Open and Shut - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,65
pompous and dislikable, and I hope the jury has the same reaction. He is basically there to testify about the material found under the fingernails of Denise McGregor, as well as the scratch marks on Willie that those fingernails obviously caused. Wallace has a lot of ammunition here, and he doesn't leave a single shell unexploded.
There is a large poster board with a full-color shot of a dazed and scratched Willie Miller, taken shortly after his arrest. The only way he could look more guilty in the picture would be if he were holding up a sign saying “I did it.”
Wallace is questioning Cassidy about the photograph, and Cassidy has a wooden pointer, the type teachers used to have in class before they got the Internet wired in.
Wallace asks, “Where were the scratch marks?”
Of course, Stevie Wonder could have pointed to the scratch marks on the photograph, but Cassidy does so as if the jury really needs his help to see them.
“They are here, and here, on the left and right cheeks on the defendant's face.”
Wallace then takes maybe thirty questions to elicit the information he could have gotten in two. Not only were the blood and skin under the fingernails of Denise McGregor that of Willie Miller, but Cassidy has determined that the scratch marks on Willie's face were made by those same fingernails.
Wallace turns the witness over to me. If I can't get the jury to doubt Cassidy, it's game, set, and match.
“Mr. Cassidy, what other foreign material besides Willie Miller's blood and skin did you find under the victim's fingernails?”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Which part of the question didn't you understand?”
Wallace objects that I'm being argumentative and badgering. Damn right I am. Hatchet sustains the objection. I restate the question, and Cassidy answers.
“We didn't find anything else.”
I feign surprise. “To the best of your knowledge, was Willie Miller naked when he was arrested?”
“I wasn't there, but I believe he was fully clothed.”
“Is there any reason to think he was naked when he committed the crime?”
“Not that I'm aware of.”
I bore in. “Were there scratches anywhere other than on his face?”
“No, those were the only scratch marks. But there were needle marks on each arm.”
The medical examination of Willie had shown needle marks on both arms, but since a blood test revealed no drugs in his system, the prosecution was precluded from bringing it out in direct examination. Wallace smiles slightly, assuming that I ineptly opened the door through which that information reached the jury.
“Yes, the needle marks, we will certainly hear more about those,” I say. “Now, what was the defendant wearing when he was arrested?”
“Objection,” says Wallace. “The answer is already in the record. His shirt and jeans, with the victim's bloodstains on them, have been submitted into evidence.”
Hatchet sustains the objection, and I bow graciously to Wallace. “Thank you. It's so hard to keep track of all this conclusive evidence.”
I ask Cassidy, “His shirt was cotton, wasn't it?”
“Yes.”
“But there were no traces of cotton under her nails?”
“No.”
“So she went after his face only?”
“It was only his face that she actually scratched,” he says.
“I can't say for sure what she went after, I wasn't there.”
“No. Neither was I. Can I borrow your pointer? It's a beauty.”
He would like to hit me over the head with it, but instead he grudgingly hands it to me, and I walk over to the large photograph of Willie in all his scratched glory.
“By the way, did you find a ruler near the body?”
“A ruler?”
“You know what a ruler is, don't you? It's like this pointer, only smaller, flatter, and straighter.”
Wallace objects and Hatchet admonishes me; business as usual.
“The thing that puzzles me,” I say, “is that I personally cannot draw a straight line, yet the victim managed to scratch two of them.”
I point to the scratch marks on each cheek, which are in fact close to perfectly straight and perpendicular to the ground.
“There are no normal patterns for this. Every case is different.” He's getting more smug as he goes along. It's time to de-smugitize him.
“No normal pattern? Isn't the existence of any pattern at all by definition abnormal?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Then let me explain it to you, Doctor,” I snarl. “Here we have a woman who is being beaten and stabbed to death by a drunken man, who must be pretty unstable in his own right. So she's flailing away, desperately trying to defend herself, trying to stop the knife from penetrating her, trying to stop