Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

anything like . . ."

He let it hang there.

"Then what happened?" Abe Socolow asked in another time-honored question lawyers use to move the story along.

"Jake, Mr. Lassiter . . ." Rusty looked over at me and gave a half smile. He was a boyish charmer until you got to know him. "Jake jumped up and went for the gun, but Chrissy just fainted dead away into his arms."

"Your witness," Socolow said amiably.

There was no need to cross-examine Rusty. Except my need to inflict some pain, preferably not on my client or myself. I stood and Rusty smiled at me, which caused a red-hot spot in my gut to spread to my limbs. I was sweating.

"Mr. MacLean," I began, as if I'd never seen this fellow in my life, "have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

Rusty's smile froze, and he shot an anxious look at Abe Socolow, who merely shrugged. It's a perfectly legitimate question of any witness, but strangely, under the rules of evidence, if the answer is yes, you can't ask, "What crime?" If the answer is no, and it's a lie, you can put on evidence of the conviction to impeach the witness.

"You oughta know," Rusty said finally.

"Indeed I do, but the jury does not." I opened a file and held up a blue-backed legal document, as if examining it. "I ask again, sir. Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

"Yeah, you represented me. Next time, I'll get a better lawyer."

That drew some laughs from the gallery, and a few smiles from the jury box, but it didn't bother me one bit. Let the jurors think poor Chrissy had a bumbler while the state was represented by the coolly efficient surgeon named Socolow. I am not above a ploy for sympathy. I returned the blue-backed document to its file folder. It was the deed to my house, not Rusty's conviction for fraud, after overcharging models for their composites while making farfetched promises of employment.

"Mr. MacLean, how much time elapsed from the moment Chrissy Bernhardt took the gun from her purse until the last shot was fired?"

Rusty shook his head. "It was quick. I dunno. Less than ten seconds." He stared into space, thought about it, actually brought his hand up as if holding a gun, pulled an imaginary trigger three times. "Maybe six seconds."

"Six seconds," I repeated. "Now, you just testified that Christina fainted after shooting her father?"

"Yeah. I said that."

"So she lost consciousness?"

"She just collapsed, and you caught her before she hit the floor."

"Precisely when did she lose consciousness?"

"Precisely? I don't know."

"Was it a second before she fell, five seconds, six seconds?"

"Well, it couldn't have been six seconds. That would be about when she started firing, and she was conscious then."

"She was?" I tried to sound surprised. It isn't difficult because I often am. "Were you monitoring her heart rate?"

"No."

"Or her blood pressure?"

"No."

"Or her brain waves?"

"No, of course not, but she was firing a gun, for God's sake."

"Which you were looking at, correct?"

"What?"

"The gun, Mr. MacLean. When Chrissy Bernhardt was firing the gun, state's exhibit three . . ." I walked to the clerk's table and picked up the little Beretta. "You were looking at it, weren't you? Your eyes were glued to the gun?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Just as you are now?"

Rusty's eyes flicked from the gun to the jury and back to me. "Yeah. It kinda draws your attention."

"Therefore, you weren't looking at Chrissy's eyes, were you?"

He paused a moment, irritated with me. "No, I guess not."

I returned the gun to the clerk. "So you couldn't possibly know if Christina's eyes were open or closed at the time of the shooting, could you, sir?"

The purpose of cross-examination is to eliminate a witness's choices, and just now, Rusty had no choice. "No, I couldn't tell if her eyes were open," he admitted.

"You couldn't see her facial expression at all, whether her face was slack or taut?"

"No."

"And consequently you don't know if she was conscious or unconscious or in some in-between state?"

"Objection! Calls for speculation."

"Overruled, but Mr. Lassiter, why don't you rephrase anyway? 'In-between state' is a little vague."

"Do you know if Christina Bernhardt was conscious at the time of the shooting?" I asked.

"I don't understand the question," Rusty said. He was not going to make it easy for me, especially after I humiliated him with the criminal conviction question.

"All right," I said. "Was she alert to her surroundings?"

"She seemed to know where her father was sitting."

Ouch. I went on without blinking or checking for wounds. "Did she appear to notice you sitting at the bar?"

"No."

"And you were right next to Mr. Bernhardt?"

"Yeah."

"And you were a friend of Chrissy's?"

"Like I said, I was her agent once."

"Did she say hello to anyone in the club?"

"Not that I saw."

"Did she move quickly toward Mr. Bernhardt?"

"No. She kinda swayed over, the way models walk."

"Slowly?"

"Yeah."

"In a languid manner?"

"I don't know what that means."

Neither had I until I looked up synonyms for "faint," "feeble," and "weak."

"Did she seem to be in a trance?" I asked.

"I never saw anyone in a trance," he said, "except in the movies. More like she was real sleepy."

"As if she were sleepwalking?"

"In a way."

"Which is sort of a trance, is it not?"

"Objection! Repetitious." Socolow was on his feet.

"Sustained. Mr. Lassiter, I do think you've mined this ground."

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said, bowing slightly, more to loosen up my back than pay homage to the judge. "Now, Mr. MacLean, did Chrissy try to escape or avoid capture?"

"No. She just collapsed."

"Do you know if Chrissy had any history of blacking out or fainting?"

I expected I don't know. Rusty paused a moment, thinking about it.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, she did. On a couple of shoots, she fainted. I told her to go see a doctor, but I don't know if she ever did."

That got the jury to thinking, and I did the same.

25

Turning Out the Lights

"Do I remember her?" the doctor asked, smiling. "Did you just walk through my waiting room, Mr.