“And you had an inventory of that crime scene and what was found there, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And these were the victim’s belongings and property, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can you refer to that inventory list now?”
With the judge’s permission, Lankford brought the so-called murder book to Whitten. If he had been called by the prosecution, he would have normally taken the witness stand with the thick compendium of all investigative records tucked under his arm. Not bringing it with him to the stand when I called him was a little glimmer of that hostility he was so skilled at hiding.
Working off a copy of the list I had received in discovery, I continued.
“Okay, referring to the inventory list, I see no cell phone. Is that correct?”
“We did not recover a cell phone from the crime scene. That is correct.”
“Now, Mr. La Cosse explained to you, did he not, that he’d been on a call with the victim earlier that evening and that that conversation was the reason he went to her place in person?”
“Yes, that is what he told us.”
“But you found no phone in the apartment, right?”
“Right.”
“Did you or your partner try to find an explanation for this discrepancy?”
“We assumed that the killer took her phones as a means of hiding his trail.”
“You say ‘phones.’ There was more than one phone?”
“Yes, we determined that the victim and the defendant used a variety of throwaway phones to conduct their business. The victim also had a cell phone for private use.”
“Can you tell the jury what a throwaway phone is?”
“These are inexpensive phones that come with a limited number of minutes of call time. When you burn up the minutes, you throw the phone away or in some cases you can reload them with new minutes for a fee.”
“These were used because call records would be difficult to obtain by investigators if the phone was thrown away and you didn’t know where to start looking.”
“Exactly.”
“And this is how Mr. La Cosse and Ms. Dayton communicated in the course of their business, correct?”
“Yes.”
“But you found none of these phones in the apartment after the murder, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Now, you mentioned that the victim also had a cell phone for private use. What did you mean by that?”
“This was an iPhone that she owned and that she used for calls unrelated to her escort business.”
“And this iPhone was also missing after the murder?”
“Yes, we never found it.”
“And whoever killed her, you think he took it.”
“Yes.”
“What was the theory behind that?”
“We believed it was an indication that the killer knew her and that they might have communicated by cell phone or his name and number might be in a contact list on the phone. So the killer took all of the phones as a precaution against being tracked in that way.”
“And the phones have never been found?”
“They have not.”
“So, did this cause you to go to the phone company and order the call records from these phones?”
“We ordered records for the iPhone because we found some bills in the apartment and knew the number. As far as the throwaways went, there was no way to order records when we didn’t have the phones or the numbers. There was nowhere to start.”
I nodded like I was learning all of this for the first time and coming to a deeper understanding of the difficulties Whitten faced on the case.
“Okay, so going back to the iPhone. You ordered records and you had some records you’d found. You studied these records for clues, correct?”
“We did.”
“Did you find any calls to or from Mr. La Cosse on that iPhone?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Did you find any calls that were significant or of note in those records?”
“No, we didn’t.”
I paused there and made a face as I looked down at my notes. I wanted the jury to think I was troubled by the detective’s last answer.
“Now, these records that you ordered, they contained all incoming and outgoing calls on that phone, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Even local calls?”
“Yes, we were able to obtain local records.”
“And you studied these?”
“Yes.”
“And did you find any calls, either coming in or going out, that were significant to your investigation?”
Forsythe objected, saying I was repeating my questions. The judge told me to move along. I asked Whitten to find in the murder book the three-page printout of calls on Gloria’s iPhone.
“Are those your initials on the bottom right corner of this document’s front page?”
“Yes.”
“And you wrote the date of November twenty-sixth there, correct?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why is that?”
“That would be the date that I received the document from the phone company.”
“That would have been fourteen days after the murder. Why did it take so long?”
“I had to secure a search warrant for the records. That took some time and then it took the phone company some time to put it all together.”
“So by the time you got these records, Andre La Cosse had already been arrested and charged with the murder, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You believed that you had the killer in jail, correct?”
“Yes, correct.”
“So then, what good were these phone records?”
“The investigation always continues after an arrest. In this case, all leads were followed and we continued all valid avenues of investigation. The report on the phone records was one of them.”
“Well then, did you find any numbers on this list that were connected to Mr. La Cosse?”
“No.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Then did any of the numbers listed here — there must be about two hundred — have investigative value to you?”
“No, sir, they didn’t.”
“And, by the way, how are the numbers ordered here?”
“By frequency of calls. The numbers she called the most often are at the top and then they go down in descending frequency from there.”
I turned to the last page and told Whitten to do so as well.
“So on the last page here, these are numbers she called just once?”
“Correct.”
“For how long a period?”
“The search warrant asked for records going back six months.”
I nodded.
“Detective, let me draw your attention to the ninth number down on the third page. Can you read that out to the jury?”
I heard rustling as Forsythe decided I might be doing more than wasting the court’s time and turned the pages of his copy of the document.
“Area code two-one-three, six-two-one, sixty-seven hundred,” Whitten read.
“And when was that number dialed on Gloria Dayton’s iPhone?”
Whitten squinted as he read.
“At six forty-seven p.m. on November fifth.”
Forsythe now understood where I was going with this and stood up and objected.
“Relevancy, Your Honor,” he said with an urgent tone in his voice. “We’ve allowed defense counsel great latitude, but where does it end? He is going far off the reservation here, stringing out the details of one three-minute phone call. It has nothing to do with the case at hand or the charges against his client.”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Your Honor, Mr. Forsythe knows exactly where this is headed, and he does not want the jury to go there because he knows the house of cards that is the prosecution’s case is in great peril.”
The judge made a motion with her hands, bringing her fingers together.