But by now he had come to realize that this wasn’t going to happen. He and his wife were somehow “in the criminal justice system,” and this more than anything meant that the benefit of the doubt had evaporated. No one in the system was inclined to believe anything he said. The motivations for anything he did got skewed and twisted by people who started out by considering him, if not a criminal, then at least a shady character. And once they had that mind-set, nothing was going to change.
Now he was going on to Hardy: “I like the way you laid this conspiracy these people have cooked up right out there.”
“Me too,” Hardy said. “I couldn’t believe Braun let it in, but if she was going to let me, I sure as hell was going to run with it.”
“My concern,” Harlen Fisk said, “is it’s going to turn up the heat on Glass.”
“Let it,” Kathy West declared. “Harlen and I showing up here ought to be enough to do that. I welcome it. And, Diz, you just declared open war, which also suits me fine. Jerry Glass has got nothing on us. This will all get litigated away in civil court, but in the meanwhile this is where we fight it, where it can do Maya the most good.”
“It’s great you both came down for this,” Hardy said to Kathy and Harlen. “It was really a good idea, Kathy. Let them know we’re not cowering and hiding and plotting some backroom deal. I think it’s really shocked them.”
The mayor nodded. “That was my intention.”
“Are you planning on coming in every day?” Hardy asked.
This brought a smile. “When I can, maybe I will, if it will have some strategic value for you. But day-to-day, I’ve still got this city to run.”
“I should be here most days,” Fisk said. “Wave the flag for my sis.”
“So what’s the next step?” Joel asked.
“Witnesses,” Hardy replied. “We get down to it.”
If Paul Stier felt he’d taken a few hits from Hardy’s opening statement, or harbored any residual resentment at Judge Braun, he showed no sign of either as he stood in the center of the courtroom. “The People call Sergeant Lennard Faro.”
The head of Crime Scene Investigations stood up in the second row of the gallery and came through the door in the bar rail and up to the witness stand. Well-dressed as always in snug tan pants, a pink dress shirt, and a subtly shimmering light brown sports coat, he cut a dashing figure very much at odds with that of most other cops. With his spiky dark hair, gold stud earring, and well-trimmed goatee, he might have been a young graduate student or fashion designer; but even so, his experience and ease on the witness stand soon verified the credentials he outlined to Stier as they began-fourteen years on the force, the last eight with the CSI unit, the last six in charge of it.
“Now, Sergeant, what is your role at these crime scenes?”
“My team of three officers and I search the general area for physical evidence that might be related to the crime. We collect as evidence anything of interest. We also photograph the victim and the scene to try and create a record of everything at the scene as it was when we found it.”
Though a bit unusual, since murder trials often began with forensic and medical evidence, Hardy thought Stier’s decision to call Faro first was a good bit of strategy. This would put evidence at the crime scenes into the trial at the outset, potentially rebutting Hardy’s contention in his opening statement that there was little or no physical evidence tying Maya to the murders. It was also a prime opportunity to get pictures of the victims in front of the jury-real human beings who’d been murdered.
“Sergeant, were you present at the scene of Dylan Vogler’s murder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And would you tell the jury how you proceeded?”
“Sure.” Faro, the consummate witness, nodded and came forward in the witness chair, turning slightly to be facing the jury. “I arrived at a few minutes before eight with three other crime-scene technicians.”
“Would you describe the scene as you found it?”
“It was a Saturday morning, nice day, and patrolmen from the local precinct had already cordoned off the site with police tape. Their lieutenant, Bill Banks, was also at the scene.”
“Did it appear that officers had appropriately preserved the scene so that you could begin your investigation?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Describe, please, the body of the victim.”
“Mr. Vogler’s body was lying on the ground in a paved alley by the back door of his business. He showed signs of a gunshot wound in the chest.”
“Showing you People’s One through Six, do these appear to be photographs accurately depicting Mr. Vogler’s body in the alley as you first saw it?”
“Yes, they do.”
“After the scene was photographed, did you conduct a search of the alley to determine what, if any, evidence might be present at the scene?”
“Yes, I did.”
Hardy knew that, in fact, all four crime techs had searched the alley. But if any of the other three located something, they would call Faro over without touching it, and he would photograph and collect the evidence. That way, Faro could testify to finding each piece of evidence without needing to have the other three come to court. “Among other debris, I found one.40-caliber brass bullet casing and a.40-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun.”
Stier went through the same process of authenticating and introducing the photos of the items as they were found at the scene. Then he went to his counsel table and retrieved two evidence containers that held the items. He had them marked as People’s Exhibits and showed them to Faro. “Now, Sergeant, do you recognize these?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Please tell the jury what they are.”
This allowed Faro to repeat for the third time-in case one of the jury members was actually so dense that they’d missed it the first two times-his account of finding the gun and the casing in the alley. Whatever else Stier might be, he was professional and methodical. He went through the same process having Faro describe where and how he found the bullet in the stucco wall. Photos of the bullet hole and the projectile itself went into evidence.
For the next twenty minutes they went over all of the things Faro had not found in the alley, although he had looked for them. No other casings, no other weapons, no other bullet strikes on any of the walls or surfaces. No signs of blood, no footprints. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in that alley. He even described, though they did not physically produce, the bag of garbage they packaged up for later examination at the lab-the Coke cans, cigarette butts, and, not surprisingly, about a dozen coffee cups.
Having finished the crime scene, Stier moved on to work Faro had done at the lab. As well as working at crime scenes Faro wore a second hat as a firearms examiner in the lab. Stier went through his extensive training and experience and qualified him as an expert, and then led him through the process of comparing the bullet from the wall to the gun-test-firing the weapon and comparing the known bullet microscopically to the bullet in evidence.
As Hardy knew he would, he said that although the bullets appeared similar in class characteristics and likely came from the same sort of gun, there were insufficient details on the recovered slug to say with absolute certainty that it had come from the gun in the alley.
Stier knew that this was not his strongest point, and he moved to buttress it. “Tell the jury, please, what tests, if any, you ran on the spent casing, and what results you got.”