Larry’s tale is as advertised based on the discovery documents. He had seen Noah on a number of occasions in the neighborhood, at least a dozen by his recollection. Noah had been visiting the ill-fated house to buy drugs, and Larry and the other neighbors considered the activities a scourge on the community.
I’m not sure why Larry is here today, though it’s probably to bask in the publicity limelight of the moment, and look good doing it. He doesn’t get many chances to do so, and it probably was irresistible.
I could ask a few perfunctory questions and let him go; that’s probably what I should do. His testimony is not particularly damaging, since we are not contesting that Noah was a drug user, and that he bought from the occupants of the house. I should probably just let Larry have his pathetic moment in the sun, and let him go.
But I won’t.
“Mr. Cahill,” I begin, “how did you recognize the defendant here today?”
“What do you mean? I used to see the guy all the time in the neighborhood; he hasn’t changed that much.”
“So the fact that he no longer has the beard didn’t throw you off?”
Larry seems a little worried about how to respond to this, so he goes with the relatively safe, “No, it didn’t.”
“What kind of beard did he have? Do you remember?”
Larry puts his hand to his chin, in a demonstration. “Just a regular one… you know, around the chin.”
“Yes, that’s where beards grow, around the chin. So you remember the beard, but you can’t picture exactly what it looked like?” I ask.
“Right.”
“What if I were to tell you that Noah Galloway didn’t have a beard then, and never had one in his life? And that he had a moustache instead?”
A flash of panic on the good citizen’s face, and then, “That’s what I meant, a moustache. I’m a little nervous; I got the words confused.”
“You meant to say he had a moustache on his chin? Where was the beard, on his big toe?”
The jury and gallery are laughing, which causes Dylan to come out of his stupor and object that this is irrelevant. De Luca overrules him and the fun continues.
“Noah Galloway never had a moustache either, Mr. Cahill. I could show you a picture, if you’d like. Are you sure it wasn’t Abe Lincoln you saw in the neighborhood? Or maybe Adolf Hitler?”
Dylan objects again, and De Luca suggests I move on.
“You testified that Mr. Galloway was coming to the neighborhood to purchase drugs. Were you a witness to those purchases? Were you in the room when they took place?”
“No.” Larry has decided to switch to the “fewer words is better” approach.
“How did you know which apartment he went to? Were you standing in the corridor at the time he entered the building?”
“Everybody knew,” he says.
“So you heard this from other people?”
“I knew it also.”
“Okay, let’s assume you somehow knew which apartment Mr. Galloway entered,” I say. “How did you know they sold drugs in there?”
“Everybody knew that too.”
“Did this all-knowing everybody buy drugs from them as well? Or were you the only one?”
He shakes his head emphatically. “No way. Not me.”
“Who did you buy your drugs from?”
“I never bought drugs,” he lies.
“You have two convictions for possession, for which you served ninety days in prison. You were innocent of those crimes?”
“Yes.”
“You pleaded guilty to throw the authorities off the track?”
Dylan objects, and De Luca sustains.
Time for me to wrap this up. “Mr. Cahill, one of those convictions was two weeks after the fire. Is it possible that in the weeks before that, your mind was impaired by drugs? And that instead of seeing Mr. Galloway, you saw some facial-haired person and got them mixed up?”
“No,” he says.
“No further questions,” I say.
I enjoyed that, but all I did was add debating points to my increasing total. Dylan is going to bring more witnesses to say basically the same thing that Cahill said. It was a stupid move on Dylan’s part to have Cahill testify at all, and especially first.
Dylan calls four more witnesses in succession that place Noah in the neighborhood, having dealings with the drug guys on the first floor. These witnesses are not convicted drug users, nor are they lying. For that reason I barely lay a glove on them, and don’t try too hard to do so.
There’s no reason to make witnesses like this look bad. The jury will like and believe them, and they are testifying to facts that are really not in dispute.
It has basically been an uneventful day, and barely a diversion from my meeting with Pete tonight, which I hope will be the main event.
Alex Bauer knew the call was coming.
He had known since the moment he saw Carpenter on television. He hadn’t needed Loney to call and alert him, but Loney had done so the next morning.
Bauer had been upset at the turn of events, and had let Loney know it in no uncertain terms. He didn’t believe that Loney had cared one way or the other about his level of concern; Loney was not the type to be bothered by anything.
Bauer considered himself a cool customer as well, and he had no doubt that he would handle the call when it came. But he had been assured that there would be no slipups, and now all of a sudden there was a major one.
Bauer avoided the call twice. They came on his cell phone, as he knew they would, so there was no one to answer the call for him and make an excuse. He knew who it was because it was from a number he did not recognize, with a New Jersey area code.
The third time he answered it, if only to get it over with, and to find out how much they knew. It was a woman, which for some reason surprised him, but she sounded professional and self-assured. She introduced herself as Laurie Collins, an investigator working for Andy Carpenter.
She was probing, but it soon became obvious that she knew very little. She talked about his having received phone calls from a particular number, and wanted to know who the caller was and what the nature of his relationship with that caller was.
“Why are you asking me these questions?” he asked.
“It has come up as evidence in a major trial being conducted right now,” she said. “Perhaps you’re aware of the Noah Galloway trial?”
“The guy who set the fire?” Bauer asked.
“The jury hasn’t made a decision on that question either way as yet. But it’s a very public trial, and since you’re the head of a public company, I would assume you’d want to stay as far away from it as possible. One way to insure that would be to answer my questions without the need for depositions or testimony.”
It was a threat, not a very veiled one at that, and matched what Carpenter had said on television. In any event, Bauer was certainly not cowed by it, and he said what Loney had suggested he say.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Collins, I really have no idea what you’re talking about. And if I have to testify to that, I’ll find the time to do so.”
“So you’re saying you never received such a phone call?” she asked.
“I’m saying I receive many phone calls. As you pointed out, I am the head of a company. I have no idea which phone call you are referring to, and you don’t seem to be in possession of much information to help enlighten me. So while I would very much like to help you, I’m afraid I cannot.”
That effectively ended the call, though Collins said that he would be hearing from her again. She had no idea
