Joyner let the patrol car slide a few yards farther down the street.
“What's that?”he asked urgently, pointing straight ahead.
O'Leary had seen it, too; or thought she had. The fog was playing with her imagination. One moment, it seemed to lift; then, a moment later, they were in it again. Now, just for an instant, it cleared once more. Across the intersection, on her side of the street, a large, dark-colored Mercedes was parked against the curb. Someone was bent over the wheel. Joyner stopped the car, reached for the flashlight that was fastened under the dashboard, and opened the door.
Getting out on her side, O'Leary watched Joyner walk cautiously toward the Mercedes. She saw him hesitate halfway across the intersection, draw his weapon, and turn on the flashlight. The narrow funnel of yellow light slashed through the light gray mist until it hit the driver's-side door. A man's head was tilted against the window, the side of his face pressed up against the glass, thrown against it with such force that it was stuck there, held fast by the sticky red blood that was spattered all over.
Joyner moved closer. O'Leary began to move forward, keeping to the right, gun in hand, looking past the passenger side of the car in case someone was still lurking in a doorway nearby. Joyner reached for the handle of the driver's-side door. Someone jumped up on the other side of the front seat and bolted out the passenger door. Startled, Joyner fell back, the ribbon of light from his flashlight jerking crazily through the gray silk fog. O'Leary immediately dropped into a crouch, both hands on her gun. The light from the flashlight swept past someone in a black leather jacket, a black wool cap pulled down to his eyes, running right in front of her, running toward the corner, trying to escape.
Testifying in open court, there was no trace left of the emotions that must have surged through Gretchen O'Leary and concentrated every instinct, every impulse in a way that no one who has never faced that kind of danger can begin to imagi ne. She spoke in a quiet, conversational tone, calm, in control, waiting to the end of each question before she began to answer, and always turning to face the jury when she did. Slowly, meticulously, every word was put in perfect order.
“I had begun moving closer,”she explained, describing the events immediately preceding her decision to fire. “When the suspect started to run, I was halfway across the intersection. He saw me. He started to turn toward me. He was raising his gun. I knew he was going to shoot. I discharged my weapon and the subject went down.”
It was curious. She did not say she “fired”or that she “pulled the trigger.”She said she “discharged”her weapon. She might as well have been reading aloud from a police training manual. I could almost see the section where she must first have learned it: “An officer whose life is in danger may discharge his weapon to protect himself.”
Haliburton finished his direct examination. Thompson asked if I had any questions I wanted to ask on cross.
“Just a few,”I replied almost apologetically as I got to my feet.
Under Haliburton's patient encouragement, O'Leary had gradually become, if not relaxed, at least comfortable on the stand. But now, as I moved around the end of the counsel table and started toward her, she sat erect, with a slight forward lean, tense and expectant.
“The district attorney asked you a lot of questions. Certainly more than I can remember,”I added with a helpless shrug. “So I wonder if you'd mind helping me out just a little. Could you, in your own words, just tell me again what happened that night? I don't mean everything that happened: just what happened from the time Officer Joyner got out of the patrol car.”
Her eyes never left me. When she was sure I was finished, she began the slow, methodical recitation of what she had seen and what she had done.
“Officer Joyner approached the subject vehicle. He shined the light on the driver's-side window. I could see someone's head. Then I could see blood on the glass. Then, all of a sudden, there was another head—on the passenger side. It just popped up. And then the passenger door shot open and he was running down the sidewalk, heading toward the corner.”
She paused and took a breath. There was no change in her expression, nothing to reveal what, if anything, she felt.
“I had begun moving closer. When the suspect started to run, I was halfway across the intersection. He saw me. He started to turn toward me. He was raising his gun. I knew he was going to shoot. I discharged my weapon and the subject went down.”
Not a word out of place, not a word left out. I tried to act as if there were nothing out of the ordinary about what she had just done.
“Yes, yes, I see,”I said, peering down at my shoes.
As if I had forgotten what I wanted to ask next, I went back to the counsel table and began to thumb through the pages of my black loose-leaf notebook.
“We've never met before, have we?”I asked, looking up.
“No,”she replied evenly.
I smiled. “But we have spoken before, haven't we?”
She seemed not to understand the question.
“You remember, don't you?”I asked, still smiling. “I called you. I asked if it would be possible to talk to you about the case.”
Guardedly, she nodded her head.
“I'm sorry, but you have to answer out loud. The court reporter has to take these things down.”
“Yes,”replied O'Leary reluctantly. “I remember your call.”
I looked down at the notebook to the page my finger held open.
“And do you remember your answer?”I asked, glancing up.
There was a slight, almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles around her jaw. “I believe I indicated I did not wish to discuss it with you.”
“Yes, I suppose you could describe it that way. Although,”I added with a short, self-deprecating laugh as I looked at the jury, “all I remember is the sound of the telephone being slammed in my ear.”
O'Leary sat still as stone, glaring at me.
“Oh, well, it doesn't really matter. We get to talk about it now. And the way my memory has been working lately,”I said with a rueful grin, “I probably wouldn't have been able to remember anything you might have told me then anyway.”
I shook my head, like someone embarrassed because he can no longer do the things he used to do, or at least not do them quite so well.
“Let me ask you this,”I began tentatively. “How long had you been a police officer that night you rode with Officer Joyner—the night of the murder?”
“Three months.”
“Three months? So this was one of your first assignments as a police officer?”
“Yes, it was.”
“And, of course, you were riding in the patrol car with a much more experienced officer, weren't you?”
“Yes, Officer Joyner has been on the police force for more than—”
“We'll find out about Officer Joyner's experience later,”I said, interrupting her before she could finish. “Right now we're only concerned with you.”
I had made my way across the front of the courtroom to the jury box. Leaning against the railing, I folded my arms across my chest and stared hard at the witness.
“Was this the first time you shot anyone?”
“Yes.”
“And you testified the fog was very thick that night?”
“Yes, it was.”
“And you testified that you first saw the figure in the driver's side of the car only when the patrol car was just a few yards away?”
“Yes, that's correct.”
“And yet you testified that you could see plainly not only that the defendant had turned toward you while he was running away, but that he had a gun in his hand and—”
“Yes,”she replied before I could finish, “I did.”
I threw up my hands in apparent frustration. “I'm sorry. I was going too fast. I got ahead of myself.”
Walking toward her, I apologized: “I'm afraid I've lost track of where I was. Would you mind? Could you just tell me again—in your own words, of course—exactly what happened, from the point at which Officer Joyner left the patrol car?”
It is strange sometimes, the way memory works. I had not read the case since law school and, despite what I had heard from the witness, I might still not have remembered if I had not heard Albert Craven, when he described that abandoned building on the far side of Angel Island, mention the tenements and sweatshops of New York. The case I had read in law school, the case everyone reads in law school, was about a fire in a sweatshop: the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Dozens of women were killed. At the trial, a lawyer had a witness for the other side go back through the story she had told on direct. When she repeated it word for word, he had her do it again. When she repeated it a third time word for word, everyone knew she was telling a lie.
This was Gretchen O'Leary's third time, but she was so concerned that I not catch her in an inconsistency that it never occurred to her that there was an even greater danger in staying too close to the same script.
“Of course,”replied O'Leary confidently. “As I testified, Officer Joyner approached the subject vehicle. He shined his light on the driver's-side window. I could see someone's head. Then I could see blood on the glass. Then, all of a sudden, there was another head. It just popped up. And then the passenger door shot open and he was running down the sidewalk, heading toward the corner.
“I had begun moving closer. When he started to run, I was halfway across the intersection. He saw me. He started to turn toward me. He was raising his gun. I knew he was going to shoot. I discharged my weapon and the subject went down.”
When she finished, my eyes were wide with amazement.
“Tell me, Officer O'Leary, who was it who helped you rehearse the testimony you have given here today?”
“No one!”she snapped.
“Ah! You did it all by yourself.”I shook my head in disgust. “No more questions,”I announced as I headed toward the counsel table, trying hard to conceal my delight.
C
all your next witness,”Judge Thompson ordered the next morning with a peremptory wave of his hand as he stepped to the bench.
Clarence Haliburton waited until the judge was seated in the high-backed leather chair.
“Your honor, the People call—”
Raising his hand, Thompson cut him off.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,”said the judge, smiling at the jury.
Thompson began to arrange the papers he had brought with him. A moment later, he glanced up and asked irritably, “Are you going to call a witness or not?”
Haliburton's crooked mouth hung open, an expression of bewildered contempt flashing in his eyes.
“The prosecution calls Officer Marcus Joyner to the stand,”he said finally.
His hands folded together as he leaned forward on the witness chair, Marcus Joyner appeared attentive, alert, and, so far as I could tell, completely at ease. Well over six feet tall, with round shoulders and long arms, he had a short wide neck and a broad pockmarked face. Narrow almond-shaped eyes slanted toward pudgy cheekbones and his heavy mouth turned down at the corners. Everything about him gave the impression of relentless strength, and yet Joyner's voice was surprisingly gentle and soft.
“In answer to one of the questions asked by Mr. Haliburton,”I inquired when it was time for cross-examination, “you indicated that you instructed Officer O'Leary to stay at the patrol car when you approached the Mercedes. Did I understand you correctly?”
Joyner was a courtroom veteran. Some witnesses start to answer a question as soon as they understand it; he waited until the last echo of the last word had died away.
“Yes, that's correct,”replied the officer.
I stood at the far end of the jury box, directly in front of the witness. One hand was shoved down into my pocket; with the other I fumbled with a button on my coat.
“And what was the reason you asked her to do that?”
“Standard procedure,”replied Joyner, looking right at me. “If there was a problem, one officer should be in a position to request assistance.”
I filled in the blank. “By summoning help on the patrol car radio?”
“Yes.”
“But instead of remaining at the car, as you requested, Officer O'Leary began to move toward the other vehicle, correct?”
He did not hesitate. “Yes, but she was still close enough to get assistance if we needed it.”
“But that wasn't what you told her to do, was it?”I persisted. “You told her to remain at the vehicle.”
“She did what she was supposed to do,”he insisted.
I took my hand out of my pocket and stepped closer. “Before she fired the shot that struck the defendant, did you hear her issue any kind of warning, any kind of command, anything that told the defendant you were police officers?”
“There wasn't time.”
“There wasn't time? You mean because he pointed a gun at Officer O'Leary?”
“Yes. She didn't have any choice.”
I moved even closer. “Did you see the defendant point a gun at Officer O'Leary?”
For just an instant, Joyner's eyes narrowed. “No. I was on the other side of the car. My view was obstructed, and,”he added, “it was very foggy.”
“In fact, the fog was so thick you couldn't see the body of Jeremy Fullerton until you were just a few feet away. Isn't that correct?”
“Yes. As I said, it was very foggy that night. I mean, that morning.”
I kept my eyes on him while he answered and watched him a moment longer after he finished. Then I shoved my hand back in my pocket, turned away, and walked across to the counsel table.
“So,”I said, peering down at an open page of the loose-leaf notebook, “you didn't hear a warning, and you didn't see the defendant point a gun at Officer O'Leary.”Closing the notebook, I looked up.
“At the moment she fired, which of you was closest to the defendant?”
Joyner thought about it for a moment.
“I'd have to say I was, at least a little closer. But, as I say, my view was obstructed by the car.”
“Yes, that's what you said,”I remarked as I drummed my fingers on the corner of the table. “How tall are you?”
“Six-foot-two,”he replied. He knew where I was going and added almost immediately: “But when he jumped up from the front seat and threw open the passenger-side door, I dropped down onto one knee.”