Stobel nods that he can see the calendar adequately from where he sits.
“Who actually first saw the notation with my client’s name? Was it you or your partner?”
He ponders this for a moment. “I think it was me.”
“And you then called Detective Jamison’s attention to the notation? Is that correct?”
“Right.”
“So you both read this notation?”
“Yes.”
“And you made a note of it on your pad? Your investigative notes?”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought it was significant?”
“Objection. Calls for a conclusion,” says Kline.
“Overruled.”
Stobel makes a face. “Yeah. I thought it was significant.”
“Did you make notes of any other entries from the calendar in your notebook?” I already know the answer to this from my examination of his notes.
“No.”
“So in your judgment none of the other notations that the victim made on her calendar were significant to your investigation?”
“In my judgment, no.”
“Did you read all of the notations on the calendar for each month?”
“I looked at them.”
“And none of them were significant in your opinion?”
“I didn’t see any significance.”
“And yet the entry of my client’s name you immediately thought to be significant?”
“I don’t know if it was immediate,” he says.
“Well, you made a notation on it while you were there, during the initial investigation.”
“Because it was one of the entries for the day of the murder.”
“Ah, so it was only because my client’s name appears as an entry on the calendar for the date in question that you thought it was significant?”
This is a narrowing of the implications, a concession he would rather not make, so he restates it in his own words.
“Because based on the note there is a possibility that the defendant would have been the last person to see her,” he says.
“But that’s an assumption, isn’t it? In fact you don’t know whether my client was ever there at the victim’s apartment that day, do you?”
“No.”
“In fact the actual language of the note, the words written by the victim on the calendar, don’t actually say that she had a meeting with my client, do they?”
“It’s one interpretation,” he says.
“Move to strike as nonresponsive,” I say.
“The witness’s answer will be stricken. The jury will disregard it.”
“That note does not use the word meeting, does it, Detective Stobel?”
“No.”
“What do the words say, Detective? Read them for the jury.” This has been done several times, but I want to emphasize it for my own point.
“Acosta, four-thirty,” he says.
“And that’s all, isn’t it? The name Acosta, and the numerals four-thirty?”
“That’s it.”
“And the other notation for the day in question?” I ask him. “I’m talking about the note that Kimberly was to go to her grandmother’s after school. That doesn’t have anything to do with my client, does it?”
Though this is technically hearsay, Kline, for some reason, does not object.
“No.”
“Did you consider that notation to be significant?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing unusual about it,” he says.
I turn on him, bug-eyed. “You don’t consider it unusual that the victim indicated that her daughter was supposed to be at Grandma’s the day of the murder?”
He looks at me, not certain what I’m trying to get at. “Not really.”
“In the early-morning hours following the murder, where did you find Kimberly Hall, Detective?”
“Oh.” He sees where I’m going. “We found her in a closet in the apartment. Hiding,” he says.
“Why wasn’t she at her grandmother’s like the note said?”
He’s not sure. “Perhaps she was killed before she could take the child over there.” As soon as he says it he realizes he’s stepped in a snake pit.
“What time did the child get out of school?” I ask him.
He consults his notes. “Two forty-five.”
“So you think the victim was killed in the early afternoon, around the time school let out?”
“I didn’t say that.” This would be an hour and forty-five minutes before the alleged meeting with Acosta. Kline already has problems with the time of death. It seems a neighbor told the cops she heard a single shout, a loud voice sometime between seven-thirty and eight that evening coming from Hall’s apartment. The woman will testify to this. None of these square with a four-thirty appointment with Acosta.
“Why wasn’t the child taken to her grandmother’s, as stated in the calendar note?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you didn’t consider this significant?”
“No.”
The point is not lost on the jury. Another item they cannot answer.
“And her grandmother didn’t come to check when she didn’t show up?”
“The victim’s mother told us she didn’t know she was supposed to be baby-sitting that night.” It is hearsay, but Kline is not about to object.
“So you assumed that the victim never told her?”
“Seems a fair assumption,” he says.
“Let’s talk about the Acosta note, Detective. Were you aware at the time that you saw this notation on the calendar that the victim was a potential adverse witness in another case involving my client?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be unusual for an adverse witness to be meeting with someone she is planning to testify against?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he says.
“Well, do you, as a police officer, encourage witnesses in criminal cases to meet privately with the suspects they are going to testify against?”
“No. It could be dangerous,” he says.
“Move to strike,” I say.
“Granted. Officer, just answer the question,” says Radovich.
Stobel gives him a look that says he thought he had.
“Do you normally advise witnesses in criminal cases to meet privately with the suspects they plan to testify against?”
“No.”
“And yet when you saw the notation on the victim’s calendar you immediately concluded that the words ‘Acosta, four-thirty’ could mean only one thing: that the victim and my client were planning to meet?”
“That’s what I assumed.”
“Isn’t it possible that the notation could have referred to something else besides a meeting between Mr. Acosta and Ms. Hall?”
“Objection. Calls for speculation,” says Kline.
“Seems he’s already engaged in it,” I tell the court. “When he assumed that my client and the victim met on the day of her murder.”
“I’ll overrule it,” says Radovich.
“Do you understand the question?” I ask Stobel.
“No.”
“I mean, couldn’t this notation on the calendar refer to some other meeting not necessarily between the defendant and Ms. Hall, but perhaps pertaining to her testimony regarding the defendant in the other case?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“But you can’t tell us, as you sit here today, that the notation on that calendar, a single cryptic word, ‘Acosta,’ followed by the entry of apparent time, ‘four-thirty,’ did not mean just that.”
“Objection. Speculation.”
“Overruled.”
“Isn’t it possible that Brittany Hall had a meeting with someone else, perhaps someone in your own department, or the prosecutor’s office, or a lawyer that she had hired privately before testifying, to discuss her pending testimony in the other case?”
He gives me a face but does not answer.
“Objection.” Kline tries one more time.
“Overruled.”
Stobel doesn’t want to answer the question.
“As you sit here today, Detective, you cannot testify with certainty and tell us that this is in fact not what that notation means, can you?”
“No.”
“In fact, based on your own advice as a police officer, your testimony previously that you would not advise a witness to meet privately with a suspect in a case, wouldn’t it be more likely that this is what the notation reflects, a meeting with others to discuss this testimony, rather than a meeting with the defendant himself?”