Impact (3 page)

All my friends graduated the spring before the trial started. I got a part-time job that fall and started taking classes at night to get my high school diploma. The plan was that I should be able to graduate by the Christmas after the trial.

My father arranged to work permanent nights at the plant so that he could attend the trial every day. My mother also worked it out so that if she was scheduled to work during the week, it would either be in the evening or at night. She didn't want to miss a single day either.

I tried to get my boss to scale my time back to Friday nights and Saturdays, but he
said he needed me to work during the week. So I quit and got another job delivering pizza at night instead. We were all tired, but we all showed up every single day.

A real trial isn't like a trial on tv or in the movies. When you see a trial on tv, it seems like people are up there testifying for five or ten minutes at the most. It also seems like the lawyers and the prosecutors are really smooth.

But in real life, it's not like that. In real life, people can be up there testifying for an hour or two hours or even longer. Some of the lawyers stumble and fumble and say
um
and
er
. And there are plenty of times when they're arguing over whether they can even show a certain piece of evidence or ask certain questions, so sometimes court gets adjourned early, and sometimes it takes a day or two for the judge to decide about whatever the lawyers are arguing about. So sometimes it's boring or frustrating or just seems like a big waste of time.

They had a pathologist up there who talked about how Mark died. He'd been
kicked and beaten with fists and with a piece of pipe. There were bruises and cuts all over his body, plus some broken ribs. She said what killed him, though, was having his head kicked in with some steel-toed boots. My mother cried quietly when she heard that. My father just stared straight ahead.

They had the pizza guy up. The prosecutor took him through everything he had seen and done, and asked him about what Mark had said, which was just the one word, the name
Tony
.

Then the defense lawyers got into it. There were four of them, one for each defendant. They grilled the pizza guy like you wouldn't believe. First they wanted to know what the pizza guy had seen. He described again hearing a sound and calling out to see if everything was okay, and then going into the parking lot and seeing Mark lying there and three or four guys running away.

The lawyers wanted to know if the pizza guy had seen the three or four guys doing anything except running away. The pizza guy said he hadn't.

The lawyers said, “You say you saw three or four guys. Which was it,
three
or
four
?” The pizza guy said he only got a good look at three guys, but that he was sure he saw a fourth person out of the corner of his eye.

Each lawyer wanted to know if the pizza guy had seen
his
client. The pizza guy said he was positive he had seen Tony and Joey and Robert. He said he hadn't seen Kyle. The lawyers went on and on, asking him how he could be so sure what he saw when he didn't know any of the defendants and when it was the middle of the night. The pizza guy said they ran right under a streetlight.

Tony's lawyer wanted to know what Mark had said about Tony. When the pizza guy said that all Mark said was Tony's name, Tony's lawyer said that for all the pizza guy knew, Mark could have been trying to say that Tony had tried to help him. He said that for all the pizza guy knew, the guys he saw fleeing the parking lot could have been running away because they were afraid they would be accused of something. Tony's lawyer kept on and on, trying to make the jury think that
the pizza guy hadn't seen anything that would prove that Tony even touched Mark.

I glanced at my father. He was staring straight ahead, but I could tell he was angry.

Kyle's lawyer was asking over and over again, “So you didn't actually see my client? So you have no way of knowing whether my client was even there?” I felt my father tense up beside me.

They had a bunch of experts. The first was a cop who found fingerprints on a piece of pipe that had been found in a garbage can in an alley a few blocks from the parking lot where Mark died. He said one of the fingerprints belonged to Tony. Tony's lawyer asked him if there were any other fingerprints on the piece of pipe. It turned out there were—lots of them. The lawyer asked if the cop knew whose prints they were. The cop didn't. The lawyer asked if there was any way to tell whether someone else, someone whose prints the cop hadn't identified, had handled the pipe after Tony. The cop said there wasn't. Tony's lawyer asked if there was any way to
tell if someone had picked up the pipe after Tony had put it down and had used it to beat Mark. The cop said there wasn't.

My father tensed up beside me again.

Then a forensic scientist went up and testified that Mark's blood had been found on the pipe along with a couple of Mark's hairs. She also testified that blood had been found on one of Tony's boots and that it was Mark's blood. Blood had also been found on the soles of Joey's boots, and on the toe of one of Robert's Doc Martens. They hadn't found any blood on anything that belonged to Kyle.

The lawyers all asked pretty much the same thing: Was there blood on the ground where Mark was found? The forensic scientist said that there was. Was it possible that Tony and Joey and Robert could have got the blood on their shoes or boots when they went to help Mark? The forensic scientist said that it was possible. Was there blood on any clothing belonging to the defendants? No, there wasn't. Kyle's lawyer asked again if there was any blood on anything belonging
to Kyle. The forensic scientist said no, there wasn't.

Another police officer testified, a homicide cop. He explained how the name Tony had led him to Shannon, and that had led him to Tony's school, where he got a photograph of Tony and found out who Tony's friends were. He then presented the pizza guy and the taxi driver with a photo array—a set of pictures that included Tony and a bunch of other guys who looked similar to him. He did the same thing with Joey and Robert and Kyle. The taxi guy couldn't recognize anyone, but the pizza guy picked out Tony and Joey and Robert right away.

The detective said that he spoke to each of the three and they all said the same thing— they were just hanging out that night and they didn't know Mark. The homicide detective said they were vague on where they were hanging out and they couldn't tell him a single place they had been where someone might have seen them and might remember them.

He got a search warrant and their houses were searched. That's how he got the shoes
and boots. He said that if he had to guess, the defendants had gotten rid of their clothes but had just washed their boots and shoes. All of the lawyers objected to that, and the judge cautioned both the homicide cop and the prosecutor.

I started to worry. It all came down to the pizza guy. He had seen Tony and Joey and Robert. But he hadn't actually seen them do anything. What if they got off?

“We have looked at the four young men who are accused of killing our son,” my father reads. “We have looked at them and I can tell you, in all honesty, that there were times when I couldn't see any difference between them and our Mark. They look like ordinary boys.”

Shannon was called to testify. She was pale and kept biting her lower lip, which is how I knew she was nervous. She looked at the
prosecutor the whole time. He asked her about her relationship with Tony.

“He used to be my boyfriend,” she said.

“For how long?”

“For two years,” she said.

“And then what happened?”

“We broke up.”

“Why did you break up?”

“Because if another guy even looked at me or spoke to me, even if he was just asking me what time it was, Tony would freak out. One time I was working on a school project with a guy who was assigned to work with me. We didn't have any choice, the teacher made the assignments. We were in the library together, just the two of us. Someone told Tony that we were there, and Tony came and beat the guy up.”

Tony's lawyer objected.

“He did,” Shannon said. “If you don't believe me, you can ask Michael Riordan. He was in the hospital for a week. He almost lost an eye.”

The whole time she was saying that, Tony's lawyer was objecting.

The prosecutor asked Shannon if Tony had ever hurt her.

“He slapped me around a couple of times, yeah,” she said. She kept her eyes on the prosecutor. Tony was looking at her the whole time she was up there.

“Can you tell the court why he did that?” the prosecutor said.

Tony's lawyer objected again. He said that Shannon couldn't read Tony's mind and couldn't testify as to what he was thinking.

The prosecutor said, “Shannon, can you tell the court what happened when Tony slapped you around?”

“It happened twice,” Shannon said. “The first time, Tony wanted me to go out with him on Saturday night. We always spent Saturday night together. But I said I couldn't because I had to go to my grandparents' anniversary party. He wanted to go with me, but I said he couldn't. My parents didn't like Tony. They didn't want him at the party. But I didn't tell Tony that because I knew it would make him mad. I just told him that it was a family-only party, so he couldn't come. Then he told me

I shouldn't go either. When I said I had to, he hit me.”

“How did he hit you?”

“He slapped me across the face. Twice. Hard.”

“What about the second time?”

“The second time, I told him I was too tired to go out with him. By then I wasn't sure if I wanted to see him anymore. This was after he beat up Michael Riordan.”

Tony's lawyer objected again.

“Tony argued with me. He said he really wanted to see me. He said he'd had a tough week and he wanted to have some fun. When I told him again I was too tired, he punched me in the face. I ended up with a black eye. My parents wanted me to report him to the police, but I was afraid to. So instead they made me transfer to another school.”

“How did Tony react to that?”

“He didn't like it,” Shannon said. “He called me all the time. He left messages. He showed up at my new school. He'd be waiting for me at the end of the day. He said
he wanted me back, and he'd get mad at me when I told him it was over.”

“How did you meet Mark Spencer?” the prosecutor asked.

I held my breath.

“Mark went to the school I transferred to,” Shannon said. “I noticed him right away. Mark was good-looking. He was nice too. I heard people talking about him all the time.”

She glanced at where my mother and father and I were sitting. She looked at my parents. I held my breath again. She didn't look at me.

“Mark asked me out,” she said. “We went out a couple of times. He was nice.”

“Did Tony ever see you with Mark Spencer?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes,” Shannon said. “One time we came out of school together. Mark must have said something funny, because I remember I was laughing. Then I saw Tony. He came up to me and demanded to know who Mark was. I told him it was none of his business. He tried to grab me, but Mark
shoved him away. I think Tony would have done something, but a cop car went by, and I could see the cops were looking at what was happening. So Tony took off.”

“When did this happen?”

“About a week before Mark...before he died.”

“Did Tony do anything that led you to believe that he might want to hurt Mark?”

“He phoned me. He wanted to know who Mark was. He wanted to know his name. But I didn't tell him.”

“Did he say why he wanted to know Mark's name?”

“He said he wanted to talk to him.”

“Why didn't you tell him who Mark was?”

“I was afraid he wanted to hurt Mark the way he hurt Michael Riordan.”

Tony's lawyer asked Shannon a lot of questions about her and Tony.

He asked why Shannon had stayed with Tony for two whole years. Shannon said that he was nice at first.

The lawyer asked her about a party she and Tony went to just before Shannon
transferred schools. He asked her if it was true that she got mad at Tony because he was flirting with another girl. She said no. He asked her if she knew there were several witnesses he could produce who would testify that she had told them she was mad at Tony because he was flirting with this girl and she was going to get even with him if it was the last thing she did. She said no, but I could tell that some of the jurors were wondering if she was telling the truth.

Then Tony's lawyer asked if that's what she was doing now—getting even with Tony. She said no. He asked her if that was the real reason she transferred schools—because she couldn't stand seeing Tony with another girl. She said no. He asked her if anyone had seen Tony give her that black eye. She said no. He asked her if she was sure she hadn't given herself that black eye and then blamed Tony for it, as a way of getting even with him. He asked if that was the real reason she hadn't reported Tony to the police—because he hadn't hit her at all.

Shannon's face was red by then. She
said no. She said she would never do anything like that. She said everything she said about Tony was the truth. She said—

“No more questions,” Tony's lawyer said.

“We worried about our younger son, Jordan,” my father reads. I wait, but he does not look at me the way he looked at my mother earlier. “We know what a terrible toll his brother's death has taken on him.”

Michael Riordan was called as a witness. He said what Shannon had already described. He said that Tony Lofredo had come into the school library when he was working on
a project with Shannon. Tony pulled him up out of his chair and punched him in the stomach and said that would teach him to fool around with Shannon. Michael said that Tony then punched him in the face, and he kept punching him. He said Tony got suspended, but even then he was afraid to go back to school because Tony used to hang around across the street. He said he transferred schools to get away from Tony. He said he made sure he didn't transfer to the same school as Shannon because he didn't want Tony to get the wrong idea.