The Expert Weighs In
It was a long time ago so it is hard to know with certainty where one’s education took a wrong turn – maybe it was ending up in the registration line for Fruitless Studies of Ancient Texts in Dead Languages or perhaps it was Ancient Studies of Dead Texts in Fruitless Languages, in any event it was not Business Mogul 101 as one had thought, and upon realizing the mistake shrugging one’s shoulders and saying, ‘well, this line is shorter, that’s for sure!’ as if that is somehow a rational way to make decisions – but I see now I should have been steering my studies and resume-building towards one career and one career only, that of expert witness.
Close studies of television shows across a range of genres, be they courtroom dramas, detective shows, law and order narratives, or simple murder mysteries, show that no one in the modern landscape, perhaps no one in the universe, holds a higher position of authority or credibility than the expert witness.
No one carries themselves with such an easy manner than these people who walk confidently into the courtroom, plop themselves down in the witness chair, adjust the microphone – they’ve done this so many times before they know exactly how they want the microphone to be! – and sit back and wait for the questions to come their way.
He or she is afforded immediate respect, not to say deference, and at some point in the dialogue they more or less take over the script and are off and running, telling everyone what’s what in no uncertain manner.
I want to tell people what’s what!
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” the expert will explain gently to the defense attorney.
“The mud on the shoes of the suspect is not simple Kansas farm mud, as a cursory examination might conclude, but mud from the lower half, perhaps the lower quarter, even perhaps the lowest eighth of the shoreline of the Amazon River. The shore, that is, that is on your left if you are looking back here towards the courthouse,” they explain courteously.
I would love, in any number of circumstances, to say with an easy courtesy, “that’s where you’re mistaken.”
I would just love that!
Under certain circumstances as things work out now I’m the one that’s mistaken. You might even say in most circumstances. A statistical analysis might go further and say I am mistaken under all circumstances.
What a wonderful opportunity it would be to make up for lost time and turn the tables on these guys, telling them for a change that it’s they who are mistaken.
In this future that I project I will have my little ways that I will be known by.
It is hard to say right now what those ways are, but I might, for instance, ‘chaw’ upon an unlit cigar.
I might wear a fancy vest as riverboat gamblers used to do and refer to an ornate pocket watch I pull out from time to time, its gold chain dangling and catching the light from the lamp fixtures in the courtroom ceiling.
I might jingle the loose change in my pocket.
I might whistle noiselessly as if lost in a reverie of my own.
If that isn’t enough – if that doesn’t establish some characteristic or eccentricity that the public falls in love with – I will move on to other more florid displays of individuality. I may carry around a live lobster that I pretend to consult with from time to time, holding him up to my ear to catch his counsel.
I may do all of these things at once.
I am still thinking it through but by God I will be known for something.
My courtroom manner will be neither abrupt nor servile. I have been in this situation many times before and while the players and the specifics of the case might change, what doesn’t change are the relentless mechanics of my mind and the way I preside over it all with authoritative nonchalance.
It will be my habit on entering the courtroom to address the lady clacking away on that funny typewriter and say, “read that back to me if you would.”
“How far back?” she says, flustered but pleased to have caught my attention at all.
I consult a pocket calendar and see that it is 10:00 on Thursday. “From Monday morning,” I suggest.
The judge nods and she sets off relating everything that has happened to date, including the judge’s lunch orders and the janitor’s rather biting comments on the current crop of jurors.
This gives me time to take in the case and study the psychology of the individuals involved.
Is this a murder trial? Is blackmail involved? How about poisoning? Is it important to establish differing kinds of ink available on the market, or the ways you can identify and catalogue varying specimens of cigarette ash?
All these and more may fall under my expertise.
Is this instead a traffic court, and the case before us is one where some fellow has sat at a four way stop and took upon himself to communicate by impatient gesture who of the four drivers should go next?
I can’t stand those guys – who appointed them traffic cop anyway? – and though I usually operate in the higher courts I will make an exception in this case. Like I say, I really don’t like these guys that do that impatient gesture thing, and there must be some way that my expertise, whatever it is, should be able to send this one to The Big House for an extended stay.
Upon taking my seat in the witness chair, I will affirm the oath with dignified respect, though the judge may mention to the jury, “we appreciate the good doctor’s patience with a process that he has undertaken a million times.”
“No, no, good sir, and good citizens, I am no better than you, even if I am world famous.”
At the conclusion of the administering of the oath, I will survey the courtroom and leap to my feet and point to a fellow about two rows back. “You wonder do I see the killer in the courthouse? Indeed I do, sir, indeed I do. That is the man right there!”
The judge leans over and whispers that this fellow is the guy from the sandwich shop that stands by in case anyone wants to place early lunch orders, so I tell the fancy typewriter gal, still prettily flustered at my attentions, “strike that. The jury will disregard the last comment as not germane to the case…for now,” for I still have my suspicions in the matter.
Well, and then it gets a little fuzzy, this scene unreeling in my mind, though there are some elements that I know will be there, for instance the slides that will show on the screen they have put up to one side, though I haven’t quite decided what’s on those slides.
It could be a crushed beer can, photographed from different angles. It could be a picture of a dog not barking. It could be a closeup of a painting from The Renaissance, highlighting the unusual pattern of the way the paint is flaking off. It could be shards of ancient pottery from an archeological dig in Mesopotamia. It could be a picture of ordinary pavement with raindrops spattered upon it. It might be an image of the Periodic Table of the Elements.
The point at this juncture is to see things that no one else sees, even the other experts.
For you see, I have been brought in specially for this case, after all the other experts have wilted before the evidence and thrown up their hands. I am reserved for special special cases. I am the expert’s expert.
For instance, I may specialize in the left hand side of the Periodic Table, or the rightmost shoe in a pair of tennis shoes.
We can just skip over all that, the part that demonstrates my actual expertise, and jump right to the part where I stop the proceedings.
“May I see slide number 13 again?”
Since we are on slide 194 by this time, everyone knows that I have seen something that has troubled me, or has alerted me to the identity of the culprit.
They show me the slide, I nod with a kind of “I thought as much” attitude, and I sit back with a sigh of contentment.
It is part of my personal legend, this sigh, and everyone knows that I don’t emit it until I have solved the case to my own satisfaction.
It is now merely a matter of routine, naming the killer, the weapon, the time of day, the station on the radio at the time, the current going rate for mortgages at the local savings and loan.
“What conclusions have you reached?” the judge will ask respectfully.
I will say, “do I really have to go through that? It is very tiresome for me.”
And just about as I am ready to launch into this learned dissertation on the chemistry of matchheads or the biology of the lowly garden worm or the composition of your ordinary internal combustion engine such as might power a home lawnmower circa 1968, this guy or gal in the back of the room, someone no one has ever, ever suspected, leaps up and says, “I can’t take it any more! I did it! I did it! I am the killer!” and that is that.
Such is my dream.
It is not unusual that in this rich portrait I have painted there are a few details to fill in, such as what exactly I am an expert about, since I really don’t know much of anything, but that will all come out in the wash I expect.
The important thing is the way a stir goes through the courtroom as I stride to the front, and the murmur that runs through the crowd. ‘Game’s up,’ this one knowledgeable fellow says upon seeing that it is me that they have called in, ‘may as well put this one in the record books.’
Man, I can see it now.
