Jackson so he'd know we weren't jamming him. We tell him she's on the
way and even let the kids lay down in the apartment next door while
they're waiting. So then Raymond goes, 'All right, Melvin. We're all
stand-up here. Now what were you saying about showing us what we came
for?' Melvin says, 'It's in the van. Keys are on the table.'
'We leave backup watching Melvin and the apartment while we head out to
the parking lot with the keys. We slide open the door, step in, and
find six gallons of mocha cream paint.'
'Anything else?' I asked.
'Not in the van. So we go back up to the apartment and say to Jackson,
'I guess you've been watching the news, Melvin.' He must've lost his
desperation by then, knowing that his mom's on the way for the kids. He
tries to play it cool and is all, 'The news? Man, I don't know what
you're talking about, the news.' And I said, 'You must've known we
were looking for the paint, Melvin. You just told us where to find
it.' And so then he admits that he knew we'd been looking for the
paint.'
'Anything in the apartment?'
'Oh, yeah. Melvin keeps a great big fat file on his eviction case,
including copies of all the letters he sent the vie. We also found
some drafts of letters he must not have sent, and those were even
worse. We bagged 'em up already, but I wrote down here that one of
them said, Maybe someone should show you what it's like to lose
everything, bitch. Guess he decided that wasn't likely to get him
anywhere.'
Neither would her death, but murder is rarely rational.
'Then Melvin's mom shows up. And let me tell you, Mama Jackson is a
major piece of work. Came damn close to waking up the entire floor.
Kept screaming at us to get her boy out of those handcuffs. We were
trying to calm her down. Then
Raymond walks out of the back of the apartment with a hammer looped
over his pen.'
'What hammer?'
'I'm getting there. I thought I was supposed to give you the facts in
the order they happened.'
Cops love to fuck with lawyers, even when they're prosecutors, and, as
much as Walker loves me, I am still a prosecutor.
'Ray found a hammer stashed on the top shelf of the bedroom closet.
Looked like it had been wiped down, but you could still see a little
blood. The crime lab's checking for sure. We should have an answer by
morning.'
'So what happened when Jackson saw that you found the hammer?'
'That's what was fucked up. It wasn't so much what Jackson did; it was
what the mother did. She went absolutely nuts. Hands on the hips,
doing the sassy head thing: 'I knew this wasn't no routine search. This
here's about that white judge. I been trying to tell this fool the
police gonna be knockin' on his do', but, no, Melvin, you got yo'self
too busy to listen.' Then she starts homing in on Johnson, going off
about how he planted the weapon and how could he turn his back on his
own people, that kind of shit.'
'Can't be the first time you guys had to deal with a pissed-off
mother.'
'Sure, you get used to it, but she took our attention away from
Jackson. No one got a chance to see his reaction when he realized
Johnson found the hammer. There's something about that first look,
that expression on their face when they realize you've got 'em. It's
too bad you can't get that look into evidence, right there for the
jury. Because the minute you see it, you know. You know it in your
gut, This is the guy. And we missed it.'
'Oh, come on, you know it's your guy anyway. You got the weapon, the
paint, the letters. You said yourself that Jackson practically
confessed.'
'I didn't say he was getting off. Shit, the guy's toast. But it's the
look, Kincaid, and the mom kept us from seeing it. You've got no clue
what I'm talking about, do you?'
I did, actually. There's a thrill no, it's nothing short of a high
when you've got the defendant on the stand, you're building a rhythm
with him on cross, and then you ask the karate chop question, the one
you've been headed for from the very start. But you sneak up to it
through the back roads, taking every possible detour, so no one knows
it's coming, least of all the defendant. And when he realizes there's
no good way to answer it, he gets that look. He flashes back to his
attorney warning him to stay off the stand. Then to him telling the
attorney, 'That bitch ain't got nothing on me.' And then he pictures
what you both know is coming, the jury reading that verdict. It's a
look of panic and utter hatred.
An arrest without the look was like hitting it out of the park without
the crack of the bat. Or a perfect drive off the tee without feeling
the ping of the ball against the sweet spot of your club. For Walker,
