Page 56 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Eddie

While Bernice called her first witness, I texted Harry and asked how things were going one floor up. I didn’t want to ask Kate. She was under enough pressure. No way did I want to add to that.

I trusted Kate.

I had to keep reminding myself of that. Had to focus on Elly’s case.

There was no denying I was distracted. Half of my head was in the courtroom upstairs, fighting for my ex-wife.

Bernice looked up from a stack of papers on her desk, slid the large-framed glasses from her nose and let them hang round her neck as she stood and called her first witness.

Patrolman John Djawadi was sworn in, and Bernice guided him through his testimony.

He responded to a call from one of the victim’s parents.

James’s father couldn’t get in contact with him.

James wasn’t picking up the phone and wouldn’t answer the door to his apartment.

It wasn’t like him. He’d been vilified on social media, lost his job and his friends and his father was worried that James had done something stupid.

The patrolman met James’s father at the front door of the apartment building together with a locksmith.

The locksmith opened the door, and the patrolman entered first, calling out for James.

He entered the bedroom, found James and Harriet dead on the floor. He got the father out of the apartment and called in the bodies.

‘Officer Djawadi, while you and the victim’s father were in the apartment, did you disturb anything or touch anything?’

‘Just the doorknob of the bedroom. That’s all, ma’am.’

‘After you had secured the apartment, what did you do then?’

‘Like I said, I called in the bodies to dispatch, who said they were sending homicide. I stood outside the apartment and made sure it was secure while I waited for the arrival of the detective.’

‘What time did the detective arrive at the apartment?’

‘Around ten thirty.’

‘Thank you, no more questions.’

I stood up and let Officer Djawadi off the hook. He’d done his job. I could spend a half hour or so picking through his testimony, hitting him with a few jabs and even a body shot or two, but there was no point. This wouldn’t win us the case.

No point in wasting energy with this guy.

I was waiting for the right witness.

This case would be won or lost depending on the answer to a single question.

One question.

Wait.

Be patient.

‘No questions, Your Honor,’ I said, then sat down.

Bernice stood, said, ‘The People call James Parker Senior . . . ’

‘Your Honor,’ I interrupted, ‘Mr. Parker, the father of the late James Parker, has already been through so much. Neither my client, nor I, wish to add any further pain or injury to Mr. Parker’s suffering.

We are satisfied that if his statement to the police was simply read to the jury, verbatim, it would also speed up proceedings.

We do not intend to cross-examine Mr. Parker.

On behalf of my client, we simply ask the court to note our sorrow at his son’s passing and offer our sincere condolences. ’

A tall, fit man in his sixties with a shock of coiffured white hair, wearing a white shirt and a charcoal suit, came and stood by the prosecution table.

Bernice had waved him to a stop. His pale skin had a gray tone, except for the redness around the eyes, as if these were the points through which his soul had been sucked clean out of his skull.

‘Your Honor, Mr. Parker Senior is here to testify for his—’

I interrupted Bernice again. ‘We all know what he’s here for. There’s no need to put this man through that kind of ordeal.’

There was no evidential value in calling the father of one of the victims as a witness in this case.

He looked strong, but nobody gets on the stand and talks to a hundred strangers in a courtroom about finding their son’s body, at the trial of his murderer, and manages to hold it together.

Nobody. Mr. Parker Senior would fight through it, but soon his breaking heart would reduce him to tears.

And all of that wasn’t for his benefit. There was no catharsis. No closure.

Bernice wanted the jury to see his pain.

To feel his pain. And for that pain to turn into anger and for the jury to throw that same anger at the defendant.

Juries don’t just make decisions with their minds – they make them with their hearts.

They would be desperate to give this father justice.

And that meant convicting Elly. And I had to stop that at all costs.

‘Mrs. Mazur, I’m afraid I am in agreement with Mr. Flynn. It saves court time and spares Mr. Parker Senior from the pressure of testifying in this case,’ said the judge. ‘The jury can read his statement, and it can be entered into evidence.’

A wave of the hand from Bernice, as if to say, you win some and you lose some and it’s no problem for the prosecution.

She couldn’t really object because she wanted the victim’s father to burst into tears and get the jury on her side.

She turned to Mr. Parker Senior, who had been following all of this closely.

He shook his head at Bernice, turned toward the defense table and stared at Elly.

She stared back, but while Elly’s open face was filled with sorrow, for the loss of her husband and for the pain this man was going through, that look was not mirrored by Mr. Parker Senior.

His mouth twisted into a snarl, his eyes crawled into a furrow and he leaned forward.

And spat in Elly’s face.

She closed her eyes, but otherwise didn’t react.

I heard a gasp from someone in the crowd behind me.

Bernice skipped out from behind the prosecution table, and lightly took his arm to guide him away, but he wrenched free from her grip, and with a final look of disgust at Elly he strode back to his seat in the gallery.

I looked at the judge. He shook his head.

So did Bernice. I gave Elly my handkerchief. She was crying softly now.

The judge could’ve admonished Mr. Parker Senior.

Even held him in contempt. It was technically an assault on the defendant, and contempt of court.

But Judge Quaid didn’t do anything. There was no point because there was no punishment fitting for this man.

Very little in this world could have added to his suffering.

‘Your Honor, the People call Detective William Sacks.’

The first witness of any real consequence.

This was Detective Sacks’s big day and he had dressed for it.

As he raised his hand to take the oath, his beige sport coat rode up.

It may have been made to measure, probably five years ago.

Made to measure a detective who was twenty pounds lighter, perhaps.

Sacks wore a dark checkered shirt and a red tie beneath the tight jacket. Charcoal pants.

The formality of a court appearance in the biggest murder case of his career didn’t extend far enough for Sacks to wear formal shoes. When he had passed me by on the way to the stand, I clocked his red socks beneath his black Crocs.

As Bernice asked her first question, I noticed a sheen of sweat on the detective’s top lip, and his cheeks were flushed.

He was feeling the pressure of this case.

Bernice, always looking to move the case on as quickly as possible, ran through the circumstances of Sacks getting to Elly’s apartment after the patrolman and the late James Parker’s father had found the bodies.

Sacks had given fast, direct answers. The speed of his delivery and the fact that he was looking squarely at Bernice as he answered confirmed his anxiety.

Cops are trained to take their time and to look at the jury as they give their answers, not at the counsel.

‘Would you please describe, for the jury, what you saw in that bedroom?’ asked Bernice cleverly. She had included a reference to the jury in her question in the hope it would remind Sacks of his training – that he should be addressing them, not the lawyers.

Before he answered, he cleared his throat, then took Bernice’s subtle clue and turned to look at the jury as he delivered his response.

‘I saw two people in the bedroom. One, the female, whom I later identified as Harriet Rothschild, was lying face down on the floor on the right side of the bed. The other individual was male, and later identified as James Parker. The upper half of his body was on the bed. He was lying on his back, but his feet were hanging off the bed, one of them on the floor. There was a distinct odor in the room. I stepped inside and—’

‘Detective, let me stop you there for just a moment. You had mentioned to the jury that you smelled something. Could you elaborate on the odor you detected?’

Sacks took a breath, closed his eyes and nodded, then exhaled. It was only natural to be nervous in a case like this, with the world watching.

‘My apologies, yes,’ he said, then looked at the jury. ‘There was a strong smell of vomit in the room.’

‘Were you able to determine the source of that odor?’

‘Yes, I saw a large pool of what appeared to be vomit beside the female victim’s head. There was another smaller pool on the bed beside the male victim.’

‘I see, thank you. What did you do next, Detective?’

‘I gave the bodies of the victims a visual inspection, of course careful not to touch them or move the bodies before forensics or the medical examiner arrived. I could see no signs of blood on the floor or in the room at all. No pooling of blood and no blood spatter anywhere. I could see no signs of violence anywhere on the bodies of the victims. No cuts, no bruising. In addition, there were no signs of asphyxiation.’

‘And what were you thinking at that moment?’

‘I hadn’t completed a full inspection of the victim’s bodies, so I could not rule out physical violence pending the medical examiner’s autopsy conclusions, but at this moment I thought that either they had overdosed on drugs or, alternatively, death may have been due to poisoning.’

‘Is poisoning an unusual cause of death?’

‘It’s quite rare, but not unheard of. I thought about it in this case because there was no evidence of drug use in the apartment.

No drug paraphernalia, no burnt spoons, no needles, no burnt foil, no drugs, nothing that I would expect to find in the apartment if this was a case of death by drug overdose. ’

‘So what did you do next?’

‘While I was waiting for the forensic team, I made notes and took pictures of the water bottles in the bedroom. There were two of them. I guessed they each belonged to the victims. And I made a note and took pictures of all the items in the refrigerator and the cupboards, the cleaning products, the bathroom products, everything in the garbage bag in the kitchen – basically, anything that may have carried or contained a potential source of poison. I wanted the forensics team to examine and test all of it.’

There’s always a lot of information to take in during a murder trial.

Some testimony is more important than others.

Juries usually don’t miss the key stuff.

You underestimate the intelligence and understanding of a jury at your peril.

Even so, they’d had a lot to take in, so far.

And Bernice was about to get into important details.

‘Your Honor,’ said Bernice, ‘might we take a short comfort break?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ said Judge Quaid.

The break was for the jury, so that when they came back with their bellies filled with coffee and stale donuts, they’d have a better chance of remembering the key testimony that was about to come out.

I checked my phone to see if Harry had replied. I wanted to know if things were okay in Christine’s case.

I had one message.

From Harry.

He could have lied to me. Told me everything was going just fine.

But that’s not Harry Ford.

Amy had to grow up with me as a father. She needed her mom. And, in truth, she needed Kevin.

The text read –

We’re losing. We need a miracle.