Part 30 (2/2)

Judge Mac considered this for a moment, then said, ”Overruled. You may continue, Counselor, but this is not a fis.h.i.+ng expedition, understand.”

”Thank you, Your Honor.” She turned back to Daniel. ”Did your family discuss Alex Feldman?”

”Not really 'discuss,' just mention him, and not often.”

”When he was mentioned, what name was used? Did you know his name?”

He shook his head. ”Not until now. I mean, recently. When he was arrested, I learned his name.”

”What was he called when he was talked about then?”

He looked at his hands, at her, the spectators, anywhere but at Alex. ”The freak,” he said in a low voice.

”What else?” she asked. She was keeping her voice low, conversational, as unintimidating as she could manage; Daniel obviously was frightened, and she did not want him to become more frightened. Not yet.

”Devil, or devil freak,” he said, even lower.

”Anything else?”

”Devil sp.a.w.n.”

”Who used those names, Mr. Marchand?”

”I don't know. Maybe we all did.”

”Did you ever hear him referred to any other way?”

”My mother just said the boy next door, or our neighbor.”

”Was that why you were frightened of him when you were younger, because he was called devil?”

”I guess so,” he said.

”Did you think he had horns, or had had horns that had been surgically removed?”

”When I was little,” he said.

”Do you think that now?”

Novak objected, and this time Judge Mac sustained the objection. ”You've made your point, Counselor,” he said to Barbara. ”Move on now, if you will”

Silently she agreed; she had made her point. ”If you had seen an intruder that day, would you have mentioned it to your mother or father?”

”I guess so,” Daniel said after a moment. ”There wasn't any time to tell them.”

She walked to the map and pointed to the yellow disc. ”If a person had been here, or even within fifty feet on either side of this spot, he would have been visible to anyone on the back porch of the house, wouldn't he?”

”I don't know,” Daniel said helplessly.

”Well, it's a clear line of sight from the back of the house to most of the brambles, so that spot would have been visible also. Do you agree?”

”Yes, I guess so.”

”Is there an opening in the brambles back there?”

”No, it's thick. You can't get through them.”

”So if anyone had been at that spot, he would have had to approach from the orchard side, or from the woods on the other side. Is that correct?”

”Yes.”

”And from the woods side, once he cleared the house, he would have been visible to anyone on the back porch, wouldn't he?”

Daniel said yes.

”And then he would have had to cut through the backyard on a diagonal path away from the house, or else follow the edge of the mowed area, keeping near the brambles in order to arrive at that spot. Is that correct?” She traced a path as she spoke, and it appeared as far-fetched as it sounded.

”Objection,” Novak called out finally. ”This is getting too hypothetical. No one knows what that person did or why.”

”Sustained. Move on, Ms. Holloway,” Judge Mac said.

She nodded. ”It has been shown that the spot where the boys parked was a quarter of a mile from your driveway, and from the map here we can determine how long the driveway is.” She measured it and said, ”Two hundred feet. Are you a good math student, Mr. Marchand?”

”Pretty good,” he said.

”Do you remember the rule about the square of the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the square of the two legs of a right triangle?”

He looked wary and uncertain. ”I think so.”

”In my day we said the square hippopotamus was equal to two square legs,” she said smiling. Daniel did not smile. ”Let me draw the figure.” She picked up a drawing pad from her table and propped it up on the easel, then drew a line. ”This represents the quarter mile on the road from where Ben Hennessey parked, to the driveway,” she said. ”A quarter mile, or one thousand three hundred twenty feet.” She drew a very short line downward, perpendicular to it. ”And this is the driveway, two hundred feet.” She connected the two lines, finis.h.i.+ng the triangle. ”And this line represents the route you took, cutting through the orchard and yard to get to the house. It's not exact, of course, because there were trees and bushes, but it's a fair approximation. We'll label them A, B, and C, just like in the old geometry books. Now, according to Euclidian geometry, the sum of A squared plus B squared equals C squared. We'll use a calculator for the arithmetic.” She did the math and wrote the figures on the paper, then said, ”So C equals one thousand three hundred and thirty-three feet, and that's the distance you covered, give or take a foot or two.”

”Objection,” Novak said. ”This is not the time or place for a math lesson, and there's no point in wasting our time this way.”

”Oh, I have a point,” Barbara said. ”Just a little longer, Your Honor. I'll make my point.”

”I certainly do hope so, Counselor,” Judge Mac said dryly. ”You may continue for a very short time. Overruled.”

She had been doing the math on the newsprint pad. She returned to it and said, ”You were gone for four minutes and thirty-two seconds, and thirty-nine seconds of that time you were in the house, which means you were running for about two hundred thirty-three seconds altogether, or one hundred sixteen seconds in each direction. I think we can forget half seconds for the purposes of this demonstration and instead allow for a plus-or-minus factor of a second or two either way.” She was adding the figures to her paper as she talked, labeling them all.

”All right,” she said then, ”if you covered one thousand three hundred and thirty-five feet in one hundred sixteen seconds, it means you were running about eleven and a half feet per second.”

She looked at Daniel then and asked, ”Have you followed the math? Do you agree to the conclusion of about eleven and a half feet per second?”

”I guess that's about right,” he said.

Clearly he had no idea if that was right, but Judge Mac was following along just fine, Barbara noted.

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