The Suspect

by John Lescroart

  But now, back in the van, she was whining again, still wound up and endlessly needy. He might have to try to talk her into taking some of the lithium, although it brought her down and got her off her high, when she’d get as boring as she was exciting now. She’d probably sleep for a couple of days if he did that, so he thought at least they ought to get it on one more time before she checked out.

  “I just want to get some more clothes,” she was saying. “I’m cold.”

  “Just use the blanket there, Kym. Here, let me wrap you up.”

  But she shrugged that off. “Too hot, too hot, too hot. Aren’t you listening to me? Plus it smells bad. What did we do with those clothes I got with Debra? Did I leave them with her?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”

  “You did too!”

  He shook his head. “You never brought them back here.”

  The suspicion was back in her eyes. Lately this seemed to be her fallback position with him. Not trusting him. When in truth he was the one providing for her—this ride, her food, her dope, her drink, her needs. But this was the thing, he knew, that made her so difficult at certain times and so kind of fascinating at others. You just never knew what her reality was going to be. And suddenly, now, she sat up, her stoned eyes flashing in anger at him. “You sold them, didn’t you? That’s what you did, Trev. You turned them back in at the store for the money.”

  “No I didn’t, Kym. You never brought them back. You left them at your aunt’s.”

  “I wouldn’t have done that. I liked those clothes.”

  “You said you hated them.”

  “I did not. You’re making that up.” But something about it seemed to strike her as possible, if not actually true, and she shifted gears in that infallible way she had. “Let’s just go up to the house.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? Nobody’s there. I’ve got my old clothes in my room, in my closet. I’m really cold, Trev. I’m not kidding. I don’t want to get sick.”

  “You don’t get sick from being cold. That’s an old wives’ tale.”

  “I don’t care about that. And I don’t believe it either.” She was patting her pockets, feeling around in the pile of blankets and other stuff on the mattress with her. “Where are my keys? You’re not the boss of me. I’m just going.”

  “Kym.” He picked up the blanket from behind her and tried to wrap it around her shoulders. “We can’t go up to your house. We just can’t do that.”

  She grabbed at the corner of the blanket and pulled it off her again. “Where are my keys? Did you take my keys, too?”

  “I didn’t take them. You gave them to me.”

  “So give them back now. Do you even know where they are?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where are they? You have to tell me. They’re mine.”

  “They’re ours, Kym. And they’re in a safe place. Can’t you leave this blanket over you, please? Just until you warm up. Then we can talk about it.”

  “But I want to go to my house and get my clothes.”

  “Kym. Your mother was killed there. Remember that? You said you’d never be able to go in there again.”

  “But I could now. My mom’s not going to…” Whatever the evanescent thought was, it had vanished. She sighed and said, “Anyway, you could come with me.”

  “I can’t go in there, Kym. I can never go back in there. Don’t you get that? If somebody saw me and knew that you were with me and then they got my fingerprints somehow, they might put me in jail.”

  “No! You can’t go to jail, too!”

  “I know. I know. But if anybody saw us there Sunday…”

  “Nobody saw us, Trev. It was in and out; I know the combination, we hit the safe, take the money…”

  “We should’ve taken all of it. And the gun, too.”

  “No! That would have really been dumb. I know my dad. He wouldn’t have known exactly how much he’d put in the safe, but he’d notice if all of it was gone. And we don’t need the gun. What do we need a gun for?”

  “We could have sold it someplace. And there was just so much more there, Kym, for the taking. Stuff they never even would have missed, I bet. But now that chance is gone forever. We should have got more when we could.”

  But then she had that faraway look in her eyes again, and she went silent, now reaching for the towel and pulling it tightly around her, smell or not. “I knew you wanted to go back. It’s so lucky you didn’t go back.” She reached out and touched his leg. “You didn’t, did you? Go back.”

  “Of course not, Kym. You know I didn’t. I told you that.”

  She recited the explanation as though she memorized it: “‘I stayed with Jen and you went to Jeremy’s and bought this weed instead,’” she said.

  “Right. With the money we got from the safe. And luckily I didn’t go to your house, ’cause whoever was there might have…I mean, I might have got in the way too.”

  “Like Mom did.”

  “Right. Just like that. But that’s why I can’t go back there now. They might think somehow I had something to do with your mother. Which I did not, Kym. I swear to God, I didn’t.”

  Kymberly nodded and nodded, until the movement became so pronounced that it turned into rocking. A tiny, frail humming started deep within her and in a few seconds had turned to a full-throated keening that Trevor had to muffle by pulling her against him and holding her to his chest, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair, whispering soothingly to her. “It’s okay, now, it’s okay.” And then, just as suddenly as the moaning had come on, it broke into a cathartic sobbing that wrenched at her chest and seemed to involve her whole body.

  “Don’t leave me,” she cried. “Please please please don’t leave me.”

  Trevor continued to stroke her back. “I never would,” he whispered close to her ear. “Never ever ever.”

  “Kym, this is Gina Roake again.”

  “How did you get my number?”

  “Your father tried to call you this morning on my cell phone, so the number’s on it.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “You always ask that, you know that?”

  “I’m sorry. Bad habit. It sounds like you’ve been crying.”

  “What if I was? My mother’s just been killed. I guess I can cry if I feel like it. Is that okay with you?”

  Gina thought that there was no winning with this young woman. Biting her tongue, repressing a sigh that she was certain would be misinterpreted, she summoned her most neutral voice and said, “I’m on my way back to your father’s hearing, and I have a question for you.”

  “I might not know the answer.” She said something else that Gina couldn’t pick up.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. I was talking to somebody else. What’s your question?”

  “When you talked to your mother on that last Sunday, did you tell her you weren’t going to school?”

  “No. Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just asking. Your father wanted to know too.”

  “Why do you always say, ‘your father,’ like it was this big formal thing? Why don’t you just call him my dad?”

  “Okay, Kymberly, your dad wanted to know what you’d talked to your mother…to your mom about. If it wasn’t about school.”

  “Money. To tell her I was going to need money.”

  “Wasn’t she sending you money?”

  “Yeah, but that was directly to the dorms. I told her I met some people and we’d decided to rent an apartment instead, so she should just send me the money directly.”

  “And what did she say to that?”

  “What do you think? That she wasn’t going to do that.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “The usual. Was I taking my pills? I shouldn’t leave the dorms. Blah blah blah.”

  “So that was the whole talk?”

  “Pretty
much. She had to go out as usual, so she cut it short.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She said she had an appointment.”

  “Did she say with who?”

  “No. It was just the usual. ‘I’ve got an appointment.’ Covers for everything.”

  “Kymberly,” Gina said. “Would you please try to remember if she said anything about who she was meeting. It might have been the last person to see her alive before she was killed. It might even have been her murderer.”

  Nothing again from the daughter. “She said she had an appointment, that’s all. Hey, is my dad there? Can I talk to him?”

  “He’s in a cell behind the courtroom right now, Kymberly. He left you a message that maybe you can come see him this afternoon during visiting hours. He’d like that.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said. “I don’t know. You can tell him I took one of my pills. I’m getting a little tired. I’ll see how I feel.”

  And without another word, Kymberly hung up.

  Gina sat at the defense table, waiting for Stuart to be brought in. Judge Toynbee had declared the lunch recess a little early, and now a long afternoon loomed before her. Though it shouldn’t have made any difference, she was acutely aware that the rooting section of her lunch mates had all gone back to their regular jobs. The fact that Dismas Hardy was going to try to get in touch with Wyatt Hunt and assign him to get some facts about PII and Bill Blair didn’t quite make up for the irrational feeling Gina had that she’d been abandoned. Ridiculous, she knew. She was a big girl. But the show of support in the morning had been unexpected and very nice. She glanced back. Debra Dryden was still waiting in the hallway because Abrams had subpoenaed her and she had to stick around. In spite of Debra’s strong and positive feelings for Stuart, to Gina she really didn’t feel like much of an ally. And Jedd Conley’s appearance this morning had evidently been token as well, since now there was no sign of him.

  On the prosecution side, however, the only evacuees were the morning’s two witnesses, Strout and Faro. At this very moment, Abrams was talking animatedly with Juhle, Clarence Jackman, and a couple of the uniformed cops who’d been out there all day. Suddenly, a general laugh broke out in the group, no doubt someone with a joke. Guys sure could find a way to laugh just about anytime, she noted. And, in fact, what wasn’t for them to laugh at? They sure didn’t have to prove much at this hearing; they were a united team; nothing was that serious anyway; it was a man’s world.

  Gina abruptly turned her back on the gallery, thinking fuck that noise. She wasn’t going to let herself get sucked into that negative thinking. She might be alone here, all right, but she was a damned competent lawyer who’d beaten many a man before. And, she told herself, this time she had the truth on her side. Okay, guys, she thought, I’m ready. Bring it on.

  THIRTY-ONE

  BY ITS NATURE, A PRELIMINARY HEARING tends to be short on narrative thread. There is no real opportunity for or tolerance of argument. In theory, the proceeding marshals and presents the evidence against a defendant in such a way that it speaks for itself. This structure, coupled with the probable-cause standard of proof, allows both sides to play a little fast and loose with witnesses and even, sometimes, with physical evidence, since no formal explanation of the relevance of the various elements of a case is required in advance.

  This would probably be good for Gina when it came time to present her own alternative theories of her case—the connection of Caryn Dryden to Kelley Rusnak and to PII, the inadequate police interrogations of alternate suspects with strong motives and into Caryn’s financial and personal lives, the rush to judgment on Stuart because he was the spouse—but it made it difficult to know how to deal with a prosecution witness such as Officer George Berriman of the Highway Patrol, a well-groomed, good-looking, friendly man on the sunny side of thirty.

  Over Gina’s continuing objections on relevance, Berriman’s testimony put into the record that Stuart had been upset when he’d been pulled over on the Friday night before Caryn’s death and that he’d said he was going up to the mountains for the weekend, because otherwise he might kill his wife, with whom he just had a bad fight. There wasn’t anything Gina could do. It was what it was. Not devastating, but very far from helpful. But she thought she could make a small point or at least put in a dig to Abrams.

  “Officer Berriman”—she stood again in the center of the courtroom—“in the course of your average working day, do you pull over many people and give them speeding tickets?”

  “Sure. That’s a big part of the job.”

  “And you’ve testified that Mr. Gorman was very upset when you pulled him over, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let me ask you this, officer. Do you run into a lot of people who are ecstatically happy that you’ve pulled them over to give them a speeding ticket?”

  A ripple of low laughter ran through the gallery behind her as Berriman told her no.

  But she barely waited to hear him say it before she all but waved him away with a curt, “No further questions.” Without moving, she looked up at the bench.

  The judge took the cue. “I think I hear a relevance objection from Ms. Roake. I’ll let it in for whatever it’s worth, which I have to say isn’t much.”

  Buoyed by Toynbee’s rebuke to Abrams, Gina went back to her table fighting to hold back any sign of smugness or confidence, but when she sat next to Stuart, she leaned over and whispered. “We’re now three for three, which makes them oh for three.”

  “Okay, at last you’ve convinced me,” Stuart said. “I’ll cut you your check. You’re hired.”

  Before calling his next witness, Abrams introduced as evidence the tape of the 911 call Stuart had placed after discovering Caryn in the hot tub. Gina of course had obtained a transcript of this with her discovery documents and was familiar with the actual words, but hearing it played back in the courtroom underscored even more dramatically the absence of any sense of grief. Stuart’s voice—calm, rational, detailed, matter-of-fact to a chilling degree—couldn’t have sounded less like a panicked husband who’d just come home to discover his wife dead.

  Abrams didn’t dwell on the tape, but called his next witness, Captain Allen Marsten from the Central Police Station, the first police officer on the scene, who did his own damage dealing as he did with Stuart’s attempted CPR on Caryn while she was in a state of full rigor mortis. His testimony was certainly relevant and gruesomely powerful, with him entering through the open door (in other words, Stuart hadn’t started trying to resuscitate his wife until after he had called 911 and then opened the front door), easily persuading Stuart to give up on the artificial respiration, describing the contorted position into which Caryn’s body had stiffened.

  Particularly effective was the wrap-up, which Gina knew was a preemptive assault on what would be her only argument—that Stuart had been so overcome with emotion after he’d discovered his wife in the hot tub that he had tried to breathe life into her even though it might have been apparently hopeless.

  “So, Captain Marsten,” Abrams said. “After the defendant stopped with his attempt at artificial respiration, what did he do next?”

  “Well, he stood up, pulled a towel over the body, and asked us if we’d like some coffee.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes. He said there was a fresh pot he’d made before he discovered his wife. Sergeant Jarrett and I both told him no thanks.”

  “Was the defendant crying or otherwise visibly upset.”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. What did he do then?”

  “He told us he could use another cup, and walked into the kitchen.”

  “Did he look back at his wife’s body at all?”

  “No, sir. He just went inside and poured himself a cup of joe.”

  Gina stole a glance up at Toynbee just as he allowed himself a piercing gaze at Stuart. Obviously, Marsten’s testimony, unadorned as it was, had made an impression on the
judge. He was looking at Stuart as though he’d never seen him before.

  After this strangely powerful lead-in, Abrams called Devin Juhle to the witness stand. His testimony, based to a large extent on her client’s own conversation with him on that first morning, was relevant and potentially damning.

  Over an hour and a half, it all came out. It began with Stuart’s direct testimony—captured on tape and transcribed—starting with the divorce ultimatum, Stuart’s various admissions about the troubles in the relationship, the financial ramifications of Caryn’s death, and the couple’s marital history, including his interviews with the neighbors who’d told him about the two domestic disturbance calls to the home. It went on with Stuart’s suggestion to Juhle about about the Vicodin upstairs and the 105-degree hot tub. Then Bethany Robley and her unwavering identification of Stuart’s car on the night of the event, plus the threats to her delivered on Stuart’s behalf by his own daughter.

  Gina objected that they couldn’t tie the alleged threat to Stuart, but…

  After that, Abrams backtracked to the warrant Juhle had pulled on the cabin and the havoc wreaked therein, talked about the discrepancies in the timing of the drive from Echo Lake, offered his own scenario of a more plausible late night/early morning drive from San Francisco to Rancho Cordova and back. Then Abrams fast-forwarded Juhle through to some of the details of the arrest, Stuart’s apparent armed flight down to a motel in San Mateo, the loaded gun in Stuart’s possession when Juhle broke in the door to make the arrest.

  In all, it was exactly the kind of narrative, from a highly skilled and experienced witness, that Abrams was prohibited from delivering himself. The prosecutor didn’t have to say “consciousness of guilt,” a formal legal construct that sometimes could possess the power to convict. His witness’s testimony eloquently delivered the message.