“Well, was Mr. Elliot under arrest at that point?”

“No, he wasn’t and I explained that to him. I told him that the guys — the deputies — had been taking every precaution until they knew what they had. Mr. Elliot said he understood this. I asked if he wanted to continue to cooperate and show the members of my team around inside and he said, yes, he would do it.”

“So you took him back inside the house?”

“Yes. We had him put on booties first so as not to contaminate anything and then we went back inside. I had Mr. Elliot retrace the exact steps he said he had taken when he came in and found the bodies.”

I made a note about the booties being a bit late, since Elliot had already shown the first deputies around inside. I’d potshot Kinder with that on cross.

“Was there anything unusual about the steps he said he had taken or anything inconsistent in what he told you?”

I objected to the question, saying that it was too vague. The judge agreed. Score one inconsequential point for the defense. Golantz simply rephrased and got more specific.

“Where did Mr. Elliot lead you in the house, Detective Kinder?”

“He walked us in and we went straight up the stairs to the bedroom. He told us this was what he had done when he entered. He said he then found the bodies and called nine-one-one from the phone next to the bed. He said the dispatcher told him to leave the house and go out front to wait and that’s what he did. I asked him specifically if he had been anywhere else in the house and he said no.”

“Did that seem unusual or inconsistent to you?”

“Well, first of all, I thought it was odd if true that he’d gone inside and directly up to the bedroom without initially looking around the first level of the house. It also didn’t jibe with what he told us when we got back outside the house. He pointed at his wife’s car, which was parked in the circle out front, and said that was how he knew she had somebody with her in the house. I asked him what he meant and he said that she parked out front so that Johan Rilz, the other victim, could use the one space available in the garage. They had stored a bunch of furniture and stuff in there and that left only one space. He said the German had hidden his Porsche in there and his wife had to park outside.”

“And what was the significance of that to you?”

“Well, to me it showed deception. He’d told us that he hadn’t been anywhere in the house but the bedroom upstairs. But it was pretty clear to me he had looked in the garage and seen the second victim’s Porsche.”