Tiana Crown’s eyes fluttered. “Big deal, I craft.”
Alicia said, “Can’t talk to you,” and walked away.
Chapter
44
Tiana Crown ended up booked, re-Mirandized, and jailed as Rhonda Lee Cronin, the given name she’d used to collect nearly three thousand a month of assorted government assistance payments, some legitimate, others sketchy.
She was assigned a public defender named Wilf Mankell, young, inexperienced, slightly addled.
Or as Milo referred to him: “Space Cadet with a J.D.”
John Nguyen called Milo to fill him in on Mankell. “Shit law school, no distinctions, he’s lunch meat.”
Despite that assessment, Mankell kept his client unavailable and proceeded to file assertively worded motions to dismiss that Nguyen termed “rectal ejecta but you still have to use up the toilet paper. One of them he’s hinting at a diminished-capacity defense. Ask Delaware what he thinks of that, haha.”
Eighteen days post-arrest, the evidence list was handed over to the defense. Two days after that, Mankell emailed Nguyen and asked for a meeting.
Nguyen told Milo and me about it over coffee in the court cafeteria.
“I yawn and ask him what for. He says I’ll find out. I say no games, I’m busy, and if you’re thinking of a plea bargain, forget it, this is alock-and-load. Then I call him kiddo. Like you do, Milo. Except you’re being nice and I’m letting him know I think he’s a piece of shit.”
We smiled.
Nguyen chewed on a cake donut. “He tries to sound authoritative but his voice goes all quivery and he says how about the chance of parole. I say in how long? He says ten and puts a rookie question mark at the end of it. Like, Mother, may I? I laugh, say see you in court, and he kicks it up to twenty. I say three murders and an attempted against a police officer? You auditioning at The Comedy Store? He immediately jumps to thirty. I say forty, he buckles. So, hell, Milo, if I can avoid going to trial, what do I care what happens in forty years?”
“I’m okay with that, John.”
“Good,” said Nguyen. “Not that it matters. And just to show you what a nice guy I am, I made it contingent on her sitting down with you and telling you why the eff she did it. Bring your pet shrink, maybe he can make sense of it.”
—
Nguyen left and we sat there drinking coffee as I studied the blue folder Milo had brought.
Slim folder but potent.
Cellular tower tracking placed Rhonda Cronin in the vicinity of all three murders at all the right times. Three days prior to the strangulation of Sophie Barlow, she was pegged near the alley behind Michael Heck’s apartment building, pointing to a DNA-collection mission.
Minute brown spots on the rear seat of the Highlander and huge brown splotches under the seat were confirmed to be Lynne Gutierrez’s blood, ditto for the material in the treads of the Nikes that Cronin had on during her arrest.
The jigsaw Alicia had pulled out of Cronin’s purse was new and produced nothing. But an identical tool recovered from her craft station—an old door on sawhorses situated in a spare bedroom—though well cleaned, yielded barely visible blood specks embedded between the teeth of the blade that matched to Martha Matthias.
Cronin’s living room had been converted to a home gym and ametal bar, hefty and capable of holding serious weights, produced more of Lynne’s blood.
The last bit of evidence was unconventional but just as telling. Along with Cronin’s pencil-drawn plans for an assortment of birdhouses in various stages of construction were rough sketches of a woman sitting at a table with a cord around her neck and another of a woman with disarticulated arms laid atop her torso.
Nothing commemorated Lynne Gutierrez’s murder.
Milo said, “Why do you think?”
I said, “Collateral damage, like we said. Lynne had led her to Martha. Even if it was unwitting, she didn’t want Lynne figuring it out.”
“Intellectually challenged? Doesn’t sound like much of a threat.”
“Good point. When we talk to her, we can try to find out.”
“Speaking of which, how does tomorrow look, say ten a.m.?”
