“And you also interviewed the defendant, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In total, how many hours do you estimate you spent with him?”
“Over a period of six months, I’d say I spent upward of ninety hours with Lieutenant Latham.”
“Doing what?”
“We did a lot of talking,” he said. “And a fair amount of testing.”
“And Dr. Stern, on the basis of those ninety hours of talking and testing, what if any conclusions did you draw?”
“I found your client to be an anomaly in our study.”
“An anomaly?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that, sir?”
The psychiatrist shrugged. “He didn’t fit any of the standard psychological criteria we had developed for terrorists.”
“Did I hear you correctly?” Dana pressed. “Are you saying this alleged monster, this alleged butcher, this animal accused of bombing a building and killing almost two hundred people isn’t a terrorist?”
“What I’m saying is, he doesn’t fit any of our profiles.”
“Just so that I’m clear about this, doctor, and more important, so that the jury is clear about it, I’d like to go over the specifics of your thesis.”
As Dana was eliciting the pertinent details behind Ronald Stern’s expert opinion, Craig Jessup was sorting through the morning mail. There was the usual number of bills, credit card applications, and catalogues, and at the bottom of the pile, an envelope bearing the elegant gold letterhead of Cotter Boland and Grace.
Jessup was surprised. He had long since tendered his September invoice and been paid in full. It was rare for him to receive written communication from the firm between statements. He ripped open the envelope, and extracted a single, typewritten page.
“This is to inform you,” it read, “that no additional serviceswill be required regarding the Latham case. If there is any amount still owing, please submit a final invoice, at your earliest convenience, so that we may reimburse you.
“We thank you for your excellent effort in behalf of this matter, and look forward to working with you again in the near future.”
Paul Cotter, himself, had signed the letter.
Jessup did not particularly appreciate being cut off like this, in the middle of trial, without any warning. Especially now, when he was working on a new angle that was just beginning to come into focus. He laid the letter on his desk and sat there, elbow on armrest, rubbing his chin. He wondered why Dana hadn’t mentioned it to him.
The defense finished its direct examination of Ronald Stern in the late afternoon.
“Doctor, based on your extensive work in the field of terrorist psychology, the number of hours you spent with my client, and the results of your profiling, do you have an opinion as to whether my client has the predisposition of a terrorist?”
“In my opinion,” Stern said flatly, “he does not.”
“Thank you, sir.”
At that, there was a slight but audible sound of exhaling by a number of jurors. Dana sat down, well satisfied. She had argued endlessly with Paul Cotter about using Stern as a witness, about the effectiveness of putting a Harvard type in front of a Seattle jury. But he had been able to take the most complex psychological theories and reduce them to easily understandable concepts, and he had done it as though he were sitting around a kitchen table with his audience, engaging in a conversation over a cup of coffee.
“I don’t understand the problem,” she had told the managing partner. “We need the best and he is the best. And besides, it isn’t going to cost us a dime.”
She had won her argument, and in the wake of the psychiatrist’s testimony, and the jury’s reaction to it, she felt totally vindicated.
The jury’s reaction was not lost on Brian, either. Stern was a powerful witness, his work praiseworthy, his credentials above reproach, his infirmity giving him an extra measure of credibility. He was what was known as a sympathetic witness, and the prosecutor knew the jurors would not take kindly to seeing him battered by cross-examination.
“Dr. Stern,” he inquired pleasantly, “relying on all the expertise you’ve gained in the field of terrorism, can you state unequivocally that Corey Latham did not bomb Hill House?”
The psychiatrist contemplated the question for a long moment. “My research is based on probabilities, not absolutes,” he replied finally. “My examination of the defendant did not reveal the psychological characteristics associated with having committed this crime. But no, I can’t state unequivocally that he did not.”
“So, even though he doesn’t fit the profile, and doesn’t fall within the parameters of your study, that man over there,” Brian said, pointing at the defendant, “could still have gone out and bought aspirin, and sulfuric acid, and fertilizer, and made a bomb, stuffed it into a duffel bag, and planted it at Hill House, couldn’t he?”
“I don’t think it’s probable,” Stern conceded, “but it’s possible he could have done that.”
“Thank you, doctor,” the prosecutor said. “That’s all I have.”
“Do you think Brian undermined. Stern’s testimony?” Joan Wills asked on the way back to Smith Tower.
“Not a lot,” Dana replied. “When you’re dealing with reasonable doubt, possibilities don’t usually carry enough weight.”
The two attorneys were now being accompanied, door to door, by King County sheriff’s deputies, as were the prosecutors and the jurors, by order of Abraham Bendali. The officers, Guff and Marty, guided them through the ninth-floor camera gauntlet and the milling crowds outside the courthouse like an oar slicing through water, accompanied them into the elevator at Smith Tower, and deposited them safely on the seventeenth floor.
“What time in the morning, ma’am?” Guff inquired of Dana.
“Uh, nine o’clock, I guess,” she said, “… thank you.”
“Will you be together?” Marty asked.
The attorneys nodded. The deputies touched their hats and were gone.
Dana sighed uncomfortably. She was used to keeping a low profile, and while she appreciated Bendali’s good intentions, she felt exposed. “It’s so conspicuous,” she said to Joan.
“Maybe so,” the associate responded. “But I don’t mind telling you, after what happened to those two jurors, I feel a lot safer with them in front of us.”
Elise Latham stretched out on the bed like a cat, her body glistening in the glow of the lamp.
“I really should go home,” she said.
“What for?” the man beside her asked.
“Because I have to be at the courthouse bright and early tomorrow,” she told him. “I’m testifying.”
“So?”
“So, there’s a deputy who’s going to arrive at my house at eight o’clock in the morning, courtesy of King County. How do you think it would look, me showing up from Mercer Island instead?”
Steven Bonner chuckled. “You mean, it wouldn’t look very wifely?”
Elise sighed. “I’m afraid there’s not: much I’ve done in the past month that would look very wifely,” she said.
“I know,” he agreed. “That’s why it’s been such fun.”
“Fun for you,” she retorted. “Absolutely necessary for me.”
“You know, I think I like you better now than before,” he told her. “You’re a lot less uptight than when we were engaged.”
She looked at him archly. “I was only uptight because you were playing me for a fool.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I guess I just wasn’t ready to settle down back then.”
She laughed. “What are you trying to tell me, that you are now, when it’s too late?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry, and that I know I blew it.”
Elise blinked. “In that case, you’re forgiven.”
“I think I may have let happiness get away, and now the best I can hope for is a little excitement in my life,” he said, sounding strangel
y sincere.
She poked him in the ribs. “Like getting it on with the wife of a terrorist?”
He chuckled. “I don’t suppose it could get much more exciting than that, could it?”
“Whatever turns you on, sweetie.”
“You turn me on,” he said. “So, what are you going to testify to in court tomorrow?”
“The truth,” she said with a shrug. “Whatever that is.”
“The truth and nothing but the truth,” he recited, trailing an index finger down the length of her body. “Does that include telling the jury where you’ve been spending your nights recently?”
“Maybe I should,” she said, quivering beneath his touch. “Maybe they would feel so sorry for Corey, they’d acquit him, just because I’m such a bad wife.”
“Is that what you want,” he murmured, beginning to suck at her nipples, “for Corey to be acquitted?”
She shivered deliciously. “It depends on my options,” she said. “Maybe I should tell them that the reason I fled to another man’s bed is because my husband is guilty, and I can’t stay with him, knowing that.”
“And will you also tell them how irresistible that other man finds you?” he whispered, slipping his hand between her legs. “How insatiable.”
Elise groaned. “Come any closer and I’ll show you just how insatiable I can be,” she dared him. “And then I really do have to go home.”
NINETEEN
The wife of the accused walked to the stand with her head up and her eyes straight ahead, looking neither right nor left. Her mauve dress had long sleeves and a high collar, and fell well below her knees. A matching bow held her sleek blond hair securely at the nape of her neck. Her makeup was soft. Corey looked at her longingly as she passed.
Dana rose from her seat and took several steps toward the witness. “Elise,” she began, conversationally, “when did you and Corey first meet?”
“It’ll be two years in November,” she replied.
“When did you become engaged?”
“Six weeks later.”
“And you were married four months after that?”
“Yes.”
“Between the day you met and the day he came back from his last patrol, how much time would you say you and Corey actually spent together?”
Elise shrugged. “All told, about five months.”
“Was that time enough for the two of you to get to know each other pretty well?”
“No, it wasn’t,” the young wife admitted. “I think, knowing what we know now, we should probably have waited at least a year before we got married. But we were in love, and that was all we could think about.”
At the defense table, Corey smiled.
“There has been testimony during this trial that, in September of last year, you had an abortion,” Dana said gently. “Is it true?”
“I’m not very proud of it,” the witness replied with a heavy sigh, “but yes, it’s true. I did have an abortion.”
“Will you tell the court why?”
“I was scared,” Elise said simply. “Here I was, all by myself and married to a man I hardly knew. I didn’t know whether it was the right time to bring a child into the world. I couldn’t see the future. All I could see was where I was, right then and there, and I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared of being a mother, of not being able to cope. Scared of what it would do to our marriage, to have a baby so soon. Scared that Corey wouldn’t be there when we needed him.”
“And he couldn’t help you work it through?”
“That’s just the point, he wasn’t here. Only it wasn’t like he was on some business trip or something, and I could talk to him on a telephone if I had to. No, he was out on a boat, in the middle of an ocean for three months. And it wasn’t just that I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t even write to him about it. The stupid Navy didn’t allow it.”
“The Navy wouldn’t let you talk to your husband, or write to him that you were pregnant and needed his help?”
“No,” Elise said flatly, “they wouldn’t.”
“So you had to make the decision?”
The young woman nodded. “Maybe it was the wrong decision, I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is I had to make it on my own.”
“What happened when Corey found out?”
“He was furious. And I made it worse by lying to him. I don’t know why I did that. I just thought it would be easier.”
“Did you know how Corey felt about abortion before this happened?”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t think it ever came up. We talked about having kids someday, sure, but we never talked about not having kids.”
“All right, so Corey was furious when he found out you’d had the abortion,” Dana prompted. “Can you tell us what he did?”
“In the beginning, he just couldn’t see it from my side,” Elise said. “All he could focus on was that I’d killed his baby, that I’d taken a life. He screamed at me, he stormed around the house, he smashed things. But mostly, he cried. And that was the worst part, hearing him cry like that.”
At that, Corey blinked rapidly a few times, and swiped a hand across his eyes.
“How long did this go on?”
“For maybe two weeks.”
“Then what?”
“Then I guess the anger began to go away, and we started to talk. Sometimes, we’d stay up all night talking.”
“About what?”
“About how we were going to get through this,” Elise said. “About whether or not our marriage was going to survive.”
“Did you get any outside help?”
She nodded. “Yes, we did. That was Corey’s suggestion. We joined a church when we moved to Queen Anne, so we went to the minister there for counseling. Then he got Corey into this support group, and after that, things got better.”
“What kind of support group?”
“It was for people who had lost a child,” Elise said. “At first, he went almost every night. After that, it was maybe once or twice a week. I guess it helped, because by the end of November, he was pretty much his same old self again.”
“So, as the person closest to him, would you say that it took Corey about a month to work through everything, and come to terms with it?”
“Yes. About that.”
“We’ve heard testimony from one of your neighbors, Carl Thorson, who said he came in on the middle of an argument between you and Corey one night, and believed it was about to turn violent. Is this true?”
“Did he come over one night when we were arguing? Yes, he did,” Elise conceded. “Did it turn violent? No, it didn’t.”
“Then let me ask you this, during the entire month between the time Corey found out about the abortion, to the time when you believe he became reconciled to it, did he ever turn violent toward you?”
“No, never,” Elise said emphatically. “Not before, not during, not after, not ever.”
“Thank you,” Dana said. “Now, will you tell us a little bit about your house?”
“Well, it’s not very big. It has a little living room with a dining area, a small kitchen, two bedrooms, a bath, and a detached garage.”
“Is Corey handy around the house?”
“Oh yes, he can do lots of things.”
“Does he have a workshop area?”
“He works out in the garage, sometimes,” Elise said. “We park the car in the driveway.”
“Do you ever go in the garage?”
“Sure, I do. There’s not much storage space in the house, so we keep extra canned goods and supplies and stuff in the garage. I probably go out there for something several times a week.”
“So you’re pretty familiar with what belongs in the garage, and what doesn’t?”
“Sure.”
“If there was something there you didn’t recognize, like, say, a dozen car batteries, would you have noticed?”
“A dozen car batteries?” Elise echoed.
“Of course I would’ve noticed. Who wouldn’t?”
“Do you think, if Corey had been building a bomb in your garage, you would have known it?”
“Of course I would’ve known. I was in and out of the garage all the time. My God, how could I not have known if my husband was building a bomb?”
“All right then, let’s move on to the night before the bombing. Where were you?”
“I was out for the evening,” she replied. “It was a coworker’s birthday. A bunch of us from the office took her to dinner.”
“What time did you get home?”
“A little before ten o’clock.”
“Was Corey home when you got there?”
“Sure. He was watching television—3rd Rock from the Sun. It’s his favorite show. I watched the last ten minutes of it with him.”
“What did you do then?”
“We did what we always did. We watched the news, had our cocoa, and went to bed.”
“What then?”
Elise glanced at the jury, embarrassed. “Well, we got it on a little,” she mumbled, blushing. “And then we went to sleep.”
“Are you a heavy sleeper, Elise?” Dana asked.
“No,” the young woman replied. “As a matter of fact, I’ve always been a very light sleeper. It’s why I like our neighborhood, because it’s quiet. If so much as a car goes by, it wakes me up.”
“Taking that into consideration, if Corey had gotten out of bed for any reason during the night, would you have known it?”
“Yes, I would’ve,” she said without hesitation. “He used to get up sometimes to go to the bathroom. I always woke up. Sometimes, it would wake me up if he just turned over in the bed.”
“Did Corey get up on the night before the bombing?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Let’s be very clear here. Are you as certain as you can be that on that night Corey did not get out of the bed you share, he did not put on his clothes, he did not leave the house, and he did not get in his car, start the engine, and drive away?”
“No, he didn’t do any of those things,” Elise said. “I’m as certain of it as I can be.”
“We’ve heard testimony here from your neighbor across the street, Omar Ram, who said he heard a car engine start up shortly after midnight. He further said he believed the car was your husband’s.”
Act of God Page 36
