John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

By repeating the objection over and over, Hardy had bullied him into second-guessing himself. ‘On reflection, I believe Mr Hardy has a point. I’m going to sustain his objection, and reverse my decision on the previous objection.’

Soma threw his hands wide. ‘But, Your Honor…’

The judge stopped the histrionics with a pointed finger. Drysdale helped, laying a soft hand on his partner’s sleeve. Salter’s first ruling had been right, but having already changed his mind once, he was never going to change it back. Hardy had stolen one. Salter put his glasses back on. ‘All right, gentlemen, thank you.’

When the attorneys had all returned where they belonged, the judge turned to the jury. ‘You will disregard Blue’s statement that she heard voices from Mr Russo’s apartment, or the gender of those voices. Back to you, Mr Soma.’

The prosecutor went back to his table for a sip of water, trying to buy himself the time to think of another tack. He took a deep breath, threw a look at the ceiling, then turned back to the witness.

‘Blue,’ he said, ‘have you ever seen the defendant before?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

‘Would you please tell us where?’

‘Oh, lots of times. He come by the apartment, be out in the alley with his dad, like that. Lately he be there all the time.’

‘And did you ever talk to him?’

‘Couple of times. Say hi, like that. Nothing really to speak of.’

Soma was about to ask another question, perhaps in this same vein, but Drysdale had a small coughing fit and raised his hand, asking the judge if they could have a couple of minutes recess, which was granted.

When, after five minutes, court was called back to order, Soma announced that he was through with this witness.

She’d given him nothing.

But she was going to give Hardy quite a bit. He knew why Drysdale had had his coughing fit. Soma, flustered by the reversal on Salter’s objection ruling and floundering while he thought up another line of questioning, had asked a question for which he didn’t know the answer, and it had opened a door for the defense. The coughing fit had tried to slam that door shut, but it hadn’t come in time.

‘Blue.’ Hardy wasn’t going to go formal on this woman, get hung up over nomenclature and make her mad. He smiled at her. ‘During the many times you saw Graham with Sal, did you ever see them fight?’

‘No. Nothing like fighting.’

‘What do you mean, nothing like fighting?’

‘Well, they was always laughing, more, you know. Most the time. Sometimes they just be sitting on the back of his truck, talking. Mostly that’s when I see ’em. Just talkin‘, laughin’. Sometimes in the lobby, the halls like.‘

‘So you would say they acted as though they liked each other, is that right?’

‘Objection! Conclusion.’ Soma knew he had brought this on himself. By degrees his vocal register was going up. His objection was sustained, but Hardy didn’t care.

He smiled at the witness again. ‘Blue, during the time you lived below Sal, did you ever hear any other bumps, things falling over, stuff like that?’

‘Sure, sometimes, maybe he bump into some lamp, something like that.’

‘Did you ever go to his apartment?’

She showed her teeth. ‘Not on business.’ Another ripple of laughter. ‘Couple of times, he told me he had some good salmon, I could come and get it. I love that salmon.’

‘Me too,’ Hardy said. ‘And during those times you went to his apartment, did you notice if Sal was a good housekeeper? If the place was clean and uncluttered?’

‘Lord, no,’ she said. ‘There was magazines and boxes and stuff everywhere.’

‘Any of which he might have tripped over as he was walking around, isn’t that true?’

Soma objected again, got sustained again. But Hardy felt he was making his point to the jury and pressed on. ‘All right, Blue, now I’d like you to try to remember the day Sal died and you heard this noise upstairs, like something falling. Do you remember that?’

‘I said I did.’

‘That’s right, you did. Then you told Inspector Lanier that sometime later you heard the door upstairs closing, isn’t that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Now, to the best of your recollection, how much time passed between this bump you heard and the door closing?’ Hardy wanted to establish a temporal distance between the two events. The longer the lag between the bump and the door closing, the less likely there was any causal relation between the two. Therefore, a struggle became a less likely scenario.

Blue sat back in the witness stand, pulling her hands off the rail. Methodically, she began cracking her knuckles one at time. Her eyes were far away. ‘I hear the bump. I hear him kind of moaning, “No, no, no.” Pretty good amount of time, I ’spect.‘

Hardy pounced on this. ‘While you were hearing these noises upstairs, you were having a modeling session? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘That’s right. That’s why I don’t go up there, see what’s the matter, when I hear this bump and him saying, “No.” ’

‘All right, Blue. Now, this “pretty good amount of time” you’ve just referred to, could it have been more than a half hour?’

‘Could have been.’ She paused, obviously nervous that she’d get caught in a lie. So she decided to come clean. ‘I fell a little asleep.’ She leaned forward now, looked at the judge, down into her lap.

Hardy played the card he’d picked up from Sarah. It had not been on any of the transcripts, but Lanier had mentioned to Sarah his feeling about the smell emanating from Blue’s place. ‘Blue, did you smoke marijuana this day? Is that why you fell asleep?’

Cornered, Blue’s eyes were all over the room. ‘It wasn’t that long,’ she said ambiguously.

‘You mean that you were asleep?’

‘And afterwards, after he was gone, I went up, but nobody answered.’

‘You didn’t try the door?’

‘No.’

‘Do you clearly remember that the sound of the door closing was after you woke up from your doze?’

‘Yes.’

‘And was the scraping or bumping before?’

‘Yes, sir. It was.’

‘So it might have been as long as an hour between the scraping and bumping and the entirely separate sound of the door closing, is that right?’

Another objection, this one overruled. In Salter’s view this last point wasn’t speculation. Blue could make a reasonable estimate of how long she’d been asleep. She told Hardy he was right: the sounds weren’t really all that close together.

‘Thank you, Blue. That’s all my questions.’

Soma got up on redirect and tried to repair some of the damage. ‘Blue, I’ve got here a transcript of your interview with Inspector Lanier. It says, and I quote, “I hear the door open, then the ceiling creaks, somebody else there.”’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good. Now, continuing with the transcript, you told Inspector Lanier – well, maybe you can read what it says here. Would you do that?’

Blue took the paper and read the highlighted text. ‘ “And then some other noises.” ’

Soma patiently nodded, leading her through it. ‘In other words, Blue, aren’t you saying here that the noises occurred after this someone arrived upstairs?’

Her face took on a pained expression. ‘No, I don’t mean that.’

‘But didn’t you say “then some other noises”?’

Blue was shaking her head. ‘But I don’t mean then like meaning after . I mean then like next thing I thought .’

This was bad news for the young attorney, who hadn’t given much thought to the woman’s syntax. She’d said then , which to him meant after . In this context that’s all the word meant to him. To someone with a little less education than Soma, however, the word could be almost endlessly fluid.