Майкл Коннелли - Law of Innocence

Berg ran out the afternoon with testimony and video from the lead criminalist who had been in charge of the crime scene and then the deputy coroner who had conducted the autopsy on the victim. Both witnesses were part of the building blocks of the state’s case, even if they offered no evidence that directly implicated me. With the criminalist, I passed on the opportunity to ask questions. There was nothing to be gained there. With the coroner, Berg ran her direct examination past the usual 4:30 p.m. cutoff for testimony. Judge Warfield liked to use the last half hour of the day to dismiss the jury with warnings about avoiding media reports and discussing the case on social media or anywhere else, and then to check with the lawyers for any new business to consider.

But I stood up to address the court before she could do it.

“Your Honor, I have only a few questions for the witness,” I said. “If I can get them in today, the prosecution can start tomorrow with a new witness and Dr. Jackson will be able to go back to his important work at the coroner’s office.”

“If you’re sure, Mr. Haller,” the judge responded, a suspicious tone in her voice.

“Five minutes, Judge. Maybe less.”

“Very well.”

I went to the lectern with only my copy of the autopsy report and nodded to the witness, Dr. Philip Jackson.

“Dr. Jackson, good afternoon,” I began. “Can you tell the jury if it was your opinion that the victim in this case was obese?”

“He was overweight, yes,” Jackson said. “I’m not sure he would be considered obese.”

“How much did he weigh at autopsy?”

Jackson referred to his own copy of the autopsy report before responding.

“He weighed two hundred six pounds,” he said.

“And how tall was he?” I followed.

“He was five foot eight.”

“Are you aware that the National Institutes of Health table of desired weights for adults places the maximum optimum weight of an adult male five foot eight in height at one hundred fifty-eight pounds?”

“Not off the top of my head, no.”

“Would you like to review the table, Doctor?”

“No. That sounds about right. I don’t dispute it.”

“Okay. How tall are you, Dr. Jackson?”

“Uh, six foot even.”

“And your weight?”

As I expected, Berg stood and objected on the grounds of relevancy.

“Where are we going with this, Judge?” she asked.

“Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “We are going to adjourn and take this up in the—”

“Your Honor,” I interrupted. “Three more questions and we’ll be there. And the relevancy will be clear.”

“Hurry, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “You may answer the question, Dr. Jackson.”

“One ninety,” Jackson said. “Last I checked.”

There was a slight murmur of laughter from the jury box and gallery.

“Okay, so you’re a relatively big guy,” I said. “When it came time during the autopsy to examine the victim’s back for injuries, did you turn the body over yourself?”

“No, I had help,” Jackson said.

“Why is that?”

“Because it’s difficult to move a body that weighs more than yourself.”

“I imagine so, Dr. Jackson. Who helped you?”

“As I recall, Detective Drucker witnessed the autopsy and I enlisted his help in turning the body over.”

“Judge, I have no further questions.”

Berg had no redirect and Warfield moved to adjourn court for the day. As she gave the jury the routine warnings, Maggie reached over and patted my hand.

“That was good,” she whispered.

I nodded and liked how she had touched me. It was my hope that the five-minute cross-examination of Jackson would leave the jury with something to think about as they went home for the night.

So far, Berg had offered nothing in the way of testimony or evidence that explained how I had gotten Sam Scales, who was essentially built like a mailbox, into the trunk of my car in order to shoot him. The possibilities ranged from my having an accomplice to help move an incapacitated Sam into the trunk to my drugging him and then ordering him into the trunk at gunpoint before those drugs took effect. I didn’t know whether Berg was planning to avoid the issue altogether or if something was coming further down the line in her presentation.

But for the moment, at least, I had control of the issue. And it was a bonus that my weight loss since my initial arrest had now reached nearly thirty pounds, leaving me at least fifty pounds lighter than Sam Scales at death. I had checked the jury during my final questions to Jackson and several were looking at me instead of the witness, most likely sizing up whether I could have manhandled the 206-pound mailbox into the trunk of my car.

Going to trial is always a gamble. The prosecution is always the house in this game. It holds the bank and deals the cards. You take any win you can get. As Deputy Chan came to collect me and take me back into courtside holding, I felt good about the day. I had spent less than fifteen minutes cross-examining the state’s witnesses but felt I had scored points and put a hit on the house. Sometimes that was all you could ask for. You plant seeds that help keep jurors thinking and that hopefully sprout and bloom during the defense phase of the trial. For the third trial day in a row, I felt momentum building.

I changed into my blues in the holding cell and waited for a runner to come get me and take me down to the dock. Sitting on the bench, I thought about where Dana Berg would take the trial next. It seemed to me that the case had largely been delivered to the jury through Drucker.

Tomorrow would certainly center on my garage. The state’s wit list included another criminalist, who had handled the search there the morning after the killing, a DNA expert who would testify that the blood collected from the floor of the garage came from Sam Scales, and a ballistics expert who would testify about the analysis of the bullet evidence.

But I couldn’t help thinking that there was going to be something else. Something not on a list. An October surprise, as members of the defense bar liked to call a sandbagging by the prosecution.

There was a clue to something coming. I had noticed that Kent Drucker left the courtroom after his testimony concluded. He was not replaced by his partner, Lopes, which meant that Berg was flying blind through the rest of the afternoon—no case detective on hand in case she needed documents or a refresher on aspects of the case. This rarely happened in a murder trial and it told me something was up. Drucker and Lopes were working on something. It had to be case-related, because they would have been taken out of the homicide rotation once the trial started. I was sure there was an October surprise coming.

This was how the rules of fairness in trial procedure were subverted. By putting off the investigative work on a witness or piece of evidence until trial is underway, the prosecutor can claim that it was a newfound witness or piece of evidence and that is why there was no forewarning to opposing counsel. The defense did it as well—I’d had people poised to drop a subpoena on Louis Opparizio, who would be my own October surprise. But there was something inappropriate and unfair about it when the prosecution, which held all the power and all the cards, did it. It was like the New York Yankees always getting the best players because they had the most money. It was why my favorite team in baseball was whatever team was playing the Yankees.

My thoughts were interrupted when the runner came to the holding cell to escort me down to the prisoner transport dock in the courthouse basement. Twenty minutes later I was in the back of a sheriff’s cruiser being driven solo back to Twin Towers, courtesy of the order from Judge Warfield. I noticed that the driver was a different deputy from the one who had driven me that morning and last week. This driver seemed familiar to me but I couldn’t place him. Between the jail and the courthouse I had seen so many different deputies in the past four months that there was no way I could remember them all.