"How does he get blood on the left-hand back side of his flight jacket?" Tommy walked over to the prosecution's table, picked up Scott's leather flight jacket, and held it up, displaying it for the court to see.
Major Clark hesitated. The redness had returned to his face.
"I don't understand the question," he said.
Tommy pounced.
"It would seem most simple, major," he said icily.
"There's blood on the back of his coat. How does it get there? In your entire testimony, describing the crime, and now, in acting it out for this court, at no point do you ever suggest Lieutenant Scott turned his back on Bedford. How does that blood get there?"
Major Clark shifted about in his seat.
"He may have had to lift the body up, before shoving it back in the stall. He would use his shoulder, and that might have put the blood there."
"You're not an expert at these things, right? You've never really been taught anything about crime scenes. Or blood patterns, correct?"
"I've already answered that."
Walker Townsend rose to his feet.
"Your Honor," he said, "I think the defense is " Colonel MacNamara held up his hand.
"If you have some problem, you can bring it out on redirect. For now, let the lieutenant continue."
"Thank you, colonel," Tommy said. He was surprised by MacNamara's decisiveness.
"Okay, Major Clark. Let's suppose he did have to lift the body, although that's not what you said the first time through. Is the defendant right-handed or left-handed?"
Clark hesitated, then replied.
"I don't know."
"Well, if he opted to use his left shoulder for this heavy labor, wouldn't that suggest to you he was left-handed?"
"Yes."
Tommy spun about, suddenly facing Lincoln Scott.
"Are you left-handed, lieutenant?" he abruptly, loudly, demanded.
Lincoln Scott, wearing a small smile of his own, reacted swiftly, before Walker Townsend had the opportunity to object.
He thrust himself to his feet, and shouted out: "No sir!
Right-handed, sir!" And then he made a fist with his right hand and held it up in front of him.
Tommy pivoted again, abruptly facing Major Clark.
"So," he demanded sharply.
"Maybe the crime didn't happen that way. Precisely." He mocked the major's own word with sarcasm in his tone of voice.
"Well," Clark responded, "perhaps not precisely-" Tommy held up his hand, cutting him off.
"That's good enough," he said.
"I wonder what else didn't happen precisely as you suggest. In fact, I wonder if anything happened precisely as you think it did!"
Tommy fairly shouted these last words. Then he shrugged his shoulders and raised his arms in a great questioning gesture, filling the courtroom with the elusive sense that it would be unfair to convict any man without precision.
"No further questions," he said with as much disgust as he could manage.
"Not for this witness!"
He dramatically returned to his seat, making a clattering noise as he sat down. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hauptmann Visser paying rapt attention to the cross-examination. The German wore the same nasty half-smile that Tommy recognized from other moments. Visser whispered something to the stenographer, who quickly scratched down the Hauptmann's words on his sheet of paper.
From his seat next to Tommy, Lincoln Scott whispered, "Nicely done." On the other side, Hugh wrote on his own paper the single name Fenelli, followed by several dark exclamation points. The Canadian policeman knew what was coming, as well, and he wore a similar satisfied smile on his lips.
Behind them, voices were buzzing, as kriegies leaned together, like spectators at a closely played ball game, discussing the action on the field. Colonel MacNamara allowed the excited muttering to continue for a moment, then he banged his makeshift gavel down hard three times. His own face was rigidly set. Not angry, but clearly upset although with the prosecution's flimsiness or Tommy's theatrics was impossible to tell.
"Redirect?" he coldly demanded of Walker Townsend.
The captain from Virginia rose slowly. There was something in the steady, patient way he moved that made Tommy suddenly nervous. He thought the captain should be flying erratically, trying to keep high and level even with one engine out.
Shaking his head, smiling wryly. Captain Townsend stepped forward.
"No sir, we will have no further questions for the major. Thank you, sir."
This got Tommy's attention. The one thing he'd been certain of as he sat down was that Townsend would need to rehabilitate Major Clark's testimony. And he counted on the belief that every effort to make Clark look like he knew what he was talking about would only serve to make his inadequacies as a criminal investigator more obvious. Tommy felt an unexpected fear, not unlike a moment many months earlier inside the Lovely Lydia, making their way home to base one evening when the bomber had been jumped by an unseen fighter and the Focke-Wulf's tracer rounds creased the blue sky beside them. It had taken all the skill his old captain from West Texas possessed to climb into the nearby clouds and elude the threatening fighter.
Then Townsend turned, looking briefly at the defense, then out at the body of airmen crammed into the theater.
"Do you have another witness?" Colonel MacNamara asked.
"Yes, we do, colonel," Captain Townsend said carefully.
"One last witness, and then we will be completed with our case, sir."
Townsend's voice rose quickly, gaining momentum and strength with each word, so that when he finally spoke, it was close to a bellow.
"At this point, sir, the prosecution would call Second Lieutenant Nicholas Fenelli to the witness stand!"
Hugh Renaday blurted out, "What the bloody hell?" Lincoln Scott dropped the pencil to the table, and Tommy Hart's head suddenly reeled, as if he'd stood up too quickly. He could feel the color drain from his cheeks.
"Lieutenant Nicholas Fenelli!" Colonel MacNamara called out.
There was commotion from the crowd of airmen in the audience, as they parted to allow the erstwhile physician to make his way forward. Tommy spun about in his seat, and saw Fenelli moving steadily down the center aisle of the theater, his eyes directly on the witness chair, scrupulously avoiding contact with Tommy's.
"What the hell's this?" Renaday whispered nearby.
"A damn ambush!"
Tommy watched as Fenelli approached. He had obviously spiffed up his uniform as much as possible, shaved with a precious new blade, combed his stringy black hair, and trimmed his pencil-thin mustache. At the front of the theater, Fenelli saluted briskly, then reached out for the Bible, on which to swear to tell the whole truth. Tommy felt momentarily mesmerized by the medic's appearance, almost as if the scene in front of him were playing out in slow motion. But as Fenelli raised his hand to swear, Tommy managed to shake the surprise from his body, and he leapt up, slamming a fist down onto the table in front of him as he did so.