“Yeah. I got the receipt from the credit card.”
“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.
2
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.”
