Terry’s unfazed expression told me she’d anticipated that answer. She was just continuing to plant the conspiracy seeds. Now she paused and looked down at her notes, as though taking a moment to gather her thoughts. I knew she was simply making sure she had the jury’s attention.
“You can’t say when any of those hairs got into Averly’s car, can you?”
“Which hairs, Counsel?”
“Any of the hairs you collected.”
“No.”
“And you can’t say how any of those hairs got into Averly’s car, can you?”
Dorian frowned. “Well, I can say that as many hairs as I found, it was likely they got there because your client sat in the car.”
“Fair enough. But what I meant was, for all you know, the hairs that look like Ian’s might have gotten there when Averly gave Ian a ride home one day, right?”
“True.”
“And that day might’ve been two years ago, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“Now, you said you found no evidence of forced entry into Averly’s car, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“But someone could have broken in without leaving evidence that force was used, right?”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“So you can’t rule out the possibility that someone broke into Averly’s car at some point?”
“Not completely, no.”
“Now, it’s relatively easy to collect someone’s hair without their knowing it, isn’t it, Ms. Struck?”
“Well…it could be done. I’m not sure how easily.”
“Then let me give you an example. If I held your jacket for you, I might find hairs on the shoulders that I could lift off with my bare hands, isn’t that right?”
“You might.”
“And if you used the courthouse restroom across the hall, I might find your hair in the sink?”
“It’s possible.”
“So wouldn’t you agree that there are several ways someone could collect a person’s hair without that person knowing it?”
“I haven’t counted the ways, but I’d agree there are a few.”
“And if I took hair off a person’s jacket and put it into someone’s car, you’d have no way of knowing that I’d planted that hair, would you?”
“Probably not.”
“Thank you. So it’s possible that the hairs you found to be consistent with my client’s were planted in Averly’s car, isn’t it?”
“Counsel, it’s possible we could be on a spaceship to Jupiter right now. Or I could be the next Miss America. Though I’ve yet to be nominated, hard as that may be to imagine.”
At that, the jury laughed out loud. Short, squat, no makeup, inch-long-steel-gray-haired Dorian wouldn’t enter a beauty contest if her life depended on it.
Judge Osterman frowned. “I believe Ms. Struck is interposing her own objection that your question calls for speculation. Which it does. Sustained. Next question.”
Terry didn’t miss a beat. She came straight back at Dorian. “You can’t say someone didn’t plant those hairs in Averly’s car, can you?”
“No. I can’t say they didn’t, but I have no reason to say they did.”
“And once again, you’re not trying to tell this jury that the hairs in Averly’s car are definitely Ian’s hair-you’re just saying they’re consistent with Ian’s hair, right?”
“Yes, right.”
“So they might not be Ian Powers’s hair, correct?”
“Correct, they might not.”
“Thank you. Nothing further.”
Before the judge could ask, I was on my feet. Terry’s persistent questioning about planted evidence and frame-ups was, as she intended, having a water-on-rock effect on the jury. At first I’d seen only mild curiosity on their faces, but by the end of Dorian’s cross, I’d begun to see real interest. I had to find a way to do some damage control. I took a shot in the dark.
“Ms. Struck, is there anything noteworthy about the hairs that was inconsistent with both Ian Powers and Jack Averly? Anything that might indicate whether they were deposited recently, or by someone who’d been in the car on more than one occasion?”
“What I can say is this: the unidentified hairs in Mr. Averly’s car did not match each other. That indicates they came from different people-not one person-and probably at different times, or I would have found more hairs that matched each other.”
It was as good as I was going to get. It didn’t rule out the possibility that some unknown conspirator had gotten into Averly’s car and planted Ian’s hair, but no witness could do that. The only thing that could was common sense. I tried to look calm and confident as I said, “Nothing further.”
“Defense?” the judge asked.
Terry looked unperturbed. “No, Your Honor, thank you. But I’d like this witness to remain on call.”
Placing a witness on call means they have to come back whenever they’re summoned-no further subpoena required. Sometimes it means the lawyer has something to smack the witness with later-an inconsistent statement, or a prior screwup of some kind. Sometimes it’s a bluff. And sometimes it’s just a way of making sure a witness will come back in case the lawyer forgot something. It would be just like Terry to bluff. But it would also be just like her to really have something up her sleeve-though what anyone could have on Dorian was hard to fathom. It made me every bit as nervous as Terry undoubtedly meant it to.
The judge turned back to me. “We have about fifteen minutes left. Do you have any short witnesses?”
Dorian, who’d just stepped down from the witness stand, gestured to herself and looked up at the judge. “How much shorter can they get?”
The jury laughed again. I’d heard she had a funny side, but this trial was the first time I’d seen it.
And on that note, the judge declared the court in recess for the day. Things wouldn’t always go this well, I knew. But for now, just for this one moment, I let myself enjoy a brief surge of hope.
68
I would’ve preferred to take our end-of-day confab back to the Biltmore bar, where we could plot our next moves in comfort. But we couldn’t talk in public. The only safe place, other than my room, was in my office with the door closed. And Eric had even questioned the security of that option. He’d offered to have our offices swept for bugs. So far, I hadn’t felt the need. There was nothing we talked about that the defense didn’t already know.
Bailey perched on a chair in front of my desk. “So who’s next?”
“Have you heard from Janice?” She could give us some information on the feud between her brother Tommy and Russell, and just through her presence remind the jury that Brian had been a real person.
“She’s still waffling,” Bailey said. “She wants to show her support, but…it’s a double whammy for her.”
I nodded. Bad enough having to deal with agoraphobia, but she’d also have to be in the same room with one man who’d driven her brother to suicide and another who’d murdered her nephew. That didn’t mean it was a lost cause, but I couldn’t count on her.
“Have you taken a temperature check on Raynie lately?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure what side she was on, and I couldn’t afford to have the mother of the victim become a hostile witness. Better to do without her testimony than have the jury see that.
“Haven’t had the chance,” Bailey said.
“Why don’t you let me give her a call?” Declan asked.
Why not? I didn’t want to set him up to take any hits for being my “stooge,” but I couldn’t imagine Raynie getting ugly with Declan. Russell would, but not Raynie.
“If you’re okay with it, I have no objection.”
“You want to put her on Monday if she’s…in the right frame of mind?”