The Gods of Guilt(113)

I gave up and sat down. Whitten was dismissed and I called my next witness, Victor Hensley.

Hensley was a Trojan horse witness. His was the sixteenth name on the original witness list that the defense turned in before the start of trial. In keeping with court protocol, each name on the witness list was followed by a brief description of who the person was and what his or her expected testimony would be. This was to help the opposing side decide how much focus and time to apply to vetting and preparing for the witness’s testimony. However, in placing Hensley’s name on the list, I didn’t want the prosecution to know my true purpose—which was to use him to enter the Beverly Wilshire’s security videos as defense exhibits. So I listed Hensley’s occupation and simply described him as a corroborating witness. My hope was that Forsythe and his investigator Lankford would view Hensley as a witness who would confirm that no one had rented the room that Gloria Dayton had gone to on the night of her death.

As it turned out, Hensley reported to Cisco during a check-in phone call that during the run-up to the trial, he’d had only one brief visit at the hotel from Lankford and had never spoken to Forsythe at all. All of this boded well for me. I realized as Hensley took the stand, carrying with him a smart-looking leather folder with his notes inside, that I stood a good chance of not only maintaining the momentum begun that morning with Whitten but increasing it.

Hensley was in his late fifties and looked like a cop. After he was sworn in, I quickly ran down his pedigree as a former detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department who retired and took the job in security at the Beverly Wilshire. I then asked him if the hotel security staff had conducted its own investigation of the part the premises had played in the hours before Gloria Dayton’s murder.

“Yes, we did,” he answered. “Once we became aware that the hotel played a tangential part in the situation, we looked into it.”

“And did you take part in that investigation yourself?”

“Yes, I did. I was in charge of it.”

I then led Hensley through a series of questions and answers that outlined how he had worked with LAPD detectives and confirmed that Gloria Dayton had entered the hotel that evening and knocked on a guest-room door. He also confirmed that the room where she had knocked was empty and that no guest was staying in it.

My Trojan horse was now inside the gate and I got down to work.

“Now, from the very start, the defendant has claimed to police that a prospective client had called from the Beverly Wilshire and said that he was in that room. Is that possible?”

“No, it’s not possible that a guest was staying in that room.”

“But could someone have gotten in that room somehow and made the call?”

“Anything’s possible. It would have to be someone who had a key.”

“Is it an electronic key?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check to see if someone stayed in that room the night before?”

“Yes, we checked, and someone did stay in that room the night before. That would have been Saturday night. We’d had a wedding reception in the hotel, and the bride and groom stayed in that suite that night.”

“When is checkout time?”

“Noon. But they asked for late checkout because they had an evening flight to Hawaii. Since they were newlyweds, we gladly accommodated them. They left at four twenty-five that afternoon, according to our records, meaning they probably left the room at four fifteen or so. We covered this in our investigation.”

“So the room was occupied until four fifteen or so and then not rebooked for Sunday night.”

“That’s correct. Because of the late checkout, it was not put on the availability list because housekeeping wouldn’t have it ready until much later.”

“And if someone somehow got access to that room—got in somehow—then he would have been able to use the phone to call out, is that right?”

“That is correct.”

“Would a call from outside the hotel be put through to that room if the caller requested it?”

“The policy at our hotel is that no call is transferred to a room without the caller asking for the guest by name. You cannot just call up and ask for room twelve-ten, for example. You have to know the name, and it has to be a registered guest. So the answer is no. The call would not have been put through.”

I nodded thoughtfully before continuing.

“What were the names of the newlyweds who had the suite the night before?”

“Daniel and . . .”

He opened his yellow folder and checked his notes from the investigation.

“. . . Laura Price. But they were checked out and on their way to Hawaii when all of these events were supposedly happening.”