“We’ll do it right here, right now in open court, Judge,” said Ray. The intention was to play to the press and it worked. The journalists in the front row were tapping away or scribbling as fast as they could.
“Thank you, Mr. Horgan, but I don’t think we need to turn my courtroom into a crime lab.” There was a riffle of laughter.
“Then we’ll go right down to the lobby to do it with Dr. Dickerman.”
Du Bois moved the back of his hand as if to say, ‘Whatever.’
“I did have a thought about Dr. Dickerman,” the judge said.
Mo stood up again in the back of the courtroom and walked toward the bench. No one had ever accused Mo of being reluctant about attention. The judge proposed that Mo be appointed the court’s expert, with the parties splitting his fee. Mo was renowned around the world, probably the most widely respected print expert in the US, outside the FBI. No one was likely to contradict him, anyway. Ray agreed immediately, fulsomely praising the judge’s idea. D.B. acted as if he hadn’t heard.
“So I’ll direct that whatever fingerprint evidence is found be delivered to Dr. Dickerman,” Lands said. “If the fingerprint lifts from the scene remain in a condition where current comparisons are likely to be probative, then he should compare those prints to the ones he gets from Senator Gianis today.”
“And the DNA?” asked Tooley yet again. Clearly, Hal was hot to do that test.
“Well, you know, Mr. Tooley, Mr. Horgan may have a point. I’m not sure you get to run a test that your own expert says is overwhelmingly likely to be unproductive. But I’ll withhold my ruling. I’ll give Mr. Horgan a week to file a written response about it; you, Mr. Tooley, will get a week to reply. By then, Dr. Dickerman may have the fingerprint results, and those may inform my ruling on the DNA. So let’s meet again then. Mr. Clerk, please give us a date.”
“February twentieth at 10 a.m.”
“That will be the order,” said Du Bois. Watching from the plaintiff’s table, Paul thought he would not have ruled differently. Du Bois had been fair and savvy and measured.
The judge called a recess and rose on the bench, which brought everyone else in the courtroom to their feet. From that vantage, D.B. looked for the first time directly at Paul. The glance was fleet, but seemed to have been accompanied by an expression somewhere between a grimace and a smile. ‘See?’ he seemed to say.
14
It had been years since Tim had entered the Temple, as the Kindle County Superior Court Law and Equity Department was known. Constructed of buff-colored brick in the 1950s, the building had the proportions of an armory, with a dome above bleeding weak light down in the central rotunda, through which at 9:00 a.m. a determined crush swirled. Tim’s natural terrain had been the Central Branch courthouse a few blocks away, where criminal cases were heard. In here, he still felt like a tourist, and after he passed through the metal detectors, he found a uniformed security guy to direct him to Du Bois Lands’s courtroom on the fourth floor.
Tim had known Du Bois’s uncle well, but only while Crowthers was an attorney. Nonetheless, the impression Sherm had made remained vivid, since there was no defense lawyer whose cross-examinations Tim liked less. Sherm tended to terrorize a witness, yelling in that booming voice, mocking and badgering, looming over the witness box so that his sheer size was yet another instrument of intimidation. In one murder case, Sherm had taken the weapon found at the scene and pointed the pistol at Tim for a good ten minutes as he questioned him, before the deputy PA finally responded to Tim’s pleading looks and objected. Like everybody else in the courtroom, the prosecutor had been mesmerized by Sherm.
Tim had come to court today at Mel Tooley’s request, so he could go at once to serve any new subpoenas the judge approved. With Ray Horgan’s agreement, Tim had already dropped off other subpoenas last week out in Greenwood County, and yesterday had brought the fingerprint lifts and reports produced in response to Mo Dickerman’s office.
Tim was sitting in the back of the courtroom when Dickerman came in and caught sight of him. He slid over on the bench to make room. Tim had been through God knew how many cases with Mo, who was just coming up when Tim was already a detective lieutenant. He had probably been the first dick to recognize how exceptional Dickerman was-a great witness and unusually learned in his field. Eventually, Tim recommended Mo for promotion over several guys senior to him. As a result, Mo had always been somewhat in Tim’s debt, and Tim had gotten along with him as well as anybody did. As a guy, Mo would never really pass as warm, and he was so up on himself these days that he had fewer friends than ever in McGrath Hall.
Mo was past seventy now-around seventy-two, Tim thought, which made him the oldest employee of the police force. Yet he was too famous to be forced into retirement, and the County Board grandfathered him every year. He was one of those thin guys who didn’t age much, but you could see some wear on him, more weariness in his long face and plenty of gray now in his thinning hair. Around the eyes there was a sad gathering of puffy, wattled flesh. Like Tim, Mo was now a widower. His wife Sally had died only a few months back and you could see the evidence of that, too, in a watery vacancy that had replaced Mo’s prior intensity. Tim grabbed Dickerman’s knee as he sat.
“How is it with you, boyo?” Tim asked. “You OK?” Dickerman had been out when Tim dropped off the subpoenaed evidence yesterday.
Mo made a face. He knew Tim was talking about Sally’s passing. For Tim, Maria’s death fell into the broad category of things you couldn’t do anything about, and he usually spoke with great reluctance about those years-shuttling her for treatments, shopping with her for wigs, sitting in the waiting room with his insides scoured by worry during the course of three lengthy surgeries, his daughters’ weeping as soon as they caught sight of their mom, whenever they came to town. But Mo clearly was of the other school, talking about Sally constantly so he could believe it himself. Telling Tim the story now, Mo leaned down in the yellowish courtroom pew, ostensibly to keep their conversation private, but it looked as if the memory had doubled him in pain.
“When they found the lump, I was thinking, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, she’s going to lose her tits,’ and then after we saw the big-deal specialist at the U, I’d have gotten on my knees for him to tell me that was all there was to it. There was nothing to do. They tried, but they just made her miserable. At the end she begged me not to ask her to do anything else. She didn’t last eight months from diagnosis to the funeral.”
Tim very briefly covered Mo’s hand with his own. You live with somebody, peaceably, dreaming beside each other, sharing meals, making a family, but there seems no special excitement to it, even though you know, as Tim did, that you’re living with a person of exceptional kindness. And then she’s gone and the depth of the loss almost surpasses understanding, even when you realize you’re also mourning your loneliness, and the inevitability of it.
Judge Lands came on the bench then and they both stood. The clerk called Kronon’s case first.
Tooley and Horgan strolled forward from their respective tables, two stout fellows looking a bit like a bride and groom as they met in the center of the courtroom before Tooley preceded Ray to the podium.
Du Bois was one of those judges who knew his business and didn’t waste time. As a cop, Tim had never been all that keen about judges. Many just seemed to get in the way, with a fair number of them thinking the whole case was about them. Whoever went to a baseball game to see the umpire?