“Sure,” says Kline, “but Goya does.”
“You know that? Prove it,” I tell him.
“Your Honor, we move to reopen the state’s case, to call Lenore Goya to the stand,” says Kline.
“And we object,” I tell Radovich. “The state had every opportunity to call Ms. Goya during its case. It was aware of her fingerprint on the victim’s door and it failed to call her. Now they think they made a tactical mistake and they want to revisit it.”
Radovich is a million faces, expressions like melting butter behind the desk.
“I’m inclined to agree,” he says. “You had your chance,” he tells Kline. “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic.” He gives me a look as if he’s not sure he believes me.
Kline makes a last hit, and the judge cuts him off.
“Unless you can make an offer of proof,” says Radovich, “some hard evidence that Ms. Goya or Mr. Madriani has the item of jewelry in question, I’m not gonna allow you to reopen. We have to move on.”
Harry and I turn to leave.
“And you, Mr. Madriani,” says the judge. “You better not be comin’ into my court with any last-minute evidence of jewelry discovered the night before you close. Do we understand each other?”
“We understand each other,” I tell him.
He gives me the evil eye. “Good,” he says.
As I brush by Kline on the way out I can feel a shudder run through his body with this contact. He comes up close in my ear so that no one, not even Harry, can hear this.
“You tell that bitch,” he says, “you tell her that I want it.” He is actually holding my arm as he says this, a grip like iron so that I have to pull my shoulder to one side to get away.
When I look in his eyes, it is there: all of the hostility, months of shallow, concealed enmity toward Lenore suddenly bubbling to the surface, finding expression in this-a piece of missing evidence.
CHAPTER 29
There comes a time when you are forced to take your chances. If you are lucky and blessed by wits, these moments occur only infrequently, snippets of panic in the middle of a trial. You try to minimize them, hedge your bets, cover your ass, but in the end you close your eyes and cross your fingers. One of these is about to happen in our case.
Jerry Franks dabbles on the edge of expertise in a dozen fields of forensics. He is master of none. His résumé has the substance of the Sunday comics. That his testimony is based on any organized body of knowledge is an item that must be taken on faith, like the beatification of the saints. He is, in short, the man you call when you wish to purchase an opinion. His credentials are not simply subject to question, they are for sale.
For all of these reasons Kline veritably gloats when I call Franks to the stand. In the war of “my expert is better than your expert,” anyone using Jerry Franks could be construed as mentally challenged.
While he may have mastered the jargon, his grasp of the science is not always there.
He is short and stout with tousled hair, what is left of it, and thick glasses in horn-rim frames. These are set with clear glass, like windowpanes, so that I have always assumed they are for effect. His sport coat is part of the uniform for court, corduroy that went out twenty years ago with leather-patched elbows, and pants so stiff with perspiration that they might produce dangerous vapors under the press of an iron. His black shoes are strangers to polish, with a hole in one sole that I have seen him display with pride when he crossed one leg in a hearing a year ago. He cultivates the image of the debauched professor, someone who you might guess has drunk his own juice from some lab experiment.
As Franks climbs toward the stand, Stobel says something to Kline and the two men actually laugh, so that there is no question as to the butt of their joke. Among lawyers in this town and the more perceptive jurors, Franks’s opinion on any subject is likely to carry the weight of helium. With a jury this is less certain, though a good attorney can usually cut him to shreds.
He is sworn and before I can reach the podium, Kline is on his feet objecting.
“Your Honor, we have received no report from this witness. No findings or written opinion,” he says.
“For a simple reason,” I tell the court. “Because the witness did not render one.”
I have given Kline a summary of Franks’s testimony, but only to a certain point, enough to make him curious and satisfy the elements of discovery.
“Well, can we at least ask the purpose of his appearance here today?” says Kline.
Radovich wants a sidebar. We huddle at the edge of the bench.
“What’s this about, Mr. Madriani?”
“Evidence relating to the calendar in the victim’s apartment, Your Honor.”
I have had Franks examine four or five items of evidence, the calendar being one among them, so that Kline could not focus on a single issue.
“What about the calendar?” says Radovich.
“There appears to have been some notations, impressions on the calendar that we believe are relevant.”
“Being offered for what purpose?” says Kline.
“To show that there was more written by the victim on her calendar for the date of the murder than has been revealed thus far,” I tell the judge.
“No wonder he didn’t provide a report,” says Kline. “Even if this is true, it’s hearsay.”
Unless we can fit Hall’s notation under some exception, Kline is right. He had to find an exception to hearsay himself to get the note on Acosta’s meeting into evidence, as an adoptive admission.
“The content may or may not be hearsay,” I tell him, “but the fact that there may have been other entries on the victim’s calendar for that date is not.”
The problem for Kline is that this, an additional meeting on the date of the murder, is certain to inspire assumptions by the jury that Kline cannot control.
“For that limited purpose,” says Radovich, “the witness may testify. But keep it tight,” he tells me.
I look at Franks on the stand. “Right.”
We back off. I see Acosta is sitting next to Harry at the table questioning him as to what is going on.
For all that she is not here in court today, Lenore is now increasingly at the center of our case.
It was as much tactics as loyalty that has kept me from calling her into court. What Kline thinks she knows, or has, is now his darkest dream, what I would not wish on anyone except an adversary at trial, something to keep him awake with angst in the night.
Without Lenore, I have had to back-fill and jury-rig to figure some way to get at the note that Lenore removed from Hall’s calendar, the fact that at some point the victim and Tony Arguillo had scheduled a date for that night. It is the reason for Franks’s appearance here today.
We do the thing regarding his credentials. This takes only a moment.
Kline wants to voir dire the witness as to expertise. He is allowed to ask several questions, and when he is finished he objects to the witness.
“He does not qualify as an expert. Not in the field of paper and impressions,” says Kline.
We get into an argument over this.
Franks has attended two seminars on the subject, one of them five years ago. He has dabbled, though he cannot tell the court that he has ever testified previously concerning the topic of indented writings.
Radovich cuts us off. He asks the witness a few questions of his own regarding his background and the technique of identifying impressions in paper. He finally concludes that the issue, the existence or nonexistence of indented writings, does not involve high science.
“If he were going to testify on the content I might agree,” he tells Kline. “But in this case, it’s a matter for the jury in ascribing the weight to be given to the witness’s testimony.”
Kline is not happy but he sits down. Franks hasn’t said a word and he is already mired in controversy.
“Mr. Franks, can you tell us whether you examined a calendar made available to you by the police at my request?”