The Laws of our Fathers (17 page)

    'We-all are ready, Judge,' says Marietta, peeking in from the back door of the chambers.

    In the courtroom, we get off to a fractious start. Tommy told Hobie the first witness would be Lovinia Campbell, the young homegirl who ended up as another victim of the shooting, but Molto says the transport deputies have failed to deliver her, as they often do. Hobie thinks this is simply an excuse to turn the tables on him.

    'Mr Tuttle,' I say, ‘I have to tell you this happens all the time.' Annie is always on the phone complaining about the jail's failure to deliver the prisoners we need. Somehow there is never any keeping track. A thousand inmates go back and forth each day, walked over into the basement of this building down the tunnel that ties the jail to the courthouse. Somebody bonds out. Somebody else never arrived from the police station where he was first arrested. And in a system in which everything - bail, jail housing, sentencing - go harder on repeat offenders, it is a daily occurrence to discover that a defendant has not given his true name. Often the intake fingerprint comparison done at McGrath Hall, Police Force headquarters, will reveal that a defendant has a rap sheet with four or five different aliases. Kamal Smith is Keeval Sharp, Kevin Sharp, and Sharpstuff. Aggravated by all of this, Annie's English is apt to fall apart. 'Today, dis mawnin, you send me wrong Ortiz. I need Angel Ortiz. Numbah, six oh six, faw faw fi'. Tree times now we ged wrong Ortiz. Is not right. Ged me right one. Please!'

    'Your Honor,' Hobie says, ‘I think they're not prepared to put on the witness. I think she's giving them trouble.'

    'Judge,' answers Molto, 'there wasn't any trouble until she met Mr Tuttle. And we'll be happy to put her on, but she's not here. Maybe the transport deputies dropped the ball, maybe our office did, but she didn't arrive from Juvenile Hall. We can't change that now. We have some stips to read and another witness on the way over. That's all we can do.'

    'Mr Turtle, are you unprepared for the witness the state intends to call?'

    'I'm all right,' he answers casually. 'Well then, what's your point?'

    He shrugs as if he doesn't know and without more discussion retreats to counsel table, fiddling with his pad and pretending not to notice my irritated glance. A few feet away, Molto and Singh confer. Is Lovinia Tommy's problem? Is she the reason he was so eager to get started? Was he hoping to keep her in line? That's what it sounds like.

    After some shuffling at the prosecution table, Rudy Singh arrives at the podium. His limp grey suit is far too light for the season.

    'We have reached stipulations, if the court please,' he announces. Rudy has a musical voice and pretentious manner. He is darker by a shade than Hobie, slender, with heavy black brows and perfect features. He strikes me as one of those spoiled, pretty-boy princes who seem to be produced by every ethnic group around the world.

    Rudy reads what has been agreed into the record. Essentially, the police pathologist's report has been accepted. June Eddgar died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head. Blood gases and the lung tissues indicate death was immediate. Various details regarding the state of her digestion, and facts reported by the officers on the scene lead the pathologist to opine that the time of death was between 6:15 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. on September 7. Mrs Eddgar, according to the pathologist, was looking straight into the path of the gunfire when she was struck.

    'So stipulated,' Hobie intones.

    'The People and the defendant, Nile Eddgar, further stipulate that the remains examined by Dr Russell were in fact those of June LaValle Eddgar, date of birth March 21, 1933.'

    'So stipulated.' We have a murder case. A victim dead of violent means.

    Next, Rudy reads a summary of an array of telephone toll records. In the era of computers and multiple area codes, the phone company maintains magnetic media recording every call from every number. These summaries show that in August and early September Nile seldom let twenty-four hours pass without calling a pager number. The testimony, no doubt, will be that the pager was Hardcore's. It was dialed repeatedly from Nile's apartment and office, and his father's home on several evenings and weekends.

    After that, Rudy recites the parties' agreement about the fingerprint expert's report. One of the shell casings recovered from the scene shows a partial print from Gordon Huffington, a.k.a. Gorgo. Huffington has not been available for any current comparisons.

    'He's a fugitive?' I ask. 'Huffington?'

    Singh looks to Tommy, then Hobie, before responding. Hobie waves a hand to show he could not care less if Rudy answers.

    'Yes, Yaw On-ah,' Rudy replies.

    'And the state's theory is that he's the shooter?'

    Again, there's a pause. Molto gets to his feet, his small mouth shriveled by chagrin about my frequent questions.

    'It wasn't covered in openings,' I explain. 'I'm just trying to get my bearings.'

    'He's the alleged member of the conspiracy who fired the shots,' Tommy answers. 'And he's at large.'

    I nod. But there is a hole in the state's case. The actual killer is unaccounted for. That's bound to provide room for the defense.

    Singh resumes reading. He allows his voice a flourish meant to inform that we've reached a point of drama. People's Group Exhibit 1 consists of Exhibits 1A and iB. Exhibit 1A is a plastic bag. Singh holds it aloft, displaying a long blue plastic sleeve resembling the wrapper from my Sunday newspaper. Group Exhibit 1B consists of 177 pieces of United States currency, 23 hundred-dollar bills and 154 fifty-dollar bills. Like the blue bag, the bills are encased in thick plasticine and sealed with heavy tape, which is inscribed in red with the repeated word 'Evidence.' When received by the lab, the bills in iB were bound by a single

    common latex band and were contained in Exhibit 1 A, the blue bag. Eighty-nine bills from Exhibit iB were submitted for fingerprint examination: the top and bottom bills of the stack - a $100 bill and a fifty - and 87 bills chosen at random, each one identified in the stipulation by serial numbers.

    Rudy's reading continues monotonously. The stipulation discusses points of comparison and ridge details, and goes on at particular length about the so-called Superglue Method, involving cyanoacrylate, which was used to develop prints on the plastic bag. But there is no missing what's significant: Nile's fingerprints were identified on the two outer bills of the stack of money, and his prints, as well as Hardcore's, were also discovered on the blue plastic bag in which the money was wrapped.

    As a prosecutor, it took me years to learn I was almost always better off with a stipulation. It avoided the hundred ways witnesses fail - memory lapse or slip of the tongue, the fatal, blurted remark on cross-examination. Especially without a jury, Tommy is probably doing exactly what he should. But he's also allowing Hobie to make the best of the situation, by underplaying highly damaging testimony. What excuse, after all, is there for a probation officer to be exchanging large bills with one of his clients? Even the reporters, minutely whispering at the onset of Rudy' s recitation, gradually quiet as the details about the fingerprints emerge. Everyone in the courtroom now knows the case has passed beyond the stage of accusation. No matter how dryly delivered, the state has offered real evidence against Nile Eddgar.

    As its first witness, the prosecution calls Detective Lieutenant Lewis Montague of Area 7 Homicide, who supervised the case investigation. When his testimony is complete, Montague will be in and out of the courtroom to assist the prosecutors - contacting witnesses, retrieving exhibits. He's the cop on the case. Questioned by Rudy Singh, in an orderly and energetic way, Montague describes what confronted him on the morning of September 7 - uniforms, yellow tape, ambulances, and cruisers. Photos are produced. Pictures of the body are passed up to me. I thumb through them and write down the exhibit numbers. There is no face, just mess. Grim, I think. But it's not June. It occurs to me after the fourth or fifth eight-by-eleven I may be reacting to the fact she gained so much weight. In the scramble of papers already heaped here on my leather blotter, I find the path report. Seventy-seven kilograms! I am mortified for June's sake. The woman I knew had an enviable adult sensuousness, on which she clearly counted, even in the midst of the revolution.

    'Did you examine the victim?' Rudy asks.

    'We waited for the PP.' Police pathologist. Montague bothers himself with a glance my way and adds, confidentially, 'She was off-line, Judge. Clearly.' Dead, in other words. The cops are always at their toughest when the subject is dying. They have a thousand euphemisms. 'Giving the Q sign' is the one that occasionally makes me suppress a smirk. It means the decedent was found with her tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth.

    'And did you, Detective, have occasion to make observation of a young woman who was subsequently identified as Lovinia Campbell?'

    'Ms Campbell was on the pavement at the time I arrived, about fifty feet from Mrs Eddgar. A paramedics team which was on scene was preparing to remove her.'

    Montague details her position. A photo of a bloodstain is offered, then a schematic line drawing of the street. Montague makes an X and a Y to indicate the positions of Lovinia and June Eddgar. The testimony is crisp, dispassionate. Montague describes the work of other officers whom he supervised. Evidence techs went over the interior of the vehicle. They found June's purse and dusted it for prints, then inventoried the contents. A uniformed officer called in the plate on the Nova and received a report that the car was registered to Loyell Eddgar in the town of Easton. Finally, Montague says he directed a canvass of the neighborhood. After the results were reported to him, he instructed Homicide investigators to attempt to locate an individual.

    'And what was the name of that individual?' asks Rudy, tiptoeing past the hearsay rule. 'Ordell Trent.'

    'And was Ordell Trent identified by any other name?' 'Hardcore,' says Montague. 'That's his gangster tag.' 'And calling your attention, sir, to September
u,
1995, four days later, did you have occasion to meet with Hardcore?' ‘I met him that day, at Area 7.' 'And who else if anyone was present?' 'His lawyer. Jackson Aires.'

    'And did you receive anything that day from Hardcore?' Rudy has gone back to the prosecution table and fishes in the cardboard box where the state stores its exhibits. On the white carton, the prosecutors have written the case name,
People
v.
Eddgar,
and in letters big enough for a street sign - and certainly for a jury to have noticed -
consp.
murder
. Rudy again holds up People's Group Exhibit 1, the $10,000 on which Nile's fingerprints were found. Montague says he received the money from Hardcore, initialed it, and submitted it for fingerprint examination.

    'And what, if you please, was the result of that examination, Lieutenant?'

    Rankled, Hobie takes his feet. 'Your Honor, I already stipulated. What's this about?'

    'Yaw On-ah,' answers Rudy majestically, ‘I am merely trying to establish the process of Lieutenant Montague's investigation.' He is, in fact, attempting to emphasize his best evidence, which is why Hobie accepted the stipulation in the first place. I sustain the objection and Singh is done.

    Montague turns his head minutely, awaiting Hobie. Sitting below me a few feet away, Lew Montague is a picture of repose. He wears a blue blazer and a shirt pilled at the collar. His long black hair is smoothly combed. He seems thickened by experience, by his years of scraping blood and guts off the streets near the projects. In the witness chair, he sits almost limply. Montague has been crossed and recrossed once a week for at least a decade and has fully mastered the body language of credibility. He will maintain his calm. His voice will never rise. His answers will be brief. A cop like Montague, a true expert on the stand, could convict virtually anyone he chooses, support the theory of phlogiston or the burning of witches at the stake.

    'Just a few questions, Detective,' says Hobie. He is in another gorgeous suit; his beard is trimmed and his fingernails sparkle with clear polish. He starts toward Montague and then, seemingly struck by something, retreats. He takes the plastic bags containing the currency, People's Exhibit i, from Rudy's hand. The band of Hobie's watch, a huge hunk of gold, comes briefly into view from beneath his French cuffs.

    'Now when you sent this money here to the state police lab, did you happen to ask them to test for anything besides fingerprints?'

    Montague frowns barely. He catches Hobie's drift at once. My friend Sandy Stern has often told me that a defense lawyer is like a person feeling along a wall, looking for a light switch in the dark. Hobie, apparently, is in search of procedural defects, hoping the state performed scientific tests about which they failed to advise him. There is always the vague hope, even in the era of the Rehnquist court, that a defendant can be set free, not because he is innocent, but because the state has been unfair.

    'No,' Montague answers to the question about other tests.

    'So you didn't test to see if there were, perhaps, traces of blood on this money?'

    'No.'

    'You didn't attempt to see if there was, for instance, any evidence of gunpowder?'

    'Gunpowder?' Montague contains himself. 'No.'

    'Could you have run those tests?'

    'I saw no reason to.'

    'You could have, though?'

    'Sure.'

    'Could you do it now?'

    'No,' says Montague. 'No, wait. Yes, you could. I was going to say no, because the money was treated with ninhydrin' - the stinky purple print-developing agent - 'but we only sent half of it. The lab -' Montague lifts a hand, but it is the soured mouth that says it all.