“No, that’s very incorrect.”

“Then, what was the reason you stopped the test drives?”

“One time, I was called back to the office to conduct an interview of somebody waiting there, and the other time, I was listening to the radio and I heard a deputy call for backup. I diverted to back him up.”

“Why didn’t you document these in your report on your driving time investigation?”

“I didn’t think they were germane, because they were incomplete tests.”

“So these incompletes were not documented anywhere in that thick file of yours?”

“No, they were not.”

“And so we have only your word about what caused you to stop them before reaching the Elliot house in Malibu, correct?”

“That would be correct.”

I nodded and decided I had flogged him enough on this front. I knew Golantz could rehabilitate Kinder on redirect, maybe even come up with documentation of the calls that pulled Kinder off the Malibu route. But I hoped that I had raised at least a question of trust in the minds of the jurors. I took my small victory and moved on.

I next hammered Kinder on the fact that there was no murder weapon recovered and that his six-month investigation of Walter Elliot had never linked him to a gun of any sort. I hit this from several angles so that Kinder had to repeatedly acknowledge that a key part of the investigation and prosecution was never located, even though if Elliot was the killer, he’d had little time to hide the weapon.

Finally, in frustration, Kinder said, “Well, it’s a big ocean out there, Mr. Haller.”

It was an opening I was waiting for.

“A big ocean, Detective? Are you suggesting that Mr. Elliot had a boat and dumped the gun out in the middle of the Pacific?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then, like what?”

“I am just saying the gun could have ended up in the water and the currents took it away before our divers got out there.”

“It could have ended up out there? You want to take Mr. Elliot’s life and livelihood away from him on a ‘could have,’ Detective Kinder?”

“No, that’s not what I am saying.”

“What you are saying is that you don’t have a gun, you can’t connect a gun to Mr. Elliot, but you have never wavered in believing he is your man, correct?”

“We had a gunshot residue examination that came back positive. In my mind that connected Mr. Elliot to a gun.”

“What gun was that?”

“We don’t have it.”

“Uh-huh, and can you sit there and say to a scientific certainty that Mr. Elliot fired a gun on the day his wife and Johan Rilz were murdered?”

“Well, not to a scientific certainty, but the test—”

“Thank you, Detective Kinder. I think that answers the question. Let’s move on.”