Michael Connelly - The Fifth Witness

“That means you can all leave now,” Perry added. “I’ll tell the deputy that Mr. Opparizio is relieved as a witness. He probably has the whole media throng in the hallway waiting to devour him. And he probably blames you for that, Mr. Haller. You might want to steer clear of him while he’s in the courthouse.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Perry picked up the phone to call the deputy as we headed toward the door. I followed Freeman out and down the hallway to the courtroom. I was expecting it when she turned on me with nothing but pure and piercing anger in her eyes.

“Now I know, Haller.”

“Now you know what?”

“Why you and Maggie will never get back together again.”

That put a pause in my step and Aronson walked right into me from behind. Freeman turned back around and kept going.

“That was a low blow, Mickey,” Aronson said.

I watched Freeman go through the door to the courtroom.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

My last witness was my trusty investigator. Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski took the witness stand after lunch, after the judge told the jurors that all of Louis Opparizio’s testimony was stricken from the record. Cisco had to spell his last name twice for the clerk but that was expected. He was indeed wearing the same shirt from the day before, but no jacket and no tie. The fluorescent lighting in the courtroom made the black ink chains that wrapped his biceps clearly visible through the stretched sleeves of the pale blue shirt.

“I’m just going to call you Dennis, if that is okay,” I said. “It will be easier on the court reporter.”

Polite laughter rolled through the courtroom.

“That’s fine with me,” the witness said.

“Okay, now, you work for me handling investigations for the defense, is that correct, Dennis?”

“Yes, that’s what I do.”

“And you worked extensively for the defense on the Mitchell Bondurant murder investigation, correct?”

“Correct. You could say that I piggybacked my investigation on the police investigation, checking to see if they missed anything or maybe got something wrong.”

“Did you work from investigative materials that were turned over to the defense by the prosecution?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Included in that material was a list of license plate numbers, correct?”

“Yes, the garage at WestLand National had a camera positioned over the drive-in entrance. Detectives Kurlen and Longstreth studied the recording from the camera and wrote down the plate number of every car that entered the garage between seven, when the garage opened, and nine, when it was determined that Mr. Bondurant was already dead. They then ran the plates through the law enforcement computer to see if any of the owners had criminal records or should be further investigated for other reasons.”

“And were any further investigations generated from this list?”

“According to their investigative records, no.”

“Now, Dennis, you mentioned you piggybacked on their investigation. Did you take this list and check these plate numbers out yourself?”

“I did. All seventy-eight of them. As best I could without access to law enforcement computers.”

“And did any merit further attention or did you reach the same conclusion as detectives Kurlen and Longstreth?”

“Yes, one car merited more attention, in my opinion, and so I followed up on it.”

I asked permission to give the witness a copy of the seventy-eight license plate numbers. The judge allowed it. Cisco pulled his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.

“Which license plate did you want to further check out?”

“W-N-U-T-Z-nine.”

“Why were you interested in that one?”

“Because at the time I looked at this list we were already far down the road in our other avenues of investigation. I knew that Louis Opparizio was part owner in a business called Wing Nuts. I thought maybe there was a connection to the vehicle that carried that plate.”

“So what did you find out?”

“That the car was registered to Wing Nuts, a courier service that is partially owned by Louis Opparizio.”

“And, again, why was that worthy of attention?”

“Well, as I said, I had the benefit of time. Kurlen and Longstreth put this list together on the day of the murder. They did not know all the key factors or individuals involved. I was looking at this several weeks down the road. And at that point I knew that the victim, Mr. Bondurant, had sent an incendiary letter to Mr. Opparizio and-”

Freeman objected to his description of the letter and the judge struck the word incendiary from the record. I then told Cisco to continue.

“From our viewpoint, that letter cut Opparizio in as a person of interest and so I was doing a lot of background work on him. I connected him through Wing Nuts to a partner named Dominic Capelli. Capelli is known to law enforcement in New York as an associate of an organized crime family run by a man named Joey Giordano. Capelli has various connections to other unsavory-”

Freeman objected again and the judge sustained it. I put on my best show of frustration, acting as though both the judge and prosecutor were keeping the truth from the jury.

“Okay, let’s go back to the list and what it means. What did it show occurred at the garage involving a car owned by Wing Nuts?”

“It showed that the car entered the garage at eight oh-five.”

“And what time did it leave?”

“The exit camera showed it leaving at eight fifty.”

“So this vehicle entered the garage before the murder and left after the murder. Do I have that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“And the vehicle was owned by a company that was owned by a man with direct ties to organized crime. Is that also right?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Okay, did you determine if there was a legitimate business reason for a vehicle belonging to Wing Nuts to be in that garage?”

“Of course, the business is a courier service. It is used regularly by ALOFT to deliver documents to WestLand National. But what was curious to me is why the car entered at eight oh-five and then left before the bank even opened at nine.”

I looked at Cisco for a long moment. My gut said I had gotten all I needed to get. There was still chicken on the bone but sometimes you just have to push the plate away. Sometimes leaving the jury with a question is the best way to go.

“I have nothing further,” I said.

My direct examination had been very precise in scope to include only testimony about the license plates. This left Freeman little to work with on cross. However, she did score one point when she elicited from Cisco a reminder to the jury that WestLand National occupied only three floors of a ten-story building. The courier from Wing Nuts could have been going somewhere other than the bank, thus explaining his early arrival in the garage.

I was sure that if there was a record of a courier delivery to an office in the building other than the bank, then she would produce it-or Opparizio’s people would magically produce it for her-by the time she could put on rebuttal witnesses.

After a half hour, Freeman threw in the towel and sat down. That was when the judge asked if I had another witness to call.

“No, Your Honor,” I said. “The defense rests.”

The judge dismissed the jury for the day and instructed them to be in the assembly room by nine the next morning. Once they were gone Perry set the stage for the end of the trial, asking the attorneys if they would have rebuttal witnesses. I said no. Freeman said she wanted to reserve the right to call rebuttal witnesses in the morning.

“Okay, then we will reserve the morning session for rebuttal, if there is any rebuttal,” Perry said. “Closing arguments will begin first thing after the lunch break and each side will be limited to one hour. With any luck and no more surprises, our jury will go into deliberations by this time tomorrow.”