SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
FIRESTONE: Now assume for a moment that the object that the van's driver had been attempting to avoid hitting was an oncoming car, directly in the van's lane. Are you able to tell us how fast that oncoming car was traveling?
SHEETZ: No, I'm not.
FIRESTONE: Why not?
SHEETZ: Because I found no skid marks at all coming from the opposite direction. So I had nothing to measure, nothing to start with.
FIRESTONE: Can you tell us anything from the absence of skid marks coming from that opposite direction?
SHEETZ: Yes, I can.
FIRESTONE: What's that?
SHEETZ: I can tell you that the driver of that oncoming car never braked, never tried to stop or even slow down.
To Jaywalker's way of thinking, it would have been a powerful moment to stop. But Firestone wanted even more. Why settle for a mere kill, after all, when you can follow it up by ripping out your victim's bloody heart, and hoisting in the air for all to see?
In the days following Carter Drake's surrender, Firestone had obtained a search warrant for his Audi, and troopers had gone to the Manhattan garage where it was stored. Unlike Jaywalker's open-air, seventy-fivedollar- a-month parking spot in the middle of the Hudson River, Drake's spot was indoors. It was heated in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer. The spot had been purchased several years earlier for $128,500, a figure that included neither the monthly maintenance charge of $2,585 nor the additional service fee of $975. Tips, while not required, were encouraged, and were also extra.
The troopers had towed the Audi up to a more modest garage in New City, where William Sheetz and other investigators from his squad had spent five hours going over it.
FIRESTONE: What did you find?
SHEETZ: We found nothing out of the ordinary. There was no indication of external damage. The steering system was intact. The brakes were fully functional. The windshield was clean and unobstructed, and provided a good view of whatever was ahead. The headlights worked, both high beams and low. The horn worked.
FIRESTONE: In other words JAYWALKER: Objection.
THE COURT: Yes. Please don't summarize the witness's testimony.
FIRESTONE: Were you able to come up with any explanation as to why the driver might have failed to see the van?
SHEETZ: No.
FIRESTONE: Or why he'd been driving in the wrong lane?
SHEETZ: No.
FIRESTONE: Or why he never tried to slow down or stop?
SHEETZ: No. No explanation at all.
And that was where Firestone left it.
Jaywalker glanced at his watch before collecting his notes and walking to the podium. It was after four o'clock. William Sheetz would be the last witness of the day, and of the entire week, for that matter. Jaywalker loved nothing more than to send jurors off for the weekend on a high note for the defense. But given this particular witness's testimony, that was going to be a tall order. Still, he had a couple of points to make, and he did some quick thinking on how to save the best for last. And then, as he so often did, he started where his adversary had left off.
JAYWALKER: Is it fair to say, Investigator Sheetz, that you've investigated a number of accidents that included a leaving-the-scene component?
SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: Dozens?
SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: Hundreds?
SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: Thousands?
SHEETZ: I'd say so.
JAYWALKER: And you'd agree, would you not, that in most, if not all, of those cases, you were able to discover some evidence that the driver of the vehicle that left the scene at least slowed down before doing so?
It was vintage Jaywalker. He had no idea at all if that was true or not. But the way he'd worded the question made it almost impossible for the witness not to answer in the affirmative. First, by inviting him to agree with the very first question out of his mouth, Jaywalker was making it easy for Sheetz to do so. If he disagreed right off the bat, he risked coming off as overly argumentative. Next, by using the phrase most, if not all, rather than something like almost all or the vast majority, Jaywalker was looking for agreement on no more than a bare majority of accidents. But later on, the jurors would forget the qualifier 'most' and remember the absolute 'all.' Then, by using the words you were able to discover some evidence, he was appealing to Sheetz's ego and prowess as an investigator. A negative response could be construed as damaging to either or both of those things, a positive one as reinforcing them. On top of that, the supposition underlying the question, that even a motorist who eventually decided to leave the scene would experience a moment of indecision before driving off, made sense. It was consistent with everyday human experience. You slowed down, even briefly considered stopping, before you panicked and sped off. And finally, by pretending to be reading the question verbatim from some learned treatise, rather than springing it ad lib from his own devious imagination, Jaywalker was warning the witness that if he disagreed with the premise, he risked challenging an authority in the field.
SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: You'd agree with that?
SHEETZ: I'd agree with that.
JAYWALKER: Good. So let's take a look at that extremely rare case where you could find absolutely no evidence that the driver who left the scene ever stopped or slowed down. Might that give you pause to consider that he might never have been aware of the accident that had occurred?
Sheetz realized too late the corner he'd put himself into. Sure, he could have backtracked and secondguessed his earlier answer. But John Wayne never did that, did he? So he did the next best thing, and gave Jaywalker as qualified a yes as he possibly could.
SHEETZ: That could be one explanation.
JAYWALKER: And does that explanation become more plausible with the fact that the accident, in this case the van's leaving the roadway and going over the embankment and out of view, occurred behind the driver who continued on, rather than in front of him or to one side of him?
SHEETZ: Yes, sir. I guess so.
JAYWALKER: And does that explanation become more plausible still if the incident occurred at night, in the darkness?
SHEETZ: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: And even more plausible if the driver who continued on did so at fifty or sixty miles per hour, and would quickly be out of both visual range of the scene and auditory range, as well?
SHEETZ: I suppose so.
JAYWALKER: And drawing your attention to this diagram of the scene. I'm sorry, tell us again who made it? SHEETZ: I did.
JAYWALKER: Right. This bend in the road here… (Pointing) Continuing on after its near collision with the van, how soon would the Audi have rounded it and lost sight of the van altogether?
SHEETZ: It depends on how fast the Audi was traveling.
JAYWALKER: Let's assume it was going the speed limit.
SHEETZ: Maybe two seconds.
JAYWALKER: And if, as it's been suggested, the Audi was going five or ten miles an hour over the limit?
It was another of those win-win questions Jaywalker loved so much. Carter Drake's driving too fast was one
