The Gods of Guilt(127)

That made me feel better about things.

The judge rolled back and returned her focus to the subject of the sidebar. She warned me that her patience had grown exceedingly thin and that I needed to draw the string on the net she had allowed me to cast.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I went back to the lectern.

“Agent Marco, did anyone tell you that the name Stratton Sterghos had appeared on the defense’s amended witness list this week?”

Marco showed the first signs of discomfort, shaking his head wearily.

“No. I don’t know that name. I never heard of the man before you just brought him up.”

I nodded and made a notation on my legal pad. It read Got you, motherfucker.

“Can you tell the jury where you were on the night of November eleventh of last year?”

Forsythe stood.

“Your Honor!”

“Be seated, Mr. Forsythe.”

Marco shook his head casually.

“I can’t remember exactly what I was doing that far back.”

“It was a Sunday.”

He shrugged.

“Then I was probably watching Sunday Night Football. I don’t know for sure. Does that make me guilty of something?”

I waited, but nothing more came.

“The way it usually works is that I ask the questions,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”

“What about two nights ago on Monday? Do you remember where you were that night?”

Marco didn’t answer for a long moment. I think he realized that he might be standing in the middle of a minefield. In the silence, I heard the rear door of the courtroom open and turned to see Lankford returning, one of the courtroom deputies behind him.

“I was on a surveillance,” Marco finally said.

I turned back to the witness stand.

“A surveillance of whom?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“That’s a case. I’m not going to talk about it in open court.”

“Was that surveillance on Salem Street in Glendale?”

Again he shook his head.

“I’m not going to talk about open investigations in court.”

I stared at him for a long time, wondering how far I should push him.

I finally decided to wait and looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time but I request that the court hold Agent Marco as a witness so that I can recall him later today.”

The judge frowned.

“Why can’t you finish your direct now, Mr. Haller?”

“I need to take testimony from another witness this morning, and from that testimony I will draw the final questions I’ll have for Agent Marco. I appreciate the court’s ongoing indulgence of the defense’s presentation.”

Leggoe asked Forsythe if he had an issue with my plan.

“Judge, the people have grown very weary of defense counsel’s flights of fancy but once more we are willing to take the ride. I know this will be another crash-and-burn and forgive me but I just can’t look away.”

The judge asked Forsythe if he wanted the opportunity to cross-examine Marco before he stepped down. This would be in addition to the opportunity he would have after I brought the DEA agent back to the stand in the afternoon. Without much thought, he opted to wait to conduct one uninterrupted cross-examination. And as a safety measure, he reserved the right to call Marco back to the stand even if I didn’t.

The judge told Marco he could step down but ordered him to return to the court at one p.m. She then told me to call my next witness.

“The defense calls Lee Lankford.”

I turned to look at Lankford. He was slowly starting to stand.

“And, Your Honor, we’re going to need the audio-visual remote for a video demonstration.”

I made sure I requested it before Marco and his attorney got out of the courtroom. I wanted them thinking about the video I planned to play.





42





Lankford walked with a steady but slow pace to the witness stand, his eyes staring at a fixed point on the wall behind it. I watched him closely. He looked like a man who was running equations internally while running on autopilot externally. I thought this was a good sign, that he was realizing his one way out was through me. I decided I would know pretty quickly into his testimony which path he had chosen.

As the DA’s investigator assigned to the case, Lankford had been granted a standard exception that allowed him to remain in court even though he had been listed as a witness by the defense. This meant that going all the way back to jury selection he had been a familiar presence to the jurors as he sat each day against the railing behind Forsythe. But he had never been introduced before the moment I made him stand and be identified during Hensley’s testimony the day before. So I walked him through who he was and what he did, and I included his background as a former Glendale homicide detective, even though that information had been revealed earlier by Marco.