Page 46 of The Best Lawyer
“Mr. Quick?” Judge Castor said. “Any redirect?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“All right then. We’ll break for lunch. Is your next witness prepared to take the stand immediately after, Mr. Quick?”
“She is,” Quick said. “Detective DePaul is ready and willing.”
Chapter 17
Sharon DePaul owned morethan one suit. I knew this because I’d seen her in them. But every time she testified in court, she wore the same one. A cuffed burgundy pantsuit with straight lapels and a silk rose blouse underneath.
Addison spent just half an hour going through her background testimony. She graduated from Wayne State with a degree in Communications. From there she’d served five years in the Coast Guard, and in the reserves for twenty years beyond that. At fifty-five, she now had twenty-five years with the Delphi PD, with ten handling sex crimes and the last year in violent crimes and homicide.
“Thank you for your service, Detective DePaul. That’s a long career, indeed.”
“It’s coming to an end.” She smiled. “I plan to retire at the end of the year.”
“Well deserved. If I could bring your attention to the morning in question. Can you tell me how you became involved in this case?”
“Sure,” she started, adjusting her jacket. “I received a call from my lieutenant that there was a suspected homicide on River Lane in Kimball Township. I was immediately dispatched to the scene.”
“Can you give me your timeline? When did you arrive?”
“On scene? 6:32 a.m.”
“Can you describe what you saw or encountered when you got there?”
“Two field ops units had already secured the block around Mr. Loomis’s residence. Deputy Borman turned control over to me. I was informed that an employee of Mr. Loomis’s had made a 911 call approximately thirty minutes before my arrival. The employee, I learned, was Jenna Rodney, the housekeeper. She was sitting in Deputy Winkleman’s patrol car when I got there. In addition, the victim’s wife, Katy Loomis, was seated in the back of Deputy Wallace and Sanchez’s patrol car. I had already been informed that Mrs. Loomis was also a material witness and the crux of what Ms. Rodney had informed Deputy Winkleman and the 911 dispatcher.”
“Did you speak to either of them?”
“I did, but it wasn’t the first thing I did. I put on latex gloves and booties and entered the residence through the front door. Deputy John Sanchez was inside, standing in the living room, also gloved and booted. He directed me to a back bedroom at the end of the hallway. I observed a white male, later identified as Tom Loomis, laying supine on the bed. He was naked from the waist up and covered in copious amounts of blood. The fatal wound was quite obvious. His neck was slashed, leaving a gash of about an inch wide from just beneath his right earlobe andcutting through to the left side of his neck just above the clavicle.”
“He was dead?”
“Most definitely. I learned later that he had been almost completely exsanguinated. He bled out just about every drop of blood in his body. It covered the mattress beneath him, dripped down to the floor and his entire chest was coated with blood.”
One by one, Quick introduced the crime scene photos. By any rubric, they were gruesome. They depicted multiple angles of Tom’s body and the room itself. The process took close to ten minutes. At the end of which Quick left a close-up shot of Tom’s face, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. The photo had been cropped just above the wound, but the lower half of his face was covered in blood.
“What did you do next, Detective?”
Sharon cleared her throat. “I called for the medical examiner and the Michigan State Police forensic team. I directed Deputy Sanchez to take the photographs you’ve just entered into evidence. I explored the scene looking for any signs of forced entry or a struggle. Finding none, I exited the home and went to speak with first Ms. Rodney, Mr. Loomis’s housekeeper.”
She essentially reiterated the statement Jenna had given to her the day of the murder. Jenna had walked into the home and found Katy covered in blood and holding a knife over Tom’s lifeless body.
“You’re aware Ms. Rodney has already testified. Can you very briefly tell me what actions you took after speaking with her?”
“I went to speak with Mrs. Loomis. She was distraught. Nearlyhysterical. I was concerned about both her mental and physical well-being as I observed she was also covered in blood.”
I stayed at the ready. Sharon had reached the point where she had first violated Katy’s rights, in both my and the court’s opinion. Armed with Jenna’s statement already, Katy had been a person of interest the moment Sharon walked up to her. I knew Katy had started spouting off at that very moment that she didn’t remember what had happened. That she’d just woken up next to him already dead.
Mercifully, Sharon respected the court’s earlier decision and answered carefully. “Though she indicated she wasn’t hurt, I was quite concerned Mrs. Loomis might be in shock. I had Deputy Wallace call for an ambulance. One arrived approximately four minutes later. I instructed Deputy Wallace to accompany her to the hospital and stay with her.”
“All right, what happened next?”
“By then, the ME had arrived. A very short time after that, the crime scene analysts showed up. According to my log, it was 7:02 a.m. I, along with Deputies Winkleman and Sanchez, began canvassing. I instructed them to speak to the neighbors on each side of Mr. Loomis’s residence along with those across the street and behind the house.”
“All right.” Quick paused. He then had Detective DePaul run through the remainder of the investigative steps she’d taken that day. Most were mundane, routine canvassing, checking in with the ME and the forensics team, communicating with command. She had gone back to the police station to question Katy, but the bulk of that testimony had already been ruled inadmissible, so Quick had no choice but to bypass it.
