Capitol Offense

by William Bernhardt

  His voice broke. He turned his head away.

  Ben cleared his throat. “We could take a break …”

  “No. I can continue.” Dennis sat up straight and wiped his face dry. “She told me to outwit the stars. It was a phrase she knew from a famous teacher, a yogi. Part of her ongoing search for meaning, for peace of mind. I’m no expert, but I think it means, Don’t let yourself be controlled by outside forces. Or other people. Chart your own course. Your own destiny.” Dennis pressed his fingers against his forehead. “She wanted the best life possible for me. Even … even without her.” He covered his face. His shoulders heaved.

  “Your honor …”

  Ben didn’t have to finish his sentence. “Let’s take a fifteen-minute break, shall we?” McPartland rapped the gavel. “We’ll pick this up right where we left off.”

  32

  Ben took Dennis into a nearby deliberation room and left him there so he could collect himself in private. While he did, Ben and Christina conferred.

  “How do you think it’s going?” Ben asked, knotting his fingers together.

  “I think it’s going well. Hard to be sure.”

  “That’s supposed to be your specialty.”

  “This is a tough case. Too many nuances. I think they are genuinely moved by his loss. And that’s good. But I’m not sure they blame the police, certainly not enough to justify a murder. I think they like Dennis and believe him so far, but we really haven’t gotten into the tricky stuff yet.”

  Ben ducked his head, hoping that the reporters in the corridor would leave him alone. “Bottom-line this for me, Christina. I don’t have much time.”

  “They like and believe him, but that doesn’t mean they believe he was temporarily insane. And we need that. Without it, all we have is jury nullification. Dennis’s situation was horrible, but to impel the jury to let him go unpunished, we would have to also show that the police were unreasonable. If we could show that Detective Sentz had some deliberate reason for not investigating, some ulterior motive, that would be good.”

  “But we don’t have that,” Ben replied. “And the mystery man in the police station isn’t going to be enough.”

  “No,” Christina said sadly. “I don’t think it is.”

  “So that leaves us with making the jury like him so much they want to let him off, or making the jury think he was temporarily crazy, which are rather contradictory goals.”

  “Don’t I know it. And that contradiction is playing out big-time right now, inside the heads of each and every member of that jury.”

  Ben stepped into the deliberation room. Dennis seemed to have recovered himself with surprising speed. Or perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised.

  “I just talked to my investigator,” Ben said. “Did you know that the late Officer Sentz had a brother who worked at St. Benedict’s? With your wife?”

  Dennis blinked rapidly several times, as if he was having a hard time processing the information. “No, I had no idea.”

  “Surely she mentioned the name.”

  “Not that I recall. But the name didn’t mean anything to me—until after she disappeared. And she was always careful to observe patient confidentiality.”

  “It’s a heck of a coincidence,” Ben said, frowning.

  “Does he know anything about the case? About what his brother was doing?”

  “I don’t know. Yet. My investigator is looking into it. Unfortunately, I have to take you back into the courtroom and finish the direct. I’m beginning to wish we hadn’t moved to trial so quickly.”

  “Could you get the judge to delay the trial?”

  “A reasonable judge, maybe. This judge, no. But I’ll try.”

  • • •

  The hearing in the judge’s chamber took fewer than five minutes. Ben had said he was ready for trial and now he was going to have to stand by his word. Justice would not be delayed because “some investigator had a hunch of no apparent significance.” And so the direct examination of Dennis would proceed.

  “Dennis, if you’re ready to continue, I have a few more questions,” Ben said.

  “Of course.” He seemed a little steadier. His voice was almost back to normal, though his face was flushed.

  “What did you do after they found Joslyn?”

  “I kind of lost control at the scene of the accident. Detective Sentz finally showed up and he was angry and bellowing because Torres had initiated the search. The search that found her, if too late. That was just the last straw. I’m embarrassed to say I got in his face and he grabbed me and threw me to the ground. That’s when my face was scraped up. He later made it sound as if he had to take precautions to protect himself. That was a crock. He was covering his rear, once he saw how much attention the case got.”

  “You had been through a horrifying experience,” Ben said. “Were there any further incidents?”

  “Yes. After Joslyn died. I attacked him and I managed to get one good punch in before his buddies pulled me away. He had me arrested. I spent the weekend in jail. By the time I was released, Joslyn had been cremated. I never got to see her again. Never really got to say goodbye.”

  “That must have been heartbreaking.” Ben was having to fight back tears, as were many in the gallery. “What about later? After you got home?”

  “For days, I did nothing. I pretty much fell apart. Let myself go. I felt so bad. So … guilty. As if there were something I should have done. Something more. Beating myself up night and day.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “And I was angry at Detective Sentz. I will admit that. Thought about him all the time. But please realize—this man had the power to save my wife’s life. I didn’t! I couldn’t save her. But he could. He could and he chose not to. That was … that was a very hard truth to deal with.”

  “You saw your therapist?”

  “Yes, and he tried to help, but there was only so much he could do. I was totally consumed with these thoughts about Detective Sentz.”

  “Did your therapist give you medication?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “Of course. Couldn’t tell that it made any difference, though. I was too far gone.”

  Not the words Ben would’ve chosen. Keep it moving …

  “When did you obtain the gun?”

  “I had it already. We lived out in the country, remember? Everyone has a gun. It isn’t unusual. It made Joslyn feel safer. But I never used it. Never once. Couldn’t even remember where it was at first.”

  “But you did remember eventually.”

  “Yes.” His features seemed to slow as if he was trying to recall, trying to revisit someplace he didn’t really want to go. “I found it. Loaded it. I had become increasingly obsessed with Detective Sentz. I couldn’t think, read, watch television. I saw him everywhere I went. I just—” He looked skyward. His eyes were watering. “I wanted him to acknowledge that he did a bad thing. That’s all. Just wanted him to take responsibility.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went to the police station. Turned out he wasn’t there, he was on some kind of stakeout. So I made a stakeout of my own. I watched the police station until he turned up. When he did, I followed him, all the way to the Marriott. I went in and waited. If you sit in the central lounge, you can see the outside of every door on every floor. I watched and waited. Eventually, I saw him go into a room. I took the elevator up.”

  “Did you meet anyone along the way?”

  “Yes. That police officer. The one who testified. Shaw. He tried to stop me. But he didn’t try hard. I think he was sloshed. You know.” He made a drinking gesture with his hand. “I’d seen him sitting in the hotel bar swishing martinis for several hours. So I pushed past him and went on up to the hotel room. I wasn’t planning to hurt Sentz. I just wanted to force him to acknowledge what he had done. I wanted him to take responsibility for the death of my wife.”

  “And what happened next?”

 
Dennis took a long deep breath. He seemed almost lost in thought, his eyes turned inward. “I don’t know. That’s all I can remember.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “I know I got in the elevator. I got off. I have a vague memory of seeing Sentz, of him letting me in the room. We talked. I don’t remember what was said. And that’s it.” He shook his head, obviously frustrated. “I woke up several hours later in the hospital. Apparently I blacked out.”

  “Objection,” Guillerman said quietly.

  “Sustained,” Judge McPartland replied. “The witness will limit himself to what he saw and heard.”

  “Do you remember anything more?” Ben asked. “More than what you’ve told us?”

  “No. Nothing. But I want to say this—I did not go to the hotel to kill that man. Yes, I took a gun. Maybe I even wanted to scare him a little. And definitely I wanted him to admit that he had been wrong, that his actions had killed my Joslyn. If there was something going on with him and that man at the station, I wanted to know about it. But I did not plan to kill him. Never in a million years. Joslyn would not have wanted that. And neither did I.”

  “Thank you,” Ben said. “I’ll pass the witness.”

  As Guillerman approached, Ben realized that his chore now was almost as difficult as Ben’s had been. This was cross-examination. The DA had to be aggressive. At the same time, if he came on too strong with a man who had just lost his wife in a horrible manner, it could well put off the jurors. He had to find a middle ground, at least until he uncovered some lie or inconsistency. Then, and only then, could he pounce.

  “Mr. Thomas, you talked a great deal about your life after you lost your wife and what you did then. But aren’t you leaving something out?”

  Dennis’s head tilted to one side. He obviously didn’t know what to say. Questions like that were insidious. The correct answer, of course, was no. But even the most confident witness had to wonder what the DA was about to spring on him. And nothing eroded confidence like uncertainty.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You talked about seeing your shrink, going to the funeral … but for some reason you’re leaving something out. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m still not aware of what you mean.”

  “You saw Mr. Kincaid. Didn’t you?”

  Ben sat up straight, ready to respond. Guillerman was entering dangerous territory. He could establish the fact of a meeting, but any questions regarding the nature or content of the discussion were strictly forbidden. And given that Guillerman had already narrowly escaped a mistrial motion for a closely related leak, he expected the DA to toe the line carefully.

  “I—I saw my lawyer, yes.”

  “And when did you see him?”

  “Well …”

  “It was the very day you shot—excuse me—when you were arrested on the charge of shooting Detective Sentz. Right?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “How long did you and your lawyer chat?”

  “Perhaps fifteen minutes.”

  “That was all it took. Wow.” Guillerman shook his head from side to side, commenting without commenting. “Did you do anything else that day?”

  “Only what I’ve already described. From there I went to the police station.”

  “So after you had your little chat with the good senator, you went directly to the station, where you waited for Detective Sentz to arrive and then stalked him with a gun.”

  “Objection!” Ben said.

  Guillerman held up his hands. “I’m only repeating the man’s testimony.”

  McPartland was unimpressed. “I think there might have been a little rephrasing mixed in with the repeating. Sustained.”

  Guillerman continued. “You left Mr. Kincaid’s office, you went to the police station, you followed the detective to the hotel, you discovered his room, and you went up. With a gun. Is that correct?”

  Dennis exhaled heavily. “That’s correct.”

  “But you want this jury to believe that you did not go there with the intent to kill him.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “The thought never entered your mind.”

  “I can’t say that. At that time, I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, some of them pretty bad. But I didn’t act on them.”

  “You did carry the gun for a reason, I’m assuming.”

  “I thought I might need it to get in to see him. And I thought I might want to scare him. Intimidate him a little. Get him to tell the truth about what he had done.”

  Guillerman whistled. “That’s very logical thinking.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I must say, Mr. Thomas … you don’t strike me as crazy at all.”

  “Thank you. I guess.”

  “You strike me much more as a planner.”

  “Objection,” Ben said.

  “I would prefer it,” Judge McPartland said, “if your questions were actually questions, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  “Sorry,” Guillerman replied, not looking very sorry.

  “We’re not that far away from closing arguments. Can’t you wait?”

  “I will do my best.” He turned back to the witness. “You were apparently level-headed enough to see an attorney before anything happened that might cause you to need one, right?”

  “I’ve already said that.”

  “And you were level-headed enough to track down Detective Sentz.”

  “I did.”

  “And you managed to find out which room he was in.”

  “It didn’t require Jessica Fletcher.”

  “And yet now we learn that all this time you were temporarily insane, under the control of an irresistible impulse. That was one doggone smart, cold, and logical irresistible impulse.”

  “Your honor,” Ben said, rising, “I’m sorry, but I must object again. This is nothing but closing argument thinly disguised as questioning.”

  “I have to agree with Mr. Kincaid,” McPartland said. “If you have no more real questions, Mr. Guillerman, sit down.”

  “I’m sorry, your honor. I’ll move along. I think I’ve made my point.”

  Unfortunately, Ben knew that was the truth. He had made his point, and he would make it even more strongly later. “Now let’s talk about this mythical other man you claim you saw at the police station, the one who conspired to force Detective Sentz to … well, to abide by the rules of the Tulsa Police Department. You don’t know his name, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You can’t describe him.”

  “True.”

  “No one else saw him.”

  “No one else will admit to seeing him.”

  “What about Officer Torres? He stuck up for you at other times.”

  Dennis lowered his head and frowned. It was obvious this question bothered him. “He said he didn’t know who or what I was talking about.”

  Guillerman spread his hands wide. “Doesn’t it seem like someone else should have seen this mystery man?”

  “Yes,” Dennis said firmly, “it does. And I think it’s very suspicious that he could be there and no one recalls it.”

  “So I guess he was also out to get you? Good thing you didn’t know who he was when you were toting that gun around.”

  “Your honor!” Ben protested. The judge reprimanded Guillerman again, but Ben knew all the legal wrangling would have little impact on the jury. Guillerman was scoring his points, slowly, one by one, chipping away at Dennis’s credibility.

  “You do understand, do you not, Mr. Thomas, that Detective Sentz was abiding by the written rules of departmental procedure?”

  “I know that is technically correct. I also know that he had the discretion to open an investigation if he saw fit. And I believe that most human beings would have done so given the circumstances. The fact that he repeatedly refused to do so is suspiciously—”

  “Right, right. I know. The great conspiracy to get you. Or your wife. Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to h
urt you and your wife?”

  “No. Apparently there was one.”

  “But you don’t know what it could possibly be.”

  “That’s what I was trying to find out!” Dennis leaned forward in his chair. Veins throbbed on the sides of his head. “That’s why I wanted to talk to Detective Sentz.”

  “You mean, that’s why you wanted to shoot him.”

  “No! I just wanted to know what happened. I wanted to know why my wife had to die! Is that so much to ask?”

  He was shouting now and it didn’t sound good. Ben wished there were something he could do to slow this down, break it up. But there was nothing. A frivolous objection would not help Dennis.

  “Let me ask you another question, Mr. Thomas. That whole week she was missing, did you really even want to find your wife?”

  Ben closed his eyes. Now Guillerman was being intentionally provocative, taking advantage of Dennis’s agitated state.

  Dennis was floored, literally sputtering. “I—I can’t believe you would even ask that. Of course I did. I—I tried everything—”

  “Isn’t it true that her car was found less than two miles from your house?”

  “As the crow flies. But I didn’t know where she was.”

  “You had a week. In seven days you couldn’t find someone who was two miles away?”

  “I didn’t know where she was!” Dennis was practically shouting now.

  “Are there many roads out there, sir? Out to your place?”

  “Only one.”

  “So you couldn’t effectively search one road two miles from your home?” Guillerman shrugged. “Of course. Who would think to look there?”

  “She wasn’t visible!” Dennis was on the defensive now and he acted like it. He was straining, trying to convince the unconvinceable, which never made for effective testimony. “You couldn’t even tell a car had gone off the road!”

  “What if you got out of your car and looked around?” Guillerman asked. “Like the police ultimately did. Didn’t take them long to find her.”

  “They knew where to go.”

  “Why did you need a cell phone signal to tell you the obvious? That she was probably not far from home?”