Break and Enter Read Free

statement.—lamp, knife, gasoline
    The court officer swore in Detective Ralph N. Nelson, using a Bible with an uncracked spine and the courtroom number scrawled irreverently on the closed edges of its pages. Peter and Nelson understood each other perfectly—or as best they could given their different lives. Nelson was about fifty, black, and had been a cop almost as long as Peter had been alive, testifying in hundreds of cases. He’d been through the Rizzo, Green, and Goode administrations. Peter hadn’t even pretended to instruct him prior to testimony; he would just lead the detective to all the right places and let him do the rest. Nelson was a piano of a man, and his size lent him the air not of unassailable strength but of titanic weariness, a superhuman burden of the knowledge of the ways human beings brutalized one another. Nelson settled in the witness chair, gave his badge number, and lifted his bloodshot eyes in patient expectation.
    Peter moved quickly through procedural questions. Defendant taken in for questioning. Unmarked squad car. Was he handcuffed? No. Where did you go? Room C, police headquarters, Eighth and Race Streets. Nelson sat completely still. His eyes barely moved, blinked occasionally; his voice bore the weight of cigarettes, radio crackle, methodical note-taking in the homicide division office, a three-year-old Buick, two slug scars in the lower back, a heavy-assed wife whom he loved loyally and deeply, season tickets to the Eagles, and a baby granddaughter born with spina bifida.
    “Did you read the defendant his rights?” Peter asked.
    “Yes. I told the defendant, ‘You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will provide you one at its expense. Anything you say can and will be used against you.’ ”
    “From what did you read this?”
    Nelson held up the card.
    “It’s a police form. Standard form seventy-five dash miscellaneous three.”
    “What did you do next?”
    “On the other side of the card are questions, which I then read to the defendant: ‘Do you understand that you have the right to remain silent?’ And the defendant said yes. ‘Do you understand you have the right to a lawyer?’ And the defendant said yes. ‘You sure you understand that you can have a lawyer here if you want?’ ‘Yes, you motherfucker.’ ‘Do you understand …’”
    Morgan sat at his table, intently listening, waiting to leap up with an objection, picking at lint, collecting paper clips in a pile, and watching his case die. Peter had selected this jury to believe a man such as Nelson. And listening to his words be repeated, Robinson kept his head bowed and smiled to himself, gripping the table with both hands as if he were about to fall backward.
    “Was any force used in this interview?” Peter asked when the detective was finished. He would steal some of Morgan’s standard questions, undermining the cross-examination that would follow.
    “No.”
    “Was the defendant drunk?”
    “No.”
    “Eyes glazed? Speech slurred?”
    “No.”
    “Any sign of using narcotics?”
    “No.”
    “Was the defendant ill?”
    “No.”
    “Deprived of sleep?”
    “No.”
    “Deprived of water?”
    “No.”
    “Was he verbally abused, shouted at?”
    “No.”
    “Did he appear to be oriented as to time, place, identity, and situation?”
    “Yes, he appeared to be oriented as to the time. The place. His identity. And to the situation and gravity of being questioned by two detectives, Counselor.”
    He appreciated Nelson’s tight, corrective testimony. It was a rare thing; most witnesses and even an occasional policeman slopped around within the vagaries of memory.
    “And you took a statement?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have that statement here with you today?”
    “That is correct.”
    “Please describe the manner in which the statement was taken.”
    “I asked him questions and I typed each answer as he said