Hardy stood. "I'm sorry I'm late, your honor. Dismas Hardy, second chair for the minor."
Johnson's lips went tight, his eyes narrowed. "All right, Mr. Hardy. Would you care to approach the bench, please? Ms. Wu? You, too."
This was unusual, but when the judge called you up, you went.
"Yes, your honor?"
Johnson held his glasses in one hand, and it was shaking. His eyes were cold pools of glacier water. He spoke with a crisp clarity, brooking no misunderstanding. "I gathered from your various motions and witness list yesterday that you intended to make this hearing more of a protracted proceeding than I had intended to countenance in this particular case. Now I see a second lawyer at Mr. Bartlett's table. I don't often see two attorneys for one juvenile defendant in the seven-oh-seven. I wanted to give you both fair warning that I'm not going to tolerate any delaying tactics or tag-team mumbo jumbo from either of you. I'll hear from one lawyer per witness- either one of you, but only one. If your witnesses don't speak to particular criteria, I will dismiss them. If you waste this court's time, I will cut you off. Is that clear?"
"Yes, your honor." Hardy was stunned at not only the force of the warning, but also the severity of the dressing-down. Wu had really ruffled feathers up here, maybe more so even than she had with Boscacci, and Hardy would be well advised to keep it in mind. Still, he wasn't about to roll over. "But as you've no doubt noticed from our motions, your honor, this case has grown in complexity. The-"
Johnson pointed a finger. "That's exactly my point, Mr. Hardy. Don't get me started. This hearing is not about the complexity of this criminal case. It's about whether Mr. Bartlett should be tried as a minor or not. That's all it's about. I've read your motions about calling witnesses for the gravity criterion and it doesn't take a genius to see what you have in mind on that score, but your witnesses had better be about facts and evidence. I won't tolerate any alternative theory nonsense- you can bring all that up in adult court if some judge will let you." He caught himself. "Assuming, of course, that this case goes to adult court."
He leaned down over the bench, shot a look at Hardy, over to Wu. He lowered his voice, which in no way diminished its intensity. "I believe we all know that we shouldn't even be here this morning, and wouldn't be, Mr. Hardy, if your firm had played straight with the DA. But now that we are here, I won't let you make a mockery of this proceeding. That's all."
Summarily dismissed, Hardy returned to the defense table while Wu prepared to continue with her witness. Seated next to Andrew, for several minutes Hardy found that he couldn't get his mind to focus. Johnson's warnings rang in his ears; Anna Salarco's tape burned in his pocket.
Next to him Andrew sat not in one of the courtroom chairs, but propped and shackled to a wheelchair, his wrists cuffed and resting in his lap. A thick, cotton-wrapped white brace of some kind encircled his neck, bringing visions of Frannie back to him- it was neck brace week on the hacienda. Andrew sat straight up, a ramrod, eyes closed, occasionally emitting tiny moans that Hardy did not believe were faked. Behind them both, in the front row, Hardy felt the hostile eyes of the Norths- they'd watched him enter the courtroom, followed him up the aisle and to their son's table, with ill-disguised displeasure.
Gradually, he forced himself to put the distractions aside. He reminded himself that this hearing was merely Act I of what looked more and more like it would become a three-act play- with the preliminary hearing in adult court next and then the trial to follow. On the stand next to the judge was an ex-cop private investigator friend of Wes Farrell's named Jane Huron, whom they were paying $350 and who was to have read Andrew's "Perfect Killer" story and picked it apart for criminal veracity. On the surface, Hardy thought, this was a simple and fairly straightforward task, especially since they'd supplied her with many of the objections Andrew himself had voiced for them.
She'd obviously been on the stand for a good while, and now Wu was apparently in the process of wrapping it all up. "So, Ms. Huron, based on your training and experience, eleven years as a police officer and seven as a private investigator, how would you characterize the criminal sophistication of the author of this story?"
Huron looked the part: short-cropped, dark hair, a dark blue pants suit. She was a hefty, solid woman with a no-nonsense face. Answering, she turned directly to the judge, as Hardy and Wu had suggested. They'd also told her not to mince her words. "Not at all sophisticated, in terms of the real world," she said.
"What specifically do you mean by that?"
"He showed no knowledge of how a real police investigation would treat such a crime."
"Could you give us one example, please?"
"Yes. His alibi was extremely naive."
"In what way?"
"Well, primarily because it wouldn't in any way have eliminated him from suspicion. The times of the deaths would have been consistent with his presence at the scene when they occurred, regardless of what he did afterward. It would have just been stupid. And then going back to the scene, and pretending to discover the bodies. Not even the most remotely sophisticated criminal would consider doing something like that."
"Anything else?"
Again, Huron looked up at the judge, as though for approval, and he nodded down at her. "Almost everything else, I would say. The author demonstrated little understanding of forensics, ballistics testing, gunshot residue, hair and fiber samples, any of the normal details that crime scene investigators routinely analyze as a matter of course. The kind of precautions outlined in the story- the surgical gloves and fingerprint worries and so on- are what you'd expect to get from watching television and movies. Not from any real-life crime experience."
This was all Hardy and Wu could have hoped for, and Huron had pulled it off perfectly. Wu inclined her head, thanked her, and said she had no further questions.
"Mr. Brandt?" Johnson intoned from the bench.
And Brandt was immediately on his feet, approaching the witness with a light in his eye and a spring in his step. Hardy thought this wasn't a good sign, but didn't see where he could go. He was about to find out, and it wasn't a long journey. "Ms. Huron, you've worked in law enforcement for nearly twenty years, isn't that true?"
"Yes it is."
"And you've had a great deal of experience with firearms and forensics, have you not?"
"Yes."
"Ballistics studies, matching samples of bullet slugs and so on?"
"Yes."
"I see. Let me ask you this, then. Prior to reading this story, did you know that guns made in Israel were fingerprinted ballistically before they were sold, and that this information was embedded with the registration number of the weapon, so that any bullet fired from that gun anywhere in the world could be matched to its owner?"
Huron smiled as though in appreciation of a bit of fascinating trivia. "No," she said, "to tell you the truth, I didn't know that. That's an interesting fact."
"Yes, it is," Brandt said, "and you, a sophisticated criminologist, didn't know it." He half-turned back to Wu and Hardy, came back to the judge, nodded genially. "I have no further questions."
The suddenness of it clearly surprised Wu, but Hardy thought it was a very effective jab, trumping Huron's own undeniable sophistication with an even better example of Andrew's. But he didn't want to risk causing damage to Wu's rhythm or confidence, so he just leaned back, crossed his arms, nodded as though he were enjoying himself.
Wu stood and called her next witness, this one someone she had known from college- Padraig Harrington, Ph.D., a teacher at San Francisco State University. But just as Bailiff Cottrell got to the back door and opened it to call the witness, Brandt stood again. "Your honor, sidebar?"