And this is how the first day of trial ends.
David is allowed to lean over the bar and kiss Marcie before the deputy escorts him out of the courtroom. Marcie, Vaughn, Alexander Ginsberg, and I wait for him to leave. We stand together quietly as the press and other spectators make their way out of the courtroom. I wait for Devlin and Christina Wesley to pack up and leave. Then I turn to Ginsberg.
“Good luck,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ll call you in a little while, after you get back to the office. We’ll talk in more detail.” He turns and leaves the courtroom.
“I think you did well with the crosses of Kujowski and Pancetti,” Vaughn says. “But Devlin’s getting his below-the-belt punches in over your objections. It’s close, but all they’ve proven so far is what we already admitted: that Jennifer was murdered and that the police found David at her house hours afterward.”
Marcie looks from Vaughn to me, then takes her leave.
“I’ll see you back at the office,” I tell Vaughn, hinting that it’s time for him to go, too.
I leave the courtroom and walk over to Piper, who’s been waiting at the end of the hallway. I reach out for her hands, take them in my own. I sigh, and we stand there looking at each other.
Then she breaks the silence. “I think you did great,” she says with a smile, but I see the fear in her eyes.
“This is all going to turn out okay,” I say. Just like I promised her in the hotel on the night of the charity gala.
Piper moves into me, and we hug, tightly. I walk her out of the building and down into the underground Love Park garage. Piper climbs in her car, opens the window. I lean through it and kiss her.
“You’ll be late, I know,” she says. “I’ll have some leftovers in the fridge in case you’re hungry.” And with that, she drives away.
Half an hour later, I’m back in my office. Vaughn has filled Susan in on what happened at trial. Now she sits in one of the chairs across from my desk. We talk a little about the two cop witnesses, and about what Devlin is likely to do tomorrow.
Then I ask, “Have you seen Tommy? Is he planning to watch any of the trial?”
Susan tells me that Angie said he’s up at the trailer.
Our conversation ends abruptly, and I get to work. The hours pass quickly as I finish my cross-examination prep for Devlin’s witnesses. I turn to the window behind my desk. The tower clock at City Hall reads 9:45. My eyes take me past City Hall and down a few blocks on Market Street to the tall building whose roof still holds the red, neon PSFS sign. I stare at the sign. Then the letters fade, and I see my own eyes staring back at me.
A tidal wave rises inside me, threatening to wash me away, drown me . . . the same way I felt when Tommy told me about killing our father. But this time I do not surrender to the pain. I cannot. I must, must, must hold myself together, see this thing through, make it work out, for everyone’s sake. Everyone, that is, except Jennifer Yamura and her shattered family.
28
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13
Day two starts with my cross-examination of Officer Pancetti. “Yesterday, your testimony and that of Officer Kujowski seemed to cover everything—except why you were there.”
Pancetti sets his jaw. He knows where I’m going and why.
“The prosecutor asked if you were directed by dispatch to go to Addison Street to follow up on a report of a possible disturbance. You remember that?”
“Sure.”
“But you chose not to go into the details of what was reported to dispatch.”
“I just answered the questions. I didn’t choose anything.”
“Fair point. It was Mr. Walker who chose not to play the audio of the 911 call.”
Devlin objects, and the judge sustains him.
“You’ve heard the tape, haven’t you?”
“Sure.”
I nod to Vaughn, who moves up to the counsel table and pushes some buttons on the laptop hooked into the courtroom’s audiovisual system. I tell the judge we’re going to play the audiotape for the jury, subject to later authentication by the dispatcher during our own case-in-chief. Judge Henry asks Devlin if there is any dispute as to the tape’s authenticity. Devlin says no, so Vaughn plays the tape.
The first words the jury hears are, “911, what’s your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice is clear, but the caller’s voice sounds muffled, as if he’s trying to disguise it. I listen carefully, as I have every time I’ve listened to the tape. There’s something vaguely familiar about the caller’s voice.
“Something’s going on in a house in my neighborhood,” the caller says. “I think maybe someone is getting hurt. There’s a lot of shouting and screaming coming from the house. And it sounds like things are crashing and getting smashed up. Lotsa rockin’ and rollin’.”
“What’s the address?” the dispatcher asks.
“It’s 1792 Addison Street.”
“I’ll send someone over.”
“You better hurry. They’re shouting and screaming at each other. And it sounds like someone is getting hurt real bad.” Then there’s a click.
When the tape is finished, I refocus on the witness. “But when you went into the house, you found the oddest thing, didn’t you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, the caller said he heard people shouting, but there was only one person in the house, and that was Mr. Hanson, right?”
“Maybe he was shouting to himself.”
“But the caller said ‘they’ were shouting ‘at each other,’ didn’t he?”
“I guess.”
“And all that crashing the caller heard. When you went inside—nothing was broken, was it?”
“No.”
“No smashed vases?”
“No.”
“No broken glasses or windows or shattered glass from picture frames?”
“No.”
“You didn’t find a single broken item, did you?”
“No, sir.”
I pause and let this sink in. Then I make my point.
“Someone knew Mr. Hanson was in that house and wanted very much for the police to catch him there, didn’t they?”
Devlin objects that my question calls for the witness to speculate. The judge sustains him, but the point’s been made. To nail it home, I press forward.
“As a police officer at a murder scene, did you ask yourself why someone would call the police and say things that couldn’t possibly be true—like the voices shouting and all the crashing?”
“I didn’t know the details of the call when we first got there.”
“But you heard the tape later. Didn’t you ask yourself then?”
Pancetti hedges.
I’ve made my point. Before he can think something up, I end my examination. “Nothing further.”
Devlin, still on his feet, asks one follow-up question. “Regardless of what was said on the call, when you got to the house, you found that it turned out to be the scene of a murder?”
“Yes, it did.”