Part 13 (1/2)
Coats is not sure about this. He wants to talk to us. He calls the lawyers up to the side of the bench.
”Mr. Madriani, it seems as though the witness has already testified to this.”
”Then it's been asked and answered, Your Honor. There should be no need for the question.”
”No, it's not quite the same.” Tannery wades in. ”I asked him about production runs, and s.h.i.+pping practices. I'm only trying to tie it all together,” he says.
”There's no way this witness can know whether the tie used to kill the victim and the ties found in the defendant's pocket were from the same store.” I am red out to the tips of my ears. ”This exceeds any issue of expertise. It raises questions of factual knowledge.”
”It raises issues of probabilities,” says Tannery. ”We know all the ties came from the same factory. They came from the same press run of machines. Is it not probable they were purchased at the same store?”
”That calls for speculation.”
The judge is shaking his head. I can't believe it.
”You'll have your chance to cross-examine him, Mr. Madriani. I'm going to allow it.”
We step back from the bench. Harry's looking at me, like What gives? I simply shake my head. It's how you feel when you've lost a call that you know is wrong.
”Is there not a good probability, Doctor, that the tie used to kill Kalista Jordan and the cable ties found in the coat pocket of the defendant, David Crone, were purchased at the same point of sale?”
”I believe so.” Warnake is actually smiling. He knows there is no way he can prove this. Tannery has pressed it too far. It is just the kind of error that can lead to reversal on appeal.
”Perhaps they were part of the same package?” says Tannery.
”Your Honor, I have to object.”
”Sustained.” I can see it in the judge's face. He has made a mistake, and he knows it.
”Let me ask you this, Doctor Warnake. From what you now know, can you exclude the possibility that all of these cable ties came from the same package in the same store?” says Tannery.
He has turned it around so that there is no basis to object, though I do it anyway.
”I'll allow that,” says Coats.
”No, I cannot exclude that possibility.”
Crone is looking up at me from the counsel table. His hand comes over on my arm as if he is actually consoling me. His expression says he is not surprised, the scientist accepting the conclusions of science.
From Harry I get a different look: one that says, I told you so.
Within seconds of the judge's gavel coming down, a phalanx of county jail guards moves in to escort Crone back to the holding cell. There he will change from his suit and tie back to jail togs and rubber flip-flops for the shackled walk across the bridge that links the criminal courts building to the jail.
Harry and I collect our papers as the courtroom empties. A few bystanders, court hangers-on, chew on the events of the day. Most of the reporters have headed back to the pressroom where they will file their stories by e-mail, driving one more spike into our client's reputation, and tallying one more brick on the scales for the state.
Tannery's evidence is beginning to come in cleanly, the outline of a case taking shape like a Polaroid print developing in front of our eyes. Lawyers can sense when an opponent hits his stride. It's a feeling that brings on heart-pounding panic, even as you are pulling all the legal levers in court with simulated confidence and spinning a web of lies to the media outside.
The challenge, as always, is to lie to yourself and to do so convincingly. That is the art of a true believer, who will accept every deceit, even his own, on faith. Neither Harry nor I am of this religion. We are c.o.c.keyed pessimists with a cynical twist. I have my own unspoken doubts about the case. I am convinced that at the heart of it lies some corrosive deception, though I still cannot accept that my client killed Kalista Jordan.
It isn't until I turn to stash my copy of West's softcover Penal Code in my brief box that I see him, sitting alone, forlorn in the back of the courtroom. Frank Boyd has been watching our case unravel from the shadows of the last row.
He is wearing a pair of white painter's overalls, bits of sawdust on one shoulder that he has missed in brus.h.i.+ng off. Some splotches of what look like dried glue on one pant leg.
Frank is a finish carpenter. He is an artist with wood. He has shoulders like a linebacker and forearms like Popeye. The man can move beams the size of tree trunks, notch and carve them into place single-handedly, with nothing but a hand-cranked come-along to hold the weight while he dangles from a ladder: the kind of guy you would want on your side if you had to go to war.
In another life, he'd been a teacher until he learned he couldn't stand the confinement of the cla.s.sroom. Frank took a job as a woodworker's apprentice in a s.h.i.+pyard and over six years he mastered the skills of a s.h.i.+pwright, finis.h.i.+ng the interiors of yachts, until the federal luxury tax crushed the industry and threw him out of work. Ever resilient, he started his own business, and for the past fourteen years has worked by hiring himself out to contractors on large homes that require an artist to finish the wood.
It runs in his blood, independence and art. I have seen charcoal and pencil drawings of his children framed in the hallway of their modest home. Doris tells me that these are Frank's work. He had taken anatomy courses to better understand the articulation of the human body, how it moved and functioned. He now produces drawings-drawings with such a flourish of confidence one might think they were ripped from the sketch pad of da Vinci. It causes me to wonder what might have been, had he turned to oils or other media. Doubtless he would have been no more affluent. Unfortunately for Frank, he is also hobbled by the mercantile tin ear of the artist. He has no sense of his own worth.
Like a vagabond he now travels in his beat-up Volkswagen van, a sixties-vintage van, working on its third engine and for which the only spare parts can be found in wrecking yards. The rear springs sag under the load, tools of his trade a.s.sembled and collected over thirty years. Chisels and power saws, miters for angles and small curved handsaws of j.a.panese steel mail-ordered from Asia. He uses these for cuts of microscopic precision. I am told that he has a.s.sembled whole staircases in homes that might qualify as castles, only to dismantle the entire structure, risers, treads and railings, just to shave a little more wood until the pieces fit like the parts in a puzzle. Frank's signature in wood is perfection.
He is an addict when it comes to to his craft. He will drive a thousand miles in the broken-down van with his ladders on top to labor for a month on a log mansion in the wilds of Montana, for some eastern investment broker with the palace appet.i.te of the Medicis. For Frank, it is the work, not the client, that is critical. It is not difficult for a man like this to find himself laboring at art for which he will not be paid. The fact that contractors will hunt Frank down for these special jobs is a testament to his skill, even if what he receives barely covers his gas. He is today's equivalent of the ancient metal smith hammering gold on a pharaoh's mask. No one will ever know his name, even as they marvel at his craft.
Today the dust on his work clothes reflects the dull pallor of his face, which is lined with deep furrows as if some gnome had pulled a plowshare through the gullies under his eyes. I would bet he hasn't shaved in three days, five-o'clock shadow gone to seed. He has lost forty pounds in the months since our last meeting, so that I have to re-calibrate the register of my recognition before I am sure I have the right person.
What pa.s.ses for a smile these days edges across his face and then is gone just as quickly. He gets out of the chair and moves forward slowly, down the center aisle, then sidles sideways across the front row of chairs on the other side of the bar railing to approach.
”Frank. I haven't seen you in a while.”
He extends a hand and we shake, somewhat shy. His large hand engulfs my own so that I have the feeling that it has been closed in a sandpaper glove. The flesh of his hands is tough enough to grind gla.s.s.
There has always been some social distance between us; Frank the blue-collar man, Paul the lawyer. He is constrained by self-imposed social divisions of another era. I suspect that doctors would unnerve him, like talking to G.o.d. For Frank, this would be an added point of stress in dealing with his daughter's illness.
”Been a long time,” he says.
”It could have been under better circ.u.mstances.” I motion with my head toward the judge's bench and smile.
”Tough day?” he asks.
”They're all tough. You know my partner, Harry Hinds?”
”Don't think we've met,” says Frank.
Harry gives him a mystified look and offers his hand.
”Frank Boyd. Harry Hinds.”
They shake hands, and Harry finally connects the name. ”Oh, you're the little girl's . . .” then catches himself.
”Right. Her father.” There is something about Boyd that brings to mind the actor William Devane. It is in the sad-sack eyes, and the face that seldom changes expression, as if the load of life were simply too oppressive to permit any real relief. It is the look of a man who is not allowed emotionally to come up for air, who is quietly drowning.
”How's Doris?” I ask.
”Oh, good. Good. She's tough.”