Fried Chicken was not a public phone and that he did not have a dime to use a pay phone.  He said that he had stayed with this truck from 7:28, when he arrived at the Zeiglers' home, until he drove to the store with Tommy.

Eagan had no redirect: a sign that Hadley's cross-examination had done no serious damage.  Edward Williams walked out of the courtroom, having testified for the last time.

*

The day and the week ended with the brief testimony of six witnesses.  John Grimes, the seventeen-year old clerk at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, said that on the night of Christmas Eve, a frightened black man came into the restaurant and asked to call the police. Grimes testified that he told him that the number was in the front of the phone book, and the black man made a call that lasted about two minutes.  Grimes said that he did not overhear the conversation, and that as far as he knew, no police cars had arrived across the street.

Grimes was a necessary witness for Eagan.  The jury had to hear some corroboration of Williams appearance at the restaurant.  For the prosecution's purposes, Grimes was the best choice of a bad lot, since he was vague about the time that Williams arrived; all the other possible witnesses placed Williams at the store after 9:00.  But Grimes was not without a price for the prosecution.  Hadley's three questions on cross-examination brought out his testimony that Williams was wearing a brown jacket or sweater.

James Lee Bryan, an Orange County deputy, described how a work party of jail trusties had recovered the bullet from the grove south of Route 50, where Felton Thomas said that Zeigler had taken him and Mays to shoot pistols.

Fred Crawford, a firearms dealer (and brother-in-law of Zeigler's cousin Connie Crawford) testified that he had sold Tommy the .22 Beretta pistol that had been found, unfired, in the office desk drawer.

Two uniformed OCSO officers, James Pearson and Frank Hair, described the puzzling sequence at the back gate of the fenced rear compound when Pearson found the gate locked and Hair, moments later, found it open.  This incident occurred shortly after police arrived at the store on Christmas Eve.  Pearson said that he inspected the lock, but he admitted to Hadley that he might have been mistaken about whether the gate could be opened.

Finally, Alton Evans gave brief chain-of-custody testimony about the orange grove bullet, and Judge Paul recessed for the weekend.

Attorneys at a jury trial usually try to end the day on a high note, to give the jury some favorable evidence to ponder until the next session.  By that standard, and by any other, the day belonged to Robert Eagan.  the overwhelming impression was Edward Williams's story of an attempted murder in the dark