meaning it, even though she could see two jurors in the front row smile.
Detective Wilkins nodded graciously. “All in a day’s work.”
Judy laughed. Touche. Maybe it would help put the incident behind them. “Now, as you have testified, you were the detective on the scene the morning Angelo Coluzzi was killed, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you were called to the pigeon-racing club?”
“Yes.”
“And you examined the back room carefully, where the killing occurred?”
“Yes.”
“And you testified there were signs of only a brief struggle?”
“I did.”
“Excuse me a moment.” Judy turned to counsel table, grabbed the exhibit mounted on foamcore, brought it to the witness stand, and placed it on a metal easel. The jury looked at the exhibit while she moved it into evidence, without objection. “Let the record show that the exhibit is a black-line diagram of the first floor of the pigeon-racing club, including the back room.” Judy had reconstructed it from her memory and with the help of The Two Tonys. “Detective Wilkins, does this depict the first floor as you remember it, including the back room and the furniture?”
Detective Wilkins scanned the exhibit. “It does.”
“The exhibit shows a large entrance room, let’s call it, with a bar on the west side of the room, the left-hand side. The entrance to the back room is on the north wall, through a wooden door. Correct?”
The detective nodded. “Yes.”
“The back room contained a blue card table in the middle of the room, with four chairs around it. Referring again to brief signs of a struggle, didn’t you notice that the table had been out of square?”
Detective Wilkins thought about it. “I did.”
“So the table had been moved,” Judy summarized for the jury’s benefit. “Would you say it was clearly out of square?”
“Slightly.” Detective Wilkins knew just where Judy was going, and he wasn’t going with her, which was to be expected.
“But clearly, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Thank you.” Judy pointed to the black-line chair in the diagram. She could have proved this easily through use of police photos, but they showed Angelo Coluzzi dead in the center of the picture. “Now, Detective Wilkins, there were four chairs around the table, all of which are brown metal folding chairs. Do you recall them?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true that the chair on the east side of the table was knocked over?”
“Yes, but it was on the path of travel, from the door to the bookshelves.”
Judy held up a firm hand. “I’m not asking why or how you think it was knocked over, only that it had been knocked over. And it had, hadn’t it?”
“Yes.” Detective Wilkins’s mouth became a hard line.
Judy pointed to the exhibit again. “Now, the metal shelves we have been talking about that you said had been pulled down, they had been standing against the east side of the room, opposite the table, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And they had been pulled down. To the floor, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And the contents, which were pigeon supplies, had fallen to the ground. Had bottles broken?”
“Yes.”
“Pills spilled out?”
“Yes.”
“Bands for pigeons’ legs had fallen from their boxes?”
Detective Wilkins thought a minute. “Yes.”
Judy collected her thoughts. She had almost accomplished what she needed to, setting up her closing. She couldn’t get much more out of a hostile witness. But she needed to make her point. “Detective Wilkins, your credentials are very impressive, your having worked for twenty-three years as a homicide detective. How many crime scenes do you think you have examined in that time?”
Detective Wilkins sighed. “Thousands, unfortunately.”
Judy let it be. There were roughly two hundred murders in the city in a year, and she didn’t want to do the grisly multiplication either. “I would gather that most of those murders involve a weapon—a knife or a gun—am I correct?”
“For the most part, yes. That is the typical situation.”
“So you are very familiar with the signs of a struggle that occur in such situations?”
“Yes.”
Judy took a breath—and a risk. “Have you ever investigated a killing that took place without a weapon, between two men over the age of seventy-five?”
Surprised, Detective Wilkins reacted with a short laugh. “No.”
“So how much of a struggle do you want?” she asked with a throwaway smile, and Wilkins smiled, too. “Thank you, I have no further questions.” Judy grabbed her exhibit and sat down before Santoro could object. That had gone as well as it could, and Santoro stood up and approached the podium.
“Your Honor, I have redirect,” Santoro called out, but Judge Vaughn was already nodding over his half- glasses. Santoro addressed his witness. “Detective Wilkins, you said you have investigated thousands of murder scenes, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you have a set of skills and experiences that you bring to bear in every murder scene you investigate, is that right?”
“I like to think so.”
“And so you can be presented with a new situation in a murder scene and you can bring to bear your skills, experience, and instincts, honed over twenty-three years?”
Judy thought about objecting but let it go. The jury could see how self-serving it was, and she wouldn’t get points by tearing down Detective Wilkins.
Detective Wilkins nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so.”
Santoro rocked on his loafers a minute, evidently thinking about pressing it, and Judy shifted in her chair. If he went too far, she would object and she would have to be sustained. It was the lawyer’s equivalent of the cowboy’s hand hovering at his hip holster. Santoro made a decision. “I have no further questions. Thank you very much, Detective,” he said, and sat down.
It was always high noon in a murder trial, but only one man took the risk of getting dead.
Santoro’s next witness was a woman from Mobile Crime, a tall brunette with a black suit, a severe ponytail, and thick glasses, who testified that she had collected fibers from the clothes of Angelo Coluzzi that came from Pigeon Tony’s clothes. She was absolutely credible, and Judy barely objected, since it wasn’t inconsistent with her case for the defense. And her thoughts were elsewhere, as she tried to figure out what Santoro was doing and ways she could meet whatever it was in her case.
It was clearly the morning for police testimony, because his next witness was another crime tech, a red- haired young man who had taken photographs of the scene. Santoro’s only purpose was to show the photographs of Coluzzi’s body to the jury, over Judy’s objection. She could do little but watch them as they looked uncomfortably at the grim photos, which Santoro had enlarged on a projection screen in the front of the courtroom. They swallowed hard at the sad sight, and Coluzzi looked horrible in photo after photo, his dark eyes sunken, his body as small and frail as Judy had remembered. The slides weren’t bloody, but somehow their very ordinariness spoke with a more subtle eloquence. Two jurors looked away, and even Pigeon Tony blinked.
But Judy was suddenly grateful for the bulletproof sheet muting the reaction of the gallery. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Coluzzi’s widow crying and John Coluzzi holding her as she sobbed. The entire Coluzzi side of the courtroom was red-faced and teary, but the Lucia side remained still. Sketch artists drew madly, kept busy
