Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

DR. HIRSCH: Absolutely not.

Jaywalker knew better than to attack Hirsch, and the truth was, he had no reason to. The case wasn't about whether Barry Tannenbaum had been stabbed to death or not. He had, and everyone knew it. Still, there were a few points to be made. Cross-examination doesn't necessarily mean beating up a witness, Jaywalker knew. Often you could accomplish much more by adopting the witness as your own.

MR. JAYWALKER: Doctor, I'm interested in the expression Mr. Burke used when he showed you the knife and asked you if its properties are consistent with the wound sustained by Mr. Tannenbaum.

DR. HIRSCH: Yes.

MR. JAYWALKER: By agreeing, did you mean to say that this knife in fact caused the wound?

DR. HIRSCH: No. Only that it could have.

MR. JAYWALKER: I see. Might you care to esti mate how many other knives in the city could have caused the wound, just as easily?

MR. BURKE: Objection.

THE COURT: Overruled.

MR. JAYWALKER: Dozens?

DR. HIRSCH: Sure.

MR. JAYWALKER: Hundreds?

DR. HIRSCH: Yes.

MR. JAYWALKER: Thousands?

DR. HIRSCH: I'd say so.

MR. JAYWALKER: And this depression you de scribed, this stamp you believe was created by the hilt of whatever knife was used. Would I be right in con cluding that if you're correct about its origin, it tells us that considerable force was used in plunging the knife into the body?

MR. BURKE: Objection to "considerable."

THE COURT: Overruled. You may answer.

DR. HIRSCH: I would agree with "consid erable force." We would have had a better idea of just how much if the blade had struck a rib. Then some thing would have had to give. Either the rib would have fractured or splintered, or the blade would have bent, broken or stopped moving forward. But as I said earlier, the blade missed the ribs.

MR. JAYWALKER: So we'll never know for sure.

DR. HIRSCH: Exactly.

MR. JAYWALKER: And we'll have to settle for "considerable force."

DR. HIRSCH: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: Suggesting that a rather powerful person was responsible for the thrust of that knife, and that he plunged it home with an awful lot of muscle behind it.

This time, Burke's objection was sustained. But Jay walker had made his point. And he knew that when it came time for summations, he would be allowed to argue it, and to ask the jurors to take a good look at Samara and ask themselves if she seemed capable of wielding a weapon with such brutal strength.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to send the jury out to lunch on.

By two o'clock Burke's detective was still unavailable, and rather than scurry around trying to find other witnesses to call out of turn, Burke asked to go over to Monday. That sort of thing occurs in just about every case that gets tried, and is a good reason never to believe a judge when he tells prospective jurors how long he expects a trial to last. To paraphrase a not-so-old expression, stuff happens.

"All right," said Judge Sobel, "we'll give the jury a long weekend. But make sure you have your detective here first thing Monday morning, or-"

"Or you'll dismiss the case?" suggested Jaywalker.

"In your dreams," said the judge. "In your dreams." Ap parently he'd been taking a peek at the rest of the evidence.

"You'll probably get to testify sometime around the middle of next week," Jaywalker told Samara, once they'd walked up to Canal Street and were safely out of earshot of the jurors. "We'll need to spend some time getting you ready."

Spend some time. Not spend some more time, given the fact that they'd already had a dozen such sessions, spanning twice that number of hours. Though Jaywalker lived in dread that his witnesses might come off as rehearsed and memorized, he clung to his belief that there was no such thing as overpreparation. He would continue to work with Samara right up until the day she took the stand. The day? More like the minute.

"Want to come over this evening?" she asked. "I'd say now, but I'm going to enjoy my afternoon off, right up to curfew time. After that, though, I could be all yours."

Jaywalker looked at her, trying to figure out if she'd intended the double entendre, or if it existed only in his mind. "Let's make it nine o'clock tomorrow morning," he said. "At my office. There'll be fewer distractions there."

The way she somehow managed to pout and smile simul taneously told him no, it hadn't been just in his mind. And once again, as he turned from her and headed for the entrance to the subway, the words that came to mind were, Y ou moron.

By Monday morning Tom Burke had his detective ready to testify. He also had some additional paperwork for Jaywalker, in the form of a two-page typewritten report. In the Age of the Computer, with three-year-olds routinely exchanging e-mails with their octogenarian grandparents, and second graders being encouraged to hand in assignments created on word processors, the NYPD had apparently bought up the entire stock of the world's discarded typewriters, the old manual ones with misaligned keystrikers and dried-out ribbons, and taught its personnel how to use them with their thumbs, perhaps, or their elbows, with the additional require ment that they misspell every third word and ignore the rules of grammar at every conceivable opportunity.

Still, it took Jaywalker only a glance to see that the de tective's unavailability on Friday had been the result of neither a conflicting court appearance nor a family emer gency. He'd been busy working, working in connection with the trial. More specifically, he'd been running around collecting fingerprints, in some cases by retrieving existing cards from BCI files, in others by actually going out, locating individuals and, with their consent, taking inked impressions of their hands. Now Jaywalker all but groaned as he read the names of the individuals. Anthony Mazzini. Alan Manheim. William Smythe. Kenneth Redding. Burke had handed his detective a list of the people whose names Jaywalker had proposed to Roger Ramseyer, the CID de tective who'd testified on Thursday, as additional suspects whose prints should have been checked against the unknown ones found in Barry Tannenbaum's apartment. Now the jurors were going to hear that none of their prints-not even Mazzini's, who'd hung around the apart ment for a good half an hour-matched any of the unknown ones. Jaywalker looked over at Burke, just in time to catch him trying to suppress a grin. "Nice work," he said.

"Hey," said Burke, "didn't anyone ever tell you how to catch red herrings?"

Jaywalker answered with a blank expression.

"You spear 'em."

Anthony Bonfiglio was a New Yorker through and through. He was a caricature right out of Little Italy, or maybe Pleasant Avenue. He could have played a wise guy on The Sopranos, or a mobbed-up cousin from one of The Godfather movies. He could have been a bookie or a loanshark or an enforcer, the kind of guy who keeps a baseball bat within arm's reach on the car seat next to him, not for hitting fungoes, but for busting kneecaps.

Instead, Bonfiglio had become a cop. And now, twenty years later, he was a detective, first grade, working homicides. Jaywalker knew him, having had to cross-examine him a couple of times over the years, and had little use for him. He strongly suspected that Bonfiglio was on the take, though he couldn't prove it. But jurors loved the tough cop image and positively ate the guy up.

Burke had Bonfiglio describe how he'd "caught" the homicide of Barry Tannenbaum just about a year and a half ago.

MR. BURKE: Was that because of some special expertise on your part, or some particular familiarity with the victim?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Nah. It was my toin, was all.

The jurors laughed. They were in love with him already.