Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  Ben wrinkled his eyebrows. “What’s that?”

  “Cancer.”

  Gene hung his head angrily. He had heard Suzan talk about cancer before but her doctors knew nothing about it. He was convinced Suzan was lying, or allowing her imagination to overtake reality.

  Ben’s look of surprise was truly genuine. “That’s what you were in the hospital for?”

  Suzan nodded. “Yes.”

  Ben did not challenge her. “Why did they release you?”

  “I walked away on my own.”

  “Why, if I may ask?”

  “Well . . .” Suzan straighted herself in the witness chair. “If someone told you they were going to cut your leg off, wouldn’t you be scared and walk away?”

  “So you discharged yourself?”

  “Right.” Suzan was lying and Gene shook his head.

  Ben glanced at the jury. They got the point. The woman was beginning to look like someone whose candles weren’t all lit.

  “Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Brown, that when you heard the woodpile go down, you also heard a helicopter overhead?” Ben asked.

  “I never heard the helicopter,” Suzan answered firmly. “Didn’t see one, didn’t hear one.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, making an effort to understand the information. “You didn’t hear a helicopter, but you did hear a woodpile fall down.”

  Applegate grimaced as Bernard poked yet another hole in Suzan’s story. Police testimony had already established that a police helicopter was on the scene within minutes of Dan’s 911 call. It seemed unlikely that Suzan had heard her woodpile fall down if she hadn’t heard the helicopter.

  “Ms. Brown,” Ben continued, “what did you do when you went out to the garage that night?”

  “I was putting my hobbies together.”

  “Your what?” Bernard wanted the jury’s attention.

  “My hobbies. I had converted my garage into a patio area where I make lampshades out of Popsicle sticks.”

  This time Ben did not smile. The jurors were doing that for him. “Popsicle-stick lampshades? That’s your hobby?”

  “Yes. I made them every night till about eleven o’clock.”

  “And you worked on that hobby wearing shorts and a tank top in fifty-one-degree weather?”

  “Yes.” Suzan did not appear to be bothered by this line of questioning. After all, there was no connection between having a hobby of making Popsicle-stick lampshades and the events of Carol Montecalvo’s murder.

  By the end of the morning Applegate sincerely wished the defense hadn’t called Suzan Brown as its first witness. If Applegate’s impression was correct, the jury had been more interested in the woman’s hobby of building Popsicle-stick lampshades and her style of dress than in her testimony about the noises in her backyard.

  The next neighborhood witnesses did much better, especially the man who testified about a ladder that had been knocked off his fence that night. When they had exhausted the neighbors’ testimony, the defense called Jerry Vogler to the stand. Jerry was one of the two men who had hired Dan to manage the fledgling hotel in downtown Los Angeles back in 1984.

  Dan decided he should question Jerry. The process was tedious and stilted, peppered with objections both from Ben Bernard and Judge Tso. Dan was asking Jerry why he had hired him as a manager for the hotel.

  “At the time you went to interview me, Mr. Vogler, what exactly were you looking for in a manager?” Dan asked, pacing in front of the defense table.

  “Objection. Relevance,” Bernard said. In the interest of time, he had resorted to one-word reasons for objecting to Dan’s questions.

  “Sustained,” Judge Tso said with a sigh.

  “When you said that you realized in a week or so at the hotel that dealing with the homeless was not your strong suit, could you expound on that a little, please?” Dan asked, apparently unfazed by his lack of success.

  “The court will interpose an objection; sustain the objection. Irrelevant. Next question,” Tso said.

  Dan and his attorney shared a whispered conversation. When Dan stood up, he looked confident. “Can you tell us why you thought I would make a good manager?”

  “Objection,” Ben said. “Relevance.”

  Dan nodded. “Do you recall the purpose of a meeting at the Rampart Police Department?”

  “Yes,” Vogler said, finally able to answer a question.

  “Purpose of that meeting to discuss the clientele of the hotel?”

  Judge Tso took off his glasses again and leaned over the bench. “Don’t testify, Mr. Montecalvo; ask questions.”

  “Was there a concern raised by the local Rampart Police Department regarding the clientele of the hotel?”

  “Objection,” Ben responded. “Hearsay.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Were you informed by local police departments—”

  Judge Tso interrupted Dan before he could continue. “Mr. Montecalvo, that invites hearsay. Restate the question.”

  “After the purchase of the hotel, Mr. Vogler, did you discover what kind of clientele was at the hotel?”

  “Objection,” Ben said politely. “Relevance.”

  “Sustained.”

  And so it went for more than an hour. Relief finally came when Judge Tso called for a lunch break, ordering all parties back in the courtroom in two hours. But if Dan’s questioning had hurt his case, it was nothing to what happened in the afternoon. Just after 2 P.M. Judge Tso ordered the defense to return Vogler to the stand. Applegate cleared his throat nervously.

  “Uh, Your Honor, may we approach for a moment?”

  Judge Tso appeared to be on the verge of losing his patience. “No. You may not. Have your witness come forward, counsel. Is he outside?”

  “No, sir. He’s not.”

  Judge Tso strained forward, his eyes wide in astonishment. “What do you mean he is not?”

  “Well, he had to meet with people out of town, a business meeting, I guess,” Applegate said softly. “I told him that we would tell you that.”

  Judge Tso was clearly furious. “Our jury has returned, defendant and counsel are present. We had put the matter over until two P.M.The hour is now two-twenty-five. We will call Jerry Vogler once again.”

  The court clerk bent her head toward the microphone. “Jerry Vogler, please enter the courtroom.”

  There was no response.

  “The jury may be excused,” Tso said. The jurors filed out of the courtroom. When they were gone, Tso continued. “It is against the law for a witness to ignore a judge’s order to return to the courtroom. Therefore, I want to issue a bench warrant for Mr. Vogler’s arrest. I will set bail in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars.” Tso spat out the words.

  “I have never had anything like this in fifteen years on the bench,” Tso continued, staring at Applegate. “I will not have it again.”

  “Well, Your Honor, I don’t know what to say,” Applegate sputtered. From the other side of the room, Ben Bernard appeared to be busily sorting through paperwork. He had never seen Judge Tso this angry and he thought it best to stay out of the conversation.

  “Do you have his business address?” Tso asked.

  Applegate shook his head. “I have no idea what it is.”

  “Then give me his phone number. Give it to the clerk immediately.” He turned to the court clerk. “You give that phone number to the sheriffs department to reverse trace it to an address.”

  The courtroom was utterly silent while Applegate and the court clerk responded to the judge’s orders. When the court clerk took the phone number and left the room, Judge Tso continued. “I want that person here. I can’t believe this is happening to me.” He shook his head in disgust. “We will resume with the next witness.”

  * * *

  Although the jurors did not understand exactly what had transpired in their absence, they were certain of one thing. The defense had made another lethal error. Judge Tso sti
ll looked angry when the proceedings continued. They heard again from Pastor Wil Strong and then from Maree Flores, who had rented part of her home to Dan, been with him during his arrest, and was now in love with him. Applegate hoped their testimonies would rebuild what devastation the prosecution had wreaked on Dan’s character.

  Maree was on the witness stand, her thick black hair hanging below her shoulders and draping her face so that it was difficult to see her eyes. During her testimony she mentioned that she and Dan were in love. Neither Dan nor she had admitted their growing feelings for each other until his arrest. That weekend, Maree had visited him in prison, bereft that the man who had come to be her best friend was being treated so unfairly. Speaking over a telephone and gazing through thick glass just as he had presented the question to Carol years earlier, Dan asked Maree to marry him and she agreed. No matter that everything was working against them, no matter that police thought he’d killed Carol. Maree loved Dan and wanted to do whatever she could to help him fight the charges against him.

  Now, with Ben Bernard about to begin cross-examination, Maree looked like a frightened deer on the first day of hunting season. Bernard did not waste time taking aim before firing his first question.

  “Ms. Flores, you said you had fallen in love with Mr. Montecalvo,” Ben said pleasantly. “When did that happen?”

  “I would think over a period of time, gradually,” she answered quietly.

  “When did you realize you were in love?” Ben asked. He was trying to paint a sordid picture of Dan killing Carol for her insurance money only to take up a relationship with her closest friend. Maree knew this was not the truth. While Carol was alive she had never been interested in Dan.

  Maree fidgeted on the witness stand. “Well, I think after the arrest,” she said sweetly. “I think that’s probably when I, you know, when I realized it.”

  “Something about an arrest that causes you to realize that you are in love?” Bernard asked plainly. He caught a few of the jurors smiling at the notion.

  “Well, crisis does that. Yes, I think I fell in love because of the crisis situation.”

  “Dan ever express his love for you?”

  “After his arrest, yes. We began to realize the depth of our feelings for each other after that.”

  The connection had been made. Before Ben finished he could feel the jury’s contempt for Dan. By the day’s end, Ben Bernard believed the defense witnesses had helped the prosecution as much as anything he had presented. At this rate they were going to save the court that twenty thousand dollars it would have cost to put Garrett Trapnell on the witness stand.

  On the following day Vogler returned to court and—after a verbal reprimand from Judge Tso—continued his testimony. After that Applegate brought forth a string of witnesses who further testified to Dan’s good character, and a maid who had worked at the Strand Hotel who testified to seeing stray bullets in Dan’s desk drawer. This was intended to confirm Dan’s story that the bullets found in his belongings in storage were from his desk at the Strand and not an indication that he had kept guns in his house.

  Bernard was not concerned. After all, the prosecution had presented witnesses who had seen Dan with guns on many occasions. Finally, only Dan Montecalvo was left. It was the afternoon of October 25, and Applegate was trying to convince Judge Tso that they needed more time to prepare.

  “I cannot allow him to take the stand today, Your Honor,” Applegate said earnestly. “I have not had an opportunity to talk to him in more than two weeks.”

  “We have an hour left before we recess for the day,” Judge Tso explained impatiently. “If you do not put him on the stand now, I will rest your case for you.”

  “Your Honor . . .” Applegate sputtered. “Your Honor, the court knows the problems I have had communicating with the defendant in the jail. I can’t let this man testify without at least spending a day with him.”

  Judge Tso raised an eyebrow. “Remember, you are only cocounsel on the case, Mr. Applegate. This was his wish, right from the beginning. I am not going to waste another hour as I did yesterday.”

  With that, Judge Tso again dismissed the jurors. Ben Bernard understood why. The judge’s sharp words might prejudice the jury. When the jurors had filed out of the courtroom, Judge Tso turned to Applegate.

  “Your Honor,” Applegate said, “I feel that it would be grossly unfair for the court to rest our case for us until we have had time for Mr. Montecalvo to prepare to testify.” Applegate paused, taking Judge Tso’s silence for acceptance. “If I can have a day at the jail with him. As you know, I was denied that last weekend. If we were not going to be here tomorrow, I could meet with him tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” Tso stated, mistakenly believing that Applegate had agreed to question Dan the next day. “We will begin the defendant’s testimony tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

  Applegate stared blankly at Judge Tso, realizing that he had been misunderstood. “Your Honor, how can I interview him tonight? He does not even get back to the county jail until nine o’clock at night. I believe you misunderstood me. I need tomorrow to interview him.”

  Judge Tso sighed. “Counsel, at first you said tomorrow. We are going to do it tomorrow.”

  Dan stood up. “Your Honor, I have been under this pressure for three years. I am trying to clear my name, here. That is why I wanted to come to this courtroom. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in this county jail on a daily basis here, sir?”

  “Look, Mr. Montecalvo . . .” Judge Tso sounded tired. “I have warned you of the disadvantages you would face by acting as your own attorney. You are your own attorney, therefore you are prepared. You know what you are going to testify to. I am going to treat you as I treat any lawyer that appears in this courtroom. That means I expect you to be ready.” The judge turned to the bailiff. “Bring the jury back in, will you?”

  The bailiff moved toward the jury room. Dan looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown as he made one final attempt.

  “Your Honor, if you could just give us tomorrow. One day to prepare so that—”

  Judge Tso interrupted Dan’s plea. “We will resume in the matter of The People v. Dan Montecalvo.”

  The argument was over. Dan would have to testify the following day. Ben Bernard was not surprised by the judge’s decision to deny more time for the defense. What did surprise him was that the defense was still not ready to produce the very testimony on which they had built their case.

  In the end Judge Tso studied his calendar and agreed to put testimony off until Monday, giving the defense a three-day weekend. The extra day did little to allay Applegate’s concerns about putting Dan on the witness stand.

  The advantages of doing so were easy to recognize. Dan would tell the story about what had happened to him and Carol the night she was killed, offering the jury an alternative to the picture that had already been painted by the prosecution. The disadvantages were more subtle. If the jurors didn’t like Dan—and Applegate had no illusions that they did—they might discount everything he said.

  There was also the issue of Dan’s prior record. Wil Strong had already mentioned that Dan was an ex-convict, and now it was up to Dan to explain his past in a way the jury would empathize with. That Monday morning Applegate cringed at the thought and listened as Judge Tso ordered the proceedings to begin. He called Dan to the stand and asked him to describe his duties at the Strand Hotel in 1984.

  Dan wore a plain gray suit. He looked composed as he took a deep breath and began. “Well, my duties were to manage the hotel, to accommodate the clients at the hotel, to supervise the employees of the hotel, to bring a semblance of some sort of a hope into the hotel for the clients—most of which were homeless people, welfare recipients.” Dan stopped to take another breath. “My job was to establish, and if possible, to fulfill ministries in the hotel, to try and serve the people in the hotel, to reduce the crime in the hotel, to reduce the violence, to eliminate the welfare fraud that
was running rampant in the hotel. Eliminate those people who were not paying their rent, to get them into drug programs, alcohol rehabilitation programs, and also to direct them to employment, if they were seeking that.”

  From his seat Ben Bernard felt exhausted by Dan’s long-winded explanation. He wondered if Dan was trying to impress the jury with his numerous abilities. If so, judging by the jurors’ tired faces, he had failed miserably.

  Dan’s testimony wore on. After establishing how Dan’s poor health had resulted in his job loss, Applegate next asked Dan about his gambling debts, trying to imply that the collectors were not pressuring him to make a payment as the prosecution had implied.

  Just before lunch, Applegate asked Dan about his emotional state after Carol died. Ben sat peacefully in his chair, aware that his opponent was trying to make an emotional plea in the moments before a break.

  Dan’s eyes filled with tears and he appeared to be struggling to answer. “What was my mental state of mind?”

  “Yes.”

  Dan dropped his head into his hands dramatically and a loud sob echoed into the microphone. The jurors stirred restlessly in their seats.

  After several seconds, Dan lifted his head and tried to answer the question. “Well, you’ve got to understand the type of lady Carol was,” he blurted out. “You had to know this lady. I mean, to lose something like she was, the impact she had on my life . . .” He shook his head and seemed to drift back in time; then suddenly he turned back toward Applegate. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say I’m a saint. I truly wasn’t. But she was.” Dan sniffled loudly. “The impact she had during the ten years we were together . . . and to have to lose her like that and then . . .”

  Ben Bernard considered objecting because Dan was not specifically answering the question, but he decided against it. Past experience told him that whenever Dan opened his mouth for any period of time the end result was worse for the defense than if he hadn’t.

  Dan paused again and more tears filled his eyes. “I mean, I could have dealt with it better if it was a heart attack, or an accident, or something. But to have her shot like that and to . . . to know she is not going to be here anymore and going through that every day.” He wiped a tear from his cheek. “Then when you put that on top of what the police were doing as far as walking around telling my friends that I did it, telling my wife’s family, telling my church friends that I executed my wife. After that, people started to stay away from me. People in my own church were afraid of me. They didn’t know who to believe.”