The Gods of Guilt(112)

“Yes, La Cosse wanted his share from a client and Gloria Dayton said there had been no client, that nobody was in the room he sent her to.”

I pointed at the ground as if pointing to the moment he just described.

“Did you and your partner investigate that disagreement to determine who was right and who was wrong?”

“If you mean, did we check out whether the victim was actually holding out on La Cosse, yes we looked into it. We determined that the room La Cosse sent her to was unoccupied and that the name La Cosse said he gave her belonged to the guest who was in that room previously but had already checked out. There was no one in that room when she went to the hotel. He killed her for holding out on money she didn’t have.”

I asked the judge to strike Whitten’s last sentence as unresponsive and prejudicial. She agreed and instructed the jury to disregard it, for whatever that was worth. I moved on, hitting Whitten with a new set of questions.

“Did you check to see if the Beverly Wilshire had surveillance cameras on site, Detective Whitten?”

“Yes, and they do.”

“Did you review any of video from the night in question?”

“We went to the security office at the hotel and reviewed their video feeds, yes.”

“And what did you glean from your review, Detective Whitten?”

“They don’t have video on the guest floors. But from what we did see of the lobby and elevators videos, we concluded that there was no one in the room she was sent to. She even checked at the front desk and they told her no. You can see it on the video.”

“Why didn’t the state present this video to the jury during the prosecution phase of this trial?”

Forsythe objected, saying the question was argumentative and irrelevant. Judge Leggoe agreed and sustained the objection, but again the question was more important than the answer. I wanted the jurors to wish they had seen the video, whether it was germane to the murder or not.

I moved on.

“Detective, how do you account for the discrepancy between Andre La Cosse setting up the date at the Beverly Wilshire and Gloria Dayton going there and finding the room unoccupied?”

“I don’t account for it.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Sure it bothers me but not every loose end gets tied up.”

“Well, tell us, what you think happened that could explain what seems to be some kind of mix-up on Andre La Cosse’s part?”

Forsythe objected, saying the answer called for speculation. This time the judge overruled, saying she wanted to hear the detective’s answer.

“I really don’t have an answer,” Whitten said.

I checked my notes to see if I had forgotten anything and then glanced at the defense table to see if Jennifer had any reminders. It looked like I was clear. I thanked the witness and told the judge I had no further questions.

Forsythe went to the lectern to see if he could bandage the wounds I had opened in the prosecution’s case during the morning session. He would have been better off passing, because it came off—at least to me—as though he was more worried about semantics than content. He brought out that Whitten had been an undercover narcotics officer in an earlier part of his career. As such he had several confidential sources that fed him tips. None of them, he testified, contacted him through the main number of the police station. That would have been highly unusual and dangerous. They all were given private numbers with which to make contact.

That was all well and good, but it did not speak to Gloria Dayton’s circumstances and gave me an easy setup when it was my turn for redirect. I didn’t even go to the lectern with my legal pad.

“Detective Whitten, how long ago did you work as an undercover narcotics officer?”

“I did it for two years—two thousand and two thousand and one.”

“Okay, and do you still have the same cell phone number from those days?”

“No, I’m in homicide now.”

“You have a new number.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so what if one of your informants from two thousand and one wanted to call you today because they had information you needed to have?”

“Well, I would direct this person to current narcotics investigators.”

“You’re missing the point of the question. How would that old source of yours reach out to you, since the old established method of contact is no longer in existence?”

“There are a lot of different ways.”

“Like calling the main number of the police station and asking for you?”

“I don’t see an informant who wants to stay an informant doing that.”

Whitten understood what I wanted and obstinately didn’t want to give me the point. It didn’t matter, though. I was sure the jury understood. Gloria Dayton had no way after so many years to contact Agent Marco but to call the DEA’s main number.