That provoked some nervous laughter, and I could tell juror five, the retired engineer with the hunched back, did not like the idea of a nine-year-old boy looking at those videos even once, let alone one hundred and seventy times.
“Why did you watch it so many times?” Anita said.
“To figure out where the guns went so Dad wouldn’t go to prison.”
Anita glanced over at Wills and then at the jury. “Did you figure out where the guns went?”
“I think so.”
“Objection,” Athena Carlisle said. “Your Honor, we’ve been through this. Real experts have looked at the videos and found nothing wrong with them. We’re expected to believe a nine-year-old discovered something that they didn’t?”
“Ms. Marley?” Judge Larch said.
“Let the boy speak, Your Honor,” Anita said in a reasonable tone. “Echoing what you said when you allowed the videos to be introduced, the prosecution is free to rebut if Ali is wrong.”
The judge adjusted her glasses and then looked over at Ali. “Did you really figure it out?”
“I think so,” he said.
“Let’s hear it.”
Naomi put the videos up on the screen and gave Ali a remote control. Stopping the three videos in strategic places in much the same way the prosecution had made its case against me, Ali was able to show the jury how the lighting changed in the videos, how it grew slightly dimmer before each victim appeared and then brightened considerably just before I shot.
“What do you think is happening there with the lighting?” Anita said.
Ali said, “Whoever was controlling the spotlights dimmed them just before Mrs. Winslow, Mr. Watkins, and Mr. Diggs stepped into view. It’s hard to see them in that weaker light, but they’re there, and then the spotlights are boosted and you see the empty hands just as my father shoots.”
“Okay,” Anita said. “So what?”
“That’s what I kept thinking,” Ali said. “So what?”
“Until?”
“Oh, until I read the autopsy reports.”
CHAPTER
81
JUDGE LARCH WHIRLED her chair around and glared at me through those Coke-bottle lenses.
“You let a nine-year-old read autopsy reports, Dr. Cross?”
> “I wasn’t supposed to, Judge,” Ali said, twisting in his chair to address her. “But I did it anyway.”
Larch looked away from me, squinted at my boy, and said, “You on the road to criminality, son?”
Ali smiled nervously. “No, ma’am. Uh, Your Honor.”
“No, I know you’re not,” Larch said, softer, and her expression eased toward amused resignation. “Go ahead.”
Ali testified that he’d defied Bree and me and dug out the autopsy reports on Virginia Winslow and Leonard Diggs, looking for something odd about the gun hands of the three victims.
“Did you find something odd?” Anita asked.
“Yes,” Ali said.
“Gunpowder residue?”