Page 98 of The Best Lawyer
“She’s going to prison,” I said. “Katy will live the rest of her life behind bars.”
“That’s not your fault,” he said. “Everyone was right that you were her best shot at beating this. And you landed some punches, Cass. Sharon should have been more thorough. She zoned in on Katy and that was it. You shouldn’t have had to track down Maisy Carmichael or even Tallon Shipley.”
“Except it didn’t matter anyway.”
Eric smacked his palm against the edge of his steering wheel. “She missed something. She had to have. There’s no way she didn’t. You’ve been right about that and you know I’m the last person who’d want to admit that, too. I’m always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the detective. It’s just …”
“Something,” I finished for him. “I know. It just doesn’t make sense. I still don’t understand where that knife came from. Or the timeline. How Katy could just stand there frozen like Jenna Rodney said. But she’s clean too. Of everyone, her alibi is on tape.”
Eric backed out of his parking spot. Without telling me where he was going, he started to drive.
I went through what I knew would be Addison Quick’s closing argument.
“No forced entry. Nothing was taken from the house. No burglary. Katy admits that she didn’t love Tom as much as she loves Joe. That if she could have, she would have loaned Joe the money to save his business and lived happily ever after with him. He’s got proof Tom was thinking about divorcing her and cutting her off from his money. I can practically write his closing for him. It’s just … there were liars everywhere. Tallon about her relationship with Tom. Joe about his whereabouts. But none of that exonerates Katy. And two things can’t be true. She can’t have both slept through that murder and be a sleepwalking killer.”
“She’s covered in blood,” Eric picked up. “But not spray.”
“That’s a weak straw to grasp though,” I said. “Dr. Trainor couldn’t conclusively say where Katy had to be standing in order to get hit by an arterial bleed like that.”
“Time did pass,” Eric said. “She could have tried to clean herself up.”
“But there were no bloody footprints leading into the bathroom or out of the bedroom. Katy’s feet were clean. So she could have been sleeping next to him when Tom was killed.”
“Or she got out of bed and cut him. In which case, she might not have stepped in any blood. Cass, I want to see it. I want to get it all in my head. The space. The sounds. All of it.”
He made a sharp turn. I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Five minutes later, Eric pulled into Tom Loomis’s driveway. Thehouse had been turned back to Tom’s estate, which was in limbo right now pending the outcome of this trial. Katy had given me the garage code just like Tom had given it to Jenna Rodney.
Eric left his headlights on as he got out and punched in the code. I waited for the door to rise, then leaned over and pulled the key out of the ignition.
We went in through the service door, just like Jenna would have. Eric pushed the button, closing the garage door behind us.
“Nobody’s cleaned anything up yet?” he asked. Bits of tape and powder dusted the kitchen counters where the crime scene unit had done its work.
“I never thought of it,” I said. “Tom didn’t have a mortgage. The estate’s been paying his homeowner’s insurance. Jeanie had Miranda work on the logistics with the probate court and the bank. Packing up the house just wasn’t a priority.”
The house had a dank, dismal smell, not having been opened for months. The air conditioner had been running, but no windows had been opened to let in the breeze.
Eric reached for a hallway light switch. For a moment, I feared it wouldn’t turn on. I wasn’t sure whether Miranda had also arranged for the utilities to be paid. But the lights worked.
Tom and Katy’s bedroom was at the end of the hallway. The door was closed and the remnants of crime scene tape hung off the doorknob. Eric batted it away and opened the door.
I could still detect just the hint of a metallic smell. I studied crime scene photos for months. But until now, I’d never actually been inside the house. Eric hit the bedroom light switch. Even after all these months, the sight took the air from my lungs.
Though dried now, there had been so much blood. The sheet on Tom’s side of the bed had looked dark pink in the photos, though I knew the fabric was ivory. Those sheets now sat in an evidence box downtown. You could still see faint staining on the bare mattresses though. Katy and Tom had a split king, each with their own twin XL mattresses. Katy’s side was mostly clean.
“He didn’t have a drop left in him,” Eric said. I recognized the spray pattern Dr. Trainor had testified about. Yes, I’d seen it in photos, but this was so much worse. Dried blood arced all the way up to the ceiling.
Just as Dr. Trainor testified, there were no bloody footprints. Eric went to the en suite bathroom. Katy had remodeled it after they got married. All white tiles and marble. Not so much as a water stain anywhere, much less blood.
Nothing stained the towels. They hung neatly folded, each corner squared.
“She never came in here,” he said. “That’s pretty obvious.”
I went to the bed. Eric walked around the room, checking every window. Then he left. I heard him at the front door. One by one, he checked every window out there too.
“Don’t you think the investigators checked all of that?” I asked. I knew they had. I had the report. They checked for prints, too. There wasn’t a shred of evidence that any window or door had been left unlocked or could have been opened without breaking it.
“Oh, Katy,” I whispered as I moved through the rest of the house. Her touch was everywhere. White furniture in the livingroom. White carpet. The boldest design choice she made was having blue cabinets in the kitchen.
