Have You Seen Luis Velez?(62)

Chapter Thirteen




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Just the Facts

“Mr. Adler,” the prosecuting attorney said, “please tell the court what you witnessed on the evening in question.”

“Okay,” Ralph Adler said.

He was a heavy, fiftyish man with thinning dark hair. He seemed to wear a look on his face as though smelling fish that had gone bad. But maybe that’s only the stress of the courtroom, Raymond thought. And it must have been hard to witness such a terrible act of violence and then be asked to relive it.

“I was walking down Third Avenue. I was behind them. The victim, you know, and the lady. The defendant, I guess I should call her. I was behind them both. We were all walking in the same direction. So the victim, Luis—Mr. Velez—he was closer behind her than I was. And he was a faster walker, so he was gaining on her. But he wasn’t paying any attention to her—just walking down the street, you know? But I guess I noticed that he was gaining on her because she started glancing over her shoulder, kind of nervous-like. And I was watching her, because I could see she was nervous, but I was trying to see if she had any reason to be, but it didn’t seem like she did, because Mr. Velez wasn’t paying any attention to her, like I said.”

The defense attorney rose to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Conjecture. The witness is not qualified to judge what Mr. Velez was paying attention to or whether my client had reason to feel concern.”

“Sounds to me like Mr. Adler is sharing his observations,” the judge said. “So I’m going to overrule your objection, but let the jury be advised that this is only one witness’s assessment of the situation.”

The defense attorney shook his head and sat.

Raymond typed with nearly blinding speed, trying to get all this down. He hadn’t had a chance to charge his laptop battery over lunch, and it was down to thirty-nine percent.

“Go on, Mr. Adler,” the prosecutor said.

“So, okay. So after a time she’s looking over her shoulder like every second, and then she starts digging around in her purse. You could kind of tell there was a lot in there. Not that I could really see the inside of her purse, but you could tell by the way she was digging around. It looked like it was hard to find anything in there. So then she pulled something out. I know now it was the gun. At the time I figured she had some mace or pepper spray or something. It must not have been a very big gun, because I couldn’t really see it there in her hand. But it was a big enough gun, I guess, because the guy is dead.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” the defense attorney said again. He rose to his feet more slowly this time, as if tired from all the exertion.

“Sustained. Mr. Adler, please tell us the facts of what you saw and refrain from any kind of editorializing.”

“Sorry, Your Honor. Anyway, just as she was pulling the . . . well, object, I’ll say, because I didn’t know it was a gun at the time . . . just as she pulled it out of her purse, she dropped something. Like she pulled up on this object, and it upended something else that was in there, and it fell out onto the street. It didn’t seem like she noticed. But the victim—Mr. Velez—he saw that right away. I don’t think he paid attention to her before that. Not that I could tell. But he saw that wallet drop, and it woke him up, sort of. It was kind of a wallet and kind of a change purse. It had a change purse attached to one side of it. I only mention that because later she kept calling it her purse, and that was kind of confusing, because her purse was on her shoulder, but she was talking about this wallet-and-change-purse-combo thingy.

“Anyway. Mr. Velez, he picked it up. He picked up what she dropped. And he tried to call to her. He didn’t go up to her right away. He didn’t just run right up and tap her on the shoulder. He tried calling her, over and over. ‘Ma’am,’ he said. And then he said it louder. And then even louder than that. ‘Ma’am, you dropped this! You dropped something!’ He must have said it ten times. Maybe twelve times. There were a few people on the street. One of them was the lady who testified earlier, but then there were also a couple others who never came forward. But I remember one of them, and the way we kind of looked at each other, like, What, is this lady deaf or something?” Then, turning his eyes to the defendant, he added, “Sorry, ma’am. Turns out you really were hard of hearing, and I didn’t mean any offense by that. Just telling you what we were thinking. Or what I was thinking, anyway.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Adler,” the prosecutor said. “Go on.”

“Well, he just kept getting louder and louder, but it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good. Sorry. A darn bit of good. So that’s when he went up and tapped her on the shoulder. But I swear he never even really tapped. He reached out to tap, but by then she was already spinning around. And it was dusk, nearly dark, so the next thing I remember was the muzzle flashes. You could see the muzzle flashes from the gun real good in that light. I know there was sound. I know the shots were loud, but somehow that’s not what I remember. I just remember how that gun spit out this fire. It scared the bejesus out of me, because I was right behind him. Right behind Mr. Velez. I felt like she was shooting right at me, so I jumped out of the way. Lost my balance and slammed into this building and bruised my shoulder. And then I looked again, and she just kept firing. And firing. And firing. And I was thinking, like, What the hell? Even if a guy really was trying to steal your purse . . . I mean, why would anybody put that many bullets into anybody?”