The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [173]
Fifty-one
My last witness was my trusty investigator. Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski took the witness stand after lunch, after the judge told the jurors that all of Louis Opparizio’s testimony was stricken from the record. Cisco had to spell his last name twice for the clerk but that was expected. He was indeed wearing the same shirt from the day before, but no jacket and no tie. The fluorescent lighting in the courtroom made the black ink chains that wrapped his biceps clearly visible through the stretched sleeves of the pale blue shirt.
“I’m just going to call you Dennis, if that is okay,” I said. “It will be easier on the court reporter.”
Polite laughter rolled through the courtroom.
“That’s fine with me,” the witness said.
“Okay, now, you work for me handling investigations for the defense, is that correct, Dennis?”
“Yes, that’s what I do.”
“And you worked extensively for the defense on the Mitchell Bondurant murder investigation, correct?”
“Correct. You could say that I piggybacked my investigation on the police investigation, checking to see if they missed anything or maybe got something wrong.”
“Did you work from investigative materials that were turned over to the defense by the prosecution?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Included in that material was a list of license plate numbers, correct?”
“Yes, the garage at WestLand National had a camera positioned over the drive-in entrance. Detectives Kurlen and Longstreth studied the recording from the camera and wrote down the plate number of every car that entered the garage between seven, when the garage opened, and nine, when it was determined that Mr. Bondurant was already dead. They then ran the plates through the law enforcement computer to see if any of the owners had criminal records or should be further investigated for other reasons.”
“And were any further investigations generated from this list?”
“According to their investigative records, no.”
“Now, Dennis, you mentioned you piggybacked on their investigation. Did you take this list and check these plate numbers out yourself?”
“I did. All seventy-eight of them. As best I could without access to law enforcement computers.”
“And did any merit further attention or did you reach the same conclusion as detectives Kurlen and Longstreth?”
“Yes, one car merited more attention, in my opinion, and so I followed up on it.”
I asked permission to give the witness a copy of the seventy-eight license plate numbers. The judge allowed it. Cisco pulled his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.
“Which license plate did you want to further check out?”
“W-N-U-T-Z-nine.”
“Why were you interested in that one?”
“Because at the time I looked at this list we were already far down the road in our other avenues of investigation. I knew that Louis Opparizio was part owner in a business called Wing Nuts. I thought maybe there was a connection to the vehicle that carried that plate.”
“So what did you find out?”
“That the car was registered to Wing Nuts, a courier service that is partially owned by Louis Opparizio.”
“And, again, why was that worthy of attention?”
“Well, as I said, I had the benefit of time. Kurlen and Longstreth put this list together on the day of the murder. They did not know all the key factors or individuals involved. I was looking at this several weeks down the road. And at that point I knew that the victim, Mr. Bondurant, had sent an incendiary letter to Mr. Opparizio and—”
Freeman objected to his description of the letter and the judge struck the word incendiary from the record. I then told Cisco to continue.
“From our viewpoint, that letter cut Opparizio in as a person of interest and so I was doing a lot of background work on him. I connected him through Wing Nuts to a partner named Dominic Capelli. Capelli is known to law enforcement in New York as an associate of an organized crime family run by a man named Joey Giordano. Capelli has various connections to other unsavory—”
Freeman objected again and the judge sustained it. I put on my best show of frustration, acting as though