Overkill

19

Even though the jurors had known for a full week that Jeremy would be taking the stand, every one of them locked eyes on the young man as he rose from his seat and began making his way toward the witness stand. There are few moments in a trial that rival the drama that accompanies the announcement that the defendant is about to testify. The delivering of the verdict, certainly, and perhaps the summations of the lawyers. But short of those events, which in this case wouldn’t take place until the following week, Jeremy Estrada taking his place in the witness box was unquestionably the high point of the trial.

From an early age, we’re conditioned to resolve disputes by hearing from both sides. Try to visualize a scene in which a mother hears a crash coming from the kitchen. Upon investigating, she finds the cookie jar in a hundred pieces on the floor, her two young sons standing equidistant from its remains.

“Did you do that?” she asks one of them.

“No,” he says. “Not me.”

Turning to the other one, she asks, “Did you?”

Son number two decides to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination, and says nothing. Though only four, he’s read up on constitutional law and knows that his silence may not be used against him.

So who broke the cookie jar?

If you say the second boy, the one who refused to deny it, you’re being nothing more nor less than human. We’ve grown to expect that someone accused of a transgression will either admit his guilt or deny it, and that-and here’s the interesting part-for some reason we think that simply by listening to him we’ll be able to judge whether or not he’s telling the truth.

So Jeremy taking the stand in his own defense promised to be a defining moment for the jurors, most likely the defining moment. They would listen to him as he tried to explain away the evidence that had built up against him over the past five days, and from his answers they would know whether to walk him out the door or ship him off to state prison for the next twenty-five years or more of his life.

Telling the truth or lying.

Guilty or not guilty.

Black or white.

They could forget about reasonable doubt, ignore which side had the burden of proof, and stop looking for shades of gray. By putting the defendant on the stand, Jaywalker was making it easy for them. Once they heard from Jeremy, they would know.

Jaywalker, too, knew that was what they were thinking, of course. But long ago, perhaps as long ago as he’d set eyes on Jeremy and heard him say that when he’d shot Victor Quinones he’d been defending himself, he’d known it was a strategy he was going to have to adopt. Carmen hadn’t been there at the fight and the shooting. Frankie the Barber had come all the way from Puerto Rico on his own dime, but he hadn’t been there, either. Nor had Julie, with all her unexpected eloquence. Miranda had been there, but by writing out a statement for the detectives, she’d poisoned herself as a witness.

Which left only Jeremy.

So for better or worse, it would be left to him to tell his story, and it would indeed come down to how persuasively he could and would tell it. And now, as he placed one hand on a Bible, raised the other and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Jaywalker held his breath and prayed for the best. The hundreds of hours of prying Jeremy’s story from him were a thing of the past. The mock examinations and cross-examinations were history. Even Jaywalker’s last piece of advice delivered an hour ago would be forgotten. “Details,” he’d told Jeremy. “We need details. And relax. You can’t hurt yourself up there. You can only help yourself.” It was a lie, of course. But to Jaywalker it was no worse a lie than a doctor prescribing a placebo for his patient and saying, “Take one of these for your headaches, but only one, because they’re extra-strength.”

Jaywalker started off gently with Jeremy, asking him short, easy questions that wouldn’t require any real thought on his part. He wanted to give him a chance to warm up, to get his voice going, to get a feel for the process. He established that Jeremy was nineteen now, but had been barely seventeen two years ago; that he’d been living with his mother and twin sister; and that he’d recently transferred to a new high school, Park East, at 105th Street, which he walked to and from.

JAYWALKER: How were you doing in school?

JEREMY: Not so good.

JAYWALKER: Why is that?

JEREMY: I have a learning disability. I’m not good with numbers or writing. Also comprehension. School was actually pretty hard for me.

JAYWALKER: Did you hear Ms. Darcy asking your mother yesterday about your attendance?

JEREMY: Yes, sir.

JAYWALKER: And is it true that at times your attendance was poor?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Even before that May?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: In addition to going to school, were you doing anything else?

JEREMY: Yes, I was working.

JAYWALKER: How old were you when you first started working?

JEREMY: I’d just turned fourteen.

Jaywalker had Jeremy describe the jobs he’d held up to that time. He’d worked part-time after school and full-time each summer. The jobs had been in the neighborhood, and he’d been paid in cash, off the books.

The preliminaries having been dispensed with, it was time to introduce the jurors to Miranda.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time that May, Jeremy, when you met somebody?

JEREMY: Yes, I met this young lady.

JAYWALKER: Tell us how that happened.

JEREMY: Well, as I was walking to school one morning along Third Avenue, I passed this flower shop. And I saw her right inside. And even though neither of us said anything, we, like, made eye contact, you know?

JAYWALKER: What did she look like?

JEREMY: She was very, very beautiful.

The day Miranda had been at Jaywalker’s office, he’d thought to take several photographs of her. He wasn’t quite sure why at the time, had even suspected himself of wanting to keep them, so striking-looking she was. Now he drew the best of them from a file, had it marked for identification and handed it Jeremy.

JAYWALKER: Do you recognize the person in this photograph?

For a split second all Jeremy could do was stare at it. Jaywalker hadn’t shown it to him before this moment, hadn’t told him he was going to. Sometimes, he felt, you got the best stuff out of your clients by surprising them. Finally Jeremy managed to pry his eyes away from the image and look up. But when he tried to speak, his voice failed him, and he looked as though he was about to cry. But then, Jeremy had these pale blue-gray eyes and often looked like he was close to tears.

JEREMY: Yes. That’s her.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when you actually met her?

JEREMY: Yes. It took me a few days, but finally I get up the courage to go inside the shop. I pretend I’m looking to buy some flowers. And someone comes up behind me and says, “Can I help you?” And I turn around and I see her. So I start blushing, I guess, ’cause I’m nervous, kind of like I am now. She asks me if I want some flowers, and I go, “Yes, for my little niece. She’s having a birthday party.” And she says, “Am I invited?” So I say, “Sure.”

Jaywalker sneaked a look at the jurors, saw they were enthralled. It was as if Jeremy’s embarrassment at telling the story was providing them with a lens through which they could share his nervousness two years ago.

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: We talked for a minute. I introduced myself. I said, “My name is Jeremy.” And she said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Miranda.”

Jeremy had arranged to meet her at the shop at six o’clock, when she would be getting off from work. Then he’d turned to leave, only to have Miranda stop him and remind him that he’d forgotten to buy flowers for the party. But Jeremy hadn’t had enough money to pay for them, and had been forced to confess that there was no party after all. “I just said it to meet you,” he’d admitted. And she’d told him he hadn’t needed to lie to her and should never do it again. But, she’d said, she would still meet him.

So Jeremy had picked her up after work. He described how they’d gone for ice cream, walked around and talked. And in the weeks that had followed, they’d seen each other often. They’d done everyday things, going for pizza or to McDonald’s, or for ice cream. There was a little park where they’d sit and talk. Or they’d walk east to the river and look out across the water, watching the boats go by.

Jaywalker paused briefly before asking his next question. Having woven the spell of the young couple falling in love for the very first time, the moment had come to move on, to break that spell.

JAYWALKER: Did all go well in your relationship with Miranda, or did it not go well?

JEREMY: It went well up to a point.

JAYWALKER: And what happened at that point?

JEREMY: I noticed this guy who always seemed to be hanging around Miranda.

JAYWALKER: Can you describe him for us?

JEREMY: He was kinda dark-skinned. Muscular. And to me he seemed very mean-looking.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever learn his name?

JEREMY: Yes, Miranda told me. She said his name was Sandro.

JAYWALKER: What else did she say about him?

JEREMY: That he always wanted to go out with her, but that she didn’t want to have anything to do with him or his friends.

According to Jeremy, Sandro was always surrounded by a gang of six or eight guys who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. None of them seemed to work or go to school. Several of them sported crude, hand-done tattoos, and a few had “gold decorations” on their front teeth. And even though it was late spring and hot on the avenue, a couple of them still wore black leather jackets with “pictures of stuff” on them.

JAYWALKER: What kind of stuff?

JEREMY: They were Oakland Raiders jackets, and they had the face of a man on them, with crossed swords behind it. And the man has like a patch over one eye. It looks kind of like the face you’d see on a pirate flag. It’s meant to be scary, I think.

JAYWALKER: What would happen when you’d see Sandro and his gang?

DARCY: Objection to the word “gang.”

JAYWALKER: It’s the word the witness himself-

THE COURT: Overruled. The witness did use the term. That said, it will be up to the jurors to determine whether it was a gang or not, should they feel the need to resolve the issue.

JAYWALKER: Could we have the question read back, please?

He listened as the court reporter began to reread the question from her stenotype machine. He wanted the jurors to hear the word gang again, but this time from a different, neutral voice that would serve to put an official-sounding imprimatur on it. A little thing? Sure. But Jaywalker deemed it crucial that by the time the jurors began their deliberations, whenever they’d think of Sandro and his group, the word gang would reflexively come to their minds. There was a world of difference, after all, between being harassed by a young man and his friends, and being harassed by a gang. And to Jaywalker’s way of thinking, if you took enough little things just like that and added them all up, they could take a conviction and transform it into an acquittal.

REPORTER: Question: “What would happen when you would see Sandro and his gang?”

JEREMY: I’d be walking along, and Sandro would say, “There go that white boy, that-”

JAYWALKER: Who were they referring to?

JEREMY: Me.

JAYWALKER: Did they call you names?

JEREMY: Yeah, you know.

JAYWALKER: No, we don’t know. You have to tell us.

JEREMY: Punk. Cocksucker. Maricon. Motherfucker. Stuff like that.

JAYWALKER: What does maricon mean?

JEREMY: It’s like, “You fucking fag.”

Jaywalker had him describe some of the things the gang had done. Jeremy described hand motions imitating guns being fired and knives being drawn across throats. He’d been told to “get the fuck out of here,” to “get lost if you know what’s good for you.” And he’d been chased, often at full speed.

JAYWALKER: Did this pattern continue for a period of time?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: As it continued, what was your reaction? What were some of the things you experienced?

This would be the hard part for Jeremy. Talking about Miranda had been easy. Even talking about what the gang had done or threatened to do had been manageable. But as Jaywalker moved from those areas into the subject of Jeremy’s reactions, he found himself holding his breath between each question he posed and Jeremy’s answer. Because this was the stuff that he’d had such difficulty over so many months prying loose. And despite all the hours lawyer and client had devoted to the process, as he waited for each response, Jaywalker had no real idea what to expect. Would Jeremy recite in riveting detail what he’d gone through that summer, or would he instinctively bend forward and go into a crouch, in order to protect himself from yet more humiliation?

JEREMY: I tried to keep going on like normal, but it was hard. I’d keep getting like paranoid, you know.

JAYWALKER: Tell us what happened to you physically.

JEREMY: I would cry all of a sudden, for like no reason. I had trouble eating. And when I did eat, sometimes I’d vomit, or get diarrhea. I lost weight. I had trouble sleeping. I–I-I-

JAYWALKER: What would happen when you did sleep?

JEREMY: I’d be getting nightmares, and wetting the bed sometimes.

Jaywalker asked about school attendance, and Jeremy admitted it had gotten even worse than before, because he’d grown afraid to walk down Third Avenue. As a result, he began getting “cut slips,” warning him that he was in danger of failing his classes.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when your mother confronted you about your attendance?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: She got a letter in the mail.

JAYWALKER: What happened as a result of that letter and that confrontation with your mother?

JEREMY: I told her everything, and she pulled me out of school.

JAYWALKER: Did you continue to work?

JEREMY: For a while.

JAYWALKER: And then what?

JEREMY: I got fired.

JAYWALKER: Why?

JEREMY: ’Cause I stopped going to work.

JAYWALKER: Why did you stop going to work?

JEREMY: ’Cause they’d follow me to my jobs and come inside and make trouble. Or follow me home. One time I had to hide in the bushes in front of my building ’cause they wouldn’t leave.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: After an hour or so I urinated in my pants. And then after another hour or so I–I-I-

And as much as Jaywalker would have liked to rescue the young man, to have spared him from continuing with his answer, he stood there silently, listening to the stuttering, watching the tears flow, waiting for the rest of it.

JEREMY: [Continuing] I couldn’t hold it any longer. I–I defecated in my pants.

As much as the jurors, raised on a steady diet of political debates and in-depth interviews, might have grown accustomed to that great American institution, the Follow-up Question, Jaywalker sensed that this was one time when none was required. If wetting one’s bed had represented the ultimate in shame for a seventeen-year-old boy, soiling one’s pants had to have been in the next universe of humiliation. And describing it in front of a roomful of strangers would only have multiplied the agony.

So far, Jeremy had done what he’d had to do.

Jaywalker glanced at the clock and saw it was a few minutes before one. Catching Harold Wexler’s eye, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, just enough to signal that he’d reached a good stopping point. The judge nodded, then recessed for lunch.

As the jury filed out, a friendly court officer sidled over to Jaywalker and offered the opinion that perhaps it hadn’t been the most appetizing note on which to send the jury off for lunch.

“Good,” said Jaywalker. “I want them to gag on it. I want them to choke on every last bite.”

Even Carmen backed off without argument when Jaywalker looked down at her latest grease-stained, paper-bagged offering, thanked her, but assured her and Julie that he wouldn’t be having lunch on this particular day. Then, once he’d made sure the last of the jurors was out of the courtroom, he reached past Carmen, grabbed Julie and hugged her tightly. “You were terrific,” he told her. “And you be careful.”

“Don’t jew worry,” said Carmen. “She be with me.”

When they resumed that afternoon, Jaywalker lost no time in reintroducing the jurors to someone whose name they’d barely heard mentioned for nearly two days.

JAYWALKER: All right. Up until this time, it was Sandro who was the main person who was bothering you. Is that correct?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time in August when somebody else began bothering you?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: At the time, did you know the name of this other person?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: Have you since learned his name?

JEREMY: Yes, Victor. Victor Quinones.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever learn where Victor Quinones had been during the months of May, June and July?

Katherine Darcy rose to object, but for once Jeremy was uncharacteristically quick with his response. His “In prison” beat her “Objection, calls for hearsay” by a full second-precisely as Jaywalker had coached him. And the judge’s “Sustained, disregard the answer” was pretty much beside the point.

Jaywalker had Jeremy describe his first encounter with Victor. Jeremy had been in the flower shop with Miranda, and a few of the gang members had spotted him from outside. One of them, a newcomer, had made a move to come inside, but his girlfriend had stopped him.

JAYWALKER: Was his girlfriend the same young lady who testified earlier this week?

JEREMY: Yes, she was.

JAYWALKER: Do you now know her name to be Teresa Morales?

JEREMY: Yes.

Jeremy described several subsequent incidents in which Victor had played an increasingly central role. These included chasing Jeremy, spitting on him, and twice threatening him with a straight razor. And he seemed to have gradually taken over from Sandro in the name-calling department, as well.

JAYWALKER: What were some of the names he called you?

JEREMY: Cunt. Pussy. Pussy ass. You smell like pussy.

JAYWALKER: What did you do on these occasions?

JEREMY: Nothing.

Although the room was quiet, his voice could barely be heard.

JAYWALKER: How did you feel?

JEREMY: Like dirt. Ashamed. Embarrassed.

THE COURT: Angry?

Here was Harold Wexler, stepping in not only to break the flow of Jaywalker’s examination, but to suggest that perhaps the shooting had been motivated by something other than self-defense. And while Jaywalker was tempted to object to the interruption, he knew better. For one thing, Wexler had what it took to get even: a black robe. More to the point, Jaywalker had known for months that this moment would come, in some fashion or another, and he’d warned Jeremy to expect it and not be intimidated.

JEREMY: Angry?

THE COURT: Yes, angry. Didn’t all this make you feel terribly angry?

JEREMY: I honestly don’t remember feeling angry. I do remember feeling scared, terrified. Paranoid.

JAYWALKER: When you say you felt paranoid, what do you mean by that?

JEREMY: I was always looking back to see if I was being followed. Or looking out the window to see if they were waiting for me downstairs.

JAYWALKER: And were you being followed?

JEREMY: Sometimes, yes.

JAYWALKER: And were they waiting for you downstairs?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: All the time?

JEREMY: A lot of the time.

It was time to move on. Not because Jeremy had folded under Harold Wexler’s questioning-he hadn’t-but because Jaywalker didn’t want to run the risk of over-doing things and desensitizing the jurors to Jeremy’s plight.

JAYWALKER: Where did you used to get your hair cut, Jeremy?

JEREMY: At Frankie’s. At 112th Street, off Third Avenue.

JAYWALKER: Is Frankie the witness who testified yesterday?

JEREMY: Yes.

Jeremy described the barbershop incident as he recalled it. It pretty much dovetailed with Francisco Zapata’s account. But where the group of tormenters had been anonymous to the barber, Jeremy was able to supply names. Sandro had been there, and Victor, as well as Shorty and Diego and three or four others. And the young lady Frankie had mentioned was Victor’s girlfriend, Teresa Morales.

Following the barbershop incident, it had been six full days before Jeremy had dared to venture out of his apartment again. Jaywalker made a point of having Jeremy recite the two dates and calculate the exact number of days between them. Not only did it show just how terrified the boy had been, it meant-if Jeremy was to be believed-that he’d had no opportunity to go out and get hold of a gun.

JAYWALKER: Why was it, Jeremy, that having been afraid to go out for six days, you eventually did go out again?

JEREMY: Well, Miranda called my house to say she’d be going to the Labor Day carnival with her little sister and her cousin. And I thought at the carnival there’d be a whole bunch of people, and I’d be safe. And I was tired of staying upstairs, you know? I wanted to get out. I just thought it would be okay.

And for a while, it had been. Jeremy had met Miranda and the girls right where’d they’d arranged. They’d gone on the Ferris wheel, played games, eaten popcorn and cotton candy. And for a little while the events of the summer had receded and Jeremy had even dared to believe that they might have been nothing but a long bad dream.

Until Victor had appeared.

They’d talked about fighting, Jeremy recalled, about having it out right there. Jeremy had surprised himself by saying he was willing. It had been Victor who’d said no. He’d said Jeremy was lucky that Teresa and Miranda and the little girls were there, that he didn’t want to embarrass him in front of all of them.

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: He sucker punched me.

JAYWALKER: What’s a sucker punch?

JEREMY: It’s when somebody catches you off guard.

JAYWALKER: And does what?

JEREMY: Hits you out of nowhere.

JAYWALKER: Where did Victor hit you?

JEREMY: Alongside my right eye [indicating].

JAYWALKER: What did he hit you with?

JEREMY: His fist.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: He caught me good. I went down to my knees. I think I stayed down a couple of seconds.

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: I got up and ran after him.

He’d chased Victor and Teresa up Third Avenue. Miranda had sent the girls home and followed Jeremy. At 113th Street, Jeremy had finally caught up with Victor.

JAYWALKER: Were you that fast, or was Victor that slow?

JEREMY: He didn’t run that fast. It seemed like he wanted me to catch up to him.

JAYWALKER: What happened when you did?

JEREMY: He turned and said, “You want some more of that?” And we started fighting, right there.

JAYWALKER: What kind of fight was it?

JEREMY: It was a regular fistfight.

JAYWALKER: Do you remember what you were wearing?

JEREMY: Jeans, a shirt. Sneakers. It was hot.

JAYWALKER: You heard one of the witnesses from last week testify that you were wearing two or three pairs of socks. Was that true?

JEREMY: No. I hardly ever wear socks in the summer. If I’m going to wear them, I’m going to wear one pair.

JAYWALKER: Do you recall if you were wearing socks that day?

JEREMY: I honestly don’t.

JAYWALKER: Did you have a gun in your waistband?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: In your socks?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: In an ankle holster?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: Anywhere?

JEREMY: No, absolutely not.

He had Jeremy describe the fight, how they’d traded punches until Victor had called a time-out to rest and take off his sweatshirt. Jeremy demonstrated pulling something over his own head. He remembered that underneath, Victor still had a long T-shirt on.

JAYWALKER: What did you do while Victor was pulling his sweatshirt up over his head to take it off?

JEREMY: I waited for him.

JAYWALKER: And what did you do after that?

JEREMY: We started fighting again.

Jeremy described how he’d hit Victor a couple of times, hard enough to hurt his own fist. He thought his punches had landed in the area of Victor’s eyes and mouth. Jeremy himself had been hit on his lip and nose.

JAYWALKER: Who won the fight, Jeremy, if you can tell us?

JEREMY: I did.

JAYWALKER: What makes you say that?

JEREMY: He was more bruised up than I was.

JAYWALKER: How did the fight end?

JEREMY: He put his hands up, like this.

And Jeremy raised both his hands to shoulder height, palms facing forward, fingers slightly spread. Victor had surrendered.

Jeremy had just stood there at that point, bent over slightly with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He’d noticed blood, his own blood, dripping to the pavement from his mouth or nose, or both.

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: I heard a scream.

JAYWALKER: What did you do?

JEREMY: I looked up, and I saw Victor pulling out a gun.

JAYWALKER: Where was he pulling it from?

JEREMY: From his-from right here.

He pointed to his midsection, just above his waistband and slightly off to one side.

JAYWALKER: What did you do?

JEREMY: For a second, nothing. Then I charged him.

Jaywalker asked how far apart the two of them had been when Jeremy had first seen the gun. Jeremy pointed to the portion of the jury box closest to him, a distance of maybe eight or ten feet.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: I got to him before he could fire it, and we started wrestling over it. I was trying to stop him from pointing it at me. And he was trying to bring it up high, toward my body.

He stood up and demonstrated by clasping both hands against his chest.

JAYWALKER: Then what happened?

JEREMY: The gun went off, real loud. And I thought he shot me.

JAYWALKER: Why did you think that?

JEREMY: The bang was so loud, and as soon as it happened I felt a burning sensation right here, in my stomach [pointing].

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: I thought I was falling down, but it was him, Victor, who was leaning to one side like.

JAYWALKER: And as he was doing that, what, if anything, did you do?

JEREMY: I grabbed the gun away from him, got my finger on the trigger, and I fired.

JAYWALKER: How many shots did you fire?

JEREMY: I don’t know. I just kept pulling the trigger and hearing bangs.

JAYWALKER: Who was firing the gun?

JEREMY: I was. Me.

JAYWALKER: Did any of the bullets you fired hit Victor?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: How do you know?

JEREMY: Because he’s dead.

Jaywalker let the last answer echo in the courtroom for just a second or two. So far, Jeremy had done as well as Jaywalker could have hoped for. But so far had been the easy part. Now came the hard part.

JAYWALKER: Jeremy, you’ve sat in this courtroom for a week now. And you’ve heard people take the same witness stand as you, and say that at some point after the first shot or shots, Victor ran quite a distance and fell. And that you ran after him and shot him one last time. Did you hear them say that?

JEREMY: I heard them say that.

JAYWALKER: Is that what happened?

JEREMY: I don’t know. I can only tell you what I remember, and I don’t remember anything like that. To me, it all happened fast, and it all happened at once. The first shot goes off. I think I’m shot. Victor leans away. I grab the gun, point it at him and start firing. So maybe those other people are right. But honestly, I don’t remember it happening that way. I just remember shooting at him until he was on the ground and not moving anymore.

JAYWALKER: And then?

JEREMY: And then I must have stopped. And I looked and saw this gun in my hand. And I remember feeling like I was in a dream. And Miranda and me, we began walking away.

JAYWALKER: Did you walk, or did you run?

JEREMY: I tried to run, but I couldn’t.

JAYWALKER: Why not?

JEREMY: I don’t know. It felt like my legs wouldn’t work right.

They’d walked uptown, Jeremy still holding the gun in his hand. At some point Miranda had told him to put it away. He’d tried to put it in his waistband, but it was too heavy and started slipping down his jeans. So he’d thrown it into the sewer. Then they’d kept walking to Jeremy’s building.

JAYWALKER: Did you stay at home that night?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: Where did you stay?

JEREMY: Up in the Bronx.

JAYWALKER: And did you continue to stay in the Bronx?

JEREMY: No. I just stayed there that one night.

JAYWALKER: Where did you go from there?

JEREMY: To Puerto Rico.

JAYWALKER: Why did you go to Puerto Rico?

JEREMY: I was scared they were going to kill me.

JAYWALKER: Who?

JEREMY: Sandro and them.

Jaywalker established that Jeremy had spent seven months in Puerto Rico and could have stayed there indefinitely, but instead had returned to New York in late April.

JAYWALKER: What did you do when you got back?

JEREMY: I told my mother I was going to go to the police and give myself up.

JAYWALKER: And did you in fact do that?

JEREMY: Yes, I did.

Jaywalker asked him when he had last seen Miranda. He replied that it had been half a year ago, when she’d come out to Rikers Island to visit him one time. Since that day, he hadn’t seen her or heard from her. Nor did he know where she was now.

And finally…

JAYWALKER: Jeremy, you say you killed Victor Quinones.

JEREMY: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Can you tell us why you killed him?

JEREMY: I can only tell you what was in my mind at the time.

JAYWALKER: And what was that?

JEREMY: In my mind, I was trying to save my life.

It had been a long and emotional direct examination, and Judge Wexler granted Katherine Darcy a recess before requiring her to begin her cross.

To Jaywalker’s way of thinking, Jeremy had come through with flying colors, far exceeding expectations. And it had been powerful stuff, which had to have moved the jurors. But direct examination often turns out to be the easy part, where sufficient preparation is almost guaranteed to pay dividends. Even Jeremy’s final series of responses had been all but rehearsed, right down to the “in my mind,” a phrase that, come summation time, Jaywalker would argue were the three most important words of the entire trial.

Cross-examination was different. On cross, instead of being a friendly teammate, the examiner was suddenly a hostile opponent. And the questions, far from being softballs lobbed over the middle of the plate, are fastballs, curves and nasty sliders aimed at the corners. But Jaywalker knew that, and he’d literally spent dozens of hours playing the role of prosecutor, trying to anticipate every conceivable pitch Darcy might try to throw at Jeremy. So the problem wouldn’t be the unexpected question; Jaywalker had seen to that. The problem would be that there simply was no best answer to Dr. Seymour Kaplan’s conclusion that the fatal shot between the eyes had been fired from a distance of no more than five inches, or to Detective Regina Fortune’s assertion that Jeremy must have chased Victor Quinones some forty-five feet before delivering that shot. Those were facts that weren’t going to go away, no matter how thorough Jaywalker’s preparation had been, or how well Jeremy were to testify.

After the recess, Katherine Darcy showed just how smart she was. Instead of working chronologically, as Jaywalker had on direct, beginning with school and jobs and first meeting Miranda, Darcy moved right in for the kill.

DARCY: Mr. Estrada, did I hear you say you killed Victor Quinones in order to save your life?

JEREMY: That’s how it felt to me at the time.

DARCY: How many guns did Victor have?

JEREMY: One.

DARCY: When you shot him between the eyes, who had the gun?

JEREMY: I did.

DARCY: What was Victor doing at that point?

JEREMY: I’m not sure. Falling, I think.

DARCY: Falling on you, or falling away from you?

JEREMY: Falling down. Sort of away from me, I guess.

DARCY: You hadn’t been shot, had you?

JEREMY: I thought I had.

DARCY: But the truth is, you hadn’t been. Isn’t that right?

JEREMY: Yes.

Not the best answer.

And whenever that happened, Jaywalker blamed himself for having failed to anticipate the question. Better by far would have been, “The truth is, I thought I had been shot. Today, a year and half later, I know I wasn’t.” And then let Darcy wrestle with that one. But it was too late now. Not that Jaywalker wouldn’t lose an hour of sleep over it that night, kicking himself for having let Jeremy-and himself-down.

Darcy backed up and spent a few minutes questioning Jeremy about his shoddy school attendance even before he’d met Miranda. She asked him about his marijuana conviction, which he readily admitted. Taking Harold Wexler’s cue, she next tried to get Jeremy to admit that the taunts of Sandro and his friends had made him angry. But Jeremy refused to take the bait. He’d been scared, humiliated, even felt paranoid at times. But he didn’t remember feeling anger.

DARCY: How about when Victor sucker punched you in the face? That made you angry, didn’t it?

JEREMY: Yes, that did.

DARCY: So you chased him, right?

JEREMY: After I got up, yes.

DARCY: Weren’t you afraid he might have some kind of a weapon? A knife, a razor or something like that?

JEREMY: I don’t remember thinking about that.

DARCY: You weren’t afraid?

JEREMY: I don’t remember being afraid at that time.

DARCY: In fact, you had a very good reason not to be afraid. Didn’t you?

JEREMY: [No response.]

DARCY: And that good reason was that you had your gun. You had a loaded gun, didn’t you?

JEREMY: No, not at that point.

DARCY: Oh, right. You say Victor had it first. So when was the first time you saw it?

JEREMY: After the fight, right after somebody screamed. I looked up and I saw it in Victor’s hand.

DARCY: Did you run away?

JEREMY: No.

DARCY: Why not?

JEREMY: I’m not sure. I guess ’cause I was too close to him to run. If I’d turned and tried to run, he would have shot me in the back. Or maybe shot Miranda. I don’t know.

Darcy tried to pin Jeremy down about the number of times he’d fired, but he said he was unsure. He didn’t know if he’d emptied the gun or not, or how many rounds it held. And he claimed to have absolutely no recollection of having chased Victor some forty-five feet while holding the gun in his hand.

Jaywalker bit his lip, knowing the worst was about to come. But knowing also that there was nothing he could do about it.

DARCY: Did you hear Detective Fortune say it was forty-five feet from where the fight was to where Victor was found?

JEREMY: Yes.

DARCY: And did you hear Dr. Kaplan say there’s no way Victor could have walked or run those forty-five feet after being shot in the head?

JEREMY: Yes.

DARCY: So how do you explain how Victor got there, unless the true answer is that you chased him and shot him there?

JEREMY: I–I can’t explain it.

DARCY: Do you think Detective Fortune was lying about the forty-five feet, or Dr. Kaplan was lying about Victor’s not having been able to run after he’d been shot in the head?

Jaywalker could have objected, not only because it was two questions in one, but because it called for an opinion as to other witnesses’ testimony. But he decided to let it go. They’d been over this part a lot, the two of them, and he was pretty sure Jeremy could handle it.

JEREMY: I’m not saying they’re lying. I’m just saying I honestly don’t remember chasing him once I had the gun. I only remember getting it away from him and shooting at him until he was on the ground.

DARCY: How about holding the gun no more than four or five inches from him while you shot him between the eyes? Are you telling us you don’t remember that, either?

JEREMY: I know we were close. I don’t know exactly how close.

DARCY: How about Victor’s begging for his life right before you shot him between the eyes? Remember that?

JEREMY: No. No, I don’t.

DARCY: Or picking him up a little bit off the ground before shooting him between the eyes and letting him fall back down on the pavement? Remember that?

JEREMY: No.

DARCY: Could those things have happened?

JEREMY: I guess they could have. They must have. But I honestly don’t remember them.

DARCY: How about your being the one who had the gun in the first place? Could that have happened, too?

JEREMY: No, that didn’t happen. I’d know that.

DARCY: Yet you heard Magdalena Lopez say it happened, didn’t you?

JEREMY: Yes.

DARCY: And you heard Wallace Porter say it happened, didn’t you?

JEREMY: Yes.

DARCY: And you heard Teresa Morales say it happened, didn’t you?

JEREMY: Yes.

DARCY: And she was standing right there, wasn’t she?

JEREMY: Yes.

It was devastating stuff.

Jaywalker spent ten minutes on redirect, trying to rehabilitate Jeremy as best as he could. But he knew he wasn’t fooling anybody, not even himself. With Katherine Darcy’s last line of questions, the entire momentum of the trial had abruptly shifted. During direct examination and even up to a point on cross, the case had been up for grabs and the jury might even have been leaning to the defense’s side. Then Darcy had systematically pointed out that in order for Jeremy’s claim to be believed-that he’d still been trying to save his life when he’d fired the final shot-the jurors were going to have to flatly reject the testimony of a detective, an impartial medical examiner, and not one, but all three of the prosecution’s eyewitnesses.

That was asking an awful lot of them.

Once Jeremy made his way back to the defense table, Jaywalker rose and announced that the defense was resting. Katherine Darcy stated that the prosecution was resting, too, though she referred to her side as “the People,” as prosecutors love to do.

The next day was Friday, and not wanting to give the case to the jury with a weekend coming up, the judge excused the jurors until first thing Monday morning, when they would hear the lawyers’ summations. “The court officers,” he told them, “will explain what procedures you’ll need to follow.” Meaning: bring a toothbrush and a change of clothes, because you won’t be going home Monday night unless you’ve reached a verdict.

The lawyers, on the other hand, would be due back in the morning, in order to meet with the judge and go over the instructions he’d be including in his charge to the jury.

“Do you want your client here tomorrow?” the judge asked Jaywalker, once the jurors had left the courtroom. “For the charge conference?”

Jaywalker put the question to Jeremy, who opted not to be woken up at three o’clock in the morning just to be brought over from Rikers Island for an hour of legal wrangling. A friendly court officer then allowed him to sit across the railing from his mother and then his sister for a few minutes, before leading him back into the pens.

“So how does it look, Mr. Jailworker?”

“I don’t know,” he told Carmen as they waited for an elevator.

“They still want to give him so much time?”

“Yup.”

“Jew gotta get him less,” said Carmen. “After all, it was only a accident.”