The Gods of Guilt(116)

I handed Hensley the laser pointer so he could keep the red dot on Gloria as she made her way and he narrated. I realized that the video gave the jurors their first glimpse of Gloria in motion. During the prosecution phase they had seen autopsy photos, mug shots, and screen shots from her Giselle Dallinger websites. But the video was Gloria as a living person, and when I glanced at the jury, I saw that they were fully engaged in watching her.

That was what I wanted, because my next set of questions to Hensley would take them in a new direction. I retrieved the remote and the laser and stood back in the well. I started playing the video trail from the beginning and then froze the image when Gloria was passing through the lobby and in front of the man in the hat.

“Now, Mr. Hensley, can you look at the screen and tell the jury if you have any members of your staff there in the lobby?”

Hensley said the man standing at the elevator alcove was part of the security staff.

“Anyone else that you can see?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“What about this man here?”

I put the laser dot on the man in the hat, who was sitting on the divan and looking at his phone.

“Well,” Hensley said. “We can’t see his face in this frame. If you play it until we see his face . . .”

I hit the play button and the video advanced. I had drawn eyes toward the man in the hat. But he never changed the position of his head and his face was not seen. The video jumped when Gloria went into the alcove and then stepped onto an elevator. There was a black screen for a few seconds and then the video showed Gloria getting back on the elevator on the eighth floor and going down to the lobby.

When the video jumped again to her exit walk through the lobby, I hit the slow button on the remote and put the laser dot on the man in the hat once again to orient the jurors. I said nothing while all eyes were on the screen. I held the red dot on the man in the hat as he got up and left behind Gloria. I then froze the image a moment before he left the screen.

“Does that man work for the hotel?” I asked.

“I could never see the face but, no, I don’t think so,” Hensley said.

“If you could not see his face, how do you know he isn’t an employee?”

“Because he would have to be a floater and we don’t have floaters.”

“Can you explain to the jury what you mean by that?”

“Our security is post-oriented. We have people at posts—like the man at the elevator alcove. We are posted and we are visible. Name tags, green blazers. We don’t have undercovers. We don’t have floaters—guys who float around and do whatever they want.”

I started to pace in front of the jury box, first walking toward the witness stand and then turning back to cross the well. With my back turned to Hensley and my eyes on Lankford sitting against the rail, I asked my next question.

“What about private security, Mr. Hensley? Could that man have been working security for someone staying in the hotel?”

“He could have. But usually private security people check in with us to let us know they’re there.”

“I see. Then, what do you think that man was doing there?”

Forsythe objected, saying I was calling for speculation from the witness.

“Your Honor,” I responded. “Mr. Hensley spent twenty years as a police officer and detective before spending the past ten in security for this hotel. He’s been in that lobby countless times and dealt with countless situations there. I think he is more than qualified to render an observation on what he sees on the video.”

“Overruled,” Leggoe said.

I nodded to Hensley to answer the question.

“I would bet that he was following her,” he said.

I paused, wanting to underline the answer with silence.

“What makes you say that, Mr. Hensley?”

“Well, it looks like he was waiting for her before she even got there. And then when she comes back down, he follows her out. You can tell when she makes the sudden turn to go to the front desk. That catches him off guard and he has to correct. Then he follows when she leaves.”

“Let’s watch it again.”

I ran the whole video again in real time, keeping the laser dot on the hat.

“What other observations do you have about the video, Mr. Hensley?” I asked afterward.

“Well, for one, he knew about our cameras,” Hensley said. “We never see his face because of the hat, and he knew just where to sit and how to wear it so he would never be seen. He’s a real mystery man.”

I tried hard not to smile. Hensley was the perfect witness, honest and obvious. But calling the man in the hat a “mystery man” was beyond my expectations. It was perfect.