Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 34

"Yes."

"You had seen Mr. Morgan and Mr. Smith within the previous hour, isn't that so?"

"Yes."

"And you authenticated that report today, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"That night, you described Mr. Morgan as black, isn't that so?" "Yes."

"And you did say he and Mr. Smith were young, didn't you?" "Yes."

"And you described what you believed he and Mr. Smith were wearing, isn't that so?"

"Yes."

"And did you also describe Mr. Morgan as very tall?"

Neil was silent.

"Did you describe him," I said, "as merely tall?"

Again Neil didn't answer.

"Did you mention his height or size at all?"

Neil sighed.

I extended my hand with the manila folder. "Show us in this report, if you will, where you mentioned-on the night of the murder, less than an hour after it happened-that the man whom you saw shoot your father and run away toward the beach was very tall or even tall."

Neil didn't reach out for the folder.

"Isn't it a fact, Neil, that less than an hour after your father's murder, you didn't describe Darryl Morgan-the man who allegedly shot your father-as tall?"

"I remembered it, but-"

"No," I interrupted sharply. "I didn't ask you what you remembered. I asked you how you described him. Yes or no, please-isn't it a fact that an hour after your father's death, when you were asked to describe the man who shot him, you neglected to say he was tall? Yes or no!"

Neil looked to Judge Fleming for help, but none was forthcoming. "If the police report is accurate," Neil said, "it would seem that I omitted that fact."

I let that go.

"And yet," I said, "three months later, in the courtroom at the trial, you described him to me as ''very tall'-isn't that so?"

"Because by then I remembered."

I waited, but Neil said nothing more. There was no jury to impress. There was only Judge Fleming. "Quit while you're still ahead" was the best maxim for any cross-examiner-and the hardest one to follow.

So I started to turn away, but then stopped, scratched my head, looked indecisive. Sighed, as if I were tired of the whole business.

" ... There's just one more little thing," I said. "I nearly forgot it." I shuffled through the papers in the folder I still held.

I came up with one page more of Neil's thirteen-year-old testimony in this same courtroom. I handed it to him and asked him to read it silently.

Neil did so. He looked up, a little puzzled.

"What you swore to thirteen years ago," I said, "is exactly what you swore to today, isn't it, Neil?"

"Yes, of course," he replied.

"You heard a noise, something like an urn breaking-is that right?"

"Yes."

"And your father got up from the backgammon table and went out to the terrace."

"That's right."

"Your mother followed him."

"Yes."

"You heard three shots."

"Yes."

"Not two shots, or four shots, or five shots?"

"No, three ... as best I recall."

"Do you have any doubt as to the number?"

"Not really."

"How long did it take, Neil, between the time you heard the shots and the time you reached the terrace and saw your father lying there on the floor?"

"Probably ten seconds."

"You reached there just in time to see a black man, who we later learned was William Smith, make some movement with his hand toward your mother's face?"

"Yes."

"No more shots were fired?"

"No."

"And were any shots fired before that, while you and your mother and father were playing backgammon?"

"No."

"You're positive?"

"Of course I'm positive. My father wouldn't have gone outside if a gun had been fired."

"No more questions," I said.

Whatley asked for redirect. The last line of questioning had seemed like a fis.h.i.+ng expedition, but he badly needed to rehabilitate his witness on the matter of Neil's first description of Darryl Morgan.

Whatley said, "Mr. Zide, that night thirteen years ago, you had just seen your father shot to death, isn't that so?"

"Yes." Neil nodded. "And it was horrible."

"Is it fair to say that you were shocked and stunned by what you saw?"

I objected; he was leading the witness. The judge sustained my objection.

Whatley asked, "What was your state of mind after your father's murder?"

"I was in a state of shock."

"When you talked to Sergeant Nickerson and described these two young men retreating across the lawn, were you at all concerned whether they were fat or thin, tall or short?"

"Not at all. I was only thinking about my father and mother and what had happened to them a few minutes earlier."

"Pa.s.s the witness," Whatley said.

"No more questions," I said.

"Is Mr. Zide released or on call?" the judge inquired.

"If it please the court, on call."

Whatley ended his presentation by reminding the court that the state had no burden of proof and therefore no more witnesses. Muriel must have felt they had met their obligation of enlightenment and of saving Judge Fleming the onerous task of reading through the three-thousand-page transcript.

Now it was my turn.

I hadn't known it until recently, but I had waited thirteen years for this moment.

So had Darryl.

It was also time for the lunch break, and I welcomed it. I needed to talk to Gary Oliver. But when I made my way to the back of the crowded courtroom and started carving a path between the reporters and the TV cameras, I saw what at first seemed to be a familiar face.

Then suddenly, startlingly, there stood my wife. She wore what I called her traveling outfit: a pair of floppy khaki trousers, a camel's-hair blazer, and leather boots. I shoved through the mob to Toba's side, and she fell into my arms.

Chapter 29.

IT WAS ALAN, of course. He had called at seven o'clock that morning from the pay phone at Oakwood. He didn't hesitate or waffle. He said, "Mom, I can't stand it here anymore. I'm going. I just thought I owed it to you and Dad to let you know."

Toba had wanted to ask, "Alan ... are you cured?" But the key word seemed too raw.

"Will they let you go?"

"They can't stop me. There's this woman, Germaine, keeps yelling at me, tells me I'm a quitter and I'll go back on drugs. And the guys have stopped talking to me. But it's like a prison here. Germaine wants me to stay another three months. And when that's over, I know she'll say, 'Three months more.' "

"He took his GED test," Toba told me. "He's sure he pa.s.sed, so he'll have the equivalent of a high school diploma. But he doesn't get the results until this afternoon. He said he'd wait for that, and then he's off tomorrow."

"And what are you doing?" I asked, for we were in the coffee shop at the courthouse, and her feet were propped up on her traveling bag. Her sheepskin winter coat was tossed over the back of her chair.

"I have a plane ticket that gets me into Newark Airport at six P.M. I can rent a car and be at Monticello certainly before midnight, and I'll find this Oakwood joint by nine o'clock tomorrow morning. If he still insists on going, at least I can make sure he doesn't go out on the road like a pauper."

"The road to where?"

"San Francisco, he said. He was going to hitchhike. Can you imagine? In the middle of January?"

"And why did you stop off here, Toba?"

"I had to talk to you first. I couldn't get through to you in the courtroom. So I thought: f.u.c.k it, why not." Toba glanced at her watch. "I have to be at the airport in two hours to make my connection."

I shook my head in despair. "We've been over this ground. It's a mistake for Alan to quit. Germaine Price is the woman who told me he would die if he didn't go through the program."

"Which I always considered a major hunk of melodrama."

"You always hoped it was a major hunk of melodrama."

Toba hunched her shoulders. I thought I saw new lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes. Or maybe she was tired, or hadn't put on her makeup with her usual fastidiousness. No, they were new crow's-feet. A gift from her son. From life.

She straightened up. "Well, Ted, you've done all you can. You can't leave in the middle of a trial, or hearing, or whatever it is. So I'll bite the bullet. I'll go up and deal with it."

She had once said to me, when Alan had told us he considered driving his car off the causeway, "What if he dies while you're off trying to save some lousy murderer's life?"

Wrong. Darryl wasn't a murderer. But neither was Alan. If I was battling to save Darryl, didn't I owe the same allegiance and effort to my son?

Judge Fleming had given me until 5 P.M. tomorrow to finish the hearing. He had to pack up and vacate his court; he couldn't change his schedule. It didn't seem that I could go up to Oakwood with Toba and get back in time.

But I had to, and there was only one way.

If it didn't work, Darryl could die. And maybe Alan too, if Germaine Price hadn't been serving up major melodrama to the peanut gallery. I felt a cold clamp of fear in the middle of my chest.

I threw coins down on the table for the coffee that was growing cold. "Let's go find Gary Oliver."

Toba and I flew to Newark together, grabbed a Hertz car, and by six-thirty had struggled through the maze of highways and late rush- hour traffic onto the Jersey Turnpike and then Route 17 into New York State. The night was dark and the temperature well below freezing. Rags of snow lay on the edge of the road; it made me s.h.i.+ver just to look out there. I still wore the clothing I had worn in the air-conditioned Jacksonville courthouse.