Hit List - Lawrence Block [93]
“Well, I don’t know,” Gloria said.
“We can only go by the testimony,” Mrs. Estévez said. “The lawyer asked the questions and the man answered them.”
Keller hadn’t wanted to say anything, but he couldn’t help himself. “But how did he know to ask?” They looked at him, and he said, “How did he know about the birthday party, and that the guy taped it?”
“Everybody tapes their kids’ parties,” somebody said.
Did they? Was every childhood birthday party captured that way, the moment frozen on time through the magic of videotape? Did anybody ever look at the tapes?
“But he knew the date,” Keller said. “He must have heard somewhere that the guy borrowed a camcorder. The clerk had to deny it, it’s a breach of regulations. Just because he denied it doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.”
“It doesn’t mean it did, either,” a woman pointed out.
“Well, no,” Keller said. “It’s a question of who you’re going to believe.”
“But what’s it matter? There’s no camcorder in the prosecution’s case. Just a VCR. Who cares if the guy borrowed a camcorder? Nobody was using it, and he brought it back in the same condition he borrowed it.”
“It establishes a pattern,” Gloria said.
“What pattern? If he borrowed a camcorder, he must have borrowed a VCR? And so what if he did? So what if he took the VCR home with him, which nobody says he did, by the way, and brought it back a day later or a week later? It’s still the same VCR.”
“Unless he switched it,” a man said.
And now they were off and running, trying to figure out why the property clerk would borrow a VCR in the first place, and why he might then substitute another one for it. “Maybe it was like your cousin’s,” a man said, with a nod at the woman whose cousin’s set kept changing channels for no discernible reason. “Maybe he had a lemon, so he switched it for the one in the evidence locker.”
“The one Mapes bought off the defendant.”
“The one Mapes says he bought off the defendant.”
Keller looked at Gloria. She wasn’t smiling, the expression on her face was carefully neutral, but he could tell that she was pleased.
“Eight guilty,” Morgan Freeman announced. Well, Milton Simmons, Keller thought, but Morgan Freeman himself couldn’t have said it better. “Three not guilty.”
“That doesn’t add up,” someone said.
“Makes eleven, and there’s one blank slip of paper. Guess somebody couldn’t make up his mind.” He frowned. “His or her mind. Their mind. This was just to get an idea where we stand, so your mind don’t have to be completely firm to vote one way or the other, but if you can’t say one way or the other at this point, that’s cool. Anybody who voted not guilty want to say anything about why you voted that way?”
“Well,” Gloria said, “I’m just not convinced the state proved their case. I still can’t be sure it’s the same VCR.”
“Girl,” the largest of the black women said, “is that a defense? ‘That’s not the stolen VCR I sold him. I sold him a different stolen VCR.’ Stolen is stolen and sold is sold.”
“What about the fruit of the poisoned tree?”
“That’s something else entirely,” Milton Simmons said, and explained what lawyers meant when they talked about the fruit of the poisoned tree. “If they searched the man’s house,” he said by way of example, “and if they found a roomful of stolen goods, and if the search was ruled illegal, then everything they found and everything it led to is the fruit of the poisoned tree, and woe unto him who eats of it. Meaning it’s inadmissible as evidence.”
“I bet they did, too,” Keller said.
“How’s that?”
“Search his house. You arrest a man for receiving stolen goods, you’d search his house.”
“Maybe they didn’t find anything.”
“Then you’d have had Nierstein crowing about it. ‘And did you search my client’s residence, officer? And did you find anything incriminating? So you would have us believe