The Wrong Man Read Free

but he always had so many cases going, he was always so hurried, always promising that there was plenty of time to prepare for the trial, even though it was less than
two months away
.
    After a while, Deidre collected herself. Crying about it was never going to solve anything, her mother always said. Her nephew Thomas didn’t have a mother, not anymore. She was all he had now.
    She saw a couple of men who looked like reporters—if carrying notepads and handheld tape recorders was any indication—rush into the neighboring courtroom, 1743. Not being in a particular hurry to return to work, she followed them inside.
    A trial was obviously in progress, the antiseptic silence and formality coupled with tension. Dread filled her chest. In just a few short weeks, her Tommy would be on trial just the same.
    Deidre took her seat and watched. In the center of the room, a lawyerin a gray suit stood with a pointer in his hand, next to a blow-up photograph that rested on a tripod and was turned toward the jury. From what she could see, it was a photograph of a gas station and a street.
    “Now, Ms. Engles,” the lawyer boomed, “are you confident that you had a clear and unobstructed view of the shooting?”
    “Yeah.” In the witness stand sat a young, pretty African-American woman, mid-twenties at best.
    “This truck.” Turning to the blow-up photograph, the lawyer aimed his pointer at a truck parked at the gas station, parallel to the street and perpendicular to cars that would be pumping gas, except that there were no cars in the photograph. “This truck did not obstruct your view?”
    “No. We were on the far end. You could see the street around the truck.”
    “For the record, the far west end?” The lawyer used that pointer again. “The furthest-west end of the gas station?”
    “Right.”
    “The furthest-west row of gas pumps?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And you were on the west side of that last row of gas pumps?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And showing you People’s Twenty-four, previously introduced.” The lawyer moved to a second photo, a second tripod. “Does this photograph accurately depict your point of view, sitting in the driver’s seat of your automobile, while your car was parked on the west side of the farthest-west row of gas pumps on the night of the shooting?”
    “Yeah, that’s how I saw it.”
    “And you can easily see straight ahead to the street, which would be south, without obstruction from that gas truck?”
    “Yeah, real easy.”
    “And you are certain, Ms. Engles, that the person you saw fire a weapon and kill Malik Everson is sitting in the courtroom today?”
    “Yeah, it was Rondo.”
    “By ‘Rondo’ you mean Ronaldo Dayton.”
    At the defense table, the lawyer nudged an African-American man sitting next to him. That man stood up.
    “That’s Rondo right there,” said the witness.
    “The record will please reflect that the witness identified the defendant, Ronaldo Dayton.” The prosecutor nodded with satisfaction. “Nothing further,” he said.
    Deidre sighed. The prosecution had so many resources. An army of police officers and lab specialists and doctors, fancy blow-ups and diagrams, everything that defendants like her Tommy lacked. It was such an unbelievably lopsided fight. Unless you had money.
    Or you got really lucky with a good defense attorney.
    “Afternoon, Ms. Engles.” The defense lawyer strode into the center of the courtroom. Her first full look at him, he wasn’t what she’d expect in a lawyer. He looked more like a football player. Tall with broad shoulders. A formidable person. Judging from the expression of the witness, she held the same opinion as Deidre.
    “My name’s Jason Kolarich. Can I call you Alicia?”
    “Yeah, okay,” she said. “Can I call you Jason?”
    She giggled a bit. So did a couple of jurors.
    “Sure, why not?” he said. The lawyer didn’t have any notes with him. He stood just a few feet away from the witness, angled toward the jury.