The Wrong Man (3 page)

“You have a receipt that someone using this card bought gas. That’s all it says. True?”

“I don’t… I don’t get you.”

“The receipt doesn’t say what car received the gas, or what person pumped it.”

The witness still seemed perplexed.

“Isn’t it true, Alicia, that your Grand Prix was parked
outside your house
at the time of the shooting?”

This time, the witness didn’t answer so quickly. “My car—”

“If I told you that your neighbors will testify that your Grand Prix was parked outside your house at the time of the shooting—”

“Objection, Judge! Objection.”

The judge raised a hand. “The objection is sustained. Mr. Kolarich, you know better. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please disregard Mr. Kolarich’s last question. He just stated ‘facts’ to you that haven’t been established as facts.”

“Not yet,” said Kolarich.

The judge turned on Kolarich. “Counsel, you will not interrupt this court, and you are not doing yourself any favors here. This is not the first time I’ve given you this warning. But it will be the last. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Ladies and gentleman, you are not to believe so-called ‘facts’ just because a lawyer says he has these facts. You will only consider the evidence presented. Now, Mr. Kolarich, see if you can behave yourself.”

“I was driving Bobby’s car,” the witness blurted out.

Kolarich turned to her. “I’m sorry?”

“I just forgot which car, is all. I was driving Bobby’s car. Bobby’s got him a Mercedes he bought. A used one. He’s real proud of it.”

Kolarich paused for a long moment. He raised a hand, as if trying to work it all out. “You drove Bobby’s car.”

“Right. It’s also kinda small like the Grand Prix. I just got mixed up on the car. But it don’t change what I saw.”

“I see. I think I have that record somewhere.” Kolarich trudged back to his table and opened a folder. On the other side, the prosecutors were flipping through some papers themselves. “Okay, here it is. Bobby Skinner drives a 2006 Mercedes C280 4matic. License plate KL-543-301. Does that all sound right?”

“Yeah, I think so. That’s the license plate, and it’s a Mercedes. He parks it in the garage, so that’s why the neighbors wouldn’t a known if it was parked there or not.”

The witness sat back in her seat and seemed pleased with herself, as if she were winning a debate. It sure seemed like she was, from Deidre’s viewpoint.

Kolarich threw the slip of paper on his table, looking exasperated and disappointed, and turned around to face the witness. “But you’re
sure
you were in the driver’s seat, having just pumped gas, when the shooting occurred. Isn’t it possible you remember that wrong?”

“No, I’m sure about it,” said the witness, with renewed animation.

“And you were staring straight forward, looking south at the street where the shooting occurred. You’re sure you weren’t facing north?”

“I’m sure, Jason,” she said, smiling. She really was a cute young lady.

“And you’re still
sure
you were positioned at the farthest-west end of the gas station, the last row of gas pumps, and on the west side of that last row?”

“Yeah.” She was feeling better now, having recovered nicely from a brief slipup.

“So from your position in the driver’s seat of the car, if you looked to
your left, there was the gas pump you were using. Forward was the street where the shooting occurred. And to the right were no gas pumps, just open space and the restaurant next door?”

“Yeah, that’s right. See, I never thought about it from, like, which car ’cause I drove away as soon as I seen the shooting and that part about which car, it didn’t matter. Grand Prix or Mercedes, I wasn’t thinking, y’know.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” said Kolarich. “Because the shooting would have stuck out in your mind more than the car you were driving.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Mercedes, Grand Prix, they’re roughly the same size—you just slipped up in your memory.”

“Right, yeah.”

“Okay.” The lawyer sighed. “But just for the record, you’re
sure
now that it was your boyfriend’s car, the 2006 Mercedes C280 4matic, that you were driving. Not the Pontiac Grand Prix.”

“Yeah, I mean, now that you say it and all. Yeah, I’m sure.”

The lawyer let out an audible sigh and shook his head, seemingly defeated. Maybe beneath the impressive surface, Deidre thought to herself, he wasn’t that great a lawyer, after all.

The judge said, “Anything further, Mr. Kolarich?”

“Oh, just one more thing, Judge,” he said. “Alicia, how did you pump the gas?”

“How did I—what?”

“How did you pump the gas?”

“I—same way you always do, I guess…”

The lawyer moved away from the table, back toward the witness. “No,” he said. “What I mean is, if you pulled the driver’s side of the car up to the gas pump, as you’ve repeatedly testified, how did you fill the tank? When the gas tank for a 2006 Mercedes C280 is on the
passenger
side?”

The witness froze.

Jason Kolarich smiled.

And so did Deidre Maley.

My client, Ronaldo Dayton, looked better than I’d ever seen him as the sheriff’s deputy escorted him from the defense table to the county lockup. I promised him I’d stop by later to review the case before tomorrow, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to put on a defense. We would rest, and closing arguments would follow. I didn’t want to give the prosecution any time to try to rehabilitate their star witness, who hadn’t turned out to be such a star, after all.

“Mr.… Kolarich?”

I turned around and saw a woman standing with her hands clasped together, as if in prayer. She was on the high side of middle-aged, gray and weathered, wearing a troubled expression. That wasn’t exactly surprising. There weren’t a lot of happy faces in the criminal courts building.

“My name is Deidre Maley,” she said.

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said. My mother raised a polite boy. His name is Pete, my brother. But I have my moments, too.

“That was… impressive,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask: How did you know she wasn’t driving the Pontiac?”

The courtroom had filtered out. The jury was long gone, and the prosecutors had left, too.

“I didn’t,” I said. “I just knew she was lying.”

She considered me. She probably couldn’t decide if she was impressed or disgusted.

“My nephew needs your help,” she said.

Okay, put her down for impressed.

“He’s been charged with… felony murder, they call it. He has a public defender for a lawyer, but I’d like someone else.”

I asked, “Who’s the P.D.?”

“Bryan Childress.”

“Sure. He’s good.” I knew Chilly back from law school. He’d been with the P.D.’s office since graduation. But he was about to leave. I wondered if she knew that.

“He’s good, but he’s about to leave,” she said.

Check.

“And I think… I’d like you to represent him, Mr. Kolarich.”

The P.D.’s office gets a bad rap. Most of them are actually quite good. But they’re overworked, so sometimes clients feel like they’re not getting special treatment.

“I don’t have very much money,” she said. “But if you could be patient—I promise I’d find a way to pay you.”

She was probably in her sixties, so her earning potential wasn’t exactly at its peak.

“Tom is a sweet boy. He’s sick. He came back from Iraq a different person. I tried to keep an eye on him, but I just couldn’t. My husband, you see, suffers from multiple sclerosis, and I couldn’t take care of Tom like I should have. I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.”

And I couldn’t help but feel like I was being played. Aunt Deidre was laying it on pretty thick. I was waiting for her to collapse so I could catch her in my arms.

“His parents are deceased,” she added. “I’m all he has for family.”

Did he rescue drowning orphans, too? But lucky for her, she caught me in a good mood.

“I’ll meet him,” I said. “After that, no promises.”

Don’t ask me why I do the things I do.

But I was bored. And this one sounded interesting.

The Madelyn R. Boyd Center was two blocks south of the criminal courts building. I finished a preliminary hearing I had before Judge Basham on a B-and-E and met Bryan Childress in front of Boyd at eleven sharp. We were both surprised that I was on time.

Childress wore a gray suit and black tie. Cheap stuff. Chilly never cared much for clothes. Back in law school, he never cared much for anything at all except which bar we’d hit that night.

“So, Ronaldo Dayton,” he said to me. “Well done. I heard the jury came back in four hours?”

Three, actually. Rondo was probably still celebrating as we spoke.

Chilly whistled. The state had really wanted that one. It wasn’t that they cared so much about one gangbanger killing another, but Ronaldo Dayton was a chief with the Black Posse, and they wanted him bad.

We went through the doors up to the front desk. “Hey, Chilly,” said one of the guards, a younger guy, meaning my age. Looked familiar.

“Jimmy, you remember Jason Kolarich? From the gym.”

He nodded at me. “Sure. I caught one or two of his elbows.”

Right. Now I placed him. We played hoops together a couple weeks back. “I was trying to teach you the three-second rule,” I said.

He seemed to like that. “You guys going up to the penthouse?”

Childress nodded. I showed my bar card. Jimmy the guard took down my information and handed me a piece of paper with instructions. I knew the drill. I’d been here a couple times when I was a prosecutor and was trying to flip a gangbanger.

Jimmy followed us into the elevator and slipped a key card into a slot, the only way you could punch a button for the penthouse. Nobody was supposed to go up there by accident.

I looked over the instructions on the sheet of paper.

DO
NOT
:

• Touch the glass partition
  
• Pass the inmate anything that has not been placed in the visitor’s container at the guard station
  
• Accept anything the inmate tries to pass to you
  
• Pass
  anything
  through the speaking holes
  
• Turn off any lights
  

When I looked up from the piece of paper, Chilly was smirking at me. He was almost my height, with reddish-blond hair and a spray of freckles across his rosy cheeks. He looked like a leprechaun on human growth hormone.

“So you met Aunt Deidre,” he said. “She’s a persistent one.”

I folded the instructions and put them in my jacket pocket. The door opened on six. The guards, a man and a woman, sat behind a desk. Above them, in a thick, boxy font, were the words:

The walls were painted a dull orange, with a large clock and a photo of our governor, Edgar Trotter, smiling broadly. Three windows allowed mid-morning sunlight that angled across the tile floor. It had the sedate, antiseptic feel of a medical facility.

Bryan, who was counsel of record, filled out the paperwork. Case name, docket number, relationship to inmate, that kind of thing.

“We had you down for an interview room,” the female guard said to Chilly. “If he’s not counsel of record, it’s no contact.”

“Right. That’s fine.”

They made me sign a form indicating I understood the visitation etiquette and a waiver absolving the state of any liability for any damages resulting from this visit. We emptied all of our pockets and gave up our cell phones and wristwatches.

“Anything you want to transfer to him?” the guard asked.

Chilly looked over at me. “You want to give him your business card?”

I slipped one out of my pocket and into the round plastic container. The guard made sure that was all we wanted and then closed it up.

The male guard stood up. “You gentlemen have any questions?”

We didn’t. The guard handed us visitor badges and walked us down a hall. We passed through a metal detector and another guard picked us up.

“Our guy was an Army Ranger in Iraq,” said Bryan. “First lieutenant. An honorable discharge, nothing indicating any problems, nothing but good stuff on his record. When he gets home, he has a break with reality, as they say. He drops out of college, can’t hold down a job, and finally goes to ground. He’s arrested a couple of times on vagrancy and shoplifting, nothing that really sticks. But as far as anyone can tell, he’s been living on the street for over a year when the murder happens.”

“Combat fucked him up,” I said.

“It would fuck
me
up.”

Me, too. “So he shoots a woman getting out of her car in Franzen Park,” I said, recalling Bryan’s summary yesterday. “On Gehringer near Mulligan, by that shoe store. And your guy says this was post-traumatic stress? A flashback? He thought the woman was some soldier in Iraq and he opened fire?”

“Basically.”

“And our client told the cops that the victim pulled a gun on him?”

“In the interrogation, he committed to it. He said he told her to put the gun down. He said it over and over again to the detectives. ‘Put it down. Drop the weapon. Put it down.’”

“But you don’t buy it?”

Chilly let out a low moan. “The victim didn’t own a gun, and there’s no evidence she had one. No GSR on the victim, no embedded bullets found at the scene, other than the one in the vic’s skull. Point being, if she had a gun, there’s no trace of it.”

“But if he was flashing back, it was just him hallucinating, anyway. So who cares if he was accurately perceiving events?”

“That’s the argument, Counselor. It just would have been nice if she actually had a gun. It would make the whole thing feel more real to the jury.” Chilly hit my arm. “Oh, and I haven’t told you the best part: Our guy told the cops he apologized to the victim. ‘Please don’t die,’ ‘I’m so sorry,’ that kind of thing.”

It was my turn to moan. Seek forgiveness and you might spend your afterlife in heaven. But you’ll spend your mortal life in a state penitentiary. Our state followed the modified ALI on insanity. The defendant had to show that he suffered a mental defect that prevented him from appreciating the criminality of his conduct. Basically, that means he has to prove he didn’t know what he was doing was against the law.