The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [149]
She gestured toward the mannequin’s head, angled sharply back with the faceplate up. I checked the jury. Everybody was watching intently. It was like show-and-tell in first grade.
“Okay, Doctor, if you put the angle of the head back to even or just slightly elevated, did you come up with a range of heights for the real perpetrator of this crime?”
Freeman jumped up and objected in a tone of complete exasperation.
“Your Honor, this isn’t science. This is junk science. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors, and now he’s asking her to give the height of someone who could have done it? It is impossible to know exactly what posture or neck angle the victim of this horrible—”
“Your Honor, closing arguments are not till next week,” I interjected. “If the state has an objection then counsel should state it to the court instead of speaking to the jury and trying to sell—”
“All right,” the judge said. “Both of you, stop it. Mr. Haller, you’ve been given wide latitude with this witness. But I was beginning to agree with Ms. Freeman until she got on her soapbox. Objection sustained.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Freeman said as though she had just been rescued from abandonment in a desert.
I composed myself, looked at my witness and her mannequin, then checked my notes and finally nodded. I’d gotten what I could.
“I have no further questions,” I said.
Freeman did have questions but try as she might to shake Shami Arslanian from her direct testimony and conclusions, the veteran prosecutor never got the veteran witness to concede an inch. Freeman worked her on cross for nearly forty minutes but the closest she got to scoring a point for the prosecution was to get Arslanian to acknowledge that there was no way of knowing for sure what happened in the garage when Bondurant was murdered. The judge had announced earlier in the week that Friday would be a short day because of a districtwide judges’ meeting planned for late in the afternoon. So there was no afternoon break and we worked until almost four before Perry recessed the trial for the weekend. We moved into the two-day break with me feeling like I had the upper hand. We had weathered the state’s case by potshotting much of the evidence, then closed out the week with Lisa Trammel’s denial and claim to be the victim of a setup, and my forensic witness’s supposition that it was physically impossible for the defendant to commit the crime. Unless, of course, she happened to strike the fatal blow to the victim while he was looking straight up at the ceiling of the parking garage.
I believed these were powerful seeds of doubt. Things felt good to me and when I finished packing my briefcase, I lingered at the defense table, looking through a file for something that wasn’t really there. I was half expecting Freeman to come over and beg me to sell my client a plea bargain.
But it didn’t happen. When I looked up from my phony busywork she was gone.
I took the elevator down to two. The judges might all be getting off early for a meeting on the eroding rules of courtroom decorum, but I figured the DA’s office was still working until five. I asked at the counter for Maggie McPherson and was allowed back. She shared an office with another deputy DA but luckily he was on vacation. We were alone. I pulled the missing man’s chair away from his desk and sat down in front of Maggie.
“I came by court a couple times today,” she said. “Watched some of your direct with the lady from John Jay. She’s a good witness.”
“Yeah, she’s good. And I saw you there. I didn’t know who you were there for—me or Freeman.”
She smiled.
“Maybe I was there for myself. I still learn things from you, Haller.”
Now I smiled.
“Maggie McFierce learning from me? Really?”
“Well—”
“No, don’t answer that.”
We both laughed.
“Either way, I’m glad you came by,” I said. “What’s going on this weekend with you and Hay?”
“I don’t know. We’ll be around. You have to work, I guess.”
I nodded.
“We have to track somebody down, I think. And Monday and Tuesday are going to be