“So how,” asks Doan, saying each word slowly, “do you remember it now?”
At the defense table, Polansky sits with his hand to his forehead, presumably thinking about the case that might have been. Subtle strategies have suddenly been rendered obsolete by simple vaudeville. The Newport cigarettes, the unchecked hairs and the ghost of Vincent Booker-all of that is out the window now that Doan is blowing holes in Sharon Henson for the courtroom’s amusement. At times, the jurors laugh so loudly that Gordy uses the gavel.
Outside the courtroom, Rich Garvey fidgets as Henson’s time on the stand lengthens. Only when Doan emerges is the true scope of the victory made clear to him.
“What happened with Nee-Cee?” he asks the prosecutor as they walk down the third-floor corridor. “How’d she go over?”
Doan smiles as if he had a dorsal fin sticking through the back of his pinstripes. “I killed her. I destroyed her,” he tells the detective. “There’s blood all over the floor in there.”
“She was terrible?”
“She was a fucking joke. The jury was laughing at her,” says Doan, unable to conceal his delight. “I’m serious. I fucking murdered her.”
From here forward, it is a downhill ride. If Sharon Henson had held to the truth, if she had been willing to give the state what she gave them in March, she could have counted herself as nothing worse than one piece of the circumstantial puzzle. Instead, she chose to perjure herself and as a result, she exists in every juror’s mind as evidence of Robert Frazier’s desperation.
On Monday, the testimony begins again with Rich Garvey’s return to the stand and the blow-by-blow of the investigative steps that led to Frazier’s arrest. On the cross-examination, Polansky works hard to emphasize his client’s early cooperation in the probe, Frazier’s willingness to come downtown and be interviewed without a lawyer. At one particularly telling moment, Polansky asks about the wounds from both knife and gun, suggesting that the use of two weapons indicates that two suspects are involved.
“How many years have you been a police officer?” he asks Garvey.
“Thirteen.”
“And you’ve investigated many, many homicide cases either directly or-”
“That’s right,” says Garvey.
“Have you ever had a case where the victim died by a stab wound and gun wound and there was only one perpetrator?” asks Polansky.
“Yes,” says Garvey calmly.
“How many cases? What case? Name it.”
“We had indications in the case of Purnell Booker that there was one perpetrator.”
Take that, thinks Garvey. With one sweet little answer, the same jury that has been asked to worry about the mysterious Vincent Booker can now wonder about the fact that somewhere in this case another Booker exists as a victim. Polansky asks to approach the bench.
“I am not even sure what to do, whether to ask for a mistrial or not,” he tells Gordy.
The judge smiles, shaking his head. “You’re not going to do anything since you asked him.”
“I didn’t ask him,” Polansky protests.
“He answered your question,” says Gordy. “What is your request? What do you want me to do? Why did you come up here?”
“I don’t know,” says Polansky. “Now I’m wondering whether I should open the whole thing.”
“I’m not going to let him open up the whole can of worms based on that answer.”
“Thank you,” says Polansky, still a little dazed. “I am not… I have no requests then.”
Garvey’s second trip to the stand is a carefully crafted piece of work and a redemption of sorts for his performance on the first day of the trial, but it is almost beside the point. So, too, is the testimony of Robert Frazier, who takes the stand the following day to explain himself to the jury and declare that he had no reason or desire to kill Charlene Lucas. Frazier’s day in court has already been clouded by Sharon Henson; she has colored everything to which the jury is subsequently exposed. More than that, Henson’s testimony provided a stark contrast to the other essential testimony in the case: Romaine Jackson was young and frightened and reluctant when she identified Robert Frazier as the man she saw with Lena on the night of the murder; Sharon Henson was hard and bitter and contemptuous when she took the same stand to deny her own words.
That is precisely the comparison that Doan makes in his closing argument to the jury. Rich Garvey, now permitted in the courtroom as an observer, watches several jurors nod in agreement as Doan paints a vivid picture of each woman-one is an innocent truth-teller, the other, a corrupt prevaricator. Once again he returns to Henson’s testimony about her boyfriend’s clothing. He gives special attention to one small piece of testimony, one tiny fragment gleaned from a week of legal argument. When Romaine Jackson testified, she was asked to describe the defendant’s hat. A cap, she says, a white cap.
“She’s got her hands up here and she says it has a snap on it,” recalls Doan, hands to his head. “Has a snap on it… And when did that become significant?”
Sharon Henson, he tells the jury. A day later, Sharon Henson is on the stand trying to help her boyfriend. Oh, says Doan, in imitation, he was wearing all beige. Beige trench coat. Beige slacks. Beige shoes. Probably beige underwear and a beige golf cap…
The prosecutor pauses.
“… with a snap on it.”
By now, even the juror in the front row-the one who had Doan worried at the beginning of the trial-is nodding in agreement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, after seeing and listening to Romaine Jackson and then hearing that description from a woman who is doing her very best to help this defendant, can there be any question that the person that Romaine Jackson says she saw is the defendant?”
A helluva connect, thinks Garvey, as Doan moves on through the rest of the evidence, urging the jury to use common sense. “When you put it all together, that jigsaw puzzle we talked about will be clear. You will clearly see that this man-”
Doan wheels and points at the defense table.
“-despite all his protestations to the contrary is the man who brutally murdered Charlene Lucas in the early morning hours of February 22, 1988.”
Polansky responds with his strongest stuff, listing the state’s evidence on a nearby drawing board and then crossing off each item as he tries to explain away the circumstances. He does his best to knock down Romaine Jackson and to resurrect Vincent Booker as the logical alternative. He steers clear, however, of Sharon Henson.
In his final response to the jury, Larry Doan actually has the temerity to go to Polansky’s drawing board and begin writing his own comments above his opponent’s visual aid.
“Objection, your honor,” says Polansky, tired and angry. “I would appreciate it if Mr. Doan wrote on his own board.”
Doan shrugs with feigned embarrassment. The jury laughs.
“Overruled,” says Gordy.
Polansky shakes his head; he knows the game is up. And no one is surprised when, only two hours after arguments, the courtroom is reconvened and the jurors file back into the box.
“Mr. Foreman, please stand,” says the clerk. “How do you find the defendant Robert Frazier in indictment number 18809625 as to murder in the first degree, not guilty or guilty?”
“Guilty,” says the foreman.
In the gallery, only the Lucas family reacts. Garvey stares blankly as the jury is polled. Doan shoots a look at Polansky, but the defense attorney continues to take notes. Robert Frazier stares straight ahead.
In the third-floor corridor ten minutes later, Jackie Lucas, the younger daughter, finds Garvey and wraps her arm around his shoulder.
Garvey is momentarily surprised. There are occasions like this, moments when the survivors and the detectives share whatever kind of belated victory comes from a courtroom. Too often, however, the family doesn’t even show for court, or if they do, they regard the defendant and the authorities with equal shares of contempt.