The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (17 page)

“Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God,” the bailiff said.

“I do,” Andy replied.

“Please be seated,” the bailiff said.

Reginald Chambliss rose from behind the prosecutor’s table, buttoned his suit jacket, and moved into the open area in the front of the courtroom. Andy noticed that he’d ditched his off-the-rack suit for one that looked far more expensive than anything that would ever hang in Andy’s closet. Of course, the suit was dark blue, with a white shirt and a red tie. He looked like he’d been shopping at the power politicians’ clothing outlet. “Officer, for the record, would you please state your full name,” he said.

“Andrew Eugene Myers.” Yeah, Eugene. I always thought that was a funny middle name.

“And, Officer, what is your official position?”

“I am a senior patrolman for the City of Trask Police Department.”

“How long have you been a Trask police officer?” Cham-bliss asked with a relaxed, very informal tone.

“Six years, ten months,” Andy replied.

“Now, Officer Myers, can you tell us what took place on the morning of Tuesday, July seventh?”

“I was working the graveyard shift, and I received a call from the Trask dispatcher with a report of a 10-16, that is, a domestic disturbance, from the Madison Park Apartments. The call came in a little after two in the morning—two-oh-six to be precise.”

“Was this unusual, getting a call like that in the middle of the night?” Chambliss asked, lobbing another softball of a question toward Andy.

“Not at all. I probably go out to that apartment complex two or three times a week for some sort of disturbance or another when I work the overnight. Usually, the calls turn out to be nothing, at least nothing major. I didn’t think much about getting a call on that night. I figured it would be more of the same, either a television cranked up too loud with someone asleep on the couch in front of it, or some couple arguing with one another. That’s all,” Andy said. He’d rehearsed this little speech in his head a few thousand times over the past two months. He knew exactly what he wanted to say.

“What did you discover when you arrived?” Chambliss asked.

“Several residents were waiting for me in the parking lot. They seemed pretty agitated about something. Another resident greeted me at the top of the stairs of building three as I made my way up to apartment 323, the apartment about which three separate calls had been made to the police department. Still, I didn’t think too much of any of this. The people out there tend to be easily excitable. Sometimes I think calling the cops is their favorite form of entertainment.”

“Objection,” John’s attorney, Donald Edmonds, said. “The witness is making a judgment that has little bearing on this case.” Andy figured the guy just wanted to remind the court that he was there and he was paying attention.

“Sustained,” Judge Houk said. “The entertainment habits of the residents of the Madison Park Apartments has little bearing on the events of the night in question.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” Andy said.

“What did you find when you went to the Phillips apartment?” Chambliss asked.

“I had to knock several times before anyone opened the door. When the door finally did open, I found John Phillips talking on the telephone. He waved me into the apartment, and kept on talking on the telephone,” Andy said.

“Is there anything unusual about that?” Chambliss asked, again, setting up Andy to make a point.

“Absolutely. When accidents occur, those who come upon the accident usually drop everything to try to help the accident victim or they call for outside help. This is especially true when a child is injured. In my experience, parents don’t let anything come between them and their child in need. Sometimes we almost have to pry the child out of the parent’s arms. Mr. Phillips, however, appeared very nonchalant, as if I had arrived at the wrong apartment. I have never before observed a parent react to the injury or death of a child as I saw Mr. Phillips act. I had to insist that he get off the phone before he would hang up,” Andy said. He thought he noticed a visible reaction from the jury as he said this.
Good
, Andy thought. He wanted the jury to feel the same apprehension about John as he felt from the first time he met the guy.

“Then what happened?” Chambliss asked.

“Then Mr. Phillips said, ‘He’s back here,’ in a way that sounded like a waiter showing me to a table. He also said something about how he was just about to call the police. I followed him down the apartment hallway, to where he motioned into a room and said, ‘He’s in there.’ ”

“What did you discover in the room into which Mr. Phillips led you?” Chambliss asked. His tone had become very serious.

“The room was very small, but the floor looked like it had been painted in blood. And on the bottom bunk lay a small boy. There was blood smeared on the side of the mattress as well. I rushed over to the boy to try to start CPR, and the linoleum floor was pretty slick from all the blood, which, as it turned out, was not all blood but also water from a broken goldfish bowl. I moved the boy from the bunk bed to the floor to start doing mouth-to-mouth, but he was unresponsive,” Andy said.

“What was Mr. Phillips doing while you were working on his son?” Chambliss asked.

“Nothing. He stood in the doorway and watched. I asked him what had happened and he told me his son fell out of the top bunk and hit his head on the bottom drawer of the dresser that was right next to the boy’s bed,” Andy said.

“Was this a normal response from a parent in a situation like this?” Chambliss asked.

“Objection,” Edmonds said. “The prosecutor is leading the witness.”

“Sustained,” Judge Houk said.

“In your nearly seven years of experience as a police officer, what manner of behavior have you observed in other parents when their child has been injured?” Chambliss asked, rephrasing his question.

“Nothing like this. A lot of parents rush over and try to be so close to their child that it prevents us from working on them. Others, when they give you the distance you need to administer help, cry and weep and carry on or show extreme anxiety in some other way. Mr. Phillips not only kept his distance, he seemed very detached from the situation. He began talking about what his son’s name meant. At one point he even offered to pray for me. I have never before observed a parent who demonstrated so little emotional response to the injury or death of a child,” Andy said.

“You said the floor was covered with blood. Was the child bleeding?”

“Yes, sir. From the back of his head. Although the blood wasn’t flowing freely like it obviously had earlier, it still dripped from the back of his head. The pillow on which he’d been laid was soaked with blood, and the mixture of blood and water covered the floor. It pretty much ruined the uniform I had on that night,” Andy said.

“Were the defendant’s clothes covered with blood as well?”

“No. He freely admitted later he had changed clothes between the time Gabe died and when I arrived.”

“Is there anything unusual about that?”

“In my experience, yes. Mr. Phillips took the time to change his clothes, but he never called the police or fire departments for help. I’ve never seen that in a parent. Usually, a mother or father is so upset by their child’s injury and so focused on trying to help them, they lose sight of everything else. I found this quite odd,” Andy said.

“Objection,” Edmonds said. “This is nothing but conjecture on the part of the witness.”

“On the contrary,” Chambliss said. “The unusual nature of the defendant’s response on the night in question calls into doubt the defendant’s explanation of Gabriel Phillips’s death. His actions aroused the suspicions of law enforcement professionals from the very beginning. This is not conjecture on the officer’s part, but a clear observation of an abnormal emotional reaction to this traumatic event.”

“Objection overruled. You may continue, Mr. Chambliss,” the judge said.

“What did you do after unsuccessfully trying CPR?” Chambliss asked.

“I radioed in for the coroner and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department to come to the scene. The sheriff’s department takes the lead in investigating potential crime scenes like this. I also agreed to let the dispatcher call out the fire department paramedics and an ambulance. To me, it was apparent that the boy was dead. However, I wanted to make sure we gave him every possible chance to survive,” Andy said.

“Did the defendant say how long it had been since the accident occurred when you arrived?” Chambliss asked.

“He said ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Would that ten or fifteen minutes have made a difference in saving Gabriel Phillips’s life?” Chambliss asked.

“Objection,” Edmonds said. “The witness is a police officer, not a doctor.”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“I withdraw the question. What happened after you radioed in for help?” Chambliss queried.

“I led Mr. Phillips back into the living room, where we waited. I left him there after the fire department arrived. I had to show the paramedics back into the boy’s bedroom, where some of them didn’t do too well. A couple of them knew Gabriel through their sons and became very distraught. Once Detective Ted Jackson and the sheriff’s department investigative team arrived, I turned the scene over to him and rejoined Mr. Phillips in the living room. He never said anything else. Most of the time he sat with his head down and his eyes closed,” Andy said.

“Thank you, Officer. No further questions,” Chambliss said.

“Your witness, Mr. Edmonds,” the judge said.

Before Donald Edmonds stood up, John whispered something in his ear. Andy didn’t know what he said, but it was pretty clear Edmonds didn’t like it. He let out a loud sigh, then stood and said, “Officer Myers, did you know the deceased child?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how did you know him?”

“I am a friend of his mother,” Andy said without offering any further information.

Edmonds looked down at a sheet of paper in his hand, then glanced back at John. “No further questions,” he said in an agitated voice.

“Would the prosecution like to ask anything further at this time?” Judge Houk said.

“No, Your Honor,” Chambliss said.

“Your Honor,” Edmonds said, “the defense would like to reserve the right to recall the witness at a later time.” Andy couldn’t read minds, but the look on the attorney’s face looked like he said this in spite of what his client had told him.

“Mr. Chambliss?” the judge said.

“I have no objections to that, Your Honor. In fact, the prosecution would also like to reserve the right to recall the witness.” That was a lie. The prosecution let out a huge sigh of relief that John’s public defender didn’t hammer Andy about his relationship with Loraine. The D.A. reserved the right to recall Andy only as a way of keeping him as far from the courtroom as possible.

“Very well,” the judge said. “Thank you, Officer Myers, you may step down.” As Andy walked out of the courtroom, he heard the judge say, “Next witness.”

And that was it. Andy had to leave the courtroom and he couldn’t go back until the day the judge read the verdict. For the rest of the trial, Andy had to content himself with getting his information from the local news. Every night for a week and a half, some reporter would stand out in front of the courthouse in the cold and tell what had happened that day. When they cut to the courtroom scene, they showed those hokey artist’s renditions that were as close as you could get to the action inside. Cameras wouldn’t be allowed in courtrooms for quite a while yet. The cartoon caricatures of John didn’t squirm and sweat like Andy wanted to see him squirm and sweat, but it was as close as he could get to the courtroom.

Even as the trial proceeded, Andy held out hope that John would change his plea and admit to what he had done. From the way the news reporters described the action inside the courtroom, John wasn’t doing too well. Sandy Jacobs, the perky little twenty-something blond reporter from channel six’s
Action News,
described the forensic evidence as “damning” and she called the ex-hooker’s testimony a “bombshell” that severely damaged the image the Phillips defense team presented of their client. “Phillips,” the reporter said, “pressured the former prostitute for sex in repayment for helping her off the street. This hardly fits the picture of a deeply religious man the defense maintains John Phillips is.” Andy stood up from his couch and cheered when the reporter said the defense barely challenged Ms. Peters’s claims.

Christopher Brilliant, the channel eight field reporter who came across like Geraldo on steroids, described Loraine’s testimony as “gripping” and “heart wrenching.” He told how several members of the jury had tears running down their faces as Loraine described the anguish and guilt she carried since the day her little boy died. Reading from his script, the reporter said she closed her testimony by saying, “He told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it. Well, I regret it now. I wish I’d died instead of my son.” When they switched back to the studio, the female news anchor called the story “tragic,” before moving to a report about a local farmer and his giant beet.

But all the reporters nearly had a cow right there on the television screen after Brian Paul testified. Andy couldn’t believe his ears when he heard Pamela Martinez, of News Team Thirteen, say that the defense did not even bother to cross-examine “little Brian Paul after his tearful account of the murder of his bestest friend.” After hearing that one, Andy immediately called Ted Jackson to get the scoop on what had happened. As the lead detective on the case, Ted Jackson sat at the prosecutor’s table throughout the trial.

“What happened in the courtroom today?!” Andy asked the moment Ted answered the phone.

“And hello to you, too,” Ted said. “I figured you would probably call tonight, once the word got out about Brian Paul’s testimony.”

“So what happened?” Andy asked.

“Chambliss put the kid on the witness stand, and we each just sort of held our breath. I told you how nervous we were about pinning the case on the testimony of an eight-year-old kid. But the kid had to testify. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. So Brian tells the court that Gabe was afraid of his father because he’d beaten him in the past. At this point Chambliss introduces the pictures of the bruises on Gabe’s body to back up the Paul kid’s story. Everything’s going pretty smooth and I’m thinking we may actually get through this without a hitch. I’m always nervous when kids testify. No matter how many times you talk to them ahead of time, you never know what’s going to come out of their mouths.