Chapter 16
“Good morning, Ms. Rodney,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she interjected. “I’d be more comfortable if you called me Jenna.”
“Of course. Thank you for clarifying. Jenna, then. While it’s still fresh in my mind, I’d like to ask you a follow-up question about something you just said during your answers to Mr. Quick.
Specifically, you made a statement that Mrs. Loomis appeared frozen in place when you came to the threshold of the bedroom. Do I have that right?”
“Yes,” she said. “She didn’t move. She didn’t look like she saw me. Not until I screamed. Before that, she just stood there holding that knife.”
“Hmm. But you said you heard moaning. That’s what drew your attention to the area of the bedroom, correct?”
“Right,” she said.
“Who was moaning?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, you knew both Tom and Katy Loomis pretty well by that time, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know if I’d say well.”
I tapped my fingers on the lectern. “Well, you’d been in their home once a week for two years with Katy Loomis.
Four years with Tom Loomis. You testified that you and Katy regularly chatted over coffee before you began your work for the day.
In fact, if I’m reading your statement to the police, you told them that was sometimes a problem.
That Mrs. Loomis would tie you up talking, which sometimes made you late getting out of there and later to your next client. Right?”
“I think I said that. Yes.”
“You think you said it. Was it also true?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want it to sound like I was angry with her or anything. I just meant she is a talker. It’s not a bad thing.”
“So it’s true that you know what Tom and Katy’s voices sound like, right?”
“Sure.”
“So, who was moaning when you walked into the house?”
“Katy, I think. Tom had a pretty deep voice. A baritone. I remember telling him once that he should do the voiceovers for movie trailers.”
“Got it,” I said. “And if I told you the medical examiner established the time of death as having occurred at least one hour prior to your arrival at 5:52 a.m., that wouldn’t surprise you, would it?”
“What? Yeah. I don’t know. I only know what I saw.”
“Right,” I said. “What you saw. That’s important. So I really want to make sure I have it straight. You heard Katy moaning as soon as you walked into the house.”
“Yes.”
“And as you testified and told the police, you saw her standing beside the bed on Tom’s side?”
“Yes.”
“You saw blood on the bed. On the sheets, dripping down Tom’s side of the bed. Right?”
“Yes.”
“You saw blood on Katy’s face and on her clothes, right?”
“Yes.”
“Am I missing anything?”
“Well, just that she was holding a knife. And there was blood on the knife. I could see it on the blade.”
“How long did you stand there observing all of this?”
Jenna looked at Addison. He kept his head down, writing notes.
“I don’t know. Maybe three seconds.”
“Three seconds,” I said. “As in, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi? Does that seem accurate?”
“Yes. No more than that.”
“Did you scream before, after, or during those three seconds?”
“What?”
“If you recall.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, I can’t really remember the sequence like that. I think I screamed about the same time I saw what I saw.”
“Three seconds,” I said. “And you say Katy Loomis had no reaction to your presence until you screamed?”
“I said. She was just frozen there. Like stuck in time.”
I looked back at Jenna’s statement to Detective DePaul.
“Stuck in time? That seems like a very specific recollection. A precise description. I don’t see that in your statement to the police. Did you just remember that while you’ve been here in court?”
“Objection,” Quick chimed in. “Counsel is making a speech.”
“Your Honor, it is my job to explore the accuracy and consistency of this witness’s statement to the police against what she’s testifying to here today. That’s all.”
“I’ll allow it,” Judge Castor said.
“Can you repeat the question?” Jenna asked.
“Sure. This description you now have of Mrs. Loomis being frozen or stuck in time, that’s new. That isn’t how you described what you saw to Detective DePaul four months ago when the events were fresh in your mind, is it?”
“It’s what I remember. That’s all I can tell you. It’s what I saw. I don’t know if I told it like that to Detective DePaul at the time. Or if I did and she didn’t write it down like that. No clue. But I’m telling you now what I saw. That’s it.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll move on. Let’s go back in time a bit. You stated on direct that you never sensed tension between Mr. and Mrs. Loomis. Is that right?”
“I guess. Yes. They were nice to each other when I was around them. Yes. But I also said I knew Mrs. Loomis had moved out for a while early in their marriage.”
“But Mr. Loomis never discussed that with you, right?”
“No. He didn’t discuss it with me and I didn’t ask.”
“Okay. And likewise, you never overheard the Loomises arguing when you were in their presence.”
“No.”
“Just the one time when you claim you thought you heard them yelling at each other when you arrived?”
“No. But a lot of the time, Mr. Loomis had already left for work by the time I got there.”
“I’m only asking what you observed, Jenna.”
“Then yes. I mean, no. I never overheard them arguing, except that one time.”
“If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to circle back again to what you said you saw when you entered the home on March 14th. Besides seeing Mr. Loomis’s body and the blood and Mrs. Loomis. You said you saw her holding a bloody knife. Was it in her right hand or her left hand?”
“Um … her right hand.”
“Mr. Loomis slept on the right side of the bed as you stand at the foot of it, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“So if Mrs. Loomis was standing over him on his side, that means her left side was closest to you, correct?”
“Um … yes.”
“But you say you clearly saw her holding a knife in her right hand. How was she holding it again?”
“I don’t know what you mean. In her hand.”
“Well, in your statement to the police, you stated she was holding the knife. You weren’t specific about how she was holding it.
Now you’ve testified she was holding it up and over Tom.
So I’d like to understand that. Was Katy holding the knife loosely, with her arm down, the blade pointed at the floor?
Did she have it raised? Was it flat against her palm?
I’m asking you specifically, how was she holding that knife? ”
“She just had it in her hand.”
“Was her arm at her side?”
“Yes. I mean, no. No, her arm, her right arm, was bent at the elbow. She had the knife gripped in her right fist. The blade was pointing up toward the ceiling, not down toward the floor.”
“You mean the point of the blade was aimed upward, toward the ceiling?”
“Yes. Like … uh … like how you’d hold a torch if the point of the blade were the flame.”
“Got it. That helps me envision it. Thank you. So what did you notice about the knife?”
“Just that it was bloody and it was a big blade.”
“Okay, Jenna, I’d like to direct your attention to the State’s Exhibit 19.” We had previously stipulated to the entry of certain exhibits. The photograph of the buck knife found at the scene was one of them. “Do you recognize it?”
Jenna shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I can see this knife is bloody. And it looks like the one Mrs. Loomis was holding. So then, yes. I do recognize it from that.”
“But you don’t recognize it beyond that. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“So you’d never seen this knife before? Look very closely. Can you describe for the record what’s carved into the handle?”
“Initials,” she said. “XYZ.”
“XYZ. Do you know what those letters mean?”
“No idea.”
“You testified that among your duties, you did Tom Loomis’s laundry. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Am I correct in assuming that also means you put his clothes away after you folded them?”
“That’s correct.”
“Where did you put them?”
“Where they belonged. Dress shirts hung in the closet. He had his suits dry-cleaned. Sometimes I’d pick up his dry cleaning for him and put that in the closet. His tee shirts went in his dresser. Underwear. Socks. The usual.”
“So is it fair to say that you could tell me what items belonged in every drawer or cabinet of Tom Loomis’s house?”
She looked skyward. “I guess it is, yes. It wasn’t a very big house.”
“You knew what he kept in his dresser drawers. What about his nightstand?”
“Sure. He had hankies in there. He kept a watch there. His wallet. A few loose photographs.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Addison squirm in his seat. Jenna was going far beyond yes or no answers.
“His kitchen drawers and cabinets. Do you know what he kept in each of those?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have a junk drawer?”
“Yep. It was the drawer to the immediate left of the fridge.”
“What about the spare rooms? What was in those?”
“One was a kind of catchall. He had a spin bike and a treadmill in it. Some boxes he’d never unpacked from when he moved in. Mrs. Loomis added to those.”
“Were those boxes sealed?”
“They were. Yes. I’d offered a few times to help unpack them. They never took me up on it.”
“What about the third bedroom?”
“That was his office. There was a desk with a computer. A couple of file cabinets.”
“Did you ever have occasion to go into those drawers? Either the desk or the file cabinets?”
“Sometimes, yes. Once or twice he called while I was there. This was before Mrs. Loomis was in the picture. He was at work and forgot some notes he needed. So he asked me to go in and find them. They were in a desk drawer.”
This was gold. My hope that Jenna would grow comfortable on the stand paid off. She continued with her candor, explaining how she helped Tom unpack and organize his basement as well.
“All right,” I said. “So in the four years that you worked for Tom Loomis and gained intimate familiarity with where he kept his things, you never once saw this XYZ buck knife?”
“No,” she said.