William Bernhardt - Death Row

“I can’t tell.”

“Is it a beer? Or just soda pop?”

“I can’t tell.”

Ben turned toward the jury, a look of amazement on his face. “Officer Murphy, has anything happened to your eyesight between the day of the search and the present day?”

“No.”

“Has there been some profound diminution of your mental or physical faculties?”

Murphy pursed his lips. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Is there any reason to believe your powers of perception have been reduced since the time of the search?”

“No.”

“No, I thought not.” Ben approached the bench. “Your honor, this was an illegal search, without probable cause. I move that the search and all evidence collected as a result be suppressed.”

Kearns didn’t hesitate. “Done.”

“Your honor!” Bullock raced to the front. “This little courtroom prank has no bearing-”

“Don’t bother, Mr. Bullock.”

“But this witness is an honest, truthful servant of-”

“Mr. Bullock!” Kearns aimed his gavel in the direction of his nose. “Throughout my career as a judge, I have always shown a great deal of respect to the representatives of the district attorney’s office. But if you press me on this, that could change.” He slammed down his gavel. “Let’s take a recess.”

For the first time since the trial began, Ben did not have to push his way through a mob of reporters to get out of the courtroom. He assumed they were all huddled around their cell phones, calling in this surprising development.

Ray was on the other side of the hallway, joyously embracing his girlfriend, Carrie. She was a secretary he’d met at the chemical plant where they both worked. Ray was passionately in love-for the first time in his life, he said-and they had been planning to marry. Before this disaster descended upon them. Carrie had been supremely patient throughout the protracted pretrial ordeal-but Ben knew that wouldn’t last forever.

Not far away, Ben noticed a teenage girl staring at Ray and Carrie. She had short black hair and was leaning on a cane. Ben didn’t have to ask who she was; he’d interviewed her beforehand and had seen her sitting in the courtroom gallery every day since the trial began. She was Erin Faulkner, the girl who’d miraculously managed to escape being chained up in the basement. The only survivor of the Faulkner family.

Ben assumed she was less than delighted about the elimination of key evidence against the man accused of sadistically killing her entire family. But the look in her eyes at that moment, as she gazed at Ray, puzzled him. Was she suppressing the bitterness and hatred she must feel toward him? Ben scrutinized her face more carefully. There was definitely something going on in her head. But what was it?

She turned and, all at once, their eyes locked. Ben felt an icy twinge at his spine. He quickly averted his eyes and, without even thinking about it, wrapped his arms around himself. Defending murder cases was one thing. But this he did not need.

“Sudden chill?”

To his relief, Ben saw his legal assistant, Christina McCall, standing beside him. She was wearing purple-tinted glasses, a waist-length jacket with a fake fur collar, a short, psychedelic orange skirt, and high hip boots.

“Just in from the Sonny and Cher concert?” Ben asked.

“No. Just in from the clerk’s office, where they’re all abuzz about how you knocked Bullock’s feet out from under him.”

“I did my best.”

“You did better than that. One good cross and-voilà! The prosecution case is dead in the water.”

“I never make predictions. It isn’t over till it’s over.”

“So true. And so originally put, too.” She gave him a gentle jab on the shoulder. “Way to go, slugger. You hit a home run.”

Ben shivered. “I always love your sports analogies.”

She fluffed her long strawberry-blonde hair back over her shoulder. “So who does the prosecution have left?”

“Only the complainant. Erin Faulkner.”

“Tough witness to cross. But she didn’t really see much, did she? How much damage can she do?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said, and reluctantly he let his eyes return to the fifteen-year-old girl who would now walk with a cane for the rest of her life. “I just don’t know.”

“We’re winning, right?” Ray said as he reclaimed his chair at the defense table beside Ben. He kissed Carrie again, squeezed her hand, then let her return to her own seat in the gallery.

Ben wouldn’t play. “I never make predictions.”

“I respect that.” He paused. “But we are winning, aren’t we?”

“Ray-”

“Carrie thinks we’re winning. I realize she’s not impartial. But she thinks you tore the prosecutor’s heart right out of his chest.”

Ben tried to resist the mental image. “The last witness went… very well for us. I agree. But anything can happen. Juries are unpredictable.”

Ray faced the front of the courtroom. “You’re right. Of course you are. That’s fine.” He glanced almost impishly at Ben out of the corners of his eyes. “But we are winning. Aren’t we?”

Ben gave him a small smile. “I hope so.”

Packed as it was, the entire courtroom fell silent as Erin Faulkner hobbled to the witness stand. Ben knew her left leg had been so severely damaged in the assault that for months she had not been able to walk at all, and even now could only do so with supreme effort. Her struggle to cross the courtroom underscored the inherent drama that her presence, and her testimony, would lend the proceedings.

Slowly, painfully, she led the jury through her first-person account of the night of horror. She told them how she and her mother and siblings had returned home to find a brute in a ski mask torturing her father. How he had held them all at gunpoint, had beaten and abused and cut them, one after the other. How she had watched helplessly as her family was brutalized. And finally, how he had broken her leg and knocked her out.

The account of her time locked in the basement was perhaps even more riveting. The story of a fifteen-year-old girl, naked, disoriented, suffering from a broken leg, nonetheless mustering the presence of mind and the courage to break her own thumb in order to escape was a resounding testament to the indomitability of the human spirit. Ben knew she was making a profound impression on the jury.

At last she reached the end of the tale, how she fought her way out of the cellar and up the stairs only to be greeted by a bloody tableau worse than anything Edgar Allan Poe ever dreamed about: her entire family dead, butchered-with their eyes cut out of their skulls.

“After the police arrived,” she said, in a quiet but steady voice, “they called the ambulance. I passed out soon after that and didn’t wake up until three days later in the hospital.”

“I see.” With a solemn expression, DA Bullock closed his trial notebook. “Miss Faulkner, I know this will be painful for you, but I am required by the court to ask. Do you have any knowledge regarding the identity of the man who invaded your home? Who killed your parents and your six siblings?”

“I do. I know who it was.”

Bullock paused. Ben felt his pulse quicken. “And what is the basis for your identification?”

“I was there. I saw him.”

“Wasn’t he wearing a mask?”

“He was. But I could still see his eyes, his lips. I have a very good memory.”

“And is that the basis for your identification of the killer?”

“Not entirely, no. The main basis I have is… his voice.”

Ben sat up straight. He hadn’t heard anything about this before.

“You heard his voice?” Bullock asked.

“Of course. Repeatedly. At length. It’s a very distinctive voice.”