The judge raised her eyebrows and turned to me.
“I wasn’t excited,” I said.
“Your Honor,” Castiel hopped in, “the defendant had just shot out all the tires on Mr. Lassiter’s car.”
“Three tires,” I corrected him.
“Mr. Lassiter immediately called Mr. Ziegler to warn him that Amy Larkin was armed and coming after him. The evidence code defines an ‘excited utterance’ as one immediately following a startling event in which the declarant is under stress and is excited. Clearly, this falls under the rule.”
“I wasn’t excited,” I repeated, drily. “I was calm and rational. As I recall, I was thinking about whether I should buy four new tires and not just three. It seemed a prudent thing to do, given balancing and rotation and tread wear.”
“Objection overruled,” the judge declared.
We resumed our places, and Ziegler repeated my regrettable words: “Mr. Lassiter said, ‘She’s got a gun, and she’s headed your way.’ Or something to that effect.”
The jurors’ eyes switched from the witness to my client. Grave looks. I didn’t like that. Not one bit.
Castiel moved to the night of the shooting. An assistant handled the projection gear, showing the solarium, the broken window, and what would be the grand finale, the body of Max Perlow. Castiel methodically paced Ziegler through the moments leading up to the murder. A noise outside. The two men walk into the solarium. Perlow waddles up to the window, approaches the glass, and ka-boom, ka-boom. Then the money question.
“Did you, Mr. Ziegler, see who fired the gunshots?”
The jurors leaned forward in their chairs. I clenched a pencil.
Ziegler spoke clearly into the microphone. “I saw a figure outside.”
“Can you identify that figure?”
“Not really,” Ziegler said.
Castiel’s eyes flickered. “Not really?”
“It wasn’t the woman sitting next to Mr. Lassiter,” Ziegler said. “It wasn’t Amy Larkin. I can tell you that.”
I’ll be damned. Just as Amy said, Ziegler was doing the right thing. Assuming it was the truth.
A ripple of murmurs moved through the gallery. Jurors exchanged looks.
Castiel fixed his face into a mask of Zen-like equanimity. He knew the first rule of trial work: Never let them see your fear. “Now, Mr. Ziegler, do you recall giving a statement to homicide detectives?”
“Amy Larkin is tall and thin,” Ziegler said, ignoring the question. “The shooter was bigger, stockier. It was definitely a man.”
A couple jurors exchanged whispers.
“So that it’s clear, Mr. Ziegler, your testimony directly contradicts your statement to the police, isn’t that correct?”
“I’d just seen Max shot and was very upset.”
Castiel stayed calm and did not raise his voice. He’d been doing this too long to pee his pants over a recanting witness. “When you gave your statement to homicide detectives at the scene, the shooting was fresh in your mind, was it not?”
“With Amy Larkin stalking me, there was some sort of mental suggestion that it must have been her.”
“ ‘Mental suggestion’?” Castiel sounded amused.
“Like if you know someone has a green car, if you see a green car, you think it must be them.”
“Was this mental suggestion, this green-car syndrome, still preying on your mind when you repeated your identification in a written affidavit?”
“It must have been.”
“And when you and I met prior to your deposition, you again confirmed your earlier statements, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“More green-car syndrome?”
“I guess I’d convinced myself.”
“When Mr. Lassiter deposed you under oath prior to trial, what did you say then?”
“Same deal. But I was wrong.”
Ziegler was trying to exonerate Amy, I thought. Only problem, he looked like he was trying. There was something artificial and pre-packaged about the recantation.
Castiel picked up the wooden pointer he’d used to highlight diagrams of the house and pool deck. He might have wanted to flail his witness with the pointer, but he merely wagged it like a parent scolding a child. “You’ve been upset ever since Ms. Larkin came to town and made those accusations against you, haven’t you?”
“She accused me of a crime I didn’t commit, so yeah, I was steamed. Probably the way she feels right now.”
That zinger brought a sharp look from Castiel, but he kept his voice even and untroubled. He made a show of looking at the clock, then at the jurors, and finally at the judge. “Your Honor, perhaps this would be a good time for the lunch break. As you might expect, I am not finished with this witness.”
Translation: I’ll spend the next hour sharpening my scalpel and the afternoon removing his liver.
The judge turned to me for my assent. “Mr. Lassiter?”
“I could eat a bear,” I said.
“Done. We stand in recess for one hour.”
65 The Alibi
I had lied to the judge. I wasn’t hungry. My stomach was filled with razor blades.
An aging sheriff’s deputy swung open the steel door, and I joined Amy Larkin in the windowless holding cell behind the courtroom. We were deep in the bowels of the Justice Building. I made a mental note to spend the next hurricane here.
When the door clanged shut behind me, I must have been frowning because Amy said, “Smile, Jake. We had a great morning.”
I sat down on a steel bench bolted to the wall. “Think so?”
“C’mon, Charlie was terrific.”
“Only if you like circus tricks. Now cut the bullshit and tell me what’s going on.”
“What do you mean? Charlie said he was going to do the right thing, and he did.”
She seemed almost giddy.
“You’re playing me, Amy. You and your new best friend. Charlie. And you’re playing the court. Problem is, you’re both amateurs.”
“C’mon, Jake. Charlie torpedoed the case.”
“What makes you think so?”
“There’s no eyewitness testimony.”
“Sure there is. Ziegler I.D.’d you half a dozen times before he recanted. You think the jury slept through all that?”
“Why would they believe a story he says is no longer true?”
“Because Castiel did a good job impeaching him, and he’s not done yet. Plus all the circumstantial evidence. The matching bullets. The prints. The stalking. The threats. Not to mention my call from the gun range.”
“You’re saying I’ll still be convicted.”
“Bet on it.”
Her smile vanished. “Charlie said this would work.”
“He’s a better pornographer than lawyer.”
“And there’s nothing you can do?”
“Give me your alibi. Unless that’s bullshit, too.”
“It’s real!” Her face heating up. The anger looked sincere.
“A name. Give me a name.”
She toyed with a thought before speaking. “I need to make a call.”
I handed over my cell, and Amy dialed a number. “Hi. It’s me. Can you come to the courthouse right away? Jake says he needs you.”
A pause. She listened.
“I know, but things have changed.” Her eyes flicked toward me. “Jake says Charlie changing his testimony won’t work with the jury. He accused me too many times before. Jake says today was just a circus trick.”
Amy listened some more, then laughed. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Said what?” I asked, but she waved me off.
“An hour, then,” Amy said into the phone. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”
She hung up and her face was once again beatific. Not a care in the world.
“Who the hell was that?”
“Melody Sanders.”
That rocked me. “Ziegler’s girlfriend is your alibi? No way.”
Amy shrugged. “It’s true.”
“What were you doing with her? And what did she say just now that’s so damn funny?”