Jury of One

37

“Material witnesses,” said Shelly to the guard. She signed in at the desk and moved over so that Joel Lightner could do the same.

“Joseph Slattery,” said the man behind the desk. He scanned a sheet of paper that was kept in a plastic sleeve, looking for the location of the prisoner.

Twenty-five minutes later, Shelly and Joel Lightner sat in a room with Joseph Slattery. The report Shelly held told her that Mr. Slattery was age thirty-six and homeless. He had a sheet but little of significance. Criminal trespass was the primary violation in the last ten years. Before that, there had been an aggravated battery pleaded down to simple assault.

The man didn’t look like a homeless man, because, of course, he was not homeless for the time being. Joseph Slattery was being held as a material witness by the county attorney. This was an option that the prosecutors reserved for people whom they suspected would be unwilling to appear at trial. Often, the unreliability of the witness was due to the fact that they were criminals. Here, the prosecutors were probably afraid that Joseph Slattery might simply disappear off the face of the earth.

He was clean-shaven and fair-complected. His hair was clean and combed. His clothes-standard prison garb-were undoubtedly an upgrade on his normal attire. Shelly detected an occasional alertness in his eyes. He was clearly a troubled man, like most homeless. Very few people rationally chose to live on the streets, which was the true tragedy. Walk along the city’s streets and check out the vagrants and beggars, and nine out of the ten-if not all ten-are either mentally disturbed or addicted to something, be it alcohol or drugs. People crying out for help who don’t know how to cry out. Or who cried out but no one listened.

Joel took the lead, as he did with the other witness to the shooting. He had probably spoken to people like this hundreds of times, and he had fixed on the proper angle and tone. Besides, he was the “prover”-that, after all, was the reason he was here, to corroborate what was said, in case any of the interviewees decided to change their testimony when it came to trial. Shelly would call Joel, if need be, and show that the witness had spoken inconsistently on an earlier occasion.

Joseph Slattery spoke with a soft, hoarse voice. He did not immediately appear to lack credibility, which could cut either way for Shelly, depending on what he said. She could not suppress pity for this man, who had had some major complications in his life to turn out this way. Worse still, she realized that she might be required at trial to destroy his credibility, depending on how things turned out. She would have to put aside her emotions and, as the ruthless defense attorney, equate this man with a sideshow freak in a traveling carnival.

“Highland Woods,” he said when Joel asked him where he grew up. Shelly, who was practiced enough not to jump from her seat, noted that this particular suburb was among the most affluent in the city, and possibly the country.

“I’m a two-time loser,” he told the room. “I’m bipolar and an alcoholic.”

This much Shelly already knew. The prosecution was required to disclose such things when they proffered their witnesses to Shelly. Technically, the witness lists had not been exchanged yet in this case, but there was no reason for Dan Morphew to hide these facts from Shelly, and he had not done so. Alcoholism had overtaken this man five years ago, sending him from a decent job as an office manager to the city’s streets.

“Are you medicating in here?” Joel asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Lithium. And I’m drying out.”

The problem with bipolar disorder, from Shelly’s perspective, was that it did not necessarily attack the witness’s perception. It caused enveloping mood swings-from a heightened state of euphoria to, more often, acute depression. But it didn’t mean that Slattery didn’t see what he claimed to see.

Alcoholism was another story, obviously. If this guy was loaded when the events went down, Shelly could rip his testimony to shreds.

“What about when you’re on the street?” Joel asked.

“Pretty much nothing.” He looked at each of them. “I don’t get violent. I don’t do that. It’s more, just-I’m uneven.”

Shelly smiled warmly at the man.

“I hang out on Gentry Street a lot,” he said without solicitation. “Near the train station. I was over there when this stuff happened.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened, Joe,” Lightner suggested.

“See, I see this cop car. That didn’t mean much, ’cause I see them a lot. Usually they leave me alone. I’m not one of these guys they gotta worry about. Me, I don’t get violent.”

“Right,” said Joel, “you don’t get violent. We get that.” Shelly could see that Joel had dealt with these kinds of witnesses before, and she realized that this could be a liability. He sounded like a cop playing the heavy. She had to assume Joel knew what he was doing, but she felt that this man was intelligent enough not to be subjected to condescension, something about which a woman working in the legal system knew plenty.

“This kid’s running from the cops and they were chasing him. The kid went into the alley. The cop ran after him and the kid shot him.” The man lit a cigarette and chewed on his lip. He seemed uncomfortable, but not because of the presence of Shelly and Joel.

“Where were you?” asked Joel.

“I was on Gentry. I was on the other side of the street.”

“To the north or south?”

Mr. Slattery thought a moment. “South. Yeah, south.”

“How far, would you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fifty feet away? Hundred feet?”

“Close enough to see.”

“Give me a distance.”

“I don’t know.”

Shelly touched Joel’s arm, and he deferred to her. “Mr. Slattery, the boy who was running? Can you tell me what you remember about him?”

Slattery rubbed his cheek. His skin was rough and blotchy. You could clean off the dirt but you couldn’t erase years of malnutrition and poor hygiene. “He had a bag. He had a gun.”

“He had a gun,” Shelly repeated in a soothing voice. “Where did he have it?”

“I don’t know. He shot the cop with it.”

“You saw him shoot the cop?”

“Yeah. The cop didn’t have a gun.”

Well, that last point was unsolicited. But the time for that issue would come later. “The cop hadn’t removed his gun from the holster.”

“Right. The kid shot him. The cop was just standing there.”

“This was in the alley.”

“Yeah, in the alley. Yeah.” The man nodded enthusiastically.

“The cop had nothing in his hands?”

“No, sir,” he answered, even though he was addressing Shelly.

“Okay, so-the cop had nothing in his hands and the boy had a gun.”

“Right,” he said. Shelly saw Joel scribbling in his notepad. This was good, because the witness was wrong on this point.

Shelly took a chance. “And who else was there?”

Slattery blinked. His eyes narrowed.

“You said the cop who was shot,” she said. “You said the boy who shot him. Wasn’t someone else there?”

“There was another cop.”

“Yeah, but I don’t mean him. I mean the other person in the alley.”

Slattery looked off to the side and inhaled. Shelly, of course, was bluffing. She had no concrete knowledge that any other person was in the alley. This was tantamount to a cross-examination, suggesting an answer and trying to force it on the witness. She wanted him to know that she “knew” of another person, so he would feel free to tell her. The witness’s face contorted, and Shelly couldn’t tell if she was tripping the man up or confusing him.

“Can you describe the other person in the alley for us, Mr. Slattery?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t know about another person.”

She wanted to come across the table and grab him. “There was another person.”

“I said I don’t know. I don’t know about that.” He began to tap his foot.

They went back and forth like that a while longer. She wanted to sound as if she knew it to be true that another person, besides Miroballi and Alex, had been present in that alley. She wanted Slattery to think there was no reason for him to deny it. But he didn’t take the bait, either because it was not true or he was afraid to say so.

Finally, she sat back in her chair and let Joel continue. Joel went through a number of subjects over the next half-hour. Slattery adamantly denied that he was either intoxicated or suffering from his bipolar disorder at the time of the shooting. Shelly couldn’t know, on any topic of importance, whether he was telling the truth. He certainly seemed to be sympathetic toward the government, who was temporarily housing, feeding, and medicating him. But she knew what she needed to know. His testimony would be damaging, which meant that she would have to go after him at trial.

As to whether another person was present at the shooting, she considered it an open question.