Lisa Scottoline - Running From The Law

“The right, I believe.” She held up a bejeweled index finger. “Wait… it was the left.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Ryerson said. “Defense counsel is trying to confuse the witness.”

Not this time. “Your Honor, I’m trying to understand exactly what Mrs. Mateer saw. The Commonwealth calls her an eyewitness, after all.”

“Overruled.” Justice Millan nodded, and Ryerson sulked in her chair.

“Mrs. Mateer, I need to know whether the person you saw got into the car from the right or the left. Please take a minute and think about it.”

Ryerson sighed, making a great show of her exasperation, and Fiske tensed at my elbow. He knew where I was going and suddenly so did I.

“The left side,” Mrs. Mateer said. “I’m positive now. The left.”

GO FOR IT! Fiske wrote on my legal pad, but I shook my head. Better to save it for later. It wasn’t a home run at a preliminary hearing but might be enough to constitute a reasonable doubt at trial. I didn’t want to show my hand.

“Mrs. Mateer, you’re sure that the person got into the car on the left in a great hurry, started it immediately, and drove off?”

“Yes.” She drew a deep breath, now that she felt on safer ground.

“And the person didn’t slide over in the front seat to start the car?”

“No.”

“He jumped in and started right off?”

“Yes.”

Fiske wrote GO! GO! GO! on the pad.

No, I wrote back. Not today.

He pursed his lips. He couldn’t have been as good a chess player as I thought. I had learned something, but the police wouldn’t drop a murder charge on it. Fiske’s Jaguar, being British-made, had the steering wheel on the right, so the driver would have entered from the right side of the car. Either Mrs. Mateer wasn’t so good on the details or Fiske was being framed for murder by someone who knew his license plate but didn’t know about his steering wheel. Or who had forgotten.

“Do you have any further questions, Ms. Morrone?” Justice Millan said. “Let’s keep things moving.”

“Just a couple, Your Honor. Mrs. Mateer, how often do you look out of your kitchen window?”

“Every time I’m at the sink. And other times, to check on my garden.”

“I understand.” You’re not a nosy old bird. “Did you ever see people coming and going from the carriage house?”

“Yes.”

“It was mostly men who came and went, isn’t that right?”

“Objection, Your Honor!” Ryerson said. “What is defense counsel suggesting?”

“Your Honor, I’m hoping Mrs. Mateer can help me understand who visited the carriage house. That is highly relevant to proving who killed Patricia Sullivan, which is the only thing the Commonwealth should be concerned about.”

“Overruled,” Justice Millan said. “She’s entitled to inquire.”

“Mrs. Mateer, you said you rented to Patricia Sullivan for a two-year period. Did you happen to notice that men visited her during that time?”

“Well, yes.”

“Would you say that many men visited her or just a few?”

She paused. “I would have to say more than a few.”

“You would have to say ‘many,’ am I right?”

“Yes.”

The reporters started yapping, as I knew they would. I wondered how Fiske would take this. Or Paul. “Mrs. Mateer, did you meet any of these men?”

“What?”

“Let’s back up. You work in the garden out back, and you’re a gardener, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a member of the Wayne Garden Club, by the way?”

“I was for many years, but no longer.”

Hmmm. Kate’s club. Did it matter? “When you were out working in your garden, did Patricia Sullivan ever introduce you to any of her visitors?”

“No… well, only one. I forget his name.”

“Is he in the courtroom today?”

She scanned the crowd slowly. I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t point at Paul. I’d normally never ask such an open question on cross, but I needed this answer. After a long time, Mrs. Mateer said: “Well, I see a man I recognize, but Patricia never introduced us.”

My mouth went dry. “Who would that be?”

She pointed a bony finger at the gallery. Heads swiveled frantically among the pews. I looked at Paul, who sat bolt upright, seemingly unafraid of her identification.

“In the back,” Mrs. Mateer said. She aimed her finger at Stan Julicher, who raised his hand and smiled at the press.

“Besides him, is there anyone else?”

“No.”

My mind flipped through the drawings I’d seen in the other sketchbooks in the garage, then the sketch I stepped on. “Mrs. Mateer, wasn’t there one man who visited more frequently than others?”

“I have to object, Your Honor,” Ryerson said. “This line of questioning casts aspersions on the character of the victim. This is the worst kind of-”

“Overruled. Get to the point, Ms. Morrone,” Justice Millan interrupted. “I’m not interested in watching while you fish.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Mrs. Mateer, there was one man who visited more than the others, wasn’t there?”

“I don’t know his name.”

I thought of the front door, unlocked. “Did he live with Miss Sullivan?”

“I’m not sure.”

“He was tall, wasn’t he, about six feet?”

She nodded. “I suppose.”

Ready, set, go. “And he was black, was he not?”

Mrs. Mateer cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”

The gallery burst into excited chatter and Justice Millan pounded the gavel. “Now, children,” she said.

“And he rode a BMW motorcycle, didn’t he?”

“Why, yes.”

And he left the seat up, too, but we won’t go into that. I glanced at Fiske, who looked puzzled. Paul didn’t. “Mrs. Mateer, I have one final question. You never saw Judge Hamilton visit the carriage house, did you?”

“No.”

Thank God, Fiske had kept his trysts nocturnal. “I have no further questions of this witness.”

I sat down and half listened to a repetitious redirect by Ryerson, then put myself on autopilot as Lieutenant Dunstan described in mind-numbing detail the police procedures for license-plate and fingerprint identification. He testified that they’d found Fiske’s prints in the living room, which squared with what Fiske had told me. He’d confined his close encounters to the sofa. Why do you think they call it a love seat?

On cross-examination, I established that the police had dusted the carriage house and found no other fingerprints from Fiske, and had examined Fiske’s Jaguar and had not yet found any evidence of the victim’s blood, hair, or fibers from her clothes. But I couldn’t resist a final line of questions, just to get the press salivating.

“Lieutenant Dunstan, did the police consider that one of the male visitors to the carriage house could have committed the crime?”

He nodded. “We investigated thoroughly, including the gentleman you referred to.”

A shake, rattle, and roll emanated from the back of the courtroom. I looked back. It was Tobin, shaking his box of Jujyfruits, presumably warning me not to press further. Still, I couldn’t resist a parting shot:

“Lieutenant Dunstan, how easy do you think it is to make a fake Pennsylvania license plate, one that would look real at a hundred yards, in the middle of a dark rainstorm?”

“I have no idea.”

“What if I told you I made one this morning in only ten minutes, out of cardboard and indelible markers?”

“Objection!” Ryerson said, but the reporters responded predictably, salivating and scribbling, scribbling and salivating. Justice Millan banged her gavel again and again, to no avail. All the news that’s fit to spin was being spun, like straw into gold.