Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

The media twins were already in their usual spots when we entered.

“I see you alerted the press,” Berg said.

“Not me,” I said. “Maybe they’re just vigilant. Isn’t that what we want in a free society? A vigilant press?”

“Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree this time. They’re going to see you get your ass handed to you by the judge.”

“For the record, Dana, I don’t blame you. I actually like you, because you’re fierce and focused. I wish all our government people were. But you have people working for you who are not doing you any favors.”

We split as we went through the railing. She went left to the prosecution table, while I went right to the defense table. Jennifer was already seated there.

“Anything from Lorna?” I asked.

“She just parked and is on her way,” she said.

“Hope so.”

I opened my briefcase and pulled out a legal pad I had worked on while doing final prep in the first-floor cafeteria. Jennifer leaned over to look at my scribbling.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said.

I turned in my seat and checked the gallery. I had sent a text about the hearing to my daughter, but it was last minute and I was unsure of her Monday-afternoon class schedule. I had not heard back from her and she was not in the courtroom.

Judge Warfield was ten minutes late starting the afternoon session and that gave Lorna enough time to get to the courtroom with the photo exhibits. We were locked and loaded when Deputy Chan called the room to order and Warfield took the bench.

I held my pad in hand and was ready to be called to the lectern — it was my motion, my prerogative to go first. But Berg stood and addressed the court.

“Your Honor, before Mr. Haller is allowed to stand up here and feed his completely unfounded claims to the media that he has invited to the hearing, the state would request that the hearing be moved in camera so as not to taint the jury pool that the defense is trying to reach with these wild and wholly unsubstantiated accusations.”

I was standing before she was finished and the judge cued me.

“Mr. Haller?”

“Thank you, Judge. The defense objects to the motion to move this hearing to chambers. Just because Ms. Berg doesn’t like what she will hear is no reason to cover up what is said and presented. It’s true that these are serious allegations but sunlight is the best disinfectant, Your Honor, and this hearing should remain open to all. Additionally, and for the record, I did not alert the media to this emergency hearing. I don’t know who did. But it never occurred to me, as it apparently has to Ms. Berg, that a vigilant media would be a bad thing.”

I turned and gestured toward the two reporters as I finished. I saw then that Kent Drucker, the lead investigator on the case, had arrived and was sitting in the gallery row behind the prosecution table.

“Are you finished, Mr. Haller?” Warfield asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Submitted.”

“The request for a closed hearing is denied,” Warfield said. “Mr. Haller, do you have any witnesses?”

I paused. In a perfect world a lawyer never asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to. That means a good lawyer never puts a witness on the stand whom he or she cannot control or draw the needed answers from. I knew all of that but still made the call to go against the received wisdom.

“Your Honor, I see Detective Drucker in the courtroom. Let’s start with him as the first witness.”

Drucker went through the gate to the witness stand and was sworn in. He was a seasoned investigator with more than twenty years on the job, half of it working homicides. He wore a nice suit and carried his copy of the murder book with him. If he was surprised I had called on him, he didn’t show it. Since we were not in front of a jury, I skipped the soft introductory questions and got right to the heart of the matter.

“Detective, I see you brought your murder book with you.”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Would you mind going to the property report that was filed in regard to the belongings of the victim in this case, Sam Scales.”

Drucker opened the thick binder on the flat surface at the front of the witness box, leafed through it, and quickly found the report. I asked him to read it to the judge and he quickly ticked off items of clothing and shoes, as well as the contents of Scales’s pockets, which amounted to some loose change, a set of keys, a comb, and a money clip containing $180 in twenties.

“Anything else in his pockets?” I asked.

“No, sir,” Drucker responded.

“Cell phone?”

“No, sir.”

“No wallet?”

“No wallet.”

“Was that notable to you?”

“Yes.”

I waited for more and got nothing. Drucker was one of those witnesses who would not give an inch more than what was required.

“Can you tell us why?” I said, not hiding my exasperation.

“It raised a question,” Drucker said. “Missing wallet — could this have been a robbery?”

“But there was a money clip in his pocket, wasn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t that undercut the robbery theory and raise the possibility that the wallet was taken for another reason?”

“It could have, yes.”

“It ‘could have’? I’m asking if it did.”

“Everything was a question. The man was obviously murdered. There were a lot of possibilities as to motive.”

“Without a wallet and ID, how did you identify the victim as Sam Scales?”

“Fingerprints. There was a patrol sergeant on hand with a mobile reader. We got the ID pretty fast and it was more reliable than checking a wallet. People carry fake IDs.”

He had just unknowingly made a point that I intended to make.

“After you identified the victim as Sam Scales, did you do a criminal background check on him?”

“My partner did.”

“What did he find?”

“A long list of frauds, cons, and other crimes that I am sure you are familiar with.”

I ignored the barb and pressed on.

“Isn’t it a fact that in each of those frauds, cons, and other crimes, Sam Scales used a different alias?”

“That is correct.”

Berg sensed that a kill shot might be coming and stood up and objected.

“Your Honor, this is a motion to compel discovery, and counsel is leisurely walking the witness through the entire investigation of the case. Is there a purpose here?”

It wasn’t much of an objection but it did serve to knock me out of my rhythm. The judge admonished me to get to the point of my questioning or move on.

“Detective Drucker, knowing that the victim of this murder used different aliases, wouldn’t it have been important to the investigation to recover his wallet to see what alias he was using at the time of his death?”

Drucker digested the question for a long moment before responding.

“Hard to say,” he said.

I knew with that answer that I would never get what I wanted from Drucker. He was too wary of me to ever break free of the short answers that imparted very little information of value.

“Okay, let’s move on,” I said. “Detective, could you turn to the crime scene photos in your murder book and look at photographs thirty-seven and thirty-nine.”

While Drucker found the relevant pages in the murder book, I quickly set up two portable easels in front of the empty jury box and on them placed the 24 x 18 blowup shots Lorna had gotten made that morning. Each was a photograph of Sam Scales lying on his side in the trunk of my Lincoln. The second shot was a little tighter than the first.

“Did you find the photos, Detective Drucker?”

“Yes, I have them here.”

“Do your photos thirty-seven and thirty-nine correspond with the blowups I have put up for the court to see?”