The Reversal

“That’s good. Can you tell me, sir, what you do for a living?”

“Yes, sir. I am head of operations for the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard.”

“ ‘Head of operations,’ what does that mean?”

“I make sure everything works right and runs-from the stage lights to the toilets, it’s all part of my job. Mind you, I have electricians work on the lights and plumbers work on the toilets.”

His answer was greeted with polite smiles and modest laughter. He spoke with a slight Caribbean accent but his words were clear and understandable.

“How long have you worked at the El Rey, Mr. Johnson?”

“For going on thirty-six years now. I started in nineteen seventy-four.”

“Wow, that’s an achievement. Congratulations. Have you been head of operations for all that time?”

“No, I worked my way up. I started as a janitor.”

“I would like to draw your attention back to nineteen eighty-six. You were working there then, correct?”

“Yes, sir. I was a janitor back then.”

“Okay, and do you remember the date of February sixteenth of that year in particular?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It was a Sunday.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Can you tell the court why?”

“That was the day I found the body of a little girl in the trash bin out back of the El Rey. That was a terrible day.”

I checked the jury. All eyes were on my witness. So far so good.

“I can imagine that being a terrible day, Mr. Johnson. Now, can you tell us what it was that brought you to discover the body of the little girl?”

“We were working on a project in the theater. We were putting new drywall into the ladies’ room on account of a leak. So I took a wheelbarrow full of the stuff we had demoed-the old wall and some rotting wood and such-and wheeled it out to put in the Dumpster. I opened the top and there this poor little girl was.”

“She was on top of the debris already in the trash bin?”

“That’s right.”

“Was she covered at all with any trash or debris?”

“No, sir, not at all.”

“As if whoever threw her in there had been in a hurry and didn’t have time to cover-”

“Objection!”

Royce had jumped to his feet. I knew he would object. But I had almost gotten the whole sentence-and its suggestion-to the jury.

“Mr. Haller is leading the witness and asking for conclusions for which he would have no expertise,” Royce said.

I withdrew the question before the judge could sustain the objection. There was no sense in having the judge side with the defense in front of the jury.

“Mr. Johnson, was that the first trip you had made to the trash bin that day?”

“No, sir. I had been out there two times before.”

“Before the trip during which you found the body, when had you last been to the trash bin?”

“About ninety minutes before.”

“Did you see a body on top of the trash in the bin that time?”

“No, there was no body there.”

“So it had to have been placed in that bin in the ninety minutes prior to you finding it, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, if I could draw your attention to the screen.”

The courtroom was equipped with two large flat-screen monitors mounted high on the wall opposite the jury box. One screen was slightly angled toward the gallery to allow courtroom observers to see the digital presentations as well. Maggie controlled what appeared on the screens through a PowerPoint program on her laptop computer. She had constructed the presentation over the last two weeks and weekends as we choreographed the prosecution’s case. All of the old photos from the case files had been scanned and loaded into the program. She now put up the trial’s first photo exhibit. A shot of the trash bin Melissa Landy’s body had been found in.

“Does that look like the trash bin in which you found the little girl’s body, Mr. Johnson?”

“That’s it.”

“What makes you so sure, sir?”

“The address-fifty-five fifteen-spray-painted on the side like that. I did that. That’s the address. And I can tell that’s the back of the El Rey. I’ve worked there a long time.”

“Okay, and is this what you saw when you raised the top and looked inside?”

Maggie moved to the next photo. The courtroom was already quiet but it seemed to me that it grew absolutely silent when the photo of Melissa Landy’s body in the trash bin went up on the screens. Under the existing rules of evidence as carved by a recent ruling by the Ninth District, I had to find ways of bringing old evidence and exhibits to the present jury. I could not rely on investigative records. I had to find people who were bridges to the past and Johnson was the first bridge.

Johnson didn’t answer my question at first. He just stared like everyone else in the courtroom. Then, unexpectedly, a tear rolled down his dark cheek. It was perfect. If I had been at the defense table I would have viewed it with cynicism. But I knew Johnson’s response was heartfelt and it was why I had made him my first witness.

“That’s her,” he finally said. “That’s what I saw.”

I nodded as Johnson blessed himself.

“And what did you do when you saw her?”