The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella (26 page)

“The prosecutor tried to ask you about graphology. I think she was trying to ask you if it’s a legitimate system of analysis. So, is it legitimate?”

“Yes. Of course it is.”

“Isn’t it true that a graphologist interpreted a blot on John Wayne’s signature to be his unconscious mind telling him that he had lung cancer? That’s correct, isn’t it?”

I gave the jury an incredulous look, like this was the craziest thing I’d ever heard, but I put my back to the witness so that he couldn’t see my expression. I had, in fact, asked him if a graphologist had made that interpretation about John Wayne, and of course, he would know that to be correct. But because I gave the jury a strong visual aid, the jury heard an answer to a different question.

“Yes,” he said. He answered correctly, that a graphologist had indeed made this interpretation, but because of my face pulling, the jury heard him say that he agreed with the crazy theory, not the mere fact that the theory existed.

“So it’s more like fortune-telling?”

“No. It is a legitimate interpretational method of analysis.”

“I don’t know what that means, Doctor.” I turned to the jury and put my hands in the air to let them know that even the high-paid lawyer didn’t know what this guy was talking about. They smiled.

“Let’s see if we can have a practical demonstration.”

It was time to load up the base without the doc seeing. I pulled out my blowup of a letter “G” that I’d made in the photocopier upstairs and held it up for the jury. I turned it so the doc could see it and then placed it on the easel next to the “G” from the one-ruble note. With both the blowups side by side, they looked identical. Most prosecutors would object at this point, and we’d have an argument on whether I could test the expert’s findings. Normally the judge gives a little leeway to cross examine. Miriam didn’t object because she knew I’d get my way and that it might appear to the jury that she was shielding her witness. When she could, Miriam liked to let witnesses stand on their own feet.

“Doctor this ‘G’ is constructed in a similar way to the letter ‘G’ in the disputed note and the known samples of my client’s signature, correct?” I hoped he would agree. It seemed like a minute had gone by with just him and the jury staring at the large letters in front of them. Goldstein screwed up his face as he carefully examined the letters.

I had to give him a nudge. “The ‘G’ on this blowup does appear to be similar to the letter ‘G’ in the note, doesn’t it?”

“It could be, yes.”

“It is similar, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And this one?” I pulled up another big sheet of paper. The “G” looked similar, but it was a different sample; part of another letter was visible on this copy. A long laborious stare from Goldstein, but not as long as the last.

“Yes. It’s very similar.”

“Graphologists make judgments about people based on the way a person might construct the letter ‘G,’ correct?”

“Correct.”

“And isn’t it correct that a graphologist would say that the person who wrote this letter ‘G’ is a
sexual deviant
.” I let the last two words dominate the sentence by increasing my volume and letting those words boom and echo around the courtroom—a great way to wake everybody up. Handwriting is dull. Sex is interesting. Sexual deviancy is damn interesting.

“Yes,” he said. “The author, or whoever wrote those letter ‘Gs’ would have tendencies toward deviancy in their sex life.”

I paused. I wanted the jury’s mind working, questioning this statement.

“You have met the acting district attorney for this part of the world, Miriam Sullivan?”

He was suddenly nervous. “Yes. Of course I have.”

“Is Miriam Sullivan a sexual deviant?”

“What? Of course not !”

“Your Honor . . .” Miriam cried.

“Yes. It’s okay, Ms. Sullivan,” said Judge Pike. “Mr. Flynn, please behave yourself.”

“My apologies, Your Honor, but might I just ask if Your Honor indulges in any sexually deviant practices?” Now, this was totally outrageous. I was in danger of losing all my jury points and ending up in the cells below the court for contempt.

Judge Pike dragged her glasses to the end of her cosmetically corrected nose and looked at me over those rims, like a serial killer surveying her prey over the hood of a hot Chevy before running over the little maggot. “Mr. Flynn, you’ve got ten seconds before I throw your ass in jail.” The jury looked physically shocked.

I felt two blasts of vibration across the small of my back. Arturas had triggered the device. I remembered what he’d said earlier about the remote detonator : two buttons, one to arm, one to detonate. I figured the bomb was now armed and live.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Arturas looked at me like I held a knife to his mother’s throat. I was certain that arming the bomb was a warning—if I got sent to custody, Arturas would trigger the device.

Judge Pike seemed to rise from her chair as if the fury boiling in her cheeks was enough to physically levitate her from her seat.

“Your Honor, members of the jury, please turn to bundle B, page seven,” I said.

I’d never seen pages turned more furiously. Judge Pike opened her file to the correct page and returned her outraged stare to me. The jury looked perplexed.

I placed myself beside the easel to emphasize my point.

“Your Honor, the first character I have blown up here is the first ‘G’ from your signature on the certificate of listing on page seven—Gabriella Pike. Correct?”

“Yes,” she said, still angry but now a little curious.

“Dr. Goldstein, according to your findings, the judge could have written the disputed note.”

“No.”

I took a yellow Post-it note out of my pants pocket and handed it to the well-dressed Hispanic juror.

“This note was handed to me by the prosecutor this morning. Please pass it around to your fellow jurors.”

YOUR CLIENT’S GOING DOWN. I’LL HAVE HIS BAIL REVOKED BY 5 P.M.

“The jury will see the ‘G’ at the beginning of ‘going’ is in fact the same letter that I’ve blown up here, in this poster. It’s the same method of construction used by the author of the disputed handwriting. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“I already said it was similar.”

“On your evidence, the murder note could have been written by the defendant or the judge or the prosecutor?”

“No. You’re twisting everything.”

“Let’s allow the jury to look at the note. They can decide.”

The note passed around the jury. One by one they looked at the note. Looked at the blown-up “G” from “going” and looked at Miriam. The look was the same; Miriam was a kid with her hand in the candy jar. She put her head in her hands. The jury would think her presumptuous, cocky, not one of them.

“Let’s be clear about this, Doctor. Some graphologists say that a person who puts a pronounced tail on their letter ‘G’ has sexually deviant tendencies, but not all graphologists have the same opinion, right?” He thought I was throwing him a rope, and he grabbed it.

“That’s right.”

“Doctor, isn’t it correct that we construct letters of the alphabet according to how we were initially taught to write them, either at home or in school?”

“That’s a big factor, but not the only one. Some people alter their handwriting as they get older, but not substantially; I grant you that.”

“So, the nuns who taught me to write in Catholic school. If they put a tail on the letter ‘G’ when they wrote it up on the blackboard to allow me to copy it, that wouldn’t mean they were sexually deviant, now, would it?”

The members of the jury who wore crucifixes seemed to sit up a little straighter.

“No. It wouldn’t.”

“And it doesn’t mean that the judge or the prosecutor have deviant inclinations either, or indeed, whoever wrote on this one-ruble note. It’s more than likely to do with the way they were taught to write, and lots of perfectly normal people construct that letter in the exactly the same way, correct?”

“You’re right.”

“It’s a fairly common way of constructing that letter?”

“Yes.”

“There’s maybe two hundred people in this court. How many would construct that letter of the alphabet in the same way? A quarter? A third of them?”

“A good many would construct it that way,” he said. He was backpedaling rapidly. His hands shook as he took a sip of water. I’d taken him to a place he really didn’t want to go, and Goldstein wanted to get out as quickly as possible and move on.

The jury finished handing around Miriam’s note, and the court officer handed it to the judge. If possible, she looked angrier with Miriam than with me. I’d almost finished with Goldstein; the lid was on the coffin, and I just had to nail it down.

“It’s impossible to tell if someone is sexually abnormal just from their handwriting, isn’t it?”

“I would have to say yes. On reflection, it’s impossible,” he said, quick to divorce himself finally from graphology. Unfortunately, that was end for Dr. Goldstein.

“You now say it’s impossible, yet in the year 2000, you wrote a paper entitled,
Identifying Repeat Sexual Offenders through their Handwriting
. In this paper you say you can identify rapists, pedophiles, and deviants from nothing more than their tax returns. You did write this paper, didn’t you?” I held it aloft for the jury.

Goldstein stared straight ahead. His jaw and mouth worked soundlessly until he nodded.

“I take it that’s a ‘yes.’ So, Doctor, given that your sworn testimony today is that it’s impossible to identify sexual practices from handwriting, but in the year 2000, you wrote a paper claiming that not only can you identify sexual predators from their handwriting but that you can discern what kind of predator they are . . .” I paused, I hadn’t actually asked a question yet, but the pause served to let me look at the jury as if I were taking my question from them. “The question this jury will want an answer to is this : Doctor, were you lying in your paper in 2000, or are you lying now? Which is the lie?”

An unanswerable question is clearly the best kind. It didn’t matter what he said; no one would believe a word. Indeed, he said nothing. He simply hung his head. Two of the black women on the jury physically recoiled from Dr. Goldstein with a healthy
look of disgust on their faces. The rest of the jury looked angry at the doc or just couldn’t look at him at all and stared at their shoes instead.

No re-examination from Miriam. Her note had given me the idea. The “G” in her note had been written in a similar way to the letter “G” that Goldstein focused on in his report, and it didn’t take long to find another similar letter in the trial bundle. Lucky it was from the judge. Doc Goldstein walked sheepishly from the witness stand to take his place at the back of the court.

“I can’t stand any more of this today,” said Judge Pike. The armed guard came back into court to escort the jury to their room before they left for the day.

“All rise,” said the security officer. Pike slammed the door of her chambers closed on her way out. The court began to empty. It was four thirty. Miriam went into a huddle with her team. The jacket felt heavy on my shoulders. I’d run my persuader as best I could; if it worked, then Volchek should have been dancing a jig. When my gaze fell across him, I saw him smiling, but Arturas, curiously, was not.

As the reporters rushed out, I saw one man standing against the exiting tide : Arnold Novoselic. He buttoned his coat and slipped along the benches as he made his way toward the prosecution table, his gaze permanently fixed upon me.

I shook my head, but his stare never faltered and his look seemed to be one of determination. At least I knew Arnold wasn’t just here to observe : He was batting for the prosecution.

Miriam ignored her team once she registered Arnold’s approach. She met him before he could reach her table, and they sat down on an empty bench together. I glanced at Volchek and saw that he’d remained seated with his arms folded. As I looked back at the benches, I saw both Miriam and Arnold turning their eyes away from me : Arnold had told Miriam about the bomb.

They got up together and made for the door. Miriam’s team saw their leader leaving and quickly packed away their files and followed her. Before Miriam reached the door, she turned back and looked at me with a puzzled expression. I thought that could only be bad news. After the pounding she’d just taken, she should’ve been looking at me like I’d just keyed her car. Averting her gaze,
she scanned the emptying room, and her eyes found the three men in crisp suits whom I took to be feds. Arnold and Miriam waited at the door, and I saw Miriam introduce the jury consultant to the FBI before they left together.

I hung my head and swore under my breath. I’d run the perfect persuader and hopefully bought enough trust from the Bratva, but all that was about to change. From the look on Miriam’s face as she left the court, I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance of being arrested the second I stepped out of that courtroom and Amy wouldn’t live a moment longer.

Copyright

An Orion eBook

This ebook first published in 2015 by Orion Books

Copyright © Steve Cavanagh 2015

The moral right of Steve Cavanagh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 978 1 4091 6580 4

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