“She drove home and parked her car at some time approximating eleven that night. We’ll never know exactly what she had planned for the rest of that evening. Maybe she was going to study. Maybe she was going to veg out in front of the television. Maybe she was going to sleep. Or maybe she was thinking about tomorrow, which would be her twenty-fourth birthday, and the plans she had with her friends.
“But as I said, we’ll never know. Because she never saw her twenty-fourth birthday. She never saw her condo again. She barely made it past getting her bag out of the trunk of her car. Because on January thirteenth, at approximately eleven o’clock at night, Kathy Rubinkowski was accosted by that man, the defendant, Thomas Stoller.”
Wendy pointed at Tom, who was sitting next to me. His aunt Deidre had purchased a suit at a secondhand store that fit him, more or less, and I had thrown in a tie that I haven’t worn in ten years. I wanted him to look decent so he didn’t appear disrespectful of the proceedings, but by no means did I want him to look polished or buttoned up. It was one of the many artifices of the courtroom. The jury was forming initial and perhaps lasting impressions of Tom based on an appearance that bore absolutely no resemblance to reality.
“The defendant robbed Kathy Rubinkowski on that dark, lonely street,” Wendy said. “The defendant took her purse. He took her necklace. He took her cell phone. And he took something far more valuable. He took her life. He shot her in the head. He shot this defenseless woman right between the eyes.”
Most of the jurors winced or reacted in some way to those last sentences. She had delivered them well, for maximum impact. I would have said he shot her in the face, which sounded even worse. But Wendy was always one for understatement.
I paid close attention to how she phrased it. He took her purse, her necklace, her cell phone, her life. She implied that the robbery came first, then the shooting, but she didn’t explicitly detail an order of events. She wasn’t boxing herself into one particular theory. I knew what she thought-that Tom killed her first, then stole her possessions. The evidence lined up that way. But she had some problems with that theory and obviously knew it, so she was keeping things general for the time being.
Wendy recited the facts that would support her case. The murder weapon found in Tom’s possession, and the other things the police found with Tom: her purse, her cell phone, her necklace with the clasp broken, presumably yanked from her neck. Wendy brought each of these out individually, as if item after item implicated him ever further. I, on the other hand, would try to make them a package deal in the jury’s mind-if one link failed, the whole chain did.
She completed her opening statement in twenty minutes. Her case was pretty simple and straightforward.
“She didn’t mention the confession,” said Shauna.
Right. She was saving it. Understating her case. That was Wendy’s style. It would be a pleasant surprise, I guess.
The judge gave me the opportunity to give my opening. I’d already indicated that I would defer my opening until the defense case, because I wanted the element of surprise. I had lost Sergeant Hilton as a witness, but I had an idea as to how I could still use Dr. Sofian Baraniq, my expert. It was a gamble, but it was all I had.
“I’d like to defer my opening,” I told the judge. On balance, I thought, it was still the smart play.
I looked behind me. I caught Aunt Deidre’s eye, but that wasn’t the one I was looking for. I found him in the back row of the courtroom: Special Agent Lee Tucker of the FBI.
“Judge, I wonder if we could take a short break,” I said. We’d gotten a late start today, and it was coming up on eleven, so he probably wouldn’t give it to me. Lee would have to wait.
“Let’s try to get in a witness before lunch,” said the judge. “Ms. Kotowski?”
Wendy Kotowski stood.
“The state calls Officer Francis Crespo,” she said.
70
Officer Francis Crespo was a ten-year veteran of the city police department. He was built like a brick house and had dark features and a mustache. He was one of the patrolmen in the area when reports came in of the shooting on Gehringer Street.
“We weren’t the first to arrive,” he explained. “But we got the nod when the call came through about a sighting of a homeless man running through Franzen Park with a gun.”
“You ‘got the nod’?” Wendy asked.
“We were dispatched by the detective-in-charge on the scene to investigate. My patrol and Officer Downing’s. Cars eighteen and twenty-three.”
“Go on, Officer.”
“My partner and I proceeded by vehicle to Franzen Park.”
“Why a vehicle?” Wendy asked. “Wasn’t Franzen Park just a block away?”
“That’s correct, ma’am, but it’s a city block wide and long. So the northeast end of the park was a quarter-mile away. It made sense to drive there and be mobile by vehicle once there.”
“Fair enough, Officer. Where did you travel?”
“Officer Downing’s patrol took the south end of the park, and my partner and I searched the north end. When we searched behind the park district building, we found an individual sitting between two dumpsters. He had-”
“Excuse me, Officer. Do you see that person in court today?”
“That’s correct, ma’am. It was the defendant, seated there.” He pointed at Tom.
“Stipulate to identification,” I said.
“Go on, Officer.”
“Ma’am, he-the defendant had a purse in his lap and was rummaging through it. I shined my Maglite-my flashlight-I put my flashlight beam on him and announced my office. I saw to his immediate left a firearm sitting in the grass. A Glock pistol. My partner and I drew our weapons. I told the subject to raise his hands where I could see them.”
“His hands were in the purse?”
“That’s correct.”
“What did he do when you told him to raise his hands?”
“For a moment, nothing. I ordered him again to remove his hands from the purse. He did not.”
“But then-”
“But then his right hand came free and he looked up into the flashlight beam. His gun was to his left, so he wasn’t a threat to go for that weapon.”
He was covering his ass here.
“And then in one very quick motion, he lifted a two-by-four sitting next to him and threw it at me. Kind of a boomerang throw. He hit me in the chest and knocked my flashlight out of my hand.”
“And what happened next?”
“I fell backward, ma’am, and my partner had been circling around me from behind, so I fell into her.”
“The defendant got away on foot?” Wendy said, helpfully.
“That’s correct, ma’am. It’s embarrassing. But he got away. He ran west, and we chased him. He jumped the fence and ran north on Gehringer Street for approximately three blocks. We had radioed for backup, and two squad cars cut him off.”
“And then what happened?”
“The subject-the defendant-dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head.”
“You took him into custody.”
“That’s correct, ma’am.”
Wendy took the officer through the retrieval of the evidence-the murder weapon, the purse, the necklace. They also found where Tom “lived,” so to speak, in Franzen Park, but they didn’t find anything related to the case there. Finally, she questioned him on the process of submitting the evidence at the police station.
The direct was finished at a quarter to noon. I was eager to talk to Lee Tucker, so I hoped the judge would recess.
“Cross-examination, Mr. Kolarich?” he asked.
“It will take us past the hour, Your Honor.”
“Cross-examination, Mr. Kolarich?” he repeated.