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During the lunch break, Dan and Maria and Camila discussed what had happened so far. They had all been watching the faces in the jury box, but Camila seemed particularly astute in her observations—even though he had warned her never to appear to be staring, or to do anything that made the jury feel uncomfortable. She thought the jury looked smart and attentive, and she was encouraged by the fact that they didn’t avoid making eye contact with her. They were understandably curious, but not skittish. Or to use her words, there was no sign that they had already decided to convict her.
He spotted Prudence Hancock, Sweeney’s assistant, entering the courtroom and seating herself on the back row of the gallery, not far from the plainclothes security officers K hired to keep an eye on him. Jimmy noticed as well, and his bug-eyed expression suggested that he didn’t like being on the same side of the courtroom with her.
Had Lex Luthor sent her here on some dastardly mission? He texted:
Ray gun wouldn’t get past metal detectors
Jimmy texted back:
Unless made of plastic—Lex is genius
Camila turned to face the gallery, and unless he was mistaken, Prudence appeared to duck.
Did she not want to be spotted by the mayor?
Jazlyn spent the early afternoon calling a series of police officers to the witness stand. The first was Bryan Dietrich, the unfortunate soul who was the first to discover the corpses. His usual beat was patrolling the Crislip Arcade area, an assignment that rarely involved anything dangerous or complex. On the morning in question, however, he encountered something dramatically different.
“It was the smell that led to the report,” he explained. Baby face. Missed a loop with his belt. White undershirt. “That’s what I was supposed to be investigating. I thought it was probably a dead animal. Maybe a skunk. Something like that.”
“How did you go about your investigation?” Jazlyn asked.
“I had to force entry. The door was closed. Padlocked. The registered owner was a corporation called Petersburg Preservation, and at the time, I had no idea who owned it.” Of course, as Jazlyn mentioned in her opening, the owner was Camila. “I called the number listed with the Secretary of State, but no one answered or called back.”
“Did that surprise you?”
“It did. There were signs that renovation was about to begin, so I expected someone to be in charge. But I never saw anyone there or heard from them. So, based upon the public nuisance, I was forced to enter the premises.”
“What did you discover?”
He shook his head slowly, as if the question brought the memory too vividly back to his consciousness. “The stench was unbearable. This wasn’t my first rodeo, and I’ve seen some bad stuff, but when I got a whiff of this—I almost passed out. I ultimately put a cloth over my nose and mouth just so I could bear it.”
“What did you find?”
“Bit of a mess in the lobby. Overturned chair. Litter. I thought maybe an animal had gotten inside, knocked things around a bit. But the odor became a much more intense as I approached the kitchen.”
“What did you find there?”
“The source of the smell appeared to be the oven. Big industrial-sized thing, designed to cook several tiers at once. Clamp handle on the door. No way to open it from the inside, but easy from the outside. I opened it...” He fell silent.
“Officer Dietrich, please tell the jury what you found.”
He took several seconds before answering. “Turned out the oven was big enough to accommodate more than bread. It was big enough to contain four adult bodies.”
“Is that what you found?”
“I found what...remained of four men. They had been burned. Caked blood on the floor and the walls. What wasn’t burned to a crisp was...” He drew in a deep breath. “Melted.”
“Do you have a clear memory of what you saw?”
“I will never be able to get that image out of my head. And believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Did you see any sign that the victims attempted to escape?”
“They were trussed up, knees to nose. Trapped.”
“Were there any signs that anyone had...made use of their hands?” She was trying not to lead the witness, but they all knew where she was going with this.
“Only one. The corpse nearest the oven door, the one who was later identified as Nick Mansfield. His fingers touched the base. He appeared to be...drawing.”
“In his own blood?”
“Or someone else’s.”
“And what did he draw?”
Dietrich took another deep breath. “Looked to me like the letter ‘C.’”
* * *
Jazlyn followed with two other police witnesses who mostly just filled in the blanks, covering a few items Dietrich could not.
A member of the CSI team named Glen Austin testified about what was found on the premises. Portly. Monotone. Dark circles around his eyes. The only items of interest were the flask and the vial.
The second police witness worked in the records lab and looked like he rarely got out of the basement. Thick glasses. Spit curl. Small bruise on right hand. He was the one who eventually learned that Petersburg Preservation was a holding company one hundred percent owned by the defendant. He opined that, as the legal owner, she would undoubtedly have a set of keys.
The jury also heard from Dr. Brenda Palmer, the fingerprint expert. He had examined Palmer during the Gabriella Valdez case. She’d been pushed to take her evidence further than she should and he’d burned her badly. He could tell she was not happy to back in the courtroom with him. As might be expected, there were a host of fingerprints in the bakery, particularly on the doors and countertops. And some of those matched Camila.
On cross, he tried to make this seem as insignificant as possible. He smiled as he approached Dr. Palmer. Pant suit. Small scar behind left ear. Stud earring, also on the left side. “You would expect the owner of the building to have visited once or twice, wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t say that I find it surprising.”
“And there were many other fingerprints around the place, weren’t there?”
“I detected at least forty-seven distinct sets of prints.”
“Can you time-date the fingerprints?” This was a loaded question. During the Valdez case, the doctor had claimed she could establish a rough timeline of when prints were laid down. He had destroyed the whole theory on cross. He doubted she would try that again.
He was right. “Not with any degree of accuracy. We generally assume that those with greater oil residue are more recent, but that can vary depending upon the degree of contact. How long, how hard.”
“Can you give the jury any idea when the prints from my client were made?”
“I feel comfortable saying it was within a month of when I conducted my examination. Anything more specific would be speculative. They were good, strong prints, but as I’ve said, there are multiple possible explanations for that.”
Palmer was playing it safe. Which was just the way he liked it.
“Did you find her prints on the flask?”
“We found no prints on the flask.”
“And the vial?”
“Same thing. No prints.”
“What about the oven?”
“We did find prints on the oven, but they were blurred and indistinct, probably due to the high temperatures.”
“So as far as you’re concerned, there’s no evidence that my client was even in the kitchen, much less near the oven.”
The doctor drew in her breath—then smiled. Once burned, forever cautious. “I did not find a clear set of prints on the oven.”
Good. Jazlyn might’ve established that deaths occurred, but there was nothing strongly tying Camila to the deaths.
Yet.
Of course, the prosecution was just getting started.