The Hearing (50 page)

“I think it’s funny,” Abe said. “A little bit funny.”

J
an Falk’s testimony had only the most tenuous relationship to Cole Burgess, but by the time Hardy was done with him, after three o’clock in the afternoon, he felt certain that he’d forged another link in the chain that bound all these disparate elements to the murder of Elaine Wager.

Over a near constant clamor of relevance objections from both Pratt and Torrey, Judge Hill let Hardy make his case. The Cadaver spouted a constant flow of overruling rationalizations, and all of them taken together assumed the force of a mantra.

“Mr. Torrey, this is a capital case. I’m going to let it all in and sort it out at the end.”

“Mr. Torrey, this will go a lot faster if you just let Mr. Hardy do what he has to do.”

“Yes, I realize that defense counsel is arguing his evidence, but you’re the one asking for the death penalty, and if you get it, Mr. Torrey,
every single layer
of appellate court in this country is going to review it. They’re going to want a complete record of all the issues and I intend to give it to them.”

“Ms. Pratt, if as you say this line of questioning is irrelevant, how could it possibly hurt your case to hear it?”

“I know my job, Mr. Torrey. I will throw out what doesn’t belong here. You’ll have to trust me on that. But I’ve told you I’m allowing extreme latitude here, especially after this morning’s revelations in Ms. Wager’s letter to Lieutenant Glitsky.”

Hardy knew that no judge had ever been reversed for giving the defense what it wanted. He couldn’t say whether it was Jeff Elliot’s
Examiner
article, or the judge’s time-tested views of the integrity of the D.A.’s office, or Elaine’s letter, but whatever had caused it, suddenly the Cadaver appeared compelled by the argument that events surrounding Cullen Alsop’s overdose were somehow key to Cole’s guilt or innocence.

Hardy had introduced no physical evidence—the judge had simply allowed hearsay and argument. Falk had put Gene Visser with Cullen Alsop at Jupiter on the day of his release from jail and subsequent overdose. He’d disclosed information familiar to narcotics inspectors that substantial quantities of cocaine and heroin seized in arrests of dealers were finding their way back onto the street again. He opined that perhaps the evidence lockup room under the Hall of Justice was not as secure as was generally imagined. A recent internal narcotics department audit had revealed, for example, that in the past twelve months, there was a discrepancy of nearly eighteen ounces between the amounts of opiates and cocaine logged into evidence and stored downstairs and the amount actually on hand in the case lockers.

More specifically, though, Falk had testified that Banks was going to interview Visser on the day of his own disappearance. With the inspector still on the stand, Hardy argued that since two critical witnesses in this case had died or disappeared within the past week, more investigation was called for. The burden of proof, always on the prosecution, demanded some explanation for these unusual events.

In spite of all the objections, the prosecution didn’t even bother to cross-examine Falk. What were they going to ask? If he’d made up any of this stuff? They knew he hadn’t. He was Hardy’s witness and they were evidently happy to see the end of him.

Hill stood up and announced that he would be leaving the bench for fifteen minutes, the last recess of the day. Cole went for a pit stop with the bailiff and Hardy and Freeman started talking about whether they had enough to make a motion to bifurcate the hearing—put it on hold until some of these outstanding issues had been investigated and/or resolved.

But Abe and Treya had come into the courtroom during the last half hour, and Glitsky, finally having pushed through the gallery and inside the bar rail, listened for a minute, caught their gist and interrupted. “I don’t think we want to do that.”

As Hardy called lab technician Nikki Waller to the stand, suddenly he had the sense that the momentum had truly shifted—the lone fact that Freeman had so desired had finally appeared. The stocky, pretty young woman came confidently forward out of the gallery and took the stand with a kind of bright effervescence. Enthusiasm was rare enough in the courtroom, and Hardy found himself smiling at her, grateful for the attitude and also—mostly—for the information she possessed. He walked her through her introduction and credentials, then got directly to the point.

“Ms. Waller, did you have occasion recently to examine for fingerprints some of the contents of the room where Cullen Alsop died?”

“Yes, I did, just today.”

“Hadn’t you already done something like that?”

“Yes.” She briefly explained the computer problem, concluding, “I didn’t have a print good enough to compare to prints already in the system by computer, so not too surprisingly, I didn’t find anything to match.”

“Although there were a lot of fingerprints in the room, isn’t that so?”

“Oh yeah.” She almost giggled. “There was no shortage there. They were everywhere.”

“And then what happened this morning to make you look again?”

“Well, Inspector Thieu from homicide came to the lab and asked that I check the fingerprints again against a specific individual, whose prints were on file.”

“And did you do that?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ms. Waller, what was the object on which you found the fingerprint?”

She wrinkled her face fetchingly. “Actually, it was a piece of Scotch tape—the inside sticky part—which was used to close the Baggie that had held the heroin.”

“And was it usable?”

“It was blurry, but usable.”

“And did you get a match this time?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

Hardy straightened up and inhaled deeply. “Would you please tell the court the name of the person whose fingerprint was on the tape that enclosed the bag of heroin?”

Nikki Waller looked helpfully up at the Cadaver. “Eugene Visser.”

On the stand, Visser was the picture of blue-collar cooperation. “Of course I can explain it. This was the junkie in the bathroom, right?”

Hardy shrugged. “You’re telling the court, Mr. Visser. Not me.”

“Well.” Visser sat back, no sign of tension anywhere. “First you gotta understand that Jupiter is a party place. I mean, I heard what your last witness was talking about—Falk?—and you know, I’ve seen him in there, too. In the bathroom.”

“We’re not talking about Inspector Falk right now, Mr. Visser. We’re talking about how your thumbprint came to be on a bag of pure heroin that was a vehicle for a young man’s death.”

“Okay, sure,” Visser said. “The short answer, then, is I picked it up.”

“You picked it up?”

“I’m in the bathroom, I’m standing at the urinal, it’s the middle of the afternoon. I’m hearing some noise next to me in the stall, but you know how that is, you don’t exactly go sticking your head over the top and asking how things are going.” A nervous titter rolled through the gallery. “Anyway, next thing I know, I hear this person swear, like he dropped something, and a Baggie of white powder shows up at my feet.”

“At your feet?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. He must have kicked it grabbing for it or something. But like I was telling you, this isn’t the first time I’d seen something like that at Jupiter. I mean, this is an adult place. There’s a lot of law enforcement types, like myself. So I figure, the kid in the stall, maybe he’s undercover—like your friend Falk, maybe, huh?—and he’s trying to entrap me.” The gallery found this amusing, too. “So I leaned over, picked up the Baggie, closed it back up with the tape. By this time, the kid’s out of the stall, coming around, frantic. Going all like ‘Where’s my stuff? Where’s my stuff?’ So I hand it back to him.”

“You handed it to him?”

Visser smiled. “All taped up. Which, now, take my word for it, I wish I hadn’t.”

Another ripple of laughter, and Visser acknowledged it almost as though he was doing stand-up. He began to rise out of the witness chair, but Hardy held up a hand and stopped him. “Mr. Visser, excuse me. We’re not quite done here. Inspector Falk has testified that you went into the bathroom after Mr. Alsop and both of you stayed in there for quite a while, perhaps as long as ten minutes. Would you care to explain that to the court?”

Shaking his head at all this silliness, Visser plopped back down and gave Hardy a long and serious look. “You don’t have to believe me, but I talked to him.”

“You talked to him? Cullen Alsop? What about?”

He threw a look to the judge, then back to Hardy. “No, forget it. Never mind. You’d just laugh.”

“I’m not laughing, Mr. Visser, I assure you. Please answer the question.”

The private eye fussed with his jacket. He took another moment, then shrugged. “I told him he oughta go easy on that stuff. That it could kill him.”

Behind Hardy, the gallery hummed again, but this time there wasn’t any laughter.

“So we talked like a minute, five minutes, I don’t know. He seemed like a good kid. He told me he’d just got out of jail, and the first thing he did was get hooked up. He knew he should get straight, but couldn’t seem to do it. So I told him just why didn’t he take that bag and flush it right then. Start now. And you know, for a minute I thought he would. I think he really thought about it. But then he just said he couldn’t do it, not yet.” The big man let out a convincing sigh. “It was that close,” he said sadly.

To keep his temper in check, Hardy walked across the courtroom, then to his table for a sip of water. Freeman got his attention, mouthed, “Let him go.” The old man sensed that Hardy was going to go after him some more, with no idea even of what questions he was going to ask, much less the answers to them. But Hardy ignored Freeman, and by the time he came back to the witness, he had himself under control. “Mr. Visser, did you talk with the police regarding this matter?”

“Yes, I did.”

“When was that?”

Visser made a show of remembering. “I don’t know exactly, last Wednesday or Thursday, I think. I told the inspector the same thing I told you.”

“You talked to an inspector?”

“Yeah. Black guy, right? Banks? He had me at Jupiter with the kid, too. He came by there the next day after the boy died, asking questions then.” A nonchalant shrug. “He was just following up.”

“Where did you see him?”

“He came by my office, which is down on Pier 38. I was working late there and he caught me. He asked me the same questions, not so specific about the Baggie maybe—I didn’t know I had a print on it—but the same basic idea.”

“And then what happened?” Hardy was so angry, he couldn’t stop himself.

“What happened when?”

“Next,” Hardy snapped. “After you’d finished?”

Visser lifted his shoulders, let them down theatrically. “I don’t know. He left.”

Hardy raised his voice. “Are you telling this court that you don’t know that Inspector Banks has been missing from that night on?”

The witness sat back in dismay. “Missing?”

Behind him, David Freeman exploded into a coughing fit. Evidently he’d choked on some water he was drinking, and now was hacking with a devastating and awful severity. He knocked his glass over on the table. There wasn’t a person in the courtroom who didn’t believe he could be choking to death. Cole was up, patting him on his back, the bailiff was moving over. Hardy remembered the judge, asked to be excused for a moment, then hustled over.

Freeman seemed to be recovering. He looked up, caught Hardy’s eye, put a finger on his legal pad, upon which he’d written and underlined a question.

The dog! Hardy thought. The sneaky, brilliant dog. Slowing him to a stop, getting him back into focus. He couldn’t blow it now because he had been baited into losing his temper.

Hardy stayed a moment longer to make sure that David was breathing again. Finally, Freeman stood and apologized, and Hardy returned to the witness.

“Mr. Visser.” Hardy was speaking too loud now, standing too close to the witness. In desperation, Freeman had given him a question that probably broke his own cardinal rule, but phrased in such a general way that there could be no wrong answer, and maybe, just maybe, a very good one. “Have you ever had occasion,” Hardy asked, “to enter the evidence room in the basement of the Hall of Justice?”

The change of direction wiped the complacency from Visser’s face. “Yes.”