Frank met her eye only briefly, then focused again on the witness. His face was pale beneath his fresh shave, and there were circles under his large eyes, emphasized by the darkness of his corduroy suit and knit tie. He kept stealing looks at John Coluzzi. Obviously Pigeon Tony had told Frank about his parents. Judy didn’t know what would happen next, but she had to put him out of her mind. She was trying to save his grandfather’s life. She returned to the testimony, taking notes while Detective Wilkins spoke, but it concluded quickly, with Santoro taking his seat at counsel table.
“Ms. Carrier, your witness.” Judge Vaughn shifted his icy gaze from Pigeon Tony to Judy, and she stood up and went to the podium.
“Thank you, Your Honor.” She faced Detective Wilkins, who eyed her with remoteness. If he remembered that day in her apartment, when he was so nice to her, it didn’t show. Today they were adversaries and they both knew it. “Detective Wilkins, we have met, haven’t we?”
“Yes, we have, Ms. Carrier.” The detective’s blue-eyed gaze met Judy’s levelly, and his demeanor remained steady. He even wore the same suit as yesterday; the jury would like that, Judy knew. And they’d already be on his side, after Pigeon Tony’s display. She had to defuse it.
“Detective, you have my client’s apologies for his conduct yesterday, as well as my own apology,” she said, meaning it, even though she could see two jurors in the front row smile.
Detective Wilkins nodded graciously. “All in a day’s work.”
Judy laughed. Touché. Maybe it would help put the incident behind them. “Now, as you have testified, you were the detective on the scene the morning Angelo Coluzzi was killed, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you were called to the pigeon-racing club?”
“Yes.”
“And you examined the back room carefully, where the killing occurred?”
“Yes.”
“And you testified there were signs of only a brief struggle?”
“I did.”
“Excuse me a moment.” Judy turned to counsel table, grabbed the exhibit mounted on foamcore, brought it to the witness stand, and placed it on a metal easel. The jury looked at the exhibit while she moved it into evidence, without objection. “Let the record show that the exhibit is a black-line diagram of the first floor of the pigeon-racing club, including the back room.” Judy had reconstructed it from her memory and with the help of The Two Tonys. “Detective Wilkins, does this depict the first floor as you remember it, including the back room and the furniture?”
Detective Wilkins scanned the exhibit. “It does.”
“The exhibit shows a large entrance room, let’s call it, with a bar on the west side of the room, the left-hand side. The entrance to the back room is on the north wall, through a wooden door. Correct?”
The detective nodded. “Yes.”
“The back room contained a blue card table in the middle of the room, with four chairs around it. Referring again to brief signs of a struggle, didn’t you notice that the table had been out of square?”
Detective Wilkins thought about it. “I did.”
“So the table had been moved,” Judy summarized for the jury’s benefit. “Would you say it was clearly out of square?”
“Slightly.” Detective Wilkins knew just where Judy was going, and he wasn’t going with her, which was to be expected.
“But clearly, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Thank you.” Judy pointed to the black-line chair in the diagram. She could have proved this easily through use of police photos, but they showed Angelo Coluzzi dead in the center of the picture. “Now, Detective Wilkins, there were four chairs around the table, all of which are brown metal folding chairs. Do you recall them?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true that the chair on the east side of the table was knocked over?”
“Yes, but it was on the path of travel, from the door to the bookshelves.”
Judy held up a firm hand. “I’m not asking why or how you think it was knocked over, only that it had been knocked over. And it had, hadn’t it?”
“Yes.” Detective Wilkins’s mouth became a hard line.
Judy pointed to the exhibit again. “Now, the metal shelves we have been talking about that you said had been pulled down, they had been standing against the east side of the room, opposite the table, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And they had been pulled down. To the floor, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And the contents, which were pigeon supplies, had fallen to the ground. Had bottles broken?”
“Yes.”
“Pills spilled out?”
“Yes.”
“Bands for pigeons’ legs had fallen from their boxes?”
Detective Wilkins thought a minute. “Yes.”
Judy collected her thoughts. She had almost accomplished what she needed to, setting up her closing. She couldn’t get much more out of a hostile witness. But she needed to make her point. “Detective Wilkins, your credentials are very impressive, your having worked for twenty-three years as a homicide detective. How many crime scenes do you think you have examined in that time?”
Detective Wilkins sighed. “Thousands, unfortunately.”
Judy let it be. There were roughly two hundred murders in the city in a year, and she didn’t want to do the grisly multiplication either. “I would gather that most of those murders involve a weapon—a knife or a gun—am I correct?”
“For the most part, yes. That is the typical situation.”
“So you are very familiar with the signs of a struggle that occur in such situations?”
“Yes.”
Judy took a breath—and a risk. “Have you ever investigated a killing that took place without a weapon, between two men over the age of seventy-five?”
Surprised, Detective Wilkins reacted with a short laugh. “No.”
“So how much of a struggle do you want?” she asked with a throwaway smile, and Wilkins smiled, too. “Thank you, I have no further questions.” Judy grabbed her exhibit and sat down before Santoro could object. That had gone as well as it could, and Santoro stood up and approached the podium.
“Your Honor, I have redirect,” Santoro called out, but Judge Vaughn was already nodding over his half-glasses. Santoro addressed his witness. “Detective Wilkins, you said you have investigated thousands of murder scenes, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you have a set of skills and experiences that you bring to bear in every murder scene you investigate, is that right?”
“I like to think so.”
“And so you can be presented with a new situation in a murder scene and you can bring to bear your skills, experience, and instincts, honed over twenty-three years?”
Judy thought about objecting but let it go. The jury could see how self-serving it was, and she wouldn’t get points by tearing down Detective Wilkins.
Detective Wilkins nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so.”
Santoro rocked on his loafers a minute, evidently thinking about pressing it, and Judy shifted in her chair. If he went too far, she would object and she would have to be sustained. It was the lawyer’s equivalent of the cowboy’s hand hovering at his hip holster. Santoro made a decision. “I have no further questions. Thank you very much, Detective,” he said, and sat down.