I cut him off. 'No further questions, your honor.'
Lisa tried to rehabilitate him as a witness, but what could he say? He
claimed he was confused in the previous trial about the night in
question, which might be better than admitting to an offer to perjure.
I was pretty sure the jurors saw him for what he was, though.
Considering the crap Lisa had pulled, I got through the afternoon
pretty well.
By the time we were done with Derrick Derringer, it was a little past
five, so Lesh was more than ready to call it a day. Lesh is one of the
hardest working judges in the courtroom, so you can usually count on
him to have trial every day, even Fridays, which most judges view as
golf day. But this evening he announced that he had a funeral to
attend the next day and that we would not reconvene until Monday. The
delay would give me some extra time to file whatever papers I planned
to submit in support of my motion to exclude the evidence of the
Zimmerman case.
When I reached the eighth floor, I went straight to O'Donnell's office.
Luckily he was still in.
'Thank God you're here. Did Alice tell you what's happening in Lesh's
courtroom?'
'Yeah. I figured you'd want to talk as soon as possible, so I told the
guys to go running without me.'
I was glad enough not to hear him say I told you so. But missing an
opportunity to run on a sunny day in Portland is huge around the DA's
office, where running is essentially our religion. I suspect I got my
job more for my mile times than my educational pedigree. 'Thanks. I
need the help. I know close to nothing about the Zimmerman case, and
Lopez is dumping it with no notice right in the middle of the Derringer
trial.'
He looked at his watch. 'Unfortunately, the Zimmerman case was pretty
fucked up, and this anonymous letter just makes it look worse. It'll
take awhile for you to get up to speed, and I don't have long.'
A date, no doubt. Good to know the head of the major crimes unit had
his priorities straight. 'Well, start by giving me what my detectives
can say and where they might be weak. The only good thing about Lopez
springing this thing on me is that she boxed herself in on witnesses.
She's basically got to get the defense in through my witnesses. I've
got Walker, Johnson, and Forbes. They were all involved in Zimmerman,
right?'
'Yeah. I can tell you right now that, if you've got a problem, it'll
be Forbes. Let me give you some background.' He explained what I
already knew, that Forbes got involved in the case by happenstance when
Taylor's probation officer, Bernie Edwards, called him in to follow up
on Landry's reported suspicions.
He then filled in the details leading up to Landry's confession. 'You
got to understand that when Edwards and Forbes went out to Landry's,
they were already pretty sure she was full of shit. It was basically a
CYA house visit in the event Landry actually knew something. It was
about a month after Zimmerman's body was found, and the Oregonian
printed a short Crime Watchers column with a picture of the vie and a
bare-bones description of the crime, asking people to call in if they
knew anything. Landry told Edwards and Forbes that she read it and
started thinking that maybe Taylor had something to do with the
murder.
'She said she remembered Taylor coming home drunk unusually late around
the time of the crime and taking a shower, which was not typical for
him at night. When she woke up in the morning, he was doing a load of
laundry already, which was also strange. She said that about a week
later she overheard Taylor talking on the phone, saying something about
how someone named Jamie had flipped out on him. She assumed Jamie was
a guy at the time, so didn't think too much of it. But, according to
her, she put all this together when she read the article and then
called Edwards.'
I took a second to process the information. 'Huh? Even if she was
telling the truth at that point, why would she connect Taylor to a
murder based on that?'
'I know. It didn't make sense to Edwards or Forbes either. They
shined her on a little bit and then left. But then Margaret figures
out that they're blowing her off, so she calls Edwards the next day and
tells him she was poking around in Taylor's stuff and found a matchbook
from Tommy Z's that said Jamie Z with a telephone number on it. Edwards
runs a reverse trace on the number and it comes back to Jamie
Zimmerman's mother's house.'
'Did Jamie live with her mother?' I asked.
'As much as she lived anywhere for any substantial period of time, I
guess. Before she was killed, she'd been out of her mom's house for
about six months. Hey, I know what you're thinking, and, trust me,
Edwards and Forbes thought it too. They figured she looked the number
up in the book or something. But Jamie's mom had a different last name
I can't remember what it is now and the paper never printed it. That
phone number was a big piece of evidence for us down the road, when
Margaret was backing out of her confession. We looked at the case up
and down, and we just couldn't figure out how she could've come up with
