“I have a lot more questions, Jason. A lot more. Like, where were you tonight that you didn’t get home until after midnight? Can anyone vouch for you? How did Alexa-”
“I said we’re done,” Bradley says again. “That means we’re done.”
Stop tape.
As Roger Ogren kills the DVD player, several of the jurors get aha looks on their faces, solemn nods, grim realizations. I imagine cartoon bubbles over their heads, displaying their thoughts, the words “That’s right, you are done” in bold letters.
39
Jason
My lawyers, Shauna sitting next to me and Bradley John next to her, scribble notes as they listen to the examination of Detective Cromartie. He’s done well on the witness stand. He’s a strong, assertive type, but he isn’t overplaying his hand, not coming on too strong. A good cop knows where to draw that line. Ray Cromartie, I’ve thought since that night, is a good cop. He was stringing me along pretty well before I abruptly terminated the interview. He scored one on the key for Alexa, with me shutting the interview down while I was on the ropes, and I’m sure he knew that, but he was clearly disappointed when I pulled the plug. He wanted what all of them want: a confession. He caught me in a couple of-ahem-inconsistencies, which is a nice consolation prize, but he didn’t get what he came for.
Shauna is spending too much time on her notes. She’s coping, I think. She’s forcing herself to stay clinical, to focus on questions and answers and not on the reality of what is happening here, and what happened that night. This is tougher on her than I expected, hearing all this and bearing the burden of keeping me out of prison. She’s one of the best lawyers I know, but she has almost no experience in a criminal courtroom. She mentioned more than once that we should consider some highbrow defense attorney, Gerry Salters or someone like that, but it had to be her. It had to be.
After some preliminary questions with the detective, Roger Ogren brings the television screen to life again, taking us back to the interrogation at a different point. Roger Ogren has decided to cherry-pick through this tape, playing various tidbits out of order, because some of the stuff on this tape will be shown to the jury through Cromartie and others through the Community Action Team squad officer. This part of the tape began around the sixth minute of conversation:
“You told me back at your house that you have a pretty good idea who killed Alexa,” Cromartie says. “Can you help me out with that? Who killed her, Jason?”
I don’t answer at first. Several seconds pass. I shake my head and wave a hand. “His name is Jim.”
“Last name?” Cromartie asks.
“Just Jim,” I say.
“Well. . what can you tell me about Jim?”
The way Cromartie says Jim, it’s like he’s dealing with a little kid who is obviously lying.
“He. . he has red hair,” I say. “He’s big, muscular. He wears glasses. He has a paunch, like, a gut.”
“Why do you think Jim would kill Alexa?”
“To get to me,” I say. “To get to me.”
“Why would Jim want to get to you, Jason?”
“I’m. . I’m not sure. I just know that he’s angry with me. I’m still trying to figure out why.”
“Did this. . Jim tell you that he was going to hurt Alexa? Or you?”
I shake my head. “Not in so many words. I wish he had. If he had, maybe I could have done something.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Cromartie says.
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it. A nice motto of mine, stolen from my mentor, and a nice tool for dominating a conversation. But probably not so nice when your audience is a jury trying to decide if you’re a cold-blooded murderer.
After a lengthy delay, Cromartie opens his hand, visible to the camera. “That’s it? A guy whose last name you don’t know, who might want to hurt you, but you don’t know why?”
“I wish I knew more,” I say. “I’d love to tell you more, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”
Roger Ogren stops the tape. “Detective Cromartie,” he says, “since this interview with the defendant on the early morning of July thirty-first, has the defendant come back to tell you who ‘Jim’ is?”
“No, sir, he hasn’t.”
“Since this interview, which took place over four months ago, has the defendant come back to tell you why this ‘Jim’ person wanted to hurt him?”
“No, sir.”
“During these four-plus months, has the defendant told you anything at all about this supposed murderer named. . ‘Jim’?”
“He hasn’t. Not a peep.”
Roger Ogren looks over his notes at the lectern one last time. Shauna takes a deep breath.
I lean into Shauna’s personal space. “You ready for him?”
“Is he ready for me?” she whispers back. False bravado, or I haven’t known this woman half my life.
“Thank you, Detective,” says Ogren. “No more questions for this witness.”
40
Shauna
Judge Bialek calls a recess before I cross-examine Ray Cromartie. I have my notes in front of me, drawing some arrows to move around some questions, but it’s dangerous to get too wedded to notes. Once you write them down in detail, you tend to stay with them and stop listening to the witness. It becomes less of a fight and more of a conversation. You just have to let go and trust your preparation. You have to take off the training wheels and pedal that big bike down a dark, scary trail.
Jason is taking a bathroom break with an armed escort, so it’s just Bradley John and me in the conference room adjacent to the courtroom. I don’t like to stray too far during breaks. Elevators can break down, restaurants can take too long to bring the food. I can handle the stress of a trial, I’m used to it, but I could live my whole life and never get used to the stress of being late. So Jason’s brother, Pete, who is in town for the trial, has brought us sandwiches from a deli.
I pick at a turkey and Swiss on wheat while I meditate. After a moment I push my notes away and breathe out. “I can’t look at this anymore. I just need to do it.”
Bradley is chewing on a pickle and staring at a transcript from the interrogation. “I don’t know why Jason ever agreed to that interview,” he says. “He knows better than anybody not to do that.”
“Sometimes you can’t take your own advice,” I offer.
“Yeah, but-I mean, it’s one thing if you try to talk your way out of things. The perps I used to interrogate would do that all the time. They’d be full of stories. ‘Here’s what happened, see, it went like this, see,’ and I’d let them just drone on and on and tangle themselves in knots. But Jason didn’t argue a case for himself. He basically just let Cromartie beat him up.”
I scrap the sandwich and go for the good stuff, the salt-and-vinegar potato chips. “You’re forgetting that Jason was still under the spell of OxyContin,” I say. “You saw him scratching his arms in there and smacking his lips. Classic withdrawal symptoms.”
“I know, I know. But all he had to do was take Five. Just assert his right to remain silent and shut the whole thing down. That’s what I told him to do. I told him, before we went in-”
“I know you did, Bradley. I know you did.” I pat his arm. This interrogation has bothered Bradley as much as anything in this case, because it was the one thing that happened on his watch. He gave Jason sound counsel-to not make a statement-but he was overruled. Surprise! Jason didn’t listen to advice. Truly, he wouldn’t listen on his best day, and on top of everything else, there was the painkiller problem. It’s hard to know Jason’s frame of mind in that police station. I wish I knew. I wish I knew whether Jason knew what he was doing or screwed this whole thing up by talking to Cromartie.