Overkill

JAYWALKER: Anything else?

JULIE: [Inaudible.]

JAYWALKER: I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.

JULIE: Nothing.

JAYWALKER: What was it you said?

JULIE: I said, “I want him back.”

As the tears ran down her face, she made no attempt to hide them. And Jaywalker, who knew how to be a gentleman and where they kept the tissues for just such moments, didn’t go to her rescue. Instead, he moved forward into June and July, and asked her if she’d begun to observe a different Jeremy.

JULIE: Yes, very different.

JAYWALKER: In what ways?

JULIE: He started seeming afraid of everything all the time. He thought he was being followed. He couldn’t sleep. He stopped eating. He’d move the food around on his plate, but he wouldn’t eat it. He jumped at loud noises. He couldn’t look me in the eye anymore. He began to stutter, and he developed these funny movements in the muscles of his face, uh-

JAYWALKER: Tics?

JULIE: Yes, tics.

JAYWALKER: As the weeks went on, did he seem to get better, or worse?

JULIE: Worse, much worse.

JAYWALKER: How so?

JULIE: He lost weight. He got these dark circles around his eyes. He would cry for no reason, or at least no reason he would talk about. And he, he-

JAYWALKER: What?

JULIE: He began…he began to wet his bed. He didn’t think we knew, my mother and I. And we pretended we didn’t. But we did, we knew.

Jaywalker let that one hang there for a few beats. He tried to imagine something more devastating to a seventeen-year-old boy than regressing into bed-wetting. The only thing he could come up with was having his mother and twin sister aware of it. And as Jaywalker opened his mouth to ask his next question, he heard a muffled sound behind him. When he turned to look, he saw that Jeremy had slumped forward and laid his head on the defense table. For a horrified second, Jaywalker thought the young man might have passed out or, worse yet, fallen asleep. But then the heaving of Jeremy’s shoulders gave him away, and Jaywalker could tell he was sobbing. And he realized that until that moment, the poor kid had thought he’d gotten away with stripping the wet sheets off, secretly washing and drying them, and then remaking his bed before nightfall. Even as Jaywalker winced at having added yet another layer of humiliation to his own client’s anguish, he caught himself wondering if the jurors had understood what had just happened, and found himself hoping they had.

Judge Wexler declared a brief recess.

Jaywalker had fully intended to ask Julie about how she’d been chased and threatened by a group of the Raiders five or six days ago. He knew he would be on shaky ground, because technically, that incident had no relevance to the murder charge against her brother. But if he could get it in, it at least showed that there had been, and still was, a bunch of thugs who went around wearing Oakland Raiders jackets and intimidating people.

But Julie’s testimony, and her brother’s reaction to it, had created a powerful moment right before the recess, a moment in which the depth of Jeremy’s suffering had been revealed in full measure. Jaywalker had no desire to water that down now with a new line of questions that had more to do with Julie than with Jeremy. He also secretly hoped that Katherine Darcy, in cross-examining Julie, would blunder into opening the door to the recent incident. So when they resumed and the jury was brought back in, with the witness once again on the stand, Jaywalker rose and announced he had no further questions of her.

Which, he knew, created a dilemma for Darcy.

He watched her closely now as she stood and walked slowly to the lectern, saw from her hesitation that she recognized immediately the trap Jaywalker had set for her. And as she began her examination, he grudgingly gave her credit for not falling into it, as much as he would have liked her to. Still, he wondered if at some point she might not get careless.

DARCY: You are the defendant’s sister, aren’t you?

JULIE: Yes.

DARCY: His twin sister, in fact.

JULIE: Yes.

DARCY: Is it fair to say you love your brother?

JULIE: Yes.

DARCY: Very much?

JULIE: Yes.

DARCY: If he were in serious trouble, would you help him out if you could?

JULIE: Of course.

DARCY: Would you lie for him?

It was one of those questions prosecutors loved to death. If the witness were to say no, the jury would disbelieve her. What sister wouldn’t lie for a brother in serious trouble? Yet if the witness were to say yes, that she would lie, then her own answer would brand her as a perjurer unworthy of belief on the rest of her testimony. In other words, for the questioner it was one of those absolutely irresistible win-win questions, and the problem for the witness was that there seemed no way out of it.

The problem for Katherine Darcy, on the other hand, was that Jaywalker knew all that stuff, too. So he always-always-made it a habit to prepare his witnesses for the question. However, in the ten minutes the judge had allowed him this morning, he’d neglected to remind Julie Estrada to expect it. Was there any chance she might remember his advice from weeks or months ago? He bit deeply into the inside of his cheek as he listened to Darcy repeat the question.

DARCY: Would you lie for your twin brother?

JULIE: You know, I’m pretty sure I would, if it came down to that. But so far, I haven’t had to find out. Everything I’ve said is a hundred percent true, and even you know that.

Jaywalker had to hold on to the arms of his chair to keep from jumping to his feet and applauding. He couldn’t have come up with as good an answer himself. Though evidently he had, some weeks ago.

Darcy understandably refused to quit on that note. She asked five or six more questions, but none of them, or the answers they drew, amounted to much. When finally she succeeded in scoring a tiny point by getting Julie to admit she couldn’t remember the exact time frame of the bed-wetting, she quit. That said, Jaywalker had to admire her for her discipline. While he’d burned her on the lying-for-your-twin-brother business, Darcy had continued to steer clear of the even more dangerous territory Jaywalker had hoped she would stumble into. All she would have had to do was ask Julie the same innocuous question she’d put to Carmen-whether she herself had ever witnessed anyone in a Raiders jacket chasing Jeremy-and Julie could have answered, “No, but they chased me last week!” And even if Harold Wexler had let only the first word of the answer stand, Jaywalker’s Jewish half would have smiled and said Dayenu.

It would have been enough.

“Call your next witness,” said the judge.

Jaywalker stood, let a second or two click off the clock, and said, “The defense calls Jeremy Estrada.”