Blind Justice

by James Scott Bell

  Shaking his head, Tolletson said, “Why they let you still practice law, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll be paying very close attention to you, Mr. Denney,” said Judge Wegland.

  “Well, that’s just fine, Judge,” I said. “I hope you enjoy the view.”With that, I walked out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WE HAD TWO more witnesses that afternoon.

  The first was Garth Watts, lead detective on the Rae Patino murder. He was a big man, whose ample stomach poured over his belt even as it fought the restraint of his shirt. He had bushy eyebrows and thinning hair that once must have been red. What was left on his head now was a dull, orange fuzz.

  Tolletson led him through his qualifications and then to the murder scene. He asked Watts to walk through his preliminary investigation.

  “I arrived with the photographer at approximately 11:35 P.M.,” Watts explained. “Officer McGary was at the scene and had placed the defendant under arrest. I immediately examined the victim.”

  “And what was her condition?” asked Tolletson.

  “Dead.”

  “Did you determine the cause of death?”

  “Knife wounds. She had been stabbed numerous times, with great loss of blood.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I tried to interview the defendant.”

  “Where was he at the time?”

  “Officer McGary had him sitting in a chair in the living room.”

  “What was his condition?”

  “He was bleeding but in stable condition. A paramedic was seeing to his wound.”

  “What was your opinion at that point as to how the defendant sustained the wound?”

  I objected. “This is mere opinion, Your Honor.”

  “Overruled,” said Judge Wegland. “The witness is qualified to answer.”

  “I at first thought he might have been a victim too. But that changed when I asked him what happened.”

  “Why did that change, Detective Watts?”

  “Because he wouldn’t talk, even though he was capable of it. I started to wonder about that. Why wouldn’t a guy who’d been attacked himself want to help us out? That’s when I Mirandized him.”

  “You informed him of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I returned to the murder scene and began my sketches.” Watts explained a little bit of police procedure—the making of sketches, the taking of photographs, the collection of physical evidence. Tolletson lingered over this line of questioning to give the jury the impression of a very careful veteran detective doing his job.

  When Tolletson turned the witness over to me, I felt like the proverbial salmon heading upstream, looking for any current of reasonable doubt I could catch.

  “Detective Watts,” I began, “you sound like you try to be very careful at crime scenes.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Of course, it is. We all understand that. You want to make sure you get everything you can out of the scene, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “To help you find the person who committed the crime, correct?”

  “We did that in this case.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “It’s my professional judgment.” He was not giving an inch, and he was good at holding the line. But I was just getting started.

  “Detective Watts, when you got to the crime scene, the sliding glass door at the back of the house, was it open or closed?”

  “It was open. Officer McGary reported that it was open when he arrived at the scene.”

  “I see. An open door at the back of the house, allowing anyone access to the inside.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How about to get out of the house?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Isn’t it true that an open door also allows people to get out?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Like a perpetrator, for instance?”

  “If he chose to leave. In this case, he did not.”

  “You’re assuming the defendant is guilty, aren’t you?”

  “That’s why we arrested him.”

  “But he is not guilty until the evidence proves it to the jury, is he?”

  Adele Wegland did not wait for Tolletson to object. “Mr. Denney, I will state the law to the jury at the end of the testimony. Confine your questions to the facts, please.”

  Another rebuke from the judge in front of the jury. I was a wayward child, not a lawyer, and I felt some of the heat of impatience arising from the jury box. Two things a trial lawyer must never do—bore or annoy the jury. I felt I was starting to do both.

  So I raised my voice a little, hoping the volume change would make things more interesting. “Isn’t it a fact, sir, that you never considered the idea that another person committed this crime?”

  Watts hesitated before he answered. Then he dug in his heels. “It’s a fact because there was absolutely no evidence pointing to anyone except Howard Patino.”

  “That’s because you didn’t look for it, did you?”

  “Detective work isn’t a fishing trip, Mr. Denney. We don’t waste our time. We go where the evidence points us.”

  “Didn’t the fact that the defendant was stabbed himself give you even a slight suspicion that another party might be involved?”

  “Like I said, I had that idea at first, but not after I tried to question the defendant.”

  “How did Mr. Patino look to you, Detective?”

  “Look? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, look. Was he calm, cool, collected? Or was he agitated in some way?”

  Watts thought a moment. “He looked guilty.”

  The courtroom erupted with laughter. Watts looked surprised at first, then he himself started to laugh. And I was being buried by it. Laughter at a lawyer’s expense is not a good thing. It chips away at any authority you hope to establish. When you get up for closing arguments, you don’t want the jury to think of you as a hapless fool.

  So I took the gloves off. “You’re an expert at judging guilt or innocence just by looking at people?”

  “No, sir. But you asked for my opinion.”

  “I’m interested in the facts, sir. And isn’t it a fact that you did not follow any other leads?”

  “As I said, there was nothing to point us anywhere else.”

  “Not even the fact that the knife had no fingerprints?”

  “That is consistent with the perpetrator trying to stage his own attack.”

  “And it’s also consistent with someone wearing gloves to keep fingerprints off the weapon, isn’t it?”

  “Anything is consistent with anything if you have a big enough imagination.”

  “Is the open bathroom window a product of anyone’s imagination?” It was a small fact that I had noted in one of the reports.

  Watts seemed momentarily disarmed. “Well, that again, like I said before, there was no reason to consider that.”

  “Did you even look at the window?”

  “I personally did not, no.”

  “Never even gave it a thought, did you?”

  “Again, there wasn’t a reason.”

  “So your answer is no?”

  “That’s my answer.”

  I scooped up a copy of Watts’s report, which had been provided to me during discovery. It contained one minor detail that I decided to try to upgrade to major.

  “Detective Watts, you testified earlier that you tried to talk to Mr. Patino and that he did not talk to you. Is that correct?”

  “He was uncooperative, yes.”

  “That’s not entirely true, is it?”

  “Yes it is. He did not cooperate with any questioning.”

  “In fact, though, he did say something. Do you have a copy of your report in front of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “On page 2, in the middle, do you not
say that the suspect mentioned the devil?”

  Watts took his time looking at his report, giving himself the chance to formulate an answer. “That was not in answer to any of my questions,” he said finally.

  “But it is something he said. In fact, didn’t my client keep mentioning the devil over and over again?”

  “I remember a few instances, yes.”

  “And you didn’t ask him about that?”

  “Mr. Denney, I don’t really think the devil is a suspect in this case.” The answer drew more laughter from the courtroom.

  “But what if my client believed that, Detective? Wouldn’t you think he was crazy?”

  Tolletson didn’t give his witness the chance to answer. “That is beyond the competence of this witness, Your Honor. He’s a detective, not a psychologist.”

  “Sustained,” said Judge Wegland.

  “May we approach the bench?” I asked.

  “No,” the judge answered. “Move on.”

  I had nowhere to move. I was beginning to think that all I had going for me was the defender’s desperate last hope—that the jury would think I was so obviously being ganged up on that they would start to feel sympathy for me. They would see that I was so out of it that they would think to themselves, His client deserves better, maybe we better let him go.

  Yes, it was desperation time. As I walked with wobbly knees to the counsel table, Triple C was looking at the far wall. He couldn’t bear to make eye contact with me.

  The only look of encouragement I got was from my poor client. “It’s okay,” Howie whispered to me as I sat down. “You’re trying.”

  I hoped to do better with Tolletson’s next witness, Hinton police officer Donald Cheadle, who heard Howie’s blurted statement at the Hinton County Hospital. This was potentially the most damaging testimony of all and an admission from Howie’s own mouth that he killed his wife.

  Tolletson and Cheadle seemed to be having a grand time with this testimony. It’s not often that a prosecutor gets such a juicy statement, even though in my opinion it should never have been admitted into evidence. It would be a good ground for an appeal.

  That night I couldn’t sleep, even with the help of the bottle.

  I’d taken a room at a Motel 6 near the freeway so I wouldn’t have to make the long drive back to Hinton the next day. That way I’d be fresh.

  But not if I didn’t sleep. Not if I stayed up half the night fighting visions.

  They came fast and furious, and for awhile, I actually thought I might be going insane, losing my already tenuous grip on reality.

  My first vision was of a lost girl drowning in the black ocean. No life jacket, no boats.

  In my mind’s eye, I watched, and at one point almost screamed for someone to save her, but who would hear me on a moonless night that existed only in my imagination?

  I kept seeing her, this little girl, and then a horrible realization hit me.

  The girl was Mandy.

  She was going to be lost. Lost to me. Lost forever.

  As was my custom, I fought back with a drink and a vow of anger. I would make Barb pay, some day, some way, for making me have visions like this.

  That was not the only vision I had. I paced the room, the TV blaring, not listening or watching it but hoping it would push out the maelstrom of images. It didn’t work, and I was hit with another vision—this time, a vision of myself.

  I was in a bare field, and it was night. The only light came from the flickering flames of torches held in the hands of faceless people. I was tied to a post, and my back was bleeding from open wounds, red and raw like I’d been whipped. There was a man standing there with a whip, and it was my father.

  None of this made sense, but alcoholic dreams seldom do.

  The walls of the room began to close in on me, so I went outside, to enjoy its sweeping vista of the motel parking lot. If you’re looking for inspiration, ever in need of a visual to fight off thoughts of self-destruction or deep depression, do not go to a Motel 6 parking lot.

  I couldn’t see the mountains I knew were behind me or the ocean, which was miles from view. The sun had set long ago, and there was no moon. For all I knew, I could have walked out to the parking spot of cave dwellers.

  Lindsay Patino popped into my mind. I wished she was here. I wished she was here so I could point out to her what a meaningless existence this was, that in the end the only thing to look forward to was a darkness much like this one, a darkness that would last forever and we wouldn’t know anything about it because we wouldn’t be conscious. I wished she was here so I could look her in the eye and tell her I couldn’t share her sweet delusions because I was too rational, too stuck on reality to escape life through deception.Why I had the need to tell her all that I don’t know. I wouldn’t really find out until the next day, when everything caved in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  IRONICALLY, THE DAY started out pretty well for us.

  Tolletson called Randy Crowley, the man who sat next to Howie on the flight down from Alaska. The calling of this witness was proof that Tolletson was dead serious about winning this case because it must have cost a lot in time and money to track this guy down.

  When I got the witness list in discovery, I asked Howie about this man. Howie remembered him vaguely but couldn’t remember anything he’d said to him. His mind had been elsewhere.

  Mr. Crowley seemed to have a great memory of his conversation with Howie.

  “What was the first thing you recall the defendant saying to you?” Tolletson asked.

  Crowley, who was thin—Ichabod Crane thin—and wore glasses, wasn’t a magnetic witness. He had a reedy voice that annoyed me and, I hoped, the jury.

  “He asked me where I was heading to,” Crowley said.

  “And you answered?”

  “Toluca Lake. That’s where I live.”

  “What, if anything, did he say next?”

  “He told me he was going to catch a bus and come up to Hinton.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He said he had to see someone.”

  “Were those his exact words?”

  “Yes, sir. He said, ‘I have to see someone.’”

  “How did he say it?”

  “He just said it in a matter-of-fact way.”

  “Did he say he was going to see his wife?”

  “No. He said, ‘Someone.’ And he had a faraway look when he said it.”

  “Objection,” I said. “Non-responsive and speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  Tolletson asked, “What, if anything, did you say next?”

  “I asked him if this was regarding business.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He shook his head and said, ‘No, I’m going to deliver a message.’”

  “What was his demeanor like when he said that?”

  Again I objected. This time Wegland overruled me. Crowley said, “He was very serious and looking straight ahead.”

  “He wasn’t talking directly to you?”

  “No, sir. He just looked straight ahead, sort of faraway.”

  Once more I objected, since the same speculative answer had come in again. Wegland said the answer would stand this time. “He’s explained it,” she said.

  “Did he say anything else?” Tolletson asked.

  “Only one more thing,” Crowley answered. “He said, ‘She’ll never forget it.’”

  “Again, were those his exact words?”

  “Yes. ‘She’ll never forget it.’ And he was still looking far away. I got a little spooked.”

  “You were afraid?”

  Crowley squared his shoulders. “Not afraid, just spooked. Like this guy was a little weird.”

  “Objection!”

  “Overruled.”

  Tolletson said, “And did you have further conversation with the defendant?”

  “No. That was it. I was glad when the flight was over and he would go away.”

  “Your witness,”
Tolletson said to me.

  “Good morning, Mr. Crowley,” I said. He nodded at me. “What was my client wearing that day on the plane?”

  The question surprised him, which was exactly my intent. Crowley looked at the ceiling a moment, then said, “He had on a suit, I think.”

  “Can you describe it a little better than that?”

  “Well, I wasn’t really studying him. I think it was a blue suit of some kind.”

  “What about shoes?”

  “I believe they black.”

  “You believe? Can you be sure?”

  “Again, I wasn’t studying his clothes.”

  “I see. Did you have a meal on that flight?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Do you remember what you ordered?”

  Crowley smiled and said, “It was probably rubber chicken.” His attempt at humor fell flat. No one in the courtroom laughed. That shook him. He looked nervously at the jury, then back at me.

  “This is a serious question,” I rebuked. “What did you have to eat?”

  Sighing, Crowley looked up at the ceiling again. Maybe he was looking for an escape hatch. “I think it was chicken, or maybe some sort of beef.”

  “Do you know the difference between chicken and beef?”

  “Objection,” Tolletson intoned.

  “I’ll withdraw the question, Your Honor. Mr. Crowley, did you order any drinks on that flight?”

  “Yes,” he said confidently. “I always order a Coke when the flight attendants come around.”

  “And what did my client order?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did he order anything?”

  “He may have. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “I see. Now Mr. Crowley, you’ve just testified that you aren’t sure, that you ‘think’ or ‘believe.’ Yet when it comes to what my client said, you have no such uncertainty, do you?”

  Now fully aware of what my questioning was about, Crowley began to fidget. He put his bony hands together on his lap, and one of his thumbs started flicking up and down, up and down.

  “I remember what he said, yes.”

  “It’s more than that, isn’t it? You remember his exact words, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You even remember the details of his facial expression, for heaven’s sake.”