Chapter 56

Yvonne’s witness list includes all three eyewits. It doesn’t say in what order she’ll call them, but I hope she’ll stick to the same sequence as at pre-trial, it’ll work best for us.

I’m a little shocked when Irving tells me I’m to handle the cross on all three—the first two for show, the last for money. I protest that he’s sure to be better at it.

“We’re being disarming, remember?” he says. “Well, how can we be more disarming than by sitting lead counsel down and letting an associate take them? Besides, this was your idea, you follow it through.”

I can see his thinking, it’ll look like we’re dismissing them and giving our attention somewhere else. I’m still nervous about it, I haven’t ever handled anything serious in court except for that first public-defender case, but Irving will be right there, if I fall down he can pick me up. And it’s flattering as hell that he thinks I’m up to it.

Well, I think so, too. The investigators got us the whole story, and it’s a nasty one; I can almost sympathize with Watkins. But this isn’t about sympathy, it’s about truth, and I think I have enough in my bag to pull that out of him.

The way we’ve got it planned timing is a big part of this, and Irving starts off with jury selection. He’s always meticulous about it, but he takes that to even greater lengths to make sure the process fills up the entire first day. By using a couple of unnecessary peremptory challenges, which I can see puzzle Yvonne, he gets us to 3:30, which is late enough. Yvonne wants a fresh start for her opening statement, so we’re over to the next morning, as we wanted.

Yvonne’s pretty wordy with her opening—she’s going all the way for murder two—so Irving has to re-think his. He doesn’t want to go short, but the clock is ticking so he decides to postpone it entirely until the defense opens its case. Which, if our plans work out, will be never.

But that puts us ahead of schedule, so we’ve got to drag out some cross-examination. Yvonne presents her case in the same sequence, which encourages me, and Irving stretches the cross on the early wits, but we’re still at lunch way too early. And if she changes the sequence of the eyewits it’s going to get really awkward.

She doesn’t, though. The mom’s first after lunch, and Irving takes as long with her as he can, but he can’t press it real hard; juries don’t like it when lawyers bully little old ladies, especially grieving ones. She’s pretty open about her animosity toward Sam but that doesn’t help us and he has to quit. We’re still running about thirty minutes early when the first of the eyewits ­comes on, and it’s up to me.

I do my very best imitation of a stumbling fledgling lawyer. I hem, I haw, I ask the same questions over again and Yvonne, bless her gullible little heart, contributes by making objections that consume still more time.

But I make sure to get in the key questions. Did the wit know the defendant before? Did he know the vic before? No? “Seen him around,” nothing more. Is he sure about that? It’s where I’m planning to start with Watkins; there’s a small risk, but Irving and I agreed it’s minimal so we go for it.

And I get an extra when I ask the first guy if he’s discussed his testimony with anyone. It turns out the three wits met up one night and spent lots of time going over their recollections of the fight.

Now I know where the changed stories came from. I get confirmation from the second one, but I don’t push it; time enough for that if we have to take the case to the jury.

We get to afternoon break—”high tea,” Irving calls it—pretty much on time. Irving and I had argued about this, I told him I’d need only an hour for Watkins’ cross and he said an hour and a half with the objections, so we finally compromised on 3:45. And sure enough, Watkins hits the stand at 3:30, Yvonne takes the same fifteen minutes with her direct, and we’re on target.

I start off with him the same, does he know who started the fight? No, he doesn’t. Is he sure about that? He wasn’t paying attention. But then he pushes it a little, saying he “had an impression” that Sam had picked it. Yvonne looks pleased at that, but with what’s going to come it suits me fine. I go on to had he known either one before? Nope. Is he sure about that? Oh, yeah.

By now I’m looking like a complete idiot, and Yvonne is all but falling asleep. That’s been part of the point. So when I take a little swerve she doesn’t wake up right away.

Me: “Mr. Watkins, has that always been your name?”

Watkins: “I beg your pardon?”

Me: “Was your name Watkins when you were born?”

Yvonne pipes up as I’d expected. “Objection, relevance, your honor.” But she’s still snoozing, there’s no heat in it. Yet.

“I’ll tie it up,” I respond.

“Do so promptly, counsel,” the judge says. “Overruled.”

Everybody waits for a minute, me for an answer and the witness in uncertainty, so I ask it again. “Was Watkins always your name?”

“I don’t understand,” he says. Oh, yes, you do, I think, and I push it.

Me: “Wasn’t your last name originally Watkowski? Didn’t you have it legally changed?”

Watkins (looking first to Yvonne for help, which isn’t forthcoming; she’s already taken her shot): “Yes, I did that some years ago.”

Me: “Will you tell me how many years ago?”

Watkins: “I don’t remember.”

Yvonne chimes in again, she’s beginning to wake up; she doesn’t understand it but she doesn’t like it on general principles. “Objection, your honor, relevance again.” Still shy of the heat, though,

“I can’t tie it up until he answers,” I respond. The judge overrules again—Irving would have jumped in if he hadn’t, but we were hoping he wouldn’t have to—so I persist.

Me: “Was it after you graduated high school?”

Watkins: “Umm ... I guess so.”

Me: “So in high school you were Jared Watkowski?” (I could push him for the date he made the change, which I know, but that’s not important.)

Watkins (reluctantly): “Yes.”

Me: “And as Jared Watkowski, what high school was it that you attended?”

Yvonne doesn’t like it some more now, but she keeps quiet. Watkins doesn’t like it either, but tough shit, he has to answer and finally does with the name of the school I know.

Me: “Was that the same high school that the defendant, Sam McDonald, attended?”

He blusters that he doesn’t know, anyhow Sam was a year ahead of him— Oops.

Me: “So you knew the defendant then?”

He fumbles and bumbles a little, but when I point out that McDonald was one of the big sports stars of his school, he finally acknowledges that he did, “sort of.” Yvonne’s wide awake now, but the damage is done. And it’s going to get worse.

Me: “And did you know Jerry Truesdale in that time as well?”

Watkins (defiantly): “No. And I didn’t go to high school with him.”

Me: “Quite right, Mr. Watkins“ (emphasis on the “Watkins,” making sure it gets through to the jury). “But your school played against his in various sports, did it not?”

Watkins: “Yes.” He blew that one badly, if he didn’t know Truesdale how’d he know what high school he went to? I could play with that but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Me: “And did you know Patricia Lowell while you were in high school?”

By now Yvonne’s on full alert; she still doesn’t know what’s going on, but she knows she doesn’t want any more of it going on. “Objection, your honor, are we going through the entire school enrollment? Ms. Calvalli’s fishing.”

“Catching some, too,” I respond perkily. “Your honor, we’ve already established that Mr. Watkins lied about not knowing the defendant before.” That’s for the benefit of the jury, in case some of them are a little slow; the judge already knows. “Patricia Lowell ties in, too.”

“Very well,” the judge says. “Overruled.”

Watkins gets it now, but there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it. He tries. He denies knowing Patty at all until I pull out a copy of the high school yearbook showing the two of them together. He denies knowing she dated Truesdale until I point out that some of his classmates remember it a lot differently and ask do I need to put them on the stand.

Yvonne’s objecting to nearly every question at first and now the heat’s really turned up, but she’s a day late and a dollar short and she knows it. Finally she gives it a rest—some of the jurors are shooting her annoyed looks by now and it’s never a good idea to piss off a jury—and inch by inch I drag the whole sordid story out of Watkins.

He’d worshiped Patty in school without a whole lot of reciprocation. But when she found herself pregnant and dumped she turned to her only loyal supporter, and Jared saw her all the way through to having the baby and putting it out for adoption.

I lead him through the rest of it, supplying specifics every time he balks—how Patty fell apart afterwards, how she’d drifted from place to place with him following faithfully with each move, how she’d sunk into drugs and prostitution, how she finally killed herself with an o.d. just a year ago with him standing by helplessly at the hospital where she died.

God, what a miserable life that poor girl had. I have to firmly suppress my feelings again and again, I hate the two pricks myself for what they did. But Watkins took it a little too far.

“Now, Mr. Watkins, after she died you returned here. For what purpose? Was it because the two men you felt were responsible for what happened to Ms. Lowell, Mr. Truesdale and the defendant, the two men you hated for that, was it because they lived here and you wanted retribution?”

Yvonne’s on her feet again, but Watkins answers “no!” loudly before she can open her mouth. Hugo’s sitting in the third row of pews and I look over at him for confirmation and see him shake his head. But Yvonne sees it too; I’ve been checking with him from time to time during Watkins’ testimony, and I guess she’s picked up on it.

“Your honor!” she says. “May we approach the bench?”

The judge calls us up for one of those sotto voce consults, and Yvonne is pissed. “Your honor, Ms. Calvalli is exchanging signals of some sort with one of the spectators, the second from the right in the third row. This is inappropriate.”

The judge takes a look. “Do you know this man?” he asks me.

“He’s my husband, your honor,” I say. I really need Hugo one last time, I can’t let the judge throw him out. “We’re newlyweds,” I add with as cute a simper as I can muster.

The judge bites a little, but he’s still unhappy. “Is your husband an attorney?” he demands. Lawyers who get signals from other lawyers while they’re examining witnesses aren’t popular in any court.