The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [272]
By now Judge Brown was rubbing hard at the leathery, wrinkled skin of his face with both hands. “Mr. Picton,” he said, trying to keep his voice under control, “if I have ever heard such bald sophistry in a courtroom before, I cannot recollect it. You know perfectly well that anything offered by a witness in testimony must be considered evidence, or it is improper! I ought to hold you in contempt, sir—and if you try that kind of semantic trickery again, I will hold you in contempt! You are here to present acceptable evidence, not remark on interesting, un-proven theories!” Turning to the jury box, the judge bellowed, “The jury will disregard everything that was just said, and it will be stricken from the record!” Then it was Lucius’s turn: the judge spun on him and hollered, “And if you mention the subject of fingerprinting again, Detective Sergeant, I’ll hold you in contempt, too!”
Lucius’s forehead began to glow bright under the heat of those words. “Yes, sir,” he said sheepishly.
Hissing in exasperation, Judge Brown turned to the defense table. “All right, Mr. Darrow, the witness is yours! And since I’m in a warning mood, let me tell you, sir—I don’t want to see any hysterical theatrics of the variety that I witnessed yesterday! This trial is going to be run in an orthodox manner from here on out, and if either side crosses the line again I’m going to lock everybody up!” Mr. Darrow couldn’t hide a smile, at that; and the judge pointed straight at his head with the gavel when he saw it. “Don’t make the mistake of taking this lightly, Mr. Darrow, or you’ll find yourself on a train back to Chicago, smarting like a whipped cur!”
Mr. Darrow wiped the smile from his face as he came out from behind his table. “Yes, Your Honor. I do apologize—you’ve been extremely patient.”
“You’re damned right I have!” the judge said, causing the galleries to ripple with laughter. At the sound the judge got to his feet and banged his gavel like a madman, “And that goes for the rest of you, too!” As quiet returned, the judge began to calm down; but only when the room was absolutely still did he sit, mumbling something about “all my forty years on the bench.” Then he pointed at Mr. Darrow again with the gavel. “Well? Get a move on, Counselor, I don’t want to die before this trial is over!”
Nodding, Mr. Darrow approached Lucius. “Detective Sergeant, in how many legal cases, would you say, has ballistics played an important role?”
“In the United States?” Lucius asked.
“Ah, yes, Detective Sergeant,” Mr. Darrow answered, “for the sake of His Honor’s nervous health, I think we’d better confine our discussion to the United States.” There were a lot of people who wanted to laugh, just then, but nobody did.
Lucius shrugged. “There are some.”
“Can you give me a number?”
“No. I’m afraid I can’t.”
“But all this business about your being able to determine when a gun was fired by the mold and rust on the thing—that’s been used before?”
“Several times. It began with the Moughon case, in 1879. The defendant was exonerated when a gunsmith determined that, because of the mold and rust accumulations in his pistol, the weapon could not have been fired in at least a year and a half. The murder in question had taken place during that time period.”
Mr. Darrow shook his head, wandering over to the jury box. “I don’t know, Detective Sergeant—maybe it’s just me, but—I’ve seen a lot of mold and rust, in my life. Seems pretty amazing that you can date its growth as accurately as if it were a living creature.”
“Molds are living creatures,” Lucius answered,