Laura used the ancient ploy of apparently ending the questioning, turned to go back to the defense table, then wheeled around and asked, “Do you know a Mr. Simplicio Chen?”
The ploy worked. Jerome had begun to relax. Caught off guard, he jumped at the sudden resumption of the questioning and at the name.
“No! I mean, yes. I’ve met him.”
“What did you meet him about on the afternoon of the accident?”
“Objection.”
Before Emil could explain the basis for his objection, Wong sustained it. Laura needed no explanation to realize her misstep, and she cursed herself for having allowed Emil to interrupt the flow of testimony.
Quickly rephrasing the question, she asked, “Did you meet with him on the afternoon of the accident?”
“I, we, my brother and me. We saw him. I’m not sure if it was the same day. Maybe the day before.”
“What did you see him about?”
We saw him about a fighting … a rooster he wanted to buy from us.”
Laura saw she had breached his defenses. His choices were to fight a hopeless battle, to surrender, or simply to run for it. He chose to run, and Laura decided to let him go, making sure he left a trail of perjured statements behind him. In the meantime she carefully avoided giving Emil any basis for objections.
“Was Lyndon Stanner with you?”
“No.”
“Did you sell Mr. Chen the rooster?”
Jerome hesitated, not knowing what answer would be the least disastrous.
“Yes.”
Laura returned to the defense table and picked up a sheet of paper.
“This is a photocopy of a check, with that date on it, signed by Mr. Chen. Was this the check he wrote to you in payment?”
Jerome looked over at the prosecuting attorney and then seemed to be scanning the audience for a familiar, and hopefully, friendly face. “No it isn’t. He paid cash for the bird.”
“Then you’ve never seen this check before?”
“No.”
“How do you explain it was deposited in an account, held jointly by you and your brother, on the Monday following the accident?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you unaware your brother deposited this check in your account on the Monday morning following the accident?”
“I didn’t know about it.”
“How do you explain the fact your endorsement is on the back of this check?”
“It’s not my signature.”
“Are you aware there are experts who can testify to the authenticity of signatures?”
“I don’t care, it’s not mine.”
“Does Lyndon Stanner’s endorsement on the check look familiar?”
“I never saw it before.”
“So there is no possibility you might have written it?”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you kill Lyndon Stanner?”
***
The uproar that followed Jerome’s shouted “No!” drowned out Laura’s “no further questions, your honor.”
Emil made no move to cross-examine. Laura tried to put herself in his place and decided he had made a wise decision. She knew she would hear about her questioning in his summation. It was probably where rebuttal of her implications would be most effective.
Judge Wong called a brief recess.
“Great questioning,” Kay said. Kimo nodded in agreement.
“It will be great for the prosecutor when Jerome comes up for trial on forgery,” Laura said, “but it really didn’t do us much good. If I can’t break Wilson, the jury’s going to be left with only vague suspicions.”
Kay reassured her. “You’ll break him.”
Wilson was smiling and relaxed when he sat down at the witness stand. There was nothing about him to indicate Kay’s prophecy would be fulfilled. Laura could even have sworn he winked at her as he settled into his seat. At first she was disconcerted. She recovered quickly and used the same approach with Wilson she had used with his brother. She received the same answers, up to the point where she asked him if he knew Simplicio Chen.
“No.” Wilson shifted in the chair.
“Are you absolutely certain you never met him? Perhaps you may have known him under the nickname of the Fat Priest.”
“No.” Wilson was showing definite signs of uneasiness, the tip of his tongue straying across his upper lip.
“Maybe it will help if I let you know some of the information we already have. Your brother has already sworn how both of you were in Simplicio Chen’s office on the evening of the accident. Lyndon Stanner was there. You quarreled over the sale of a rooster owned jointly by you, your brother and Lyndon Stanner, but you accepted payment for it by check, in all three of your names. On Monday morning you appeared at your bank and deposited the check, with the forged signature of Lyndon Stanner on it…”
Laura’s rapid fire statements caught Emil off guard. “Objection, your honor,” he protested, finally. “The defense has presented little or no evidence to support any of these statements. This is simply hearsay.”
“Sustained. Please confine yourself to questions and not assertions, counselor.”
“Do you know the penalties if you lie on the witness stand?”
“Objection, your honor,” Emil jumped up. “Counsel is badgering the witness.”
“Your point is well taken, prosecutor. Counsel! There is no need to remind the witness of the consequences of perjury. I’m sure he’s fully aware of how severely the bench looks upon such behavior. The penalties could be considerably more severe for perjured statements than for the offenses you’ve implied the witness may have committed. Objection sustained.”
Laura was both surprised and pleased at Wong’s statement. Wilson was not. Laura could see him weighing up the consequences of perjury in his mind. She decided to hit him as hard as possible, saving lesser questions for later.
“Did you kill Lyndon Stanner?”
“It’s nice to know how a witness is going to react to a question,” Qual had told her, “and just about the time you’re sure about what’s going to happen, it doesn’t.”
This was one of the times when the answer stunned everyone in the courtroom. The look on Wilson’s face should have warned her. She remembered a pig hunt she had gone on with her father. Backed up to a cliff wall by five pig dogs, the young boar they had tracked down knew he was cornered. Terror and desperation had shown in his eyes. Then one of the younger dogs, in his exuberance, crowded an older and more experienced one, throwing both of them off balance. The pig saw the opening and lunged successfully through it, disappearing into the jungle thicket of banana poca and lianas. Wilson, too, saw an opening and made for it.
“I didn’t! Jerome did!”
Chapter 24
The story unfolded slowly. Wilson was badly shaken and occasionally lapsed into incoherence, but the picture was clear.
While Stanner was staying with Drina two houses away, he had dropped by to talk to the Jacintos about fighting cocks. It was then they learned about El Diablo Rojo. Along with considerable cash, Lyndon had won the rooster in a card game on Oahu and was only half aware of what he had. The three of them agreed he would bring the bird to Elima and the Jacintos would train him. In return, they would split the profits from the fights. When the Fat Priest heard about the revived Manacas line, he offered the three of them a price they could not resist.
Wilson’s enthusiasm for cock fighting made him momentarily forget his plight as he explained how even a champion cock could be lost by one unfortunate plunge of an opponent’s armed spur. All three had agreed a bird in the Fat Priest’s hand was worth one in the fighting ring. The mistake they made was in going out early Friday afternoon to celebrate. Wilson drank some, Jerome virtually nothing. Lyndon consumed vast amounts of beer. By the time they arrived at the Fat Priest’s office with the rooster, the argument had begun.
Lyndon insisted the split had to be two ways, the Jacintos claimed it should be
three. The Fat Priest became impatient and wrote the check out to the three of them jointly. The argument continued to rage all the way back to the Jacinto home. It cooled some as Lyndon began to sober up. Then they broke out a bottle of whiskey to renew the celebration. Within minutes the quarrel flared up and became serious again.
By midnight the noise of their renewed quarrel would have been heard by anyone of normal hearing at the next door home. Lyndon refused to sign the check, saying he would return it to the Fat Priest and get his bird back. According to Wilson, Lyndon started the fight. It ended abruptly when Jerome, using a butcher knife to defend himself, stabbed Lyndon in the chest. Jerome had not meant to hurt him, just to ward him off, Wilson insisted. The knife barely penetrated. Lyndon looked astonished, turned and ran out of the house.
The Jacintos heard the sound of the accident, immediately shut off the lights, and peered out through the windows in the front room to see Kimo coming up on their porch. They didn’t answer his knock, but instead waited until he had left. They then went out and found Lyndon’s body behind the abandoned pickup. Jerome pointed out they would never be able to cash the check if Lyndon was found and identified before they did so.
They then picked up the body, went through their own yard to a second gate opening out along the edge of the gulch. It took only moments to empty the pockets of the corpse and to throw it into the raging waters. After that, they waited until the police had left, then washed themselves thoroughly to remove any blood stains. Wilson took their own bloodstained clothes to the dump on the following day. Jerome copied Lyndon’s signature from his driver’s license onto the check, and Wilson deposited it early on Monday.
Following Wilson’s testimony, Laura asked for a directed verdict of acquittal. Judge Wong responded by declaring a recess and retiring to his chambers with Laura and Emil.
***
“OK,” Sid said to Kay as he and Qual stood with her outside the courtroom, “she did a good job, but she was lucky, too. I would never have expected Wilson to break so easily. There were at least a couple of times during his testimony where Emil could have a sound basis for objecting, and I sure didn’t expect Wong to help her out, either.”
“You’re overdoing the luck part, Sid,” Qual said. “Laura was going for the jugular. She figured if she missed, she could still come back to it later. We came in at the tag end of Jerome’s testimony, Kay. What do you think are the chances of a directed verdict?”
“Wong’s not going to buy it, and Laura knew it when she asked. It was mainly to impress the jury. There’s only Wilson’s word Lyndon was knifed. Jerome denied all of it. If Jerome did stab him, it doesn’t detract from the fact Lyndon was alive when he ran into the pickup, even if he was in the process of dying. I’m sure Emil’s going to argue that, and Wong has no basis for disputing it. It will go to the jury for sure.”
“I have to head back,” Qual said, “but Sid can stick around to lend moral support.”
“Hmph,” Kay muttered. “Laura can do without Sid’s brand of moral support. None of that pessimism around her when the jury’s out, Chu. Don’t go on at length about how you knew a jury was going to find your client innocent, for sure, and then they came in with a verdict of guilty.”
Qual grinned. “I’ll leave you two to settle your argument, but no knifings.”
***
“Emil and I told Wong we thought we could finish our summations before noon if we can get through Kimo’s testimony in half an hour,” Laura told Kay as they were sitting back down at the defense table.
“How did the request go?”
“As expected, though Wong actually seemed inclined in the direction of granting my motion. Emil did the obvious. He pointed out Lyndon was alive when he got hit, no matter what happened to him before that. Wong had to agree.”
Laura had no intention of prompting Kimo. Since she had heard him describe the accident clearly and succinctly several times, she let him have his head. In ten minutes he had covered what happened from the moment of entering the loop to when the police arrived.
When he finished, Laura asked him only one question. “Prior to the accident, how much did you drink and how long did you take to drink that amount.”
“I had five beers, starting right after supper at six. I drank about one an hour.”
Emil’s first question shook Kimo. “Have you ever driven before after consuming that amount of alcohol over a similar period of time?”
Kimo could see the trap and thought it over carefully before answering. Laura had warned him: “Take your time. The judge isn’t going to push you. Whatever else you do, don’t answer off the top of your head.”
Kimo saw a dim glimmering in the distance, perhaps a way out. “I was in Kuwait when I was in the service, and there were no blood tests there. I may have driven when I had that much to drink while I was there. I never had an accident, and I’m sure I was able to drive safely.”
Good answer, Laura thought. Emil’s going to have a tough time pursuing that tack.
“So you may have habitually driven while under the influence of alcohol?”
“Objection, your honor. The prosecutor is being argumentative. The defendant has not said, nor even implied, he habitually drives while under the influence of alcohol.”
“Objection sustained.”
Emil returned to the attack but was unable to shake the essential point in Kimo’s testimony. The substance of his answers was he was in full command of all of his faculties when he left for home on the night of the accident.
Laura gave Kimo a big smile when he returned to the defense table. “That was great,” she said.
Kimo tried to smile back but failed. “I’m just glad it’s over. Even waiting for the verdict won’t be as bad.”
Laura was convinced it would be as bad—probably worse—but was not about to disabuse him of the belief.
Laura and Kay were both impressed with Emil’s summation. Even Kimo had to admit Emil painted a grim but reasonable picture of what had happened. Emil insisted the law was clear. Kimo had a blood-alcohol reading above the minimum which was the accepted test of intoxication. He pointed out how, regardless of Kimo’s subjective evaluation of his condition, it had long been established the minimum designated by the law indicated inability to drive a vehicle in a safe and responsible manner. He ended on the crucial point, that no matter what condition Lyndon was in at the time of the accident, he was clearly alive before, and just as clearly dead afterwards.
Laura was raring to go when her turn came. All of her nervousness at the beginning of the trial was forgotten. Kay felt like a proud mother as Laura, in the fifteen minutes she had set for herself, covered all of the salient points.
Without making any emotional appeal, Laura covered Kimo’s service record, emphasized he had just been discharged, stressed the meaning of the minimum blood-alcohol level which corresponded only roughly to the amount Kimo reported drinking. She reminded the jury of Professor Sukuma’s testimony, and reviewed it briefly.
Switching to the death, itself, she said there was now no question but that the accident victim was running from a life-threatening situation and may have been near death at the time. Kimo had not run into Lyndon Stanner. Rather, Lyndon Stanner had run into Kimo. She ended by stating they could find Kimo guilty only if it was beyond any reasonable doubt he was both intoxicated at the time to the point where he could not safely drive a vehicle, and had through negligence caused the death of Lyndon Stanner.
***
Though Laura did not say so, she was convinced the jury would return a verdict of not guilty. Kay, Sid and Kimo had all praised her. As the four of them sat in the conference room waiting for the verdict, they reviewed the trial and the events leading up to it.
“Hank’s back from the Jacintos,” Sid said. “The lab men have found blood in the cracks on the counter of their kitchen sink. It’s human blood, for sure. Hank’s sending samples off to Honolulu to see if the lab can match it to Lyndon’s blood. He
also found a pair of thick eyeglasses Wilson admits belonged to Lyndon. Hank’s charged both of the Jacintos with aggravated assault. Bunco has a forgery charge on them too. They’ve hired Bill Kuroyama to defend them but, of course, he’ll only be able to represent one of them.”
“Bill’s going to have his hands full,” Laura said. “Those two are going to be accusing each other right down to the wire.”
“He said to tell you you really shook up poor Wilson. Wilson’s glad you aren’t the prosecutor.”
“The present prosecutor’s no slouch,” Laura said. “Wilson may wish I were back asking him questions.”
“The only problem I see with Emil,” Kay said, “is he isn’t aggressive enough.”
“That isn’t all bad,” Laura commented absently.
The time dragged. Kay went out and bought herself a pocket mystery. Laura and Kimo flipped the pages of the old magazines in the conference room. Sid worked his way through his notes on the burglary trial due to come up the following day. By four, everyone was feeling restless.
Sid began to reminisce about earlier trials. Kay watched him through narrowed eyes. “I can remember one Qual had. It looked completely hopeless. Damned if the jury didn’t come in with a verdict of not guilty.” He continued to document cases which had seemed lost but where the jury had not made the expected decision.
Laura had been optimistic. Listening to Sid, she felt even more certain of the eventual outcome. Kay stopped listening and went back to her book.
“I guess things are looking pretty good,” Laura said. “The worst part is this waiting. What do you do, Sid, while you’re waiting for the jury to come out in your cases?”
“Me? I usually work on the appeal I’m going to make.”
“Sid!” Kay shouted.
Chapter 25
Kimo had started to pace nervously. Five-thirty was approaching. “How late do you think they’ll be out?” he asked of no one in particular.
Even though Kimo had asked the question twice before, Sid again patiently tried to explain how six was probably the absolute, outer limit. He had hardly finished his explanation when the bailiff came in to announce the jury would be coming out.
Dead and Gone Page 16
