Partners

9.

The State’s case against Tee Ray was built upon the solid eyewitness testimony of Officer Keith Knoxel. By the time he had secured the murder scene, put the handcuffs on Tee Ray, and followed the ambulance to the hospital, Knoxel had created, rehearsed, and refined his story. Without a word about the hooker, Knoxel claimed to have been just on the other side of Crump Street, not far at all from Buck, when he too saw the black guy in the oversized overcoat. He heard voices and began to cross the street to cover his buddy. The black guy charged Buck as they exchanged fire. Then, somehow, Buck dropped his weapon, and Mr. Thomas Ray Cardell shot him in the face. It had all happened so fast, but there was no doubt in his mind. He had witnessed a murder.

The chief prosecutor was a blustering, hard-charging climber named Max Mancini, and Max was finding it impossible to keep his picture out of the papers. He was pushing for a speedy trial. There would not be a plea bargain. It was a clear-cut death penalty case. Anything remotely related to the upcoming trial of the cop killer required either a press conference or a serious sit-down interview. Every motion was hotly contested and reported on.

Sebastian moved for a change of venue. The hearing took two days and the courtroom was crowded. The motion was denied. Sebastian filed a notice of a claim of self-defense, and Mancini offered his thoughts to a reporter. Sebastian moved for a gag order in an effort to stifle the prosecutor, but the judge said no.

The pretrial maneuverings were intense as the clock ticked. Through it all, Sebastian skillfully eliminated a few crucial elements of the State’s theory. For example, the press had labeled Tee Ray a drug dealer, but there was no proof of this. He had not been in possession of anything when he was arrested. He had admitted nothing. He was not known to the police to be involved with trafficking. Simply walking down a street at night near the Flea Market was not evidence of guilt. His gun, the alleged murder weapon, was indeed an illegal firearm. It was unregistered and its serial number had long since disappeared. However, and much to the surprise of everyone, the Beretta 9-millimeter fired by Buck Lester was also unregistered. Apparently, it was a leftover from his Marine days and he preferred it over the 9-millimeter Colts issued by the city police. Sebastian doubted the prosecution would get near the topic of illegal firearms. The jury might expect a guy like Tee Ray to carry one, same as everyone else in Little Angola, but not one of the city’s finest young policemen.

The cops and Max Mancini had failed in their efforts to create testimony. Sebastian had succeeded in keeping Tee Ray in protective custody, in a cell by himself, and had thus prevented the involvement of any of the prosecution’s web of snitches. They were career deadbeats, most of them druggies, and they were always in jail for small-time felonies. The cops would feed them the details of a crime, stick them in the cell with the accused, and — presto! — get a new witness who’d heard a full confession. After the snitches lied under oath to the jury, the charges against them would be either reduced or lost in the paperwork.

Just for the hell of it, Sebastian filed a formal motion that he labeled “Motion to Prevent the Police and the Prosecutor from Employing the Use of Jailhouse Snitches to Attempt to Elicit Fabricated Testimony from the Defendant.” The motion was deemed out of order and overruled, but the point was made.