Robert Tanenbaum - Fury

"Thank you, Mr. Villalobos," Louis said, mopping his face. He turned to Karp. "Your witness."

Villalobos waited like a man facing a firing squad as Karp approached and said, "Mr. Villalobos, you testified that you hit Ms. Tyler repeatedly…hard enough to crack her skull in three places. Can you tell the jury what you used to hit her?"

Villalobos looked at Karp suspiciously. He'd been warned to be careful when answering, but this wasn't one of the questions he'd gone over with Louis. He looked over at the fat lawyer for guidance, but Karp stepped into his line of sight.

"Yes," Villalobos said and tried to smile. "It was a piece of driftwood I found under the pier."

"I see," Karp said. "And did you bite Ms. Tyler on the breast before or after you hit her with this piece of driftwood?"

"After," Enrique said, then looked at the women in the jury, "after I fucked her."

"Thank you, Mr. Villalobos," Karp said. "I have no further questions at this time for this witness-"

The remainder of his statement was interrupted by a murmur of astonishment from the audience. Even Louis looked surprised. But Sykes turned his back toward the jury and smirked, first at his colleagues who struggled to keep their faces noncommittal, and then at Liz Tyler. When he caught her eye, he smiled and made a kissing motion with his mouth.

"-however, I ask the court to hold Mr. Villalobos over so that I can recall him during the defense portion of the trial," Karp said.

Villalobos stopped smiling and looked over at Louis, who looked worried but offered no guidance as he rose to his feet. "Your honor, that is the plaintiffs' case."

Tuesday, January 25

The next morning, Karp was surprised to see Liz Tyler standing outside the courtroom without her police escort.

"I told them it wasn't necessary," she said when he asked. "I said it was fine if they just got me past the crowds at the screening area. They have better things to do than shepherd me around like I was in kindergarten. I don't know, maybe I'm starting to feel stronger."

"Have you given any thought to what you'll do when this is over?"

Tyler looked surprised, as if the question had never occurred to her. "I don't really think that far ahead, Mr. Karp. I know I must seem so weak to you. I know other women have survived what I went through and gone on with their lives, whatever that means. But if my life ended tomorrow, I wouldn't be sad. I'm tired of being afraid all of the time, Mr. Karp."

"Butch," he said.

Tyler smiled. "Butch… I think that's why I couldn't deal with resuming my life with my husband and child. I was afraid-not of what might happen to me, but that something might happen to them and I'd be powerless to do anything about it. Just like I was powerless that morning when Jayshon Sykes and the others raped me."

"You remember?" Karp asked.

Tyler hesitated. "I won't take the stand, if that's what you mean," she said. "I couldn't…and it probably wouldn't help you anyway. I'm sure Mr. Louis would soon have me confused. And to be honest, I still have a hard time differentiating what is nightmare and what was reality. But I remember Sykes was the one who first grabbed me and dragged me under the pier by my hair. And I remember…" She started to cry. "…I remember him on top of me but he couldn't…he couldn't finish, so he hit me again. The others…I remember faces and being raped, but it was as if I were crawling into a shell…they could have my body but they couldn't have me."

The last statement came out as a sob. Hesitantly, Karp put his arm around her, felt her tense and then relax against his chest. After a minute, she pulled back. "I'm sorry, but I think I needed that," she said and gave him her tiny smile. "I've never been able to find my way back out of that shell, Mr… Butch. It's like I'm living in a body that doesn't belong to me anymore."

As he began to present the defense case that morning, Karp briefly touched the damp spot on his jacket where Tyler's tears had soaked in. "Your honor, the defense calls Jack Swanburg to the stand."

Karp looked toward the back of the courtroom where a short, rotund man wearing bright green suspenders to hold up his pants entered. Swanburg looked a little like Santa Claus with his flowing white hair and beard, merry blue eyes, and a round belly that Karp suspected did, indeed, shake like a bowl full of jelly. However, Karp knew that the man's mild appearance belied his reputation as one of the country's foremost forensic scientists, a freelancer from Colorado who made his living examining forensic evidence for both prosecutors and defense lawyers.

On the witness stand, Karp quickly established that the man was a doctor of pathology with expertise in a variety of forensic disciplines, "including blood-splatter analysis, bite-mark identification, forensic photography, ballistics, and dactylography…better known as fingerprint analysis."

"Is there anything you're not an expert in?" Karp asked with a smile.

"Well, you'd have to ask my wife, Connie," Swanburg replied with a chuckle. "I'm not too handy around the house."

"Doctor, can you tell the jury how many cases you've testified in?"

"Nearly three thousand."

"For the prosecution or defense?"

"Both. I like to think that I testify on behalf of the truth," Swanburg said. "There have been times when my testimony has worked against my employer. They all know going in that I will report my findings as a man of science-without prejudice."

"Dr. Swanburg, have you studied the evidence in this case?"

"I have looked at everything-the reports and photographs, as well as the physical evidence-that I was given," Swanburg said carefully.

"Fair enough, Dr. Swanburg," Karp said, approaching the witness stand and handing Swanburg "a photograph marked as People's Exhibit 24 J from the criminal trial of the plaintiffs. Can you tell the jury what it depicts?"

"Yes, I can," Swanburg said. "It's a photograph of a bite mark on the left breast of a woman. And according to the tag on the back that woman was…Mrs. Liz Tyler."

"And what can you tell us about what it shows?"

"Well," Swanburg said, speaking to the jury, "in some ways, a clear bite mark such as the one in the photograph can be used like a fingerprint to identify who it belonged to, especially if there are particularly significant characteristics."

"Thank you, Dr. Swanburg," Karp said, retrieving the photograph and handing it to the jury to look at. "Now, did you get a chance to match the bite mark in that photograph with the dental records of Mr. Enrique Villalobos?"

"Yes," Swanburg said. "I examined the X-rays taken in the prison dental office during a routine checkup."

Louis almost knocked over his chair standing up. "Objection. Whatever tomfoolery is going on regarding this bite mark, these records were obtained without a proper search warrant or notification to counsel."

Karp silently thanked Harry Kipman. "To the contrary, your honor," he said. "We obtained the records with a subpoena duces tecum and notified counsel, all as part of our pretrial motions. However, Mr. Louis made no objection at that time. I guess he must have missed it."

"I'll allow it," Klinger said, though it was clear she wasn't happy.

Karp handed Swanburg a set of X-rays. "Are these the dental records you examined?"

Swanburg nodded. "Yes. You'll notice that Mr. Villalobos has protruding incisors-somewhat rodentlike."

The courtroom erupted with laughter as Louis again jumped to his feet. "I object to that characterization-obviously planted by the defense."

Before Klinger could respond, Swanburg apologized. "I'm sorry, your honor, I did not mean to disparage Mr. Villalobos. I was just trying to characterize…describe the sort of bite pattern his teeth would leave. I withdraw the comment." He smiled so innocently that even the judge smiled back.