it was upholding Taylor's sentence right before my trial started. Lisa
heard about it and saw a convenient defense. The anonymous letter was
also a reaction to the court's decision, probably by some death penalty
opponent or someone just looking for attention. Two totally unrelated
decisions, but both pretty predictable in hindsight. Taylor's the
first real test of Oregon's death penalty; it was bound to attract some
nut jobs
Grace nodded in agreement, and I moved on to bad-mouthing Lisa Lopez as
we finished the bottle of wine. As usual when I visited Grace, I left
feeling better than when I arrived.
On the way home, my cell phone rang. The caller ID read private. Real
helpful. Maybe if I hadn't answered, I would have at least had a
recorded message to give the police.
"Long dinner, Kincaid. Were you and that hot little friend of yours
doing a little eating out up there? If I'd known, I might've followed
you up."
The voice was vaguely familiar, but too muffled to place. "Who is
this?"
He was already gone.
I spent the weekend reviewing the Zimmerman file behind locked doors.
Between checking out every sound, double-checking my alarm, and
periodically turning off the lights to look out my windows, I didn't
feel even half prepared when I headed back to court on Monday
morning.
One thing had become clear to me, though: There was no doubt that the
entire case against Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor turned on Landry's
apparent inside knowledge. Either she had something to do with the
murder or someone had told her these details. No wonder the defense
had turned the focus to Chuck.
As furious as I was about Lopez's dirty tricks, the fact remained that
there was no evidence tying the assault on Ken-dra to the Zimmerman
murder. I also had what is known in the legal world as a butt load of
evidence against Derringer Kendra's ID, the shaved pubic hair, the
detailing of his car a day after the assault, and the fingerprint. It
would be harder work than it first appeared, but I still had a solid
case.
Also, the weekend media coverage was better than it might have been
under the circumstances. Manning's piece appeared as a sidebar to a
follow-up story on the Zimmerman case and anonymous letter. The
feature story didn't contain any new information, just a summary of the
case against Landry and Taylor and an update on their status in prison.
She was a model prisoner who counseled young women; he was a head case
who spent most of his time in solitary.
Manning's sidebar couldn't add much. Just that a defendant was
claiming during his trial that whoever killed Jamie Zimmerman had
committed the crime of which he stood accused. Seeing the assertion in
black and white, without any evidence to support it, made me see how
truly lame it was.
At 9:30 a.m. on Monday, when Lesh took us back on the record, I settled
into my chair for what promised to be a long morning.
Jake Fenninger was Lisa's next witness. Fenninger was the patrol
officer who popped Kendra last Christmas when she was working up in Old
Town. Kendra had already talked about the arrest on direct during my
case-in-chief, but Lisa's hands were tied. She couldn't get into the
Zimmerman case until she plowed through the witnesses she had included
on her defense witness list, most of whom had nothing to say other than
that Andrea Martin might be a trespasser. Compared to them, Fenninger
was riveting.
Lopez walked Fenninger through his background before he started to get
hostile. Fenninger was another New York transplant. He'd worked in
NYPD's infamous street crimes unit before joining PPB a few years ago.
Considering where he got his training and the fact that his dad was
reportedly a hard-line Irish detective from the throw-down school of
the NYPD, Fenninger was a pretty good cop.
I suspected he'd moved west to escape the pressures of being an old
school cop and sincerely wanted to do the right thing on his beat.
Unfortunately, I think he still bought into Giuliani's propaganda that
a "zero tolerance" approach to street crime was for the good not only
of the community but also of the suspect. It can be true in some
instances, but Fenninger had gone too far with Kendra.
Once Lopez had gone through Fenninger's background and current duties
with PPB, she turned to Kendra's Christmas arrest.
"In your role as a patrol officer in Old Town, did you have the
opportunity to encounter Kendra Martin on Christmas of last year,
Officer Fenninger?" Lisa asked.
"Yes, ma'am, I did."
Like most cops, Fenninger probably figured that using "ma'am" and "sir"
in his testimony might counter the stereotypes some people have of
police. They forget that anyone who's been stopped for speeding has
heard the same polite tone and still wound up with a whopper of a
ticket.
"And how did she come to your attention that day?"
"I was patrolling in my vehicle and noticed a girl on the corner of
Fourth and Burnside. She came to my attention because, quite honestly,
just about anyone walking around close to midnight in Old Town on
Christmas is probably up to no good, but she looked like she was only
fourteen years old or so. I figured she was probably a street kid out
working."
"And what do you mean by 'working," Officer Fenninger?" "Prostituting
herself. Exchanging sex for money." "So what did you do about your
suspicions?" Lisa asked. "I first saw her when I was headed west on
Burnside, so when I got to Fifth, I took a right turn, headed north to
Couch, turned right again, then headed south on Fourth so I could watch
her from my patrol vehicle." "What did you observe?"
"I saw the girl wave to a few cars that drove by on Burnside. A couple
of cars stopped, and she talked to them through the passenger window.
All the cars that she had any interaction with were driven by what
appeared to be men who were alone."
"Did you draw any conclusions from that?" "Yes. Given the time of
day, the fact that it was Christmas, the neighborhood, and the activity
that I observed, I believed that the girl was loitering to solicit
prostitution." Fenninger testified that he arrested Kendra for the
ordinance offense and then searched her and her purse, in what's called
a "search incident to an arrest."
Lisa held up a plastic bag with Kendra's purse in it, which I had
marked as evidence during my case. After looking at his police report
to refresh his memory, Fenninger confirmed that it appeared to be the
same type of purse Kendra had been carrying last Christmas. He found
heroin residue in the purse and added a charge for drug possession.
Instead of booking Kendra as a prisoner, he wrote the charges on a
ticket and took her to juvenile hall to have her processed as a