Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  The eyes darted again, the voice hesitant. “I don’t think it was that many.”

  “You said that your father took away your fake ID. When did he do that?”

  “That day.”

  “What day?”

  “When I got home.”

  “September seventh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And is that also the last time that you played with God’s Nails?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you playing in any other bands?”

  Blume shook his head.

  “Is that a no?”

  “No.”

  “And why not?”

  Blume looked again to the front row. “I can’t.”

  “Your father won’t allow it?”

  Blume shook his head. “No.”

  “Your father doesn’t approve of your playing in a band?”

  Cerrabone was up, and Sloane was surprised it had taken him this long. “Objection, Your Honor. Relevance. I think this is getting pretty far afield.”

  Underwood considered Sloane. He knew Blume was the prosecution’s most damaging witness, so he would cut Sloane some slack, but only so much. “Mr. Sloane, I’ll give you some leeway, but I want to see some connection here, and sooner rather than later.”

  Sloane turned back. “Joshua, I think my question was how your father felt about you playing in a band.”

  Joshua lowered his eyes. “He hates it.”

  “Mr. Cerrabone asked you why it took you nearly two full days to tell someone that you saw something, and you said because you were afraid of getting in trouble for sneaking out without permission, do you remember saying that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This person you saw . . . you didn’t see them commit any crime, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You said they ran up this path, got on a bike, and rode off, right?”

  “That’s all they did.”

  “So you didn’t tell your mother or father about it the following morning, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you didn’t call any of your friends, did you?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “And no one called you up and said, ‘Hey, Joshua, did you hear about the guy who got shot down the street?’ and you said, ‘I saw someone that night,’ or anything like that, right? That didn’t happen either, did it?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone right away.”

  “No one.”

  “So how, then, Joshua, did your father find out that you sneaked out and took away your fake ID?”

  “I told you . . . I told them that I saw this person . . .” He stopped and looked at his parents, realizing the inconsistency.

  Sloane waited for the jurors to realize it also. Gently, he asked, “How did your father find out that you sneaked out if you didn’t tell anyone about this person you saw, Joshua?”

  The boy paused, quickly realizing he was on an island with no one to save him. He took a deep breath. His lower lip quivered. “He caught me sneaking back in. He was awake.”

  “And he punished you that night.”

  Joshua nodded.

  “You have to answer out loud, son.”

  “Yes.”

  “He took your fake ID.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he forbade you to play with the band anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he did more than that so you wouldn’t play, didn’t he?”

  Blume looked up at Sloane, eyes wide. Then his gaze darted past. Sloane didn’t need to turn to find out where. Cerrabone was up. “Again, Your Honor, I think this inquiry is not relevant—”

  “Your objection, Mr. Cerrabone?”

  “Irrelevant.”

  This time Underwood did not hesitate. “Overruled.”

  Sloane took a step closer to the witness chair to cut off the line of sight to the Blumes in the front row. “What else did your father do?”

  The young man looked on the verge of tears. “He broke my guitar. He threw it out.” The first tear leaked from the corner of his eye.

  “And that’s what you loved the most, isn’t it, playing your guitar and playing with God’s Nails?”

  Blume wiped the back of his hand beneath his nose. “Yes.”

  “And you’d do just about anything to play the guitar with God’s Nails and be onstage with Anastasia again, wouldn’t you, Joshua?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  A couple of the female jurors blotted their eyes.

  “But you did tell her that you thought if you testified, your dad might buy you another guitar and let you play in the band again, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged.

  “You have to answer verbally,” Sloane said.

  “I don’t know. I guess I did.”

  Sloane walked back to the counsel table and returned carrying a copy of the Seattle Times. “So you got out of bed on Thursday, already grounded and forbidden to play in the band, and you read the article in the newspaper about the murder just down the street, didn’t you?” He held up the newspaper that had the article on the front page but, more important, had Barclay’s picture.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you saw Barclay’s picture in the paper that morning, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you read that the police questioned her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that was before Detectives Rowe and Crosswhite came and showed you the photograph of Barclay that you picked out of the group, isn’t it?”

  Blume sighed audibly. “Yes.”

  Sloane held up the montage photograph near the photograph in the newspaper, the two remarkably similar. “And you thought that if you testified here, being the star witness, maybe your father would let you play in the band again, didn’t you?”

  Joshua had checked out. He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  From behind, Sloane heard Mary Beth Blume sigh, “Oh Joshua.” Underwood heard it also. So did the members of the jury. Some turned their head to look.

  “Didn’t you also tell Anastasia that your father had talked to his attorney, that he thought this was a big case; that someone might even write a book about it, maybe even make a movie, and if they did, you’d get a lot of money to tell your story and maybe God’s Nails could record an album?”

  When Joshua didn’t immediately respond, what was left to fill the silence were the stifled sobs of a mother. His head down, Joshua had retreated, this time without the bangs to hide him from the rest of the world and, more important, the disapproving eyes of his father.

  After Joshua answered in the affirmative, Underwood took a recess.

  Outside the courtroom, Sloane retreated to a corner at the far end of the hallway with Pendergrass and Barclay. Pendergrass looked like a kid trying to suppress the greatest surprise in the world. Barclay looked as though she’d already seen the surprise and still couldn’t believe it. She stared, her jaw slightly open, speechless. The obvious cross-examination would have been to take on Joshua Blume’s senses, to question and cast doubt that he could have been so sure of what he saw so late on a dark and stormy night, while likely intoxicated. Then Sloane could have held up the newspaper with the picture of Barclay that looked remarkably like the picture that had been part of the montage Rowe and Crosswhite had shown to Blume. Sloane had even retained an expert to testify about the power of suggestion and how Blume would have been predisposed to pick Barclay’s picture—not because he had seen her that night but because he was familiar with her face. But that would have left unanswered the question for which Sloane had no answer and thus no way to discredit Blume. Even if it had been dark and stormy, even if the closest street lamp had been twenty yards away, even if Joshua had drunk a couple of beers, that only cast doubt on the specifics of what he saw, it did not change the fact that he had seen someone. Sloane had no way to combat that underlying fact until Jenkins had advised
Sloane on what he had learned and deduced from his second trip to the club in Pioneer Square.

  “He loves this girl,” Jenkins had said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because every sixteen-year-old boy in the world loves this girl; she’s the fantasy, the proverbial wet dream, what they all want to have and wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do with if they did. Marilyn Monroe to me, Angelina Jolie to you, Megan Fox to Jake. Adam would eat the forbidden fruit ten times out of ten for a girl like this. Hell, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t. And the father took her from him. Doesn’t matter that it was a fantasy, that the kid didn’t have a chance. He loves her, and his only goal was to play with her again, be close to her, in the band.”

  That was when Sloane tore up his cross-examination and started over. He knew he couldn’t convince a jury that Blume had hallucinated the whole thing. The better course was to challenge the boy’s heart, and thus his motivation, and hope the jurors remembered what it was like to be young and hopelessly, painfully in love for the first time, that you would do or say almost anything to be near that person, to be a part of his or her life. It was better left to the jury to infer that the boy had made up the whole story, made it up to appease a father he could never appease, with the hope that he might get back his guitar and another chance to be near Anastasia. Cerrabone would attempt to rehabilitate Blume after their break, but the damage had been done, the boy’s motivation undermined and crumbling, his testimony like the wall of a house built on a damaged foundation, standing, perhaps, but its integrity severely in question.

  Sloane had heard the analogy, even used it himself a few times, the one about trials being like climbing mountains, a test of not only stamina but will power. Those who finished the climb were those who refused even the slightest rationalization that to quit the climb was acceptable.

  So although every muscle and joint of his body burned and his mind felt as tired and clouded as it had that day when he reached the thin air atop Mount Rainier, Sloane couldn’t quit. Joshua Blume was behind them, but looming directly ahead was Felix Oberman. Unlike Blume, Oberman would not be a slap fight in the grammar school playground. Sloane needed to turn his cross-examination into a good old-fashioned brawl. He needed to take Oberman apart, to take shot after shot at him until, hopefully, Oberman displayed the temper and cruelty Barclay said lurked within the man.

  The problem with that course of action, however, manifested when Dr. Felix Oberman entered the courtroom looking too old and too small to be the oppressive ogre he had been during his marriage. The reading glasses remained tethered on a chain around his neck despite the round wire-rimmed glasses. Both gave him a studious, professorial appearance. He’d tamed his curls with water, but the beard remained an afterthought, an untended brown and gray patchwork that started high on his cheekbones and disappeared beneath the collar of his forest-green shirt.

  After the preliminaries, Cerrabone asked, “How often do you go to the symphony, Dr. Oberman?”

  Oberman spoke in a quiet, measured tone. “The season runs throughout the year, so it varies. I could go every night of the week, but I have neither the time nor the finances to do so. I usually go more frequently during the summer months.”

  “Do you have any favorites?”

  “I’m partial to Beethoven and Mozart, but my love is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8, Allegro vivace e con brio, which is why I was going that night.”

  “What night was that?”

  Oberman provided the date.

  “And is your ex-wife aware of your fondness for that particular symphony?” Cerrabone asked.

  “She certainly . . . Well, she certainly was. I played it often in our home, and we heard it together at least twice.”

  “When was the last time you saw your ex-wife at the symphony?”

  “Not since our divorce. Ten years.”

  “Ten years? It must have come as quite a surprise, then, for you to see her there.”

  Sloane contemplated objecting, as the question implied Reid never went to the symphony, but he decided to let it go and made a note to attack it on cross-examination.

  “‘Shock’ might be a better way to put it.”

  “You were alone?” Cerrabone asked.

  “At that moment I was, yes. I was meeting someone there.”

  “And what happened?”

  “As I exited my car, I turned, and there stood Barclay engaged in conversation. I initially contemplated acting as if I hadn’t seen her, but she turned and . . . as I said, it came as a bit of a shock . . .”

  “What was her reaction when she saw you?”

  “Surprisingly, she smiled and walked over.”

  “Why did you contemplate ignoring her?”

  “Our marriage did not end well.”

  “You had an acrimonious divorce?”

  “That would be an understatement. But we had seen each other at our daughter’s funeral, and I think it had a sobering effect on us both, you know; made us realize life is too short.”

  “And so you spoke?”

  “We did. I expressed surprise to see her.”

  “And what was her response?”

  “She said she needed to get a little more culture in her life, that she was tired of sitting at home watching mind-numbing movies . . . words to that effect.”

  “You mentioned she was engaged in conversation when you first saw her. Did you have an impression this person was a date or escort for the evening?”

  “No. It was a couple. They departed when Barclay came to speak to me.”

  “So she was alone when you spoke to her.”

  “She was.”

  “Did she say whether she was meeting anyone?”

  “She did not.”

  “And did the conversation eventually turn to Mr. Vasiliev?”

  “It did. I brought him up, actually.”

  “You brought him up?”

  Oberman nodded, looking chagrined. “It was uncomfortable . . . there was little to talk about, and so I said that I’d seen the article in the paper, the one about the U.S. attorney bringing charges against Mr. Vasiliev. I knew she had been heavily involved in fighting drugs since our daughter’s death, and I asked her if she knew what was to come of it.”

  “And what was her response?”

  “She sighed a bit, you know, wistful. She seemed tired. Perhaps ‘resigned’ is a better word.”

  “And you recall that specifically?”

  “If you knew my ex-wife . . . she is rarely resigned to anything.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The fire came, the one I became all too familiar with during our marriage, when her eyes change color from green to a dull gray. That’s when she said it.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said, ‘You know, if I had known it would take this kind of effort, I would have just put a bullet in the back of his head and been done with him.’”

  Cerrabone waited a beat. Then he asked, “And did you have any reaction?”

  “No, not particularly.”

  Several jurors looked confused, as if they had misheard the testimony. Cerrabone too looked and sounded curious but his was no act. “Why not?”

  “Because during ten years of marriage, I’d seen Barclay say things like that before. She cannot help herself.”

  “So you did not take her seriously?”

  A small laugh. “To the contrary, I’ve learned to always take my ex-wife seriously, Mr. Cerrabone. Yes, I thought she meant it, if that is the intent of your question. And yes, I thought she was capable.”

  Sloane shot from his chair. “Objection, Your Honor, speculation. No foundation.”

  “Sustained. The jury will disregard the witness’s last remark.”

  In theory, perhaps, but practically, Sloane knew the jurors would not be able to do so. Apparently recognizing this, Cerrabone was content to leave the jury to consider those stricken but not forgotten words.

  Sloane reste
d an arm on the railing of the well near the court reporter. “You said you learned to take your ex-wife seriously. So I imagine you called the police to tell them of this statement and your concern that she might actually do it.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You told your date for that evening.”

  “I saw no reason to do that.”

  “So you told no one?”

  “I told the police.”

  “Two weeks after the fact and after Mr. Vasiliev was dead, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Prior to that, you did nothing.”

  Oberman looked as though he were about to say something, then cleared his throat. “I did nothing prior to that.”

  “You didn’t say why you had learned to take your ex-wife seriously. Why was that?”

  “Because my ex-wife is a person who follows through on what she says she will do.”

  “Like getting a restraining order from the Superior Court against you after your separation?”

  Oberman pinched his lips. “Including that.”

  Sloane positioned himself at the corner of the counsel table so that to look at him, Oberman would also have to look at his ex-wife. “Let’s not dance around the pink elephant in the room, Dr. Oberman; your divorce was far more than acrimonious. It was vicious, wasn’t it?”

  “I certainly thought so.”

  “It even became violent, did it not?”

  Oberman shook his head. “I tried to keep things civil.”

  Sloane raised his voice, disbelieving. “You were arrested for assaulting her.” He pulled a sheet of paper from the file he had set on the table and approached. “You blackened her eye, split her lip, fractured one of her cheekbones. Do you call that keeping things civil?”

  Oberman’s jaw clenched. “I never touched her,” he said.

  Sloane held up the police report. “So the police report is what . . . a fantasy?”

  “She lied. I never touched her.”

  “Did she make up the injuries in this report? Were those also a fantasy?”

  “I don’t know how she obtained her injuries, but I was not responsible.”

  Sloane was amazed that even now, after ten years, under oath and on the witness stand, the man could be so adamant. “You were arrested for assault, were you not?”