by D. W. Buffa
“How long has this been going on?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“You’re not getting any sleep at all, are you?”
Biting on her lip, she grabbed my hand. “I’m all right,” she insisted. Peering into my eyes, she tried to convince me it was true, but before she could say anything, she started to cry.
I tried to comfort her as best I could. “Everything is going to be all right. Nothing is going to happen to you,” I promised.
She held me as tight as she could, her body tense and trembling, gasping for breath between her sobs. After a while her fingers loosened their grip around my neck and, laying her head on my shoulder, she started to breathe normally.
“Sorry,” she said as she sat up and wiped away a tear. “I don’t know why I did that. I feel fine, just fine.”
“You don’t have to lie to me about this,” I told her. “There’s something wrong, and we have to deal with it. You need to see a doctor.”
I helped her up, and with my arm around her waist we climbed the stairs and went back to bed. She lay with her arm across my chest and her face next to my neck, and until the first rose-colored light of morning I held her while she slept, listening to her soft, peaceful breath, and never once closed my eyes.
Jennifer drove me to the courthouse a little before nine under a seamless blue sky. The streets in the city were jammed with cars and the sidewalks were crowded with brisk-walking men and women hurrying to work. The air was crisp and clean, filled with the sunlit smell of summer, and Mt. Hood, miles away, seemed to be just the other side of the river.
She passed the courthouse, turned the corner, and pulled over next to the park. Whatever had happened to her during the night had to have been an aberration brought on by sheer exhaustion.
She was fine now; there was nothing wrong. She looked at me with that same mischievous self-confident sparkle in her eyes as she leaned back against the door, waiting for me to reach over and kiss her goodbye.
“You’ll see the doctor today?” I reminded her as I started to get out.
She dismissed it as unimportant, but finally promised that she would. I stood watching her drive off, and found myself wondering if she really would. It was the first time she had ever told me anything I did not quite believe.
Twenty-five
_______
The sound of his name still echoing in the hushed stillness of the crowded courtroom, Morris Bingham stepped quickly to the bench. Always pleasant, always polite, he glanced at me, and then at Cassandra Loescher. Neither the defense nor the prosecution had anything to bring before the court. A brief nod told his clerk she could bring in the jury.
While we waited, I turned to Danny and admired the way he looked, all dressed up in a dark blue suit and tie. “You’re looking very sharp today, Danny,” I assured him.
He sat with his shoulders hunched forward and his hands plunged between his legs. He looked at me with a bashful smile and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said, letting it out.
Under the watchful gaze of several hundred strangers, the jury came in, wearing solemn faces and a dignified air, twelve normal people who seemed to have no hesitation about deciding whether someone else would live or die. Some of them stood waiting while the others squeezed past them to get to their places in the jury box. I looked down at the table and ran the palm of my hand over the smooth leather surface of the attache case Jennifer had given me.
“It’s very nice,” said a voice on my right. “It looks brand-new,”
Cassandra Loescher said. She leaned closer. “I’ll bet I know who got it for you.”
The jury was seated and Bingham greeted them by reminding them where we had left off and what was coming next.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, we finished with the opening statements. Let me remind you again that what the attorneys say in their opening statements is not evidence of anything. The only evidence you are to consider is evidence introduced by the testimony of witnesses. This morning, the prosecution will begin its case by calling its first witness. Ms. Loescher, who is the prosecutor in this case, will examine each witness she calls by asking that witness specific questions. This is called direct examination. When she has finished asking questions of her witness, Mr. Antonelli, the attorney for the defense, may, if he wishes, ask questions of his own. This is called cross-examination.
At the end of the prosecution’s case, the defense will have an opportunity to call witnesses of its own. The defense will then ask questions first and the prosecution will be allowed to cross-examine.”
Pausing, he tilted his smallish round head slightly to the side in the attitude of someone about to impart something of particular importance.
“There will be a time—and you witnessed several occasions during opening statements—when an objection will be made either to a question that is asked or an answer that is given. These objections raise issues of law, issues which it is my responsibility to decide. Sometimes you will hear me sustain an objection; sometimes you will hear me overrule an objection. You should not assume that these rulings mean that I have in any way formed an opinion about the merits of this case one way or the other. You certainly must not assume that I have any feelings either of an-imosity or partiality toward either of the lawyers. Just because I disagree with an argument made by one lawyer or the other does not mean that I think he or she has the weaker case.”
He let them consider the meaning of what he had said while he arranged some papers he had brought with him. “Ms. Loescher,”
he asked, looking up, “is the prosecution ready to begin?”
She was wearing a blue print dress. Her hair was pulled up from behind her neck and stacked on top of her head. “Yes, your honor,” she said as she rose straight up from her chair.
“You may call your first witness.”
She turned her head toward the door at the back of the courtroom. “The prosecution calls Sharon Arnold.”
In her early thirties, with long black hair and dark, flirtatious eyes, the first witness had worked as Quincy Griswald’s judicial assistant for a little over four years. She had found his body in the parking structure, slumped against his car.
“How did you happen to be in the parking structure at that particular time?” Loescher asked in a calm, steady voice.
One leg crossed over the other, Sharon Arnold waited until Loescher’s eyes left the jury and came around to her. “I didn’t have my car that day. I left it at the dealer’s that morning for servicing. Judge Griswald was giving me a ride.”
With her hand on the railing of the jury box, Loescher tried to fill in the gap. “Were you going to meet him at his car?”
The question was met with a blank look. Then, when she realized what she had left out, she went on as if she had not forgotten a thing. “We left the office together, but when we reached the door to the outside, he asked me if I’d go back and get something he wanted to work on that night at home.”
Quincy Griswald had not been the only judge to depend on his clerk to keep track of where everything was and to make certain everything was done on time. The clerks ran the courthouse, and after enough years doing it some of them knew more about the law than did the judges for whom they worked. It made sense that Griswald would ask her to go back for the court file he wanted: He would not have known where to look had he gone himself.
Loescher remained next to the jury box, at the end opposite the witness stand. Each time she asked a question, the faces of the jury turned toward her, and then, when she was finished, swung back to watch as Sharon Arnold gave her answer.
“And so you went back to the office to get the court file he had asked for. Approximately how long did it take from the time you left him at the doorway until you found him?”
She was used to deciding things quickly. “Just a few minutes,”
she answered immediately.
Without moving any closer to the witness, Loescher stepped away from the jury box until sh
e was standing directly in front of her. “Please,” she cautioned, “take your time. Try to be as precise as you can. When you say ‘a few minutes,’ how many minutes do you mean?”
While she worked for Quincy Griswald, Sharon Arnold had been in court as often as the judge, sitting below him on the opposite side of the bench from the witness stand, a model of administrative efficiency. She was not used to explaining herself to anyone, and she could not quite hide her annoyance.
“Well, I don’t know—five minutes, ten minutes—something like that.”
Loescher took two steps closer, raised her head, and gave the witness a glance that was like a warning shot across the bow. This was not Griswald’s courtroom and she was a witness in a murder case, not a pampered judicial assistant who could make a lawyer’s life miserable anytime she chose to do so.
“Please consider your answer carefully,” she said, taking another step toward her. “Would you say it was closer to five minutes or ten?”
Arnold recrossed her legs and began to fidget with her hands.
She sucked in the sides of her cheeks and struck a pensive pose.
“I had to go all the way back down the hallway to the elevator. I remember it took a long time to get there. Then the office door was locked of course, and I had to unlock that. The folder was in the file drawer of the judge’s desk. Then I locked the door and … I suppose it must have been closer to ten minutes before I got to the garage and found him, lying there, all that blood all over him …”
Now in control, Loescher moved back to her preferred position next to the jury and led her witness through the story she wanted her to tell. She had found Quincy Griswald bathed in blood and knew as soon as she saw him that he was dead. She dropped the file she had been sent back to get and ran screaming into the courthouse. Two uniformed security officers followed her back to the garage and the body she had been the first to find.
I was far more interested in what she had not seen than in what she had.
“Have you ever seen this man before?” I asked as soon as it was my turn to examine the witness. Smiling at Sharon Arnold, I stood behind Danny, my hand on his shoulder.
“No, I don’t think so.”
My hand fell away from his shoulder and I moved slowly to the front of the counsel table. Gripping the edge behind me, I leaned back against it, one foot crossed over the other.
“You didn’t see him in the garage when you first found Judge Griswald?” I asked casually.
“No.”
“You didn’t see him anywhere in the garage when you went back there with the two officers?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see him anywhere in the courthouse, lurking around, when you were first leaving with Judge Griswald?”
“No.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I stared down at my shoes.
“You’ve never seen him before today, have you?” I asked, glancing at her from under my brow.
“No, I don’t think so.”
I lifted my head higher. “Can you think of anyone who would have wanted Judge Griswald dead?”
It was automatic, the other side of the insistence that we never speak ill of the dead: the blind assurance that despite the fact that someone killed them, no one could possibly have wanted it to happen.
“No, of course not.”
I raised my eyebrows, then lowered my head and walked the few steps to the jury box.
“You’re aware, are you not,” I asked, turning suddenly toward her, “that a lot of people—including Quincy Griswald—wanted Calvin Jeffries dead?”
“Your honor!” Loescher shouted as she sprang from her chair.
I held up my hand before Bingham could open his mouth. “I’ll rephrase the question. You worked very closely with Judge Griswald, didn’t you?” I held her eyes in mine and refused to let go.
“Yes, I did, for four years.”
“And in the course of that time—working that close together—
you came to know quite a lot about him, didn’t you?”
She did not hesitate. “Yes.”
“And you knew quite a lot about the way he felt about other people, including other judges, didn’t you?”
Loescher was still on her feet, watching intently. Bingham had both arms on the bench, peering down at the witness.
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t like Calvin Jeffries, did he? He didn’t like him one bit, did he?”
“Your honor?” Loescher insisted.
His eyes still on the witness, Bingham held up his hand. “No, I’ll allow it.”
“No, he didn’t like him.” I started to ask the next question, but she was not finished with her answer. “I think he was a little afraid of him, to tell you the truth.”
“Afraid of him? In what way?”
“Intimidated might be a better way to put it. Judge Jeffries seemed to have that effect on a lot of people.”
“So he wasn’t sorry, shall we say, when Calvin Jeffries was murdered?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” she replied, quick to correct the impression she was afraid she might have left.
“He wasn’t grief-stricken when Calvin Jeffries was dead?”
She did not want to answer and was content to let her silence speak for itself.
Cassandra Loescher had sat down. She tapped the erasure end of a pencil while she watched, ready to object again.
“You worked for Judge Griswald a little more than four years, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So you weren’t with him twelve years ago when he handled a criminal case in which the defendant was Elliott Winston, were you?”
“Your honor—relevance?” Loescher inquired, turning up her hands.
“It’s relevant to the defense’s theory of the case, your honor,”
I said, as if that were any answer at all.
“And beyond the question of relevance, your honor,” Loescher went on, “it’s beyond the scope of direct examination.”
Bingham looked at me. “Your honor, the prosecution established the employment connection between the witness and the victim. I’m simply exploring the scope of the relationship.”
“Then please do it as quickly as possible and then move on to something else.”
“During the time you did work for him,” I asked her, “did you ever hear him mention the name Elliott Winston?”
She thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t recall that he did.”
“You’re sure?”
“Was he the one who Judge Jeffries’s wife was married to?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
A knowing smile crept over her mouth. “He did say something once, but not about him, not directly, that is. He was angry with Judge Jeffries about something. I don’t know what. And he said he wondered if Jeffries’s wife would have married him if she’d known he was as crazy as her first husband was. That’s when I think he used that name—Elliott Winston.”
“So he thought Elliott Winston was crazy?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I assumed it was just a figure of speech.”
I had no more questions, and Cassandra Loescher had nothing she wanted to ask on redirect. Sharon Arnold was excused and the prosecution called its next witness, one of the security guards who had gone with her back to where Griswald’s body had first been discovered. Short and to the point, his testimony added little to what had already been said. Certain he was dead, but afraid to touch the body, Arnold had left it to the guard to check for a pulse. The second guard followed the first and except to ask them each whether they had seen the defendant at the scene, I did not bother to cross-examine either one of them. Loescher ended the first day of testimony by calling the police photographer who had taken pictures of the body. Over my objection, the photos were entered into evidence and the jury was shown the graphic obscenities of a violent death.
Quincy Griswald, whose eyes had so often filled with anger, and whose mouth h
ad so often been twisted with rage, had a look on his face of puzzled innocence, as if he could not understand why anyone would want to bring him harm. I looked at that picture a long time before I gave it back to the clerk. All the years that had left their mark on his deep-lined features seemed at the moment of death to have faded away, and all the disappointments of his life vanished with them. He looked almost young again.
The next morning, Loescher called the coroner, who described the cause of death, and then called Detective Kevin Crowley, who had been in charge of the investigation. I was becoming more and more impressed with the way Loescher did her job.
Each witness was called in a perfectly calculated, completely logical sequence, their testimony part of a story told according to a strict chronology. She would ask the same question three different ways if it was the only way to make the details clear. And she wanted more than to describe it to the jurors. She wanted them to know what it was like to discover someone you knew stabbed to death; she wanted them to know what it was like for the victim in that instant when he knew he was about to die.
Wearing a dark brown dress and flat shoes, she stood in front of the jury, patient and attentive, listening as Detective Crowley reported how the police had apprehended the suspected killer.
“He had the knife in his hand when you found him?”
Short and stocky, with small quick-moving eyes, Crowley was a little too eager to answer. “Yes,” he said before she had quite finished.
“I’m sorry,” she said without any apparent irritation. “What was your answer?”
This time he waited. “Yes.”
“What did you do with the knife after you removed it from the defendant’s possession?”
“I put it inside a plastic bag, sealed it, and tagged it.”
Loescher had gone to the table in front of the clerk, where she picked up a large clear plastic bag containing a kitchen knife with a black wooden handle and a six-inch blade. She handed it to the witness.
