The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella (25 page)

I sat down.

In a criminal case, there are two doors for a jury to walk through : guilty or not guilty. Miriam tried to push the jury through her door. I wanted to hold my door open for them and welcome them in. Juries behave just like every other person on the street—they don’t like being pushed into anything; they like having a choice.

Dr. Goldstein looked nervously at his papers. The more surprised and off balance he became, the better it was for me. At that point I had a choice before me—I could play it safe or set a trap for Miriam. The trap was a risk that could easily backfire. On the other hand, if it worked, it could win me favor with the jury.

I took my chances.

I leaned over to Miriam, and Arturas strained to hear what I said. I’d told him to look out for it, that I might do it if it felt right. I didn’t want to give the impression I was letting Miriam in on the bomb.

“Goldstein—he’s a graphologist. Don’t call him, or you’ll regret it,” I said.

“What the hell is a graphologist?” asked Miriam, as I’d expected. I had my answer already lined up for her.

“Goldstein is a forensic document examiner. His job is to determine authorship from a sample of handwriting; it’s a scientific analysis. Graphology tries to interpret the author’s personality from his handwriting; it’s a bunch of shit. It’s like a Christian archaeologist who digs up dinosaur bones testifying that the world is only five thousand years old. You can’t be in both schools at once; it’s hypocritical. Don’t call him.”

I sat down.

She would call him.

A look of anger spread over her proud features. The judge looked at her. I’d finished my opening. It was time for the prosecution to begin their evidence. I’d thrown Miriam off guard. Goldstein looked to be the only prosecution witness in court. She stood up.

“Your Honor, I call Dr. Irving Goldstein.”

Surprised at hearing his name so soon, Dr. Goldstein quickly folded his papers, buttoned his jacket, and moved forward. The smirk spreading across his face failed to mask his nerves. After all, this was the biggest case of his career. If my work paid off, it would be the last case of his career. He tripped over the leg of a chair on the way to the witness stand and held tightly to his papers. The report was his rock, and he clung to it. He had every right to feel confident, as his report was accurate, well written, and true. I couldn’t challenge a single word of it.

Without anyone knowing it, I’d relied on Miriam being predictably brilliant. I thought of her as a great trial lawyer. She would do the same thing that I would do in her situation. I would take my opponent’s best point and I would use it. I would ask the doc about graphology. I could control the question, make it sound normal, ordinary, even boring. I could give him all the time in the world to explain his answer fully, throwing out my opponent’s best point like a dirty rag. Miriam would do the same thing.

I counted on it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Goldstein was in his fifties, and it looked to me like he’d been fifty for around thirty years. His suit looked older than him, and to top it all, he wore a bow tie.

He stood for the oath. Adjusting his glasses as he read the card, he carefully recited the words that put him in my domain. Pouring himself two glasses of water, he settled down for a marathon session on the stand. Miriam would be quick with Goldstein. A good lawyer should be fast with all expert witnesses because, more often than not, they’re just boring as hell. Their evidence is vital, but they’re just pretty awful at explaining it so you have to keep it brief :
Who are you? Why are you smarter than any other guy in your field? Tell us what we need to know and then shut the hell up
. Miriam probably told him he would be in the box for a day. He didn’t know he’d be in and out in an hour or two.

Miriam held Goldstein’s report before her as if the paper itself were steering her toward the truth and Volchek’s conviction.

“Dr. Goldstein, please outline for the jury your particular expertise and any relevant qualifications you hold,” said Miriam. Her question was designed to settle the doc.
Tell these people on the jury why you’re so smart
. It gets the doc talking, eases him in.

“I’m a forensic document examiner. I analyze handwriting to determine the identity of the author. I have studied at . . .” And away we go for five minutes on the doc’s brilliance. I let this go. The more he told the jury how smart he was, the more he would look like an idiot when I tore into him. The doc started to look a little nervous, probably thinking that he’d been talking for too long. He began playing with his bow tie. Miriam read the signs and stepped in to save him.

“Thank you, Doctor. That’s an impressive résumé. Please explain to the jury why you were engaged by the prosecution in this case.”

“Of course. If the jury would turn to bundle D, page 287, you will see a copy of the murder note. These are the two halves of a one-ruble note with the victim’s name written on one half. I am instructed that this note was found in the car driven by Witness X. I was instructed that Witness X will testify as to what the note means and its significance to the victim’s murder. I can’t comment on that. I was engaged by the prosecution to determine whether or not the handwriting on the note belonged to the defendant.”

Miriam paused to let the jury find the page. Let them see the note. See the handwriting.

Mario Geraldo
.

“Doctor, tell us how you examined this note.” Miriam was careful to use the word “doctor” as often as possible without annoying the judge. The repetition of an expert’s official title helped build confidence with the jury.

“This is the disputed handwriting. The defendant does not concede that this is his handwriting. To determine if this disputed handwriting belongs to the defendant, I conducted a scientific analysis of the defendant’s known sources of handwriting for the purposes of forensic comparison.”

“Where did you obtain this evidence of the defendant’s known handwriting, Doctor?” asked Miriam.

“From tax returns, social security records, passport applications, citizenship applications, and other publicly filed documents bearing the defendant’s signature and or handwriting.”

“And what did you discover from your
forensic examination
?”

“I determined that there were distinct and unique characters or, as you might call it, letter formations present in all samples, including the disputed sample. In other words, the way he formed the letters and the particular and distinct manner in which he moved the pen to create the individual letters was enough to identify a definitive pattern of handwriting. From this I am able to say with a considerable degree of certainty that the defendant is the author of the note you see before you.”

The big point. Like a good lawyer should, Miriam paused and looked at the jury, letting it sink in.

“Give us an example, Doctor, would you please?” said Miriam.

“Sure,” said Goldstein, who fetched a blowup of the letter “G,” which he explained was the letter “G” at the start of “Geraldo” from the disputed handwriting source. He also produced several slightly smaller copies of similar-looking letter “Gs,” which he explained were from known sources of the defendant’s handwriting. He placed all of the enlargements on the wide A-frame easel for the jury to consider.

“When one looks at the construction of the letter ‘G’ from ‘Geraldo,’ one can see there is a pronounced tail on the ‘G,’ which is formed with a continuous unbroken line descending from the top curve of the character. The character or letter is then finished with a horizontal dash beginning inside the curve of the ‘G’ and moving from left to right and slightly ascending. This letter or character is constructed identically in all the samples I examined, including known samples of the defendant’s handwriting. Therefore I’m able to say, with a large degree of certainty, that it was the defendant who wrote the name of the victim on this one-ruble bill.”

“To what degree are you certain, Doctor?”

“Ninety-five to ninety-eight percent certain.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“This character has such a unique and consistent construction throughout all of the handwriting I examined. The note could only have been written by the defendant.”

“Doctor, what is graphology?” she asked.

Miriam could have played out Goldstein’s evidence for the rest of the day, but she couldn’t afford that luxury because she’d taken up too much time in her opening statement. She had to keep things moving for this jury. Besides, Miriam no doubt believed I would take hours with the witness. Taking a long time cross-examining the expert is believed, by some lawyers, to be the best way to disable an expert witness. Trot out every theory; confuse, obfuscate, and argue with the expert about everything until the evidence becomes meaningless and dull. I didn’t have that kind of time. Neither did Amy.

Dr. Goldstein appeared to be a little taken aback by Miriam’s question, but he did manage a smile despite the obvious discomfort it caused him. He shifted in his seat, crossed his legs, and wetted
his lips. Graphology must have been close to his heart, and he obviously knew it was a possible line of attack.

“What is graphology? Well, it’s a term used to describe an examination of handwriting and what it reveals about the author in relation to personality or sickness or psychosis. It’s not concerned with determining who wrote a particular document. It’s more about interpreting the personality of the author.”

Go on, Miriam. Ask him. You know you want to
, I thought.

“Doctor, some would say a single individual who practices both forensic document examination and graphology would be like having an archaeologist who’s a born-again Christian testify that the world is only five thousand years old. In other words, it’s a contradiction.”

Bingo
.

“Objection, Your Honor.” I jumped to my feet, and despite my joy at hooking Miriam, I did my very best to look pissed as all hell.

“On what grounds?” asked the judge.

“On the grounds of religious belief, Your Honor : I believe in God, and I don’t want my beliefs questioned by the prosecutor; nor do I think it’s right that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord, should be dragged into a legal argument by the prosecution. It’s a discriminatory statement against Christians; it implies an atheist belief on behalf of the prosecutor, and it’s against the constitutional right to religious freedom. No matter what the prosecutor might believe, it’s wrong to impose those beliefs on others or ridicule my beliefs to prove a point.”

Miriam looked like she wanted to kill me. I didn’t blame her. It was nasty, and she’d fallen for it.

The jury looked like they would happily carry me home on their shoulders. I’d banked on a Christian jury in this part of town, and I was right. Four jurors wore crucifixes. Finding a juror’s idol and holding it before them is the surest way of getting them on your side. You just need to find the right idol. If I were in Vegas, it would have been Elvis, or Sammy Davis, Jr.; in football-crazy Texas—Sammy Baugh; in Oklahoma—Mickey Mantle. In this part of New York, something liberal and Christian works every time. Most of the jury smiled at me, but the ones who weren’t were too busy giving Miriam dirty looks.

Big score
.

But the judge was not at all impressed. She saw that coming a mile away.

“Ms. Sullivan, perhaps you could consider rephrasing your last question,” said the judge.

Miriam was done.

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

On my feet, behind the defense table with my props ready, tucked underneath the desk like a cheap magician, I suddenly became conscious that I hadn’t prepared, that I could fall flat on my ass at any second. I told myself to take it slow. My eyes closed for a moment. Just enough time to take in a deep breath, and yet I knew I would see her in the dark. Hanna Tublowski. I saw her most nights before I fell asleep. That same image woke me every morning. I’d tried to wash away that vision with bourbon and cold beer. I knew when I first saw her that my heart would forever bear a scar, and I hadn’t practiced law since. The path of my life seemed to be broken in two, a life seen in terms of what happened before I took on the Berkley case and what happened after.

When my eyes opened and my head cleared, I looked at Goldstein and I could again see the questions in my mind.

“Dr. Goldstein,” I heard myself say, “would I be right in saying that if you’re comparing handwriting samples, it’s best practice to compare like for like documents? So, for example, two résumés, two passport applications, two driver’s license applications.”

“Yes, but that’s not always possible. Not unless your client wrote two different orders to have people killed and I could examine them both,” said Goldstein, looking at me over the rim of his glasses. A nervous round of laughter made its way across the audience. The doc looked rather too pleased with himself and his answer. I needed to take more care.

“You said that you formed the opinion that the unknown author of the note and the known author of the sample documents, my client, were in fact the same person. And you came to that conclusion based upon your examination of the letter formation and construction?”

“Yes,” said Goldstein. He’d obviously been told to keep it tight with me, to make his answers short and snappy. The idiot’s guide to surviving cross-examination—don’t say too much and you can’t do too much damage.

“Isn’t that what graphology does? It’s an interpretation of letter and word formation?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s a strong similarity in the analysis?”

“To a degree.”

“So there’s a strong similarity in the analysis?” I repeated, very slowly, like talking to a naughty child and making sure he understood the question. He had to give a more definitive answer now or risk looking like a liar or a moron in front of the jury. My method of repeating the question already made him look evasive.

“Yes. There is a strong similarity in the analysis.”

Excellent
, I thought.