“How long have you been on the force?”
“Twenty-three years.”
“You were the senior officer?”
“Yes, I was.”
I moved behind the counsel table and rested both hands on the back of my empty chair.
“You must have wondered why Officer O'Leary fired, did you not?”
“Yes,”replied Joyner without any change of expression.
“Yes?”I repeated with a puzzled smile. “Yes? Is that all? Didn't you inquire—didn't you at least ask why she had fired?”
“Yes,”he said, staring back at me. “I asked.”
I waited, letting the jury draw from his silence an implication of reluctance, before I finally asked, “And what answer did she give you?”
“She said she fired because the defendant,”he said, stretching out his bulky arm to point across the courtroom at Jamaal Washington, “had turned to fire at her.”
“You gave the defendant first aid until the paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital, didn't you?”
“Yes,”replied Joyner.
“You saved his life.”
It was not a question and Joyner made no answer. I let go of the chair and patted Jamaal on the shoulder as I passed behind him.
“Now, the reason you were there,”I asked as I stopped in front of the jury box, “the reason you found Jeremy Fullerton in the first place, is because you heard what you thought was a gunshot?”
The tight black leather in Joyner's gleaming knee-high boots creaked as he shifted position in the witness chair.
“Yes,”he replied.
“You immediately started to drive toward where that shot had come from, correct?”
“Not quite. The shot seemed to come from some point behind us, so I—”
“So you drove to the next corner—at the Civic Center— turned left, then drove around the center until you came out on the street where you thought the shot had been fired,”I interjected impatiently. “How much time would you estimate elapsed between the shot you heard and when you first found the car with the body of Jeremy Fullerton inside it?”
Before he could answer, I added, “And I understand from previous testimony that after getting all the way around the Civic Center you slowed to a crawl, searching for the location in the fog that everyone agrees was so incredibly thick that night.”
Twisting his head to the side, Joyner moved his closed mouth back and forth across his teeth as he tried to calculate the time.
“I'd say something less than two minutes,”he said tentatively. “Yes, I'd say that,”he added more confidently.
“Nearly two minutes!”I exclaimed, shaking my head in astonishment. “I guess I just don't understand. Nearly two minutes,”I repeated, throwing a puzzled glance at the jury.
As I began to pace in front of the jury box, I looked at Joyner out of the corner of my eye.
“In your experience, Officer Joyner, when someone robs someone at gunpoint, doesn't the victim usually give them the money?”I stopped still, a look of incredulity on my face. “If someone had a gun in my face, wouldn't I ordinarily do whatever I was told to do?”
“Sometimes people try to resist, but you're right: That's what someone would normally do.”
“Resist?”I asked in disbelief. “With a gun right in their face?”
For the first time, Marcus Joyner smiled. “It happens. It isn't the smart thing to do, but it happens.”
“All right,”I said. “Let's assume for the moment that Jeremy Fullerton was shot as part of a robbery. Either he resisted or he did not. Now, if he did not resist, then he was shot after he gave up his money—his wallet. Is that fair?”
“That makes sense,”Joyner agreed.
“But if he was shot after he gave up his wallet, whoever shot him would have run away as soon as the shot was fired. He would not still be there two long minutes later, would he?”
Joyner leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. “No, probably not.”
“But the defendant was there—wasn't he?—when you got there, two minutes after you heard the shot. Which means that if he did it, Jeremy Fullerton must have resisted. But if he resisted, and if he got shot while he resisted, is it likely that the defendant would have just hung around—for two whole minutes—after he shot him?”
Before Joyner could answer, I asked, “Isn't it a fact, Officer Joyner, that when a robbery goes bad and someone gets shot, whoever did it might grab whatever was in sight, but they would never just stay there for—how long did you say it was?—two minutes, before they tried to get away?”
“It would be unusual,”Joyner had to concede.
“Quite unusual,”I added. “Especially when it would have taken only a few seconds at most to reach inside a dead man's jacket to get his wallet.”
Haliburton was on his feet. “Objection! Mr. Antonelli is giving a speech instead of asking a question.”
I did not wait for the judge to rule. My eyes never left the witness.
“Were the keys in the ignition?”I asked as the district attorney, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.
“Yes, they were.”
“Was the engine running?”
“No.”
“Had the engine been running? Did you check the hood of the car?”
“I checked. It was cold. The engine hadn't been turned on in some time.”
“The car doors were unlocked, correct?”I asked rapidly, ready with the next question before the last one had been answered.
“That's correct.”
“All four of them?”
“Yes.”
“In that model Mercedes, when you open the driver's door, do the others open at the same time? In other words, do they all unlock at once?”
Joyner shook his head. “We checked that. Only the driver's door unlocks. There's a button on the console if you want to unlock the others.”
I looked at him as if I wanted to make sure I had it exactly right.
“In other words, the driver unlocks his door and gets in. The other doors—all three of them—remain locked?”
“Yes.”
“So no one could simply have slipped in the passenger-side door when the driver got in, could they?”
“No,”he admitted, “unless the driver was compelled to open the other door.”
I turned toward the jury and drawled, “Because, I suppose, if you're going to mug someone, you're more likely to tell him to let you in instead of forcing him to get out; because, I suppose, you'd rather not do it in the dark when you can do it in the well-lit leather-lined interior of a late-model Mercedes?”
“Your honor!”cried Haliburton from the other side of the courtroom.
“Sorry,”I said, waving my hand in the general direction of the bench. “All right, Officer Joyner,”I went on, brushing back the thatch of hair that had fallen over my eye. “Let's go back to the weather that night. It was foggy—correct?”
“Yes.”
“You could barely see in front of your face?”
“It was quite thick at times.”
“You could barely see the car across the intersection?”
“That's correct.”
I was in front of the counsel table, almost sitting on it, one foot crossed over the other. My left arm was wrapped across my stomach, my right elbow resting on it, while with my thumb and forefinger I stroked my chin.
“And neither you nor Officer O'Leary shouted any kind of warning—not even once—to the defendant before she shot him?”
“As I said, there wasn't time. He raised his gun—”
“But you never actually saw that happen, did you?”
“No, but—”
“In fact, neither one of you ever said anything before that shot was fired, did you?”
Joyner did not understand the question. He looked at me, a blank expression in his eyes, waiting for me to explain what I meant.
“You never announced your presence as police officers, did you?”
“There wasn't any time. He jumped out of the car the moment my flashlight hit the dead man's face.”
Pushing off from the table, I quickly closed the space between us. “And there wasn't any way that the defendant could have known you were the police instead of the killer, was there?”
“He was the killer!”Joyner shot back.
My eyes darted toward the bench. I was about to ask that the answer be stricken as nonresponsive. Then, in an instant, I realized what he had given me.
“That was your assumption, wasn't it? From the moment he jumped from the front seat of the car, you assumed—didn't you?—that he was the killer.”
“He ran away from the scene,”said Joyner.
“So far as you know, he was running away from the killer— isn't that possible, Officer Joyner?”I asked as I turned away from him.
“No,”he insisted vociferously. “It is not. He had the gun.”
“Oh, yes—the gun,”I said, turning back. “Isn't it just possible, Officer Joyner, that this young man opened the unlocked door—unlocked because someone else had just left—and tried to help? Isn't it possible that he saw the gun on the floor, heard you coming, saw the light flash through the fog, and—afraid the killer was coming back—panicked and ran? And isn't it possible, Officer Joyner, that in his panic he picked up the gun as he bolted out of the car and tried to get away?”
Tossing back my head, I searched Joyner's eyes.
“Isn't it possible that instead of pointing the gun at Officer O'Leary, he turned for a split second to see who was after him, to see how close they were, and that Officer O'Leary just thought he was turning to take a shot?”
Reluctantly and without conviction, like someone forced to answer a question with no obvious connection to the only reality he knows, Joyner agreed that it was at least a possibility. My hand resting on the railing, I did nothing to disguise my disapproval.
“You're a trained police officer, aren't you?”I asked sharply.
He fixed me with a contemptuous stare. “Twenty-three years.”
“When you're investigating a crime, aren't you supposed to consider all the alternatives?”
“I'm not a detective, I'm—”
“You're a street cop. You drive a patrol car. Yes, yes … we know all about that,”I interjected with a show of impatience. “When you arrive at the scene of a crime, do you interview all the witnesses—or only those who agree with what you assume must have happened?”
With sullen eyes, Joyner replied tersely, “All the witnesses.”
“Very good. Now, once again, indulge me. Assume that the defendant did not kill Jeremy Fullerton. Assume instead that, like you, he heard a shot, but instead of being blocks away, he was just a few yards away. Assume that he heard the shot and went to help. That would explain why he was in the car, wouldn't it?”
Joyner had been on the stand a long time and he was getting tired. His manner became more irritable; he was not so willing to ignore questions about his competence or his character. As he listened to the question, a cynical smile formed at the drooping corners of his mouth.
“Yeah, I suppose it would.”
“And given how thick the fog was, and given that you never announced you were police officers—that would explain why he tried to run away, wouldn't it?”
A corrosive smile spread over his face. “Yeah,”he grunted.
“And the panic he must have felt—that anyone would have felt—that would explain how he happened to pick up the gun he found in the car, wouldn't it?”
“Yeah,”replied Joyner, his voice filled with derision.
I looked at him for a moment, then stared down at the floor as if I were trying to understand the reason for his skepticism. Slowly, I raised my eyes and studied him again.
“But if that doesn't explain it, Officer Joyner, there's only one other way the gun could have ended up there on the sidewalk next to his body, isn't there? Either you or Officer O'Leary put it there.”
Angrily, Joyner began to deny it.
“No more questions,”I announced, waving my hand in disgust.
Before the judge had finished asking if he had any questions on redirect, Haliburton was on his feet, trembling with anger.
“You were about to answer the defense attorney's question when he cut you off,”he began, the words coming one on top of the other. “Finish the answer you were going to give! Did either you or Officer O'Leary move the gun from the car?”
“No, sir, we did not.”
“If neither of you moved the gun,”asked Haliburton, his voice dropping into a more conversational tone as the color of his face returned to its normal shade, “then how did it get to where it was found?”
Joyner sat back in the witness chair and turned to the jury. “The defendant dropped it there.”
Haliburton waited until Joyner's eyes came back around to him.
“After he was shot running away from the murder?”
“Objection!”I shouted, jumping out of my chair.
The judge hesitated, then looked at me, waiting for an explanation.
“The question either assumes the conclusion or it's a compound question,”I insisted. “Either way it is impermissible; both ways it is ambiguous.”
Thompson smiled. “In plain English, Mr. Antonelli.”
“The district attorney said: 'running away from the murder.' That assumes what he has to prove: It assumes the conclusion. If he isn't doing that, then he's asking two questions: First, did the defendant drop the gun after he was shot; and, second, did the defendant commit the murder.”
Pulling his head to the side, Thompson thought about it for a moment.
“I don't know if I agree with that,”said the judge finally. “But I don't want to spend any more time on it.”Turning to Haliburton, he instructed him to rephrase the question.
Haliburton shrugged his shoulders and muttered something under his breath.
“Officer Joyner,”he asked, “was the gun found where the defendant dropped it after he was shot?”
“Yes,”replied the witness. “We found it just a few inches from his hand when he was lying on the sidewalk.”
A faint smile on his lips, Haliburton rubbed his thumb over the crystal of his watch. He turned to the jury.
“Mr. Antonelli took you through a number of alternatives,”said the district attorney while he continued to stare at the jury. “Why don't we go through the same alternatives again, but in reverse order?”He faced the witness and asked, “The gun was found where it fell after the defendant was shot, correct?”
“Yes.”
“In other words,”said Haliburton, casting a withering glance at me, “you didn't do what defense counsel suggested— plant evidence?”