“I asked him if he knew of anyone who would want to kill her.”

“And what did the defendant say, Detective, when you asked him if he knew who would want to kill Alexa Himmel?”

Drawing out the question, highlighting the significance.

Cromartie pauses a beat for good measure. “He said, ‘I have a pretty good idea, but I can’t be sure.’”

“And what did you say at that point?”

“I asked him who that person was that he had a ‘pretty good idea’ killed her.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No, he did not. He said he wanted to talk to a lawyer and did not want to speak with me further.”

Roger Ogren pauses a beat, as if surprised. “He said he thought he knew who killed Ms. Himmel, but he wouldn’t tell you?”

“Objection,” I say, as if disgusted.

“Sustained.”

Ogren doesn’t protest, having made his point with the question.

“What did you do after the defendant invoked his right to counsel?”

“I ceased any further questioning. An officer stayed with the defendant on the couch while we processed the crime scene. I went upstairs, first of all, to the third floor of the town house. The defendant’s bedroom.”

Ogren admits into evidence photographs of Jason’s bedroom, close-ups on the dresser of drawers and the contents of each drawer, and the bathroom, including shots of the medicine cabinet and the inside of the cabinet beneath the sink.

“What were you looking for in the defendant’s bedroom and bathroom, Detective?”

“The defendant had told me that Ms. Himmel often spent the night. So I was looking for makeup, brushes, perfume, hair sprays or hair gels, tampons or maxi pads. I was looking for things in the shower like women’s shampoo or soaps or loofahs. I was looking in the dresser for any women’s clothing.”

“And did you find any evidence that a woman had been spending time routinely in that bathroom or bedroom? Any evidence that a woman appeared to be staying overnight on a regular basis?”

Roger Ogren is overstating what Jason said to Detective Cromartie. He knows better, but he’s testing me. It’s early in the trial, and he is trying to see how much he can get away with.

“Your Honor,” I say, standing, “could the witness do the testifying instead of Mr. Ogren?”

The judge admonishes Ogren, who nods with his eyes closed. “Detective?”

“As you can see from the photographs, I did not find any of those things. I saw no evidence that a woman spent any time in that bathroom or in that bedroom. Nothing that would indicate that a woman was sleeping over every night.”

Now it’s every night. I consider objecting again.

“I couldn’t square what the defendant had said to me with what I saw upstairs,” he adds.

Jason pats my hand. I take his cue and stay silent, poker-faced. He doesn’t like to object very much when he’s the defense lawyer. Now I’m the defense lawyer, he the defendant, but I find myself following his advice. I shouldn’t. It’s my insecurity and fear getting the better of me. If it’s Jason’s idea and it turns out badly, it won’t be my fault, it will be his.

“Well, what about an overnight bag?” Ogren asks. “Anything that Ms. Himmel would have brought with her, just for that night? A bag with a change of clothes or toiletries, that kind of thing? Did you find anything like that, Detective?”

“No, I did not. I looked very pointedly for that kind of thing and didn’t find it.”

Ogren walks Cromartie briefly through the remainder of his canvass of the house, which takes us to past two-thirty in the morning.

“I advised the defendant that I wanted to take him to headquarters for further questioning,” he says. “I asked him if he would go with me voluntarily. He said that he would, but that he wanted to call his attorney, Ms. Tasker.” He nods to me. “I told him that he could make that call before he left and she could meet us there.”

Shauna, I’m being arrested for murder, Jason had said to me over the phone, at 3:06 in the morning. Not, They want to question me, Alexa’s been murdered, but I’m being arrested. He already knew it was coming. What did he reveal to Detective Cromartie in his mannerisms, his speech, his eye contact or lack thereof, his coolness or his sweat, the vibe he gave off? These are the kinds of things that rarely get revealed in a courtroom.

One of many things about that night, I realize, that I’ll never know.

38.

Shauna

Roger Ogren hits “Play” on the remote. The television screen, facing the jury but angled so the defense may view it as well, comes to life in black-and-white. The fuzzy screen shows a nondescript room. Detective Ray Cromartie is in shirtsleeves, tie pulled down. Jason sits across a metal desk from him, his hair hanging into his eyes, in a button-down dress shirt open at the collar. To Jason’s right is Bradley John, our associate, his hair slicked back, still wet from the thirty-second shower he must have taken when he got the call from me in the middle of the night.

Cromartie, on the witness stand, has already introduced the fact that Jason gave a recorded statement. The defense has stipulated to the admissibility of the videotaped statement, at least the portions that Roger Ogren plans to introduce. The whole thing wasn’t very long, only about thirteen minutes—short enough that, if I were the prosecutor, I’d probably play the whole thing. But Ogren has decided to just pull out a couple of vignettes. One of the phrases Jason has always used to describe Ogren is control freak, and that fits. He just wants it exactly the way he wants it.

The screen shows Jason nearly front-on, only slightly angled so that a bit of Cromartie’s profile is also apparent. I’m sure the detective isn’t wild about the jury spending time with a close-up of the bald spot on the crown of his head or the fact that his tie is showing beneath his collar in the back, but presumably they’re spending more time on Jason, staring into the table, his eyes narrowed as if in concentration. To look at him, you wouldn’t know that a woman was just found dead in his town house.

“I don’t know what time Alexa got to my house,” Jason says on the tape. “She said she was going to be there by six-thirty or seven, but I don’t know. And I don’t remember exactly when I got home. I wasn’t checking that sort of thing. Just like I don’t know what time I called 911. All I know is that I walked upstairs and I found her there. She was . . .” Jason waves a hand, like he’s making a throwaway point. “She was obviously dead. I . . . just stared at her at first. I couldn’t believe it. She was . . . gone. Then I dialed 911.”

“You drove home tonight? That’s how you got home?” Cromartie asks. His voice has more of an echo to it, the acoustics favoring Jason, the primary focus.

Jason nods. “Yeah, I drove.”

“That’s your SUV parked in the garage?”

Jason nods, his eyes rising to the ceiling over Cromartie’s head. He scratches his hand.

“You came into the house through the garage?” Cromartie asks. “The door to the garage?”

Jason nods absently. Still scratching his hand—the knuckles, the palm, searching for the itch. “Right. I walked into the house and went upstairs,” he says.

“Was the front door locked, Jason? The front door, not the door that opens to the garage.”

The clock in the corner of the TV screen keeps time by the second: 4:12:06 . . . 4:12:07 . . . 4:12:08 . . .

“Jason—”