BooksBarbecue
Back Brass Verdict
Chapters (64)
  1. PART ONE
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. PART TWO
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. PART THREE
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. PART FOUR
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. PART FIVE
  52. Forty-seven
  53. Forty-eight
  54. Forty-nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-one
  57. Fifty-two
  58. Fifty-three
  59. PART SIX
  60. Fifty-four
  61. Fifty-five
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. About the Author
  64. ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

“That’s right but I told him no delay.”

Vincent had billed an hour. I wondered how long he and Elliot had sparred over the delay.

“Why did he want a continuance?” I asked.

“He just wanted more time to prepare and maybe pad his bill. I told him we were ready, like I’m telling you. We are ready!”

I sort of laughed and shook my head.

“The thing is, you’re not the lawyer here, Walter. I am. And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I’m not seeing much here in terms of a defense strategy. I think that’s why Jerry wanted to delay the trial. He didn’t have a case.”

“No, it’s the prosecution that doesn’t have the case.”

I was growing tired of Elliot and his insistence on calling the legal shots.

“Let me explain how this works,” I said wearily. “And forgive me if you know all of this, Walter. It’s going to be a two-part trial, okay? The prosecutor goes first and he lays out his case. We get a chance to attack it as he goes. Then we get our shot and that’s when we put up our evidence and alternate theories of the crime.”

“Okay.”

“And what I can tell from my study of the files is that Jerry Vincent was relying more on the prosecution’s case than on a defense case. There are—”

“How so?”

“What I’m saying is that he’s locked and loaded on the prosecution side. He has counter witnesses and cross-examination plans ready for everything the prosecution is going to put forward. But I’m missing something on the defense side of the equation. We’ve got no alibi, no alternate suspects, no alternate theories, nothing. At least nothing in the file. And that’s what I mean when I say we have no case. Did he ever discuss with you how he planned to roll out the defense?”

“No. We were going to have that conversation but then he got killed. He told me that he was working all of that out. He said he had the magic bullet and the less I knew, the better. He was going to tell me when we got closer to trial but he never did. He never got the chance.”

I knew the term. The “magic bullet” was your get-out-of-jail-and-go-home card. It was the witness or piece of evidence that you had in your back pocket that was going to either knock all the evidence down like dominoes or firmly and permanently fix reasonable doubt in the mind of every juror on the panel. If Vincent had a magic bullet, he hadn’t noted it in the case file. And if he had a magic bullet, why was he talking about a delay on Monday?

“You have no idea what this magic bullet was?” I asked Elliot.