The Defense: A Novel by Steve Cavanagh Page B

the fury boiling in her cheeks was enough to physically levitate her from her seat.
    “Your Honor, members of the jury, please turn to bundle B, page seven,” I said.
    I’d never seen pages turned more furiously. Judge Pike opened her file to the correct page and returned her outraged stare to me. The jury looked perplexed.
    I placed myself beside the easel to emphasize my point.
    “Your Honor, the first character I have blown up here is the first ‘G’ from your signature on the certificate of listing on page seven—Gabriella Pike. Correct?”
    “Yes,” she said, still angry but now a little curious.
    “Dr. Goldstein, according to your findings, the judge could have written the disputed note.”
    “No.”
    I took a yellow Post-it note out of my pants pocket and handed it to the well-dressed Hispanic juror.
    “This note was handed to me by the prosecutor this morning. Please pass it around to your fellow jurors.”
    YOUR CLIENT’S GOING DOWN. I’LL HAVE HIS BAIL REVOKED BY 5 P.M.
    “The jury will see the ‘G’ at the beginning of ‘going’ is in fact the same letter that I’ve blown up here, in this poster. It’s the same method of construction used by the author of the disputed handwriting. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
    “I already said it was similar.”
    “On your evidence, the murder note could have been written by the defendant or the judge or the prosecutor?”
    “No. You’re twisting everything.”
    “Let’s allow the jury to look at the note. They can decide.”
    The note passed around the jury. One by one they looked at the note. Looked at the blown-up “G” from “going” and looked at Miriam. The look was the same; Miriam was a kid with her hand in the candy jar. She put her head in her hands. The jury would think her presumptuous, cocky, not one of them.
    “Let’s be clear about this, Doctor. Some graphologists say that a person who puts a pronounced tail on their letter ‘G’ has sexually deviant tendencies, but not all graphologists have the same opinion, right?” He thought I was throwing him a rope, and he grabbed it.
    “That’s right.”
    “Doctor, isn’t it correct that we construct letters of the alphabet according to how we were initially taught to write them, either at home or in school?”
    “That’s a big factor, but not the only one. Some people alter their handwriting as they get older, but not substantially; I grant you that.”
    “So, the nuns who taught me to write in Catholic school. If they put a tail on the letter ‘G’ when they wrote it up on the blackboard to allow me to copy it, that wouldn’t mean they were sexually deviant, now, would it?”
    The members of the jury who wore crucifixes seemed to sit up a little straighter.
    “No. It wouldn’t.”
    “And it doesn’t mean that the judge or the prosecutor have deviant inclinations either, or indeed, whoever wrote on this one-ruble note. It’s more than likely to do with the way they were taught to write, and lots of perfectly normal people construct that letter in exactly the same way, correct?”
    “You’re right.”
    “It’s a fairly common way of constructing that letter?”
    “Yes.”
    “There’s maybe two hundred people in this court. How many would construct that letter of the alphabet in the same way? A quarter? A third of them?”
    “A good many would construct it that way,” he said. He was backpedaling rapidly. His hands shook as he took a sip of water. I’d taken him to a place he really didn’t want to go, and Goldstein wanted to get out as quickly as possible and move on.
    The jury finished handing around Miriam’s note, and the court officer handed it to the judge. If possible, she looked angrier with Miriam than with me. I’d almost finished with Goldstein; the lid was on the coffin, and I just had to nail it down.
    “It’s impossible to tell if someone is sexually abnormal just from their handwriting, isn’t it?”
    “I would have to say yes. On reflection,