“So you never actually saw either Mr. or Mrs. Potter at or around the Potter residence on the night in question?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anything unusual that night, any noises coming from the Potter residence?”
“No.” She shakes her head.
“No sharp sounds like firecrackers, or a car backfiring?”
“I didn’t hear a shot if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean, Mrs. Foster.” This lady is not as far gone as she looks.
“This car that was parked in the driveway of the Potter residence, did you notice what time it left?”
“I looked out about nine. It was gone,” she says.
“But you didn’t see who drove it away?”
“No.”
“Nothing further, Your Honor.”
“Redirect?”
“Just a couple, Your Honor.” Nelson is on his feet approaching the witness.
“Mrs. Foster, how far is it between your house and the Potter residence, approximately?”
She looks at him like this is the same as trying to tell cars apart.
“Let me see if I can make this easier on you.” Nelson thinks for a moment. “You’ve seen a tennis court, from one end to the other?”
She nods.
“Good. How many tennis courts could be laid from end-to-end between your house and the Potter residence?”
She mulls this over for a long time before answering.
“Three, maybe four,” she says.
“So it’s a considerable distance between your houses. These are not suburban homes on postage-stamp lots?”
“Oh no,” she says. “It’s a good walk to your neighbor’s.”
“So if someone fired a small handgun, inside of the Potter residence, it’s not inconceivable that you might not hear it?”
“Objection, calls for speculation.”
“Sustained.”
She shrugs but doesn’t really answer the question. He moves on.
“I suppose you were watching television on the night you saw Mr. Potter’s car in the driveway.”
“Objection, leading. The question also assumes facts not in evidence, that the vehicle observed by the witness was in fact the victim’s car.”
“Sustained.”
“Fine,” says Nelson. “Mrs. Foster, were you watching television on the night in question, when you saw the car in the driveway?”
“I don’t watch television,” she says.
“What were you doing that evening?”
“Playing with my cats,” she says. “I have six cats.”
“Ah.” Nelson is nodding his head like he understands this, an old lady and her cats. But it gets him no closer to where he wants to be, the inference that if Talia fired a bazooka at Ben inside their house, Mrs. Foster wouldn’t have heard it.
“But it’s possible,” he says, “that if a shot was fired in that house, you might not have heard it?” He finally does it head-on.
“Objection, calls for speculation on the part of the witness. She says she didn’t hear a shot. The jury can form its own conclusions,” I say.
The Coconut is making faces like he might actually allow the witness to venture a guess on this.
Mrs. Foster is pursing her lips, about to respond.
“If a tree falls in the forest, but there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” I ask.
“Excuse me,” says Acosta.
“It’s an ancient conundrum of logic, Your Honor. Counsel may as well ask the witness that one while he’s at it. Philosophers have been speculating about it without an answer for five thousand years,” I say.
Acosta is bristling at my sarcasm. But it achieves its point. The witness is now thoroughly confused. I think she would rather look at pictures of cars again.
“The objection is overruled. The witness may answer the question.”
Mrs. Foster looks at Nelson, not sure what the question is anymore.
Nelson is smiling. Acosta has driven one more spike into me and flashed him a big green light.
“Mrs. Foster, is it possible that if a gunshot was fired in the Potter residence, you might not have been able to hear it?”
She looks at me, wondering if trees and forests will be next.
“I don’t know,” she says.
With just three words she destroys this bone we’ve been fighting over.
“There,” I say. “She doesn’t know.”
Acosta gives me a look that could kill.
We break for lunch. When we return, Acosta has Eli Walker up from the little celebrity room at the jail and back in chambers.
Walker hasn’t shaved in three days. He has stains on the front of his suit pants that look remarkably like the man is now incontinent. There’s a palsy to his hands and a wild look in his eyes. In all it is a pathetic sight. I feel more sympathy here than I would have imagined, particularly given Walker’s part in all of this.
Nelson and Meeks are poised like vultures on a limb, standing in the corner waiting for Walker to hand over his source. Meeks has his note pad out as if to take the name of some unknown and distant subaltern, some buried bureaucrat who he thinks was Walker’s fountain of knowledge for the column that identified me as Talia’s lover.
“Have you had anything to eat, Mr. Walker?”
Acosta seems genuinely concerned by the condition of his prisoner. It would not do to have a member of the press corps die in his custody. Those who appoint and elevate judges might be asking some probing questions.
“I’m not hungry,” says Walker. His eyes seem to be scanning, looking for anything that might remotely resemble a decanter and glasses. But in chambers at least, the Coconut shows all the appearances of a teetotaler.
Walker’s lawyer makes a pitch to have a physician examine his client before he goes back to jail.
“Back to jail?” Walker says this like “fat chance.” There are a few obscenities, all directed at Walker’s lawyer. “You go back to jail,” he says. “You try it for a while and tell me how you like it.” With each word Eli’s spitting on his attorney, a veritable bath of saliva.
Walker looks at the judge. “Can I have a piece of paper and a pen?” he says.
Acosta obliges.
Walker’s hand is shaking so badly he has to steady the pen with both hands, a little chicken scratch on the blank note paper Acosta has given him.
“You won’t tell anybody where you got this?” says Walker.
Acosta smiles. “Mum’s the word,” he says.
Eli’s lawyer is upset, concerned that his client doesn’t understand the implications of what he’s doing.
“Mr. Walker, there’s the potential for liability here,” he says. “If you gave assurances of confidentiality to your source, and if you now reveal that source, and the person suffers some penalty, demotion, or loss of employment, you could be held liable for civil damages.”
This is an uncertain point of law, but a possibility, something on the cutting edge of appellate decisions in this state.
Walker gives him a look, as if to say “If the source wanted confidentiality, he should have brought me a drink in the can.” He folds the little scrap of paper in two and pushes it across the desk toward the Coconut.
Acosta looks at it, then passes it to Nelson. Meeks looks, but doesn’t take a note. It is clear that Harry and I are not to know who Walker’s source is.
“Mr. Walker, I’m very concerned about you.” Acosta is falling all over him now, not anxious to have him go back to his colleagues out in the hall looking like this. He calls his bailiff and gives firm instructions that the marshal is to take Walker to the nearest restaurant and buy him anything he wants, to eat or drink, and put it on the court’s tab. He hands the bailiff the county blue card, a plastic credit card accepted by merchants and innkeepers within throwing distance of the courthouse.
Acosta points the two of them toward the back door. “Then take him home so he can clean up,” he says. “And don’t let him come back until he does.” This last is whispered to the marshal, as if Eli could even care. The county’s about to get a bar tab to rival the S amp;L bail-out.
Acosta turns to Nelson.
“What about that?” The judge is pointing to the note in Meeks’s hand.