“Can you tell us why?” I said, not hiding my exasperation.
“It raised a question,” Drucker said. “Missing wallet — could this have been a robbery?”
“But there was a money clip in his pocket, wasn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t that undercut the robbery theory and raise the possibility that the wallet was taken for another reason?”
“It could have, yes.”
“It ‘could have’? I’m asking if it did.”
“Everything was a question. The man was obviously murdered. There were a lot of possibilities as to motive.”
“Without a wallet and ID, how did you identify the victim as Sam Scales?”
“Fingerprints. There was a patrol sergeant on hand with a mobile reader. We got the ID pretty fast and it was more reliable than checking a wallet. People carry fake IDs.”
He had just unknowingly made a point that I intended to make.
“After you identified the victim as Sam Scales, did you do a criminal background check on him?”
“My partner did.”
“What did he find?”
“A long list of frauds, cons, and other crimes that I am sure you are familiar with.”
I ignored the barb and pressed on.
“Isn’t it a fact that in each of those frauds, cons, and other crimes, Sam Scales used a different alias?”
“That is correct.”
Berg sensed that a kill shot might be coming and stood up and objected.
“Your Honor, this is a motion to compel discovery, and counsel is leisurely walking the witness through the entire investigation of the case. Is there a purpose here?”
It wasn’t much of an objection but it did serve to knock me out of my rhythm. The judge admonished me to get to the point of my questioning or move on.
“Detective Drucker, knowing that the victim of this murder used different aliases, wouldn’t it have been important to the investigation to recover his wallet to see what alias he was using at the time of his death?”
Drucker digested the question for a long moment before responding.
“Hard to say,” he said.
I knew with that answer that I would never get what I wanted from Drucker. He was too wary of me to ever break free of the short answers that imparted very little information of value.
“Okay, let’s move on,” I said. “Detective, could you turn to the crime scene photos in your murder book and look at photographs thirty-seven and thirty-nine.”
While Drucker found the relevant pages in the murder book, I quickly set up two portable easels in front of the empty jury box and on them placed the 24 x 18 blowup shots Lorna had gotten made that morning. Each was a photograph of Sam Scales lying on his side in the trunk of my Lincoln. The second shot was a little tighter than the first.
“Did you find the photos, Detective Drucker?”
“Yes, I have them here.”
“Do your photos thirty-seven and thirty-nine correspond with the blowups I have put up for the court to see?”
“Do they correspond? I’m not—”
“Do they match, Detective? Are they identical?”
Drucker made a display of looking down at his photos and then at the two shots I had put up on the easels.
“They appear to be the same,” he finally said.
“Perfect,” I said. “Can you tell us for the record what the two photos depict?”
“They’re both shots of the victim in this case in the trunk of your car. One of the photos is zoomed closer in than the other.”
“Thank you, Detective. The victim is lying on his right side, correct?”
“That is correct.”
“Okay, and can I now draw your attention to the victim’s left hip, which is up toward the camera. Do you see the left rear pocket of the victim’s pants?”
“I see it.”
“Do you see the rectangular-shaped distension of the pocket?”
Drucker hesitated as he realized where this was going.
“Do you see it, Detective Drucker?”
“I see some sort of pattern there. I don’t know what it is.”
“You don’t think that is indicative of a wallet in that back pocket, Detective?”
“I couldn’t know for sure without looking in that pocket. All I do know is that there was no wallet turned in to me by forensics or the Medical Examiner’s Office.”
Berg stood and objected to the line of questioning.
“Your Honor, counsel is trying to create suspicion about the investigation of this case based on a pattern he sees in the victim’s clothing. There is no wallet in that pocket because no wallet was recovered from the victim or the crime scene. The defense is using this issue, this ghost wallet, to distract the court and feed the media a conspiracy theory he hopes will get out to the jury pool. Once again the People object, first of all, to the hearing itself, and, second, to this being discussed in open court.”
She sat down angrily and the judge turned her eyes to me.
“Your Honor, that was a nice speech, but the fact remains that anybody with two eyes can see that the victim had a wallet in his back pocket. Now that wallet is gone and not only does it cast doubt on the investigation of this murder, but it puts the defense at a steep disadvantage because it is prohibited from examining the evidence that was in the wallet. Having said all of that, if the court will indulge me for five more minutes with this witness, I believe it will become abundantly clear that something was terribly wrong with this investigation.”
Warfield took her time before responding and this told me she was riding with me on this, not with the prosecution.
“You may continue with the witness, Mr. Haller.”
“Thank you, Judge. My colleague Ms. Aronson is now going to put the body-cam video for Officer Milton on the big screen. What we will show is the early moments of the tape, when Officer Milton uses the remote car key to pop the trunk.”
The video started to play on the flat-screen on the wall opposite the jury box. The angle was from the side of the rear end of the Lincoln. Milton’s hand came up into the screen as he used his thumb to pop the trunk. The lid came up, revealing the body of Sam Scales. The camera started moving as Milton reacted.
“Okay, stop it right there,” I said. “Can you back it up to the point where the trunk just comes open?”
Jennifer did so and froze the image. Milton had taken a safe side angle to the car as he opened the trunk, presumably because he did not know who or what was in it. This gave a two-second side view of the body, an angle the forensic photographer had not taken. It just happened to be captured by Milton’s body cam.
“Detective Drucker,” I said. “Can I draw your attention to the victim’s rear left pocket again? Does what you see from this angle change your opinion as to whether the victim had a wallet in his pocket at the time the body was discovered?”
All eyes were on the video screen except mine. I even saw one of the journalists slide down her gallery bench to get a better angle on the screen. The camera angle on the video clearly showed the back pocket of the victim’s pants to be slightly open because of an object inside it. It was a dark object but there was a line of lighter color running lengthwise in the middle of it.
To me, it was clearly a wallet with the edge of a currency bill poking out of it. To Drucker, it was still nothing.
“No,” he testified. “I can’t tell for sure what that is.”
I had him.
“What do you mean by ‘what that is,’ Detective?”
“I mean I can’t tell. It could be anything.”
“But you are now acknowledging that there is something in his pocket, correct?”
Drucker realized he had walked into a defense trap.