No Time for Death: A Yoshinobu Mystery

by John A. Broussard

  “What do you want me to find out from her? You aren't figuring on calling her as a witness are you? She hardly knows me. How could she be a character witness?”

  “I'm not sure whether or not we should use her. That's why I want you to talk to her. And as far as what you should ask her, stick to what you did with the rest of the crew. You've been doing fine. You've got talent. Ever thought of opening a private detective agency?”

  Sid told me Kay had minored in psychology as an undergraduate, and I can believe it. I always feel a lot better after talking to her, even when I know she's just giving me strokes. I can't really see I've contributed much to my defense, but all this talking to people has kept my mind off my troubles. All of which reminds me of those old movies where the wife's about to have a baby at home, and the doctor tells the husband to go out in the kitchen and boil as much water as possible. It keeps him out from under foot and makes him feel like he's doing something useful.

  “And see if you can talk story with Annie Loh before the day's over,” were Kay's last words before she hung up.

  ***

  Lisa knew the only thing that had saved her was her appointment. There was too much to do. She didn't have time to think of life without Jon. Simply preparing for the move to Elima, from an apartment in which they had lived for some ten years, used up the few spare hours. Going to bed exhausted every night ended each frenetic day.

  The worst moments were when she turned to share an experience with Jon and he wasn't there. It wasn't until she'd been on Elima for months before she stopped thinking, “I must remember to tell Jon about this tonight.”

  As she began to see some order coming out of the chaos of cases waiting for her, a new emotion began to break through into her consciousness. It had never occurred to her she could possibly think of sex with anyone else besides Jon. There had never been anyone before Jon, no one while she had been with him, and now she felt guilty and confused by an unfulfilled urge for which there was no longer an object.

  Her first reaction was annoyance. Why should brushing past a man in the corridors of the courthouse have any impact on her? Why did she have difficulties avoiding looking at a particular, young Hawaiian male in the jury box? Why had Sidney Chu seemed suddenly so attractive as he pleaded a case before her?

  She tentatively responded to males who approached her. There had been two brief affairs. She cringed at the memory of them. The first one had been gross. The second, an unmitigated disaster. She'd been looking for Jon, and the men who sought her out were most certainly not Jon.

  That's my mistake, she thought. I'm hoping something I can never have again will suddenly come knocking at my door. What I have to do is settle for something less. But I have to do the searching. It all sounds so easy, and so impossible.

  Keiko's soft knock on the door reminded her it was court time.

  When everyone had reseated themselves after she took her place on the bench, Lisa called the trial into session and began to look more closely at the male occupants of the courtroom. She was amused at what she was doing but she continued her survey, nevertheless.

  Her search had begun.

  ***

  My stomach was sitting in my shoes when Kay said, “This is it,” and stood up.

  We'd been going over last minute details in the court conference room. I was glad I wouldn't have to testify until the very end. And it probably wouldn't be for another couple of days.

  Sid spent a lot of time just coaching me on how to look and how to behave. “Don't hesitate to make eye contact with the jurors. Smile, but don't look like Alfred E. Neuman. Show your feelings. If a witness makes you mad, show it. If someone lies, shake your head in disbelief. ‘The suspect showed no emotion,’ is the worst thing the jury can hear, or see. But don't blow up. Don't say anything out loud.”

  Phew! It's almost like a Broadway stage-show. Sid says the defendant is the major actor. Even when there's a wild-eyed, way-out witness on the stand, the jury keeps looking over to see how the defendant is taking it.

  Sid's promised he would sit out there with us. You'd better believe I needed all the moral support I could get. And, according to Sid, the prosecutor was going to take at least a day to present his case.

  The session would start with Ikeda and then Kay addressing the jury. Then the order of witnesses would most likely be the patrolman who'd arrived at the scene, the officer in charge of the investigation, and finally the pathologist.

  “If I know my Ikeda,” Sid said, “he'll spend all afternoon just on the pathologist's testimony. Tomorrow he'll bring in Reggie. He's the only material witness Ikeda's using.”

  “Then it's our turn,” said Kay. “We'll swamp the jury with witnesses.”

  I smiled pretty feebly at that. “It sounds like we're trying to answer quality with quantity.”

  “It works,” said Sid. “And that's what counts.”

  I wasn't reassured. “I heard a rumble the prosecutor is going to go all out in this case.”

  Sid nodded, taking a clipping out of his pocket and handing it to me, “And so is his family.”

  The editorial’s headline blared: APPOINTED JUDGES TURN MURDERERS OUT INTO THE STREETS. TIME TO MAKE JUDGESHIPS ELECTED POSITIONS.

  ***

  Sergeant Medeiros caught the lieutenant just as he was leaving. “Wait up, Hank. You're not the only one who has to testify at the Crockett trial.”

  “Why does Ikeda need you?” Hank asked. “Does he think I can't describe the scene of the crime adequately?”

  Corky grinned. “Somehow I get the impression you don't like our assistant prosecutor.”

  “You've got the right impression. He's not prosecuting, he's running for office. Did you see the editorial in the Chronicle this morning?”

  Corky nodded. “Yeah. I've been wondering why the sudden concern about crime. Then I found out Ikeda's uncle bought out the paper. Do you think they're trying to influence the outcome of this trial?”

  “What else? They're hoping the judge will shiver in her boots and treat Scott Ikeda with kid gloves.”

  Corky laughed. “The Ikedas would have a lot easier time influencing the Statue of Liberty. Judge Raines is one unflappable lady. Watching her sitting up on the bench, I sometimes wonder if she has any emotions at all.”

  ***

  When we all sat down, after the bailiff called the court to order, my first thought was how the beautiful woman up there on the bench couldn't possibly do me any harm. But Kay told me right from the beginning I could get up to twenty years if I was found guilty. I didn't believe it at first, but the realization has finally sunk in. The judge, the jury, the attorneys, the witnesses, the spectators—they're all here because of me. I could leave here wearing handcuffs again, only this time it would be to lead me off to prison.

  To keep from jumping up and screaming, I concentrated on the jury. I looked at each one of the jurors, and made eye contact with most of them. In a way, it was reassuring. There weren't any grim looking monsters sitting there. In fact, they ranged from somber and attentive to actually smiling and very pleasant. One woman in the front caught my attention especially. She was probably in her early thirties, dark-haired, maybe part-native-Hawaiian, part haole. But she struck me as being a happy person, with a face which would have taken an effort to reshape into a frown. And there was one rather plain, timid looking blonde woman, quite young, who gave me what I considered to be a shy smile when I caught her eye.

  And the men seem to be just average people. The oldest juror was an affable looking, gray-haired haole in the back row wearing gold-rimmed glasses. I had myself convinced someone like him couldn't possibly find me guilty. And then I had to recognize that juries, every day, sent men and women off to prison—even to execution—and those jurors couldn't be much different from the collection sitting in judgment on me. In her clear, low, husky voice, Judge Raines explained to the jury what was expected of them and said she would give them more detailed instructions at the end of the testimony. “
Please keep in mind what the prosecutor is about to tell you should not be construed as being evidence.”

  She added a few more cautions, and I thought she was going out of her way to tell the jury not to judge Ron Crockett harshly. Later, Sid told me that was all standard. Judge Raines didn't expect the jury to treat Ron Crockett any different than they would have any other defendant. I can't say the same for what the prosecutor expected.

  In his opening argument Ikeda did his best to convince the jury I was a cross between Atilla the Hun and Ivan the Terrible. Listening to him, I found it hard to believe anyone could think of Scott Ikeda as anything else but something out of a horror movie. Dale Matthias emerged from Ikeda's opening statement as a devoted family man struck down in the fullness of his life by a club-wielding Neanderthal. There was no question in the prosecutor's mind, and so there should be none in the jury's collective mind, that a gloating beastlike creature had crept up behind the unsuspecting victim and crushed the skull of a defenseless and law abiding citizen, not once but many times. And who was the degenerate responsible for this abomination? None other than Ronald Crockett. Ikeda turned and pointed dramatically at me.

  I think you should be able to see why I was having a tough time being objective about his speech. I didn't have to remember Sid's advice to show my emotions. I didn't have to think about it at all. I was appalled, and the jury could see it. And, I'm convinced Ikeda overdid it. I tried to put myself in the jury box, and it seemed to me he protested too much, he talked too long, and sometimes I couldn't make heads nor tails out of what he was saying. There were places where he made the fine print in a real estate contract sound like a first grade reader.

  Kay was sure a refreshing contrast. What she said was short, clear and to the point. She told the jury she was going to demonstrate there was, in fact, reasonable doubt I had committed the crime as charged. And that was the one and only thing they were there to decide.

  When I first talked to Kay, I would have been horrified at the thought that would be the defense position. Back then, I'd expected her to stalk into the courtroom and say, “Ron Crockett didn't kill Dale Matthias, and I'm going to prove to you he didn't.”

  Well, I've learned a lot in the past few weeks. And the most important thing I've learned is the law is like Looking-Glass Land. As Kay said, to get to where you want to go, you have to do like the Red Queen and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction .

  I still wasn't completely convinced, but I had to depend on her. And, believe me, the firm of Smith, Chu and Yoshinobu had gone all out in my defense. During the past week, Sid and Qual had accumulated dossiers on everyone who was going to testify. Kay's briefcase wasn't just filled with old newspapers. There was sheet after sheet in there describing everything they were able to find out about everyone concerned.

  I spent hours at home every night going through the material. I knew I'd contributed a lot of the information, but most of it was their doings. Whatever else I could say about my attorneys, they were thorough.

  And Kay started right off by doing a beautiful job.

  Chapter 14

  As far as Kay was concerned, there were no surprises in Ikeda's questioning of the patrolmen. Ikeda's first witness was the officer who had first arrived at the scene of the crime. Ikeda established the time as 2:15 PM.

  “Would you relate for the jury the condition of the victim?”

  “He was sitting behind his desk with his head on the back of his right hand and leaning forward on the desk.” The patrolman made a gesture with his hand and head to indicate the position. “He was wearing a baseball cap, and it was crushed into his skull. Blood had soaked into the hat and was on his face.”

  Ikeda went on to pull the details from the witness. He clearly wished to emphasize the gore at the scene. At one point he had the patrolman talk about the murder weapon.

  Kay toyed with the idea of objecting, since it had not yet been established the club was the actual weapon, but she thought better of it. “I'll let Ikeda annoy Judge Raines with his objections.”

  “And the golf club actually showed indications of having been bent as a result of those repeated blows?”

  “Yes.”

  “That's a bit much,” thought Kay, but she again decided to let it pass.

  Ikeda marched the patrolman through his entire testimony a second time. Kay hoped the jury was as annoyed as the patrolman, who at first had seemed to enjoy being on the witness stand, but now was beginning to show resentment at having to repeat what he had already clearly testified to.

  Kay's first question was, “Did you actually see any blood flowing from the wounds?”

  “No. But I didn't remove the cap. I just checked to make sure he was dead and then waited for the doctor and Lieutenant DeMello to show up. My job is to see nothing is touched or moved.”

  “But the blood you did see was dried blood. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you speculate at all on how long the victim had been dead?”

  “Objection, your honor. The defense . . .”

  “Sustained. Please confine your questions to the facts which the officer can attest to. You'll have an opportunity to question specialists regarding the time of death.”

  “Thank you, your honor. I do feel it's important to have an opinion from the officer, since he was the first official to arrive at the scene. He's an experienced officer, and his judgment is worth considering.”

  Kay didn't alter the judge's decision. During the luncheon recess, Ron asked Kay why she had pressed so hard on the issue. “I got the impression Judge Raines was annoyed at you for pushing.”

  “It's always a risk. I'm trying to establish with the jury that there is considerable question about the time of death. I don't want to antagonize the judge, either, of course. But the most important people in the whole courtroom are the jurors. They come first.”

  Kay tentatively explored the patrolman's first impressions of Ron when the patrolman arrived at the scene.

  “He looked as though he were in a state of shock.”

  She decided to leave the topic there. “A state of shock,” was probably the best she could expect. More questions might make the jury think the patrolman was talking to someone who'd just killed Matthias and was suffering from the shock of realization at what he'd done. And if her questions took the patrolman in a more benign direction, it would only bring a sustainable objection from Ikeda.

  Sid was watching Ikeda when Kay moved on to something quite different.

  “You described the victim as having his head on his hand in something of a sleeplike position.”

  Sid could guess what was going through Ikeda's mind. Should I object to her being argumentative? But she's leading him where I'm happy to see him go. If she can make the jury think Matthias was sleeping when attacked, it’s all to the prosecution’s benefit. Ikeda said nothing.

  Emerging from the line of questioning was the patrolman's opinion the victim could very well have been asleep or unconscious when struck by his attacker. Sid could see Ikeda was puzzled, but he still said nothing and turned down the opportunity to re-examine the patrolman.

  The prosecutor posed much the same questions to the second patrolman as he had to the first. And, if anything, Ikeda was even more repetitious.

  Kay thought, “Thank God Ikeda doesn't have much imagination. That could be Ron's salvation.”

  ***

  Altogether, Sid must have spent a couple of hours telling me how to act in the courtroom long before the trial began. We went over the scenario several times.

  “You have to make a good impression on both judge and jury before you take the stand.”

  “That much I can do. Ninety-nine percent of being a salesman is just that—making a good impression on people. I'd have starved long ago if I hadn't been able to do that.”

  “You do come across well. But don't rest on your laurels. We know something about Judge Raines, so lets start with her.”

  I grinne
d. “I'd sure like to start with her. I'm no Don Juan, but I generally make a good impression on women. The only trouble is she's way out of my league.”

  “You aren't expected to make love to her. Just don't annoy her. And believe me, she annoys easily. For one thing, she'll crack the gavel in a hurry if we start whispering back and forth. And that can make a hell of a bad impression on a jury. So I'm going to give you a pad and pencil. If you have anything to tell me or Kay, write it down and write it clearly. And don't wave it in the air when you hand it to us.”

  I nodded. It was nice to know. I wasn't about to annoy Judge Raines if I could possibly help it.

  “The other thing is, be aware you're the center of her attention. She's got a good background in psychology, and she'll be watching for your reactions to what's going on. Don't take the proceedings lightly.”

  “There's not much chance of that.”

  “But that doesn't mean you have to sit there like a statue. As I already told you, emphasize positive emotions, but don't be afraid to express negative ones. Look concerned, interested and attentive. And, for God's sake, don't let Ikeda get under your skin. He's an expert at making people mad. He does it regularly to Kay and me. He's not only going to be trying to persuade the judge and jury you're a cold-blooded killer, he's also going to do his best to get a rise out of you to help him prove his case.”

  I nodded.

  “The most dangerous point of all is when the witnesses start testifying. There is no one-hundred per cent way of knowing for sure what they're going to say. Even if one of them says you should be strung up by your balls, don't say a word.”

  I quickly went through the list of witnesses in my mind, and I found it hard to believe any of them would turn against me.

  “That holds especially for Reggie Kaufman. He's a prosecution witness, and he may feel it's his duty to see you convicted. Since I know you aren't exactly fond of the guy, be damn sure to keep your cool when he's on the stand.”

  I nodded again. I couldn't imagine even Reggie would have wanted to see me convicted, even though he was absolutely convinced I was the killer.