Doreen’s eyes began to glisten, and she turned to the judge in appeal. “Your Honor, I just want them to know the truth. They have to know the truth about Richie. They’re getting the wrong idea about my son.”
Judge Patterson nodded. “Mrs. Grusini, I understand that this is difficult for you, but please compose yourself. Please wait for me to rule before you answer any further questions, do you understand?”
“Okay, sorry.” Doreen pulled a Kleenex from the sleeve of her sweater and dabbed her eyes. “I was answering the question, I was trying to answer the question. Richie’s not here to speak for himself. He needs me to speak for him.”
“Mrs. Grusini, take a moment to calm down. It doesn’t help the jury understand anything if the evidence comes in in a disordered fashion.” Judge Patterson sighed. “It’s been a long day, and we can all understand how difficult this must be. But you must allow me to make my ruling, and we will proceed.”
“Okay, sorry.” Doreen seemed suddenly exhausted, easing back into the witness chair, and the court clerk rose quickly from her desk, poured a plastic cup of water, and brought it to the witness stand, where she set it down.
Judge Patterson turned to Martinez. “Mr. Martinez, I’m going to have to agree with Ms. Rosato. I’ve given you some latitude, but let’s not get too far afield.”
“Yes, Your Honor. I’ll resume, I just have one or two questions after the witness takes a sip of water.” Martinez backed off, making much of waiting while Doreen picked up the cup with a shaking hand and sipped some water, with every eye in the jury trained on her. After she had set the water down, Martinez began. “Mrs. Grusini, please tell the jury what your relationship with Richie was like, so they understand the factual basis for your opinion as to his peacefulness.”
“I tried very hard, as hard as I could, to comfort him after his father left. He acted out a little, but he was always so special to me, especially after his father left.” Doreen paused, wiping her eyes, leaving mascara smudges that only made her appear more forlorn. “We had a very special relationship, the two of us. His uncle, my brother”—Doreen gestured at Declan again, but Bennie didn’t dare turn her head—“he used to worry that I showed favoritism to Richie and I suppose I did. He was the oldest, and when the twins came along, he understood that he had to take care of things that help me, like, be the man around the house.”
Bennie glanced discreetly at the jury, and the grandmother had tears in her eyes and so did Brooklyn Girl.
“And Mrs. Grusini, is it true that your relationship with your son was very close?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Doreen answered, more softly. She sniffled, wiping her eyes again. “We loved each other very much.”
Bennie bit her tongue, wondering if Martinez even knew that Doreen’s relationship with Richie was terrible, that she had lost custody of the children, that she even tried to kill herself. If Doreen was going to paint herself as mother of the year, Bennie would have plenty of ammunition to answer that, the equivalent of a nuclear option. But like any nuclear weapon, if she used it, nobody won.
“Mrs. Grusini, when was the last time you spoke with Richie?”
“Just three days before he was murdered. I sent him a sweater, and he called me to tell me he liked it.”
“How often did you speak with him on the phone?”
“Every week, we spoke.”
“Mrs. Grusini, so is it fair to say that Richie was a good and cooperative son?”
“Yes, absolutely, as best he could be.”
Bennie heard Jason mumble something under his breath, then he picked up the ballpoint pen and commandeered her legal pad.
Jason wrote, LIES! RICHIE HATED HIS MOM. HE TALKED SHIT ABOUT HER ALL THE TIME. I HEARD HE TRIED TO HIRE SOMEBODY TO KILL HER.
Bennie shot Jason a discreet warning glance. She didn’t want the jury to see him scribbling away during Doreen’s testimony.
“Mrs. Grusini, let’s address the present circumstances, though that is difficult for you.” Martinez turned to counsel table, picked up the bagged hunting knife, and showed it to Doreen, who recoiled at the sight. Her dark eyes filmed with tears again, and she swallowed visibly, a reaction that looked so genuinely heartbroken that Bennie felt moved. Martinez continued, “Mrs. Grusini, I didn’t mean to upset you all over again, but I did need to ask you, do you recognize that knife as belonging to Richie?”
“No, it’s not his knife, not at all.”
“But Richie was a hunter, was he not?”
“Yes, and he had a hunting knife, but that’s not his.” Doreen wiped a tear away, nodding. “I know what his looked like because his father gave it to him. They used to bow-hunt together. That’s absolutely not his knife. It’s Jason’s.”
“Objection, Your Honor.” Bennie half-rose, to make a point for the jury’s benefit. “Mrs. Grusini is competent to testify that she doesn’t recognize the knife as her son’s, but there’s no basis for her conclusion that it belonged to Jason. For all she knows, Richie bought the knife at another time—”
Martinez caught on. “Your Honor, defense counsel is testifying herself. If she wants to cross-examine the witness, she can. If she wants to make that argument to the jury, she can—”
Judge Patterson waved him into silence. “Mr. Martinez, I’ll overrule Ms. Rosato’s objection. The jury can decide on the probative weight of the witness’s opinion as to the ownership of the knife, now that both you and defense counsel have made your arguments. But Mr. Martinez, I can’t imagine what further questions you have of this witness. You are testing my patience.”
Martinez swallowed hard. “Thank you, I have no further questions.”
Judge Patterson turned her disapproval on Bennie. “Ms. Rosato, any cross-examination?”
Bennie made a decision. “I have no cross-examination, Your Honor.”
Martinez nodded, still standing. “Your Honor, the Commonwealth rests.”
“Excellent.” Judge Patterson turned to Bennie. “Ms. Rosato, you’re up, first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Bennie said, swallowing hard. She had no idea what she would do for a defense, and she still didn’t know if she would put Jason on the stand. He would go to jail forever if she couldn’t come up with something. She would have done him wrong, twice.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Bennie and Lou hit the office, stepping off the elevator into the reception area just as Mary, Judy, Anne, and John were waiting for an elevator to go down. It wasn’t that late, but the office had segued into summer hours. Marshall had already gone home, and Mary and the associates were apparently leaving for the day, their arms full of purses and shopping bags.
“Bennie, hey, how’d it go?” Mary asked, and the others clambered onto the elevator cab behind her, their expressions somewhere between Interested and We-Are-Missing-Happy-Hour.
“Okay,” Bennie answered, distracted. Her trial bag weighed heavily in her hands.
“Great!” Mary hit a button to prevent the elevator doors from closing. “When do you go to the jury?”
“Tomorrow, after we put on a case.”
Lou snorted. “After we think of a case to put on.”
Mary smiled, in her uncertain way. “Are you kidding or do you really need help? We’re going out for a drink, but I can stay and give you a hand.”
“No, thanks,” Bennie answered, touched. She had yet to get used to the fact that DiNunzio was her partner, but in any event, she’d have to deal with the case herself and she had Lou for backup.
“Looks like you’re about to get some major press attention. They’ve been calling all day. Marshall left your messages on your desk, and John spoke with Karen Engstrom.”
“Karen called here? When?” Bennie turned to Foxman.
“The reporter called in the morning, around nine thirty.”
“Why’d you take a call from the press? We never talk to the press.”
“Why not
? We always did at my old firm. We thought it was good for business. Profile-raising. At Eastman, we—”
“At Rosato, we don’t,” Bennie interrupted, annoyed. She’d probably said twenty words to the kid since he started on the job, and she was already sick of his “at Eastman, we…” So was Lou. It was the reason they’d nicknamed him Eastmanwe.
“I answered the phone only because Marshall was in the bathroom.”
“You can answer the phone, but not the reporters. What did Karen ask you?”
“She wanted to know why you’re trying Lefkavick, since it’s a small murder case—”
“No murder is small, Foxman.”
“It was her term.”
“So what’d you tell her?”
“That you were court-appointed.”
“What?” Bennie’s mouth went dry. “Why did you say that?”
“It’s true. You told us.”
“When?”
“When I started. You stopped in the conference room and told us why you’d taken the case. I remembered.”
“You remembered that from six months ago?”
“Yes.” John was pleased with himself, but Mary frowned, knowing it was a faux pas.
Judy nodded. “I remember that, too.”
Anne asked, “Isn’t that why you took the case, Bennie?”
Bennie fell momentarily speechless, her mind racing. So Karen had spoken with John in the morning, and Bennie had spoken with Karen after that, telling her that she’d taken the case because she’d handled Jason’s juvenile case. That meant that Karen would have figured out that Bennie had lied to her associates. Karen had sandbagged her at lunch, and Bennie had fallen into her trap.
Mary met Bennie’s eye, concerned. “Is it a problem?”
“I hope not.” Bennie prayed it didn’t matter. The elevator started beeping in protest at being held open so long.
Lou touched Bennie’s arm. “Let’s get to work.”
“Sure, right. Bye, folks.” Bennie turned away, heading toward the conference room.
“Take care, kids!” Lou called to them, as Mary released the button and the elevator stopped beeping.
“Bennie, call me if you need me!” Mary called back, just as the elevator doors closed.
Lou fell into step beside Bennie, through the reception area. “You think it’s a problem that Eastmanwe talked to Karen?”
“I hope not, but I have bigger worries tonight, like what the hell we’re going to do for a defense.” Bennie charged ahead, on nervous energy.
“You can turn it around. You always do.”
“It’s never been this bad.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Or this down-to-the-wire.”
“That, too.”
“I have faith in you.” Lou led the way toward the conference room. The offices were still and quiet, with the late-day sun streaming into the hallway. “If you’re so worried, why didn’t you take Mary up on her offer?”
“It’s our case, and it would take too long to bring her up to speed.”
“She’s such a doll. She always offers to help. She has your back, you know that? You were right to make her partner.”
“She earned it,” Bennie said, even though she’d thought almost the same thing. Something about the thought stuck with her, competing for attention with her new worries over Karen and her fears about pulling a trial strategy out of her butt. She and Lou trundled into the conference room, shedding trial bags, messenger bags, and her handbag.
“My prostate calls, be right back,” Lou said, leaving Bennie alone with her jumbled thoughts.
She always offers to help. She has your back.
The conference room had been turned into a war room for Jason’s case, and her gaze flitted over the legal debris without alighting anywhere: the rows of accordion files stuffed with documents, her pads of notes, photocopied exhibits, police investigation files, and other documents that Martinez had turned over. Empty Styrofoam cups dotted the table, and orangey sunlight shone in glowing squares from the panel of windows. The room had an eastern exposure, but the mirrored surfaces of the glitzy skyscrapers trapped the sun, reflecting it back. It was great in winter, but hot as hell in summer.
Bennie took off her khaki blazer and dumped it on the table, but it hit the mouse pad on her other laptop, which woke up the computer. The screen came to life with the last thing she’d looked at, the surveillance video that Martinez had showed the jury. The frozen frame showed Jason as he was about to enter the alley, and Bennie recalled it as her lowest point at trial. She flashed on the jurors, and if she had to pinpoint a moment that things went south, it was then, when Doreen had given her teary speech about Jason’s pattern of starting the fights. It had all rung true, and Jason had morphed from being the defendant to being a murderer.
That’s who he is. He always has my back.
Funny, Bennie remembered Jason’s roommate Gail saying that, when they interviewed her. She pulled out the rolling chair in front of the laptop, sat down, and hit the mouse pad, her mind churning. The video started up again, and on the screen, Jason disappeared into the alley. She let the video play, but her thoughts strayed. She thought about how Mary always had her back, and then to Jason’s roommate, who said that Jason always had her back.
Her thoughts corkscrewed farther back in time, and she remembered when she’d first met Jason, in the visiting room at River Street. He’d been a chubby boy with a toy in his hand, a beloved Lego figurine. She remembered she had found that figurine in his bedroom later, when she’d interviewed Gail. On impulse, Bennie got up and started digging in the boxes, finally finding at the bottom of one the little plastic toy, the blue knight who worked for King Lear.
Not King Lear. King Leo.
The name came out of nowhere to her consciousness, her memory jarred by the sight of the little toy in the palm of her hand. It all came back to her, what Jason had said about his Lego toy.
The coolest is Richard the Strong. He protects the Queen and the Princess. He helps.
Bennie brought the toy back to the seat and sat down, her mind churning. The video was still running, and Jason hadn’t come back out of the alley yet, but she remembered when he had told her, about what had happened to provoke him during the cafeteria fight.
I’m used to Richie saying bad things about me, but I didn’t like it when he said it about my mom.
Bennie thought a moment, trying to parse the memory. It was as if a conclusion lay just beyond her grasp, and just then Lou returned to the conference room. He’d taken his jacket and tie off and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, and in his arms was an aromatic bag of Chinese food.
“Perfect timing, right? They just called from downstairs.” Lou put the bag on the table and reached inside, unpacking the white containers. “Why are you looking at me funny? I’ll share, you know I will.”
“It’s not that.” Bennie was still trying to articulate a theory in her head. “Let me run this past you. You just said something about Mary, that she always offers to help.”
“Yes, she does.”
“You knew she would help because that’s a pattern of behavior, a characteristic of hers. People behave in ways that are patterns. That’s who they are.”
“Sure, right. It’s her way.”
“Exactly. Like Richie’s mother said today, on the stand. She said the pattern was the same.” Bennie thought back to Doreen’s testimony. “She said that Jason always provokes the fights. He provoked the fight in the cafeteria, back in middle school. He provoked the fight in the bar. And he provoked the fight in the alley, when he went inside.”
“Right, I remember.” Lou stopped unpacking the take-out bag, paying attention. “Where are you going with this?”
“But that’s not Jason’s pattern. That’s not who he is. I know his pattern is different. Jason’s pattern, or his characteristic, is that he helps. He protects. Like Mary. Like Richard the Strong.”
“Richard the what?”
/> “This little guy.” Bennie held up the Lego toy. “Think about it a minute, Lou. Jason’s roommate told us that he protected her from the next-door neighbor, who gave her a hard time for being gay. And he started that cafeteria fight because he was protecting his mother’s reputation. That’s why this toy meant so much to him when he was little. It’s a protector, a knight who protects a family.”
“Okay, what’s your point?” Lou pulled out the chair next to her, listening intently.
“So what do we know from this?” Bennie reasoned aloud, not knowing where it would take her. “We know that Jason can be violent, but only when he’s protecting someone. You follow?”
“Yes.”
“So that night in the alley, what if he was protecting someone? What if there was someone else in the alley that night?” Bennie felt her heart leap at the notion, whether it was hope or folly. “Remember my first instinct was that somebody could’ve been in the alley and gotten out the other side? Out the back? Remember we looked at it, and we saw that you could scale that wall?”
“Yes.” Lou lifted a gray eyebrow.
“What if Jason killed Richie to protect somebody? What if there was a third person in the alley that night?”
“Why wouldn’t he tell us that?”
“Because he’s protecting them.” Bennie turned to the laptop and started searching through the video files that Martinez had turned over to them.
“But who? Why?” Lou rolled his chair over, peering at the laptop.
“I don’t know.” Bennie scanned the directory for the video files, locating the one from Yearling Street, around the block from Dunbar. There had only been one, and she and Lou had watched it together, just to see if there was anything relevant, but there hadn’t been.
She clicked the file, and a dark and grainy videotape popped onto the screen, showing a deserted city street around the corner from the alley. There was only sparse traffic on Yearling, which was one-way, and all she could see were blurry headlights in the darkness and the outlines of the cars, with only poor resolution. It was hard to see the sidewalk because there was only one streetlight providing any illumination, and Bennie assumed the other streetlights were broken.
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