21st Birthday, James Patterson [best mystery novels of all time TXT] 📗

blanket on the floor of an upstairs closet. And we located the receiver for the security camera. We watched video of both Lucas Burke and Tara Burke, who was holding Lorrie, leave the house, separately. We viewed the video after we had obtained search warrants for the house and everything inside, including electronics.”

“Can you tell the court what was on the video?”

“A whole lot of not much until the morning in question, when the Burkes left the house I made a general observation that they were having a disagreement, but nothing that would indicate imminent homicide.”

Yuki said, “Your Honor, we’d like to enter this video into evidence and show it to the jury.”

Gardner stood, shouting, “Objection, Your Honor. Showing this video is purely intended to traumatize my client. It has nothing to do with any alleged crime. Prosecution simply wants to bring the dead to life in order to get the jurors’ sympathies.”

“Ms. Castellano?”

“The video is clearly relevant. The jury needs to judge for themselves the last known sighting of two victims.”

“Overruled, Mr. Gardner,” said Judge Passarelli. “I’d like to see it myself.”

Chapter 89

Yuki asked the guards to shut off the lights, and Nick Gaines lined up the laptop and hit the Play button on the video file.

The video rolled against the whiteboard.

It was as Conklin had described it; Lucas Burke leaving the house like a thunderbolt. Face dark, getting into his silver sports car, speeding up the street.

As Gardner had said, the sight of Tara Burke in her denim dress, the straps of her various bags crossing her chest, the baby on her hip, one small fist gripping a hank of her mother’s hair, was enough to humanize them for the jurors. Those images could shatter a heart made of marble.

When it was over, as the overhead lights came on, Yuki glanced over to Gardner. But the defense counsel was leaning back in his chair, his face bare of expression as if to show her his contempt. Is that all you’ve got?

He knew it wasn’t.

Yuki walked to the whiteboard and, after wheeling it around, pointed to the photo of Misty.

“Inspector Conklin, you were at the scene of Melissa Fogarty’s murder.”

“Yes, I was. Correct.”

“Can you tell us about that?”

Conklin removed a couple of sheets of stapled and folded pages from his inside jacket pocket, flattened them, skimmed them, and said, “This is my report for the task force and our lieutenant three days after Lorrie Burke’s body surfaced at Baker Beach. Tara Burke was still missing and Ms. Fogarty’s body had just been found in her car that morning by school security.”

Yuki said, “Please go on.”

“Well, Ms. Fogarty was killed on Friday night, discovered on Saturday morning. Like I said, we searched the Burke house the next day. Because of this rash of murders, our squad was working round the clock. On Saturday, Mr. Burke and his ex-wife, Alexandra Conroy, showed up in our squad room. He was in a rage, waving a newspaper with the picture of Ms. Fogarty on the front page.”

Richie rested his arms on the railing surrounding the witness chair, and spoke directly to Yuki.

He said, “Okay. So, we know Melissa Fogarty is—was—Lucas Burke’s girlfriend. Sergeant Lindsay Boxer and I separated Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy so we could interview them individually.

“Burke tells us that he and Ms. Conroy had been in Carmel until early that morning. Now, they’ve returned back to confront the police and to find out the truth about Ms. Fogarty’s murder, instead of getting it off a tabloid.”

“Were you able to confirm Mr. Burke’s whereabouts at the time of Fogarty’s murder?”

“Much of it,” Conklin said. “The drive to Carmel-by-the-Sea is confirmed. That the two shared a room in the resort is also confirmed. The missing piece is a big one. We cannot confirm whether Mr. Burke left Carmel and returned to San Francisco on Friday evening.

“These are critical hours.

“Ms. Fogarty was murdered at eight o’clock. Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy state that this is when Ms. Conroy was occupied at the spa.”

Yuki said, “Inspector, at the time Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy came to the Homicide squad, did you have reason to doubt Mr. Burke’s timeline?”

“Well, that Ms. Conroy was otherwise occupied at the precise time Ms. Fogarty was killed is a little pat as an alibi. This was a conflict we could not resolve. We checked out all the information we had, and I couldn’t prove Mr. Burke’s whereabouts when Ms. Fogarty was killed.

“That Saturday morning when Burke appeared in our squad room, he was a suspect in more than one murder, and the victims all had close association to him.

“Still, we had held him for twenty-four hours, we had searched his premises, and CSU had gone through his devices. We had reasonable suspicion that he had killed at least two people. At that time we had no direct evidence against Lucas Burke for anything.”

Newt Gardner stood to cross-examine Inspector Conklin.

He made it short.

“So you’re still prepared to swear that the man on the parking lot video, the man who presumably killed Melissa Fogarty, is in fact, Mr. Lucas Burke?”

“I am, now,” said Conklin.

“Well,” said Gardner, “I’m equally sure that he is not. Ms. Castellano, let’s go to the tape.”

Chapter 90

Yuki turned the whiteboard around so that it was again a plain white screen. Behind her, Nick Gaines pulled up the parking lot video on the laptop. And then there was the sea-spray sound of static as the tape rolled.

Yuki said, “Inspector Conklin, will you please describe what you see on the screen.”

“I’ll do my best,” Conklin said. “It’s the typical low-quality video we often see from retail-type cameras. It was dark in a virtually unlighted lot. There’s Ms. Fogarty getting out of her car. She’s standing, then pacing, unmistakable because she’s in the one beam of the one light in the lot.

“Now, if we can fast-forward…”

Nick skipped to the part where a man entered the lot on foot.

Conklin said, “There. That’s Burke. He’s in black, keeping to the