The Tenth Case

21

By Monday morning Tom Burke had his detective ready to testify. He also had some additional paperwork for Jaywalker, in the form of a two-page typewritten report. In the Age of the Computer, with three-year-olds routinely exchanging e-mails with their octogenarian grandparents, and second graders being encouraged to hand in assignments created on word processors, the NYPD had apparently bought up the entire stock of the world's discarded typewriters, the old manual ones with misaligned keystrikers and dried-out ribbons, and taught its personnel how to use them with their thumbs, perhaps, or their elbows, with the additional require ment that they misspell every third word and ignore the rules of grammar at every conceivable opportunity.

Still, it took Jaywalker only a glance to see that the de tective's unavailability on Friday had been the result of neither a conflicting court appearance nor a family emer gency. He'd been busy working, working in connection with the trial. More specifically, he'd been running around collecting fingerprints, in some cases by retrieving existing cards from BCI files, in others by actually going out, locating individuals and, with their consent, taking inked impressions of their hands. Now Jaywalker all but groaned as he read the names of the individuals. Anthony Mazzini. Alan Manheim. William Smythe. Kenneth Redding. Burke had handed his detective a list of the people whose names Jaywalker had proposed to Roger Ramseyer, the CID de tective who'd testified on Thursday, as additional suspects whose prints should have been checked against the unknown ones found in Barry Tannenbaum's apartment. Now the jurors were going to hear that none of their prints-not even Mazzini's, who'd hung around the apart ment for a good half an hour-matched any of the unknown ones. Jaywalker looked over at Burke, just in time to catch him trying to suppress a grin. "Nice work," he said.

"Hey," said Burke, "didn't anyone ever tell you how to catch red herrings?"

Jaywalker answered with a blank expression.

"You spear 'em."

Anthony Bonfiglio was a New Yorker through and through. He was a caricature right out of Little Italy, or maybe Pleasant Avenue. He could have played a wise guy on The Sopranos, or a mobbed-up cousin from one of The Godfather movies. He could have been a bookie or a loanshark or an enforcer, the kind of guy who keeps a baseball bat within arm's reach on the car seat next to him, not for hitting fungoes, but for busting kneecaps.

Instead, Bonfiglio had become a cop. And now, twenty years later, he was a detective, first grade, working homicides. Jaywalker knew him, having had to cross-examine him a couple of times over the years, and had little use for him. He strongly suspected that Bonfiglio was on the take, though he couldn't prove it. But jurors loved the tough cop image and positively ate the guy up.

Burke had Bonfiglio describe how he'd "caught" the homicide of Barry Tannenbaum just about a year and a half ago.

MR. BURKE: Was that because of some special expertise on your part, or some particular familiarity with the victim?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Nah. It was my toin, was all.

The jurors laughed. They were in love with him already.

MR. BURKE: Can you tell us what you did after being assigned to the case?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Me and my partner, Eddie Torres, we went to the apartment where the body got found. The first officers were there. They'd estab lished a crime scene. CSU was there, dustin' an' liftin' prints, takin' photos, an' doin' some other stuff.

Bonfiglio had examined the body and satisfied himself that he was looking at a murder victim, stabbed in the chest and, judging from the amount of blood, through the heart. He'd conferred with the various other officers and detectives on the scene, who told him they'd recovered no weapon. He pro ceeded to conduct his own search, being careful to not touch or disturb anything unnecessarily. He found no knife or other implement that he believed had been used in the crime.

Generally, the apartment was neat and orderly. There were some Chinese food containers on the kitchen counter, with leftovers that were cold, but not yet spoiled. There were no signs of a forced break-in, a ransacking, or any kind of a struggle.

MR. BURKE: What did you do next?

DET. BONFIGLIO: I conducted a canvass of the surrounding apartments. Specifickly, I interviewed a Mrs. Benita Gristede, in Penthouse B, a Mr. Charles Robbins, in Penthouse C, and two occupants of the apartment directly beneath Mr. Tannenbaum. Lemme see, yeah. Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin, Chester and Lois.

MR. BURKE: Were any of those individuals able to tell you anything you considered significant?

Jaywalker resisted the urge to object, even though the question called for hearsay testimony. He knew from the detective's reports that only Benita Gristede had had anything to offer, and she was on Burke's witness list, anyway. So he let it go.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Ms. Gristede did.

MR. BURKE: What did you do once you'd completed your canvass of the neighboring apartments?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Me an' my partner, we went back downstairs to the lobby, and we conversed with the doorman and the super. And I ast them to call the doorman who'd been on duty the night before an' have him come in. An' they did that.

MR. BURKE: And did there come a time when he arrived?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

MR. BURKE: Do you recall his name?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Jussaminit. (Reviews notes) Yeah, Jose Lugo.

MR. BURKE: And did you have a conversa tion with Mr. Lugo?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

MR. BURKE: Your Honor, may we ap proach?

THE COURT: Yes, come up.

Up at the bench, Burke explained that at this point he wanted to interrupt the witness's testimony in order to take that of the two individuals who'd supplied him with infor mation, first Ms. Gristede, and then Mr. Lugo. Jaywalker objected but gave no reason. If pressed, he would have had to say that anything that was good for Burke had to be bad for him and his client, and that, furthermore, he was still pissed off at Burke for having lied about Detective Bon figlio's unavailability on Friday.

"Your objection is overruled," said Judge Sobel. "I'll give you the option of cross-examining the witness now on what he's said so far, or reserving it all for later."

"Later," said Jaywalker, still in sulk mode.

The judge explained to the jurors what they were going to do, excused the witness and declared a fifteen-minute recess. Once the jurors had been escorted out of the room, he called the lawyers back up to the bench.

"Has there been an offer in this case?" he asked.

So it was starting. Matthew Sobel wasn't a meddler. Unlike some judges, he allowed lawyers to try their cases and pretty much refrained from attempting to bludgeon plea bargains out of them. But his question now, as gentle and as deferential as it was, spoke volumes compared to what others might have said-and had.

Why are we trying this case?

Can't you guys work something out here?

Doesn't your client know she's looking at twenty-five to life?

And Jaywalker's personal favorite, the impartial, And you can tell her I said she's going to get every last day of it after the jury convicts her.

Now, even Matthew Sobel was beginning to wonder. Jaywalker might have succeeded in throwing some sand in the jurors' eyes with his This-case-is-so-strong-my-client must-be-innocent opening statement, but he hadn't fooled the judge, not for a minute. And the worst part was that the truly damaging evidence was yet to come. Wait until Sobel heard the testimony about Samara's lies, the stuff found in her apartment, and the timing and the amount of that little life insurance policy.

"My client is innocent," said Jaywalker. Not only did his words sound foolish even to himself, they also violated one of his cardinal principles. It was okay to say that his client says she's innocent, or maintains her innocence, or even insists she's innocent. But as soon as you said that she was innocent, stating it as a fact, you were vouching for her. And not having been in Barry Tannenbaum's apartment that evening a year and a half ago, Jaywalker was certainly in no position to be vouching for Samara.

Burke raised his palms upward, his way of explaining that Jaywalker's comment had said it all. Even if he'd con sidered offering Samara something less than murder, how could he, given her continuing claim of innocence?

Unpersuaded by such logic, Judge Sobel pressed on. "Would you consider a Man One," he asked Burke, "with a substantial sentence? I mean, I'd have a range of up to twenty-five years."

Jaywalker spoke up before Burke could answer. "My client is innocent," he said again, trying to make it sound a little more convincing this time.

But it didn't.

Benita Gristede was a small woman in her seventies or eighties, who looked as though she might have come over on the Mayflower. Having outlived her husband, she was the sole occupant of Penthouse B, the apartment that shared a common wall with Penthouse A, Barry Tannenbaum's apart ment. On the evening of Barry's death, Mrs. Gristede had heard the sounds of an argument between a man and a woman in the adjoining apartment. She'd recognized the man's voice as that of her neighbor, Mr. Tannenbaum. The woman's voice, she was every bit as certain, had been that of his wife, known to Mrs. Gristede as Sam. The argument had occurred shortly before eight o'clock, toward the very end of that evening's episode of the game show Wheel of Fortune.

MR. BURKE: How is it that you recall that?

MRS. GRISTEDE: I recall that because the arguing was so loud, I had to turn the volume up in order to hear the TV.

MR. BURKE: Were you able to hear what the argument was about?

MRS. GRISTEDE: You mean the words?

MR. BURKE: Yes, the words.

MRS. GRISTEDE: No. Just that they were very loud.

MR. BURKE: The following day, did a detec tive come by and ask you some questions?

MRS. GRISTEDE: You mean the eye-talian one?

MR. BURKE: Yes.

MRS. GRISTEDE: Yes, he did. And I told him exactly what I'm telling you.

On cross-examination, Jaywalker purposefully mum bled his first question to Mrs. Gristede, so she'd have to say she couldn't hear him. Burke objected, and Judge Sobel had to make a record of it, adding that he'd had trouble hearing it, as well. He asked the court reporter to read it back.

COURT REPORTER: Sorry, I didn't get it, either. It had been stunts like that that had landed Jaywalker in front of the disciplinary committee. Well, like that and a lot worse. Still, he wasn't quite ready to let the hearing thing go.

MR. JAYWALKER: You do wear a hearing aid, though?

MRS. GRISTEDE: I most certainly do not.

MR. JAYWALKER: Would you say your hearing's quite good, in fact?

MRS. GRISTEDE: I certainly would. Probably better than yours.

Laughter from the jury box, at his expense. Never a good omen.

MR. JAYWALKER: Yet you never heard a scream that evening, did you?

MRS. GRISTEDE: No, I did not.

MR. JAYWALKER: Or a thud?

MRS. GRISTEDE: A thud?

MR. JAYWALKER: Yes, as though someone had just fallen to the floor.

MRS. GRISTEDE: I don't recall that.

MR. JAYWALKER: Now, you say you had to turn the volume up in order to hear the TV?

MRS. GRISTEDE: That's correct.

MR. JAYWALKER: Don't they show you everything in great big capital letters?

MRS. GRISTEDE: Yes.

MR. JAYWALKER: But you still turned the volume up to hear it?

MRS. GRISTEDE: I like to hear them say it. Be sides…

MR. JAYWALKER: Besides what?

MRS. GRISTEDE: Besides, my eyes aren't so good.

Great, thought Jaywalker. He finally gets the old bat to admit that while her hearing may be perfect, she's half blind. The only problem was that she'd never claimed to have seen anything, only to have heard his client arguing with the victim right around the time he was stabbed to death.

Jose Lugo took the stand. Lugo was a short man in his forties, with a dark mustache that accentuated the serious expression he wore. He sat on the edge of his seat and answered Tom Burke's questions as though his own free dom hung in the balance.

Yes, he said, he'd been the doorman on duty during the four-to-midnight shift on the day before he'd received a call from his boss, Tony Mazzini, to come in and talk to the detectives. Lugo knew Barry Tannenbaum, the occu pant of Penthouse A, and his wife, Samara. Asked by Burke if he could identify Samara, he hesitated for a split second, then pointed directly at her. Jaywalker couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard Lugo mumble an apology as he did so.

Lugo recalled that Mrs. Tannenbaum had arrived at the building early that evening, though he couldn't recall the exact time. But Burke was ready to help him out.

MR. BURKE: I show you what's been marked as People's Exhibit Seven for identification, and ask you if you recognize it.

MR. LUGO: Yes. It's the sign-in book, the log we keep at the doorman's station.

MR. BURKE: I offer it into evidence.

MR. JAYWALKER: No objection.

THE COURT: Received.

MR. BURKE: Will looking through that book help you remember what time Mrs. Tannenbaum ar rived that evening?

MR. LUGO: It should.

MR. BURKE: Please take a look.

MR. LUGO: Yes, here it is. She arrived at six-fifty. Ten minutes to seven.

MR. BURKE: Did she sign the book herself?

MR. LUGO: No, I signed in for her. I'm allowed to do that, so long as I know the person. Besides, she's Mr. Tannenbaum's wife. Was.

MR. BURKE: Did Mrs. Tannenbaum leave while you were still on duty?

MR. LUGO: Yes.

MR. BURKE: Do you recall what time that was?

MR. LUGO: It says here

MR. BURKE: You're not allowed to read.

MR. JAYWALKER: No objection to his reading. It's in evidence.

MR. BURKE: Thank you. Mr. Lugo, you may read.

MR. LUGO: Eight-oh-five.

MR. BURKE: That's what time she left?

MR. LUGO: Didn't I just say that?

MR. BURKE: I guess you did. Now, how late did you work that night?

MR. LUGO: Till midnight.

MR. BURKE: Were you at the front door the entire time?

MR. LUGO: The entire time. Except when I had to- (To the Court) Your Honor, can I say "pee"?

Laughter.

THE COURT: You just did.

MR. LUGO: Except when I had to pee. But then I locked the door, so nobody could come in or go out.

MR. BURKE: And from the time Mrs. Tan nenbaum left at eight-oh-five, until the time you went off duty at midnight, did anyone else come in to visit Mr. Tannenbaum, or leave after visiting him?

MR. LUGO: No.

MR. BURKE: Do you want to check the log book to make sure?

MR. LUGO: I already did. The answer is no.

On cross, Jaywalker asked the witness if he'd noticed anything strange about Samara, either when she'd arrived or when she'd left.

MR. LUGO: Strange?

MR. JAYWALKER: Yes. Like, was she covered with blood?

MR. LUGO: Blood?

MR. JAYWALKER: Blood.

MR. LUGO: I didn't see no blood.

MR. JAYWALKER: Not on her clothes?

MR. LUGO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: Her face?

MR. LUGO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: Her hands?

MR. LUGO: I didn't notice her hands.

MR. JAYWALKER: But you would have, if they'd been covered with blood, wouldn't

MR. BURKE: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

MR. JAYWALKER: Do you recall what she was wearing?

MR. LUGO: Clothes.

MR. JAYWALKER: I was hoping for a bit more de tail. Other than clothes, do you remember anything specific?

MR. LUGO: No, I don't remember. It was a long time ago.

MR. JAYWALKER: It was. But there was nothing unusual about her clothes that you remember?

MR. LUGO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: This was August, August in New York City, right?

MR. LUGO: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: You don't remember, for exam ple, that Samara was wearing a long coat, for ex ample, or a jacket that seemed too warm for that time of year, do you?

MR. LUGO: No, I don't remember anything like that.

MR. JAYWALKER: When she left, was she carrying anything?

MR. LUGO: Like what?

MR. JAYWALKER: Oh, like a knife, or a bloody towel.

MR. LUGO: No, I don't remember anything like that.

MR. JAYWALKER: And did she seem upset when she left? Or in a hurry?

MR. LUGO: No, she seemed regular.

On redirect, Burke got Lugo to admit that Samara might have been carrying a handbag, and might have been wearing a lightweight jacket, although he really couldn't say one way or the other.

They broke for lunch.

"How's it going?" Samara asked, on the way downstairs.

Jaywalker put a finger to his lips. He didn't think there were any jurors in the elevator, but he didn't want to take a chance. Once, years ago, he'd gotten into trouble by mentioning to a colleague that he was on trial and "shov eling shit against the tide." A juror had overheard him and reported it to the judge. Luckily, the juror had been only an alternate.

"I don't know," Jaywalker lied, once they were safely out on Centre Street. "Things could be worse, I guess." He refrained from adding, And soon enough, they will be.

"But you don't think we're dead yet, do you?"

"What you mean we, white woman?"

It was an old joke, probably older than Samara. Which might have had something to do with why it didn't seem to strike her as particularly funny.

In the afternoon session, Burke called a young woman employed as a programming assistant at ABC. Armed with a thick binder, she testified that on the evening of the murder, a year and a half ago, Wheel of Fortune had aired at seven-thirty Eastern Standard Time, and had ended at eight.

Jaywalker asked her no questions.

Detective Bonfiglio was recalled and told that he was still under oath. Burke reminded him that when he'd been excused that morning, he'd just described how he'd had conversations with Mrs. Gristede of Penthouse B, and Mr. Lugo, the doorman who'd been called in.

MR. BURKE: Following those conversations, did you do something?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah. By that time, CSU was finished and the morgue guys had come and taken the body. I ordered the crime scene sealed.

MR. BURKE: Meaning what?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Meaning the apartment was locked from the outside, crime scene tape was used, a notice was put on the door, and a seal was applied to it, so if anyone was to try to enter, they'd have to break the seal.

MR. BURKE: What did you do after that?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Me and my partner, we exited the premises, and we did thereafter proceed to the home of Samara Tannenbaum, to pay her a visit.

And in his best copspeak, Bonfiglio recounted their visit to Samara's. He described her initial claim that she hadn't seen her husband in about a week, followed by her admission that she'd been at his apartment the previous evening. Also her denial that the two of them had argued, similarly retreated from as soon as she'd been told that they had a witness who said otherwise.

MR. BURKE: Can you describe her general demeanor?

DET. BONFIGLIO: She was real nervous like, she

MR. JAYWALKER: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

MR. JAYWALKER: Move to strike.

THE COURT: Yes, the answer is stricken, and the jury will disregard it.

Fat chance, Jaywalker knew. Still, even though he couldn't expect the jurors to unhear it, he'd had to keep it out; otherwise Burke would be permitted to refer to it in his summation. But Burke was determined to get it in.

MR. BURKE: Detective, did you have a chance to observe Mrs. Tannenbaum while you questioned her?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yes, I did.

MR. BURKE: Tell us some of the things you observed.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Observed? I dunno, I observed her face, her arms, her legs, her

MR. BURKE: I mean regarding her demeanor.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Oh. She was pespirin' a lot. You know, sweating. And her hands was like shaking. And she'd look away from me, every time I tried to make eye contack wid her.

MR. BURKE: Did there eventually come a time when you took some po lice action with respect to her?

Jaywalker, who'd been about to rise, eased back in his chair. Burke, to his credit, had skipped the part about Samara's saying she wanted to call her lawyer, as well as her refusal to consent to a search of her apartment without a warrant. Eliciting either of those facts would have been improper, since they represented nothing but Samara's in vocation of her constitutional rights-in this case her right to counsel, her right to silence and her right to be free from unreasonable searches-and no inferences adverse to her could properly have been drawn by the jury. Still, there were plenty of prosecutors who would have tried, whether out of ignorance or arrogance. Jaywalker was only half sorry Burke hadn't; if he had, at least Samara would have had something to argue on appeal.

DET. BONFIGLIO: 'Scuse me? I don't unnastand.

Burke shot a look over at Jaywalker, who gave him a nod, meaning, Go ahead, lead the witness; I won't object. Although the two of them had never gotten far enough to try a case against each other before this one, they were un failingly on the same page.

MR. BURKE: Did there come a time when you placed Mrs. Tannenbaum under arrest?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

MR. BURKE: And what did you arrest her for?

DET. BONFIGLIO: For the murder of her husband.

MR. BURKE: Thank you. Detective, I now draw your attention to later that same day. Did there come a time when you and other members of the de partment executed a search warrant in connection with this investigation?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

MR. BURKE: Where did that take place?

DET. BONFIGLIO: At Mrs. Tannenbaum's town house.

MR. BURKE: When did that take place?

DET. BONFIGLIO: That same night, at twenty-two hunnerd hours. Ten o'clock, to you.

MR. BURKE: Would you tell the jurors what you found, and where you found it?

DET. BONFIGLIO: There was a buncha stuff found. But me, personally, what I found was wedged in be tween a toilet tank and the wall in a upstairs bath room. It was three things, ackshully. First, a blue bathroom towel, with some dark red stains on it. In side it was a lady's shirt, same kinda stains. An' in side that was a knife, like a steak knife. It had stains, too.

One by one, Burke had a court officer hand the items to the witness, so that he could identify them. Although the stains on them were small-far smaller, for example, than the stain on the sweater the jurors had seen in the photo graph of Barry Tannenbaum's body-they were nonethe less visible. With no objection from Jaywalker, the items were received in evidence. Burke asked permission to publish them to the jury, and Judge Sobel agreed.

This time the procedure was a little different. Before handing the items to the jurors, a court officer supplied each of them with a pair of latex gloves. The handling of bloodstained items had changed drastically since the dawning of the age of AIDS.

Jaywalker watched the jurors out of the corner of his eye as they passed the exhibits among them. As far as he could tell, neither the towel nor the blouse caused too much of a reaction. But when it came to the knife, there were jurors who recoiled from it and refused to touch it, even through gloves, and others who took the opportunity to stare at Samara with cold, hard looks. Even from where Jaywalker sat, a good twenty feet from the jury box, there was no missing the serrated edge, the sharply-tipped point and the pronounced hilt.

For Jaywalker and his client, this was an exceedingly uncomfortable moment, the kind of moment that made him want to crawl underneath the defense table and out of sight. But being a defense lawyer meant he couldn't do that. So instead he just sat there, pretending to review some notes and trying to look as nonchalant as possible, despite the fact that he felt as though he'd just been hit with a sledgehammer. Even when the jurors had finally com pleted their inspection of the knife, a process that had seemed to take hours, Jaywalker's agony wasn't over. Burke wanted more out of Bonfiglio.

He asked the detective if he'd conducted some further investigation on the case the previous Friday, just three days ago. Bonfiglio replied that he had. He'd located Anthony Mazzini, the super at Barry Tannenbaum's build ing; Alan Manheim, until recently one of Mr. Tannen baum's lawyers; and William Smythe, Mr. Tannenbaum's personal accountant. With the consent of each of them, he'd taken a full set of their fingerprints. Kenneth Redding, the president of the building's co-op board, had been out of town. But because Redding was a former navy SEAL and had once gone through a security clearance investiga tion, his prints were on file with the Pentagon, and Bon figlio had been able to obtain a copy of them. He'd then delivered all four sets of prints to Roger Ramseyer, the CID detective who'd testified on Thursday.

At that point Jaywalker managed to get Burke's attention, and the two of them huddled for a moment off to the side.

"You want a stipulation?" Jaywalker asked.

"No, thanks."

Burke's reply was quick enough-and decisive enough- to tell Jaywalker that it was more than a matter of prose cutorial stubbornness. Burke intended to bring Detective Ramseyer back to the stand, so he could squeeze a bit of drama out of the fact that in spite of Jaywalker's earlier in sinuations, there'd been no matches between any of the "suspects" Jaywalker had asked Ramseyer about, once their known prints had been compared with the remaining unknowns found at the crime scene.

He who opens doors sometimes gets his fingers slammed.

Jaywalker didn't really have much to cross-examine Bonfiglio about, and with the wind pretty much gone out of the defense's sails, he barely felt up to the task. But the detective had hurt Samara too much to be ignored. Besides which, his testimony had been so central to the case that there was a good chance the jury might want all or part of it read back to them during their deliberations. There was no way Jaywalker could let such a read-back contain noth ing but direct examination. With that in mind, he decided to begin where Burke had left off.

MR. JAYWALKER: Tell me, detective. Does the failure to find an individual's fingerprints at a crime scene rule him out as a suspect?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Not necessarily.

MR. JAYWALKER: Is that the same as "No"?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah, I guess so.

MR. JAYWALKER: So it doesn't rule him out. Correct?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Correct.

MR. JAYWALKER: Can you tell us some of the rea sons why it doesn't?

DET. BONFIGLIO: He mighta been wearin'gloves. He mighta not touched nothin'. He mighta wiped his prints off whaddeva he did touch.

MR. JAYWALKER: Or Crime Scene might have missed his prints?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Maybe.

MR. JAYWALKER: Or he might have touched only surfaces that prints don't ad here to?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Maybe.

MR. JAYWALKER: So right there, in about a minute's time, we've come up with, let's see, five possibilities to explain why someone might have been at the crime scene the evening of the murder, yet his prints weren't found the following day. Correct?

DET. BONFIGLIO: If you say so.

MR. JAYWALKER: I just did say so. My question is, do you agree?

DET. BONFIGLIO: I dunno. I forget the question.

THE COURT: Please read the question back. (Court reporter rereads previous question)

MR. JAYWALKER: Correct, or not correct?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Correct.

It wasn't much, but it did accomplish at least two things. It brought back Jaywalker's "suspects" from the dead, even if they were now no better than on life support. And it cast the detective in the light of a partisan who was only grudgingly willing to make the most minuscule concession to the defense.

But with his halting responses and I-forget-the-question interruption, Bonfiglio had succeeded, whether intention ally or inadvertently, in depriving Jaywalker of any flow in his cross-examination. Already the jurors were begin ning to squirm in their seats, look around the courtroom and roll their eyes.

Jaywalker spent a few minutes, but only a few, on Samara's initial lies to Bonfiglio and his partner. No, at that point they hadn't yet told her that her husband had been murdered. Couldn't her response that she'd last seen him about a week ago be nothing but the equivalent of "It's none of your business"? Bonfiglio replied that he hadn't seen it that way. And hadn't Samara denied f ighting, as opposed to arguing? Perhaps. And once she'd realized the serious ness of the detectives' inquiry, hadn't she almost immedi ately told the truth, both in terms of her presence at Barry's apartment the previous evening, and that they'd had an argument? Yes, agreed Bonfiglio, though it hadn't been until they'd confronted her with evidence that she was lying.

Not much headway there.

Jaywalker moved on to the execution of the search warrant, and the discovery of the knife, the blouse and the towel.

MR. JAYWALKER: That was a large town house you and your fellow officers had to search, wouldn't you say?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Depends on whatcha mean by large.

MR. JAYWALKER: Well, how many officers and de tectives took part in the search, in total?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Countin' me?

MR. JAYWALKER: Yes.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Lemme see. Six, eight, ten. About ten.

MR. JAYWALKER: And how long were you there?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Searchin' the place? MR. JAYWALKER: Well, were you doing anything else while you were there?

DET. BONFIGLIO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: So how long did it take?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Uh, from twenty-two-hunnerd to oh-one-one-five the next mornin'. Adds up to three hours an' fifteen minutes.

MR. JAYWALKER: Pretty large town house?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Yeah, pretty large.

MR. JAYWALKER: Fourteen rooms?

DET. BONFIGLIO: I dunno, sumpin' like that.

MR. JAYWALKER: Lots of hiding places?

DET. BONFIGLIO: I'd say so.

MR. JAYWALKER: Yet the things you found, the towel, the blouse and the knife, they were almost in plain view, weren't they?

DET. BONFIGLIO: No. They was behind the toilet tank.

MR. JAYWALKER: Well, did you have to move anything to see them?

DET. BONFIGLIO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: Lift anything?

DET. BONFIGLIO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: They weren't, for example, hidden inside the toilet tank, were they?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Inside it? No.

MR. JAYWALKER: If they had been, you'd have had to lift off the top of the tank in order to see them, right?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: And you might have missed them.

DET. BONFIGLIO: I don't think so.

MR. JAYWALKER: Then again, if they'd been in side the tank, instead of behind it, they'd have gotten wet, right?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: And some or all of the blood might have washed off, right?

DET. BONFIGLIO: I s'pose so.

MR. JAYWALKER: Making it harder, if not alto gether impossible, to identify Barry Tannenbaum's blood on them?

MR. BURKE: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained. He's not qualified to answer that.

MR. JAYWALKER: Well, would you agree, detec tive, that if the items had been unwrapped and dropped into the toilet tank itself, any blood on them would have at least become diluted by the water in the tank?

DET. BONFIGLIO: Diluted? Yeah, I guess so.

MR. JAYWALKER: But in any event, they weren't inside the tank at all, were they?

DET. BONFIGLIO: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: They were behind it.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: Nice and dry.

DET. BONFIGLIO: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: Neatly wrapped up.

DET. BONFIGLIO: They was wrapped up.

MR. JAYWALKER: Almost as though somebody had put them there, nice and neat, nice and dry, con fident that they'd be found.

MR. BURKE: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

Figuring that he wasn't going to get much more out of the detective, Jaywalker decided it was as good a place as any to quit.

Burke had one more thing he wanted to do before the judge broke for the day, and that was, as Jaywalker had an ticipated, to recall Roger Ramseyer, the CID detective. Ramseyer testified that the previous Friday evening he'd been provided by Detective Bonfiglio with four known sets of prints, belonging to Anthony Mazzini, Alan Man heim, William Smythe and Kenneth Redding. Ramseyer had gone in to work on Saturday, his R.D.O., to compare the prints to those lifted from Barry Tannenbaum's apart ment, but still classified as unknown.

MR. BURKE: What's an R.D.O., by the way?

DET. RAMSEYER: A regular day off.

MR. BURKE: I see. And did any of the prints on the four new cards match any of the remaining unknown prints?

DET. RAMSEYER: No, they did not.

As tempted as Jaywalker was to ask Ramseyer if he got paid for working on his day off-chances were he not only got paid, but got paid at overtime rates-he refrained from doing so. There was nothing significant to be gained by making the point, while the risk was that by showing off his knowledge, Jaywalker might come off as a wiseass. Samara was already in enough trouble with the jurors, he figured. She didn't need them disliking her lawyer on top of everything else.

With Jaywalker's "No questions," they broke for the day. As always, Judge Sobel cautioned the jurors not to discuss the case among themselves, not to come to any con clusions before the evidence was in, and to avoid going to any of the places mentioned in the testimony. Just in case any of them were planning on sneaking past the doorman that night, cutting the crime scene tape, breaking the seal and kicking in the door to Barry Tannenbaum's apartment.

But rules were rules.

Even Jaywalker, who'd quietly or not so quietly broken just about all of them at one time or another, knew that. But the knowledge did little to soothe him right now. In a trial that suddenly seemed to have as much to do with toilets and toilet tanks as anything else, it was by now pretty clear exactly where his client was headed. And as much as he hated the thought of losing his last trial, he knew that to think of defeat in personal terms was absurdly selfish. Sure, he'd be bummed out for six months or a year. But he'd deal. He'd buy himself a case of Kahlua, and he'd get over it. But for Samara, defeat wouldn't be about a batting average or a wounded ego. It would be about spending fifteen years to life in state prison. And that was the minimum.

He wondered what he could do, what rule he could break, what stunt he could pull off, to change that outcome. What had he missed? What hadn't he thought of? Or was this trial, as he'd suspected for so long, simply that one case in ten that, try as he might, there was nothing he could do about?

It certainly seemed so.