Open and Shut - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,66
his other hand from hitting her—”
“Objection!” yells Wallace. “Is there a question somewhere in this speech?”
“Sustained.”
I push forward. “Okay, here's a bunch of questions. Why didn't she touch his clothes? Why didn't she touch those hands? Why, in her panic, did she choose to scratch two perfectly straight marks on each side of his face?”
The smugness is gone. “I can't say for sure, but it's possible—”
I interrupt. “It's possible that someone held her hands, after she was dead, and scratched Willie Miller's face, when he was too drunk to even know it.”
Wallace stands again. “Objection, Your Honor. Must we continue to listen to Mr. Carpenter's ramblings about his visits to Fantasyland?”
I turn and address Wallace directly, which is something Hatchet will come down on me for. “If I'm in Fantasyland, you should visit it. Things seem to make more sense here.”
After court is over, I find myself alone with Wallace in the men's room. We exchange typical standing-at-the-urinal small talk, and then I ask him a question which has been on my mind.
“Richard, you were in the office at the time … why did my father prosecute Willie Miller?”
“Come on, Andy. Don't believe your own speeches. There's a mountain of evidence here.”
“No,” I say. “I mean, why did he handle the trial himself? He was the DA by then; he hardly ever went into a courtroom.”
Richard thinks for a moment. “I don't know; I remember wondering about that myself at the time. But he was adamant about it. Maybe because it was a capital case. Maybe with Markham involved, your father wanted to be the one to take whatever political heat would result if the trial went badly.”
I nod. “Maybe.”
Wallace zips up, says goodbye, and leaves me to ponder all the other possible maybes.
Hatchet adjourns for the day and I go back to the office. Nicole has called and left a message reminding me of a promise I had made to go to Philip's estate after the evening meeting at the office. He is throwing a fund-raiser for a local congressional candidate that I wouldn't vote for if he were running against Muammar Qaddafi.
We convene our evening meeting early, at five o'clock, mainly for the purpose of discussing tomorrow's cross-examination of the eyewitness, Cathy Pearl.
Laurie is not coming to the meeting; she has gone to see Betty Anthony, to try and do what I couldn't—get her to talk about her deceased husband, Mike.
Kevin and I go over how I will handle Cathy Pearl's appearance tomorrow, and we believe that we can be reasonably effective. The exciting, nerve-racking, dangerous thing about cross-examination is that there truly is no way to accurately predict how it will go. There is an ebb and flow that develops between all the players in the courtroom that is volatile and can lead in various directions.
The lawyer conducting the cross is most like a point guard in a basketball game. It's his or her job to set the pace, to try and dictate the way the game will be played. But like in a basketball game, the lawyer cannot determine what defense, what tactics, the other side will employ.
Most important, unlike in basketball, it's not a four-of-seven series; there's not another game in two days. Cross-examining a witness takes place once, and it's generally winner take all. It can be scarier than the Lincoln Tunnel.
Kevin has been a little down lately; his enthusiasm has seemed to wane even as we have had some success challenging witnesses. I ask him about that, and he reveals that his conscience is rearing its ugly head. In short, he thinks Willie Miller is probably guilty, and while he wants us to win, Kevin worries that we might cause the release of a brutal murderer out into society.
“So,” I ask him, “you think we might be better than the prosecutors?”
He responds, “I think you might be the best defense attorney I've ever seen.”
That's a subject I could talk about for hours, but I try to keep the focus on Kevin. He's in some pain over this, and I might be able to help. He believes I could be so good that there could be a wrong verdict reached.
“What if we didn't represent him?” I ask.
“Then he'd get someone else.”
“What,” I ask, “if that someone was better than we are? Or not nearly as good as Wallace? Couldn't a wrong verdict result just as easily?”
He nods. “Of course.”
“I'll tell you how I see it. To me a right or wrong verdict isn't a