Bronx Justice by Joseph Teller

crazy. Who did he think he was kidding? Did he really think that this test was going to come out any differently from the first three? And why did he have this burning need to have the case solved, figured out by the magic inside the little black box? Why couldn’t he just look at it like he did any other case? You plead guilty, or you roll the dice and go to trial. You win or you lose. The answer crept up from somewhere deep inside him, until he not only knew it was true but could even give it a name.
    And the name was fear.
    Fear, because he knew if he had to try this case, the overwhelming odds were that he was going to lose it. Fear, because Darren and his family had put their complete faith in him, had trusted him to be able to do whatever it took to reverse a hideous wrong. Fear, because the terrible pendulum had swung once again, this time in the direction of innocence.
    As much as Jaywalker loved the strange work he’d been drawn to, which pitted prosecutor against defender in a fight to the finish, as much as he wanted to be the hero, the savior to the Kingston family, more than anything else he wanted out of this one. He wanted this one last chance at the polygraph test to work, one way or the other.
    He prayed for Lou Paulson to be right.

7
THE BRICK WALL
    L ou Paulson was wrong.
    Jaywalker reached Jacob Pope Friday morning. “Well?” he asked. By this time, holding his breath had become second nature.
    To Pope’s credit, he didn’t play it cute or mince words. “No good,” he said. “Paulson says it’s like hooking up the machine to a brick wall. Kingston is simply untestable.”
    Â 
    It was mid-December by the time of the next court appearance. The last two obstacles standing between them and trial had been removed. The pretrial motions had been resolved, and the polygraph exams were a memory.
    Still, there was no thought of an immediate trial. The holidays made it a hard time to compete with the vacation schedules of judges, witnesses and even prospective jurors. And Darren’s being out on bail lowered the priority of his trial. The case was put over to the second week of January.
    Jaywalker wanted to drive his wife and daughter up to Massachusetts or Vermont to go skiing. His wife, readinghim bleak snow reports from the Times, reminded him that they had open-ended plane tickets to Florida and had promised her parents that they would be down to visit soon. They argued, longer and louder than usual. Jaywalker’s anxiety over the case, aggravated by his recent realization that it would have to be tried after all, had taken its toll on both of them.
    In the end, they flipped a coin.
    On Christmas day, it was sunny and eighty-five degrees by the pool.

8
NIGHTS ON THE COUCH
    J anuary was a time of cold, wet days, of rain that froze into slick sheets overnight, and of snow that fell wet and heavy, and turned to slush before refreezing and collecting black soot from passing cars.
    January was also a time to get ready. Not for the trial, not quite yet, but for the hearing that would precede it. The Part 12 judge who’d ruled on Jaywalker’s motions had ordered an evidentiary hearing on the admissibility of the identification testimony. In legal jargon, this is referred to as a Wade hearing, named after one of the U.S. Supreme Court cases that had given birth to the procedure.
    The district attorney’s office had notified the defense that photographs had been used in the identification of Darren as the perpetrator of the crimes. Unlike lineup results, which a jury may hear about, or “show-ups,” which occur when a witness confirms or denies that a single suspect displayed to him is in fact the perpetrator, New York statutory law specifically prohibits the prosecution from eliciting photo “hits” in front of the jury. In spite ofthat law, Bronx district attorneys stubbornly persisted in showing photos, rather than real people, to