Berg moved Drucker through some testimony involving their testing of gunshots with and without various sound suppressors, so-called silencers, and with the garage door open or closed, in an effort to determine if someone could have broken into the garage, put a drugged Sam Scales into the trunk, and then shot him multiple times without my hearing it from above.
Before Berg could ask the detective what his conclusions were, I objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge told us to approach.
“Judge, I know what counsel is doing,” I began. “She’s going to ask him if all of this testing with gunfire could be heard upstairs, but the witness is not an expert in ballistics or the science of sound. He can’t give an opinion on this. No one can. There are too many factors not accounted for. Was the TV on? Was the stereo on? What about the washing machine and the dishwasher? You see, Judge? You can’t allow this. Where was I in the house when this was supposedly happening? In the shower? Asleep with earplugs in? She is trying to rebut a defense position before we have even put up a defense.”
“Counsel makes a good point, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “I’m inclined to stop this line of questioning.”
“Your Honor,” Berg said. “We’ve gone down this path for the past twenty minutes. If I’m not allowed to finish, the state will be unfairly held in a bad light by the jury. The witness is describing efforts made by the police to see if the suspect could actually be innocent. What happens during the defense phase when Mr. Haller trots out the tired tunnel-vision defense? He’ll accuse Detective Drucker of only focusing on his guilt to the exclusion of possibly exculpatory evidence. He can’t have it both ways.”
“You make a good point as well, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “We are going to take the lunch break now and I’ll have a ruling on the objection when we come back at one sharp.”
Court was adjourned and I was led back to the courtside holding cell for the hour break. Maggie didn’t join me there for almost a half hour, finally coming in with a sandwich Lorna had picked up at Cole’s, as well as news from Arizona.
“They got him,” she said. “He was staying in his suite, having food brought in, and they thought they were going to have to door-knock him with the subpoena, when he ventured out to the pool. They got him in a bathing suit and bathrobe.”
“Tony Soprano,” I said, recalling that the television mobster liked to lounge around the pool in a bathrobe.
“Exactly what I thought.”
“They get it on video?”
“The whole thing. I have it on my phone. I can show you in the courtroom but they wouldn’t let me bring it in here.”
I unwrapped my sandwich. It was roast beef on a roll. I took a bite and spoke with my mouth full.
“Good. So we have Opparizio for Wednesday — if he shows up.”
I took another bite. The sandwich was delicious, but then I noticed she wasn’t eating.
“You want some of this?” I asked. “It’s great.”
“No, I’m too nervous to eat,” Maggie said.
“What, about the trial?”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t think Maggie McFierce ever got nervous.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“So, who is Opparizio using these days? Back during the Lisa Trammel case, he used Zimmer and Cross to try to quash our subpoena. They failed. I heard he fired them right after that.”
“As far as we can tell from documents we’ve located on BioGreen, he uses the firm of Dempsey and Geraldo for a lot of his stuff. Whether they provide criminal defense, I don’t know.”
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“I’ve run up against them before. They rep a lot of cops. Especially Dempsey. Looks like with Opparizio they’re at the other end of the spectrum.”
Maggie pursed her lips and I knew she was considering something.
“What?” I said.
“Just thinking, is all,” she said. “I’d like to get a list of their clients who are cops. See if there’s a connection to Officer Milton.”
“You can get that.”
“They’re not going to just give it to me.”
“No, but you have access to the county courts database. Put their names into it, and you’ll get hits on every case they’re involved with.”
“I took a leave, Mickey, remember? I could get fired if I did that.”
“You told me yesterday you were sneaking in to use your office phone.”
“That’s different.”
“How’s—”
Deputy Chan opened the cell door and told us it was time to go back to court. Maggie and I dropped the conversation there.
Once we were back at the defense table, Maggie pulled her phone and played me the video she had received from Cisco in Scottsdale. She had the sound down low but I could hear enough. And I could tell from Opparizio’s contorted and red face that he was angry at being served with the subpoena. He was equally upset with the camera recording the event. He lunged at it, his bathrobe flapping open and his flour-white gut hanging over his board shorts. The man behind the camera — one of Cisco’s Indians — was lighter on his feet and the lens swiftly moved out of range of Opparizio’s swinging hand without ever losing him in the frame.
The reference to Tony Soprano had been spot-on and I wondered if Opparizio himself embraced the resemblance.
After missing the camera, Opparizio followed the momentum of his swinging arm and turned back toward Cisco. Opparizio took two steps toward him while Cisco calmly stood his ground. I saw his shoulders and arms tense. So did Opparizio. He thought better of his move and stopped in his tracks. He went with the finger instead of the fight, pointing it at Cisco’s face and yelling an empty threat at him. At no point did Opparizio say anything about the subpoena being invalid when served in another state. He clearly didn’t know.
Maggie cut the video as Chan announced that court was coming to order.
“That’s the end,” she whispered. “He runs back to his room after cussing Cisco out.”
She dropped the phone into her briefcase as Judge Warfield took the bench.
Before bringing the jury back in, the judge ruled on the objection I had made.
“Ms. Berg, you have accomplished what you set out to show,” she said. “Detective Drucker has testified to the experiments at the defendant’s house, but his opinions about what the experiments mean are irrelevant. You will move on to another area of inquiry.”
Another minor victory for the defense.
The jury was brought in and Detective Drucker returned to the stand. Berg completed eliciting his direct testimony an hour into the afternoon, ending with a line of questioning designed to outline the motive for my killing Sam Scales: money.
Through Drucker’s testimony about the search of my records at my warehouse, she introduced the letter I had sent Scales in a final effort to collect the money he owed me. The letter was entered into the record as a state’s exhibit without my objection. I didn’t want to keep it from the jury. It was my belief that it cut both ways, and that would become clear when I put on my defense.
Through her questioning, Berg tried to make it seem to the jury that the letter was a key piece of evidence that I had tried to conceal by burying it in records hidden in a massive warehouse full of other possessions and junk.