“Objection. Must we endure this catalogue of assumptions while we wait for Ms. Valiant to get to the point?”
The jury was mesmerized. Several people cast pitying looks at Rhianna. Even her parents were staring with stupefied expressions as if they thought there could be some truth in Jules’s twisted version of events.
Judge Tuttle ran a thumb over his chins. “Ms. Lamb may answer.”
“That’s not what happened,” Rhianna responded to the question.
“Really?” Jules gave her a stony look. “An innocent man was caught up in your confusion, and you don’t want to take responsibility so you cry rape. Isn’t that what’s really going on here?”
“No!”
“You thought you could change this pattern for yourself, but in the end your pathological disgust for sex with men got the better of you. Once again it destroyed your chances of a real relationship. Mr. Brigham is just one of a long line of men you’ve confused and disappointed. Isn’t that the truth you don’t want to face?”
“No. I was raped!” Rhianna tried to calm herself, but she was crying. “I told him to stop and he didn’t. He had a knife. He threatened me.”
“I know you want to believe that, but your mixed messages and your history of platonic friendships tell the real story, Ms. Lamb. I venture to suggest that you have been too embarrassed to seek professional help about your condition. And to complicate your dilemma, we live in a society that endorses virtue in unmarried women like yourself. Mr. Brigham himself was well aware of your innocence and valued it highly, as he will testify in due course.”
Like she truly regretted what she had to say, Jules shook her head. “You unwittingly toyed with a man who only wanted to cherish and protect you. Who wanted to marry you. In the heat of the moment, Mr. Brigham may have misjudged your reactions. That remains to be seen. However, you placed this respectable man in that position.”
“Objection.”
Rhianna wanted to shout, Now? You wait until now to object?
“Ms. Valiant,” the judge said in a warning tone.
Jules raked the jurors with a compelling gaze as though personally challenging each of them. To Rhianna, she said, “Get help, Ms. Lamb. Don’t destroy a man’s life because you have a hang-up.”
“Objection! Now Ms. Valiant is using the cross-examination to make her closing arguments!”
“Sustained.”
Jules did not even offer one of her mea culpa smiles. Staring at Rhianna, she said gravely, “It’s time to tell the truth. You hoped you could get over your problem enough to snag an eligible bachelor. But you find sex with men repugnant, and it would not have mattered who Mr. Brigham was or what he did. You would have felt the same way. Isn’t that true?”
Rhianna was silent.
“Yes or no, Ms. Lamb. May I remind you that you are under oath.” Sternly, Jules said, “I’ll repeat the question. Sex with men repels you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rhianna whispered.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Jules’s tone was not triumphant. She did not strut or gloat. Her eyes were eloquent, her face genuinely sad. She looked breathtaking. “That was a yes.”
Chapter Eleven
To destroying the witness without losing the jury.” Carl raised his glass.
Jules acknowledged the toast and drank with her team. “We’re not out of the woods yet, people.”
“You saw the jury.” Carl’s smile was smug. “They feel sorry for her. Sure, they think she had sex and didn’t like it much. But they also think that’s her problem, and we’re going to hammer that point home.”
Sid Lyle leafed through some notes on his legal pad. “I’ve located an expert witness on female sexual-aversion disorder. Dr. Virginia Zempel. She’s available.”
“Oh, yeah. We’re making sweet music.” Carl tilted his chair back and contemplated the view from their sixteenth-floor hospitality suite. “How are we doing on those other guys she never slept with?”
“We talked to the computer-geek boyfriend again,” Sid said. “Apparently she complained to him about guys pressuring her for sex. That’s one reason he never tried for second base himself. The joke is, we don’t even have to call these witnesses. Clay is doing it for us.”
“I’m loving it!” Carl beamed. “He drags these jerks onto the stand to prove she’s as pure as the driven snow and we’re going to nail them. They’ll be sharing how she’s a frigid tease who makes normal guys feel rejected. It’s not sexual history, because hey! She doesn’t have any.”
Jules stared into her wine and reminded herself that she had gone easy on Rhianna. She could have been a lot tougher and still owned the jury. But after all this she wanted to see Rhianna again, so she needed to leave a door open. She tried to tell herself that the outcome of this thing was by no means certain. Their defense was flimsy at best. But juries hesitated over a guilty verdict in rape cases if reasonable doubt could be established. Werner Brigham would not be sent down for a mandatory five-year term if they believed he was a bewildered but well-intentioned schmuck who had misunderstood what was going on. The fact that he’d proposed would weigh with the six middle-aged women on the jury, and every one of the men would empathize with a guy who had paid for an engagement ring and a fancy dinner and thought he would get more than a good-night kiss.
“The prosecution can’t pull anything out of the hat,” she said. “They’ve painted themselves into a corner with the virgin-victim strategy.”
Carl loosened his tie happily. “The only way we’re losing this is if our client fucks himself in the ass.”
“I’ll straitjacket him,” Jules said. “We can let him run off at the mouth a bit on the virtuous-woman issue. That won’t do us any harm. But if Clay goes for a narrative cross, we’ll be right in the danger zone.”
Sid nodded. “No kidding. We need for this client to keep it zipped up.”
“I’ll talk to his mother again,” Carl said. “If there’s one woman he pays attention to, it’s her.”
A couple of hospitality staff entered from the kitchen with more fruit and cheese and refilled everyone’s wineglasses. The team went on to dissect the plaintiff’s testimony some more, marveling that she had been so dumb as to get in the client’s car of her own volition, and poring over her police statement. Rhianna had claimed that Brigham threatened her with a knife. The cops had conducted a search for the weapon and come up empty-handed.
Rhianna had waited three long days before reporting the “rape,” and she had done all the wrong things: showered, burned her underclothing, and told no one what had happened. The subsequent forensic examination had turned up no DNA evidence or collateral physical injury; however, internal trauma consistent with rape was present.
Sagelblum had initially hoped that another male could be implicated in her physical condition so that they could claim their client had been falsely accused, probably for financial reasons. After all, she could have slept with anybody during those three days. However, Rhianna had spent that period holed up in her childhood bedroom at the home of her parents. Even if there had been another male in the picture, there was no opportunity for him to have seen her in private. The prosecution was sitting on a stack of statements concerning her movements for the days after the alleged attack. The stories were all consistent.
Jules had her own theory about Rhianna’s reactions. She hadn’t told anyone she was planning dinner with Brigham because she knew they would talk her out of going. In the end, admitting she had been raped was as good as admitting she had been foolhardy and paid the price. Instead, she must have spent those three days deeply traumatized and planning her next move. In desperation, after being stalked by a man for months, and then raped, she had decided to leave Denver and assume a new identity. When she confided in her parents, they had dug deeper and found out about the attack. They were the ones who initially phoned the police.
Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Lamb had believed they could stop their daughter from leaving town by convincing her t
o press charges. Jules could imagine them naïvely expecting Brigham to be taken off the streets and remanded in custody until his trial. Audrey Brigham had offered a settlement of five hundred thousand as soon as he was arrested. But despite her family’s unglamorous financial position, Rhianna had rejected the offer without attempting to negotiate for more.
Jules wished she had just taken the money and used it to buy herself a life. If Brigham had been a nobody without the means to hire a good defense team, Rhianna could probably have expected to see a conviction. A public defender would have ensured his client copped a plea. But Sagelblum was going to fight this thing all the way to the appeals court if necessary. Even if the jury brought in a guilty verdict, the case wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Jules picked up a small bunch of grapes and absently consumed a couple. One way or another, Rhianna was not going to escape Werner Brigham. The thought shook her, and she stared out at the city lights. Could she blow the trial without anyone noticing? Could she claim bad luck and a client who alienated the jury?
Jules choked back loud laughter. Carl wasn’t stupid. He had shown up to watch her cross-examination, and Jules knew he planned to make himself a fixture at her table until the verdict came in. He didn’t have to spell out his reasons. She would do exactly the same thing if their positions were reversed. As far as Carl was concerned, her cut-throat instincts were on trial. She had to prove her loyalty to Sagelblum by displaying a personal disinterest in Rhianna. If she seemed ambivalent, Carl would take over and go for Rhianna’s jugular. If she lost, there would always be questions, and if Audrey Brigham discovered what had occurred, Sagelblum would face a serious financial hit instead of the big payday Carl anticipated.
She had no choice, Jules thought. Whatever it took, she had to win.
*
The trial lasted for less than a week, and when the jury still hadn’t reached a verdict after two days, Rhianna had prepared herself for the worst. But when she finally heard the clerk announce, “Not guilty,” shock crushed her lungs all the same. She registered Norman Clay’s disappointment, her family’s anger and dismay, the embarrassed glances of several jurors, the jubilation at the defense table. But a strange numbness set in almost immediately, and the events of the morning took on a surreal quality. She felt incredibly calm and focused. Her one desire was to get away as fast as she could without having to speak to anyone.
“Let’s go,” she told her father before he could wind himself up. He was normally a patient man, but he had been pushed to his outer limits. Rhianna knew his doctor had increased his blood-pressure medication just before the trial commenced.
Shaking hands with the prosecutor, she said, “Thank you for everything, Mr. Clay. I hope we never find ourselves in these circumstances again.”
His relief was palpable. Rhianna supposed in her situation some victims would have harangued him.
“I’ll show you a way out of here to avoid the circus,” he said.
They left via a back entrance and as they drove past the district court a few minutes later, she saw Werner Brigham and his mother holding a press conference in front of the imposing white building. At their side, Jules Valiant stood with the rest of the defense team and various public-relations hirelings Rhianna recognized. These “family spokespeople” had been stage-managing media relations ever since the arrest, making sure to give the impression that their client was the “real” victim.
“They call this justice?” her father ground out from the driver’s seat. “It was a farce.”
“Don’t get started, Desmond,” Rhianna’s mother murmured. She always used his full name when she meant business; otherwise it was just “Des.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Rhianna said, “I won’t be staying tonight. I need to get back to my job.”
Her mother turned awkwardly in the front seat. “Darling, it won’t hurt to wait until tomorrow. I don’t think you should go anywhere today. Not after this.”
“I’m fine,” Rhianna said. “The sooner I get on with my life the better.”
“Your mother thinks it’s time you gave us your address,” Des Lamb said. “And I agree with her.”
Rhianna didn’t put up a fight. She had already decided it was wrong to keep them in the dark anymore. As the car slowed for a set of traffic lights, she took a notepad from her purse, jotted down the details, and passed the slip forward.
Her mother took it eagerly. “Is Kate Lambert your employer?”
“No, that’s my new identity. I’m employed by Bonnie and Lloyd Moss, looking after their baby.”
This comment earned an irritated grunt from her father. “We put you through college so you could work as a nanny.”
“Des, let it go.” Her mother stroked a soothing hand over the skin at the back of his neck.
“No! This is what that asshole has done to my daughter. I’m going to kill him.”
“Dad, I won’t be doing this forever, and the Mosses are good people. You’d like them.”
“So long as you feel safe, Des and I are fine with it.” Her mother cast a wobbly smile in her direction.
Rhianna studied her father’s profile. He was flushed with anger, and the rigid set of his mouth betrayed the emotions he was trying to hide. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid.
Carefully, she said, “Don’t worry about me. Oatman’s a safe place and I’ve even been learning how to shoot. You were right, Dad. It makes me feel stronger knowing how to handle a gun.”
Her father heaved a sigh. “Wonderful. My daughter now has to be armed because our wonderful legal system couldn’t put a nut behind bars.”
“You might not be able to get a flight out today,” her mother said, changing the subject in a thin voice. “They’re all overbooked these days.”
“That’s not a problem.” Rhianna had decided not to use her return flight. Brigham would expect her to head for the airport, so she had other plans. “I decided to cancel the return. I’m going to call Hertz now and arrange for a car instead. We can swing by their downtown office. It’s not far from Mimi’s place.”
“Get a medium-size,” her father said. “You don’t want to make that trip in one of those crappy compacts.”
“You’re going to drive all the way to Arizona?” her mother murmured weakly.
Tabitha Lamb viewed road trips as an invitation to disaster. If the unfortunate driver didn’t get a flat tire in the middle of the night on a lonely stretch of highway inhabited by a family of cannibals who lay in wait for breakdowns, she would make a wrong turn and end up in Wyoming.
Rhianna’s father snorted. “It’s not Mars. What are we talking about? Nine hundred miles?”
“Pretty close,” Rhianna said. “It’s a two-day drive. I’ll break the trip when I get to Grand Junction.”
“Oh, my Lord.” A maternal sigh.
Rhianna made the call to Hertz as her parents quibbled over the best route to take and where she should stop for food. “You guys can just drop me at the rental agency,” she said once she’d made the reservation. “I’ll pick up the car and go straight to Mimi’s to get my stuff.”
Her mother craned around. “You’re not even going to have lunch with us before you set off?”
“No, I better get going. I don’t want to be driving in the mountains after dark.”
“The mountains,” her mother echoed in horror.
“You know,” Rhianna mused aloud, “I think they shot some footage for the movie Deliverance up there.”
She exchanged a glance with her father via the rearview mirror, and they both burst into semi-hysterical laughter.
“I don’t know what you two think is so funny.” Tabitha Lamb’s tone was chagrined. “And on today of all days.”
The family fell silent.
Rhianna stared out the window at the familiar Denver skyline and felt her world falling in around her. If things had turned out differently, she could have come back here to stay. Maybe she could have returned to
the person she used to be and the life she’d once had. And maybe she could have had a partner.
Not anymore. It was over. The best she could hope for now was a future she’d never planned on, in a place that held no past for her. She would make it work. She had no choice.
*
“Do you have to leave right now?” Mimi asked, plainly aghast.
Rhianna zipped her suitcase and lowered it from the bed to the floor. She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s been three hours since they let him go. I need to get on the road before he shows up here.”
“Rhianna, the guy was just on trial. You can’t seriously imagine he’ll start stalking you again. Don’t you think he’s learned his lesson?”
“You’re assuming he acts like a normal person,” Rhianna said. “He doesn’t. You should have seen the way he looked at me after they read the verdict.”
“Okay, even if he is a nut, you’ve still got some time. I mean, won’t he be out celebrating. Isn’t that what assholes like him do when their rich families buy them a free pass?”
“I can’t take that chance.” Rhianna felt clammy just thinking about Werner Brigham sitting at a table, twirling that silver toothpick in his mouth. “When I was testifying…when I said what I really thought of him, you should have seen his face. It wasn’t just anger. There was something else. I can’t explain it. But he’s not going to give up, believe me.”
“Okay, so he’s obsessed and a weirdo. But your mom said all he could talk about when they put him on the stand was how much he loves you. I don’t think he’d actually try to hurt you.” Mimi flushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I know he did hurt you, but it sounds like he was confused, not that I’m making excuses for him. I mean—”
“Mimi!” Rhianna was astounded. If her closest friend in the world could be sucked in by Jules Valiant’s portrayal of Brigham, no wonder the jury found him not guilty.
“I just meant that maybe he’s had a wake-up call.”
“No,” Rhianna said patiently. “He wants to own me. Men like him don’t just give up and go back to watching Broncos games. They think they’re entitled to have whatever they want. And if they can’t have it, they make sure no one else can.”
Dark Valentine Page 13
