“Then the defendant came out of the beauty parlor, and George Lutts opened his car door and called to her.”
“And what did she do?”
“She got in the car with him.”
“Then what?”
“Then they talked for a little while.”
“And then what?”
“And then Lutts drove down about half a block to this parking lot, where the defendant had her car.”
“And then what?”
“Then the defendant got out and went up to where her car was parked—”
“Now, just a minute,” Hamilton Burger said. “Do you know, of your own knowledge, that it was her car?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Then, just tell what you know of your own knowledge, please.”
“Well, she went to a car. She opened the glove compartment, and I don’t know what she did.”
“You could see her open the glove compartment?”
“Well, I saw her hands up there on the dash, about where the glove compartment was.”
“And then what?”
“Then she got back out of the car and closed the door and walked back out to where Lutts was sitting in his car.”
“And then what?”
“Then she got in the car with Lutts and they drove away.”
“What did you do?”
“I followed along until I got to a point where I realized they were going up to the Sylvan Glade Property and—”
“Never mind what you realized. Just how far did you follow them?”
“Well, I followed them out to within about half a mile of where the road turns off to the Sylvan Glade Property.”
“Then what did you do?” Hamilton Burger asked.
The witness seemed embarrassed.
“Go on,” Hamilton Burger said.
“Well, I was concentrating on following the car in front of me and I... well, I cut in on another car.”
“And then what happened?”
“I cut in front of him, and he speeded up and got over on my left side and ran me off the road, so I had to stop.”
“Then what?”
“Then there was an altercation.”
“What do you mean by an altercation?”
“I wanted to hurry on, so I could follow Lutts and the defendant, and this man became abusive and I was in a hurry and impatient and lost my temper and... well, I said some things and he said some things and—”
“Go on,” Hamilton Burger said.
“And he poked me in the eye,” Elkins admitted.
“And then what?”
“Well, then several cars stopped and... and I took a swing back at him, and he hit me in the stomach and... well, I got sick. I had the wind knocked out of me.”
“And then what?”
“Then he got in his car and drove away.”
“And left you standing there?”
“Yes. But I wasn’t standing — I was all doubled up.”
“So then what did you do?”
“I turned around and went home.”
“And when did you next see Mr. Lutts?”
“I saw his body at the funeral.”
“You may inquire,” Hamilton Burger said.
Mason looked at the clock and smiled at the Court. “If the Court please, it has now reached the hour of adjournment.”
Judge Sedgwick, recognizing Mason’s tactics, smiled back at him and said, “So it has. It is now time for the Court to adjourn.”
“If the Court please,” Hamilton Burger said, “it seems to me that if counsel has a brief cross-examination, it would be possible to rest the prosecution’s case and—”
“You are assuming that the cross-examination will be brief,” Judge Sedgwick said. “The Court cannot make such assumption. This is the conventional hour of adjournment, Mr. District Attorney, and the Court will take a recess until tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 15
Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake gathered in a gloomy session in the lawyer’s private office.
“Gosh, Perry,” Paul Drake said, “shouldn’t you have tried to break down some of the identification there? Couldn’t you have cross-examined and—”
“Sure, I could have,” Mason said. “But that’s not the way to try this case. Jurors are pretty smart, Paul. You start trying to keep things out of evidence that everyone knows is the truth, and pretty quick the jurors get the idea that you’re afraid of the truth.
“Now you can see what happened in this case. Hamilton Burger has been laying for me. He’s smarting under the sting of prior defeats. He’s made up his mind that this is one case that’s going to be so thoroughly prepared, so thoroughly checked that there won’t be the faintest opportunity of anything going wrong. He was hoping, of course, that I’d keep batting my head against a brick wall with a lot of cross-examination and objections. I might have gained a technical point or two, but I’d have lost the sympathy of the jury.
“This is one case where all the facts are so carefully dovetailed that there can’t be any question. Of course, my client tells me that the gun she put back in the glove compartment hadn’t been fired, that it was the same gun she took out of the glove compartment, that she went home in the taxicab to change her shoes and stockings, since they had become so bedraggled and soiled from walking down from the hill that she was ashamed to be seen in them. That may be true. She’s lied to me before. She’d doubtless lie again. A desperate woman will nearly always try to color the facts so that they will be in her favor.”
“If I were a lawyer,” Drake said, “I wouldn’t represent a client who lied to me.”
“Then you wouldn’t have very many clients,” Mason told him, “particularly in criminal cases. I don’t know why it is, but it’s not once in fifty times that you’ll find a client who tells you the entire truth. Nearly all of them, no matter how innocent they may be and how honest they may be, will try to sugar-coat the facts so that they become more favorable.”
“What are you going to do?” Drake asked.
“I’m afraid I’m going to stake everything on Ezekiel Elkins’ black eye,” Mason said. “If I can cross-examine him and make that black eye look significant, I can, perhaps, brand him as the murderer of George Lutts. Otherwise, I’m going to have to put the defendant on the stand, and when I put her on the stand, Hamilton Burger is going to crucify her.”
“There’s no alternative?”
“Not that I can see at the present time,” Mason said.
“Well, I can tell you this, Perry. I haven’t been able to prove that Elkins was in any kind of an automobile accident and I haven’t been able to prove that he wasn’t.”
Mason said, “The advantage of trying a case the way I’m trying this one is that the jurors become quite sympathetic. They feel that you’re not going to waste their time and the Court’s time. They’ll feel that whenever I start in on a stern cross-examination now, I will have some mighty good reason for it, and they’ll follow every question I ask with rapt attention. This is my strategy. It has to be. By passing off all of these other witnesses as being merely preliminary, the mere fact that I start tearing into Elkins on cross-examination is going to impress that jury tremendously.”
“Then you’re planning to put the defendant on the stand?”
“That depends on whether I get anywhere with Elkins,” Mason said. “If I can build a good suspicion in the minds of the jury, I may be able to get by without putting the defendant on the stand. But the chances of that are only one out of a hundred.”
“I’d hate to be in your shoes,” Paul Drake said. “This is one case I don’t like.”
“I don’t like it myself,” Mason admitted. “But if you’re a card player you frequently pick up hands that you don’t like. Just because you get a poor hand is no reason you should throw down your cards in disgust and not even try. You have to make the best out of every case you handle. What did you find out about marksmanship, Paul?”