Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  “I’m positive.”

  The two women stood in the doorway, looking out into the corridor. From the front of the courtroom, Wyatt watched them with intense curiosity. In a short while, the doors to the other courtroom swung open, and the prisoners, again cuffed and shackled, were led out by their deputy guards, heading for the elevators that would take them to the basement and then back to the jail.

  As Elvis emerged into the hallway, Violet shrank back so that he wouldn’t see her. “That’s him,” she whispered to Josephine. “That’s the man I saw in Teddy’s bar the night Paula was murdered.”

  BY THE TIME WYATT had gotten back to the office at the end of the day, Josephine had culled through their messages and told him everything Violet had told her. That was awesome, shocking news. A man who was right now being arraigned for aggravated rape had been in the nightclub on the very night the last murder was committed?

  Leafing through the message slips, he saw one that sparked his interest more than normal. Another chink in the armor, he hoped. Settling down at his scarred, paint-chipped desk, tie loosened, beer in hand, he dialed the law-bar examiner Joe Ginsberg had turned him onto.

  “What have you got?” he asked. He listened for a moment. “You’re shitting me. Son of a bitch!” Some more dialogue from the other end, confirming his suspicions. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your doing this for me,” he thanked the man. Hanging up the phone, he called out to Josephine, “Hey! Come on in here!”

  She scurried in, her own beer in one hand, a passel of paperwork in the other. Always with her hands full from the day I met her, he thought fondly. What would he have done without her? Whatever happened after the conclusion of this trial, no matter his status at the firm, he had to bring her along with him.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Blake’s bar-exam score?” He smiled, leaning back in his chair and sucking at his beer bottle.

  “What about it?”

  “She got a sixty-six, not a seventy-six. I just got off the phone with my inside man.”

  “So she was lying. Poor sad woman.”

  “Uh-uh.” He waggled his head. “Not that simple. Her test book had sixty-six; but the recorded score on the computer was seventy-six.” He cocked his head at her, as if expecting her to figure out the rest.

  Which she did. “The score on the computer was wrong.”

  He nodded. “And …?”

  “It was altered. Someone had changed it.”

  His grin was wide and deep. “You betchum, little lady. Somebody hacked into their computer and changed her score. They’re compiling the information and messengering it over. I’ll have it before the end of the day tomorrow.”

  She shook her head in amazement. “I wonder who.”

  “Yes, it’s a mystery to me, too,” he said sarcastically. “Could the mystery hacker’s initials be D.T.? We need her computer, right now. What’s the deal with the court order for it?”

  “Grant turned us down; the nexus isn’t strong enough, given that there’s no record of her taking out those files.”

  “I’m going to go back to him again. He needs to hear about this latest development. There’s enough circumstantial evidence around Blake’s computer that we should be able to see what’s inside it.”

  “If that doesn’t work, maybe it could get lost and some friend of ours could find it,” she offered. “People lose things. Stealing computers is a major industry nowadays.”

  “I think not,” he said, reining in her enthusiasm. “It’s considered against the law to steal someone’s property.”

  “I meant …”

  “Let’s keep trying through legal channels. One more go-around, at least.”

  “Okay.” She dropped into the chair opposite his. “This guy the Waleska woman saw. That’s major.”

  “Maybe. Let’s not get our hopes up. Who’s baby-sitting Leticia Pope?” he asked, changing the subject to his main concern of the moment.

  “Dexter and his posse. They’ve got her surrounded. Do you need her in here tonight, last-minute go-around? I could call Dexter on his pager.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I’ll spend an hour with her tomorrow morning before we go into session. She’s ready; she’s going to do fine.” He reached for his suit coat. “Let’s wrap for the day.”

  They walked to the elevator together. “They’ve got Dwayne Thompson, we’ve got Leticia Pope,” Josephine commented as they rode down to the garage. “It doesn’t seem like an even match.”

  “It isn’t,” he agreed. “He’s experienced, he’s persuasive, he’s done it before. She’s none of that.” They reached her car. He waited while she unlocked it and got in. “She only has one thing going for her that he doesn’t have. She’s telling the truth, and he isn’t.”

  WYATT HAD LETICIA POPE’S bio in front of him. Seventeen-year-old high school dropout. Family three generations on welfare. Barely literate. No dreams, no prospects, no knowledge of the world outside the cramped parameters of where she lived, hung out, saw friends. Her visit to Wyatt’s house had been the first time she’d been to that part of the metropolitan area; her only visits outside her tiny circumscribed circle were trips down to Texas, where her people came from before they moved north, and where some of her relatives—older grandparents and great-aunts and uncles, mostly—still lived.

  She had never been pregnant, and was not on drugs. Two big plusses. The rest of her life, societally speaking, was a minus—she had never had a job; she had no idea of what work was, or even how to go about looking for it. Like most everyone around her, she lived off food stamps and welfare checks.

  Now she sat in the hard wooden chair on the witness stand, back straight, hands folded in her lap. She looked nice. Josephine had taken her shopping, bought her a couple of simple outfits from the Gap—pleated skirts and complementary tops, and a pair of small, classy imitation-pearl earrings.

  Wyatt had spent two full days working with her. The majority of their time together, during which they were joined, at various junctures, by Josephine, Walcott, and other lawyers from the office, particularly women lawyers who became surrogate Abramowitzes, had been spent instructing her how to stand up to the prosecution’s cross-examination. Wyatt knew Abramowitz’s attack would be withering, ruthless.

  Leticia was ready. As ready as she would ever be.

  Slowly, carefully, brick by brick, Wyatt walked her through her testimony. He had interviewed everyone he could find who had seen her and Marvin that night; he had their statements, which he wove into his questions.

  His examination of her was brisk and succinct. He wanted her on and off the stand as quickly as possible—the more she was on the stand, the greater the possibility she could inadvertently say something that could be damaging. From time to time he looked over at the prosecution table, where Abramowitz, Windsor, and their assistants were listening carefully, taking notes, passing notes back and forth, getting up and rushing out of the room to come back moments later with law books, microfiche flimsies, old newspapers.

  They were going to come at her tomorrow, but that was okay. She was solid, she was handling this beautifully.

  He introduced the Polaroids into evidence near the end of his question period. After Leticia had identified them, and he had pointed out the date that was time-coded on the backs of each one, he passed them to the juror sitting in seat number 1. The juror, a middle-aged black woman who worked for state government, looked at the photos carefully, front and back, writing the information down in her notepad. Each juror in turn, as the photos were passed down the line, looked at them carefully, thoughtfully, writing notes about the small, crumpled photographs in their notepads.

  Gold, Wyatt thought, watching them handle the pictures like they were rare jewels. The mother vein.

  Retrieving the pictures after all the jurors had seen them, he placed them as exhibits and looked at Grant. “No further questions at this time, Your Honor.”

  Grant
made a few notes of his own. Looking up, he said, “Court will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at nine.” He gave his daily end-of-the-day warning to the jurors to refrain from talking to each other or anyone else about the case, not to read any newspaper articles or watch any television shows that discussed the case, and to keep an open mind until all the evidence was presented and the final summations had been given. Having said that, he wished them a pleasant evening, whacked his gavel once, and ended the session for the day.

  As he left the bench, he looked down at Wyatt and Abramowitz. “I’ll see you in my chambers in five minutes. One from each side.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Wyatt said.

  Abramowitz didn’t say anything, but her scowl was a powerful statement.

  Judge Grant’s small, dark-paneled office was cooler than the courtroom. The air conditioner in the window was going full blast, and, he had an east-facing view, so there wasn’t the direct late-afternoon sunlight that baked the courtroom windows and caused them to conduct the heat throughout the large, still space. Grant hung his robes on a corner coat-rack, doffed his tie, unbuttoned his white dress shirt, which was wet with perspiration, and took a large pitcher of ice water out of his small refrigerator.

  “Anyone want some?” he asked. In the room with him were Wyatt, Abramowitz, and his secretary. Without waiting for a reply, he poured out four large glasses. Even Helena, whose appearance had been spartan throughout the entire day’s testimony, eagerly picked up the proffered glass and drank several large, fast gulps. Wyatt could see the outline of her bra under her moist cotton shirtdress. Her hair, impeccably in place when she came in every morning, was askew now, tendrils breaking off from the coif in random, wild directions.

  Grant looked over the bar examination documents that Wyatt’s contact had sent over. “This is serious stuff,” he stated. Turning to Helena, he asked her, “What do you think?”

  “It’s serious and it has nothing to do with this case,” she said belligerently. “It’s a wild-goose chase like the rest of the defense’s presentation.”

  “Oh, come on!” Wyatt responded. “There’s a pattern here, which anyone with half a brain can see. Thompson was laying Blake, Judge. You think if she’s going to take a risk that huge she wouldn’t let him use her computer?”

  “This is not germane to anything,” Abramowitz started arguing, but Grant put his hand up to stop her.

  “It’s too late to do anything today,” he informed them, “but I’m going to issue a court order to have her computer brought in here. We’ll see what the contents are, if anything’s there that could have a bearing on this trial.”

  “Thank you, Judge Grant,” Wyatt smiled.

  “But Judge—”

  Again, Grant cut Helena off with a brusque flip of the wrist. “You’d better hope this computer comes up clean,” he told her sternly, “or you could be looking at a mistrial, possible charges of perjury, theft of government property, collusion, and God knows what else.” He turned his back on them. “You’re dismissed,” he said curtly.

  JOSEPHINE WAS WAITING FOR him in the hotel bar, sitting at a small table in the corner—fidgeting would more accurately describe her posture—one shoe nervously jigging off the end of her foot. The two were going to join Walcott and Darryl for dinner in the hotel dining room.

  After leaving Judge Grant’s chambers, Wyatt had spent a half hour with Leticia. There wasn’t much for them to do—they’d done it all already. All she had to do was tell the truth. He’d be there to protect her.

  Dexter and his main men, Richard and Louis, had taken her away with them. Wyatt had offered a hotel room, but she hadn’t wanted it; she was intimidated by it. “It’s under control, Mr. Matthews,” Dexter promised him. “She’s in good hands. I’ll have her in court tomorrow, bright and early,” he said as they drove away in his tricked-out Jeep.

  He dropped a file folder on the table in front of them. “I’ve been out checking on this Burnside character,” he said, explaining his tardiness. “He’s a repeat rapist, he’s violent, he fits the profile perfectly. And he was in Teddy’s that night,” he reminded her. “It all fits.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked, her excitement building to match his.

  “We need to put him at the scene of one of the other murders. Besides this last one.”

  “I’ve got Angelo on alert. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

  Angelo Pasquelli was a private investigator Wyatt often used in his own practice. If there was something to be found, Angelo was your man.

  “Call him. Tell him to get like a bloodhound, tout suite.”

  While she was dialing the PI and making the arrangements, Wyatt reexamined Elvis’s file more closely. If you were going to compile a dossier on the perfect suspect in this case, it would be this man. Of course, the odds of him being the actual killer had to be … what? Ten to one? A thousand to one?

  Immediately, he thought of Violet—in his brain, his heart. She did this, and not because she had doubts about Marvin. She had done this for him.

  “Penny for your thoughts, big fella.” Darryl had come up behind him, unawares.

  Not these thoughts. They private. “I’m famished,” Wyatt said. “Let’s chow down.”

  Wyatt’s cell phone rang in the middle of their meal. He answered it with his mouth full of food. “Hello?” he said, his voice garbled. “Wait a minute.” He swallowed, spoke again. “Hello?” He listened for a moment. “What?” he said again, his voice louder, agitated.

  No one was eating—they were all staring at him.

  “When?” He listened. “Where?” Another moment. “Hang tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  BY THE TIME THEY arrived there were already two ambulances and half a dozen black and whites on the scene, all with lights flashing, pulsating arhythmically. The police had cordoned off the area, flares ringing the crime scene for a square-block radius, police tape strung up around the perimeter to keep everyone at a safe distance. Sawhorse barricades were set up in the middle of the street to prevent traffic from coming through.

  It had been drizzling for an hour, a light, steady downpour that made the already brutal humidity even worse. An oil slick had formed along one side of the street, its rainbow droplets glistening under the halogen-lit streets. Dozens of people, all black (they were less than a mile away from Sullivan Houses), had come out onto the street from the apartment houses and other gathering places in the vicinity to check out the disaster. They stood behind the barricades, for the most part watching quietly, talking and watching as the paramedics worked quickly and efficiently and the police shuffled around, trying to keep order.

  The Jaguar skidded to a stop in front of the barricades. Wyatt jumped out ahead of the others, racing toward the smashed-up Jeep Grand Cherokee that was inside the secured area, the vehicle tilted at an angle against the curb, two tires blown, bullet holes in the windshield and all the driver’s-side windows, a plume of water spouting into the air from the hydrant it had crashed into.

  A burly city policeman tried to block Wyatt’s entrance as he came barreling through. “Hey, nobody’s allowed in here! This is a crime scene, can’t you see?” The cop’s hand went to his holster.

  “I’m their lawyer!” Wyatt screamed.

  As the officer reached out to physically impede Wyatt, a plainclothes detective, recognizing Wyatt, hustled over and intervened. “He’s okay,” the detective told the cop. “Let him through.”

  Josephine, Darryl, and Walcott waited and watched from outside the police line. Wyatt ran to where he saw a body lying on the ground, outside the Jeep on the driver’s side.

  Richard and Louis, dazed but seemingly unharmed, were leaning against the side of a police cruiser. “What happened?” Wyatt yelled as he rushed to them.

  “We were ambushed, man,” Louis mumbled. He had a bloody handkerchief to his forehead.

  A nearby cop, overhearing, put in his two-cents worth. “Drive-by shooting,” he said
with resignation. “We get ’em every week.”

  Dexter was laid out on a blanket on top of the wet asphalt. A team of paramedics was cutting off his bloody clothes and applying temporary compresses to the wounds. He had been shot in the left side twice, and once in the left arm. He looked up, his eyes wet with tears, as Wyatt hunched down next to him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Matthews,” he gasped as an IV was inserted into the biceps that hadn’t been shot. “I fucked up, man.”

  “Don’t say that,” Wyatt said, trying to stay calm. “Tell me what happened.” He knelt down, disregarding the oil and filth that caked his suit pants, putting his face close to Dexter’s so the boy wouldn’t have to strain to talk to him.

  “I took my business into another gang’s territory,” Dexter said, shamefaced. “This is their style of telling me to stay the fuck out.”

  Wyatt’s head was reeling. “Oh, shit,” he said to Dexter, feeling an acrid bile rising in his stomach. “I’m sorry, Dexter.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  The boy tried to smile through the pain. “You better check out Leticia, man.”

  Wyatt looked around with a start. He hadn’t noticed the second body, obscured by a phalanx of paramedics and cops, lying on the sidewalk on the other side of the Jeep. He ran to where the girl lay on the wet grass, the skirt of her dress—the dress she had worn in court all day long—bunched up around her thighs. An oxygen mask was clamped over her mouth and nose, while a team of paramedics was working feverishly to stem the slow, steady flow of thick dark-purplish blood that was pumping out of a large hole in the center of her upper body, near her heart. They weren’t making an impact stanching the wound, even with the aid of the oxygen being pumped into her system.

  Abruptly, one of the paramedics felt Leticia’s pulse, lifted an eyelid and shined a penlight into her eye, waited a second, then gently rolled the lid down. They all stopped working on her, sagging in frustration and despair.