Witness for the Defense

by Jonnie Jacobs

“Yes, I did. It was a Ford Explorer, dark blue. Real clean and shiny, too.”

  “And did you happen to notice the vehicle's license plate?”

  “I didn't get the whole thing. But the middle letters were NMO. I think there might have been a 7 in there too, but I couldn't say for sure.”

  “Was anyone in the car at the time?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Lucille Campe was basking in the role of eyewitness.

  “Did you see anyone enter the car?”

  “No, I did not.”

  Pelle frowned. It clearly wasn't the answer he'd expected. “You didn't see anyone approach the car as you returned from your walk?”

  It was a leading question, but raising an objection was the kind of hairsplitting that turned off jurors. And it wouldn't make any difference in the long run. I let it go.

  Mrs. Campe's face lit with understanding. “Yes, I did. But I didn't see her actually get into the car. It looked like she unlocked the door, but by then Penny was doing her business and I had to clean up. I wasn't paying much attention to the car by then.”

  Pelle relaxed. “Did you get a look at the woman?”

  “From a distance.”

  “Can you describe her for us, please.”

  Mrs. Campe looked at Terri and then away again. A subtle, probably unintentional gesture that no doubt made its mark on the jury. “She was maybe five-seven or thereabouts. And slender. Her hair was a light color and she was wearing dark clothing. Pants and some kind of jacket.”

  “Was she approaching from the north or the south?” he asked.

  “From the south. To my left as I came down the walk.”

  From the direction Bram Weaver lived.

  “No further questions,” Pelle said.

  Judge Tooley looked my way. “Cross?”

  I stood and took a few steps toward the witness. “Do you walk Penny every evening, Mrs. Campe?”

  “Most evenings. Sometimes my husband does it.”

  “And do you always notice what type of car is parked in front of your house?”

  “I look to see if they've blocked the driveway. People figure they can hang over a foot or two and it doesn't matter, but it does.”

  I went for an end run. “Did you walk Penny last night?”

  “Sure did. She doesn't take 'no' for an answer.” Mrs. Campe smiled fondly.

  “Was there a car parked in front of your house last night?”

  “Of course. There's never an empty parking spot in this city.”

  “What kind of car was it?”

  Her face constricted, as though she'd just been stung by a wasp. “A sedan, I think.”

  “Make? Color?”

  Mrs. Campe folded her arms in her lap, setting off another round of jingling. “I'm not sure. A compact maybe. Or a sports car. Something small. Didn't hang over the driveway, even by an inch. And the color was gray, or maybe beige.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  She squared her shoulders. “Some cars stand out, like the VW bug, a BMW, or an Explorer. This was just a small sedan. I don't remember what make.”

  “Or what color?”

  “Only that it was a neutral color.”

  “Do you recall the license number?”

  She didn't meet my eyes. “No, not really.”

  “Yet you are absolutely sure the car you saw the night in question was a dark blue Ford Explorer with an NMO on the plate?”

  “Absolutely.” She fingered the many layers of beads at her neck.

  “Mrs. Campe, in your original statement to the police, didn't you say that you recalled seeing a dark-colored SUV?”

  She looked to Pelle. “I'm not sure what my exact words were.”

  I pulled her statement from the papers on my table and asked that it be admitted into evidence. Then I read it back to her.

  “If that's what they wrote down,” she acknowledged, “it must be what I said.”

  “So at the time, you weren't sure the car was blue?”

  “I knew it was blue. Maybe I didn't say it, but I knew.”

  “Nor did you identify it at that time as an Explorer.”

  “I'm not a person who knows the names of cars right off the top of my head. But later I recognized another one on the road and looked to see what it was.”

  I pulled out an envelope of photos I'd taken earlier in the week, handed one set to Pelle, and another to the witness. “Mrs. Campe, there are six pictures here. Which one, if any, is the type of car you saw in front of your house the night in question?”

  She studied the photographs intently, then selected one with confidence and handed it to me.

  “You're sure this is the one?”

  “Yes, I am.” She nodded vigorously, amid more tinkling and jangling.

  “Let the record show that the witness has selected a photograph of a Chevy Blazer.”

  Pelle jumped to his feet, waving his copy of the photos.

  “Objection. This little demonstration is nothing more than cheap theatrics. Counsel is purposely trying to confuse the witness.”

  “How so?” the judge asked.

  “There isn't a picture of a Ford Explorer in the lot of them.”

  I thought it likely Pelle had been as confused as the witness. “I didn't say there was,” I reminded him. “I merely asked which, if any, was the car she'd seen.”

  “That's a cheap trick and you know it!”

  Judge Tooley rapped her gavel and directed a hardened gaze on Pelle. “You're out of line, counselor. The objection is overruled.”

  “I'd like it noted for the record,” he protested.

  “So noted.”

  I turned my attention back to Mrs. Campe, who was glaring at me so intensely I thought her eyes must hurt.

  “Did the police at any time show you a picture of the defendant?” I asked.

  “They showed me a bunch of pictures.”

  “And were you able to identify the defendant in any of them?”

  “No,” she said icily. “I was not.”

  On redirect, Pelle attempted to repair some of the damage.

  “Mrs. Campe,” he asked, “do you make a habit of memorizing license plates?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell the court, then, why you remember the plate you saw the night in question?”

  “It struck me that if the first two letters were reversed, the sequence would be alphabetical. M-N-O. That sounds silly, but it's how my mind works.”

  “So you are sure the plate you saw was NMO?”

  “Yes, I'm absolutely sure.” This time her response rang true.

  Terri seemed visibly shaken. “It wasn't me,” she whispered. “It wasn't.”

  Pelle returned to his seat. “No further questions.”

  Steven leaned forward and touched my shoulder. “Good job, Kali. You did a lot of damage.”

  It was, I was afraid, a drop in the bucket.

  Next, Pelle called Terri's neighbor Margo Poller, a high-strung woman with a voice to match. She testified that she'd heard the Harpers' garage door open about eleven-thirty the night of the murder and had heard their car backing out the driveway.

  “She hates me,” Terri muttered as Pelle was winding down. “She'd say anything to cause trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “They left their teenaged son home alone last spring while they went to Europe. After putting up with loud music and drunken rowdiness for a couple of days, I called the cops.”

  “I should think she'd be grateful.”

  “Well, she wasn't.”

  Pelle turned to me. “Your witness.”

  “Did you see the car?” I asked Mrs. Poller. “Or just hear it?”

  “I didn't look, if that's what you mean.”

  “So it might not have been Terri Harper's car you heard.”

  “There's only hers and Ted's in the garage, and Ted was out of town.” She fell just short of sounding like the neighborhood busybody.

  “Did you hear the c
ar return?”

  “No, I went to sleep pretty quickly.”

  “Isn't it possible then, that the car you heard about eleven-thirty was coming into the garage rather than leaving?” Never mind that Terri had said she hadn't gone out at all, I was trying to raise questions about the credibility of the witness.

  Margo Poller, however, wasn't about to entertain other possibilities. “No,” she said emphatically, “I'm sure the car was leaving.”

  “Did you think it odd, someone going out at that hour?”

  “Not at the time, no.”

  “If it wasn't unusual, how did you come to notify the police about what you'd heard?”

  She folded her hands on her lap. “They came around the next morning looking for Terri.”

  “In your statement to them, you reported you'd seen her leave that morning. With a suitcase and portacrib, if I'm not mistaken.”

  “Something to that effect, yes.”

  “I'm a little confused, then, as to why you also volunteered that you'd heard her go out at night since it hadn't struck you as odd at the time.”

  “I'd heard about Weaver's death on the news,” she explained. “I figured that's why they wanted to talk to Terri.”

  “And you wanted to be helpful?” I added a thin veneer of sarcasm but it was lost on Mrs. Poller.

  She nodded. “They said he had been shot during the night.”

  The meddling neighbor. From a purely logical perspective, that didn't invalidate her testimony, but jurors instinctively treat such witnesses as less credible.

  “Are you and Terri Harper close friends?” I asked.

  “We're neighbors, not friends.”

  “Congenial neighbors, would you say?”

  “I suppose.” Her jaw tensed, belying her words.

  “Wasn't there an incident this last spring that caused some hard feelings?”

  She shot Terri a smoldering look. “Your client called the cops on my son because he and a few friends got a little loud. They are teenagers, for God's sake. They like to have fun. If she's going to get upset about kids having fun, she should move to the country.”

  The venom in Margo Poller's words spoke for itself. I knew enough to quit while I was ahead. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  <><><>

  I'd caught a glimpse of Melissa sitting in the back of the courtroom, and when we broke for noon recess, I looked for her again. Finally I gave up and headed for the stairs rather than fight the crowds at the elevator. The quiet of the stairwell was a pleasant change from the din of voices in the hallway. I was partway down the first flight when I heard the rapid beat of footsteps descending from behind me. I turned to look just as Len Roemer caught up with me, knocking me against the wall with his shoulder.

  “Better watch your step,” he said, breathing in my face.

  “Why don't you watch where you're going?” The guy was a jerk.

  “You wouldn't want to take a nasty spill, would you?”

  “Is that a threat?”

  His teeth bared in a grin. “I'm worried about your safety is all.”

  I tried to duck around him but he stepped to the left, blocking my passage.

  “Of course, lawyers who defend killers probably don't think much about safety.”

  Anger gave way to fear. I could feel a band of perspiration at the back of my neck. I worked to sound calm. “Don't do anything you're going to regret, Mr. Roemer.”

  “Life's too short to waste time on regrets. Never look back— that's my motto.” He stepped aside, but just barely, so that I had to brush against him as I passed. “Oh, and tell your flunkies to stay away from me. I have another motto, and that's Don't put up with crap.”

  I was half a flight below him by then and I kept on going. By the time I had pushed open the door on the main floor, my legs were shaking so badly I could barely stand.

  CHAPTER 33

  Len Roemer didn't make it back to court for the afternoon session, but Billings and Lomax were there, glowering from the second row, along with a handful of faces I'd not seen previously. It looked like they'd brought along new recruits.

  Weaver's son Dan was there again too. I scanned the rows of spectators in search of Melissa, but didn't see her.

  The afternoon session opened with testimony from Chuck Russo, the chief criminalist for the city and county of San Francisco. A short, wiry man with a trim mustache, he sported a red bow tie and delivered his responses in a direct, almost folksy manner.

  Pelle introduced into evidence the white wool found on Weaver's pant leg, along with the black nylon fibers and the dark glasses with attached blond hair. At Pelle's prompts, Russo expounded on the similarity between the wool found at the crime scene and that taken from the seat covers of Terri's Explorer, but much to my relief, he didn't spring any fancy corroborative tests on us. Under cross, he admitted there was no way of knowing with certainty whether or not the fibers had come from the same source.

  The testimony with respect to the black nylon and the blond hair were similarly inconclusive. Although Terri owned a black jacket, tests had not established a clear match. Terri was a blonde of similar shade, but nothing more could be stated with certainty. And I was careful to point out in my cross the sizable number of people who were blondes, owned black nylon garments, and covered the seats of their cars with white sheepskin. Still, the cumulative effect of the prosecution's evidence against Terri had to have had an impact on the jurors.

  Next in line was Irene Kontos, Terri's manicurist. She'd been added at the last minute, so that Nick had only had a chance to speak with her briefly by phone.

  “Miss Kontos,” Pelle said, holding out the dark glasses admitted into evidence earlier in the trial. “I ask you to examine this pair of purple-framed sunglasses. Can you tell me if you recognize them?”

  Irene Kontos, an attractive young woman of Mediterranean descent, raised her gaze from her lap, where she'd been staring since being sworn in, and looked at the glasses. “I can't say for sure.”

  “Did you ever see the defendant wearing a similar pair?”

  Biting her lip, she again lowered her gaze and nodded.

  “You'll have to speak up,” Pelle said. “For the record.”

  “Yes,” Irene Kontos whispered.

  “That's a 'yes,' you saw the defendant wearing a pair of glasses like these?”

  “They were purple,” she said. “With reflective glass. I'm not sure they were identical.”

  “Do you notice anything distinctive about the glasses in front of you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the frame, near the right earpiece. Is there a logo of some kind?”

  She took her time examining the glasses. “It looks like a lightning bolt or something. In silver.”

  “And did you notice a similar logo on the glasses the defendant was wearing?”

  Irene Kontos shifted uneasily in her seat. She was clearly a reluctant witness. “There was some kind of silver accent on Mrs. Harper's,” she said, “but I didn't really look that closely.”

  “Thank you.” Pelle returned to the counsel table and I rose for cross.

  “Miss Kontos,” I asked, “how many clients do you have each week?”

  “Oh, it varies. Maybe thirty on average.”

  “And you remember the type of dark glasses each of them wears?”

  She smiled, causing her cheeks to dimple. “No, of course not. But I admired Mrs. Harper's. They were new. This was right around Easter and they looked very springy. I went right out and bought myself a pair. Well, not exactly the same, I'm sure. I got mine at Target.”

  “Do you have them with you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Would you mind showing them to me?”

  “Objection.”

  Judge Tooley arched an eyebrow and addressed Pelle. “On what ground?”

  “It's highly irregular.”

  “I don't recall 'irregularity' as being in the Rules of Evidence,” she said. />
  There was a titter from the courtroom.

  “Irrelevant then.”

  “I'm going to allow it,” Tooley said, without asking for an explanation from me. “The witness will show counsel her glasses.”

  Irene Kontos dug her glasses out of her purse and handed them to me. They were purple with square styling and reflective glass like the ones found at the scene. But side by side, the differences between the two pairs were obvious. Among other things, Miss Kontos's glasses lacked the arched bridge and thick frames of the pair in evidence. Hers were also a lighter-weight plastic and much brighter purple. But there was a silver dot by the earpiece.

  I handed them back to her. “Can you say for sure that the glasses you saw Terri Harper wearing were not identical to your own pair?”

  Irene Kontos smiled again. “I doubt Mrs. Harper buys anything at Target.”

  “But aside from that, can you be sure?”

  “No. All I remember is that they were purple and I wanted purple glasses. Also, that they had reflective lenses.”

  “Did you have trouble finding a pair?”

  “Not at all. I checked a couple of places, then found these.”

  “So purple glasses with reflective lenses aren't uncommon?”

  Pelle voiced another objection. “The witness is hardly an expert on dark glasses,” he protested.

  “I'll withdraw the question, Your Honor.”

  <><><>

  The final prosecution witness, Ellen Talbot, was a woman from Terri's book group— a brassy and shrill wife of the CFO of a local bank. She struck me as the kind of person who would never voluntarily pick up a book except to throw it. I mumbled as much to Terri, who explained that Ellen came for the socializing and the food, and at every meeting offered a new explanation as to why she hadn't been able to read the current month's selection.

  Pelle had taken her through the preliminaries and was now questioning her about a book club meeting that had taken place at the Harpers' home just prior to Weaver's death.

  “She was holding the baby,” Ellen Talbot said, making Terri's mothering sound like an outrageous act, “and when one of the women mentioned something about Mr. Weaver, she said 'that man should be shot.' “

  “Those were her exact words?” Pelle asked.