“Yes, I can.”
“And whose fingerprint was it?”
“One of your investigators, Mr. Hardy. A Craig Chiurco.”
While the bailiff went to get the next witness, Stier asked Braun if counsel could approach, and at her impatient bidding both attorneys got up and walked to the bench.
“What do you want now, Mr. Stier?” Braun asked, clearly at the limit of her forbearance.
“Your Honor,” Stier began, “I haven’t got a clue as to what Mr. Hardy is up to. This seems irrelevant, immaterial, and just plain a waste of time.”
“I’m going to wrap this up, Your Honor, within the hour. Two more witnesses and I’m done.” Turning, and hoping to provoke an already rattled Stier, Hardy smiled sweetly. “I have to give you the discovery, Counselor. I don’t have to explain it to you.”
“That’s enough, you two!” Braun snapped, nearly loud enough for the jury to hear. “I’m tired of this bickering. Mr. Hardy, you’re going to call your witnesses and we’re going to get this thing done. Return to your counsel tables.”
Hardy wasted no time calling his second witness, and by now, as he approached the witness seat, his fatigue had dissipated. Jennifer Foreman had been another one of the USF cheerleaders-friends of Maya and Dylan back in the day-that Stier had originally put on his witness list and then elected not to call for direct testimony.
Late last night Wyatt Hunt had worked his magic and, in spite of the hour, had persuaded her to talk to him. Now, on the stand, and obviously dealing with a serious case of nerves, she appeared not to have had a great deal of luck getting back to sleep in the intervening hours. Or maybe it was the fact that Hardy and Hunt had asked that she check in upstairs, then wait at Lou the Greek’s, accompanied by Gina Roake, so that she wouldn’t come into contact with any other witnesses until she was called to the stand.
Still, she came across as poised, well dressed, competent and, always a plus, very attractive, as these ex-cheerleaders tended to be. A good, solid witness if Hardy could direct her where he needed to go. Hardy stood five feet in front of her and gave her a reassuring smile. “Mrs. Foreman,” he began, “you were a classmate of the defendant, Maya Townshend, at USF in the mid-nineties, were you not?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Were you in the same class?”
“No, I was a couple of years ahead of her.”
“But you were friends, were you not?”
“Yes, I thought so. We were cheerleaders together.”
“And during the time you were cheerleaders, did you also spend time with both of the victims in this case, Dylan Vogler and Levon Preslee?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you ever personally witness them smoking marijuana?”
“Your Honor!” Stier was standing up. “Mr. Hardy has promised us that he has new evidence, but this is all old news and irrelevant.”
But by now, after the previous witness, Braun was fully engaged and inclined to let Hardy go on, even without a strict evidentiary base. He’d already presented compelling fingerprint evidence that Stier hadn’t been able to supply, and even if the meaning of that was still questionable, there was no doubt about its possible relevance. “The objection is overruled, Counselor. Go ahead, Mr. Hardy.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Mrs. Foreman, should I repeat the question?”
“No. Did I ever witness Dylan and Levon smoking dope? Yes, of course.”
“Many times?”
Here Mrs. Foreman broke a small chuckle. “Pretty much all the time.”
Hardy let the moment of levity run its short course. “Mrs. Foreman, how did you meet Dylan and Levon?”
“We had a mutual friend in my class who everybody called Paco. He turned me on to them.” She shrugged and added to the jury, “If you’ll pardon the phrase. He was kind of the leader of the other, younger guys.”
“And this Paco, to your personal knowledge, this friend and leader of Dylan and Levon, was also a regular user of marijuana, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Foreman, you’ve said that everybody called this person by the name of Paco. But was that his real name?”
“No. It was just like a street name, something he thought was cool.”
“And you also knew him by his real name, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“And what name was that?”
“Craig Chiurco.”
Again, Hardy let the considerable tumult recede before he filled his lungs with air, glanced one last time at the assembled crowd in the gallery, and threw a look over to Stier.
Who looked as though the roof had fallen on him. Now he clearly knew what was going to happen, but didn’t know how to stop it, or even if he should try.
Hardy turned to the bench. “The defense calls Craig Chiurco, Your Honor.”
Braun scowled for a second, wondering about the decorum in her courtroom, but eventually raised her eyes to the back of the gallery. “Bailiff, call the witness,” she said to the officer standing just inside the closed back door, and she opened it and disappeared out into the hallway.
After, to Hardy, an agonizing half minute, enough time for the gallery to begin to hum again, Chiurco entered in his trademark coat and tie, looking confident and, as opposed to his bosses Hardy and Hunt, well rested. He’d been waiting with Bracco upstairs in the homicide detail for the sign that it was almost time and he should move down to the corridor outside the courtroom. Now, passing up through the bar rail, by the defense table, he proffered a quick, silent greeting to Hardy, who was already standing in his spot before the witness chair.
But Hardy, intent and self-absorbed, didn’t look up.
The clerk swore him in.
Craig looked expectantly at Hardy, who carefully walked him through the statement he’d prepared about their discussion two nights before. Upbeat, Chiurco gave every indication that he was glad to be testifying. “Now, Mr. Chiurco, to backtrack a bit. Just a moment ago you told the jury that you had been assigned by your employer, Wyatt Hunt, to locate Levon Preslee, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Up until that time, had you ever heard of Levon Preslee?”
“No.”
“To your knowledge, had you ever met him?”
“No.”
“And you did, in fact, locate Mr. Preslee, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“In a matter of hours?”
“Right.”
Hardy went back to his table and picked up a piece of paper. “I think you told us how you found Mr. Preslee. Didn’t you just say that you had done a Web search and found out that Mr. Vogler was convicted for robbery back in 1997, and that he had a partner in that crime named Levon Preslee? Does that sound about right?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, your employer did not tell you that Mr. Vogler’s partner was Mr. Preslee?”
“No.”
“And why not, do you think?” This was technically objectionable, but as Hardy had hoped and predicted, Stier remained silent, certain that Braun was not going to interrupt.
Chiurco’s expression wavered briefly, a moment of indecision. But Hardy exuded encouragement, and Chiurco gave him his answer. “He didn’t know it, not at that time.”
“Mr. Hunt didn’t know Mr. Preslee’s name, that is?”
“Right. We just knew that Vogler had a partner in the robbery he’d committed. We didn’t know who it was.”
“So again, how did you find that this partner was Mr. Preslee?”
“As I said,” Chiurco still cooperative, but some exasperation breaking through the veneer, “I did a Web search.”
“You looked on Google or Yahoo?” Hardy asked. “That type of thing?”
“Yes. I don’t remember precisely which one.”
“Do you mean you don’t remember which search engine you used?”
“Yes. There are a lot of them. Prison databases, city and county records, and so on.”