David Ellis - The Hidden Man

“Well, it’s like I told the cops. I’d seen this man running from the building with a gun in his pants. So I figured, maybe there was something to it.”

“You remembered the date that well?” asked the prosecutor. “You remembered September 21, 2006, as the date that you saw this alleged man running from the building?”

“Well, not exactly like that. I mean, I had to think about it. But then I checked back and it was a Thursday that it happened, and I asked my brother Jake about it, and we both thought about it and figured that, yeah, it was the right date.”

“All right, let’s come back to that,” Mapp said. I felt a flutter in my stomach. Sometimes lawyers change the topic because they’re not making any inroads, and rather than cry uncle, they just act like they’ll “come back to it.” Other times, however, they’re hoping to trap a witness by jumping from topic to topic, locking them down on one detail and then using that detail against them in another area.

“Tell the Court where you were,” Mapp said. “Before this event, I mean.”

“Downey’s Pub is the name.” Butcher looked at the judge. “Over on West Liberty, right about Liberty and Manning.”

“Manning is the cross street,” Mapp confirmed.

“Yeah.”

“That’s about four city blocks away from the Liberty Apartments, right?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Okay, and who was present with you at Downey’s Pub?”

“Me and my brother.”

“And why Downey’s Pub?”

“Good place, I guess.”

“You didn’t go there for the dйcor, I take it.”

Butcher smiled. “Downey’s? No.”

“Or for the nice neighborhood?”

“No, definitely not.”

Not a good answer. I’d talked to Butcher about that.

“Kind of-kind of a rough neighborhood, wouldn’t you say?”

“Kind of rough,” Butcher agreed.

“But no particular reason for Downey’s?”

I could have objected but didn’t.

Butcher opened his hands. “I mean, what do you want?”

“I want to know why you were there. You live, what, about four miles from the place?”

“Yeah, so?”

Lester Mapp shrugged easily. He was handling this pretty well. “There’s a tavern or two between your house and that bar, right?”

The judge smiled. Butcher chuckled. “One or three hundred,” he said. “It’s as good a place as any. Me and my brother, we used to go there a lot before we had wives.”

Several people sprinkled in the gallery, a reporter or two and some court junkies, laughed. Judge Kathleen Poker did not.

“What was the occasion for going out that night?” Mapp asked.

“Now you sound like my wife,” he answered.

More laughter, but the judge turned to Butcher and said, “Please answer the question.”

Butcher nodded at her. “Okay, well, we was out, that’s all. Me and my brother blow off some steam now and then. It had been a long week.”

“Oh, it’s not unusual?” Mapp asked it casually, but it was not a casual question.

“No. We go out a lot.”

“How often? Once a week?”

“Could be.”

“Twice a week?”

“Been known to happen.”

“You didn’t need a special occasion that night,” Mapp said.

“No.”

“And you didn’t have a special occasion.”

“No.”

“So let’s talk about that month last year. September of last year. How many times did you two go out drinking that month?”

“Oh, well, come on-I don’t know. Who knows?”

No-that was not a good answer. You can’t claim to remember a date certain, going back a year, but then act like you have no memory of other dates in that month.

“No idea,” Mapp confirmed.

“No, I mean-I don’t know.”

“Fair enough. What were you drinking that night?”

“Probably whiskey.”

“Probably? You’re not sure?”

“It’s what I usually drink.”

“You don’t have a specific memory.”

“No. Not, like, specific.”

“How many drinks?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I was okay afterward, so not that much.”

“But you don’t recall.”

“No.”

“How long were you there?”

“Oh, probably a normal amount. Maybe couple hours, three hours maybe.”

“You don’t specifically recall?”

“No, but it wasn’t, like, a marathon session.”

Mapp smiled. “Okay. What was the weather like that night?”

Butcher cleared his throat. “Probably-I mean, pretty much normal.”

“Cold? Rainy? Snowing?”

“No, I mean-pretty much normal, I guess. Not rainin’ or nothin’ like that.”

“Okay. Oh, by the way-did you pay with a credit card? Or did your brother?”

Butcher and I had worked on his answer to this question.

“I don’t know for certain, but I doubt it,” he answered. “We usually pay cash.”

“You usually pay cash? Why’s that?”

“Keep it off the credit card bills,” he said. “The wives, you know. No offense, Your Honor,” he added, looking up at the judge.

The judge shook her head but smiled.

“So there’s no record of this transaction?”

“There’s a cash record.”

“Okay, fine.” The prosecutor had made his point, and it seemed like it wasn’t lost on the judge. “A cash record. Okay. Did you eat there that night?”

“No.”

“You just went there for some drinks?”

“Yeah.”

“Alcoholic drinks? You’re not saying you went there for fountain sodas?”

“No.” Butcher chuckled again. “We didn’t drink Pepsi.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Maybe-maybe ten. About ten?”

“Was that early for you guys?”

“I don’t know about early. I mean, the missus doesn’t appreciate it, you stay out real late.”

“You wanted to get home to your wife.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you guys drive together?”

“No.”

“Okay, where’d you park your car?”

“A few blocks away.”

“What direction from Downey’s?”

“Well, west of it, ’cause that’s the direction we were walking.”

“Okay, where specifically?”

“I don’t know, specifically.”

“But to have passed the Liberty Apartments Complex, you’d have to walk four city blocks from Downey’s Pub. So you were parked at least four city blocks away, right? A half mile away.”

Butcher and I had worked on this answer extensively.

“Yeah, see, but that’s on purpose,” said Butcher. “That’s what I do when I’m out. I give myself a walk after drinking. Straightens you out. Sobers you up. So yeah, I parked a way’s away.”

“But you don’t know where, exactly.”

“No.”

“And the point was, you guys were drinking, so you wanted to give yourself a walk.”

“That’s it.”

“Whiskey, I think you said.”

“Probably.”

“Probably. But definitely not soft drinks.”

“No, definitely not.”

Mapp paused, which probably meant a segue. “Now, Mr. Butcher, you have a criminal record, isn’t that true?”

Butcher adjusted his position in the witness chair. “Yeah, it’s true.”

“You were convicted of submitting a false bid application on a public construction contract, isn’t that the case?”

“Yeah.”

“You were a project manager for Emerson Construction Company back in 1982,” he said.

“Yeah, and in a bid application for an annex to a high school, we listed a subcontractor as a minority-owned business that, it turned out, was not minority owned.”

“ We listed. You mean, you listed.”

“Well-yeah, I mean, I wasn’t an owner at Emerson. This was before our family owned our own company. But yeah, I was the one who filled the thing out.”