Overkill

Wallace Porter and Teresa Morales-preferring to get them off the stand fairly quickly. But for some reason, Katherine Darcy’s last line of questioning with Detective Fortune pissed him off. Perhaps it was no more than his frustration over not being able to dent the consensus that it had been Jeremy who’d pulled the gun and murdered a defenseless victim. Or perhaps it had been Harold Wexler’s certainty that there was going to be a conviction and that he was going to bang Jeremy out at sentencing time. Maybe it had even had something to do with Miles Sternbridge’s cameo appearance that morning, and his snide remark about being glad to hear that Jaywalker had been behaving himself. Whatever it was, the juices were suddenly boiling within Jaywalker’s belly. That was something that didn’t happen all that often, but when it did, it made him an exceedingly dangerous cross-examiner, as Regina Fortune was about to find out.

JAYWALKER: Detective Fortune, have you ever owned a.380 automatic?

FORTUNE: Me? No.

But Jaywalker had, back in his DEA days. A nickel-plated one, with genuine walnut grips. It had been big, the exact size of a.45, and had taken one round in the chamber and eleven in the clip, and you could go to war with it if you had to.

JAYWALKER: Are you by any chance familiar with the Browning.380?

FORTUNE: I’ve seen it. It’s about the size of my hand.

JAYWALKER: Is the Browning.380 a very common.380?

FORTUNE: I wouldn’t know.

JAYWALKER: What are some other makes of.380s?

FORTUNE: I see so many guns, I wouldn’t know.

JAYWALKER: Tell me one other.

FORTUNE: I can’t remember right now.

JAYWALKER: I’ll give you a few minutes.

FORTUNE: I don’t know makes of guns, really.

JAYWALKER: Do you know the difference between a.380 and a 9 mm?

FORTUNE: The size of the gun. Because the caliber is a little bigger?

From the way she raised her voice at the end, turning her answer into question, it was clear that not even Detective Fortune believed that one. But before Jaywalker could continue, Judge Wexler came to her rescue.

THE COURT: You’re not a ballistics expert, are you?

FORTUNE: No, I’m not.

But by asking her about guns on direct examination, Katherine Darcy had opened the door to Jaywalker’s line of questioning, and Wexler was obviously smart enough to know he had no choice but to let things continue.

JAYWALKER: Detective, when we talk about millimeters, a 9 mm versus a.380, say, what are we referring to?

FORTUNE: It’s the size of the caliber of the gun.

JAYWALKER: What does that mean?

FORTUNE: It’s the size of the bullet.

JAYWALKER: Is that in length? Diameter? Radius? Or circumference?

FORTUNE: It’s measured by weight.

That one took even Jaywalker surprise. Here he’d been nice enough to make things easy for the witness by asking her a multiple-choice question. And she’d decided to go with “none of the above.”

JAYWALKER: The millimeter is a unit of weight?

FORTUNE: That’s how they determine it.

JAYWALKER: How about a meter? Is that a unit of weight?

FORTUNE: No, it’s not.

JAYWALKER: Isn’t a millimeter a fraction of a meter?

FORTUNE: Yes.

JAYWALKER: What fraction would that be?

FORTUNE: A hundredth?

JAYWALKER: Close. How about a thousandth?

FORTUNE: Okay.

JAYWALKER: Does that perhaps cause you to change your previous answer that a millimeter is a unit of weight?

FORTUNE: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Good. So do millimeters refer to the diameter of the bullet, the radius of the bullet, the circumference of the bullet, or the length of the bullet? Now that we’ve ruled out weight.

FORTUNE: I believe it’s lengthwise, the length of the shell.

This from a detective, mind you. A detective assigned to the Crime Scene Unit.

JAYWALKER: Ever heard of a.22?

FORTUNE: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Is there such a thing as a.22 long?

FORTUNE: Yes, there is.

JAYWALKER: Such a thing as a.22 short? Sometimes called a.22 corto?

FORTUNE: The.22 short I know. Yes.

JAYWALKER: Yet they’re all.22’s, in spite of the fact that they have different lengths. Aren’t they?

FORTUNE: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Does that by any chance cause you to change your previous answer that the term millimeters refers to length? To think that it refers instead to the diameter of the bullet?

FORTUNE: I guess so. I’m not an expert.

At least that much was clear. But Jaywalker still needed to undermine the detective’s claim that the discovery of.380 shell casings told her something about the size of the gun they’d come from.

JAYWALKER: Now you told us that a.380 automatic is smaller than a 9 mm. Right?

FORTUNE: Right.

JAYWALKER: Yet they can both fire.380 ammunition, can’t they?

FORTUNE: Yes, I guess so.

JAYWALKER: And either one can be as big as a.45 automatic. Right?

FORTUNE: Right.

JAYWALKER: Which would make it considerably bigger than your hand. Right again?

FORTUNE: Right.

JAYWALKER: So the fact that.380 shell casings were found at the scene really tells us just about nothing in terms of the overall size of the gun they came from. Isn’t that true?

FORTUNE: Yes.

From there, Jaywalker moved on to the subject of ankle holsters.