routine test would have told them that he had not fired the .38. His prints were not on the gun, but then Montgomery, the ballistics expert, had speculated that Junior had simply wiped the gun clean.
Nor had the State tested Junior’s blood while he was hospitalized. A test would have revealed some alcohol, as expected, but also chloral hydrate. In the bar Delgado had enticed Junior into a game of darts and had managed to swap bottles of beer.
And the snitches! Delgado listened to their fabrications and worked hard to conceal a smile. Junior’s alleged confessions were a joke. They got it all wrong. Eileen went first. Delgado talked his way into the house, pulled the gun, made her undress in the bedroom, then shot her twice. He carried Son into the bedroom, undressed him, shot him.
The problem with snitches was that they often recanted and changed their stories. Delgado knew this well, as did the men he worked for. As he watched Todd Short and Digger Robles on the stand, and almost chuckled at their fiction, he knew that he would soon get the orders to take them out. Wait for the trial to end, for Junior to be led away, for the endless appeals to begin, and start the process of planning, stalking, waiting. Their testimony was now permanently recorded and could be read into the record in the event of a retrial, though such a scenario did not bother his bosses. Son was dead. Junior would be sidelined long enough. The opposition was crippled. The casino would be built.
9
The first witness called by the defense was a teenager named Heath. His family owned a country store near the small town of Larkin, about thirty miles from the crime scene. The store sold propane for heating and cooking and had a contract with Junior’s employer to collect the empty cylinders and resupply the inventory once a week. Around 2:00 p.m. on that January 17, Junior delivered ten twenty-pound cylinders and picked up ten empty ones. Heath signed the delivery ticket but no specific time was noted.
He testified that it was “around 2:00 p.m., give or take,” but could not be more specific. He said he saw Junior almost every week and that they usually “shot the bull” for a few minutes during each delivery. He estimated that Junior was at his store for less than fifteen minutes.
Swoboda produced a large map of three counties—Walton, Brunswick, and Okaloosa—and marked the locations of Heath’s family’s store and the Mace home.
The second witness called by the defense was Len McGuire, owner of a nursery and garden shop in the town of DeFuniak Springs. Mr. McGuire sold a lot of propane and had done business with Junior’s company for years. On the day of the murders, he remembered Junior arriving on his weekly round at “approximately 3:00 p.m.” He dropped off a dozen cylinders of propane and picked up the empties. He produced a delivery ticket detailing the transaction but it did not note a specific time. It never did, he told the jury.
Since the time of the two deaths was estimated to be between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m., Mr. McGuire would have seen Junior
after
he had just killed his wife and Son Razko. Swoboda asked him a lot of questions about Junior’s demeanor. Nothing seemed out of order. Same old Junior.
The third witness called by the defense was a retired state trooper named Taggart. With the tiny budget Judge McDover had reluctantly authorized Swoboda to spend on experts, he had hired Taggart for $1,000. Standing in front of the jury box and holding a pointer, Taggart indicated locations on the enlarged map. Number one was the country store where Heath worked. Number two was Mr. McGuire’s garden shop. Number three was the Mace home. Number four was Junior’s employer’s warehouse over in Moreville. Assuming Junior made his delivery at 2:00 p.m. and it consumed about fifteen minutes, as per Heath, then Junior left around 2:15 and drove to Mr. McGuire’s for his next delivery. Taggart had made that drive on three occasions