“It was a flyer bad-mouthing one of the candidates, was it not?”
“Something like that.”
“Bad-mouthing Axel Hathorne, right?”
“For all I know that’s why he killed her,” she says, looking at Neal.
Jay winces at the glass wall he just walked into. He’s got nothing here and he knows it. He needs to retreat from the mess he’s making as fast as he can. He looks at Judge Keppler, about to signal an end to his questioning, but then looks once more at Maxine in the witness chair and reaches for the only arrow left in his quiver, poisoned though it may be. “What year were you married, ma’am?”
“Excuse me?”
“What year did you and your husband marry?”
“In 1990.”
“And Alicia was how old at the time?”
“She was twelve.”
“They get along?”
Maxine leans back a little in her chair.
“Yes,” she says, crossing her arms, guessing what he’s getting at and hating him for it. She glances at the judge, as if she can’t believe Keppler can’t stop this, as if she can’t believe someone is allowed to spread lies in open court. The D.A.’s chair is again creaking under the springy weight of a lawyer on the verge of getting on his feet again. Jay imagines he’ll never get this line of questioning past the coming objections. It’s pure innuendo, as thin as it is sly, and not worth it, not when Maxine’s defensive posture is doing the job for him.
“Nothing further, Your Honor.”
Next up: Elma Johnson.
She is led into the courtroom by the bailiff, a short white woman with a reddish buzz cut and a thick middle who takes extra care with the elderly witness, guiding her by the elbow to the edge of the witness stand, where she will be sworn in. Elma is wearing a floral blouse, black polyester pants, and thick-soled shoes. The newly pressed gray waves on her head are oiled and shining under the white lights, and she cradles a small black purse like a baby, the gold-link strap hanging over the side of her arm. She got all dressed up for a mere twelve minutes on the stand, the length of time it takes her to repeat a story that by now Jay has heard half a dozen times. Election night, at approximately eight forty-five, Mrs. Johnson looked out her kitchen window and saw Alicia Nowell standing at the corner of Guinevere and Ledwicke; she is sure it was her. “It looked like she was waiting for someone.”
Jay stands for cross. “That’s a bus stop, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“The corner of Guinevere and Ledwicke? That’s a Metro bus stop.”
“Objection, beyond the scope of direct.”
“She said the victim was ‘waiting for someone.’ I think it’s fair to probe her knowledge of the fact that there’s a bus stop where Ms. Nowell was standing.”
“But that’s a misstatement of the witness’s testimony, Your Honor.”
“That’s right, she said it looked like she was waiting for someone,” Jay says, making sure that the distinction is on record again. “I’m trying to understand the basis on which she formed her opinion, the testimony she gave on direct.”
“Overruled,” Keppler says, turning to the witness. “You may answer.”
“It’s not marked,” Elma says.
“But it’s a bus stop, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” she says softly.
“Why, then, did you tell police the victim was waiting for ‘someone’?”
“She was looking north, up Ledwicke. The buses come from the south.”
“But if someone, like Alicia Nowell, was fairly unfamiliar with the neighborhood, they wouldn’t necessarily know that, would they?”
“Objection, speculation.”
“Sustained.”
But Jay had already got what he needed. “Nothing further, Your Honor.”
Next up: Magnus Carr.
The retired postal worker is wearing a dark green, thickly knotted necktie and spectacles, round and gold plated, which he had not been wearing the day Jay visited him in his home. The shoulder pads of his camel-colored sports jacket are scrunched up around his ears and one side of his mouth is screwed up in a sort of half grimace, telegraphing his reluctance to be here. Every few seconds he keeps looking past Neal to Neal’s grandfather. He has said, under oath, at least three times, “I hate to say anything against Sam,” as if it were the elder Hathorne he’s accused in open court and not Jay’s client–whom Mr. Carr had no trouble pointing to and identifying as the man he told detectives he saw outside his study, struggling with a young girl, who he now knows was Alicia Nowell.
When it’s Jay’s turn at bat, he begins with the obvious. “Are those prescription eyeglasses, sir?” he says, liking the start of this, feeling comfortable enough to slide his hands into his pockets and lean his hip against the lectern.
“Yes, sir.”
“You nearsighted or farsighted?”
“Barely sighted,” Carr says, coughing out a laugh before realizing the implications of his joke. He swallows hard, looking at Nichols and then again at Jay. “Uh, nearsighted, sir,” he says finally. “I have another pair for reading.”
“And were you wearing your glasses on the night of November fifth?”
Again, Carr looks over at the D.A. “I believe so, yes.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I, uh, well, I had been reading some magazines earlier but I don’t remember switching from one pair to the other. But I must have had these on,” he says, tapping on the right stem of his current pair of glasses with his finger.
“Because otherwise you wouldn’t have known what you were looking at.”
“Objection, Judge. That’s not a question.”
“Sustained.”
Jay moves on.
“And what you actually told Detective Moore is that the man you saw outside your window looked like Neal Hathorne, not that it was Neal Hathorne, isn’t that right, Mr. Carr?”
“That’s right.”