The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella
Page 21
The members of the jury who wore crucifixes seemed to sit up a little straighter.
“No. It wouldn’t.”
“And it doesn’t mean that the judge or the prosecutor have deviant inclinations either, or indeed, whoever wrote on this one-ruble note. It’s more than likely to do with the way they were taught to write, and lots of perfectly normal people construct that letter in the exactly the same way, correct?”
“You’re right.”
“It’s a fairly common way of constructing that letter?”
“Yes.”
“There’s maybe two hundred people in this court. How many would construct that letter of the alphabet in the same way? A quarter? A third of them?”
“A good many would construct it that way,” he said. He was backpedaling rapidly. His hands shook as he took a sip of water. I’d taken him to a place he really didn’t want to go, and Goldstein wanted to get out as quickly as possible and move on.
The jury finished handing around Miriam’s note, and the court officer handed it to the judge. If possible, she looked angrier with Miriam than with me. I’d almost finished with Goldstein; the lid was on the coffin, and I just had to nail it down.
“It’s impossible to tell if someone is sexually abnormal just from their handwriting, isn’t it?”
“I would have to say yes. On reflection, it’s impossible,” he said, quick to divorce himself finally from graphology. Unfortunately, that was end for Dr. Goldstein.
“You now say it’s impossible, yet in the year 2000, you wrote a paper entitled, Identifying Repeat Sexual Offenders through their Handwriting. In this paper you say you can identify rapists, pedophiles, and deviants from nothing more than their tax returns. You did write this paper, didn’t you?” I held it aloft for the jury.
Goldstein stared straight ahead. His jaw and mouth worked soundlessly until he nodded.
“I take it that’s a ‘yes.’ So, Doctor, given that your sworn testimony today is that it’s impossible to identify sexual practices from handwriting, but in the year 2000, you wrote a paper claiming that not only can you identify sexual predators from their handwriting but that you can discern what kind of predator they are . . .” I paused, I hadn’t actually asked a question yet, but the pause served to let me look at the jury as if I were taking my question from them. “The question this jury will want an answer to is this : Doctor, were you lying in your paper in 2000, or are you lying now? Which is the lie?”
An unanswerable question is clearly the best kind. It didn’t matter what he said; no one would believe a word. Indeed, he said nothing. He simply hung his head. Two of the black women on the jury physically recoiled from Dr. Goldstein with a healthy look of disgust on their faces. The rest of the jury looked angry at the doc or just couldn’t look at him at all and stared at their shoes instead.
No re-examination from Miriam. Her note had given me the idea. The “G” in her note had been written in a similar way to the letter “G” that Goldstein focused on in his report, and it didn’t take long to find another similar letter in the trial bundle. Lucky it was from the judge. Doc Goldstein walked sheepishly from the witness stand to take his place at the back of the court.
“I can’t stand any more of this today,” said Judge Pike. The armed guard came back into court to escort the jury to their room before they left for the day.
“All rise,” said the security officer. Pike slammed the door of her chambers closed on her way out. The court began to empty. It was four thirty. Miriam went into a huddle with her team. The jacket felt heavy on my shoulders. I’d run my persuader as best I could; if it worked, then Volchek should have been dancing a jig. When my gaze fell across him, I saw him smiling, but Arturas, curiously, was not.
As the reporters rushed out, I saw one man standing against the exiting tide : Arnold Novoselic. He buttoned his coat and slipped along the benches as he made his way toward the prosecution table, his gaze permanently fixed upon me.
I shook my head, but his stare never faltered and his look seemed to be one of determination. At least I knew Arnold wasn’t just here to observe : He was batting for the prosecution.
Miriam ignored her team once she registered Arnold’s approach. She met him before he could reach her table, and they sat down on an empty bench together. I glanced at Volchek and saw that he’d remained seated with his arms folded. As I looked back at the benches, I saw both Miriam and Arnold turning their eyes away from me : Arnold had told Miriam about the bomb.
They got up together and made for the door. Miriam’s team saw their leader leaving and quickly packed away their files and followed her. Before Miriam reached the door, she turned back and looked at me with a puzzled expression. I thought that could only be bad news. After the pounding she’d just taken, she should’ve been looking at me like I’d just keyed her car. Averting her gaze, she scanned the emptying room, and her eyes found the three men in crisp suits whom I took to be feds. Arnold and Miriam waited at the door, and I saw Miriam introduce the jury consultant to the FBI before they left together.
I hung my head and swore under my breath. I’d run the perfect persuader and hopefully bought enough trust from the Bratva, but all that was about to change. From the look on Miriam’s face as she left the court, I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance of being arrested the second I stepped out of that courtroom and Amy wouldn’t live a moment longer.
Copyright
An Orion eBook
This ebook first published in 2015 by Orion Books
Copyright © Steve Cavanagh 2015
The moral right of Steve Cavanagh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 978 1 4091 6580 4
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