Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  “She was a lovely girl, bright and lively, full of love, she was,” said Mrs. Cullen.

  “And do you remember when she met the defendant?” asked Dalton.

  “Oh, yes, I do, of course I do. She was head over heels. So happy she was, my little girl. So full of life and love.”

  I could have stood and objected at that point. I could have yelled out “Hearsay” and the judge would have sustained my objection, and the love that Leesa Dubé told her mother she felt for my client could have been erased from the record, but what kind of idiot would do something like that? So I sat on my hands, and I let Mrs. Cullen have her say. Yes, Leesa was in love with François, yes, their wedding was storybook, yes, they were both excited about the baby, yes, everything was going so well. But of course François worked late hours at the restaurant, and of course there were the inevitable problems with money, and yes, of course, Leesa did feel abandoned and depressed after the baby came and François was less and less in evidence at their apartment.

  “And then,” said Mrs. Cullen, “she found out about the affairs.”

  “What was her reaction when she found out?”

  “What do you think? She was devastated.”

  Of course she was.

  “And what did she do when she found out?”

  “What do you think? She kicked the slime right out of the house and filed for divorce.”

  Of course she did.

  “Objection to the epithet,” I chirped.

  “Sustained,” said the judge.

  “Please try not to label the defendant a slime, Mrs. Cullen,” said Mia Dalton.

  “I’ll try,” she said, “but it will be no easy task, Ms. Dalton, because he’s a slime if ever there was one.”

  Of course he is.

  Every murder trial has two questions: How and Why. When the answer to How is strong, when five people and a video camera catch the defendant take out a gun and pop the deceased, who the hell cares about the Why? But when the How is based on a mess of circumstantial evidence, as in the François Dubé case, suddenly the Why becomes powerfully important. Which explains why Dalton, ever the artisan, was holding the How for later and leading her case with Why.

  After Mrs. Cullen testified about the deteriorating relationship between her daughter and her son-in-law, after she testified about the acrimonious divorce proceedings and the fights over Amber, after Mrs. Cullen was able to vent all the bile from her spleen, Dalton turned to me and said, “Your witness.”

  There was so much I was ready to ask Mrs. Cullen, about her strained relations with her daughter, about how her daughter would never have confided in her about a lover, especially a bad boy like Clem, about her utter ignorance of what actually happened on the night of her daughter’s death. There was so much ammunition. I stood up, stared at Mrs. Cullen, and leaned forward as if readying to unleash the furious fusillade of my cross-examination.

  “I am so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Cullen,” I said finally. “No questions for this witness.”

  I have learned from our first president that sometimes retreat is the most aggressive strategy. She was the grieving mother, she had taken on the burden of the young granddaughter, she could do my client no good up there on the stand. Get her off, as quickly as possible, and move on, that was my plan. And as a side benefit, there was a little message to the twelve and two alternates who mattered. I am not going to ask her any questions,I was telling the jury, because nothing that she said is of any import to the meat of the case. Nothing she can say makes it more likely that my client killed his wife.

  As Mrs. Cullen climbed down from the stand and made her way out of the courtroom, Dalton stood and said, “Prosecution calls Darcy DeAngelo.”

  Of course it does.

  She looked quite tasty as she walked down the aisle, Darcy DeAngelo, one of the women who’d had an affair with François. She was a sturdy woman, with her hands tightly clasped and a thin, pretty face, and she was dressed for court, a modest skirt, low pumps, her hair pinned up. She made quite the tasteful impression, though probably not the one Dalton would have liked. If Mia Dalton had dressed her, she would have worn a black bustier and high-heeled shoes with straps that climbed her thigh, she would have had long, clawlike nails and makeup smeared bright, and she would have looked like she had just come in off a late-night shift on South Street. But no such luck for Dalton, although it might have been a nice sight to see.

  As Darcy DeAngelo was sworn in, I took a quick look at the audience in the courtroom. A high-profile murder case always draws a nice crowd, and this was no exception: a few reporters, an artist trying to get my jawline right, the usual gang of time wasters finding their entertainment in the criminal courts. And then a more interested crew: the Cullens and their entourage; Detective Torricelli, sitting alongside Mia Dalton at the prosecution table; and my old friend Whitney Robinson III, keeping tabs on everything.

  It wasn’t much of a story, Darcy DeAngelo’s story of the affair. She worked under François in the kitchen, that she would end up under François in the bedroom was only to be expected. Commercial kitchens are like the bathhouses of the culinary set, bubbling pots of stock, prep guys with big knives, Wellfleet oysters, duck confit, earthy black truffles, demiglace, oui, oui. Late nights, after the crowd had gone home and the doors had been locked, sitting at the zinc bar François had imported from France, drinking champagne at cost, feeling the exhausted exuberance of two comrades who had just survived another night of the gastronomic wars. And she didn’t say it on the stand, but I could bet it was atop that very same bar that their affair was consummated. I have it on good authority that champagne and zinc are the two primary ingredients of Viagra.

  “Mr. Carl,” said the judge after Dalton had led Darcy DeAngelo through the recitation of her affair with my client. “Do you have any questions?”

  I did, actually, and I must admit that during most of her direct, I had been playing them out in my mind. “Do you like Mexican food, Ms. DeAngelo?” “Yes, actually, I do, Mr. Carl.” “I know this place on Thirteenth Street, supposed to be excellent.” “I’ve heard that it is.” “Do you think, Ms. DeAngelo, you can join me for dinner there on Saturday night?” “Oh, I think I can, Mr. Carl.” “Call me Victor.” “Okay, Victor. And please, call me—”

  “Mr. Carl,” said the judge impatiently. “Do you have any questions for this witness?”

  I stood, buttoned my jacket, looked at the pleasing figure of Darcy DeAngelo on the stand. The affair was a problem, absolutely, but I couldn’t deny its existence, and the witness, in her direct, had made it seem almost banal. Banal adultery was good, banal adultery is not an incentive for murder, simply an incentive for more and better adultery. There was one moment that had caused a tremor, when she testified that François had told her, “I’ll never let Leesa take my daughter from me, never.” Not good, absolutely, but in it came, over my useless objection, and there wasn’t much I could do with it. I could ask her if she ever saw violence in François, I could ask her if he was a tender lover and a tender man, I could try to use François’s adulterous lover as a character witness, but that seemed a little unseemly, didn’t it?

  “No questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

  “All right, Ms. DeAngelo, you are excused,” said the judge. “And I assume, Mr. Carl, at some point in these proceedings you’re going to ask a question or two.”

  “I haven’t needed to yet, Judge, but I’m guessing that eventually Ms. Dalton will come up with something in this trial that’s actually relevant to the murder.”

  “I’m sure she will. Next witness, Ms. Dalton.”

  “The prosecution calls Arthur Gullicksen to the stand.”

  This was trouble, totally expected, but trouble still. Arthur Gullicksen was an out-and-out shark, with three rows of pointy teeth and a shiny gray suit. Normally these are traits I greatly admire and do my best to emulate, but Dalton wasn’t calling Gullicksen to the stand to show off his bite.

  Beth sto
od up as soon as Dalton stated the name. “Can we approach, Judge?” she said.

  “Will this take a while, Ms. Derringer?”

  “I suspect it will,” she said.

  “Let’s have a recess, then. Fifteen minutes. Lawyers in my chambers.”

  “Mr. Gullicksen, the prosecution’s next intended witness,” said Beth when all the lawyers, along with the clerk and the court reporter, had been wedged uncomfortably into the judge’s chambers, “was Leesa Dubé’s divorce attorney.”

  “And your point is?” said the judge.

  “In light of that unique relationship,” said Beth, “we believe it necessary to limit the bounds of his testimony.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said the judge. “Mr. Gullicksen will not be able to testify about his privileged communications with the deceased. It would all be hearsay anyway. Is that satisfactory, Ms. Derringer?”

  “As a start, yes, Judge. But we’d also like to limit any testimony that can be seen as the fruits of those privileged and hearsay communications.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, we would like the prosecution to be barred from asking Mr. Gullicksen about the pleadings in the divorce case, as they would necessarily be based on statements you have already barred.”

  “Interesting. Ms. Dalton?”

  “The pleadings are public records, Judge,” said Dalton calmly, “and we intend to introduce them not to show the truth of the allegations within but as proof of their very existence and of their effect on the defendant’s state of mind.”

  “But, Your Honor,” said Beth, “some of these allegations are so inflammatory as to be unduly prejudicial to our client.”

  “What exactly are we talking about here, Counselor?”

  “There was an allegation of harassment, of infidelity, of failure to pay child support, all of which had not yet been litigated at the time of the murder, and so no legal determination had yet been made.”

  “I see,” said the judge.

  “And there was also a rather spurious allegation of physical abuse of both Mrs. Dubé and the couple’s daughter, lodged by Leesa Dubé against her husband, along with a request for a restraining order.”

  “Yes, I do see.”

  “Your Honor, there was never any evidence presented in the divorce proceedings to support these allegations. They are entirely unsubstantiated, unduly prejudicial, and based solely on the hearsay statements of the deceased. Their introduction would unfairly inflame the jury and irrevocably taint these proceedings against our client.” Beth reached into her briefcase, pulled out numerous copies of a thick memorandum. “There are cases that support our position, and I have briefed the issue.”

  “Anything in this jurisdiction on point?”

  “Not directly, Judge, but there is a case from Alaska that is startlingly similar.”

  “Which would be useful if we were trying this case in Nome. Ms. Dalton?”

  “I understand Ms. Derringer’s anger. These are hurtful accusations that would upset anyone, especially if untrue. Which is the whole point here, Judge. Mr. Carl, in his opening, seemed to indicate that the Dubé divorce was amicable, which is absolutely false. This was a brutal, no-holds-barred fight for money and custody, with the direst accusations being thrown about.”

  “And you believe the nature of the proceedings is an important part of the defendant’s motive?”

  “A crucial part, Judge.”

  “What will Mr. Gullicksen be testifying to?”

  “The allegations in the divorce case coming from both sides and his observations of Mr. Dubé’s reaction to his wife’s accusations.”

  “He wasn’t pleased, I take it.”

  “No, sir, he was not. In fact, threats were made.”

  “This is why I stay away from family court, criminal trials are so much more civil. And what would you have Mr. Gullicksen limited to testifying about, Ms. Derringer?”

  “The weather?” said Beth.

  “Okay,” said Judge Armstrong. “I’ve heard enough. I will read your memorandum, Ms. Derringer, because I so enjoy your writing, but I can tell you all now, I am inclined to give Ms. Dalton a free hand here. I, too, took note of Mr. Carl’s characterization of the divorce proceedings in his opening. He said the Dubés were working it out. The jury has the right to see exactly how. I will instruct the jury not to consider the truth of the accusations, only their effect on the defendant, but that’s as far as I will go.”

  A few minutes later, as we waited in the courtroom for the judge to finish reading Beth’s memorandum before he could dismiss it outright and rule against us, Beth was still fretting over Gullicksen’s testimony.

  “Calm down,” I told her. “It will be all right.”

  “He’s going to kill us,” she said. “I don’t care how the judge instructs the jury, once they hear the claim of spousal and child abuse, the jury will never look at François the same again.”

  “How about you? Do you see him differently?”

  “I know it’s a lie.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know,” she said, steely voiced.

  “Then maybe the jury will be able to tell it’s a lie, too.”

  “The judge is getting it wrong,” she said, “flat wrong.”

  “That’s what judges do, but we’ll be okay. Maybe we can turn this whole thing to our advantage, build some sympathy for François.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve been doing some research. That year, four of Gullicksen’s other clients made the same claim of physical abuse by their spouses. It was a standard ploy in his practice before he was sanctioned for it by the bar association.”

  “You have the proof?”

  “The pleadings are in my bag, along with the sanction. The language in each case is startlingly similar.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the judge?”

  “And spoil the surprise? No, this cross-examination should be fun, me going after Gullicksen, shark to shark.”

  “You think you’ll draw blood?”

  “Oh, I hope so, but it doesn’t really matter. This is all just the preliminary fencing. None of this really matters.”

  “Then what does?”

  “Sonenshein,” I said. “Everything depends on little Jerry Sonenshein. You want to worry about something, worry about him.”

  49

  Horace T. Grant stood on the corner in front of Tommy’s High Ball, his chin up, his creased face creased with concern. It was not a good look for Horace. His natural expression was one of repugnance, disdain, his features were generally etched with a sweet scorn for the general stupidity of the world. I watched him a moment as he worriedly fingered his bow tie. I almost felt something for him then, some sort of empathic pity, before I beeped the horn and he saw my face in the window and his normal derisive expression returned.

  “You get lost, boy? Seems like I been standing here since Truman was president.”

  “The judge held us longer than I expected.”

  “Did you tell him I was waiting? Did you tell him his inconsiderate lethargy was seriously inconveniencing an upstanding member of the community? I’m an old man, I don’t got time to waste.”

  “Probably less than you think. I’ll tell him next time.”

  “You do that. Remind him he works for us, not the other way around.” He bent his ancient frame to fit into my car. “Now, where we going? You found us a shaman this time, or a conjure man, or any other of your garden-variety frauds and tricksters intending to feed us smoke and mirrors and tell us squat?”

  “We’re going back to Madam Anna.”

  “That old scarecrow? Why we going to waste any more time with her? I’d just as soon stick a hot poker in my ear as listen to her screech again about my shoes or that there spirit world she’s in touch with.”

  “She called me,” I said. “We set up a meeting.”

  Horace T. Grant leaned back, stared at me for a long moment. “How’d you get that one-eyed w
itch to call you?”

  “It was funny, actually. Out of the blue, an L&I inspector paid our Madam Anna a visit. Would you believe she didn’t have a business-privilege license after all?”

  “Shocking,” said Horace T. Grant.

  “The inspector, in the course of his writing out the violation notice, mentioned my name. It turned out that I successfully defended this same inspector in a DUI case just last year. Funny how that works, isn’t it? When she called, I said I would tell her how to take care of the violation notice, so long as I learned what I needed to learn about the girl.”

  “I must then say, I am sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For calling you a less-than-useless piece of seagull doo.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “See, I can admit when I am wrong. Takes a big man to do that, but here I am. You still a piece of seagull doo, and you still pretty much useless. But not less than that, no, sir, not less than that at all.”

  It wasn’t long before we were back in that maroon room in Madam Anna’s apartment, candles burning on that pale blue table, the yellow symbols dancing around us as if alive. We were waiting again, that seemed to be Madame Anna’s method of operation, make the stiffs wait so long that when she finally does appear, it seems like a deliverance from on high. Horace’s black porkpie hat sat in front of him on the table.

  “How’s this?” I said, showing Horace my thumb-twiddling technique. “I think I have it down.”

  Horace took a look, raised his gaze to the ceiling. “Lord, save us from amateurs.”

  Just then the far door opened, and Madam Anna, in her shimmering green robe, entered the room, accompanied by a skinny man in a plain black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie. The man had long arms, yet still the sleeves of his jacket reached his knuckles. He looked, the man, with his long arms and hunched shoulders, as if he had just come from burying the dead. The two sat across from us and stared for a moment. We let them.