“Detective Hoyt,” Ludik asked, after the judge hit his gavel to once again quiet the room, “did you download those photos from your own police files onto my client’s laptop?”
“No!” Cody nearly jumped from the witness stand. The bailiff took a step toward him, and the judge ordered Cody to sit down.
“Maybe Monday afternoon, after you were released from the Evergreen town jail and before you transferred custody of the laptop in question to the evidence room?” Ludik asked.
“I said no,” Cody growled.
“But you can’t honestly tell the jury that someone else might not have taken the laptop from your car and done it during the weekend?”
Cody shook his head.
“What, Detective Hoyt?”
“I can’t say with certainty, but…”
“Detective Hoyt, can you recall an important case where the chain of custody of the key piece of evidence was broken quite so badly?” Ludik asked.
Cody sputtered. “We’ll find that hard drive,” he said. “And when we do, it won’t matter. That man,” Cody said, rising again, pointing at Aubrey Coates, who smiled back at him, “kidnapped and killed at least seven innocent children. You can’t turn him loose to kill more!”
Judge Moreland, furious, said, “Detective, sit down and shut up, or you’ll be arrested right here for contempt of my court.” Turning to the jury, the judge said, “Please disregard what the witness just said. He was out of line, and what he said cannot be considered in your deliberations.”
“No more questions at this time, Your Honor,” Ludik said, flipping back the pages of his pad.
Judge Moreland said, “Miss Blair, redirect?”
Blair appeared stunned and angry. Her voice was weak. “We may have some more questions later, Your Honor. Right now… well, it’s getting late in the day.”
Moreland snapped, “I’ll make the decisions to recess for the day, if you don’t mind. I don’t need your help to read the clock. Now, do you have any more questions for the witness?”
“Not at this time.” Cowed.
“Bailiff,” Judge Moreland said through gritted teeth, “please escort this witness off the stand.”
As Cody was led through the courtroom with the bailiff at his shoulder, all eyes were on him. As he passed me our eyes met, and Cody angrily shook his head.
“Mother of God,” Olive said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
I followed Cody out into the hallway. A few of his fellow cops were approaching him, trying to console him. He brushed them aside barking “Leave me alone!” and charged toward the glass doors. A couple of reporters shouted questions, which he ignored.
I caught the door as it closed and pushed it back open.
“Cody!”
He didn’t turn around, just kept stomping down the stairs toward the street.
“Cody!”
On the sidewalk, he paused, and I caught up with him. I’d never seen him so furious. The skin of his face was pulled back, slitting his eyes and making his mouth a snarl.
“That motherfucker!” Cody hissed. “I’d like to go back in there and cap him!”
“Ludik?”
“No,” Cody said, shaking me off as well. “Moreland. He fucked me. He just fucked me. And he fucked the families of all those kids.”
“Cody,” I said, as my friend knocked my hand off his sleeve. “It was Ludik…”
“You don’t understand anything,” Cody said. “You don’t know how these things work. The judge could have steered it back my way or granted that recess so the prosecutors could regroup. He let it go when he could have stopped it. The prosecution was so stunned they couldn’t think of anything to say. The judge can do anything he wants, and he let it go on.”
I found myself in the ridiculous circumstance of wanting to defend the man who was trying to take our baby away.
“Leave me alone!” Cody barked as I reached out for him again, and for a moment I thought he was going to cap me. I watched him walk into the street without even glancing at the oncoming cars, who braked so they wouldn’t splatter my friend, the suddenly disgraced detective, across Bannock Street.
IT WAS DARK and spitting hard little balls of snow when I arrived home. I’d called Melissa and started to tell her what had happened in the courtroom when she cut me off, saying, “It’s all over the news. They say he’s being suspended.” She said Brian had been at our house most of the afternoon, and they’d been following the case for hours, switching from channel to channel. Cody’s de mo lition had become a sensation.
I parked in the driveway next to Brian’s Lexus and killed the motor. The falling snow sounded like sand as it bounced off the hood and roof of the Jeep. I sat for a moment, suddenly exhausted, very much confused.
I felt a hundred years old as I willed myself to open the door and get out. The snow stung my exposed face and hands. I was numb, and not paying attention to the rhythmic thumping of hip-hop music from the street and the sound of a motor that should have been familiar and should have warned me.
As I reached for the handle on our front door the hiphop suddenly rose in volume. Later, I realized it was because the car had stopped at the curb, and the passenger rolled down his window and aimed the gun out.
The popping was muffled by the snow, and I was hit twice in the back. I turned on my heel and was struck in the face, hot liquid splashing into my open eyes, blinding me.
I could hear laughing over the roaring in my ears as the car sped away.
SIX
PAINTBALLS. I’D BEEN SHOT four times with a paintball gun. The color of the paint: yellow. The people who shot me? Garrett or Luis or Stevie, I couldn’t be sure.
Melissa called the police while I wiped paint off my face with a kitchen towel. It took several minutes for my heart to slow down, for the adrenaline that had coursed through me to dissipate. My hands shook as I wiped the paint from my eyes and ears. My terror faded and was replaced by anger.
The police officer who responded, who was in his midtwenties, Hispanic, with a wisp of a mustache and a belly straining at the buttons on his uniform shirt, wrote down my statement and took photos of the paint hits on the back of my coat. He shook his head while he did it, saying I wasn’t the first.
“There were quite a few similar instances this past summer,” he told us. “Kids compete by seeing how many citizens they can ‘kill’ in a given amount of time and tally it up. They get more points for a ‘kill’ in a good neighborhood, like this one. We’ve caught a few of them. Some are gangsta wannabes, but mostly they’re just normal knuckleheads.”
I bit my tongue, and Melissa and I exchanged glances.
He continued, “But you didn’t actually see them, right? Or get a description of the vehicle or a license plate?”
“I was blinded by the paint,” I said. “I told you that.”
“We’ll follow up and let you know if we find anything,” the officer said in a tone that meant we would never see him or hear from him again.
WHILE WE ATE-Brian had fetched Chinese takeout-Brian slid his chair back and drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket. “I called Cody earlier and left a message for him to call or come by. He’s not answering.”
“I hope he doesn’t do anything to hurt himself,” I said, “or anyone else.”
I rehashed the trial for them, and Melissa shook her head sadly. “Poor Cody,” she said. “Do you think Ludik really thinks Cody set up the Monster?”
“Hard to say,” I said. “But he injected enough doubt into the proceedings, I don’t see how they’ll get a conviction now. He even had me wondering if Cody or some of his fellow cops might have planted some of the evidence. Not that I don’t think Coates is guilty of something-I’m sure he is. I just don’t know if they’ve got enough evidence that isn’t tainted to convict him.”