“We’ve had our eyes on the wrong game this whole time.”
Detective Herman “Hank” Moore takes the stand on Monday morning, the sixteenth, a day after a center-foldout story on the trial appeared in the pages of the Chronicle, written by Gregg Bartolomo and detailing the strengths of the state’s case against mayoral candidate Axel Hathorne’s nephew and campaign manager–evidence that he apparently watched in a different courtroom from the one Jay was in all of last week, so puffed up and laid out in a way most favorable to the D.A.’s office are the facts. But such is the power of the press: to get it right, or dangerously wrong. Nichols, in a blue suit, is especially smug this morning, moving with the assured strut of every prosecutor with a cop in the witness chair–which is as good as writing the testimony himself. He leans against the lectern, hands in his pockets, barely glancing at his notes, so certain is he that the detective’s testimony, with little help from the prosecutor, will roll out with ease to produce the desired effect. As Detective Moore takes an oath to tell the truth, Jay, at the defense table, glances behind him. Sam is not in the courtroom today, nor are his daughters; just Vivian and Axel are there. Ellie, with her dad’s permission, and after he had a weekend chat with her principal–“It’s good for her, Mr. Porter”–is sitting beside them. Lonnie is at the city’s central library on McKinney, using one of their computers to search for any more information on America’s Tomorrow.
Jay can feel the rat-a-tat-tat of Neal’s left knee, up and down, up and down, bumping up against the underside of the table. At the lectern, Nichols walks Moore through the evidence, none of it new to Jay. One, the girl was reported missing by her mother. Two, Neal Hathorne came to law enforcement’s attention because his phone number was in her pager, a call that came in shortly before she disappeared. Three, Mr. Hathorne lied about knowing the girl and about calling her. Last but not least, in a follow-up with neighbors of Elma Johnson’s, Magnus Carr positively identified the defendant as the man he saw struggling with the victim on the corner of Guinevere and Ledwicke. The jurors are as stone-faced as Jay has seen them to date. Worse, a few of the women look directly at Neal, with something new: contempt. Even one of the black men in the second row, the older one by a decade, is eyeing Neal differently. He’s frowning, his arms crossed, both hands tucked into his armpits. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before, but words out of a cop’s mouth are like nuggets of iron pyrite: everyone wants to believe it’s gold.
Jay is left with little room to maneuver on cross-examination, especially because in Neal’s first interview with law enforcement Jay was the only other witness in the room, and Moore knows it. “Detective Moore, isn’t it true that my client, Mr. Hathorne, said he didn’t remember meeting the victim?” he asks first.
“That’s what he said.”
Moore, in another interesting ensemble of slacks with a checkered sports coat, has his hands clasped together, resting in the center of his lap. His afro is neatly clipped, gray hairs greased and glistening in the fluorescent lights.
“And you would agree that saying he didn’t remember is different from asserting that he had never met the victim, Ms. Nowell, wouldn’t you?”
“A misdirect is a misdirect,” Moore says. “It wasn’t the truth.”
“Within moments of saying he hadn’t called the victim’s pager, my client made clear that he might have called the number by mistake, didn’t he?”
“I don’t remember it that way.”
And there’s no one here, besides Jay, to say otherwise.
Moore patiently waits for him to land a jab, seemingly enjoying the spectacle. He lifts his russet-colored tie, fiddling with a loose thread along the bottom before returning it to its place, and resting his hands again in his lap.
“Mr. Hathorne indicated to you that he was returning a call, didn’t he?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Which suggests, does it not, that the victim, Ms. Nowell, had previously reached out to Mr. Hathorne?” Out of the corner of his eye, Jay senses movement behind him, behind Nichols at the state’s table. He turns and sees Maxine Robicheaux leaning forward a little in her seat, a curious look on her face, part surprise and part fret. Had they really not put that together for her? That for Neal to have called Alicia’s pager, she had to have given him the number or left it for him at the campaign office, the number on his card.
“I don’t know what their relationship was,” Moore says.
“Did you check the phone records for the Hathorne campaign office?”
“We declined to get a warrant.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t think it was pertinent to our investigation.”
“You didn’t think it was pertinent to investigate why the victim called the defendant in the days leading up to her death?” He presents it as a given fact, which is what trips Moore up, his eyes going blank, as if they’re scrolling through reams of information about the case in the back of his head. He shifts in his chair.
“I, uh, don’t know that she did that.”
“You found a number of items in the victim’s purse, didn’t you?”
More shifting. “Yes.”
“The pager, of course.”
The thing with his tie again. “Yes.”
“Some cosmetics, a wallet, a little money?”
“Yes,” Moore says, glancing past Jay to Nichols. Behind him, Jay can hear the faint squeak of Nichols sitting at the edge of his chair. Jay walks to the clerk’s desk beside the bench, reaching into the evidence box for state’s exhibit no. 37, the BBDP flyer. He walks it to the witness stand, laying it faceup on the banister.
“This was also among the victim’s belongings, wasn’t it?”