'Do you know Frank and Derrick Derringer?' I asked.
'Unfortunately,' she said. 'Can't be on the street as long as I have
without running into them.'
I had made the connection when I reviewed the file at Kendra's. I had
printed out Derrick Derringer's PPDS record so I could cross-examine
him about his prior convictions, but I'd never seen the need to pay any
attention to the basic identifying information, like hair and eye
color, height, and, most importantly, tattoos.
I pulled out one of the photographs that Kendra had given me the first
time I met her, the one showing Haley and a couple of girls with a man
whose face wasn't shown but whose tattoo was. I'd retrieved the
photographs from Tommy Garcia before I'd gone looking for Haley.
'Haley, I'm handing you a photograph that appears to show you with a
man and two other girls. Will you please tell the grand jurors what's
going on in that picture?'
'Uh, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?'
'Humor us,' I said.
'Well,' she said, looking at the picture, 'a few of us were partying
with a guy, and someone saw a disposable camera lying around and
started taking pictures.'
'Whose camera was it?'
'Kendra's,' she said.
'Kendra Martin?' I clarified.
'Yeah. Kendra wasn't actually there. She'd been in my room earlier,
hanging out, and left it behind.'
'Are the other girls in the picture also from the Hamilton?'
'Yeah, on and off, like me,' she said.
'Who's the man in the picture, the one with the tattoo of the Tasmanian
Devil?'
'That's Derrick Derringer.'
'How do you know him?' I asked.
'Like I said, hard not to know him,' she said. 'Him and his brother
cut in on a lot of the girls' business out there. They take a share
from you, or all of a sudden bad things start happening to you.'
'Do you give any money to Frank and Derrick Derringer?'
'Yeah, I got to give 'em half of what I make. For a long time, they
were leaving us younger girls alone as long as we'd do other stuff for
'em. Now they want both. Like that night we took the picture, we did
the group thing for him, but then I had to keep giving him money on top
of it.'
'So you have had sexual intercourse with Derrick Derringer?'
'Duh,' she said.
'The court reporter, Haley,' I reminded her.
'Yes. I've had sexual intercourse with him.'
'To your knowledge, did Kendra Martin pay any of the money that she
earned to Frank and Derrick Derringer?' I asked.
'Nope. She hadn't been working long enough to really know who they
were yet. She seemed to think she was too good for a lot of it and was
real careful to stay on her own.'
'What did the Derringers think of that?' I asked.
Haley and I had gone over her testimony carefully before I'd given her
the immunity deal. I was still worried, though, that she'd back out on
me.
'They were pissed. All the girls knew Kendra was out on her own. A
couple times, we told her to come around when we knew Frank or Derrick
were coming by. You know, we'd say we knew these guys and we wouldn't
be getting paid but needed to do it anyway. I figured she knew the
score, but she kept blowing us off while we were still getting stuck
with them. It was pissing a bunch of the girls off too, and they
started telling Frank and Derrick that they weren't going to go along
if Kendra wasn't.'
'How did the Derringers react to that?'
Haley looked at me and then the door. For a second, it seemed like she
considered bailing, but she stayed put. She was going to need some
prodding.
'Haley, I asked you how the Derringers reacted to that.'
'All I know is, I saw Derrick the day after Kendra got messed up. He
