“Only because he insisted,” Evelyn said, bored now.“Common courtesy.”
“So you had her address,” Tripp repeated, unblinking.
Evelyn’s mouth went flat.“I suppose.”
“Did you drive to her home that night?”
She gave a small, brittle laugh.“No.”
Tripp lifted a single page, the paper whispering like a warning.“Let me direct your attention to Defense Exhibit A, a trip log from your vehicle’s onboard computer.It shows your car leaving your residence at 10:03 p.m., stopping in front of Ms.Laurent’s home at 10:27 p.m., and returning to your home at 11:51 p.m.”
“Objection,” Nicole snapped, not because she had a good reason, but rather that she didn’t want Tripp to win, and clearly, he’d found their murderer.“Foundation.Authentication.”
“Overruled, if you can lay it, Mr.Masterson,” Judge Price said.
Tripp nodded.“Your Honor, these records were obtained via subpoena from the dealership’s telematics service.The custodian of records authenticated them yesterday.The State received copies late last night.”
Nicole had.She’d read them twice with growing unease.It all made sense now.
Evelyn’s fingers tightened around the edge of the witness chair.“You had no right?—”
“The timing,” Tripp continued, “is ten minutes before Ms.Laurent’s time of death, as established by the coroner’s report already in evidence.Would you like to revise your testimony?”
“I did not kill her,” Evelyn said.The smile was gone.
Tripp didn’t blink.“You say you were at home reading.What book?”
She hesitated.“I was alone.”
“Title?”
“I read many.”
“Your home’s security system shows your garage door opening at 10:01 p.m.and again at 11:53 p.m.Defense Exhibit B.”He lifted another sheet.“The security company authenticated those as well.”
A bead of sweat gathered at Evelyn’s temple, delicate as dew.Nicole watched it fall and felt a bleak, awful satisfaction.Truth had its own gravity.
Tripp let the jury sit with the contradiction, then turned another page.“Mrs.Reddick, after Ms.Laurent was killed, the murder weapon, a .38 special, was discovered in your son’s apartment.Are you familiar with the box in which it was stored?”
Her throat moved.“No.”
He slid a glossy photograph onto the evidence cart.The projector splashed it onto the screen above the jury: the upscale foyer camera still, time-stamped 11:18 p.m., Evelyn entering Derrick’s building in a dark pant suit, a rectangular manufacturer’s box tucked against her side.
A collective inhale scraped the room.
“Do you deny this is you, Mrs.Reddick?”
Silence.A tiny tremor touched her hands.
“Do you deny that the box in your possession matches the serial-labeled container of the weapon later found in your son’s apartment?”
She said nothing.
Tripp’s voice dropped, intimate and lethal.“Mrs.Reddick, did you carry the gun’s box into your son’s apartment the night Bianca Laurent was killed?”
“No!”She flinched and then, involuntarily, looked at Derrick.“Sweetheart, listen to me.I wasn’t trying to frame you.You had an alibi.I was—” She swallowed.“I was trying to…put it somewhere safe.”
Safe.Nicole’s pen stilled.The word was a ricochet.
