The Guilty

by Gabriel Boutros

  Every prosecutor who ever had to make a deal with one criminal in order to catch another knew he was really making a deal with the devil. That morning, as Paris stood in the witness box before them, several jurors may well have wondered if, in fact, the prince of darkness himself hadn’t incarnated in front of them. Even Francis Parent stood at a certain remove, looking at his young witness as if he was afraid to catch the plague from him, while he questioned him about the events of June 14, 1999.

  The slightly built young man had testified about his arrival at the apartment in Little Burgundy, allegedly with Marlon Small. After describing the shooting of Indian, he came to the point where he had come across a stoned Dexter Phillips coming out of the bathroom. Then Parent asked the question that Bratt had been waiting for all morning.

  “And what did you do then, Mr. Paris?”

  “I got the guy down on his stomach and I shot him in the back of the head.”

  Bingo, Bratt thought, looking over at the jurors, most of whom now sat with their mouths agape. The Crown’s honorable witness is a cold-blooded murderer, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe Dorrell should be here to get a look at the guy who actually shot his brother, instead of dumping his heartbreak on my back.

  “Can you describe how you shot him, Mr. Paris?”

  “I was standing by his feet and I shot him three times, just above the neck.”

  Several jurors shifted uncomfortably in their seats and continued to stare openly, both at Parent and Paris. Even Judge Green was now looking at the two of them with an obvious expression of disdain.

  Bratt wondered what the jurors found more shocking: that Paris admitted he had killed Dexter Phillips as casually as if he were stepping on a bug, or that Parent had called him as his witness? The prosecutor had asked them to keep their minds open and believe Paris when he implicated Small as his accomplice, but by the looks on their faces, Bratt didn’t think they were going to cut him a lot of slack.

  He should have been enjoying his rival’s predicament, just then, but joy was no longer a feeling that he could call up at a moment’s notice. Instead, he had found a new target for his anger.

  “What happened after that?” Parent continued.

  “Nothin’. Brando kicked him to make sure he was dead, then I heard some people running around out in the hall, and we just booted it by the back door.”

  “Did you take anything with you when you left the apartment?”

  “Nah, we had to get out of there too fast. The whole thing was a big waste of time.”

  Bratt glared angrily at Parent, feeling as if it was his own child’s pointless death that was being talked about in such a trivial fashion.

  Your wonderful witness just described shooting three innocent people as a big waste of his time, Bratt wanted to yell at Parent. Hope this makes you feel as shitty as I have these last two days.

  Parent’s own face showed his revulsion at Paris’s cavalier attitude toward his crime. He lowered his eyes to the papers in front of him and shuffled them around as if looking for something important. From Bratt’s vantage point, though, he could tell that the prosecutor was just trying to compose himself after his witness’s last remark. Nancy, sitting beside him, seemed equally unnerved by the heartless young man.

  Parent didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get back to Paris and he kept shuffling his papers until Green finally spoke up.

  “Mr. Parent, did you lose something?”

  Yeah, thought Bratt. His self-respect.

  Parent looked up, his face flushed, and cleared his throat before turning back to face Paris.

  “Did you do anything particular after leaving the apartment?”

  “Yeah. We ran round the corner and threw both guns into a big garbage bin, behind some warehouses near there.”

  “You say “we”. By that you mean…”

  “Me an’ Brando. Marlon Small. We both threw our guns away there. That was the plan from the beginning.”

  Parent turned to a table behind him and opened one of a half-dozen cardboard exhibit boxes that were on it. He pulled out two plastic evidence bags, each containing a handgun, and laid them in front of the witness.

  “Do you recognize these, Mr. Paris?”

  Paris looked at them indifferently, then pushed at the smaller of the two with the forefinger of his right hand.

  “That’s the one I shot him with, the snub nose.” His tone was flat and emotionless when he spoke. “Brando, he used the automatic.”

  Bratt went through the chronology of events in his mind: the cops had found the guns the morning after the shooting, just before the week’s scheduled garbage pick-up. Paris’s fingerprints were all over the small revolver, but, as he had no record, they hadn’t been able to match them to him at first. The prints on the 9mm automatic were too smudged to be of any use, though, so there would be nothing to connect Small to that gun except Paris’s say-so.

  Once Dorrell Phillips had selected Paris’s picture out of the 1999 Dorset High yearbook, the police quickly brought the suspect in. His prints matched those on the gun that fired the bullets found in Dexter Phillips’s skull. With that evidence in hand there was no need to be concerned that Dorrell’s identification might be faulty. Paris was cooked and he had known it.

  That the Crown had agreed to let Paris plead guilty to second degree murder in return for his testimony meant that someone on their side doubted their ability to convict Small on Dorrell Phillips’s evidence alone. So, Francis Parent, that holier-than-everyone paragon of virtue, found himself allied with an unfeeling killer on this Monday morning, and he clearly didn’t like it.

  Bratt watched with great interest as Paris testified, outlining the minimal planning that had gone into the robbery/murder, and demonstrating to everyone how little effect the violent deaths had had on him. Bratt was amazed at how easily the decision to kill had been made. He had no doubt that the jury would care very little for this witness, but they could still believe his claim that Small was his accomplice.

  Parent came to the end of his direct examination just before the court was to adjourn for lunch, and the expression of relief on his face was obvious. As for Paris himself, he seemed to pay him no heed as the prosecutor gladly handed him over to Bratt for cross-examination. He had hardly looked Parent’s way through-out the first half of his testimony, and he didn’t seem to be overly concerned at the prospect of being questioned by Bratt.

  Bratt reflected on the cold indifference that Paris was displaying and wondered if it was all just an act. He would get the chance to find out at the outset of the afternoon session, but he sincerely hoped that it wasn’t.

  “He looks like a tough nut to crack.”

  Kouri stated the cliché as if it was the result of some deep analysis. Bratt just continued to lean back quietly on the metal bench outside the courtroom as they waited for a constable to come unlock the doors.

  “I don’t know that you’re going to be able to shake him up,” Kouri continued, still looking for a response from the senior lawyer. “I guess you’ll have to spend a long time with him.”

  “Heaven forbid,” Bratt answered, although he sounded as if he were speaking to himself.

  Kouri said nothing in reply, but clearly looked puzzled. Bratt turned to him and smiled, although there was no sign of happiness in his eyes. Kouri’s expression showed even more befuddlement now.

  “What? What am I missing?”

  “How important a witness is he?” Bratt asked, sitting up and gaining a little spark now that he had decided to impart his wisdom to his assistant once more.

  “Well, I would have thought pretty important.”

  “What if I don’t think he’s important at all? Don’t you think the jury might be happy to learn they could just dismiss that scumbag from their thoughts?”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “Spend as little time on him as he deserves. I’d really like nothing more than to spend a couple of days going at him, hammer and tongs, but that w
ould tell the jury we’re scared of him. So, I’m just going to shrug him off like a minor irritation, kind of the way he acted when he shot Dexter Phillips.”

  “Ah, so that’s your secret plan.”

  “I know it doesn’t seem like much of a plan,” Bratt said, although he liked its backward logic. “But I’m not going to let that punk enjoy his moment in the sun for one second longer than necessary.”

  The jurors filed back in, Green limped up to his seat, and Marcus Paris, almost strutting despite wearing shackles around his ankles, was escorted to the witness box by a prison guard. Bratt thought of a speed-chess tournament he had seen in a park once. Hit and run, don’t give your opponent time to think, score as many points as fast as you can. He picked up his legal pad with its pages of prepared questions, opened his briefcase, dropped the pad inside it, and closed it with a snap. He had something else on his mind.

  Paris stood staring at the wall behind the jury, totally disinterested in Bratt’s presence. Bratt decided to get his attention.

  “Tell me, Mr. Paris,” he began in as casual a tone as he could, “how many people have you killed?”

  From the jury box Bratt heard several breaths quickly sucked in at the question.

  Paris’s look darted to Bratt’s face and for a moment the young man’s confusion was evident. His eyes finally pulled away from Bratt’s, and he stretched his frame up on his toes as he breathed in deeply.

  Answering the question as casually as Bratt had asked it, he said, “Just the one guy, that I shot myself.”

  “Dexter Phillips.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Didn’t seem very hard for you to do. Feel bad about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “He had it coming?”

  “His fault for being there. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “So why’s he still the only one? If it didn’t bother you more than that, I mean?”

  “Dunno. Cops caught me a couple weeks later, you know.”

  “Are you implying they cut your career short?”

  Paris sneered, as if he found the thought funny.

  “That’s okay, I’m still young.”

  Bratt paused briefly. He was intentionally giving Paris enough rope to hang himself, but the young killer’s braggadocio was helping his case all the more. With each answer, Bratt felt his internal thermometer creeping closer to the boiling point.

  “Besides,” Paris decided to add on his own, “I only got nine years and a bit left.”

  Good, Bratt thought. Make my point for me, you little shit.

  “Beats twenty-five to life, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “Goddamn right it does.”

  Bratt glanced up at Green, but the judge said nothing to the witness about his language. He was surprised to see that Green wasn’t even taking notes, but simply sitting back in his chair, staring at Paris with a look of dull anger. Bratt allowed himself a brief look at the jury and found similar expressions of distaste on their faces as well.

  Okay, so you all hate him. Let’s make sure that translates into points for our side.

  Bratt turned and looked at his client in the prisoner’s box for a moment, thinking that it hadn’t been so long ago that Small was the sole object of his ire. He turned his attention back to the witness.

  “So, why’s Marlon Small the lucky lottery winner?”

  “He shoulda knowed better,” Paris turned to face Bratt now, a thin smile playing on his lips. “I was barely eighteen.”

  “So it was all his idea, right? You were just going along for the ride?”

  Paris didn’t answer this time, just shrugged slightly and stared off into space again.

  “No,” Bratt continued, “I guess you’re not a guy to ride on somebody else’s coattails, are you?”

  “I’m my own man.”

  “A big man?”

  “You know it.”

  “But not big enough to do the time for what you did, are you?”

  “Hey, I’m still in jail.”

  “That’s right. All of nine years and four months left. And two men dead.”

  “I didn’t make the law, man.”

  “No, but you did make the deal, didn’t you?”

  Again, Paris just shrugged, but the thin smile reappeared on his lips at the mention of the plea bargain.

  “It must have been hard on you to accept the Crown’s offer.”

  “Hell, no. Why should I spend more time than I got to in jail?”

  “So, you were even willing to testify against a close friend.”

  “The fool’s no friend of mine.”

  Bratt feigned surprise at this news.

  “You mean you guys don’t even like each other?”

  “Like him? Man, what shit’s he been telling you?”

  Green cleared his throat loudly at the expletive, but still said nothing.

  “Isn’t Marlon your sister’s boyfriend?”

  “No, he just thinks he is. He’s the guy who raped her, is who he is.”

  “He didn’t really rape her now, did he?”

  “He took advantage of her and she was just a little girl. She was only fifteen when she had his baby.”

  “You don’t seem too happy about that.”

  “Damn straight. I shoulda shot him too, but Karen begged me not to.”

  “So, you would have liked to kill him?”

  “And he knew it too.”

  “But you still went ahead and did this holdup with him.”

  “Business is business.”

  “Something heavy like that, don’t you have to trust the man you’re working with?”

  “I know.”

  “So, you hated him and wanted to kill him, but still you trusted him enough to put your life in his hands?”

  “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “No, I guess you won’t. But you’re also telling us that he knew you wanted to kill him and he still went along with you, putting his life in your hands.”

  “That was his problem.”

  “Any chance that you wouldn’t have done such a foolish thing?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “I mean was there any chance that the man you were with last June 14 was not Marlon Small?”

  “I think I woulda knowed if it was somebody else.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did know.”

  “You saying I’m a liar?”

  Now he’s got the idea, Bratt thought. His control on his temper loosened just enough to raise his voice a notch or two.

  “I’m saying you and someone else went to that apartment and shot those three young men.”

  “You’re way off.”

  “Marlon Small was nowhere near the crime scene. You just decided you’d take him down with you and save yourself at least fifteen years of jail while you were at it.”

  “No way, man. Whatever he’s been selling you, you shouldn’t be buying it.”

  Bratt stepped closer to the witness and leaned aggressively closer.

  “And just what are you selling us?”

  “I’m telling it like it went down.”

  “And we’re supposed to believe you?”

  “It’s how it happened.”

  “So you say. Why should we believe you?”

  Now Paris looked flustered for the first time.

  “I’m telling it like that other guy told you.”

  “What other guy? The one who managed to survive your killing spree?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “He’s got a name,” Bratt said, his voice rising. “Don’t you even know it?”

  “They told me, but I forget. Anyway, I know he says it was Brando shot him.”

  “So the only reason to believe you is because you’re repeating what Dorrell Phillips said?”

  “I never said that’s the only reason.”

  “So let me repeat my question: why should we believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Why wouldn�
��t you lie? You hate Marlon Small and would love to see him dead. Twenty-five years to life is pretty close to dead, isn’t it?”

  Paris didn’t answer, but his constant sneer had begun to waver.

  “You’re saving yourself fifteen years in jail,” Bratt continued. “Great for you, too bad for the guy you hate, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just lucky, I guess,” Paris’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Yes, you are lucky. Dorrell Phillips picked out the picture of your worst enemy and gave you a chance to save yourself while getting rid of him. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “I wouldn’t lie about it.”

  Bratt laughed, surprising himself as well as the rest of the courtroom. As he continued, though, it was anger, not humor that came through in his voice.

  “You wouldn’t lie about it? Gimme a break! You want us to believe you wouldn’t lie to get the biggest break of your miserable little life?”

  “Mr. Bratt,” Green finally spoke up, albeit mildly and looking a bit like he just woke up from an unhappy dream. “Please calm yourself.”

  Bratt tried to control the trembling in his voice caused by the rush of hatred filling his mind.

  “Maybe I’m a bit slow. Can you explain why you say you’d gladly kill him, but you don’t expect us to think you’d lie to put him away for good?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Of course not. After all, you may be a cold-blooded murderer, but you’re not a liar.”

  Green cleared his throat again, making a half-hearted attempt to protect the witness.

  “Just answer me this one simple question,” Bratt said, lowering his voice. “Are you saying that you would never lie to get Marlon Small convicted and to save yourself fifteen years in the pen?”

  Paris sneered again, trying to regain his earlier arrogant attitude. He looked around the courtroom and could surely feel how unwelcome he had become.

  “Yeah, I’d lie,” he bragged, in defiance of the obvious hostility that surrounded him. “I’d do whatever I had to to put that motherfucker away.”

  “Mr. Paris,” Green exploded, but the witness just ignored him.

  “Getting fifteen years less is just a bonus for me.”