“DOES THE defense wish to cross-examine the witness?” Judge Gillis asked, sounding almost bored. Court procedure was much more exact than it seemed in movies and on television, just as Haywood had warned me. It was structured almost like a play, with lines that every person was expected to know and perform from memory.
“I do, Your Honor,” answered the defense council, a stout, dark-haired woman by the name of Jolana Kovač. She stood about my height, but stockier, in a pencil skirt and suit jacket that only accentuated the boxiness of her figure. I hated her on principle. My mother was right: she was a tidal wave.
“You may proceed when ready.” The judge shuffled some papers on his desk, and Kovač did the same. I wiped my wet palms on the handkerchief Haywood had never taken back, trying not to appear anxious. The moment passed, and Kovač stepped out from behind her desk.
“Ms. Nguyen,” she said, and I winced. Her pronunciation of my name was worse than most, with emphasis placed on a g that was supposed to be nearly silent. “From what angle did you allegedly see my client from when you opened the bathroom door?”
I took pause, trying to figure out what she was asking, exactly. After a moment of feeling rather stupid, I decided to get clarification. “Can you rephrase the question? I’m not sure I understand what you’re looking for.”
Kovač looked annoyed but complied. “How were you standing when you looked through the door? Were you bent over or standing at your full height?”
“I was kneeling,” I said.
“So you saw the shooter at an upward angle,” Kovač surmised, tilting her chin dramatically upward. “Giving you a view of… the underside of his chin, perhaps?”
“No, he wasn’t that close. I wasn’t kneeling directly below him. He was at the end of the hall, near the entrance to the kitchen.”
Kovač looked disappointed for a moment, but then her eyes lit up again. “So he was far away from you, then?”
“Not too far. I had a clear view of his face.” I understood where she was going with her line of questioning now. She wanted to convince the jury that I could have been mistaken in who I saw. She wouldn’t be able to; I was too sure.
“A clear view, from a crack in a door?” Kovač asked sweetly. “How big a crack do you think it was, exactly?”
“If I had to estimate,” I said, prefacing my answer in order to show I was not sure, “I would say about an inch or so.” It had been a heavy door. I didn’t want him to see it move. It had probably been less than an inch, but I could see out. I did see.
“An inch,” Kovač repeated. She used her thumb and index finger to create a gap of a little less than an inch, and then put it to her eye. “That seems a rather narrow field of vision, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, I wouldn’t. It gave me a clear view to the entrance to the kitchen, where Dustin Adams stood over Jacob Hastings as he begged for his life.”
“Stick to the questions posed, Ms. Nguyen,” Judge Gillis reminded me, his voice lowered to about half of its usual booming volume. I took that to be a whispered piece of advice and not an official order, based on volume alone.
“Sorry, Your Honor,” I said directly to him. Then I turned to Kovač and repeated my answer to her actual question. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“You seem very sure that it was Mr. Adams you saw that night,” Kovač said, and I thought she looked a little nervous, anxious even. “How far away would you say the killer stood from you?”
“Would you like me to estimate a numerical distance, or use a physical reference within the courtroom?” I asked, maybe feeling a little smug that I knew the courtroom lingo. Haywood had taught me how to answer these questions. Sound honest, and earnest, and never guess—if you have to guess, make sure the jury knows that you are guessing, and ask first before you do.
“Let’s make this easy and use a reference within the courtroom,” Kovač said, which was exactly the answer I hoped for. “Was it the distance between you and a specific member of the jury or the audience, to the back of the courtroom…?”
“Could you take a step back, then? Just to your desk.”
Kovač complied, taking a large step backward. “I would estimate the distance between myself and the shooter to be about the distance between myself and you as you stand right now. About the same distance over which the court has repeatedly asked me to identify the defendant as the man I saw shoot Jacob Hastings in the head.”
Kovač stepped forward again, looking for all the world like she wanted to shoot me in the head. “And you were on your knees?”
“I was.”
“And the shooter was standing?”
“He was.”
“And you saw him wearing a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap?”
“I did.”
“How was the hat oriented on the shooter’s head?” Kovač made a gesture to demonstrate. “Forward, backward?”
“With the brim facing backward,” I said.
“How was the shooter standing, in relation to you?” I was going to ask her to rephrase the question again, but she seemed to anticipate that, because she added, “Let me rephrase that: Was the shooter facing you when he killed Hastings?”
“No, he was facing Jacob Hastings.”
“So he had his back to you?” Kovač demanded quickly, nearly cutting off the tail end of my answer. I shook my head immediately, but a murmur went through the jury and the audience before I could answer.
“No, he did not.”
“I would like to enter into evidence the baseball cap confiscated by police on the day of my client’s arrest for the witness to identify.”
Judge Gillis consulted his papers. “I’ll allow it.”
Kovač brought forward the baseball cap, which was wrapped in plastic that was sealed with a red line of tape. She showed the cap first to the jury, then to me. “Is this the kind of hat that you say the killer was wearing?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing exactly what she would ask next.
“The only place on this hat where the name Cincinnati Reds appears is on the logo just above the brim. You say that the cap was placed backward on the shooter’s head, like this.” She turned the hat so that the logo was facing the audience and not me. “Yet you identified to the police immediately following the shooting that it was a Cincinnati Reds cap, did you not?”
“I did.”
“Then how could you have both read the team name on the baseball cap and seen the shooter’s face if the cap was facing the back of his head?”
“I didn’t see the logo straight-on,” I said. “I saw it from the side, because the defendant was turned sideways. He was neither facing me, nor facing away from me.”
“You recognized the logo from the side?” Kovač sounded skeptical, but she turned the hat sideways so that I could see about half the logo. “Like this?” Her voice was incredulous, and she glanced to the jury with her eyebrows raised.
“Yes. With half the logo and the color of the hat, I was able to determine that it was Cincinnati Reds.” I paused. “Ricky was a fan of the team and often wore their merchandise, so I was familiar with the logo.”
“So you only saw half the shooter’s face?”
“I initially saw him in profile, yes. But then—”
Kovač cut me off. “You saw only half his face. From the side many people look alike. Could you be mistaken on who it was you saw holding the gun?”
“No, I am not mistaken.”
“How can you be certain, having only seen half the shooter’s face, that it was, in fact, my client you saw and not someone else?”
“Because I saw him. When he shot Jake, he closed his eyes and turned his face away—and I saw his face, Dustin Adams’s face, covered in blood spatter.” I almost stood up to confront Kovač but managed to stay in my seat. “I saw his face.”