Star Witness

by D. W. Buffa

  Crenshaw’s eyes were large and defiant, and perhaps, I thought, even excited. He held onto the arm of the chair, gripping it hard with his hand as he leaned as far forward as he could, straining to make his point.

  “He has just killed her. He races inside the house, he gets upstairs and only then realizes he is still clutching in his hand the knife he used to kill her. He doesn’t know what to do with it; it’s all he can think about: how to get rid of it, where he can hide it, where he can throw it away where no one will ever find it. He doesn’t even remember taking off his clothes, much less what he did with them: all he can think about is getting out of there, getting out of that house, and getting rid of the knife. He leaves his clothes in the laundry hamper because that’s where he always puts them and then he showers and changes and leaves the house.

  “That’s how it could have happened, Mr. Antonelli. Or maybe he just thought no one would search his things; maybe he thought he would have plenty of time later on to get them washed. It could have happened any number of ways. I’m afraid I don’t see anything inconsistent in it at all.”

  I stood there with my mouth half open, a stunned expression on my face, like someone left speechless by an argument with which they had never been confronted before and to which they could now offer no reply. Silently, I walked the few short steps to the counsel table and placed my hand on the shoulder of Stanley Roth.

  “You’re right,” I admitted, nodding toward Crenshaw. “He could have done it, and done it just the way you described it. He could have killed her; he could have run back in the house; he could have thrown off his clothes; he could have been so concerned with what he had to do to get rid of the knife that he never noticed— or if he noticed, didn’t worry about—his blood-covered clothes. You’re right, Detective Crenshaw; you’re absolutely right.”

  A look of self-satisfaction started in his eyes, then pulled at the corners of his mouth, twisting it back into a smug, caustic grin which, despite a conscious effort to do so, he could not entirely control. I let go of Stanley Roth’s shoulder and stepped to the side of the counsel table. I was right next to the jury box, directly in front of the witness stand.

  “It could have happened that way, or—what was it you said? Oh, yes. That way, or any number of ways. And one of those ways, one which is at least as consistent with the facts of this case—with the only facts that have been proven about this case—is that someone else, someone other than Stanley Roth, murdered Mary Margaret Flanders, and then, in order to make sure Stanley Roth was blamed for it, took some of his clothes, wiped them in the blood from her throat and then put them in the laundry hamper where the only person who wouldn’t think to look for them would be Stanley Roth himself; because, after all, if he didn’t kill her, he certainly wouldn’t have any reason to imagine that any of his clothing would have any of her blood on them, would he, Detective Crenshaw?”

  He did not answer and I did not care if he did.

  “It’s consistent with the evidence, and it’s more consistent with itself, isn’t it, Detective Crenshaw?” I demanded, taking a step forward. “Instead of a killer who conceals the murder weapon but doesn’t notice he’s covered in blood, we have a killer who covers his tracks so well that he manages to convince the police to arrest the wrong man for the crime!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THERE WERE A FEW MORE questions I wanted to ask Detective Crenshaw but I was not allowed to ask them. At the beginning of the trial Judge Honigman had promised the jury that each day’s proceedings would end promptly at five. When the clock struck that hour he interrupted me in midsentence to announce that court would stand adjourned until nine-thirty the next morning. With a menacing glance, the clerk warned me not to do or say anything that might keep court in session a single needless moment longer.

  “That was very well done,” said Louis Griffin as he put one hand on my shoulder and shook my hand with the other.

  Griffin came every day to court. Somehow he had arranged to have a seat in the first row, directly behind the counsel table where Stanley Roth sat next to me. Usually, he stayed only a short time, sometimes just a few minutes; but he was always there, every day, at the beginning, lending moral support to his friend and partner.

  “I should have been back at the studio hours ago,” he explained; “but I wanted to watch your crossexamination, and, well, after you started I could not stop watching.”

  Griffin looked at me with his gentle, quiet eyes, eyes that made you feel comfortable and secure. His left hand was still on my shoulder; his right was still clasping mine, when Stanley Roth got to his feet and without so much as a glance at his partner said it was time to go.

  We ran the gauntlet of cameras and reporters on the steps outside the courthouse the way we did every day now, Stanley Roth looking straight ahead while I tried to wave everyone off as we burrowed through the crowd to the waiting car and then sped off, the same meaningless questions about what had happened that day and what we expected to happen the next, hanging unanswered in the warm enveloping Southern California air.

  As if he were trying to put off just a little longer the conversation he knew we had to have, Stanley Roth sat huddled in the corner of the back seat, his face turned toward the window.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Crenshaw? Why didn’t you tell me he knew your wife? The last thing the prosecution asks him, the last thing I hear before I have to start my cross-examination, is that he knew your wife and that he knew you. Every time I asked him a question I kept wondering what it meant; whether there was something about the fact that he knew both of you that might make a difference; whether there was anything I could use. But I couldn’t ask—I couldn’t take the chance —because I didn’t know; and I didn’t know because you never told me. Why would you hold that back from me? What reason could you possibly have had? You must have known the prosecution would know. It’s the first thing he would have told Van Roten when she started to prepare him to testify.”

  Roth gave me a strange look. “I would have thought it would have been the last thing he would have told her.”

  “You thought he’d keep it a secret? He worked as a consultant on a movie you made. Your wife was the star. Even if he wanted to, how could he have kept that a secret? Other people would have known.”

  “No one knew. It never happened. He never worked as a consultant; he didn’t have anything to do with that movie. He was never on the set.”

  “What are you saying? That he lied under oath— about that?” I asked, incredulous. “Why?”

  Roth leaned back against the soft leather seat. Wearily, with his thumb and finger, he stroked his brow. He was in his early fifties, but he was starting to look older now. His gray hair was no longer the stylish curly cut of a famous and powerful man, but more like the disheveled appearance of someone past caring how he looks. His fingernails had been bitten down to a jagged edge; the skin on the back of his hands seemed to sag from the tendons and had a ghostly, transparent look. The side of his face, just below his ear, was stained with small dark red splotches. When he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth, instead of glittering white the way they had when we first met, were coated with a dull, yellowish haze. Stanley Roth did not just look older: he had the look of someone who had begun to lose his health, someone who had begun to doubt whether he had any reason left to live.

  Roth bit his lip, scraping his teeth over the edge of it, again and again, while he peered intently into the distance. He stopped, took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and looked across at me.

  “I suppose strictly speaking he didn’t lie at all. He was a consultant; at least that’s how it went on the books— but he never worked on that movie. Crenshaw came to my house that night—the night I hit Mary Margaret, the night I wanted to kill her.”

  “The night you found out she had aborted your child?”

  “That’s right,” said Roth, nodding.

  “She called the police and they sent a homicide detective?”
I asked, trying to make sense out what he was saying.

  “No. They sent two uniformed cops in a patrol car. I was furious. I wouldn’t let them through the front gate. That’s when Crenshaw came. I suppose they thought a detective would have more luck. He was smooth, very smooth. He told me on the phone they had to get in, that there had been a call to 911, that they had to follow up. He said he knew it couldn’t have been anything serious, that a lot of people called 911 in the middle of an argument and said things—made accusations—they didn’t mean. He was very persuasive. I let him in.”

  Roth tossed back his head, his mouth twisted into a look of disgust.

  “I think he knew what he was going to do before he ever got there, before he was called. As soon as I answered the door, he turned to the uniformed cop who had come up the drive with him and told him he could go.”

  Roth brought his head back down. With a shrewd glance he let me know that it had not been difficult to figure out what Crenshaw really wanted.

  “He wanted to be helpful,” explained Roth with a low, rumbling laugh. “He had to see Mary Margaret, of course. She had called; she had asked for help. As I told you, I had hit her, all right; hit her hard. Her eye was all cut and bruised. Any normal cop would have arrested me on the spot; if I had been anybody else, Crenshaw would have arrested me on the spot. But I’m not anybody else, am I? I’m Stanley Roth, and everybody—at least everybody in this town—knows what I can do. People will do anything to get into this business—anything.”

  Roth’s gaze drifted away. He seemed to remember something, something about himself, when he was one of those people on the outside, so eager to get in, so desperate to be a part of a world that helped form, and then haunted, the imaginations of all those other, less fortunate people, caught in the routine of everyday life.

  “And Crenshaw really didn’t have to do anything to get what he wanted. All he had to do was pretend that nothing had happened, that no one had been hurt; that it had been nothing more than a little domestic quarrel—a little too much to drink—nothing worth a formal report, much less a formal charge. He took one look at Mary Margaret—I remember how he almost stood at attention when she walked into the room holding an ice pack on her eye—and said to us both that she should have it looked at. That was all: looked at. He didn’t ask how it happened; he didn’t ask if I had hit her; just, ‘Better have it looked at.’ Then he started telling me about a screenplay he had written and how he had not had much luck getting anyone to look at it.”

  Roth did not need to tell me what happened next.

  “And you said you’d be glad to take a look at it.”

  “What else was I going to tell him? He sent it over the next day. I never bothered to read it. I called him on the phone and told him the studio wanted to take an option on it. I asked him how much he wanted, and that’s what I gave him.”

  “But you said you put it on the books as a consultant?”

  “An option runs for a set term, usually a year. Then a decision has to be made whether to renew it. I didn’t want anyone else in the studio to get involved. There was another reason. Normally there’s a little publicity when we take an option on something. Crenshaw didn’t object when I suggested it might be a little early for that and that because of the way we met it might be misinterpreted.”

  Roth looked out the window, smiling to himself.

  “Misinterpreted! Not by him. He understood perfectly. Except for one thing,” added Roth, cocking his head as he looked back at me. “I don’t think he thought he was blackmailing me into anything. He thought that screenplay of his was worth every penny of the quarter million I gave him. He did! I know it. I could tell it from the way he talked about it, from the look in his eyes, from the tone of his voice. He has a kind of confidence, a self-assurance, an arrogance, I suppose, about himself. You saw how he was on the stand; how certain he was of everything. He knows I hit her—he doesn’t know why I hit her: Mary Margaret was not about to breathe a word about that—and because I hit her, he thinks I killed her. But he can’t tell anyone, because then everyone will know about him: how I hit her but he didn’t do anything about it because he wanted something for himself. And I can’t tell anyone about him, because then everyone will think the same thing he does. It’s what we used to call a Mexican standoff.”

  It explained why Crenshaw had lied, or at least not told the whole truth, about how he happened to have known both the defendant and the victim. There was, however, one point on which I was not quite clear. Roth had made it seem that he had bought Crenshaw’s silence, met blackmail with bribery, but even by his own account it had not been as simple as that. Crenshaw had given something beyond his silence in exchange for what Stanley Roth had given him. It seemed likely that he wanted more than just money in return.

  “You never looked at what Crenshaw gave you? Didn’t he want to know what you thought about it?”

  The iron gates of Blue Zephyr were two blocks ahead. Roth sat up straight, ran his fingers through his hair, and then adjusted the lapels on his blue suit coat.

  “He got his check,” said Roth in the apparent belief that this answered the question.

  “But he thought his screenplay was worth every penny of what you paid him.”

  He gave me a condescending glance. “And?”

  “And which is it? Did he want the money or did he want his screenplay made into a movie? You said people would do anything to get into this business. Isn’t that what Crenshaw wanted—to get into the business? You took an option on it. That’s what you told him. I understand he got his check—but what about later, after he got the check? Didn’t he ask you when you were going to decide whether you were going to exercise the option? Didn’t he want to know if you were going to make it into a movie? Didn’t he want to know if you thought he should make any changes in it?”

  A crowd of photographers, along with a handful of screaming protesters waving handmade signs calling Stanley Roth a murderer and a woman hater, had gathered at the entrance. Roth made certain his tie was in place and then sat back and stared straight ahead while the gates swung open. Cameras were flashing all around us. Voices, muted by the thick glass windows, shouted their incomprehensible questions and their stupid, self-righteous accusations; and faces twisted into strange, inhuman contortions as they struggled with each other for the attentions of a man who resolutely refused to look their way. It was like a mob scene in a silent movie, the veins on the forehead of each actor bulging out as they did their best to impersonate ruthless, coldhearted rage.

  The gates shut behind us, and the photographers, all their frenzy spent, shuffled around, waiting to be told what to wait for next. The protesters, their energy and their anger spent, drifted off, dragging their posters behind them. Stanley Roth lowered his window. Turning up his face, he took a breath of the still, late afternoon air, heavy with the lush scent of orange and lemon, and the tension finally began to let go. It happened like this every day when we passed through the gates of Blue Zephyr. It was like watching someone come home at the end of the day when, free of what other people thought he should be, he could be himself. He pulled his tie down far enough to get to the top button of his shirt. Drawing the tie from under his collar, he folded it over several times until it was small enough to put into the pocket of his coat.

  “Charlie will take you to the hotel,” said Roth as the car pulled up in front of the bungalow where he now not only lived and worked, but spent all the time he did not have to be in court.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him as he started to get out. He stopped and looked back, waiting for me to remind him what that question had been.

  “Didn’t Crenshaw want to know if you were going to use his screenplay? Isn’t that what he wanted? Wasn’t that the real reason he did what he did, more than the money?”

  “I don’t know what he wanted. All I know is that he had gotten all he was going to get out of me,” said Roth with a shrewd look in his eyes. “He too
k the money, and once he had done that, he had more to lose than I did if the story ever came out.”

  Roth still had not told me what I wanted to know.

  “He never asked you if you were going to use it? He didn’t call you up and want to know what was happening with his script?”

  Roth shrugged. “Yeah, he called.”

  “You didn’t take his calls?”

  “What for?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might have come to your house that night—the night you hit your wife, the night you wanted to kill her—and decided just to do the both of you a favor, because he might have understood how damaging that kind of publicity could be? Did it ever occur to you that when you said you would read his screenplay—the one on which he had worked so hard and so long—he thought you were doing him a favor, too? And then he finds out you weren’t doing him a favor at all: You were insulting him, paying him off like a cop on the take.”

  “He took the money,” insisted Roth, starting to get angry.

  “Why wouldn’t he think it was for what you said it was for—an option? Don’t you think that is what he wanted it to be? You remember what it was like—how difficult it was to get a start? You remember what you wrote—what you gave me to read—Blue Zephyr? You wanted to do something better than Citizen Kane. Richard Crenshaw wanted to do something, too; and you did something worse than tell him no: you told him yes, and then you took it all away. He got the money, all right—and he kept it—but, my God, how he must have hated you for it. And then what do you do? You give him the best way in the world to get even. Crenshaw gets to help convict you for the murder of your wife! Don’t you see the irony in it? He doesn’t want to be a cop; he doesn’t want to be a detective. He wants to be a writer, a screenwriter; but instead, thanks to you, he has to stay a cop, stay a detective, the detective who helped convict you, the great Stanley Roth, for the murder of the great film star, Mary Margaret Flanders.”