James Grippando - Hear No Evil

Torres stared at the witness, a gladiator’s stance. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said firmly. “Perhaps I didn’t hear you right. Did you mean to say that the boy’s words were something to the effect that his mother had shot his father?”

“No. You heard me right. Brian told me that he had shot his father.”

Lindsey’s head was in her hands. Jack’s gaze shifted back and forth from her to Johnson, still not quite believing.

The prosecutor did his best to seem indignant, strutted across the courtroom, his voice rising in anger. He was about to do what no lawyer ever wanted to do: impeach his own witness.

“Lieutenant Johnson,” he said, his voice booming, “you and I had numerous conversations about this case, did we not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We even did some mock examinations, practice sessions, during which I asked you questions and you gave me answers. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Not once in any of those conversations did you tell me about Brian’s confession to you. Did you, Lieutenant?”

“No. I did not. But that’s because-”

“That’s enough,” said Torres, cutting him off.

Johnson appealed to the judge, a look of anger and panic coming over him. “Your Honor, I have to explain this.”

“There’s no question pending,” said Torres.

The judge scratched his chin, as if he himself was overwhelmed. “The witness always has a right to explain his answer. Lieutenant Johnson said no, he never told you that before. Let’s hear why.”

Torres retreated to his seat, clearly uneasy.

Johnson looked at Lindsey and said, “The reason I never said anything about Brian is that Lindsey made me promise not to. After Brian confessed to me and I ran out of the house, I tracked down Lindsey and had a few words with her. I accused Lindsey of calling me over there to set me up for a murder I didn’t commit. She said she was sorry, that she was just trying to protect Brian. And then she asked me-she begged me-whatever I do, please don’t tell anyone that Brian shot his father.”

The courtroom was stone silent.

The judge leaned back in his chair, eyes raised toward the ceiling. “Any further questions, Mr. Torres?”

The prosecutor rose. Had this been a prize fight, he would have been staggering. “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Swyteck, any redirect?”

Jack could have put a finer point on it, but that was the beauty of reasonable doubt. No fine points were required. “Nothing, Your Honor.”

“The witness is excused.”

Jack watched, along with everyone else in the courtroom, as Lieutenant Johnson stepped down. He made eye contact with no one, his eyes forward in soldierlike fashion as he walked out.

The judge broke the silence. “Call your next witness, Mr. Swyteck.”

The words hardly had meaning to him. Jack was still trying to absorb what had just happened. It did make logical sense, but the emotional impact on the judge, the jury, or anyone else in the courtroom was nothing compared to the kick between the eyes that it was for Jack. Certain things finally and suddenly began to explain themselves. Lindsey’s refusal to let Jack talk with Brian. The grandparents seeking a court order to keep Jack away from Brian. From the very beginning, it was all about keeping anyone and everyone away from Brian.

And now Jack understood why.

“Mr. Swyteck, your next witness, please.”

His client’s earlier lies somehow seemed less devious now that Jack knew whom Lindsey had been protecting. Jack patted the back of her hand as he rose, trying to keep her from shaking. “Your Honor,” he said, his voice carrying throughout the courtroom. “The defense rests.”

Jack couldn’t remember another good day that had felt so bad.

Before trial had even started, Jack had been well aware that the entire case could turn if he could just get Damont Johnson on the stand. But even as that first question for the lieutenant left his lips, Jack’s highest hope was to convince the jury that a kinky arrangement had gone very wrong and that Lindsey’s husband had ended up dead at the hand of his own best friend. Never had Jack figured that Johnson would hand him victory by fingering Lindsey’s son.

Of course he was devastated. As much as Jack wanted to pretend that his decision to take this case was all about Lindsey and her son, all about keeping an innocent mother out of jail, his motivations had always run deeper than that. It was about Jack and his biological son. Jack wasn’t sure what he’d expected to get out of this, even in the best of circumstances. At the very least, he had wanted to meet Brian, maybe get to know him on some level. It worried him that Brian would grow up without a father. It pained him that Brian might lose his mother, too. And it bugged him to no end that Brian might grow up with his grandparents in a tony, gated community where kids cried at their own birthday parties because Mommy had promised that Cirque du Soleil would be there and all she could pull off was a command performance by the traveling cast from the Broadway musical The Lion King.

The very fact that he hadn’t suspected Brian, however, was troubling in its own right. Jack had crossed that line between personal interest and professional judgment. He was blinded by emotions, which told him that he never should have been in the case in the first place.

And now he knew exactly why Lindsey had hired him.

He popped open a can of beer with one hand, channel-surfed with the other, as the local television anchors delivered their punchy spin to a newsworthy day at the courthouse.

“A shocking development,” said one.

“A monstrous blow to the prosecution,” said another.

Jack switched back and forth between stations, checked all of them out in rapid-fire fashion. Then he did a double take. He’d moved two stations beyond it before the image triggered something in his brain, but he hurriedly scrolled back to one of the stations where he thought he’d seen Hector Torres speaking.

It was him. The footage was taped, but it was only a few minutes old. The prosecutor was fielding questions from the media as he left the courthouse. Jack increased the volume and listened. He handled the string of “What will the prosecution do now?” questions with ease, never breaking stride as he dished out such time-honored platitudes as, “We shall stay the course until justice prevails.” One question, however, brought him to a dead halt.

“Mr. Torres, how do you answer charges from the defense team that you’ve known all along that Lindsey Hart was innocent?”

He shot an icy glare, then collected himself for the camera. Torres had made a career out of never losing his cool in public. “First of all, Lindsey Hart is not innocent. We’ll prove that tomorrow in our rebuttal case. Secondly, I have never concealed evidence of a defendant’s innocence in my life, so if I had such evidence, Jack Swyteck would have known about it.”

The reporter persisted, pushing closer. “So why do you think the defense is making those accusations?”

What accusations? thought Jack. He hadn’t spoken to anyone.

Torres seemed to compose a response in his mind before speaking. “I don’t presume to vouch for Jack Swyteck’s integrity, but I’ve been friends with his father for three decades. I have to assume that some of the old man’s class has rubbed off, in which case Jack would never make a half-cocked accusation like that. So, until I actually hear it from the horse’s mouth, I’m going to treat those alleged accusations as mere rumors that don’t deserve a response.”

The taped segment ended, and the anchorwoman was back on screen. Jack switched to another channel, then another, but they had all moved on to other news. He could have called Torres to assure him that those accusations from “the defense team” hadn’t come from him, but he was content to leave it exactly the way Torres had played it: rumors.