“Good. Now, Deputy Harber, did you take the handcuffs off of Mr. Elliot then, since he was not under arrest?”

“No, sir, we didn’t. We placed Mr. Elliot in the back of the car, and it is against procedure to place a subject in a sheriff’s car without handcuffs.”

“Again, there’s that word ‘subject.’ Are you sure Mr. Elliot wasn’t under arrest?”

“I am sure. We did not arrest him.”

“Okay, how long was he in the backseat of that car?”

“Approximately one half hour while we waited for the homicide team.”

“And what happened when the team arrived?”

“When the investigators arrived, they looked in the house first. Then they came out and took custody of Mr. Elliot. I mean, took him out of the car.”

There was a slip I dove into.

“He was in custody at that time?”

“No, I made a mistake there. He voluntarily agreed to wait in the car and then they arrived and took him out.”

“You are saying he voluntarily agreed to be handcuffed in the back of a patrol car?”

“Yes.”

“If he had wanted to, could he have opened the door and gotten out?”

“I don’t think so. The back doors have security locks. You can’t open them from inside.”

“But he was in there voluntarily.”

“Yes, he was.”

Even Harber didn’t look like he believed what he was saying. His face had turned a deeper shade of pink.

“Deputy Harber, when did the handcuffs finally come off of Mr. Elliot?”

“When the detectives removed him from the car, they took the cuffs off and gave them back to my partner.”

“Okay.”

I nodded like I was finished and flipped up a few pages on my pad to check for questions I missed. I kept my eyes down on the pad when I spoke.

“Oh, Deputy? One last thing. The first call to nine-one-one went out at one-oh-five according to the dispatch log. Mr. Elliot had to call again nineteen minutes later to make sure he hadn’t been forgotten about, and then you and your partner finally arrived four minutes after that. A total of twenty-three minutes to respond.”

I now looked up at Harber.

“Deputy, why did it take so long to respond to what must’ve been a priority call?”

“The Malibu district is our largest geographically. We had to come all the way over the mountain from another call.”

“Wasn’t there another patrol car that was closer and also available?”

“My partner and I were in the alpha car. It’s a rover. We handle the priority calls and we accepted this one when it came in from dispatch.”

“Okay, Deputy, I have nothing further.”