Against the Wind

by J. F. Freedman

  “Objection!” Mary Lou’s on her feet. “There’s been no introduction of homosexuality or any sexual conduct regarding this killing,” she says. “The mere fact that the victim’s anus contained sperm does not mean that anal intercourse and the murder occurred at or around the same time. They’re two entirely separate issues.”

  “Over-ruled. This murder is sexual on the face of it. They cut off his penis.” Martinez turns to Moseby. “Continue, counselor.”

  Shit. We’ve lost him, for now at least.

  “We have a possible homosexual killing,” Moseby says. “How does that tie into a motorcycle gang?”

  I object again. “Since when is Dr. Grade an expert on motorcycle organizations, your honor?”

  Grade smiles at Martinez. “Let me assure you that I’m not.” He adds almost disdainfully: “In the slightest. But there is extensive literature in many psychiatric and psychological publications that talks about the male bonding in motorcycle gangs, particularly those characterized as outlaw gangs, and homosexuality. It’s common knowledge.”

  “In other words, doctor, this murder had definite homosexual overtones, and the makeup of motorcycle gangs, the psychiatric profiles as it were, also show homosexual components, in psychiatric and medical terms,” Moseby says.

  “Without any doubt.”

  “You’re dead, motherfucker! You hear me? You’re fucking dead!”

  Lone Wolf has jumped up as if he’s about to leap the table and attack Dr. Grade with his bare hands.

  “You’re dead, man! I’m gonna tear out your fucking heart and I’m gonna fucking eat it!”

  It’s bedlam. Martinez yells, “Bailiffs!” I’m holding onto Lone Wolf in a bear hug. The others are shying away. The jury is half-standing, ready to bolt.

  I look at Grade. He’s standing, staring us right in the eye. He’s not afraid, the only one in the courtroom who isn’t.

  They cuff Lone Wolf, slap on leg irons, hustle him out of the room. Martinez hammers his gavel.

  “Thirty minute recess,” he barks. “I want attorneys in chambers.”

  “You would-be Oliviers are not going to get away with this, do you hear me?”

  We’re all in there, us and the prosecution. Martinez is scorching the walls.

  “First you pull this crap with the mother,” he says, pointing an accusatory finger at Moseby, “then you,” aiming it at me, “can’t even control his goddam client!”

  “It took us by surprise, your honor,” I say, “it won’t happen again.”

  “It better not, goddam it.” Martinez is spitting mad. “I don’t want to chain and gag him for the rest of the trial, it doesn’t look good, but if it’s the only way to restrain him, I will. These are dangerous men, counselor, I won’t put officers of the court or the jury in jeopardy.”

  “I’ll do the best I can.”

  “It better be good enough.” He expels some air. “This is a bitch, boys and girls. Don’t turn it into a damn circus. I expect professionalism in my courtroom.”

  Everyone agrees to try and maintain professionalism. I glance at Mary Lou when Martinez says that word. She doesn’t look at me.

  We cross-examine Grade after lunch, continuing for the remainder of the afternoon. Ellen returns late in the day; she’s been unable to find any literature about homosexual gang killings and hot knives. We’re treading water.

  Grade is forceful and straight, but he’s their witness. You have to be careful with a witness like him, if you lean on him too hard you risk alienating the jury. On the other hand, if you’re only lobbing him slow pitches down the middle you aren’t doing your job.

  We dance around until near sundown, bag it for the day. I reserve the right to bring Grade back for further cross.

  It’s been a shitty day for us.

  None of us gets any sleep tonight; we’re in the office until dawn, trying to find a reference to Grade’s ‘hot knives’ theory. We go through volumes of case law, pull up every computer program we can access: American Bar, Supreme Court Reporter, New York Times, Library of Congress, New England Journal of Medicine—any psychiatric or psychological journal we can find in the files. Nothing.

  “What if this article doesn’t exist?” Tommy theorizes. It’s dawn, we have an hour to go home, shower, change and be back in court.

  “You mean Grade might’ve made it up?” Mary Lou asks. “I can’t believe that.”

  “He’s no spring chicken,” Paul says. “He could’ve mixed it up with something else.”

  I look at them sourly. My mouth tastes like shit, my armpits stink, I’m tired, frustrated, and pissed off. “Which one of you wants to bring that accusation?” I ask. “Against one of this country’s foremost forensic authorities, if he does say so himself.”

  No one volunteers.

  “And then he miraculously remembers where he read it, quotes chapter and verse,” I continue. “Really makes us look good. We’re doing our homework, aren’t we. Jury’d really love that.” I expel a sigh. “It’s a set-up and we’re stuck. We’re going to have to accept it on face value, try to shoot it down with our own stuff.”

  I pick up my briefcase, stuff some papers in. “Last one to leave locks up.” I trudge out, slamming the door behind me. Alexander, Hite, and Portillo. Somehow it doesn’t feel like home anymore.

  “WERE YOU AT THE MOTEL when the policemen arrived?”

  “Yes, sir.” Low, barely audible. Scared to death.

  “And were you still there when Rita Gomez left with them?”

  “Yes.”

  Her name is Ellen Sage. She’s the other motel maid, the one I encountered when I was a day late and a dollar short in my own quest for the lovely Rita.

  Tommy’s questioning her. He’s establishing that Gomez and Sanchez were in fact the officers who discovered her, took her away, and eventually produced the statement from her that got this show on the road.

  “How long after you first saw her in the condition you described did the police come?” Tommy asks.

  “I don’t know.” Whining, squirming, twisting her skirt in her hands. No fancy new clothes for her; an unvarnished little twit.

  “Try to recall, please, it’s important.”

  “Couple days. Three. I don’t know exactly.”

  “And when she left with them,” Tommy continues, “you saw them leave? Actually saw her get into a car with them and drive away?”

  She nods. “I was cleaning number six. It’s right out front. You can see everything.”

  “The door was open?”

  “Yeh. They make you do that … the management.”

  “You’ve identified the officers she left with as detectives Gomez and Sanchez, that is also correct?”

  “Yeh. Them.” She points to them, sitting in the first row behind the prosecutor’s table.

  “Okay,” he says. “Now … when she left with them, was she better? Had she recovered from the way she had been the morning you found her?”

  “Objection,” Moseby says, lumbering to his feet. “This witness hardly qualifies as a medical expert.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Let me put it another way, Miss Sage. Did she look better to you?”

  “Hell, no,” the girl says. “She could hardly walk. I’d gone out just that morning and got her two boxes of Super Kotex. She had half a box stuffed up under her panties when she walked out that morning.” She stifles a giggle. “She could hardly walk she was so stuffed up.”

  “Was she still bleeding when she left with them?” he asks.

  “She was an hour before,” Ellen says, “’cause I helped her change. She was a damn mess. I was glad when they came ’cause I figured that was the only way she’d ever go to a doctor. She needed it but she wouldn’t ’cause of her being scared and all.”

  “Did the officers say anything to you about seeing that she would be taken care of? Medically?”

  “They said they’d make sure she was okay,” Ellen replies. “I never thought they wouldn’t,�
� she continues. “That girl was bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  SANCHEZ AND GOMEZ (no relation to the lovely Rita, one in ten surnames up here is Gomez) testify. How through exhaustive police work they’d found her, convinced her that they would protect her from the bikers, finally got her to talk, and of course advised her of all her rights, including offering her an attorney (which she declined, I’d like to know how vigorously they pursued that). There had been no deals cut, she wasn’t guilty of anything except being scared to death. She had volunteered her testimony freely and without threats or coercion.

  “She had been raped? That is your testimony?” Mary Lou asks Sanchez. She paces back and forth in front of him, her heels clicking on the tile floor.

  “She said she was.” His eyelids are naturally heavy, it gives the impression he’s about to fall asleep. Maybe he is.

  “But you didn’t have her examined? You didn’t take her to a hospital?”

  “No.” Laconic, very Southwestern. He’s not going to say anything more than the required minimum.

  “Why not?”

  “She wouldn’t go.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She was afraid if it became public news they’d find her and kill her.”

  “But she did anyway. Go public.”

  “That was later.”

  “When?”

  “After we talked to her.”

  “How much later? From the time you found her until the time she agreed to talk?”

  “Five days.”

  “So for five days you and your partner were holed up with this girl somewhere …”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  “For five days you and your partner interrogated this girl until she agreed to testify for the prosecution.”

  “Yeh.”

  “During which time she was recovering from being raped.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “And you believed her.”

  “No reason not to.”

  “But even after she agreed to testify for you, and was promised protection from the men she claims assaulted her and killed her companion, you still didn’t take her to the hospital. Is that correct?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Weren’t you concerned for her? A woman who had been raped as many times as she said she was, a woman who said she witnessed a murder, who claimed her own life was in jeopardy. How could a responsible police officer not have had that woman examined?”

  “She didn’t want it. I’m not her father, lady. We offered. She refused.”

  “Isn’t it your sworn duty to see to it that she was medically examined if she claimed she was raped regardless of whether or not she wanted to be? Particularly in the state she was in? Her friend testified she was bleeding ‘like a stuck pig,’ I believe that was the way she described your witness.”

  “She told us she was okay. I wasn’t about to look under her skirt.”

  The audience titters. That’s just what you would have liked to do, I think. I wonder how many hookers got instant justice from him in the back of a squad car.

  “That’s very professional, detective,” Mary Lou counters. She pauses.

  “Of course,” she says, thinking out loud, “you might’ve taken her to a private doctor. A friend. Someone who’s helped you out before.”

  “No, lady. That isn’t SOP.”

  “A private doctor,” she continues, “who wouldn’t ask questions. Who wouldn’t even keep a record of it so your witness wouldn’t have to give a statement right then and there …”

  “Objection!” Moseby yells, this time with urgency.

  “… so you and your partner could work on that story of hers until you got it the way you wanted it,” Mary Lou says, pressing on. “In private.”

  “Sustained.”

  “… so it would be exactly the way you wanted it to be,” she finishes, “not just whatever happened to come out of her mouth the first time she was publicly presented.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained!” Martinez glares at her. “Are you deaf, counselor?”

  “Sorry, your honor,” she says ever so contritely.

  “You will completely disregard that last line of questioning,” Martinez instructs the jury. “Strike all that,” he directs the stenographer.

  “Do that again,” he warns Mary Lou, “and I’ll hold you in contempt.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry.”

  “All right, then. Proceed.”

  She looks back at our table for a second before moving on. I nod imperceptibly to her; it may have been stricken from the record, but not from the jury’s minds. The possibility exists that the state’s star witness and arresting officers are all part of one package of lies.

  “While you were questioning her was there a matron present?” Mary Lou asks now. “A policewoman?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it standard procedure to have a female officer present when a woman is being questioned? Particularly for as long as she was?”

  “There wasn’t one available.”

  “In the entire county? Not one available policewoman or matron?”

  “Guess not. We requested one. Didn’t get one.”

  “Isn’t that a violation of your rules?”

  “We made the request. The rest you’ll have to talk to someone else about.”

  “While you and your partner were sequestered with the witness what did you talk about?”

  “The case.”

  “The facts of the case?”

  “The facts she was telling us, yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “You didn’t tell her anything you knew? Like maybe something out of the autopsy report?”

  “Objection!” Moseby leaps up for that one.

  “Sustained.” Martinez admonishes Mary Lou: “Don’t push it.”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  It feels like a setup. It’s such a neat fucking bundle.

  “You only discussed the case according to what she knew,” Mary Lou says.

  “That’s right. By the book.”

  “By the book? A woman who claims she was the victim of multiple rape, was allegedly forced to witness a grisly murder, this woman is interrogated without another woman present and is never examined by a doctor and you call what you did going by the book? What book are you referring to, detective Sanchez, the Book of the Dead? Because a woman in the condition she described herself to be in could have dropped dead while in your custody, officer.”

  She stomps away from him. “No further questions,” she tosses over her shoulder as Moseby objects again.

  “But she didn’t,” Sanchez says flatly.

  Essentially, that’s the prosecution’s case. There’s additional evidence: bloodstains were found on Roach’s pants legs which matched the victim’s type, AB negative. Not many people, only about five percent of the population, have that type. By itself that isn’t much, we can introduce evidence that a fellow biker who’d gone down in an accident in Albuquerque had the same type and that Roach had helped carry him, which would account for blood on his pants. Under normal circumstances the two facts would neutralize each other, but these aren’t normal circumstances.

  The bikers’ knives were tested for blood. The results were inconclusive. The knives could have made the stab wounds, but none of them are very good fits. But the fact remains that the bikers all carried knives.

  I watch the jury as our clients’ records are read: if they had to reach a verdict this very moment, we couldn’t get a bet down in Vegas in our favor.

  BUT THAT WAS YESTERDAY and today’s a clean slate. I cannot feign false modesty: we are conducting a brilliant defense. We’re dazzling them with footwork, dancing all over that courtroom. We’re witty, charming, we have our facts at our fingertips, we’re playing our witnesses like they’re priceless Stradivarii. We dovetail beautifully, each following up on the others’ presentations
like a Marine Corps drill team. We have dozens of witnesses, we make sure each one’s testimony is thoroughly covered in our offices and utilized to maximum advantage in the courtroom.

  We’re following the bikers’ comings and goings from the time they first hit Santa Fe until the time they left, and beyond, when the body was discovered. Almost every hour is accounted for, in many cases down to the minute.

  The night in question, and the morning after, is the critical time. Several witnesses, each independent of the others, including the bartender and the manager, testify that was the only night the bikers were in the bar. The witnesses are certain; you don’t forget characters like these four. They left at closing time, two o’clock in the morning; they closed the place. Rita Gomez went with them. There is absolutely no doubt, the witnesses tell the court, that they could have left earlier. Absolutely none.

  One entire side of the front of the courtroom is filled with large flowcharts and blown-up maps on easels. They show time, place, distance from one area where the bikers were, or allegedly were, to another. We parade our witnesses, from the time the bikers left town, one after the other, a stack of alibis so thick you could strain your back lifting them: the kid that sold them the gasoline, Maggie from route 14, the bikers they partied with in Albuquerque. Scores of people who saw them, if only fleetingly. We introduce the receipts that tell where they were at any given time from the minute they rode out of Santa Fe. Every witness, every scrap of evidence that is useful is presented. We’ve covered this legal waterfront like a San Francisco fog.

  Our defense goes into its second week. My co-defenders and I are the toast of the legal community. In the bars, clubs, and restaurants where lawyers congregate after hours we’re the main topic of conversation: how well we’re conducting our case. I’m on a high, floating, I’m electric, alive. I am the toughest motherfucker in the valley, my erstwhile partners are going to be crawling on their hands and knees to get me back in the firm when this trial’s over.

  In my more reflective moments I know the feeling for what it is; ego gratification on a pretty shallow level. Yes, it’s nice to be admired and respected, but that can zip by quicker than a Nolan Ryan fastball. And what goes around comes around, all the trite and true sayings. I want to get back in the firm; I think. I want to see if there’s really something there with Mary Lou, away from the glamour of an important trial. I want to be loved and respected and rich. But what I really want is for my daughter not to be taken away from me, and for my clients to be found not guilty. And those are the two things I’m the least secure about.