by Rose Connors
“When was that?”
“Saturday, June twelfth. A week before…” Buck stares at his lap again for a moment, then back at the panel. “A week before.”
“Before what?”
“Your Honor.”
Beatrice had her gavel in hand even before Stanley spoke.
“Before what, Buck?”
“Your Honor!”
The gavel descends.
I knew this would happen, but I thought it would take a little longer. I thought I’d get at least a half dozen questions out before the prosecutor-judge team began its power play. But I’m ready.
Maybe I’m overly defensive. Maybe I’m sleep-deprived. I don’t give a damn. I’ve planned this moment. I intend to shut my opponents down. Both of them.
“Before what, Buck?”
“Your Honor!”
Beatrice leans toward me, but I don’t turn. I fix my gaze on Buck, keep the judge in my peripheral vision. “Counsel,” she barks, “there’s an objection pending.”
“I haven’t heard one, Judge.” Still I don’t look at her. “Before what, Buck?”
Beatrice bangs her gavel and then points it at Buck. She sits up straight, apparently taken aback by my poor manners. “The witness will remain silent. Counsel, Mr. Edgarton has raised an objection.”
She inhales audibly when I wheel around to face her. “No, he hasn’t, Judge. You’re interrupting my examination of the defendant and there’s no objection pending.”
I turn my back to her and point my pen at String Tie. His eyes grow wide, but his fingers keep tapping. “It seems you have an objection, though, Judge. So let’s hear it.”
When I face her again, her mouth is a perfect oval, as if she’s about to begin an aria.
“Go ahead, Judge. Put your objection on the record. And we’ll ask the Big Boys to rule on it.”
My irreverent reference to the appellate panel is more than Beatrice can bear. “Now just a minute, Counsel.”
“No, Judge. You don’t get a minute now.”
She’s no longer taken aback. She’s indignant.
“Now is my client’s time to testify, Judge, my time to question him. And nobody interrupts, not even you, unless this man”-Stanley takes a step back when I aim my pen in his direction-“voices a coherent objection.”
Now Stanley’s mouth is circular. Maybe they plan a duet. “You’re not the prosecutor, Judge. He is. It’s his job to raise viable objections. ‘Your Honor’ doesn’t cut it. Those words don’t appear in the Rules of Evidence. If the prosecutor can’t state a legal basis for his objection, then the judge can’t rule on it.”
The gavel pauses midair. Beatrice looks like she might reach out and pound it on the top of my head.
“And if you’ve got nothing to rule on, then this man”-Buck stares into his lap again when my pen finds him-“keeps talking.”
My face must be maroon by now. I’m winded. I lean against the witness box until Buck looks up, and then I turn to the jury. They’re gaping at me.
“Buck Hammond sat in this courtroom all week without uttering a word. He listened to a parade of the Commonwealth’s witnesses without making a sound. He’s the man on trial; it’s his fate we’re deciding here. It’s his turn to talk now.”
Side-by-side men in the back row rub their chins and stare hard at me. The rest of them avoid my gaze. They look instead at the judge, at Buck, at the floor.
“Buck Hammond is entitled to his turn. The Constitution says so.”
Still, almost no eye contact. The retired schoolteacher looks at me for just a second, then quickly turns away.
Stanley remains on his feet but says nothing. Beatrice sets her gavel on the bench and folds her hands into her sleeves.
I’ll take that as a go.
“Let’s get to the point, Buck”-I pause to glare at Stanley-“while we still can.”
“Counsel, that’s enough.” Beatrice retrieves her gavel and pounds again. “One more editorial comment from you, Ms. Nickerson, and you’ll take a break-a long one.”
I block her out, block them all out. The judge. Stanley. String Tie. Even the spectators. What happens now is between Buck and the jurors. No one else.
“What did Hector Monteros do to Billy?”
In the silence that follows, I study the jurors. Their gazes move from Buck to the easel, then back to Buck again.
“Took him,” he says, “took him from the beach.”
“And?”
Buck grasps the arms of his chair, as if he just hit turbulence.
“And hurt him.”
I pour a glass of water and set it on the railing of the witness box, but Buck shakes his head.
“How?”
Now a few of the jurors grasp the arms of their chairs too. They don’t want to hear the details again. Once was more than enough. They don’t want to hear the story again from anyone, but certainly not the boy’s father. They needn’t worry. Buck has never even been able to say the word.
“He…did terrible things, and then…” Buck changes his mind, takes a sip of water. “And then he killed Billy.”
“How did he kill Billy?”
Buck lowers his head. For a few moments, he seems unable to lift it again.
“Your Honor,” Stanley whines, “perhaps we should take a brief recess.”
“It won’t be any easier ten minutes from now, Judge.”
Beatrice glares at me, her pursed lips arcing downward at the corners again. That’s one of those editorial comments I’m not supposed to make. Next time I’ll tell her ten years won’t make much difference either.
“Take your time,” I say to Buck, and I mean it. Every minute he spends on this witness stand should take us one step closer to a decent result. To me, his agony is apparent, his grief tangible. I can’t tell, though, if the jurors feel it. Their faces reveal nothing.
When Buck lifts his brimming eyes, they settle on the photo tucked under my arm, the autopsy shot. He can see only its blank back, but the look on his face tells me he knows what it is. And he doesn’t want it here. He turns to the jury, still clutching the arms of his chair.
We practiced this testimony. Not because we doctored the answer, but because Buck couldn’t address the question at all, at first. He couldn’t say it out loud. Even now, he has to say the words quickly, or he won’t get through the answer.
“He bound Billy with metal cables…” Buck lets go of the chair arms and presses his wrists together. “At the wrists and ankles. And he smothered him.”
Buck drops his hands to his lap. That’s all he can say on that topic. He’s reached his limit.
“And what did you do, Buck, to Hector Monteros?”
“Your Honor, please, these jurors watched the videotape, they heard from the Chief of Police. They know what the defendant did.”
Stanley knows better. His objection is nothing more than a ploy, a manufactured opportunity to make a speech.
Beatrice stares at me-grimaces-when I look up. I’m tempted to smile. She won’t dare prevent Buck Hammond from telling the jury what he did. There isn’t an appellate panel in the country that would uphold that ruling. Stanley knows that. And Beatrice does too.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “I remind you of the limiting instruction you were given on the first day of this trial. I caution you now-that instruction is still in full force and effect.”
Funny, that’s the only ruling of Judge Long’s that Beatrice has acknowledged. The jurors nod, though, almost as one.
Stanley acts as if he isn’t satisfied. He folds his arms across his chest and stamps one foot ever so slightly on the worn carpeting. Yet another temper tantrum, this one stifled.
“Buck, what did you do to Hector Monteros?”
“I tried to stop him.” Buck shifts in his chair so he can face the jurors. “I shot him.”
“Were you able to stop him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He closes his eyes, still facing t
he panel. “I tried. But I failed. I was too late.”
I move to the easel and set the photo-Billy beaming with his striped bass-to one side. Next to it I position the other one.
Buck keeps his face averted, toward the jury box, his eyes still closed. The jurors, though, look first at me, then at the easel. One by one, their gazes settle on the photo. The awful one.
It’s a close-up of Billy, from the chest up, on the autopsy table. His arms are bent at the elbows, hands open, palms up, on either side of his head. His eyes are closed and his freckled face looks as if he might be sleeping. But on his wrists the ligature marks are plain.
Finally, Buck follows the jurors’ gazes and stares at the autopsy shot. “You see?” he asks them through clenched teeth. “I couldn’t stop him. I was too late.”
Chapter 42
“Too late?” Stanley scrutinizes Buck Hammond as if he’s a still life about to be auctioned.
Buck’s expression is blank. Seated in the witness box, he’s the same height as Stanley on his feet.
“That was your testimony, was it not, sir? That you were too late?”
Buck leans forward in his chair and nods. “Yes.”
“You were too late long before you fired the shot that killed Hector Monteros, weren’t you, Mr. Hammond?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Buck shakes his head, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Your boy was already dead, was he not, sir, when you pulled the trigger?”
Buck nods, agreeing. “He was.”
“And you knew that to be the case, didn’t you?”
“I know it now.”
“And you knew it then!”
I’m tempted to get up, but I don’t. Stanley shouldn’t testify, shouldn’t act like a witness. But I shouldn’t act like Stanley, either. Besides, we’ve got a long way to go. Stanley’s just getting started.
He waits for a response, but he won’t get one. Buck and I went over this a thousand times in the past few weeks. If there’s no question pending, Buck’s not to say a word. And he’s good at not saying a word.
A moment of silence. And then Stanley gets it. “You knew your son was dead, didn’t you, Mr. Hammond, when you fired that fatal shot?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?”
Stanley moves the easel to the wall, tosses the photos of Billy on our table. He walks toward the jury, hands clasped behind his back, a slight smile on his lips. For a moment, his footsteps are the only sounds in the room. A well-planned dramatic pause.
“You were in the courtroom, were you not, sir, when Chief Thomas Fitzpatrick testified?”
“Yes.”
“And you listened to his testimony, I presume?”
“I did. Yes.”
“You heard him tell us, then, that you identified your son’s body at the morgue?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember doing that, sir?”
“Do I remember…?”
“Identifying the body.”
Buck looks as if he thinks Stanley might be temporarily insane.
“Of course I do.”
“No memory problems, then?”
Buck shakes his head. “No.”
“And you did that, Mr. Hammond-identified your son’s body-more than two hours before the chopper transporting Monteros reached Chatham. Isn’t that correct?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hear Chief Fitzpatrick tell us exactly that?”
“I did.”
“Is it your testimony, then, that Chief Fitzpatrick was lying?”
The question is improper, but it’s not worth an objection. Cheap shots say more about the questioner than anyone else. And we anticipated a few from Stanley. Buck is as well prepared to deflect them as any witness can be.
“No,” Buck says evenly, “that’s not my testimony.”
“You agree, then, that you identified the body more than two hours before killing Monteros?”
Buck takes a deep breath and answers the panel. “The Chief said more than two hours, so it must have been.”
“But you don’t have personal knowledge of that fact, is that your testimony, Mr. Hammond?”
Buck faces Stanley again. “Yes.”
“You don’t remember?”
“That’s right.”
Stanley lets out a short, sarcastic hiccup, not quite a laugh. He strides to the side wall, flips off the overhead lights, then makes a beeline for his star witness.
He holds the videotape in front of Buck for a moment-yet another dramatic pause-before popping it into the VCR. “Let’s find out, Mr. Hammond, what you do remember.”
Harry and I exchange surprised glances. We were certain Stanley would save his second run of the video for closing, certain he’d want the bloody runway to be the final scene emblazoned on the jurors’ minds.
The glow from the TV screen illuminates Stanley’s silhouette and Buck’s profile. The rest of us sit in inky blackness. This is the advantage to a windowless courtroom: easy video viewing. It’s the only plus, as far as I can tell.
Stanley retrieves a long wooden stick from his table. It has a white rubber tip, like the ones pointed at blackboards by teachers in elementary school. He waits patiently while the military chopper comes into view on-screen. He watches silently as the chopper descends to the runway. Then he presses a controller, freezes the frame.
I leave my chair and walk quietly across the room to lean against the wall beside the jury box. I want to keep an eye on Stanley’s pointer.
“You’ve seen this helicopter before, have you not, Mr. Hammond?”
Buck nods. “Yes. I’ve seen this tape.”
“I’m not asking about the tape. I’m asking about the military helicopter, the real one. U.S. ARMY printed on its sides. You saw it on June twenty-first, did you not?”
There it is. A question I didn’t ask. It never fails. There’s always a question I didn’t ask. More than one, in most cases.
Buck tilts his head toward one shoulder, considering the prosecutor’s query. “I’m not sure.”
Stanley jumps back, as if surprised by the answer. He plasters an incredulous look on his dimly lit face, then turns it toward the jurors. “You’re not sure?”
“I know I must have,” Buck says. “But I don’t remember actually looking at it then.” He shrugs, shakes his head. “I don’t know if I saw the words. I don’t think I realized it was an army aircraft.”
Stanley shakes his head too, and presses the controller again. “You don’t remember,” he mutters.
On-screen, a uniformed marshal emerges from the chopper, his sidearm drawn. One step behind him is Monteros, handcuffed and shackled loosely, so he can negotiate the stairs. A second guard follows a few steps behind, his weapon pointed upward, as if he might fire into the air at any moment.
Stanley freezes the frame again. “Do you remember these men?” He moves his pointer from the first guard to the second, skipping over Monteros.
That’s question number two I didn’t ask.
“The guards?”
Stanley nods. “And I’m not asking you about the videotape. I’m asking about the morning of June twenty-first.”
Buck frowns, as if even he doesn’t like the answer he’s about to give. “No,” he says, “I don’t.”
Stanley smirks, presses his controller, and the action on-screen resumes. He stops it again as soon as Monteros’s feet reach the runway.
“And I don’t suppose you have any memory of this gentleman, either, Mr. Hammond.” Stanley’s pointer rests on Monteros. “Is that your testimony?”
This question I didn’t overlook. I shift my position against the wall, so I can watch the jury as well as Buck.
He sits perfectly still in the witness box, his eyes on the white tip of Stanley’s pointer. “No,” he says. “That’s not my testimony.”
Stanley turns from the TV screen to the jurors, mock surprise on his face. “Do tell us,” he sa
ys. “What do you remember about Mr. Monteros?”
Buck’s eyes leave the screen and he turns toward the jury. “I remember everything,” he says.
“Everything?” Stanley holds his stick in two hands at chest level, as if he might tap dance once the music begins. “Perhaps you could be more specific.”
“The tattoo on his arm, the scar on his chin, the sneer on his face. I remember everything.”
Stanley appears satisfied with this answer. He starts the tape again. “And tell us, Mr. Hammond…” Stanley presses his controller and points the tip of his stick at Buck on the screen, one step from the shadow of the hangar. “Who is this?”
“That’s me.”
“So it is.” This time Stanley presses twice. I know what he’s doing. Continuing the tape. And turning on the volume. It’s been muted until now.
The shot thunders through the courtroom. Most of the jurors jump in their seats; a few cover their mouths. Buck doesn’t move.
On-screen, Monteros collapses and police officers scatter. A pool of red seeps from Monteros’s head onto the runway.
Stanley freezes the frame and moves so close to the witness box that Buck leans backward in his chair. “You fired that shot, Mr. Hammond?”
“I did.”
“Whose rifle?”
“Mine.”
“You hunt?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Deer.”
Stanley turns his face toward the jury, but his body stays pressed against the witness box.
“Deer season in June?”
“No.”
“Anytime in spring?”
“No.”
“When?”
“Fall. November into December.”
Finally, Stanley walks away from the witness box, and Buck exhales. Stanley’s pointer finds Monteros on-screen again, taps against him a few times. “You intended to kill this man, didn’t you, Mr. Hammond?”
“I did.”
“You sighted his temple and your shot was on target, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty good aim.”
Buck says nothing.