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“Good. This killer is running the show and clearly wants attention. We don’t know shit. Not who, why, or if he’s going to do it again. Press could get him giddy enough to step up his game.”
“Copy that,” said Cindy.
Laughs rounded the table. Richie kissed Cindy’s face, and when the light moment had passed, Brady said, “Boxer, tell the team what you said to me when you showed me Blackout’s videos.”
“I said, Blackout’s taunting me. Why me?” I continued. “Don’t know. Why these targets? Don’t yet know. But, based on Joe’s copy of the FBI Guide to Serial Killer Pathology that we keep on the nightstand,” I joked, “Blackout’s MO is unusual. He doesn’t sexually abuse his victims. He doesn’t collect souvenirs. He films them with sound. He’s clearly experienced at this bloody game. He likes to choke out his female victims. He uses weapons to kill the males. He likes to watch them all die.”
Alvarez rocked back in her chair and then she said, “The music is thoughtfully chosen. He’s an intellectual. And smart. The films are homemade, but he edits the footage. He adds the music, frames the ending. I half expected him to roll credits.”
Conklin said, “If only.”
Brady looked up from his notepad and said, “How does Cindy fit in? At the end of his latest video, Blackout dedicates the murder to ‘Mr. Burke.’ Two of the five killings occur after she does her book signing of Evan Burke’s bio.”
Cindy said, “Why would this guy take out people around me when I’m an unarmed, unguarded target?”
“Effective when I leave this room, you’ll have undercover security 24/7,” said Brady.
Rich said, “Thanks, Brady.”
Brady carefully placed the grease pencil at the top of the page, closed the pad, and folded his hands.
“Cindy, we need your help.”
“Absolutely, yes. What do you need?”
“Tell the team everything you remember about the two people who confronted you, Hammer and this woman, Marge. No detail is too small. And then y’all watch surveillance tapes from both bookstores. I know Rick Martinez, homicide lieutenant at Pasadena PD. I’m sending him the Blackout’s video and the bookstore surveillance.”
When Brady left the room, I switched my phone to record, slid it to the middle of the table, and said, “Ready, Cin? Picture Ralph Hammer. What do you remember about him?”
CHAPTER 32
YUKI SLIPPED INTO her chair at the prosecution table moments before court was called back into session.
She whispered to Gaines, “What’d I miss?”
Her second chair shrugged his right shoulder in the direction of the defense table and Yuki looked across the aisle. Switzer and his client, Lewis Sullivan, had swiveled in their seats. They were facing one another and whispering vehemently behind their hands. Yuki couldn’t hear them, but their body language was loud and clear. There was disagreement between attorney and client and the client was winning his point. What was up?
The bailiff intoned, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Karen Froman.” The hundred people inside the courtroom got to their feet, as Her Honor entered the courtroom from her door behind the bench. The judge asked them to sit and they did.
Switzer stopped his whispered confab with his client and resumed his normal calm demeanor.
Judge Froman quieted the rustle of bags, shuffle of feet,and murmurs into cell phones with the bang of her gavel. When the room was still, Froman said, “Mr. Switzer, your first witness?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” he said. “We call Mr. Lewis Sullivan.”
Yuki and Gaines exchanged surprised looks. Sullivan was going to testify? It was a very risky strategy, but it appeared that Sullivan had demanded to take the stand.
Yuki watched as Lewis Sullivan stood up from his seat at the counsel table. He was wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and businessman’s striped tie, tie clip. His haircut was jailhouse style, cut with blunt scissors, shaved high and short on the back and sides. Still, he looked presentable and almost pure as he walked across the blond-wood floor to the witness stand.
When Sullivan had been sworn in and was seated, Switzer asked his client, “How are you holding up?”
“Bad,” Sullivan said. “I hadn’t planned on being put up at the city jail.”
Juror number four, Pierce Rodman, a retired restaurateur in his fifties, laughed at Sullivan’s joke.
Sullivan thought he was funny. But Yuki had a different thought. Something she had learned long ago in law school: a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.
She started making notes for her cross-examination, but now she heard Switzer asking Sullivan the very same damaging questions she was planning to ask. A legal tactic known as “drawing the sting.”
