He wasn’t real quick, but in high school he was bigger than the guys he was playing against. In college, and especially the pros, everybody is big. So you gotta be fast.”
“So Bobby wouldn’t have made it in the NFL if he hadn’t gotten hurt?”
“Nah. He wouldn’t even have been that good in college. But he’d never admit that, and don’t tell him I said it.”
Kenny asks me what effect my theory will have on his trial and is not happy when I tell him that right now I haven’t decided how to handle it. What I don’t tell him is that his life will depend on my making the right decision.
Willie and I head back home, where Laurie, Kevin, and Sam are waiting for me. Sam has spent the night and morning performing more miracles on the computer and has already placed Pollard geographically within range of the murders.
“And I’m gonna get the medical records,” he says with a smile.
“When will you have them?” I ask.
“As soon as you let me get the hell out of here.”
“Can’t you do it from here? Adam got killed for doing just what you’re doing.”
He shakes his head. “Adam got killed because he called Pollard and must have mistakenly alerted him to what was going on. At the time, he probably didn’t realize Pollard was the killer, but Pollard must have known he’d figure it out soon. I won’t make the same mistake.”
“Come on, Sam, you’re going way too fast. We’re not nearly that sure that Pollard is our guy.”
Sam just smiles. “No harm, no foul.”
He knows I’ll understand his cryptic comment, and I do. It’s a basketball phrase, which when twisted into this situation means that if we pursue this strategy and come up empty, what have we lost? We might as well go for it full out and see what happens. He’s right.
“Okay, but can’t you do all this on my computer?”
He snorts. “You call that thing you have a computer? You want this to take forever?”
I don’t, so I let Sam leave. Kevin then brings me up-to-date on our legal situation and the few precedents that deal with the kind of predicament we are in.
None of what we are doing has in any fashion been introduced into the trial. The judge, jury, and prosecution all have no idea that Troy Preston’s murder is one in a series or that Bobby Pollard is a suspect. All we have done as a defense is try to poke holes in the prosecution’s case and shift suspicion onto Troy’s drug connections.
What we have learned would be a bomb detonating in the courtroom, and we have to figure out how to minimize the damage our client might suffer in the explosion. After all, we could be setting up Kenny as a serial killer. Right now our only credible reason for thinking the killer is Pollard, rather than Kenny, is the fact that the imprisoned Kenny could not have killed Adam. It is possible that Quintana really did kill Adam, thinking he was me. Perhaps Adam just placed his notes in a location that the police haven’t uncovered. I don’t believe that scenario, but it’s only important what Judge Harrison and the jury believe.
An even more immediate problem is how to get all this admitted in the first place. There is a very real possibility that Judge Harrison won’t let it in. We can’t even prove that the other deaths were murders; in each case the police say otherwise. Harrison could rule that none of this is relevant, and there’s not an appeals court in the free world that would overturn him.
Laurie has learned from the doctor that a drug form of potassium not only can cause heart attacks when administered in an overdose but would be undetectable in an autopsy unless the coroner had a specific reason to screen for potassium poisoning. The reason it’s so hard to find is that once death occurs, cells in the body break down and release potassium on their own. Potassium as an agent of homicide is very unlikely to be discovered by a coroner, especially in small-town jurisdictions.
This news points even more directly at Pollard, since as a team trainer he has substantial contact with the medical staff and the drugs that they use. He would also have access to their prescription pads.
I have a four o’clock meeting with Pollard, which had been planned to discuss his potential testimony, scheduled for sometime this week. I don’t want to