The Rough Cut

by Douglas Corleone

  ‘I said I won’t post anything else. Let it go.’

  ‘Unless you’re a Disney princess, I don’t accept those three words, Ethan. I will not let this go. Not until you understand how cosmically stupid it is for anyone on trial for murder to tweet a single fucking character. Hell, it’s stupid enough when you’re not on trial for murder.’

  ‘I understand, Nick. It won’t happen again. I’ll delete my account.’

  ‘Jesse deleted your account the moment we found out about your online antics. In fact, Jesse deleted all your social media accounts. Not just deactivated them, he deleted them. It’s as if they never existed. If you open a new account, if you post so much as one fucking word, one syllable, on social media again, I will throw this fucking trial, do you understand?’

  Ethan, every bit as calm as he was just before going berserk in Breakers’ parking lot, assured Church he did.

  We moved the meeting to the deck just as the sun began to set over the Pacific. In the orange light, Nicholas Church, dressed meticulously in one of the uber-expensive suits he’d purchased at Ala Moana, paced the planks as he peered down at his phone.

  Finally, he said, ‘Wow, I think Bustmynut84 just broke this case wide open. He says, “She hot. Bet he went necro on dat shit. Dude looks like American psycho”.’

  ‘Enough!’ Ethan shouted, as he shot out of his deckchair.

  Church, still scrolling through tweets, never saw him coming.

  In the editing room, I rewatch the footage in slow-mo. As Ethan lifts Church over his head with little exertion, I think about Church’s words back at the crime scene, about how Piper Kingsley could not have been killed in the upstairs bathroom because of the physical strength it would have taken for someone to pick up her body and carry it downstairs without badly bruising it on the stairs along the way.

  By the end of the incident, as Church is pulling himself out of the infinity pool with Brody’s help, I consider how to depict the events that took place over the following days. It all happened so fast, the story reads like a blur in my brain.

  I fast-forward. As I watch Brody and myself onscreen, cleaning up (Ethan had left hours earlier), and finally walking toward the door to leave Church’s suite, I feel a pang of guilt.

  ‘Won’t whatever Kyle Myers shared with us tonight be rejected as hearsay?’ I ask Church on camera.

  ‘Trust me, Riles. We won’t need his testimony. I intend to get everything we need from Nathan on cross.’

  Onscreen, Nate walks calmly to the witness stand, head held high in the air, no doubt intended for its effect on the jury.

  Everything is, Church assured me.

  The previous day, Nathan Jakes had been battery-mates with Naomi Lau, who’d guided him gently through direct. The reason she’d put Nate on the stand became clear right from the start of Lau’s questioning. Her objective was to blunt any evidence expected to be presented by the defense – his lies, the affair, his having no alibi for the night of the murder – by dismissively getting it out of the way. Church, of course, had anticipated this and disrupted Lau at every turn, adding the relish Church felt any particular testimony deserved.

  On direct, Nate testified that he first met Piper Kingsley about six months before she was murdered. His brother Ethan had introduced them at a bar in Waikiki, where Ethan was performing. He didn’t recall whether Ethan introduced Piper as his girlfriend. From their behavior, though, it was clear that Ethan and Piper were together. Nate only learned later that Piper and Ethan had been in a romantic relationship for two months.

  Ethan didn’t tell Nate about Piper before that evening, Nate explained, because in the event the relationship went sideways, all of Ethan’s future girlfriends would be compared to her.

  ‘What did you take that to mean?’ Lau asked Nate.

  ‘That Piper was beautiful, smart and successful.’

  ‘That it would be extremely difficult to do better?’

  ‘Something like that, yeah.’

  ‘Did there come a time when you became attracted to Piper Kingsley?’

  ‘I was attracted to her the moment I met her. I’m sure most men were.’

  ‘Were you close to your brother when you first met Piper?’

  ‘I would characterize our relationship then as close, yes.’

  ‘Did there come a time when you had sexual relations with Piper Kingsley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When was the first time?’

  ‘A few nights after we met.’

  ‘But after Ethan told you they were together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were the circumstances that led you to sleep with Piper?’

  Nate testified that not long after first meeting Piper, he ‘accidentally’ ran into her outside the station where she worked. He invited her for coffee so that he could ‘talk up my brother’, and she agreed. From the coffee shop, they went to a bar. There, Piper confessed that she didn’t think she would remain with Ethan forever, because ‘his life just isn’t going anywhere’. (Ethan teared up at the defense table on hearing this.) Piper had grown up well-off and enjoyed ‘a certain lifestyle’, Nate said.

  Meanwhile, Nate confessed to Piper that he hadn’t been happy in his own marriage for years and had planned on filing for divorce ‘as soon as it became practical’. Following drinks at the bar, they got a room at the Pink Palace. They were ‘hooked on each other’ after that.

  ‘Did you consider your brother Ethan at the time you took Piper to the Pink Palace?’ Lau asked him.

  ‘In the moment, I was not thinking of Ethan.’

  ‘How about afterward?’

  ‘Afterward, it pained me very deeply.’

  ‘Yet you continued the affair.’

  ‘As much as it pained me, I continued the affair, nonetheless.’

  On cross, Church took Nate back to the beginning, to college, when Ethan and Nate performed together as The Two Jakes. He established the brothers had made a pact that they’d stick with their music no matter what it took, even if they had to get by on bartending gigs. Sometime after college, however, Nathan Jakes met and fell in love with Cheyenne Oh.

  Cheyenne, who was very close with her family, loved Nate too, but made clear she needed more security than a struggling musician could provide. So, with the financial help of Cheyenne’s parents, Nate sat for the LSAT, did well and applied only to UH’s law school. After being waitlisted for two months, he was accepted.

  Once Nate left The Two Jakes, his relationship with his brother admittedly cooled. They stopped calling each other, stopped visiting. Nate involved himself with his studies, then his law practice; Ethan with his music and the odd jobs he picked up just to survive.

  ‘Yet you were envious of Ethan, weren’t you?’ Church said.

  ‘Not envious.’

  ‘You questioned your own decisions about leaving the group and going to law school.’

  ‘Somewhat, maybe.’

  ‘You weren’t satisfied with the law.’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  Church delved more deeply into Nate’s relationship with Ethan following the dissolution of The Two Jakes. Nate categorized the relationship as lukewarm.

  ‘Did you still love your brother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Let’s return to your relationship with the victim,’ Church said. ‘When was the first time you saw Piper Kingsley?’

  ‘As I testified on direct, it was—’

  ‘No, the question isn’t about the first time you met her. It’s about the first time you saw her.’

  Nate’s gaze fixed on some spot deep in the gallery, but he didn’t appear to be rooting through his brain for the answer to Church’s question – he was rooting through his brain trying to figure out how Church obtained the information, and thereby, how much Church knew.

  He was thinking Cheyenne was the source.

  ‘On television. Maybe a few years ago.’

  ‘Did you watch her on a regular basis after th
at?’

  ‘I watched the news, if that’s what—’

  ‘No, you know damn well what I’m talking about.’

  I glanced at Lau, who seemed to be too riveted to object.

  ‘Yes,’ Nate said. ‘I watched the weather pretty regularly.’

  ‘And did there come a time when Piper Kingsley became less of your local weathergirl and more of a private obsession?’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’

  ‘No? Before you met Piper Kingsley, had you ever downloaded photos of her?’

  Nate hesitated, probably considering his computer at the firm.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Before you met Piper Kingsley, had you ever emailed her at the station?’

  At this moment, I dug into Church’s briefcase as if searching for crucial documents. When I looked up, Nate’s eyes were directly on me.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘More than once?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More than five times?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More than ten times?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More than fifteen times?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What was the nature of these emails, Mr Jakes?’

  Nate sunk lower into the witness stand. ‘Fan mail,’ he said. ‘I think I asked for a date in a few of the emails.’

  ‘Did you propose marriage?’

  ‘Jocularly, maybe.’

  I glanced at the jury and wondered how many of the twelve knew what the word jocularly meant.

  ‘Now tell me when you really learned about Ethan’s relationship with Piper.’

  ‘Objection,’ Lau said. ‘Asked and answered.’

  ‘Overruled. Mr Jakes may answer.’

  ‘I’d heard … a rumor, if that’s what you’re referring to.’

  ‘That your brother was dating the local weather reporter, Piper Kingsley?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who told you that rumor?’

  ‘My wife. She’d run into Ethan in town.’

  ‘So it was more than a rumor, right? Unless your wife is given to telling tall tales.’

  ‘I believed the information.’

  ‘Did your wife Cheyenne share any other “rumors” with you that day?’

  ‘She told me Ethan might be closing a record deal in the near future.’

  ‘That didn’t come to fruition. But at the time, the double blows must have been painful, weren’t they?’

  ‘I was happy for Ethan.’

  ‘So happy that you called him that day to celebrate?’

  ‘It was around that time, yeah.’

  ‘But you didn’t congratulate Ethan, did you? You asked Ethan to set up a night out. You asked him to bring Piper along, didn’t you?’

  Nate shifted in his seat. ‘I told him to bring Piper and have Piper bring her friends.’

  ‘And did she bring friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember their names?’

  ‘She brought just one. The weekend weather guy, Kyle Myers.’

  ‘That must have been a disappointment for you.’

  ‘Nice enough guy, but no, he wasn’t my type.’

  ‘What was the condition of your marriage at the time?’

  ‘Awful.’

  ‘The night you, your brother, Piper, and her friend Kyle Myers went out – do you remember that night well?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  Church went in for the kill. ‘Mr Jakes, isn’t it true that you lied earlier on the stand about when you first had sexual relations with Ms Kingsley?’

  Nathan said nothing.

  ‘Let’s go back to the night you first met Piper Kingsley in Waikiki. Was it really days later that you first had sexual relations with her?’

  Nathan didn’t respond.

  ‘Mr Jakes, isn’t it true that you had sexual relations with Ms Kingsley on that night? The very night you met her, the night your little brother introduced you to her as his date?’

  Quietly, Nate said, ‘Yes.’

  In the gallery, a few gasps were quickly extinguished with Hightower’s gavel.

  ‘So you lied about the night you met her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied to the police about that night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied to this jury about that night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied to your wife about that night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you lied to your brother about that night.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Church took a slight step back, an inscrutable look slowly washing over his face.

  ‘No,’ Nate said from the stand. ‘Ethan knew Piper and I had sex. He was there too.’

  FORTY-ONE

  The next day’s tabloids predictably squawked: THE TWO JAKES?

  From the moment the words left Nate’s lips on the stand, Church and I each blamed ourselves.

  ‘It’s on me,’ he said, as soon as we were out of earshot outside the courthouse. ‘I went one question too far.’

  ‘How were you supposed to know,’ I said, ‘when I gave you the wrong information?’ I frantically scrolled through my cell phone contacts as we walked.

  ‘Put that away,’ Church said.

  ‘No, that little bastard lied to me and—’

  ‘Kyle Myers didn’t lie. All he implied was that Piper slept with Nate that first night they met for drinks in Waikiki.’

  ‘That sure as shit wasn’t the whole truth, was it?’

  ‘It was the whole truth as far as he knew it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, life’s like college, right? If you know you’re talking to the campus gossip, you don’t reveal the whole story, do you? You say, sure, I went out last night, got hammered on Mad Dog and passed out naked at the edge of the lake. But you leave out the fact that you chugged half that Mad Dog out of the crack of another guy’s ass, just because some townie with nine fingers and even fewer teeth dared you to do so. It’s common sense.’

  ‘You think she told Kyle that she slept with Nate, but left Ethan out of the story.’

  ‘I do. But in this case, I don’t think she lied because she was afraid of “looking bad”. From everything you’ve told me, she wasn’t ashamed of her own sexuality.’

  ‘She didn’t want to make Ethan look bad?’ I said.

  ‘The dive bar musician? C’mon, Riles. Piper didn’t even tell Kyle that Ethan was living with her; she was already embarrassed of him. She didn’t want to make Nathan look bad. Because Nathan is the only brother she was ever serious about.’

  Over the next forty-eight hours, the late Piper Kingsley was vigorously slut-shamed online.

  The Two Jakes became heroes among (most) men, and killers among (most) women.

  ‘A debate,’ said an anchor on one of the twenty-four-hour cable news networks, ‘is brewing over which of The Two Jakes murdered Piper Kingsley. Are you on Team Nate, or are you on Team Ethan? Let us know by going to our website’s Pulse Live question of the day!’

  How all this would affect Ethan’s case was anyone’s guess.

  ‘I’ll request a mistrial,’ Church said, as we stepped into the courthouse. ‘Hightower will deny it, but at least we’ll have a basis for appeal.’

  ‘What about the jury?’

  Church stabbed at the elevator button.

  ‘Luckily, because I purged the pool of seniors, we have a fairly forward-looking twenty-first-century jury. I don’t think unconventional sex will hurt our client much.’

  ‘This case went from local to national pretty fucking fast,’ I said, as the elevator doors opened and a wave of people rushed out. ‘People are now saying The Two Jakes “broke the internet”. Whatever the fuck that means.’

  ‘Which side are people falling on?’ Church asked matter-of-factly. ‘Team Nate or Team Ethan?’

  ‘So far, most people are on Team Ethan,’ I told him as we stepp
ed onto the elevator. ‘The consensus seems to be that Nate is the only brother with the sophistication to pull off the creation of an online alibi like he did.’

  ‘Interesting. That’s something I’ll use in closing.’

  ‘Do you feel confident?’

  As a family with a handicapped child attempted to board, Church raised his hand, palm out, and said, ‘Sorry, my assistant just passed gas in here. You’re going to want to take the next one.’

  As the doors closed, he turned to me and said, ‘Confident enough. You?’

  In the editing room, I’ve come to The Footage. The footage which – as much as I will it – refuses to spontaneously combust. Once at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan, I made the mistake of telling Brody that courtrooms are an aphrodisiac for me, that I’m drawn to them like others are to expensive restaurants and megachurches. He took me a little too literally.

  I can’t even watch. I read along with the script and play only the audio.

  INT. COURTROOM – DAY

  The gallery finally comes to order as Hightower raps his gavel.

  HIGHTOWER

  Before we bring the jury in this morning, I believe Mr Brody Quinlan would like to put a statement on the record.

  Brody tugs Riley by the arm out from behind the defense table and stands her before it. He drops to one knee as a horrified expression washes over her face.

  BRODY

  Rye, you’re my love, you’re my light, you’re my everything. Will you marry me?

  Riley nods in the hopes of ending this spectacle. In the moment most women dream of, she looks as though she could shoot her boyfriend in the face.

  HIGHTOWER

  (smiling)

  I’m sorry, Ms Vasher, but we’re going to need you to provide a verbal response so the court reporter can take it down for the record.

  Riley’s cheeks burn a shade of crimson they’ll never fully recover from.

  RILEY

  (through clenched teeth)

  Yes.

  The gallery politely applauds.

  CUT TO:

  Church standing next to Ethan behind the defense table, gawking.

  CHURCH

  Did BQ really just get down on one knee and propose in front of a packed courtroom without a fucking ring?