Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  ‘No more questions, Your Honor.’

  The prosecutor asked immediately, ‘Did you hear the sound of a car starting and leaving after the gunshot, ma’am? From the alley or anywhere else?’

  ‘No. I didn’t hear anything like that.’

  ‘No further questions.’

  No other witness had heard a car in the alley either. Edward knew that from his witness statements. He turned to watch Ms Linnett walk out past him. As she walked stiffly up the aisle, Edward’s gaze shifted. His mother and father were on the front row. Linda sat toward the back of the spectator seats, looking back at him. She smiled encouragingly.

  The judge looked over the spectators’ heads at the clock on the back wall. It was only 11:30, but she turned to the jurors and said, ‘We’re going to break for lunch now. Please do not discuss the case with each other or with anyone else. Be back in the jury room by one, please. All rise for the jury.’

  Edward watched the jurors file out, then turned back toward the bench, but Cynthia had fled.

  The Halls went out together. Along the way Edward said hi to Linda.

  ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘Sure.’ She smiled.

  He followed his family down the hall, then looked back, expecting to see Linda coming along, but saw her turning the other way, toward the elevators.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he told his family, and hurried after her. He caught up to Linda, touched her shoulder. She turned and looked surprised.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to lunch with us?’

  ‘Oh.’ Linda looked past him in the direction of his family. ‘Uh, no. Y’all need to talk about the trial and I need to get back to the office. We’re having a deposition over lunch. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘But—’ he said, as the elevator doors opened and she rushed in.

  ‘That old lady was an outrageous liar,’ Mrs Hall said at lunch in the little courthouse cafeteria.

  ‘Outrageous,’ Dr Hall echoed. ‘Can you get her charged with perjury after this is over?’

  ‘Why would she lie about me?’ Amy asked, turning toward her lawyer.

  ‘You don’t know what police can do when they question a witness like that,’ Edward said. ‘They interview witnesses initially and when they already have a most likely suspect – you, in this case – their questions are informed by that. Deliberately or not, they try to make their own jobs easier, trying to nudge people out of their stories, move the playing pieces just a little bit, make the puzzle pieces fit better in the picture they’ve already got in their minds. Then, when they come back with a follow-up interview, they can sound like they’re accusing a witness who isn’t falling into line with the answers they want. By the second interview there’s a strong subtext of You’re in trouble but I can help you. The witness feels accused if he or she doesn’t say what the cops want. It’s a powerful technique.’

  ‘What can you do about it?’ his mother asked, leaning forward toward him. Amy sat stiffly at his left side.

  ‘Nothing now. The damage is done, unfortunately. We’re going to be stuck with what the witnesses think they remember now.’

  The lunchroom featured industrial white walls and acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Around them the scuffed linoleum floors showed the passage of many feet. Edward thought he could hear a murmuring substratum of old conversations, speakers long since gone, some to prison, some to the morgue. Their voices lingered as if stuck to the tables and walls like flies in amber, straining to pull free.

  When they returned to the courtroom they separated. Dr and Mrs Hall resumed their seats on the front row, while Amy and Edward passed through the gate in the railing. Edward used to feel privileged to go through that barrier into the front of the courtroom, an area reserved for lawyers. Now he realized forcefully that it also separated the accused from their supporters. It was the entrance to a cattle chute that would guide his sister inevitably to prison.

  David Galindo looked up from the adjacent table. Edward couldn’t read what the prosecutor’s eyes were saying. This trial was also different for David from his usual trials, when he dispassionately tried to convict a stranger and win from the jury as many years of imprisonment as he could manage. He didn’t know Amy, but he knew how much she meant to Edward and Edward sensed a sort of secret sympathy from the long-time prosecutor, his former rival. But even if that were true, there was no way for David’s sympathy to express itself. He had his assigned role to play.

  The afternoon brought more of Paul’s neighbors. Only one was nearly as positive in his memory as Valerie Linnett. Howard Lewis was a burly-shouldered man who drove a truck for a local produce company. He wore a plaid sports coat over a blue shirt. His house was directly across the street from Paul’s. Mr Lewis shifted uncomfortably in his chair after every answer, but those answers were loud and forthright.

  ‘I was passing by my front windows about six-ish that afternoon and I seen her, that lady there. Her car was in the doctor’s driveway and she was standing on the front porch, knocking, it looked like. I was just passing by; I didn’t stop to study her. But after I went to the kitchen I heard the gunshot. I ran back to the living room and, on the way, I thought I heard another smaller bang, like a door slamming. When I got back to my front window she was gone from the porch, but the door was just bouncing back closed, like she’d run in right after—’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lewis,’ the prosecutor said smoothly. ‘Let’s not speculate, please. At any rate, Amy Shilling was gone from the porch by the time you got back.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The witness kept watching Amy. ‘For me it was just, I saw a lady on the porch, then the next time I looked she was gone. I thought the second sound could’ve been the sound of the door slamming behind her when she went in.’

  ‘Are you sure about the timing of what you saw and heard, Mr Lewis? Is it possible that in fact—?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ the witness said, as if the prosecutor wasn’t the first to try to budge him off his story. ‘If she went in before the gunshot it was only by a few seconds. I think she was still—’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lewis. I’ll pass the witness.’

  Edward smiled at him pleasantly. ‘What were you saying when the prosecutor interrupted, sir? You think she was still—?’

  ‘Objection to speculation,’ David Galindo said so quickly Edward hadn’t even noticed him rising to his feet.

  ‘Sustained,’ the judge said blandly.

  Edward stood up too. ‘Your Honor, this isn’t speculation. This is based on the witness’s observations and memory. He can draw conclusions from his own perceptions. Any witness has to be allowed—’

  ‘I’ve made my ruling, Mr Hall,’ Cynthia cut him off.

  Resuming his seat, Edward asked, ‘Had you ever seen Amy at that house before, Mr Lewis?’

  ‘Maybe once.’

  ‘On this other occasion when you saw Amy, was it the same way? Standing on the porch, knocking at the door?’

  ‘Yes, sir. One time when I was mowing my front yard I saw her pull up to the curb, get out and go up to the porch. She knocked and waited and the doctor came to the door and let her in.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I notice you keep calling your neighbor “the doctor.” Did you know him by name?’

  ‘Yeah, we met a couple of times. One time we were both outside and I went over and shook hands with him. Welcome to the neighborhood, that sort of thing. Another time his next-door neighbor was having a few of us over for drinks and he dropped by.’

  ‘Was that Ms Linnett? Valerie?’

  ‘Yeah. She had a nice deck in her backyard. When it was still a little cool – back in the fall, after the doctor had just moved in – she had people over.’

  Edward sat staring at the witness, wondering what he knew and could say that would turn the case in Amy’s favor. There was something, he felt sure. As Edward sat there he was struck forcefully by the fact that this man had been there, within sight and hearing, when the crime happened. He hadn’t been able to see i
nside the house, but there must have been some other hint. Edward pictured the scene, Amy knocking, then a gunshot, either with her still on the porch or just after she entered. And if there really was another person inside who’d killed Paul, how could this neighbor have told?

  ‘The gunshot drew your attention, Mr Lewis?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘So after that you kept watching and listening?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you remember hearing anything else after the gunshot?’

  ‘Her scream. I remember that.’

  ‘How did Amy look when you saw her standing on the porch, sir?’

  ‘Look? She was just standing there, knocking.’

  ‘Well, was she knocking as if in a hurry for the person inside to open up?’ Edward demonstrated with a series of rapid, angry knocks on the counsel table.

  ‘No, not like that. Just a simple knock, three or four times.’ Mr Lewis was watching the lawyer intently.

  ‘OK, fair enough. Did you see anything in her hands?’

  ‘Purse, maybe. I don’t remember anything else.’

  ‘Certainly not a gun, right? You would have remembered that.’

  ‘No sir. No gun.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming down, Mr Lewis.’

  So the truck driver neighbor trudged away. As he passed the defense table, he gave Amy a sympathetic look.

  Cynthia took a break in mid-afternoon. Edward thought about following her into her office to confront her, but that would be useless. He knew she was ruling against him more than she should, but had no idea what was behind that: just trying to look fair to both sides? To balance out doing him a huge favor over Paul’s DVD? Or maybe, as the other lawyer had told him, she just really didn’t know the rules of evidence. A judge who didn’t know the law was scary, unpredictable.

  During the break, while the jury was out of the room, Amy said to Edward,

  ‘How do you think it’s going?’

  ‘Please don’t ask me that every time we take a break, OK? I need to stay focused on the individual witnesses; I can’t be taking the temperature of the case every few minutes.’

  He’d snapped that out automatically, then realized it was exactly wrong. He did need constantly to evaluate the progress of the prosecution. Not as if watching over a sick patient, instead as if making small adjustments while sailing. If the wind changed, he needed to be aware of it and do something about it.

  ‘Sorry.’ He turned to her. ‘How do you think it’s going?’

  Amy’s eyes were wide and tear-filled.

  ‘Amy. Amy.’ He pulled her close and hugged her. She was a bundle of sticks. ‘What’s the matter? Relax, darling. It’s fine, things are fine.’

  He pulled back and saw those huge eyes still staring at him. The hug had worked as well as throwing gasoline on a flame.

  ‘Edward,’ she said, and it sounded as if her voice was coming out of those huge eyes. ‘I can’t – this – this is—’And she started sobbing, right there in the middle of the still-crowded courtroom.

  Edward just stared at her. He wanted to hold her again, but that was obviously worthless. Amy had just had The Realization. Yes, this was going forward. This trial wasn’t a game of Clue, it was about her. Her. Her life and how it was going to be every day from now on. Either she would go back to her wonderful life as a successful doctor from a prosperous, well-known family, or she would be thrown into a black hole in the ground, from which she could never crawl out. From looking at her, it was clear Amy hadn’t grasped it before. Edward remembered her first days in the courtroom, when it had all seemed like a game to her. Clearly, she had gotten over that.

  ‘Amy?’

  She gasped and took a deep breath. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, and sniffled.

  ‘Can I get you—?’

  Amy said, ‘No, I’ll—’ Then she suddenly stopped talking, as if she couldn’t any more. Her throat went stiff, veins standing out, and she put her head back and screamed.

  Screamed. Right in the courtroom, Amy lifted her head like a wolf and screamed. High-pitched but not weak, full-throated, a scream of pain and fear that wrapped the courtroom in what she was feeling. Edward felt it down his spine and along his arms, all his nerves responding. He wanted to reach for her but couldn’t. That scream held him at bay like a wall between them. He reached out futile, trembling hands, but didn’t touch her.

  A bailiff started toward them, but he was a ways away. Amy dropped her head and started sobbing.

  Ten minutes later it was an ordinary courtroom again, one in which nothing unusual seemed to have happened. The judge’s empty bench loomed in Edward’s view. Cynthia must have heard Amy’s scream but the judge hadn’t budged from her quarters. Was she just not interested?

  Oh, they were going to have a talk about this, Edward and Cynthia. Mano a mano, felon to judge, equal to equal. He just wasn’t sure when, or whether his sister would be on her way to prison by then.

  ‘Amy,’ he said calmly. ‘Let me just clear up some information from these last couple of witnesses. OK?’

  She nodded eagerly, a woman hanging on by her breaking nails.

  ‘True you were empty-handed or almost when you knocked?’

  She nodded. ‘I was carrying a little clutch purse with my car keys in it, but I’d left my big purse in the car. Why?’

  ‘It’s a good detail. It means you weren’t carrying a gun.’

  Paul had been shot with his own gun, indicating a spontaneous murder. And those usually took longer to happen than the short time between when Amy knocked and when the gunfire was heard. For Amy and Paul, there had been no time for an argument to develop, for horrible, finalistic words to be exchanged.

  ‘Edward?’ Amy’s voice was high still, dropping back to a little girl’s. ‘Eddie? We’re going to win this, right?’

  He looked into her big, round, terrified eyes.

  Wrapping up the afternoon was the medical examiner who’d performed the autopsy; always gruesome testimony, a human broken down into parts, those parts disrupted by violence. Amy sat forward for this, staring at the woman as she listened to the medical details. Occasionally Amy nodded, sometimes a crease appeared between her brows.

  Edward didn’t see what could be won from this witness. Paul was unquestionably dead and a bullet had certainly accomplished that. But Amy listened as if she could unravel some mystery that might bring him back.

  The prosecutor (this time David Galindo’s young assistant) asked, ‘Dr Skinner, what was the most obvious finding of your autopsy?’

  The M.E. was young-looking, slender and had large glasses that magnified her brown eyes. The question startled her; lawyers didn’t usually cut to the chase like this.

  After a moment of reflection she said, ‘Well, obviously, the bullet hole and its entry into the body.’

  ‘Where was the entry wound?’

  Edward looked over at the young prosecutor, liking her against his will. He admired her jumping right into the meat, so to speak, of the testimony.

  ‘The bullet entered from the back, almost under his shoulder, so it went through the ribs and the lung.’

  ‘Can you describe more fully “from the back,” Dr Skinner?’

  ‘Yes. The back of his left side. More nearly his side, actually, the bullet hit a rib, nicked one of the ventricles of the heart, and, as I said, went into the lung.’

  Amy’s study of the doctor was no longer intent and clinical. She sat back with her hand to her mouth, tears starting from her eyes.

  ‘Was that a fatal wound, doctor?’

  ‘Oh yes. It would have been impossible to restart the heart’ – she glanced over at Amy, her medical colleague, who had attempted the lifesaving procedure, as if to comfort her in her failure – ‘after a wound like that. The heart simply wouldn’t perform its function. It was emptying of blood even as it filled and the lung was collapsed. He was …’ She gave Amy another long look. Edward had never seen anything like this in a cour
troom. Amy just stared back, but not hostilely, just as if she had given the M.E. permission to finish her sentence. The witness went on, ‘He was lost as soon as the bullet went through him.’

  ‘Were there any other injuries?’

  The doctor frowned at her report. ‘Some healing scratches on the back of one hand that seemed unrelated. And a healing scratch on his neck as well. But they had nothing to do with the cause of death.’

  Edward remembered what Louise Fisher had said about Paul coming in scratched a couple of times, as if he was in a volatile relationship and enjoying it.

  Soon after that the young prosecutor said, ‘Pass the witness.’

  Edward took his time starting in. He sat there looking as if he was thinking, a tactic he had often used in court, but this time he really was thinking. Then he abruptly stood up and twisted his torso, reaching his right hand up under his left shoulder. ‘So you’re saying Paul was shot about here, Dr Skinner?’

  ‘Yes. Slightly farther back, actually. Just under the latissimus dorsi muscle, if you know what that means. You can see it on my chart.’

  ‘Yes. The near back of the ribcage, sort of.’

  ‘I guess you could put it that way.’

  Edward walked toward her, continuing to twist himself.

  ‘So, doctor, if Paul was facing someone with a gun, who fired at him, what would he have to do – what would they both have to do – for him to be wounded in that way, if the person with the gun fired at him?’

  ‘He would have …’ Dr Skinner was twisting in her seat.

  ‘You can stand and show us,’ Edward said. He didn’t even look at Cynthia.

  The young medical examiner came down the couple of steps from the witness stand. She turned out to be almost a head shorter than Edward. He stepped back, looked at her unlined face and wide brown eyes, and saw that she was waiting for his direction.

  Edward said, ‘All right, you be the shooter, Dr Skinner. I’ll be Paul. Direct me. Tell me what I’d have to do for the bullet to enter where it did. How about if I started out facing you, for example?’

  ‘Well, you’d have to turn away from me. Pivot on your right foot, turning toward your right, almost all the way around but not quite. There. Stop.’