Chapter 74
JACK ROONEY MADE HIS WAY up the aisle, leaning on his three-legged cane, putting his weight on his left leg, then swinging out his right hip, repeating the awkward yet mesmerizing gait all the way to the witness stand.
Rooney accepted assistance from the bailiff, who put a hand under the man’s elbow and helped him up into the chair. Yuki thought that this witness was surely Mickey-proof.
Or was he?
“Thanks for coming all this way, Mr. Rooney,” Yuki said when the elderly man was finally seated. Rooney was wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, red bow tie. His glasses were big and square, perched on a knobby nose, white hair parted and slicked down like that of a little boy on the first day of school.
“My pleasure.” Rooney beamed.
“Mr. Rooney, were you on the Del Norte ferry on November first?”
“Yes, dear. I was with my wife, Betty, and our two friends, Leslie and Joe Waters. We all live near Albany, you know. That was our first trip to San Francisco.”
“And did anything unusual happen on that ferry ride?”
“Oh, I’ll say. That fellow over there killed a lot of people,” he said, pointing to Brinkley. “I was so scared I almost shit myself.”
Yuki allowed herself a smile as laughter rippled out over the gallery. She said, “Will the court reporter please note that the witness has identified the defendant, Alfred Brinkley. Mr. Rooney, did you make a video recording of the shooting?”
“Well, it was supposed to be a movie of the ferry ride — the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz and so forth — but it turned out to be a movie of the shooting. Nice little camera my grandson gave me,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger about three inches apart.
“It’s only the size of a Snickers bar, but it takes pictures and movies. I just take the pictures, and my grandson puts it on the computer for me. Oh, and I sold the movie to a TV station, and that pretty much paid for the whole darned San Francisco trip.”
“Your Honor?” Mickey Sherman said wearily from the counsel table.
Judge Moore leaned across the bench and said, “Mr. Rooney, please answer the questions ‘yes’ or ‘no’ unless you’re asked for a fuller explanation, all right?”
“Certainly, Your Honor. I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before.”
“That’s okay.”
Yuki interlaced her fingers in front of her, asked, “You gave me a copy of the video, didn’t you, sir?”
“Yep, I did.”
“Judge, permission to show a copy of this video and enter it into evidence.”
“Go right ahead, Ms. Castellano.”
David Hale slipped a disk into a computer, and as faces turned toward two large TVs in the front of the courtroom, the amateur film began.
The first of two segments showed a happy afternoon on the bay — the long pan of the landmarks, the camera eye coming to rest on a grinning Jack Rooney and his wife, just by happenstance catching an out-of-focus Alfred Brinkley sitting behind them, staring out over the water, plucking at the hairs on his arm.
The second segment was a scene of bloody horror.
Yuki watched the faces of the jurors as the gunshots and the terrified screams ricocheted around the small courtroom.
The pictures on the two screens slewed sideways, catching the shock on the little boy’s face at the moment he was shot, captured his small frame blowing back against the hull before falling across his mother’s body.
Yuki had seen the film many times, and still the shots were like punches to her own gut.
Red Dog was wrong. The jurors were anything but bored as they witnessed the slaughter, because this viewing of the Rooney tape was different from seeing it at home.
This time the killer sat only yards away.
Some jurors covered their mouths or averted their eyes, and over the course of the two segments, every one of them peered with dismay at Alfred Brinkley.