Page 91 of Witness 8

‘Correct.’

‘Together?’

‘With other individuals, yes.’

‘Would it be possible, at a busy and noisy party, to slip out of the front door unnoticed?’

‘No,’ said Chase, and now he was in trouble.

‘It’snotpossible to do that? So your officers spoke to every person at the party, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘And every minute that those individuals were at the party was accounted for by witnesses?’

Chase said nothing. He just bit down on his lips. Smoothed his pants.

After a few seconds more, he said, ‘No, they did not account for every minute.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So when you told this jury it was not possible for either of these two individuals to slip out the front door unnoticed, that was a lie?’

‘Not a lie – I was just momentarily inaccurate.’

‘Momentarily inaccuratesounds a lot likealternative factsto me. You understand you are under oath today, Officer?’

He nodded.

‘Having made assumptions in your investigation as to possible motives, neither you nor your officers conducted a thorough search of the upstairs bedrooms, did you?’

‘We carried out a once-over search. It was not a search and seizure situation.’

‘You were looking for possible motives, suspects, yet you didn’t find this . . .’

I walked back to the defense table and Kate handed me our first exhibit.

‘This is a cellular phone, registered to Margaret Blakemore, and hidden in her sock drawer in the bedroom upstairs. This phone contains only two contact phone numbers, and one text message remains on the phone. From the text message, it’s clear the deceased was involved in a sexual relationship with at least one of these contacts. You were not aware of this, were you?’

‘No, this is the first time I’ve seen that phone.’

‘Your Honor, this should have been disclosed . . .’ Castro was on his feet, objecting, blood filling his angry cheeks as we both approached the bench.

‘Your Honor, I didn’t know if the police had seen this phone, and ignored it, or had never seen it before until I asked this officer. For all I know, they’d examined it and deemed it irrelevant. Obviously, we want to submit this as a defense exhibit,’ I said, stretching the truth as far as I was comfortable with in front of a judge.

‘This is blatant ambush tactics, Your Honor,’ said Castro.

‘Maybe he’s right? He knows all about ambushing his opponents . . .’

‘Alright, alright,’ said Judge Zell, and stared at me.

He knew I was getting blindsided with an anonymous witness by Castro. This gave me a little leeway of my own.

‘Is there anything else relevant that you have not disclosed to the prosecution?’ he asked me. ‘What’s on this phone?’

‘One text message, sent by the victim maybe six or seven hours before the murder. We haven’t been able to trace the other phone numbers to registered devices. But it’s clear from the SMS message the deceased was involved with at least one of these contacts. There are phone calls from both numbers to the victim’s phone the day before the murder.’

Zell was a decent man, and had the makings of a good judge.

‘I’ll admit the exhibit. But you have to promise me there are no more surprises.’