Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "In other words, Mr. Quentin, you're here to tell the truth about what happened two years ago, because if you don't it could cost you your life?"

  He started to nod, then stopped, as if he had just thought of something."Not quite as good as they say it is, though," he said, grinning stupidly. "It's not like the truth will set me free."

  I moved my hand from the jury box railing and approached the witness stand. "Now let's go back to the beginning. I want you to describe to the jury everything that happened from the time you were first taken to the district attorney's office until the time you murdered Nancy Goodwin."

  Prodded by an occasional question, Travis Quentin told his story with the detachment of a man who cared nothing about what he had done. When he reached the end, I had only one question left to ask. "Did anyone tell you that Nancy Goodwin was four months pregnant when you killed her?"

  He shook his head. "No."

  I was standing at the far corner of the counsel table, just across from the defendant and his lawyer. "Marshall Goodwin never bothered to mention that?"

  "I didn't know anything about it," he said, tugging at the chain that was cutting into his shoulder. "Until she told me."

  "She told you?" I repeated helplessly.

  "Yeah," he said. "But people say a lot of things when they think they're going to die."

  Richard Lee Jones began asking the first question of his cross-examination before he had finished getting out of his chair. "Now, if I understand all this, Mr. Quentin, everything you said really comes down to some pretty simple arithmetic, doesn't it?"

  Quentin had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did anyone else.

  "What I mean, Mr. Quentin, is this," he said, stalking along the railing of the jury box. "You murder this woman Nancy Goodwin—in Corvallis." He stopped still and stared hard at him. "Right?"

  "Yeah."

  Jones started pacing. "Then you murder two more people down in Los Angeles." He stopped again. "Right?" He did not wait for the answer but started walking again, long ungainly strides, in front of the jury. "That makes three people you killed." He held his foot in place, glancing quickly across at the witness. "Right?"

  Turning until he faced Quentin directly, he drew himself up to his full height."But then you figure out," he said, squinting at him, "that killing three people gets you the gas chamber, but by killing just one more you save your own life. That about it, Mr. Quentin? The truth is," Jones spat out, "you've made this whole thing up, start to finish, haven't you?"

  Quentin drew his head to the side and waited, an ominous look in his eye.

  "You killed three people—lately. I think that was the way your lawyer put it."

  "Your Honor," I protested, jumping to my feet.

  "I'm warning you, Mr. Jones," Judge Holloway said.

  "The way the prosecutor put it," Jones went on, as if he had not heard a word, "you kill two people in California, know you're going to the gas chamber, and so you confess to another murder, one here in Oregon, and because that isn't going to get you anything by itself, you kill again—or, rather, you try to, don't you? You tell the police you were paid to kill that woman—and the man who paid you was her husband. That's what I mean by trying to get away with three murders by committing a fourth. Because that's what you're trying to do, isn't it— murder Marshall Goodwin here just as surely as you murdered his wife?"

  "Your Honor," I objected, "if there's a question somewhere in that speech, I for one would be glad to hear it."

  Jones was too quick. "I'm sorry, your Honor," he said, with his best imitation of a bashful smile. "I got a little carried away." He turned back to the witness. "You testified that you were given an envelope that contained instructions, correct?"

  "Yeah." Quentin grunted.

  "The name of the motel where Nancy Goodwin would be staying?"

  "Yeah."

  "When she'd be there?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, then, Mr. Quentin, where is it? Where is the envelope, with these very precise instructions that told you where to go and when to be there? Where is it?"

  Quentin shrugged. "Burned it."

  Placing his boot on the step below the witness stand, Jones rested his hand on the corner of the bench in front of the judge.

  "Did you burn the money too?" he asked, pushing his face forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with Quentin. It only seemed like a mistake. As hard as he could, Quentin threw his head forward, trying to hit him. Jones backed away, avoiding the blow.

  With a look of triumph, he moved back toward the counsel table. "And you testified that Marshall Goodwin, the chief deputy district attorney, brought you to his office and announced to you that he was dropping all the charges against you—not because you agreed to be a witness in a drug case but because he might want a little favor later on. Is that about it, Mr. Quentin?"

  "No, that's not about it! He hired me to kill his wife. He paid me ten thousand dollars to do it!" Quentin yelled angrily. "And if you don't believe me, ask his wife, the one he's married to now. Ask her! She's the one who brought me the envelope the day I got out of jail!"

  For an instant, Jones stared at him. Then, forcing a smile, he turned to the jury. "That's a very good idea," he said. He turned back to the witness, shook his head, and looked away again.

  "No further questions, your Honor," he said, as he sat down.

  The questioning of Travis Quentin had taken most of the day, but there was still enough time left to show the jury that Richard Lee Jones was bluffing. As soon as the guards had helped Quentin out of the courtroom, I called the next witness for the prosecution.

  Wearing round eyeglasses, her hair pulled close to her head and wound in back into a large round bun, she looked like a librarian leading a life of stringent repression.

  "Would you please state your name for the record."

  Her head held high, she carefully enunciated the words. "Kristin Maxfield Goodwin." She crossed her legs, the hem of her beige linen skirt well below her knee.

  I took her through the necessary preliminaries quickly. She answered each question directly, easily, in complete control of herself.

  "And did you, Ms. Maxfield, on the day Travis Quentin was released from the county jail, deliver to him a sealed manila envelope?"

  She did not hesitate. "No, I did not."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Under a blazing sky, Harper Bryce, struggling to keep up, followed me from the courthouse back to my office. Collapsing in the chair on the other side of my desk, he unbuttoned his suit coat and let his hands fall to his sides.

  "How about a nice hot cup of coffee?" I asked, as I tossed my jacket over the back of a chair. He grasped the arm of the chair, pulled himself up, and muttered, "Thanks, anyway."

  Helen had already left. I went into the outer office and from a small refrigerator got a soft drink. I poured coffee for myself.

  Lifting his eyes in a gesture of gratitude and partial forgiveness, Bryce held the cold can in both hands before he snapped it open. "That was one of the more entertaining days I've spent in the Multnomah County Courthouse," he said.

  Setting the case file on top of the desk, I put my briefcase on the floor. "Glad you enjoyed it." Crossing one ankle over the other, I stretched my legs over the corner of the desk. I took a long deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to clear my mind of all the fragmentary images and discordant sounds colliding against one another, the irrepressible memories of a trial day that seemed as if it had gone on for a week.

  Bryce thought he knew what I was thinking about. "She surprised you, didn't she?"

  His question brought my eyes back into focus. Gazing at the scuffed tips of my black wingtip shoes, I remarked, "Now, why would you think a thing like that?" Turning my head, I looked at him across the desk. "Do you really think I'd call a witness if I wasn't certain what she was going to say?"

  "You call the wife of the defendant to corroborate the testimony of her husband's chief accuser. How cer
tain could you be?"

  "You want the truth?"

  "Not if you can invent a more colorful lie." He pulled his reporter's notebook out of his side pocket and turned the pages until he came to a blank space on which he could write. "You were about to tell me how surprised you were," he said, looking up.

  "No I wasn't," I replied. I took a drink of coffee. "Remind me. What made you think I was surprised?"

  Bryce took notes like a court reporter. Flipping backward through the dog-eared notebook, he found the place he was looking for. "All right," he mumbled to himself. "I'll skip over all the preliminaries... Yeah, here it is," he announced, his small, heavy-lidded eyes alert. "Question: 'And did you, Ms. Maxfield, on the day Travis Quentin was released from county jail, deliver to him a sealed envelope?' Answer: 'No, I did not.' He glanced up, a suspicious look on his face. "That answer didn't surprise you?"

  I made no reply, and he looked down at what he had written. "Question: 'Is that what you told the grand jury?' Answer: 'Yes.' Question: 'Is that the truth?' Answer: 'Yes, it is.' " Bryce turned the page. "Question: 'When did you first become romantically involved with Marshall Goodwin?' Answer: 'That's really none of your business.'"

  Bryce glanced at me, his eyebrows arched into a question mark. "None of your business? As I recall, she said it with a considerable degree of anger—righteous indignation, even. And, if I remember, you started to get a little angry yourself."

  He went back to the notebook. "Question: 'Did you have sex with the defendant the night his wife was murdered?' Answer: 'No, of course not.' "

  I held up my hand. "That's enough. I was there. I remember what happened."

  "I just want to know—off the record—you thought she was going to say something else on the stand, didn't you?"

  The truth was I did not know what she was going to say, but it had not been too difficult to understand why, despite what she had told me in private, she had continued to lie.

  "Let's suppose you and I decide to commit a crime, a murder. Let's just say we decide to kill that editor of yours."

  "That's not a crime," he interjected. "That's a public service."

  "We don't want to do it ourselves, so we hire someone. We'll call him Mr. Smith," I continued.

  Bryce could not help himself. "Jones being too obvious."

  "Only, Smith gets caught and, to save himself, confesses." I swung my feet to the floor, put both hands on the desk, and bent forward. "Smith knows I hired him. All he knows about you is that you gave him the envelope that told him where to go to commit the murder and where to go to get the money. He tells the police I hired him, and they put me on trial for murder." I searched his eyes for a moment. "Now, tell me, what do you do?"

  "You mean, what do I do when I'm called as a witness?"

  "Called as a witness by the prosecution and asked if you in fact delivered the envelope."

  "Why don't I just tell the truth and say I did. That's all the prosecution knows about my involvement." He thought of something else. "And if I'm Kristin Maxfield I can say it was just part of my job. I didn't know what was inside it."

  He waited for my response. "Why do you think I'd lie about it? Why do you think she lied about it? That's what you think, isn't it?"

  I leaned closer. "Who do you have to fear? Who's the one person—the only person—who can hurt you?"

  "You are. If I help the prosecution convict you, you're going to help them get me."

  "And there's something else. By denying you made the delivery, you directly contradict the testimony of the killer. You're doing everything you can to help me. If I get convicted anyway, I'm still going to remember what you tried to do for me, aren't I? But with your testimony, I've got a pretty good chance of winning, and if they can't convict me, what do you think the chance is they'll ever go after you?"

  Removing a white linen handkerchief from his inside pocket, Bryce mopped the last remaining beads of perspiration from his brow.

  "That's all very interesting, but you haven't exactly told me the truth in this little parable, have you? You haven't explained why the prosecution would ever be stupid enough to call me as a witness in the first place."

  I turned up my hands. "Everybody makes mistakes."

  "Can I quote you on that?" he asked, with casual sarcasm. "What's the real reason?" he persisted. "Why did you call her? She's already told the same story to the police and the grand jury. What made you think she'd tell a different story on the stand?"

  "When the trial is over," I said, getting to my feet, "we'll talk again."

  Bryce rose awkwardly from the chair, touching the corner of the desk to steady his balance. "It's an interesting game you're playing with her—or she's playing with you. Whose turn is it to make the next move?"

  My hand on his shoulder, I walked him through the outer office to the door. "You know what I've discovered I missed most about trial work? The constant surprise. No matter how much you work at it, no matter how much you think about it, nothing ever goes quite the way you imagined it would. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just watch the way things happen, wait and see what someone does, and then decide what you're going to do."

  As we shook hands, he looked me in the eye. "And have you decided what you're going to do?"

  "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

  "Wouldn't miss it," he replied cheerfully.

  I had said nothing to Bryce about Kristin Maxfield's surreptitious visit and her calculated confession of what she had done and what had happened between her and Marshall Goodwin. Nor had I made any allusion to our private conversation when I questioned her on the stand. Only Horace Woolner knew what had happened that day she came to see me, and he did not understand why I had not used it.

  "Instinct," I told him. It was a little after nine o'clock at night. We were sitting in my library.

  "Instinct?" He grunted. "What do you mean, instinct?" He spread his legs and rested his forearms on them, and stirred the ice in his glass with the tip of his index finger.

  "Did you ever play chess?"

  He gave me a sidelong glance. "Yeah, a little. Not for a long time."

  "I wasn't worth a damn," I admitted, breathing in the scotch. "I used to read about great chess masters and how they anticipated dozens of moves ahead. I kept trying to do that, stare at all the pieces on the board, try to envision each possible move. I couldn't see anything, nothing, not one move. I could see what was on the board, but I couldn't see anything else."

  I made a vague gesture toward the stacks of books that swirled up all around us. "Then I read something Napoleon once said, advice he gave a general who had sent this long list of possible plans he was considering. Napoleon wrote back, 'If you want to take Vienna, take Vienna!' " I was trying to explain to Bryce that you can't anticipate every contingency, that once you start doing something, that move affects everything else. That's what Napoleon meant."

  Horace was thinking of something else. "Bryce? Harper Bryce? Every time I see him, I want to imitate Peter Lorre."

  I laughed. "Peter Lorre? What the hell for?"

  "The Maltese Falcon. Sydney Greenstreet. He and Bryce are about the same size. They even look a little alike, especially sitting down. Every time I see him, I think of that, and I hear Peter Lorre's crazy wheedling voice asking Humphrey Bogart to tell them where that goddamn falcon is. He's a hell of a card player, by the way."