steven McCoy by himself?”
Another “Yes.”
“What time was that, do you recall?”
“About two.”
Alex made a show of writing that down. “Two o’clock in the afternoon, you and Steven McCoy separated.” He looked up. “When did you and Steven hook up again?”
Tyler glanced toward the defense table. Steven was staring at him. Tyler looked away, to Alex Gordon in front of him.
“Eight o’clock,” he answered.
“Eight in the evening.”
“Yes.”
“So for about six hours you didn’t see each other, at all. Did you talk on your cell phones?”
Tyler shook his head. “No.”
Alex glanced at his notes again. “Did you try, at any time, to reach Steven McCoy on his cell phone?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“About seven-fifteen.”
“Seven-fifteen in the evening. Why did you try to call him then?”
Tyler shifted in the chair. “He was late. I was beginning to wonder where he was.”
“He was late,” Alex repeated. “Does that mean that you and he had set a time earlier for when the two of you would get back together?”
“Yes,” Tyler answered.
“What time was that?”
“Seven.”
Alex paused for a moment. Then he asked, “What were you thinking when he didn’t show up?”
Tyler squirmed in his chair. “First I thought I’d gotten confused about where we had agreed to meet up. But I was pretty sure I remembered, because it was where we had separated. Then I thought he must have met someone and gone off, and lost track of the time.”
“Was part of the reason you were worried was because he had the car? You had taken this road trip in his car, right?”
“Yes.”
“A dark-blue Nissan Pathfinder SUV, is that correct? Steven McCoy’s car was a Nissan Pathfinder?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Alex shuffled the papers on the stand. “When McCoy showed up at eight o’clock, what was his excuse for being late?”
Tyler shifted around again. “He said he had gone to a movie and had lost track of the time.”
“A movie.” Alex thought about that for a moment. “Did he tell you about anything else he had done that day? Anywhere he had been, anyone he had seen?”
“He told me he went to the beach and had a beer after that.”
“In the six hours that you and he were apart he went to the beach, had a beer, and went to a movie. That’s all he said he did?”
“Yes. That’s what he said,” Tyler told him.
“Okay. So now you’re back together. What did you do then?”
“We got dinner. Brophy’s, down at the beach.”
“And then?”
“We drove back to the ranch.”
“You drove back to the ranch,” Alex repeated. “When you got there, was the gate open, or locked?”
Luke leaned forward. This was going to be some of the most important, and potentially, the most damaging testimony in the trial. Steven, sitting next to him, was particularly alert: he, too, knew the importance of what was about to come.
Luke took a quick look behind him. Kate, sitting in the first row behind the barrier, was visibly tense. Seated behind her, Steven’s parents and Juanita were watching attentively. Steven’s parents looked worried, but they had looked worried from day one, even when Luke was scoring points for Steven.
Juanita was the only spectator who didn’t seem to be upset or concerned. She was intent on the process, but her face was tranquil. This woman has incredible inner serenity, Luke thought in admiration. She could weather anything. He turned his attention back to the front of the room, to hear Tyler’s answer.
There was no doubt in Tyler’s voice. “It was open.”
“Opened. Not locked.”
“Yes.”
“Were you surprised?”
Tyler hesitated.
“Because you had remembered that you locked it behind you when you drove into town, isn’t that right?” Alex continued, before Tyler could answer. “That Mrs. McCoy had reminded Steven—warned him, really—to make sure and lock the gate?”
“I remembered that she had reminded us to lock it,” Tyler answered.
“So when you returned, and saw that the security gate was unlocked, you were surprised,” Alex stated yet again.
Tyler looked away from him for a moment, toward the defense side of the courtroom. Then he turned back to Alex.
“No.”
For a second, Tyler’s answer didn’t register with Alex; then it did, and Alex looked like he had just taken an unexpected step off a cliff. He turned around to Elise, who was feverishly digging through a thick stack of notes in front of her.