John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘Judge Giotti,’ he began, ‘you were good friends with Sal Russo, weren’t you?’

A nod, genial. ‘I’d known him for years, although we didn’t socialize much anymore. We were close acquaintances.’

‘And as his close acquaintance, did you see him often?’

Giotti considered this. ‘As I said, almost every Friday I’d pick up some fish when I wasn’t traveling. Once or twice I’d gone up to his apartment and had a drink with him. End of the day, end of the week.’

‘On your visits to Sal’s apartment for drinks, did he sit in his recliner?’

‘Sure. Yes.’ Then Giotti threw him a bone. ‘Sometimes.’

‘But not always?’

‘No.’

‘Where did he sit other times?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma spoke quietly, reluctant to intrude upon Giotti’s testimony. ‘This is irrelevant.’

But Salter didn’t think so. ‘Overruled.’

Hardy repeated his question about where Sal sat. ‘He’d sit anywhere,’ Giotti said. ‘Sal was a free spirit. He’d sit on the coffee table, on the recliner, the couch, the floor. He’d move around.’

‘So he could have been sitting on the floor when he received this injection and-’

‘Objection!’ This was Drysdale, citing speculation, and this time Salter sustained him.

Hardy turned back to his table, and Freeman was surreptitiously motioning him over, so he pretended he was getting a drink of water. ‘What?’

Armed with Freeman’s quick advice and the photograph, he returned to the witness. ‘Judge Giotti,’ he said, ‘looking here at People’s One, is the reclining chair in a reclining position?’

Freeman, of course, had spotted that it wasn’t. In the picture it appeared to be straight up, and Giotti said as much. ‘Now, to the best of your recollection, was it like this when you entered the room?’

Giotti closed his eyes again briefly. ‘I’d say yes. I don’t remember it being down. I would have had to push it up to walk around it, and I didn’t do that.’

This was good enough and Hardy would take it. He could later argue that Sal’s body had simply either fallen out of its chair or, better, that he’d been seated on the floor when the injection was given. In all, he was heartened. Giotti had helped him. The jury would at least have some possible alternatives to consider. He considered it was time to move to the other point he’d originally intended to bring up.

‘Judge Giotti, you’ve testified that you were aware that Sal was sick. Did you know he had Alzheimer’s disease?’

‘Not for sure, no.’

‘Did you know he had cancer?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma was behind Hardy, objecting, his voice developing its telltale shrillness. ‘I fail to see relevance.’

And of course, in a legal sense, there wasn’t much. But Hardy felt he had to get some human feeling for Sal’s pain into the proceedings. He had a sense Giotti would cooperate.

First, though, Salter had to be gotten around. And the trial judge seemed to agree with Soma; Hardy’s questions were irrelevant and unnecessary. But Giotti’s authority cut both ways in the courtroom, and when he looked up at Salter and told him he didn’t mind answering – though this was beside the point – Salter acquiesced and overruled the objection.

Giotti turned back to Hardy. ‘The headaches were evidently pretty horrible. Sal told me’ – now Giotti looked over to the jury, speaking to them – ‘half kidding, but you knew he meant it, that if I didn’t see him for a few days, I should check his apartment. He might be dead. If he didn’t die from the pain, he might just kill himself.’

‘And is that why you did just that on May ninth? Stop by his apartment?’

‘Essentially, yes. I think he’d planted that seed.’

Hardy nodded, pleased that he’d gotten it in. ‘He knew he was going to die soon, is that what you’re saying?’

Drysdale: ‘Objection, speculation.’

‘Sustained.’

Hardy: ‘I’ll rephrase, Your Honor. Judge Giotti, did Sal Russo ever seriously tell you he thought he was near death?’

Drysdale again: ‘Objection.’

But Salter overruled this one, and Giotti nodded. ‘Yes. He told me he’d be dead within a couple of months.’

‘He knew that?’

‘He thought he did, yes.’

‘Thank you, Your Honor. That’s all.’ He turned to Soma.

‘Redirect?’

But the prosecutors realized that perhaps, for all their fawning, Giotti was not exactly in their pocket, and they passed the witness.

As soon as the judge had left the stand, before he was through the bar back into the gallery, Salter pointed down at Soma with his gavel. ‘Your next witness?’

‘The People call John Strout.’

The tall man with the Deep South accent moved from the gallery into the bullpen, took the oath, and went around to the witness chair. Strout testified about once a week in one case or another and was a recognized forensic expert throughout the country. He often traveled to other jurisdictions to render second opinions on ambiguous causes of death. So he sat back, legs crossed, languidly at home on the stand, while Soma got his name, occupation, experience, on the record, asked the first few predictable questions.

Then, ‘In other words, Dr Strout, are you saying that twelve milligrams of morphine injected directly into the vein is sufficient to cause death?’

Hardy thought if Strout were any more relaxed up there, he’d be dead. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention. He corrected Soma. ‘Twelve milligrams intravenous could be sufficient to cause death, especially if there were other factors such as alcohol.’

‘And was there alcohol in the case of Salvatore Russo?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘Well, his blood alcohol level was point one oh.’

‘And is that a lot, Doctor? Was Sal Russo drunk?’

‘In California he was legally drunk, yes.’

Hardy didn’t have any idea where Soma was going with all these questions about Sal and drinking, and that worried him. So what if Sal had been drunk? How did it relate to Graham? How could it hurt him?

‘Now, Doctor, could the alcohol level in the victim’s blood contribute to the effect the morphine might have?’

Strout took his time, wanting to be precise. After a moment he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the witness box. ‘Yes, it could have.’

‘In what way?’

‘With that much alcohol aboard, the morphine would have caused his blood pressure to drop rapidly.’

‘Almost instantaneously?’

Strout nodded. ‘Almost.’

‘And then what would happen?’

‘Well, with no blood pressure, you get no blood to your head and you pass out.’

This was the answer Soma expected, and he nodded, pleased. ‘But if Sal Russo injected himself and went unconscious, he would not have had time to remove the needle from his arm, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in this photo’ – Soma entered the Polaroid print into evidence – ‘can you see the syringe on a table near the body with the cap in place over it, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, assuming that the needle was found as shown in the photo, and assuming further that Mr Russo did fall unconscious from the combined effect of alcohol and morphine, it is true, is it not, that this scenario is not consistent with Sal Russo having administered the morphine himself?’

‘Yes,’ Strout replied. ‘Assuming those facts as true, this morphine was not self-administered.’

Hardy scribbled a note. He would hammer Strout with all of this ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ in his cross-examination, but he understood Soma’s point, and he thought the jury would too. Soma made it sound as though Strout were saying that someone had killed Sal Russo. It wasn’t a suicide.