I looked from face to face, wondering who they were and why they were here. One of them was here because of me. I was sure of it. But who was it, and, more important, who had sent him?
“Mr. Antonelli,”said Judge Thompson with his practiced courtroom familiarity, “do you wish to make an opening statement at this time?”
“What?”I asked, startled out of my reverie.
Thompson turned his head toward the jury and smiled.
“Oh, nothing, Mr. Antonelli,”he drawled. “We just wondered whether after sleeping through Mr. Haliburton's opening statement you had decided to sleep through your own as well.”
A bashful grin spread over my face as I ambled up to the railing that ran the length of the jury box and tried to turn my inattention into an advantage.
“For a while there, I thought I must have somehow fallen into a coma. One minute we were at the beginning of the trial and then, what seemed just a moment later, I heard the voice of the district attorney giving what I was certain was his closing argument. I wondered why I could not remember what any of the witnesses said or even what they looked like. Then, when I heard the judge ask me if I wanted to make an opening statement, I realized I had not been in a coma after all. While I'm relieved about that, I'm afraid I now have to find some way to convince you that this really is just the beginning of the trial and not, as Mr. Haliburton seems to think, the end of it.”
With my head down, I moved slowly across the front of the jury box. When I reached the end of it, I turned around and looked back to the district attorney.
“Mr. Haliburton has told us a great deal about Senator Fullerton, and so far as I know everything he told you is true— everything, that is, except the way he died.”
My gaze moved to the defendant. Jamaal Washington sat at the separate table he shared with me, in the chair closest to the jury box. The jury followed my eyes.
“The district attorney also had some things to say about the defendant. By my count he called him a 'cold-blooded killer' seven different times during his opening statement.”
I paused long enough to allow them a good look at Jamaal's fine features and intelligent eyes.
“He doesn't look much like a cold-blooded killer, does he?”
For the next twenty minutes, while Jamaal, wearing the same dark suit and the same solid-color tie he wore every day to court, sat in an attitude of respectful attention, I told the jury what it was like for most of the black children who grew up in San Francisco, reciting all the well-known statistics that seemed to suggest they were born to die of either gunshot wounds or drugs. The odds against survival were shocking; the odds against a normal life next to impossible. Yet Jamaal Washington had done more than merely survive: He had accomplished more in his short life than most of us had ever tried to achieve. Without a note, I recited his academic record and reminded them that there had never been a time, not from the day he began high school to the day when, an honor student at Berkeley, he was arrested for a crime he did not commit, that he was not working to help support himself.
“And so, Jamaal Washington was on his way home from work.”
I faced the jury and, with an ironic smile, remarked: “This 'cold-blooded killer' had just finished working at a dinner at the Fairmont Hotel, the dinner where nearly a thousand people paid thousands of dollars to listen to what would be the last speech Jeremy Fullerton would ever give. Jamaal Washington never heard that speech. There was too much noise in the kitchen where he washed pots and pans to allow him to hear much of anything.
“When he was through washing dishes, he joined the crew that clears the room after one event and gets it ready for the next one. He worked more than eight hours that night, and he did it after spending the whole day—from seven in the morning until sometime after three in the afternoon—studying physics, and chemistry, and all the other subjects a 'cold-blooded killer' spends his time trying to master.”
I shot a caustic glance across the courtroom. Haliburton pretended not to notice.
“This 'cold-blooded killer,' ”I went on, my hand on the back of my neck as I stared down at the floor, “who the prosecution told you was willing to kill for however much money he might find in a dead man's wallet, studies all day and works all night and then goes home.”
My hand dropped away from my neck. I raised my head.
“Only this night he never got home. He never got home because he tried to help someone. He never got home because, for all his trouble, he got shot in the back.”
The words came without conscious effort, freely, voluntarily, of their own accord. The copious notes; the long lists of things I had spent days preparing so I would not forget; the dozens of tattered-cornered, bent yellow lined pages filled with my longhand illegible scrawl—all of it had been left at the counsel table, locked away in my briefcase.
“How many of us would have done what Jamaal Washington did that night? How many of us would have done what he did had we been walking along, late at night, on a city street in fog so thick you could barely see your hand in front of your face, and we heard a gunshot just a few short yards away? We like to think that if we ever had to, we'd do the right thing; that if someone were in danger—real danger—we'd do everything we could to save their life. We dream about being the kind of people who run into a house on fire to save a child. We dream about hearing an explosion and without a thought for our own safety diving into the wreckage to see if someone is still alive. We dream these things and some of us, put in that situation, do them; but most of us do not. Most of us look the other way, wait for someone else—the police, the fire department, the para-medics—and then feel we've done our best if we made the call that brings them.
“Jamaal Washington heard a shot. He didn't turn on his heel, the way you or I might have done. It might have been better if he had,”I added, slowly searching their eyes. “If he had been more a coward and less a hero, he would not have been shot; his life would not have been put in danger; he would not have spent nine hours on an operating table while surgeons struggled to save first his life, then the use of his legs. He would not have been here, forced to defend himself against the charge of murdering the very man he went to help.”
Hunched forward at the end of the jury box, I rested my hand on the railing.
“But he wasn't thinking of what might happen to him—only that someone else might need help. He didn't hesitate—not for an instant. He went to help and he went right away. He saw someone slumped over the wheel. He opened the door on the passenger side and got in. He put his hand on the man's throat, searching for a pulse. The man was dead. He tried to find out who he was. He took his wallet out of his coat pocket. Then he noticed a gun lying on the floor.”
Dragging my hand along the railing, I began slowly to move across the front of the jury box.
“Suddenly a light broke through the fog. Now, for the first time, he was scared, really scared. Someone had just been murdered. Maybe the killer had never left; maybe the killer had been there the whole time, just on the other side of the car; maybe the killer was going to kill him!”
I reached the other end of the jury box, seized the railing with both hands, and leaned across.
“He bolted out of the car! He ran as fast as he could! It was the only way to save his life! That's all he could think about— getting away! That's all anyone would have thought about. And then everything went dark. He was hit by a bullet in the back. He never heard the shot. He never heard anything.”
Only the shuffling of my leather-soled shoes broke the silence as I turned away from the jury box and headed toward the empty chair next to Jamaal Washington. At the other table, Clarence Haliburton was busy jotting a note to himself.
The first witness called by the prosecution was the city coroner. Thin and stoop-shouldered, with sunken cheeks and hollow, deep-set eyes, Dr. Rupert C. Hitchcock slumped into the witness chair. Haliburton took him through the usual questions about his training and experience, questions that the coroner answered in a voice so listless and dull that Haliburton more than once had to ask him to speak up.
It was only when the issue became that of death itself that the good doctor began to rouse himself from his lethargy. Asked to describe the fatal wound, he became almost manic as he charted the bullet's progress as it penetrated Jeremy Fullerton's right temple and tore into his skull, carrying behind it sharp fragments of bone as it sliced through his brain. Death had been instantaneous. Jeremy Fullerton had died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
“Mr. Antonelli?”asked Judge Thompson. “Do you wish to cross-examine the witness?”
Bending forward, Dr. Hitchcock squeezed the fingers of first one hand, then the other, open and shut. An eager, self-confident smile began to spread across his narrow mouth.
“No, your honor,”I said, shaking my head with indifference. “I have no questions for this witness.”
Rupert Hitchcock's hands went limp; his nascent smile faded into oblivion. He dragged himself off the witness stand and out through the courtroom doors.
Like a spectator at a tennis match, I watched the prosecution and its expert witnesses volley questions and answers back and forth, the same, predictable way they did it every time they were called into court. The burden of proof, as everyone had been reminded so often it was difficult to know if the words still had any meaning, was on the prosecution. They had to make their case; they had to prove every element of the crime; nothing could be left out. I had learned a long time ago seldom to stipulate to anything. Let the prosecution bore everyone with the kind of tedious detail no one would remember and, if it went on long enough, some jurors might start to resent. Besides, the more witnesses the prosecution put on, the greater the chance one of them would make a mistake or be easy to dislike, like the coroner, and therefore easier to discredit.
The prosecution's case was simple: Jeremy Fullerton had been killed by a bullet fired at close range from a handgun found on the sidewalk next to the defendant after the defendant had been shot by the police. Nothing could be more straightforward. It had taken only seven witnesses and less than three days of testimony. I had not asked a single question.
Thursday morning, Judge Thompson settled into his chair, smiled affably at the jury, and told the district attorney to call his next witness.
“The People call Officer Gretchen O'Leary,”announced Haliburton routinely.
Opening a black loose-leaf notebook, I turned the pages until I found the place I was looking for. While the witness took the oath, I glanced quickly over the extracts I had made of the police reports and of the background information I had managed to assemble.
Even though she was wearing her black police officer's uniform, sidearm buckled down in a heavy leather holster on her belt, Gretchen O'Leary did not really look like a cop. With short brown hair, freckled face, and large hazel eyes, she seemed more like a college girl dressed for a part in a play. That impression began to vanish, however, as soon as she took her place on the witness stand. Stiff and erect, her mouth drawn tight, she focused on Haliburton with the same intensity with which, it was easy to imagine, she measured the movements of a suspect she was about to take into custody. She sat as still as a cat. No one watching her could have had any doubt about how quickly she could move.
As I listened to her answer the first few preliminary questions asked by the prosecution, I remembered something I had learned about her first night on patrol. Responding to a domestic disturbance call, she and her partner found the husband in a drunken rage and his wife, beaten bloody, cowering on the floor. The husband pulled a knife. With one swift blow of her baton, O'Leary fractured his wrist.
Haliburton took her through the events of the night Jeremy Fullerton was murdered. O'Leary's voice was steady, midrange, betraying just a trace of conscious self-control. She spoke in simple, straightforward terms, without emphasis or enthusiasm. Whatever color was added to the bare recitation of what she had seen and heard was put there by the mind of the listener.
She testified that on routine patrol, she and Officer Marcus Joyner heard what they both were certain was a gunshot. Activating the overhead lights, Joyner pressed down on the accelerator.
“Where did it come from?”Joyner shouted over the noise of the siren.
O'Leary looked all around, searching through the fog.
“Behind us!”she yelled. “Somewhere down the block. Back there!”she cried, grabbing the back of the seat as she craned her neck.
According to her testimony, Joyner looked back to his left as the car skidded around the corner. At the next intersection, he turned left again. As they neared the next street, he stared diagonally across the Civic Center, trying to get a fix on the location of the shot. Something broke through the fog. He rammed his foot on the brake pedal. O'Leary hit the dashboard with her shoulder as her head flew backward against the passenger-door window. The patrol car careened over the sidewalk, grazed a lamppost, and jolted back into the street. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a pedestrian they had nearly hit scrambling for safety.
They went all the way around the two-square-block Civic Center. At the last intersection, Joyner pulled the car into a hard right.
“Where?”he yelled, breathing hard. “How far down?”
“I don't know,”O'Leary yelled back. “Can't be too far.”
Joyner slowed down until they were barely moving. A moment later, he extinguished the blue flashing overhead light and stopped the car in the middle of the fog-bound street. There was nothing, not a sound. The street was still.
“You see anything?”whispered Joyner tensely.
O'Leary leaned as far forward as she could, searching along the line of cars parked on her side of the street, barely visible in the thick white fog. Her hand fumbled with the leather strap that held her gun snugly in its leather holster until she had it free.
“No, nothing,”said O'Leary, her eyes peering vainly into the fog.