Prosecution: A Legal Thriller
Page 19
"You heard Conrad Atkinson testify that she moved out of his house within days of the death of your wife, did you not?"
"Yes."
"You heard Conrad Atkinson testify that the night of your wife's death, the night you were working with Kristin Maxfield in the conference room of the district attorney's office, she came home only long enough to shower and change and leave for work, did you not?"
"Yes."
"You heard Conrad Atkinson testify that he had for some time prior to that night suspected that his fiancee, Kristin Maxfield, was seeing someone else, did you not?"
"Yes."
Moving around to the front of the counsel table, I sat against it, moving one leg along the edge until my foot dangled a
few inches above the floor. "The other person wasn't you?"
"You're assuming Mr. Atkinson was correct."
"I'm not assuming anything. I'm simply asking you whether you were romantically involved with your second wife while you were still married to your first. It's a simple question. Why don't you just answer it?"
"I was never sexually involved with her. I won't deny I found her attractive."
I slid off the edge of the table and began to pace back and forth in front of the jury box, scratching the back of my head.
"You weren't ' "sexually involved' " with her?" I asked, stopping still. "Is that what you said?"
"Yes."
"But I didn't ask if you had been sexually involved with her while your wife was still alive. I asked if you had been romantically involved. Would you like to have the court reporter read it back?"
He shook his head. "No. I thought that's what you meant."
"I see. You thought romantically meant sexually. I see. Very well. So, then, by your definition, you were not ' "romantically' " involved with Kristin Maxfield until three months before you married her?"
A look of uncertainty passed over his face. "Well, no, I would not say that exactly. We had started to see each other, spend a lot of time together. I think I was probably falling in love with her sometime earlier."
"Were you falling in love with her the night you were working together in the conference room, the night your wife was being murdered a hundred miles away?"
"No, of course not. I've already told you that."
Turning my back on him, I faced the jury. "Tell me, Mr. Goodwin, what time did you leave your office that night, the night your wife was killed?"
"Sometime after eleven, I think."
"And did you leave alone?"
"Yes."
Looking at him over my shoulder, I asked, surprised, "You didn't leave with Kristin, walk her to her car?"
"Yes, I'm sorry," he said hastily. "I thought you meant—"
"I know what you thought I meant." Raising my eyebrows, I smiled sympathetically. "Romantically involved," I repeated, waiting while the two words echoed in the expectant silence of the courtroom.
"Nothing happened between the two of you that night?"
"No," he insisted.
"So you weren't with her at all after—what?—eleven, eleven-thirty?"
"Yes, that's right."
"You didn't see her again after eleven, eleven-thirty, until you saw her again the next morning at work?"
"Correct."
"And has your present wife ever told you where, or with whom, she spent that night?"
Jones exploded out of his chair. "He's asking questions about conversation between spouses. There's an absolute privilege involved here, your Honor, and I demand the court do something about it."
Irma Holloway shook her finger, scratching the air. "If you want to make an objection, make an objection; if you want to make a speech, go out on the courthouse steps. Mr. Antonelli," she continued, without a pause, "the privilege protects spousal communications."
"Leaving aside the question of whether the defendant is now invoking that privilege, your Honor," I replied, stopping just long enough to return Jones's sneer with one of my own, "I'll limit the question to communications that took place before the defendant's marriage to Kristin Maxfield."
"Very well." She looked down at the witness stand where, seemingly unperturbed, Goodwin sat waiting. "You may answer the question."
"Could you repeat the question, please?" he asked.
"Did she ever tell you where she spent that night?"
Jones was back on his feet. "Objection, your Honor," he said with a slight bow, making a mockery of the formality she demanded. "Hearsay."
"I'll rephrase the question," I said, before she could rule. "Did you ever, at any time prior to your marriage to her, have a conversation with Kristin Maxfield about where she spent that night?"
"No, it never came up."
"It never came up," I repeated, as if the words themselves were ashamed to be heard.
"What kind of car did you have then, the night your wife was murdered? Four-door or two-door?"
"Two-door."
"But it had a back seat, correct?"
"Yes."
"You parked it at the parking structure across from your office that night?"
"I always parked it in that parking structure."
"And that night you had sex with Kristin Maxfield in the back seat of that car, did you not?" I was staring right at him, taunting him with the knowledge that I knew what they had done and where they had done it, something only Kristin could have told me. His eyes went blank. "And I suppose you didn't have sex with her a second time on the same day your first wife was buried?"
"No, I told you," he insisted. "It never happened!"
"Your first wife, Nancy Goodwin, was a talented woman, wasn't she?"
It caught him off guard. "Yes, she was," he replied, suddenly subdued. "Very talented."
"And you've already testified that it was her idea to take out the insurance policy, correct?"
"Yes," he said, watching me, trying to figure out where I was going with this.
"And she agreed that you ought to move money out of your checking account at the bank into a mutual fund. That is what you testified, is it not?"
"Yes."
"Is it fair to say that she was a full partner in all the major financial decisions that were made while you were married?"
He did not hesitate. "Yes. Completely. If anything, she knew more about that sort of thing than I did."
I lowered my eyes and walked slowly toward the jury box. Standing in front of the last juror in the front row, I rested my hand on the railing.
"That's quite odd, isn't it?" I asked, looking back.
He had no idea what I meant. "Odd?"
"Yes, odd that when you weren't able to deliver the ten thousand dollars in cash to the brokerage firm, you decided to leave it in a safe at work—while you began a murder trial that was scheduled to last for weeks—instead of entrusting the money and the errand to your wife."
He started to answer, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand.
"No further questions, your Honor."
Chapter Sixteen
The morning light streamed through the solitary wooden casement window and over the double set of bound briefs. Sipping coffee from a maroon plastic cup, Horace Woolner viewed them with a jaundiced eye.
"These are motions to set aside rulings on motions to set aside rulings on motions to set aside. It's been going on so long no one can remember the beginning, and I don't think anyone really expects to see the end. It's like that case in Bleak House, Jarndyce versus Jarndyce. Dickens. You remember?" He laughed. "It goes on for years. Years! And then, finally it's over and there's nothing left. Not a cent. All the money they were fighting for has gone to pay the lawyers."
Open in the front, the black judicial robe draped over his shoulders was bunched up under his legs where he had sat down without bothering to straighten it. "We were told to read Bleak House the summer before I started my first year in law school. You know," he said, raising an eyebrow the way he did whenever he was about to commit a particularly excessive exaggeratio
n, "the damn thing must be about three million pages long. They must have paid Dickens by the word."
It was seven-forty-five in the morning. Since the beginning of the trial, it had become something of a settled practice for us to meet in his chambers for a cup of coffee at the start of the day. Horace began his day earlier than any other judge in the building. He liked to schedule oral argument on complicated civil matters at eight, on the theory that the longer they had been awake the more lawyers were likely to talk. It was a phenomenon that had no obvious application to himself.
Pointing at the two briefs laid side by side in front of him, he asked, "You know what this is about? Two brothers suing each other over the business they inherited from their father. There's no business left, you understand. It went under years ago, but each of them is convinced it was the other one's fault. And someone has to pay, don't they? Which is perfectly fine with the lawyers, who measure the world in billable hours.
"Sometimes I miss being DA," he said, as he stood up. "There's something clean-cut about criminal law." He poured himself another cup of coffee. "Want some more?"
I shook my head and waited until he sat down. "Are you all right, Horace?"
He looked at me, surprised. "Sure, why not?" "Because it's not even eight o'clock in the morning, and you're wired."
"I'm always like this," he protested. "I wake up early."
"You go to bed late."
"Yeah, and I wake up early," he insisted. "I've never slept much."
It was a little too glib, a little too evasive.
"You worried about something?" I asked, searching his eyes. There was a slight pause, a brief hesitation, as if there was something he wanted to say but knew, even as he thought about it, that he was not going to. "The only thing I'm worried about is whether you're going to be able to convict Marshall Goodwin," he said finally. "I hear he did pretty well the last two days."
With both hands wrapped around the cup, he lifted it to his mouth but did not drink."Until you got hold of him, that is." A shrewd glint came into his eye. "First you tell Jones that Kristin has been to see you twice; then you ask Goodwin that question about the back seat of his car. Wonder what the two of them talked about last night?"
"Or what each of them is thinking about this morning," I added. Draining off the little coffee that was left, I set my cup on the front corner of the desk. "What do you think she'll do?" I asked. Then, before he could answer, I changed my mind. "What do you think she should do?"
"You mean, should she lie to save her husband?" He looked away, slowly shaking his head. "If she really loved him, it wouldn't even be a question for her, would it?"
Gathering up the two neatly bound briefs, Horace fastened his robe at the collar. "I have to get into court," he said, glancing at the clock. Then he was gone. Horace was never late.
Neither was Irma Holloway. With a brief glance at the jurors, she perched on the edge of the high-backed black leather chair, stretched her thin arms forward, and clasped her hands."You may call your next witness," she advised the defense.
All morning and halfway through the afternoon, the defense summoned one witness after another to testify that Marshall Goodwin could not possibly have had anything to do with the murder of his wife. Then, an hour and a half after we returned from lunch, Richard Lee Jones rose from his chair and announced that he had called his final witness. Sitting just below him, Goodwin fidgeted restlessly and his eyes shifted from one place to the next.
Holloway asked if the State had any witnesses it wished to call for rebuttal.
"Yes, your Honor," I replied, as Goodwin's head jerked up. "The State recalls Kristin Maxfield."
She had the look of a woman who had gone to bed crying. I did not even pretend to be kind. "The testimony you gave here before was not in all respects entirely truthful, was it, Ms. Maxfield." Sternly, I stood at the counsel table and waited.
Her eyes drifted toward the other end of the table, where her husband was also waiting to hear what she would say.
"Ms. Maxfield?" Her eyes came back, for an instant met mine, and then looked down at the floor. Gradually, as if she were coming to terms with a decision she knew she could not avoid, she raised her head. "No. I was not entirely truthful."
"You get one more chance, Ms. Maxfield. Now, did you or did you not deliver a sealed envelope to Travis Quentin the day he was released from the county jail?"
She took a deep breath. "Yes, I did."
"And did that envelope come from the defendant, Marshall Goodwin?"
She glanced at her husband and said, as if to let the world know how wretchedly unhappy she was that she could no longer lie for him, "I'm sorry."
"Ms. Maxfield?"
Digging her nails into the arm of the witness chair, she nodded. "Yes," she whispered, her eyes downcast.
"I didn't quite hear you," I said sharply.
"Yes," she replied, raising her head.
"The night Nancy Goodwin was murdered, the night you were working with Marshall Goodwin, did you have sex with him?"
Biting her lip, she nodded.
"I'm sorry. You'll have to give your answer out loud."
"Yes."
"Describe to the jury, please, where that took place." Nothing, not a word, not even a blink of her eye. "Did it take place in Marshall Goodwin's car, in the back seat of his car?" Still nothing. "Ms. Maxfield?"
She watched me without expression. "Yes," she said finally.
"And when was the next time you had sex with Marshall Goodwin?"
For a moment, she hesitated, her lips parted, as if she hoped I would change my mind and ask her something else. "He said he didn't want to be alone."
"It was the same day Nancy Goodwin was buried, wasn't it?" I asked. "The night of her funeral?"
"Yes," she admitted.
I stared hard at her and then, crossing my arms, lowered my eyes and walked toward the jury box. "You were asked these same questions in the grand jury, weren't you?" I asked, as I spun around.
"Yes."
"And you lied to the grand jury, didn't you?"
"I was trying to protect my husband."
"You lied," I insisted.
"Yes."
"And when you testified before in this courtroom, in front of this jury," I said, waving my hand toward the twelve men and women who were sitting on my right, watching her closely, "you lied then too, didn't you?"
"I was trying to protect my husband," she repeated.
"Are you telling the truth now?"
"Yes," she replied in a subdued voice, contrition in her eyes.
I eyed her sternly. "You're not holding anything back? Everything you say here is the truth?"
"Yes," she promised.