Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

behind. We also know by the even depth of the depression fracture to the skull that he was struck evenly on the top of the head. So by attaching the hammer at a flush angle like so…”
    Climbing onto a short stepladder next to Manny, she was able to place the strike face of the hammer against the crown of the skull and then hold it in place with two bands that went under the faceless mannequin’s chin. She then stepped down and gestured to the hammer and its handle, which was extending at a right angle and parallel to the floor.
    “So as you can see, this doesn’t work. I’m five four in these shoes, the defendant is five four in these shoes, and the handle is way up here.”
    She reached up to the hammer. It was impossible for her to grasp it properly.
    “What this tells us is that the fatal blow could not have been struck by the defendant with the victim in this position—standing up straight, head level. Now, what other positions are available that do work with what we know? We know the attack was from behind so if the victim was leaning forward—say he dropped his keys or something—you see that it still doesn’t work because I can’t reach the hammer over his back.”
    As she spoke she manipulated the mannequin, bending it over at the waist, and then reaching toward the hammer’s handle from the rear.
    “No, doesn’t work. Now for two days, between classes, I looked for other ways to strike the blow, but the only way I could make it work was if the victim was on his knees or crouched down for some reason, or if he happened to be looking up at the ceiling.”
    She manipulated the mannequin again and stood it up straight. She then bent the head back at the neck and the handle came down. She grasped it and the position looked comfortable, but the mannequin was looking almost straight up.
    “Now, according to the autopsy there were significant abrasions on both knees and one even had a cracked patella. These were described as impact injuries coming from Mr. Bondurant’s fall to the ground after he was struck. He dropped to his knees first and then fell forward, face-first. What we call a dead fall. So with that kind of injury to the knees, I rule out that he was kneeling or crouched close to the ground. That leaves only this.”
    She gestured toward the mannequin’s head, angled sharply back with the faceplate up. I checked the jury. Everybody was watching intently. It was like show-and-tell in first grade.
    “Okay, Doctor, if you put the angle of the head back to even or just slightly elevated, did you come up with a range of heights for the real perpetrator of this crime?”
    Freeman jumped up and objected in a tone of complete exasperation.
    “Your Honor, this isn’t science. This is junk science. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors, and now he’s asking her to give the height of someone who could have done it? It is impossible to know exactly what posture or neck angle the victim of this horrible—”
    “Your Honor, closing arguments are not till next week,” I interjected. “If the state has an objection then counsel should state it to the court instead of speaking to the jury and trying to sell—”
    “All right,” the judge said. “Both of you, stop it. Mr. Haller, you’ve been given wide latitude with this witness. But I was beginning to agree with Ms. Freeman until she got on her soapbox. Objection sustained.”
    “Thank you, Your Honor,” Freeman said as though she had just been rescued from abandonment in a desert.
    I composed myself, looked at my witness and her mannequin, then checked my notes and finally nodded. I’d gotten what I could.
    “I have no further questions,” I said.
    Freeman did have questions but try as she might to shake Shami Arslanian from her direct testimony and conclusions, the veteran prosecutor never got the veteran witness to concede an inch. Freeman worked her on cross for nearly forty minutes but the closest she got to scoring a point for the prosecution was to get Arslanian to acknowledge that there was no way of knowing for sure what happened in the garage when Bondurant was murdered. The judge had announced earlier in the week that Friday would be a short day because of a districtwide judges’ meeting planned for late in the afternoon. So there was no afternoon break and we worked until almost four before Perry recessed the trial for the weekend. We moved into the two-day break with me feeling like I had the upper hand. We had weathered