The Fall (33 page)

Glitsky, on the stand, gave it another careful look to go with the dozens of times he’d studied the shot, hoping that he’d see something this last time that had eluded him, but that hope got dashed in the still photograph’s unchanging reality. The picture was not going to convict Greg Treadway or anyone else. But it wasn’t going to acquit him, either.

When the lights came back up, Braden started in again. “By the way, Lieutenant Glitsky, did you have occasion to check the timeline that appears at the bottom of the video screen?”

“Yes, sir.” Glitsky had explained his procedure. He’d taken a picture of the video camera with his cell phone, then gone to maintenance and had them pull the CD, verifying that its timeline exactly matched when Glitsky had taken the picture. He’d asked maintenance to do a similar test randomly a few weeks later, and again its timeline was accurate.

The white male had shown up on the video at precisely 11:04, within
seconds of the scream, and the same time registered on Zhang Jun’s official clock. There didn’t appear to be any question about the time of Anlya’s death, nor the time of the white male’s appearance on the surveillance video.

“All right,” Braden said. “After you’d viewed this video, Lieutenant, what did you do next?”

“I decided to go to the tunnel myself.”

“To what end?”

“I hoped to identify a witness, an African-American homeless individual who’d been interviewed by another officer on the night of the crime. I thought it was possible, if not probable, that his was the back of the head we all just saw on the video. Before he had disappeared, his testimony indicated, and the video seemed to corroborate, that he might have had a good look at the person who came running down the stairs in the seconds after the scream.”

“Did you make any special preparations before going down to the tunnel?”

“I did.” Glitsky went on to describe the making of his six-pack of California driver’s license head shots, one of which was Greg Treadway’s. The six-pack was marked as an exhibit.

“And did you in fact locate someone who identified himself as the individual who had spoken to police that evening?”

“Yes. As I suspected, he is homeless. He goes by the street name Malibu, although apparently, his real name is Omar Abdullah. He admitted that he had been interviewed on the night of the crime. The night of the scream, he called it.”

“And did he say he saw anyone coming down the Bush Street steps in the immediate aftermath of the scream?”

“Yes. A white male in a coat and tie. He said he got a good look at him, face-to-face.”

“What did you do then?”

“I showed him the six-pack and read him the admonition on the back.” Glitsky dutifully read the admonition for the jury.

Braden asked, “Did he tell you he understood that admonition?”

“Yes, he did. I told him to take his time and asked him if he could recognize any of those six white males as the one he’d seen on the night of the scream.”

“And
did he recognize any of them?”

“He did. The bottom row, farthest left.”

Braden was ready with the exhibit. “How, if at all, did you have him mark this exhibit to indicate the identification he was making?”

“He circled the photo and signed and dated it.”

“And is that signature and date present on this exhibit?”

“Yes, I see it here.”

“Is the lower-left photograph the one identified by your witness Omar Abdullah as the white male he saw on the landing in the tunnel on the night of the crime?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And it is a photograph of whom?”

“It’s a picture of the defendant, Greg Treadway.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. No further questions.” He turned to Rebecca. “Your witness.”

Bakhtiari cleared his throat and spoke up. “Ms. Hardy. It’s been a long morning of testimony. If you don’t object, I suggest we break for lunch and continue with your cross-examination of Lieutenant Glitsky at one-thirty.”

•  •  •

R
EBECCA’S FACE SHOWED
her surprise. “I thought you were going back to the office.”

“Fate intervened,” Hardy said. He had come up through the bar rail and over to the defense table as soon as the judge called for the lunch recess, passing Glitsky with a curt nod and no words as his friend exited down the aisle of the gallery.

“Fate in what guise?” Greg asked.

Hardy looked around to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard and said, “In the guise of a missing witness.” He lowered his voice further. “Abe went out to pick up Omar Abdullah this morning, and he wasn’t there. It looks like he blew off testifying.”

“Can he just do that?” Allie asked.

“No,” Hardy told her. “Which is not to say that it doesn’t happen all the time.”

Rebecca’s eyes shone with hopeful disbelief. “They didn’t have him stashed someplace over the weekend?”

“Yes,
they did, but it didn’t work,” Hardy said. “Pretty amazing, huh?”

Rebecca nodded. “Staggering.” She cast a prayerful glance at the ceiling. “Wow!” She put a hand on her client’s arm. “Okay,” she said to Greg, “I’ve been touchy about it so far, but starting now, you’re allowed to be optimistic. A little.”

Obviously happy with the news, Greg remained somewhat wary. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “But is this really that big a deal? I mean, they’ve already got his testimony. Couldn’t they just read it out and get it in the record that way?”

“Maybe, but not in this case.”

“Why not?”

Rebecca pointed to her roommate. “Al? Quick quiz. You want to take it?”

The paralegal waded in. “Because Omar testified in front of the grand jury before it indicted you. And in the grand jury, we know, there’s no cross-examination, so until he gives his testimony at the trial in open court, where he is subject to cross, that testimony’s not admissible. By contrast . . .” Allie looked for Rebecca’s tacit permission to continue and got the nod she wanted. “By contrast, if he’d given the testimony at a preliminary hearing, he would have been subject to cross, and just reading out what he said would be admissible if he was truly unavailable.”

“So once again,” Hardy said, “they hurried it up by going for the grand jury indictment first, and it’s come back to bite ’em on the ass. Which, I must say, doesn’t break my heart.”

“Mine, either,” Greg said, warming to the situation. “So what next? They lose a witness, do they ask for a mistrial? I’m telling you, I don’t want a mistrial. I don’t want to do this again.”

Rebecca shook her head. “The prosecution can’t get a mistrial. That would be double jeopardy. They can’t try you twice for the same crime.” She looked at her client. “I get it, Greg. You don’t want one. And I think under these circumstances, we don’t, either.” She marveled at how the calculus had changed even since this morning. “No, we want them to run with what they’ve got, which, without Omar, doesn’t have you anywhere near the tunnel at any time.”

“Great.”

“It is great. It’s basically the whole ball game,” Rebecca said with real excitement. “I think when they finish their case in chief, without Omar—and
if you want the practice, Allie, you can start writing it up right now—we file an Eleven-eighteen.”

Technically, this was an 1118.1, named after its section of the California penal code. In this directed verdict of acquittal, the judge would have heard all the prosecution evidence and directed the jury to acquit because he’d determined that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a conviction. This was nearly always a standard boilerplate motion that the defense filed when the prosecution rested, which the judge summarily rejected. But this time, under these circumstances, it might fly. Rebecca turned to her father for corroboration. “Dad?”

“I would. Definitely. If they can’t put Greg here in the tunnel, then there’s no proof he was there. They got motive, maybe, and a damn thin one at that. Nothing more. I don’t see how the judge lets this go to the jury.”

“That’s because I wasn’t there,” Treadway said. “Not to get picky.”

Hardy gave him an appraising look. “I admire a man who stands by his story,” he said. Then he brought in the others. “Anybody here have plans for lunch?”

“We’ve got a room reserved in the back,” Rebecca said. “Lucca sandwiches ought to have been delivered already.”

“Have I died and gone to heaven?” Hardy asked. “Anybody mind if I tag along?” He broke the ghost of a grin at the client. “Nonbillable.”

Treadway nodded. “Join the party.”

•  •  •

G
LITSKY DIDN’T EXACTLY
skulk out of the courtroom, but he had no desire to run into Phil Braden or Wes Farrell or anybody else, not even his wife.

There was no way to put a kind spin on it—this Omar Abdullah thing had become far more dramatic and annoying than it ever had to be. Right from the very beginning, the night of the scream, when the dude had walked away from the first canvassing patrolman who interviewed him, and because of his critical importance to this ridiculous rush to indict somebody for Anlya’s murder, the super-ambitious Braden and even the more laid-back Farrell had given the homeless man options and considerations and a sense of control that was completely unnecessary and unprecedented in Glitsky’s thirty-plus years of law enforcement.

First had been the simple matter of his identification. The self-styled Malibu, always confident and even capable of charm, had laughed off Glitsky’s veiled
early threat that they could arrest him and hold him as a witness until the trial. He was obviously no novice in the ways of criminal procedure. He had a pretty good idea about habeas corpus. He knew that as a witness, he wouldn’t and perhaps couldn’t be held in jail until such time as he could testify. Wasn’t he already a voluntary witness? Wasn’t he the soul of cooperation?

In reply to Glitsky’s demand that he provide some documentation for his ID, Malibu repeated that he was registered at Glide Cathedral under the name Omar Abdullah. Glitsky had gone to check and found both the name and an actual identification document, issued by Glide, signed but with no photograph, which was, he realized, as good as it would get. He then ran the name and found Omar’s ten-year-old rap sheet (car theft, battery), which Glitsky eventually supplied to Rebecca Hardy, so that she could keep up with him if she needed to.

But seriously, new clothes? (Even if they were from Goodwill.) A hotel and meal allowance between the grand jury and the trial? Patrolmen driving him around town as though they were a taxi service? And when Glitsky had tried to insist on fingerprints . . .

Fingerprints?
I do not think so.

And Braden and Farrell had put up with all of it.

So now, of course, this.

Glitsky had to give it to Omar, though. Until today, he hadn’t appeared to be a flight risk, always appeared cooperative if arrogant, even happy to see Abe when he appeared. (Glitsky thought it also might have had something to do with the fresh, hot
char siu bao
that he’d started delivering with every visit.) The exceptions as to how they treated him and gave in to his demands went on, from Glitsky’s perspective, to an unfathomable degree. By the time they’d set up the appointment for him to appear before the grand jury, Omar had come to understand his critical role in convicting the guy he’d identified as the killer. He could trade perks for that. Accordingly, for example, he wanted to be admitted to the grand jury room via the stairway in the back of the building, accompanied only by Glitsky. And Braden had agreed.

Absurd.

And today, when it counted the most, he’d bolted.

Abe had already put out the word to the several shelters and food banks that Omar frequented, and he intended to canvass the usual square
mile or two where Omar wandered downtown, hopefully persuading the captain downstairs at Central Station to lend him some officers to help.

Unmolested on the walk from the courtroom to his office, Abe got to his desk and saw that the blinking light was on for his voicemail. A few seconds later, he was listening to a message that had been left at 8:05 by the AT&T supervisor with whom he’d worked on Sharla Paulson’s cell phone over the weekend.

“Lieutenant,” the message began, “this is Callie Lucente, and I wanted to let you know that I checked the activity on the warrant number first thing this morning, and she’s made a phone call to an unknown number, but I went back and looked and it’s one she called twice before in December. If you recall, that was long enough ago that we didn’t use it in our sample of familiar calls, but it looks like it might be someone she knows or used to know. Triangulation puts the recipient just outside the Ferry Building at just a few minutes ago, seven-forty-two, to be exact. If you could get back to me quickly and get a pickup on the number, we might be able to nail him right down. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

Glitsky hung up and stared at the phone as if it were a living thing about to bite him. He checked his watch and saw that it was 12:10, a full four
hours
since this call had been made. Why hadn’t Callie Lucente called his cell phone? He had given her his business card with every single number he ever used right on it.

Although what would he have done with the news of this phone call, which may or may not have been placed to Leon Copes? Four hours ago, he’d discovered that his prime witness was a no-show. Just because Sharla Paulson had made a phone call to someone, he wasn’t about to change direction and forget about Omar. Besides, for all Glitsky knew, Sharla could have been calling her sister, or her manicurist, or returning one of the marketing calls, or anything else. In any event, Leon Copes, one of five elopers, was so far down Glitsky’s priority list compared to Omar that he might as well not exist.

He’d get back to Callie on Sharla’s phone call when he got a minute, if that ever happened.

Meanwhile, and far more important, he desperately needed to get his hands on Omar Abdullah before the trial reconvened in an hour and twenty minutes.

I
T WAS AS
if Max’s mind had turned into a black miasma. Impulses he’d never considered at first left him almost unable to move.