Guilt

Farrell got his blood up when it was time to perform. Leaning over to both Dooher and Christina as Jenkins handed him the witness, he whispered, 'It's almost unfair.'

He rose slowly and made a little show of pretending to be reading something from a file in front of him, getting his questions down. From the table, finally, he raised his head and smiled at the witness. 'Mr Balian. On the night we've been talking about, June 7th, before you took your walk, you had dinner with your wife at your home. Do you remember what you had for dinner that night?'

At the opposite table, Christina saw Glitsky and Jenkins exchange a look. They must have known what would be coming, but that didn't make it any easier to sit through.

On the witness stand, Emil Balian crossed his arms and frowned. 'I don't know,' he said.

Farrell looked down at the file before him again and creased his own brow. 'You don't know? And yet in your second interview with the police, didn't you tell Lieutenant Glitsky that you'd had corned beef and cabbage for dinner on that night?'

'I think I said that, yes, but-'

'I've got the transcript of that interview right here, Mr Balian. Would you like to see it?'

'No, that's all right, I know I said it.'

'But in a later interview, were you as sure of what you had for dinner?'

Balian nodded. 'Not really. But that was a week or so after I first talked to the police, and Eleanor reminded me she thought we'd had pork chops and applesauce that night, Tuesday, if it was going to be important. The night before was corned beef. It doesn't have anything to do with the car,' he added petulantly.

'Do you remember now which dinner it was, the corned beef or the pork chops?'

'No. I'm not sure.'

Farrell put his pad down and walked around the table, out into the center of the courtroom. 'Mr Balian, would you have had a drink with either of these dinners? Let's say the corned beef?'

'Usually with corned beef, I'd have a beer.'

'One beer? A couple of beers?'

'Sometimes a couple of beers.'

'And how about pork chops? Would you have a drink with pork chops?'

'Sometimes. White wine.'

'A glass or two?'

'Yes.'

'But on this night, you don't remember what you ate or if you had anything to drink exactly, do you?'

'Not exactly, no.'

'You do admit, however, that you probably had a couple of drinks – that was your habit with meals – regardless whether it was corned beef or pork chops.'

'That's the first thing I said, wasn't it? That I didn't know?'

'Yes, it was, Mr Balian. That was the first thing you said, that you didn't remember what you'd eaten. But now, let's get on with what you say you do remember, the car with the ESKW license plates. You saw this car parked on your street on Tuesday night, June 7th?'

On more solid ground for a moment, Balian settled himself in the witness chair. He loosened his collar at the knot of his tie. 'I did. It was in front of the Murrays' house.'

'And where were you? Did you walk right by it?'

A pause. 'I was across the street.'

'Across the street? Did you cross over to look at this car more carefully?'

'No. I could see it fine. I didn't study it or anything. I just noticed it, the way you notice things. It wasn't a car from our street.'

'Okay, fair enough. Is Casitas a wide street, by the way?'

The petulance was returning. 'It's a normal street, I don't know how wide.'

Farrell went back to his table and turned with a document in his hand. He moved forward to the witness box. The questions may have been barbed, but his tone was neutral, even friendly. 'I have here a notarized survey of Casitas Avenue' – he had it marked Defense E – 'and it shows that the street is sixty-two feet from side to side. Does that sound right, Mr Balian?'

'If you say so.'

'But you had to be more than sixty-two feet away when you saw the license plate that read ESKW, isn't that true?'

'I don't know. Why?'

'Because you couldn't read the plate from directly across the street, could you?' Balian didn't answer directly, and Farrell believed the question might have struck him ambiguously. So he helped him out. 'From directly across the street, you'd only see the side of the car, wouldn't you? You would have had to have been diagonal to it to see the license plate, isn't that so?'

'Oh, I see what you're saying. I guess so. Yes.'

'Maybe another ten, twenty, thirty feet away?'

'Maybe. I don't know. I saw the car…' Balian paused.

'So how far were you from the car, Mr Balian? More than sixty feet, correct?'

'I guess.'

'More than eighty feet?'

'Maybe.'

'More than a hundred feet?'

'Maybe not that much.'

'So perhaps a hundred feet, is that fair?' Farrell smiled at him, man-to man. There was nothing personal here. 'Now, when you saw this car from perhaps a hundred feet away-'

'Objection.' Jenkins had to try, but she must have known the objection wasn't so much for substance as it was for solidarity. Her witness was beginning to shrivel.

Farrell rephrased. 'When you saw this car from across the street, was it at the beginning of your walk or more toward the end of it?'

'The end of it. I was coming around back to my street.'

'And so the street-lights were on, were they not?'

After another hesitation, Balian responded about the street-lights. 'They had just come on.'

'They had just come on. So it was still somewhat light out?'

'Yes. I could see clearly.'

'I'm sure you could, but I'm a little confused. Haven't you just testified that you walked for an hour, and when you got back to your house, it was dark? Didn't you tell that to Ms Jenkins?'

'Yes. I said that.'

'And this street you live on – Casitas – is it a long way from the Murrays' house, where you saw this car, to your own home?'

'No. Seven or eight houses.'

'And did you continue your walk home after you saw this car in front of the Murrays'? You didn't stop for anything, chat with anybody?'

'No.'

'And you've said it was dark when you got home?'

'Yes.'

'Well, then, I'm simply confused here – maybe you could explain it to us all. How could it have been light, or as you say, just dark, when you were seven or eight houses up the street?'

'I said the lights were on.'

'Yes, you did say that, Mr Balian. But you said they were "just" on, implying it was still light out, isn't that the case? But it wasn't light out, was it? It was, in fact, dark.'

'I said the street-lights were on, didn't I?' he repeated, his voice now querulous, shaking. 'I didn't tell a lie. I saw that car! I saw the license plates. It was the same car I saw the next day.'

Warfare, Farrell was thinking. No other word for it. He advanced relentlessly. 'And it was a brown car, you said, didn't you? You knew for sure that the car you saw the previous night had been brown because it had the same license plates.'

'Yes.'

'When you first saw the car that night, could you tell it was brown in the dark?'

'What kind of question is that? Of course it was brown. It was the same car.'

'Couldn't it have been dark blue, or black, or another dark color?'

'No. It was brown!'

Farrell took a moment regrouping. He walked back to the defense table, consulted some notes, turned. Then. 'Do you wear glasses, Mr Balian?'

The witness had his elbows planted on the arms of the chair, his head sunken between his shoulders, swallowed in the suit. 'I wear reading glasses.'

'And you see perfectly clearly for normal activities?'

'Yes.'

Twenty-twenty vision?'

Another agonizing pause. 'Almost. I don't need glasses to drive a car. I've got fine vision, young man.'

'For a man of your age, I'm sure you do. How old are you, by the way, Mr Balian?'

Chin thrust out, Balian was proud of it. 'I'm seventy-nine years old, and I see just as good as you do.'

Farrell paused and took a deep breath. He didn't want Balian to explode at him, make him into the heavy, but he had to keep going. A couple more hits and it would be over. 'And then the next day, at what you knew was a murder scene, you saw a similar car in a driveway to the one you'd seen the previous night, in the dark, after you'd had a couple of drinks, and Lieutenant Glitsky showed up and suddenly it seemed it might have been the exact same car, didn't it?'