A Picture of Guilt (6 page)

“No problem.”

I said I’d make a new master for Mac’s files and messenger Brashares the original. In the meantime, we set up a time to meet so he could walk me through my testimony.

“Do you think he’s got a chance?”

“I don’t know. But we’ve got more than we had before. Thanks for coming forward.”

“Chalk it up to civic duty.”

After I hung up, I tried to figure out what bugged me about this guy. I couldn’t put my finger on it. He wasn’t incompetent. He
was
doing the job, but I didn’t have the sense he was committed to it. Then again, he was a defense lawyer. He couldn’t be emotionally involved with every client. Still, I would have appreciated at least some comment about justice being served, or the truth coming out. I stood up. Maybe I was just reacting to his narcissism.

I threw on some sweats and joined Fouad outside. It was a brilliant, breezy day, the kind that triggers a yearning to be one with nature. Shading my eyes against the sun, I watched Foaud unload the spreader from his pickup. He’d lost weight, and the canvas pants he always wore when he worked hung low on his hips. Though he’d never had much excess flesh to begin with, now his dark eyes seemed enormous in his gaunt face.

My ex-husband considered lawn care a competitive sport. During the four years we were married, Barry spent thousands of dollars on landscapers, tools, and lawn care products in an effort to make our lawn the greenest, thickest patch of grass on the North Shore. At the beginning of April, even if snow still covered the ground, he’d demand that Fouad tell him precisely when fertilizer would be applied, the bushes trimmed, the weeding done. He suffered from an advanced case of “greenis” envy.

After we divorced, I didn’t have enough money to keep Fouad on. For a few years the grass languished, weeds sprouted, and grubs feasted until the lawn looked like something out of the dust bowl. Fouad came back on a limited basis last spring, and we’ve made steady progress reclaiming the land.

“This will be the last time I fertilize before winter.” He gazed ruefully at the grass, which bristled with weeds. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come more often.”

I bent over to pluck a blade of crabgrass, but a ladybug in speckled armor of black and orange was inching up its stem. Ladybugs are good.

I left it alone and straightened up. “Mother Nature will just have to understand.”

Fouad smiled and poured a bag of what looked like orange sand into the spreader. “‘Those who believe and do good deeds shall have gardens in which rivers flow.’”

Fouad has built a flourishing landscape service and a garden supply store, but he remains, at heart, a modest, spiritual soul. He rolled the spreader in a neat, straight row. Tiny bits of orange coated the green lawn. I followed him as he worked.

“Your visit to West Virginia went well?”

“Upsetting.” I explained about the white-water rafting.

He stopped with his hand on the spreader handle. “You and Rachel were not hurt?”

“We were fine. Can’t say I’ll ever do it again, though.”

“I understand.”

I thought back to the hike through the woods, Draper’s Café, Abdul’s plate. Then I remembered who’d warned me I wouldn’t see much laurel. “You were right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The only laurel I saw was in pats of butter.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

The fifth-floor courtroom at Twenty-sixth and California has high ceilings, marble walls, and polished mahogany railings around the witness stand. Unlike the cramped rooms on the lower floors, where a thick glass wall separates observers from participants and the ambiance is like a driver’s license facility, this courtroom looks like a place where justice is meted out.

The trial started on Monday. As a witness, I wasn’t allowed to attend, but a producer friend of mine at Channel Eleven knew the sketch artist for one of the other TV stations and told her to fill me in. The first witness was the police detective, who, through questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Kirk Ryan, confirmed the bullets that killed the victim came from a .38 revolver, although they never recovered the gun. Next was the medical examiner, who explained the victim’s cause and manner of death. He had also recovered scrapings from the victim’s fingernails, which DNA tests later proved to be consistent with Santoro’s.

Ryan then led the victim’s mother through a tearful testimony. Mary Jo was obedient, respectful, and ambitious, she said. Because her father was on long-term disability, the result of an accident at the steel mill, Mrs. Bosanick worked two minimum wage jobs. Mary Jo aspired to something better and was taking night classes, hoping to become a bookkeeper in a Loop office.

“But now my baby is gone. And our lives are destroyed,” her mother sobbed. “By him.” She pointed dramatically at Santoro.

Brashares didn’t tear her apart during his cross. Instead, he worked around the edges, gently eliciting the fact that she and her husband had met Santoro several times and had even invited him over for dinner.

Next the prosecution placed both Mary Jo and Santoro at the Lakeside Inn the night she was murdered. The Lakeside was a gritty but quiet neighborhood bar not far from Calumet Park, the kind of place a single woman could occasionally drop in for a beer and not get hassled. The bartender testified that Mary Jo came in around ten, looking for Santoro. He knew Santoro was one of the dockworkers who only came in when they had cash in their pockets. On the night in question Santoro showed up around midnight. He’d obviously had a few, the bartender said, and when Mary Jo lit into him for being late, he lit back. Their argument became so loud the bartender told them to take it outside. Her body was found at the boat launch in Calumet Park a few hours later, the prosecutor reminded the jury. Lying next to Santoro’s car.

But the star witness for the prosecution was Mary Jo’s best friend, Rhonda Disapio. They’d gone to the same school, the same Catholic church, and Mary Jo had been maid of honor at Rhonda’s wedding. A plump woman with bottle-blond hair, too much jewelry, and scarlet lipstick, Rhonda testified that Mary Jo had been complaining about Santoro’s lack of money and ambition. Not only was he abusive, she said, but Mary Jo thought he was a loser. She was sorry she ever got involved. In fact, she was planning to break up with him the night she was killed.

Brashares immediately objected to her testimony as hearsay. The judge sustained it, but Brashares made a big show of asking for a mistrial. It was denied, but the judge instructed the jury to disregard the witness’s comments.

Which was like telling them not to think about pink elephants.

Ryan concluded his questioning, and Brashares approached the stand. Again he chose not to attack Rhonda on cross. He did shake loose some inconsistencies, racking up points when she admitted she didn’t know how Santoro and Mary Jo first met, nor did she know what they were fighting about on the night in question. As she stepped down from the stand, the sketch artist reported, she dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

By the time the prosecution rested on Tuesday, momentum was on their side. It was a circumstantial case, which, Brashares said, was the kind of case a jury loved to get. Drunk boyfriend follows angry girlfriend; girlfriend shakes him off; boyfriend flies into a rage and shoots her. It was easy to connect the dots.

Wednesday morning the room was packed with reporters, court-watchers, and gawkers. I was glad I’d worn my gray power suit. Especially after I met Brashares outside the courtroom.

“Who’s on besides me?” I asked.

He frowned at me through his glasses. “A vice-president from the water district who’ll talk about the hours Olive Park was open.”

It turned out Olive Park, adjacent to the filtration plant, was owned by the water district. It had been open to the public until Nine-Eleven.

I nodded. “Good. Who else?”

“That’s it.” He smiled thinly.

I stared. “I’m it?”

“I couldn’t find anyone else who saw Santoro. Maybe if you’d come forward earlier…” His voice trailed off.

“You couldn’t get a continuance so you could keep looking?”

“The judge denied it.”

“What about the night crew at the water treatment plant? Maybe someone saw Santoro walking around.”

Brashares shook his head.

“Well, what about Mac? Or my cameraman?”

“They’ll say the same thing as you. You called the shots, anyway.”

“But Ryan’ll crucify me.” Prosecutor Kirk Ryan’s conduct on cross had earned him the nickname the Hammer.

“Don’t worry,” Brashares said optimistically. “We have the tape.”

I know enough about the legal system to know that when a lawyer tells me not to worry, that’s precisely when I should.

The judge asked Brashares if he was ready. He nodded and replied in a clear voice, “May it please the court, we call Eleanor Foreman.”

I tried to ignore the stir in the courtroom as I walked down the aisle, but all eyes were on me, including Santoro’s. I stole a glance at him. He wasn’t a big man, but he had broad, powerful shoulders. His buzz cut had grown out into a thick mat of dark hair, and he sat at the defense table, wearing a cheap brown suit.

As I mounted the step to the jury box, our eyes met. At first his were vacant, with a curious lack of focus. But then, in the next instant, an expression of hope flashed in them.

I swallowed.

“Miss Foreman, thank you for coming today,” Brashares said after I’d been sworn in. “Tell us what you do for a living.”

“I’m an industrial video producer.” I answered succinctly, not volunteering anything extra, just as Brashares had instructed.

“And what does an industrial video producer do?”

I wanted to say, “Whatever it takes to get the damn show made.” Instead I explained that while a producer’s role depends on the director, the budget, and other circumstances, I generally did all the research, handled preproduction logistics, wrote the script, and supervised the location photography and postproduction.

Brashares nodded. “Let’s turn to July twenty-third of last year, the night Mary Jo Bosanick died. Were you engaged in your profession that evening?”

“I was.”

“What were you doing?”

“My crew and I were preparing to shoot a scene on the Harrison-Carter intake crib for the water district.”

“Intake crib?”

I told him what it was and where it was located.

“And what were you photographing?”

I summarized the reenactment and what we had planned. I heard a few snickers when I got to the part about Big Bill and Capone.

Brashares waited until it was quiet. “Now. On the night in question, you didn’t begin filming at the intake crib, did you?”

“No.” I told him how we experimented with the camera gain and took a few shots near Olive Park before going out to the crib.

“Tell me, Miss Foreman. Was anyone in or around Olive Park that you see in court today?”

I pointed my finger at Santoro, the way Brashares had coached me. A murmur went up from the crowd.

“Let the record reflect that the witness identified my client, Johnnie Santoro. Now, Miss Foreman, what was he doing?”

“He was lying on a bench under a streetlight. He looked like he might have been asleep.”

“Was he?”

“Not at first. He did try to get up. But he couldn’t make it, and he collapsed back on the bench. He didn’t move after that.”

“How do you remember that? I mean how do you recall exactly where he was and what he was doing?”

“Because I recorded video of him doing it.”

More murmurs went up from the crowd. Smiling faintly, Brashares paused to milk the moment.

“And when did you come to realize that the individual on the video was my client?”

“When I saw pictures of him on the news. I knew he looked familiar, but it took me a few days to realize where I’d seen him. When I figured it out, I immediately called you.”

“Now.” Brashares took a measured step in my direction. “It was your understanding, was it not, that my client wasn’t moving all that well because he’d had a few drinks?”

“Objection,” Ryan cut in.

Brashares blinked.

Ryan stood up. “Leading the witness. Plus, the witness has no knowledge of what condition the accused might be in. Anything she says is speculation.”

“Your Honor, we intend to recall a witness who will talk to the number of drinks he had at the Lakeside,” Brashares countered. “And Miss Foreman saw how he moved. Or failed to move. She can testify to what she saw.”

The judge pursed his lips. “I’ll allow it, but rephrase the question, counselor.”

Brashares smiled. Ryan sat down, shaking his head.

“Now, Miss Foreman, what did you see Mr. Santoro do?”

I explained again what I had seen.

“As far as you know, did Mr. Santoro get up and leave the park?”

“Not while I was filming him.”

“And what time was that?”

“Approximately one in the morning.”

Ryan looked like he wanted to object, but then apparently decided not to.

“Now, Miss Foreman,” Brashares continued. “You never completed the video for the water district, did you?”

“That’s correct.”

“Why not?”

I explained that it was canceled last September.

“However, even if it hadn’t been canceled, you wouldn’t have used any of the tape that my client appears on in your final product, isn’t that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Why not?”

“Those scenes were never meant to be part of the finished tape. They were outtakes. Shots we did to establish the right exposure.”

“But since that time, you have since discovered something about those outtakes, haven’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Could you explain it to the court?”

“The tape with Mr. Santoro’s image on it turns out to have been slightly damaged.”

“Damaged how?”

“There appears to be some kind of interference on the tape.”

“Radio interference?”

“Objection,” Ryan shot up again. “She’s not an expert on radio frequencies.”