Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“Do they correspond? I’m not—”

“Do they match, Detective? Are they identical?”

Drucker made a display of looking down at his photos and then at the two shots I had put up on the easels.

“They appear to be the same,” he finally said.

“Perfect,” I said. “Can you tell us for the record what the two photos depict?”

“They’re both shots of the victim in this case in the trunk of your car. One of the photos is zoomed closer in than the other.”

“Thank you, Detective. The victim is lying on his right side, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay, and can I now draw your attention to the victim’s left hip, which is up toward the camera. Do you see the left rear pocket of the victim’s pants?”

“I see it.”

“Do you see the rectangular-shaped distension of the pocket?”

Drucker hesitated as he realized where this was going.

“Do you see it, Detective Drucker?”

“I see some sort of pattern there. I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t think that is indicative of a wallet in that back pocket, Detective?”

“I couldn’t know for sure without looking in that pocket. All I do know is that there was no wallet turned in to me by forensics or the Medical Examiner’s Office.”

Berg stood and objected to the line of questioning.

“Your Honor, counsel is trying to create suspicion about the investigation of this case based on a pattern he sees in the victim’s clothing. There is no wallet in that pocket because no wallet was recovered from the victim or the crime scene. The defense is using this issue, this ghost wallet, to distract the court and feed the media a conspiracy theory he hopes will get out to the jury pool. Once again the People object, first of all, to the hearing itself, and, second, to this being discussed in open court.”

She sat down angrily and the judge turned her eyes to me.

“Your Honor, that was a nice speech, but the fact remains that anybody with two eyes can see that the victim had a wallet in his back pocket. Now that wallet is gone and not only does it cast doubt on the investigation of this murder, but it puts the defense at a steep disadvantage because it is prohibited from examining the evidence that was in the wallet. Having said all of that, if the court will indulge me for five more minutes with this witness, I believe it will become abundantly clear that something was terribly wrong with this investigation.”

Warfield took her time before responding and this told me she was riding with me on this, not with the prosecution.

“You may continue with the witness, Mr. Haller.”

“Thank you, Judge. My colleague Ms. Aronson is now going to put the body-cam video for Officer Milton on the big screen. What we will show is the early moments of the tape, when Officer Milton uses the remote car key to pop the trunk.”

The video started to play on the flat-screen on the wall opposite the jury box. The angle was from the side of the rear end of the Lincoln. Milton’s hand came up into the screen as he used his thumb to pop the trunk. The lid came up, revealing the body of Sam Scales. The camera started moving as Milton reacted.

“Okay, stop it right there,” I said. “Can you back it up to the point where the trunk just comes open?”

Jennifer did so and froze the image. Milton had taken a safe side angle to the car as he opened the trunk, presumably because he did not know who or what was in it. This gave a two-second side view of the body, an angle the forensic photographer had not taken. It just happened to be captured by Milton’s body cam.

“Detective Drucker,” I said. “Can I draw your attention to the victim’s rear left pocket again? Does what you see from this angle change your opinion as to whether the victim had a wallet in his pocket at the time the body was discovered?”

All eyes were on the video screen except mine. I even saw one of the journalists slide down her gallery bench to get a better angle on the screen. The camera angle on the video clearly showed the back pocket of the victim’s pants to be slightly open because of an object inside it. It was a dark object but there was a line of lighter color running lengthwise in the middle of it.

To me, it was clearly a wallet with the edge of a currency bill poking out of it. To Drucker, it was still nothing.

“No,” he testified. “I can’t tell for sure what that is.”

I had him.

“What do you mean by ‘what that is,’ Detective?”

“I mean I can’t tell. It could be anything.”

“But you are now acknowledging that there is something in his pocket, correct?”

Drucker realized he had walked into a defense trap.

“Well, I can’t say for sure,” he said. “It could just be the lining of the pocket.”

“Really?” I said, full of disbelief. “You are now saying that is the lining of the pocket?”

“I’m saying I don’t know for sure.”

“Detective, can you go back to the property report you have in the murder book, and I’ll ask my last question.”

The room waited silently until Drucker had it in front of him.

“Okay, sir,” I said. “The property report lists where each item recovered came from, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

Drucker seemed relieved to get an easy one. But I didn’t let it last long.

“Okay, then,” I said. “What does the report say was removed from the left rear pocket of the victim’s pants?”

“Nothing,” Drucker said. “Nothing is listed.”

“No further questions,” I said.

Like a good prosecutor, Dana Berg was thinking of the trial down the road. Her cross-examination of Detective Drucker was not so much about winning the day as it was about winning the trial. She had to make sure that what went on the record today would not turn a juror against Drucker or the prosecution at trial. The smartest move she made was to ask for a ten-minute recess after I finished my direct. That gave her the space to huddle with Drucker and get a handle on what was transpiring here.

When court reconvened, Drucker had a completely different view of the photographs and video I had showed him.

I was not surprised.

“Detective Drucker, did you get a chance to review all of the crime scene photos of the victim during the break?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” Drucker said.

“And did you draw any new conclusions about what you saw?”

“I looked at all of the photos we have of the body in the trunk and I now believe that there most likely was a wallet in the rear pocket of the pants at the time the body was in the trunk.”

I had to smile. Berg was going to make it seem as though the prosecution team had made this discovery and brought it to light.

“And yet your own property report says no wallet. How do you explain that?”

“Well, obviously, the wallet was taken at some point.”

“Taken? You mean taken and misplaced?”

“Possibly.”

“Could it have been stolen?”

“Possibly.”

“When was the clothing that was on the body searched?”

“We didn’t touch it while it was in the trunk. We waited for the coroner’s people to arrive and then the body was removed from the trunk. We grabbed his prints with the reader and then the body was wrapped in plastic. After that, it was taken to the coroner’s office for autopsy.”

“So, can you say at what point the clothing was removed and examined and the property inventoried?”

“That all falls under the coroner’s duties. The body was prepped for autopsy the following day and I got a call from an investigator over there that I could swing by and pick up the property.”

“And did you?”

“Not right away. The autopsy was scheduled for the following morning. I waited to pick up the property then.”