Guilt

by John Lescroart

  'She might have helped him plan it, Abe. Now she's defending him for it. It's not that far-fetched.'

  'Then you'll have to explain why we didn't charge her, too.'

  'Because there was no proof of conspiracy. We just couldn't arrest her without…'

  Glitsky sipped the juice, giving her time to hear herself, to wind down. This was the last-minute panic to bolster a case that he'd seen dozens of times.

  'It sucks, doesn't it?' she asked.

  'Insurance,' he said. 'Juries tend to understand money.'

  'You think?'

  'It's your decision.'

  Jenkins sighed. 'Something tells me it's her, Abe.'

  'You don't need motive. Amanda. You might just want to let it go, prove the facts.'

  A long pause, then, 'Okay,' and then a click and a dial-tone.

  No hello, no goodbye. Trial time.

  Across town in his apartment, Wes Farrell sat at his Formica kitchen table, which was littered with yellow legal pads, manila folders, three days' worth of newspapers, a manual typewriter, four coffee mugs, and a thick three-ring binder that he'd divided into sections labelled Evidence, Argument, Witnesses, and so on.

  Each of these sections was further divided into subsections, and each subsection contained color-coded tabs in a particular order. Farrell had been living with this binder for the past six months and by now felt he could wake up and put his finger on anything he wanted in pitch darkness.

  Bart was under the table and the clock radio, which had been keeping him company with old rock 'n roll, suddenly broke into Jingle Bells. Immediately, he reached over and turned the dial and thought he'd found another soft rock station when he realized it was Mary Chapin Carpenter telling her lover that everything they got, they got the hard way.

  Somehow, he couldn't find the will to turn it off. He'd been consciously avoiding country music since he and Sam split, but this song, intelligently invoking passion and spark and inspiration, was ripping him up. Sitting back, he ran his hands through his thinning hair, then reached for one of the mugs of tepid coffee. He forced down a swallow.

  His eyes roamed the empty apartment – the same blank walls, thrift-store furniture, the same space.

  He'd called Sam twice after the first big fight and they'd had a couple of bigger ones after. And now Thomasino had ruled that Diane Price was going to be allowed to testify after all, and Christina was going to take her part, and Sam would probably be in the courtroom, counselling her.

  Shaking his head to clear it – this was going nowhere – he flipped off the radio. He and Sam were finished. Pulling his typewriter through the debris, he thought he'd put this negative energy to some good use by working on some notes for his opening statement, but as he reached for his legal pad, he had to move the morning Chronicle, and The Picture hit him again.

  Jesus, he thought, could it be?

  Aside from the strategic disaster the photo represented, he was having trouble overcoming his own sense of personal betrayal. Though Mark and Christina had both denied that anything untoward had taken place between them, the fact that they'd met at Mark's house, at night, alone, without telling him about it, was more than unsettling.

  It had thrown him back on his own demons.

  This was the real reason for the tantrum he'd thrown at them this morning before they went to court. This wasn't just another trial for him, where he'd have to pump himself up with some second-hand, third-rate rationalization that his actions were relatively important.

  It was far more personal – a last opportunity, dropped into his lap by a benevolent fate, finally to do something meaningful with his life. With the responsibility and the commitment to Mark's defense, something had already changed inside himself, motivating him to summon the discipline he needed to lose the extra weight he'd carried for years, giving him confidence to try a new face-softening mustache, a crisp and stylish haircut. He'd present the new, improved Wes Farrell to the world, and to that end had bought five new suits (one for each day of the working week), ten shirts, ten ties, two pairs of shoes. Perhaps these changes weren't fundamental, but they indicated that his image of himself, of who he could be, was changing. He even started vacuuming his apartment, cleaning up his dinner dishes on the same day that he ate off them. Unprecedented.

  This trial was going to be his last chance. It was life itself, a test of all he was and could be.

  He had to believe.

  And then this morning he'd opened the newspaper, and in a twinkling the foundation seemed to give – psychically, it shook him as the earthquake had. And, following that, he'd sat at this table trying and failing to ignore the other signposts on the trail that had led them all to here – the party at Dooher's, Mark's decision to bring Christina on as a summer clerk, Joe Avery's transfer to Los Angeles, which had pre-ordained Joe and Christina's break-up, Sheila's death, and now, finally, the two of them – Mark and Christina – nearly united.

  Viewed from Farrell's perspective, the progression was linear and ominous.

  He tried to tell himself that it didn't necessarily mean what it could mean.

  Wes knew Mark, who he was, what he was. And Mark could never have done what he was accused of. It was impossible.

  Wes wasn't religious, but Dooher's innocence was an article of faith for him. If he didn't know Mark, he knew nothing. This was why, as the preparation for trial had uncovered enough unpleasant assertions about Mark to make even Farrell feel uncomfortable, he had never truly doubted.

  Assertions were just that, he had told himself time and again. They weren't proven. People, often with axes to grind, would say things.

  Farrell had tried to look objectively at all this alleged wrongdoing, and came away convincing himself that it was all smoke and mirrors. There was absolutely no evidence tying Mark Dooher to any other murders or rapes or anything else.

  But now there was Christina. She was a fact, as was her connection to Mark. And worse, because of her the seed of Wes's own doubt had germinated. He closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind. A beautiful woman, no question about it. He himself was not immune to the power of beauty – what man was? But that did not mean his friend had killed to have her.

  Farrell kept trying to tell himself that Mark's lifelong luck had delivered Christina to him at the moment he needed her most, after his wife was gone, for whatever comfort and hope she could give him.

  But suddenly, after last night, this was a hard sell.

  'Christina, this is Sam. Please don't hang up.'

  'I won't.'

  'I argued with myself all day about calling you.'

  'I kissed him good night, Sam. That's all there was to it. This whole media frenzy is insane.'

  'But you know you're… with him.'

  'I represent him. I'm his lawyer.'

  'That's not what I mean. I know. I knew back… when we were still friends.'

  'I'm sorry, I have no comment.'

  'Okay, that's all right. I don't need a comment. But I just had to try to tell you – because we were friends, because you do know so much about the psychology of rape – that you and Wes are both wrong about Mark Dooher. I can prove-'

  'Sam, stop! You'll get a chance to prove everything you want to at the trial.'

  'That won't prove what I'm talking about. I'm telling you – sit and talk to her, you'll be convinced. She's telling the truth, she's-'

  'I'm going to hang up now, Sam. Mark didn't do that. He couldn't have done that.'

  'Why are you so blind? Why won't you even consider it?'

  'Goodbye, Sam.'

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Farrell was running on pure adrenaline. He'd slept less than five hours, but this was precisely the moment that all the nights of insomnia had been in service of.

  He reminded himself that the trial was simpler than life – all he had to do here was refute the prosecution's arguments, and Mark Dooher was going to walk. He could do that in his sleep.

  In California, the defense has
the option of delivering its opening statement directly following the prosecution's, where it has the general effect of a rebuttal; or it can choose to wait and use its opening statement to introduce its own version of events, its case in chief. Farrell chose the former.

  He didn't believe he was going to get surprised by any prosecution witness. He knew the direction he was going to take – deny, deny, deny. And he wanted to prime the jury, at the outset, that there was reason to question every single point Jenkins had raised.

  He'd thought it out in detail. He would begin casually, standing beside Dooher at the defense table. He would not consult any notes – his defense was from his heart. He wouldn't use a prepared speech. His body language would scream that the truth was so obvious, and he believed it so passionately, that it spoke for itself. By contrast, Jenkins had stood delivering the rest of her opening statement for the better part of the morning, consulting her legal pad over and over, laboriously spelling out her case in chief.

  Farrell sipped from his water glass and stood up.

  'You've all heard Ms Jenkins's opening statement. She's given you a version of the events of June 7th that she says she's going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no way she can do that because those actions of Mr Dooher that she got right did not happen for the reasons she contends, and the rest of them she simply got wrong.

  'I'm going to strip this story of Ms Jenkins's sinister interpretation, and give you the facts. On that Tuesday, Mark Dooher purchased champagne and brought it home because he was a loving husband. He made a phone call from his office to his home on the afternoon of June 7th, and asked his wife if she would like him to come home early. He made a date with her, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. After nearly thirty years of marriage, Mark and Sheila Dooher were having a romantic interlude. A date.

  'Before he got home, his wife took a dose of Benadryl because she suffered from allergies. She helped herself to a glass or two of champagne. Sheila Dooher was forty-seven years old and she was neither senile nor dim-witted. She could make her own decisions, and did, on matters of what she ate and drank. She had been taking the menopause drug, Nardil, for over a year. Many times, in front of many witnesses, she drank alcohol within this timeframe. Several witnesses will testify that Sheila Dooher was skeptical of her doctor's recommendations to avoid certain foods and alcohol. Tragically, it looks like Mrs Dooher was equally careless about mixing drugs.'

  Farrell sipped again from his water glass, slowing himself down. Jenkins hadn't objected once; all eyes were glued to him. He was rolling.

  'What happened next? The Doohers had a late lunch. Nothing more sinister than that. Sheila Dooher went up to her bedroom to take a nap. She was tired, and she took a sedative, her husband's chloral-hydrate.

  'Ms Jenkins has told you that Mark Dooher gave her the chloral-hydrate. Rubbish, absolute rubbish. There is not one witness, not one shred of evidence that even suggests that this is the case. Ms Jenkins says it is so because she needs it to be so to convict Mark Dooher. She cannot prove it because it never happened.'

  Jenkins now did get up, objecting that Farrell was being argumentative.

  Farrell supposed he was, but knew Jenkins had made the objection, as much as anything, to throw off his rhythm. It wasn't going to work. She was sustained by Thomasino and Farrell moved out from the desk now and went on, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth so the jury could see what a good guy he was – magnanimous at this silly interruption.

  It also gave him his third opportunity to repeat the sequence that had led to Sheila's death.

  After which: 'And what were Mr Dooher's actions after his wife had gone upstairs? Well, he did not set the burglar alarm in his house. A prosecution witness, Mr Dooher's next-door neighbor Frances Matsun, will tell you he then reached up and appeared to be doing something with the light bulb over the side door. Mr Dooher does not remember this. Perhaps there was a cobweb on it – he doesn't know.'

  'Next he drove to the San Francisco Golf Club. Now you'll remember that Ms Jenkins made rather a big issue of the fact that Mr Dooher belongs to the Olympic Club and on this night chose not to go to his own club's driving range, but rather to a public range. It is going to be for you to decide how big an issue this was. But I will tell you that Mr Dooher is a personable man…'

  'Objection.'

  'Sustained.'

  'I'm sorry. Mr Dooher has many business contacts at his club, and he didn't want to have to be…' he paused, smiling now at the jury, including them in the humor '… personally interactive. He wanted to spend the time working on his golf swing without interruption.'

  'The golf pro at the driving-range shop will testify that Mr Dooher bought two buckets of balls and sometime later returned with two empty buckets. He will also testify that Mr Dooher and he discussed golf clubs and corrections to his swing and exchanged other pleasantries – in short, that Mr Dooher's actions appeared completely normal.'

  Farrell shrugged in tacit apology to the jury for the time this was taking. He was on their side and all must agree that this was clearly a waste of everyone's time.

  'When he got home, Mr Dooher did the dishes and drank a beer, after which he went upstairs and discovered his wife's body. Horrified, he punched up nine one one. We will play the recording of this call for you and again, you can decide if the voice you hear is believable or not.'

  'But we are not finished yet. After the police came to begin their investigation, Mr Dooher cooperated fully with Inspector Glitsky' – and here Farrell stopped and theatrically gestured across the courtroom – 'who is the gentleman sitting there at the prosecution table. He gave a full and voluntary statement and answered every question until Inspector Glitsky had no more to ask.'

  Farrell deemed this a reasonable moment to pause. Going back to his table, he took another drink of water, glanced at Dooher and Christina, and turned back to the jury box.

  'Now, as to some of the other allegations and alleged evidence the prosecution has put in front of you – the tainted blood sample, the knife with Mr Dooher's fingerprints on it, the surgical glove found at the scene, and so on – we are at a disadvantage. We can't explain everything. That's one of the problems with being innocent – you don't know what happened. You don't know what someone else did.'

  'Your honor,' Jenkins said. 'Counsel is arguing again.'

  Thomasino scowled, which Farrell took to be a good sign. He had been arguing, no doubt, but Thomasino had allowed himself to get caught up in it, and resented being reminded of his lapse.

  Still, he sustained Jenkins's objection and told Farrell to stick to the evidence.

  Farrell met some eyes in the panel. 'I'm going to say a few words now about motive. The prosecution has told you that Mr Dooher killed his wife to collect an insurance policy worth one point six million dollars. This is their stated motive – I urge you to remember it.'

  Farrell went on to explain that the defense would disclose all financial records of Mr Dooher personally and those of his eminently solvent firm. He was nearly debt-free, his 40IK money, fully vested, amounted to over $800,000, savings accounts held another $100,000. He owned his home nearly outright and it had most recently been appraised for over a million dollars. In short, while one point six million dollars was not chump change, so long as Mr Dooher continued with his regular lifestyle and did not plan to take up cruising the Aegean in a fully crewed luxury yacht, he didn't need any more money.

  Farrell spread his hands. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution cannot prove that Mark Dooher had a motive to kill his wife because he had no motive. The prosecution cannot prove he poisoned his wife because he did not. They will not prove he is guilty because he is innocent. It's as simple as that.'

  'At the end of this trial, when you see that the prosecution has not proven these baseless accusations, I will ask for the verdict of not guilty to which my client is entitled.'

  For lunch, Dooher – mending fences – took them all to Fringale, a tiny bistro a couple of
blocks from the courtroom. They were at a table in the back corner and Wes, desultorily picking at a dish of white beans with duck, didn't seem to be responding positively to the gesture.

  By contrast, Dooher was in a celebratory mood, enjoying a double order of foie gras with a half-bottle of Pinot Noir all for himself. Hell, he wasn't working – he was spectating.

  Christina, oblivious to the attention she was receiving from the other patrons and their waiter (her water glass had been re-filled four times), had forgotten Sam's call and the kiss and was enthusing over Farrell's performance. 'You know, Wes, I believe you could make a living at this.'

  'It was a great statement,' Dooher agreed. 'You put all that in your nine nine five.' This was a motion that Farrell had earlier filed under California Penal Code section 995 that there wasn't sufficient evidence to convict Dooher. 'I can't believe Thomasino let this turkey go on.'

  Farrell kept his head bowed over his food, his shoulders slumped. Anyone seeing him would have trouble identifying him as the showman who'd worked such wonders in the court less than an hour before. 'It's a long way from over, Mark. You'll notice I did gloss over a few of what, from our perspective, are non-highlights.'

  Christina put her fork down. 'What do you mean?'

  'I mean the hole in the fence at the driving range, blood missing from Mark's doctor's office, Mark's fingerprints on the murder weapon…'

  Dooher was concentrating on his little toast points, spreading his foie gras with perfect evenness. 'You hit all that.' He took a bite, savoring it. 'You said we couldn't know, that was the problem with being innocent. It could have been your finest moment.'

  But Christina was staring at Wes, something else eating at her. She'd never heard him use this tone before, and it worried her. He must still be upset about the kiss.

  She knew that Wes had been angry yesterday, but Christina had assumed that his fury would blow itself out. But now she wondered if it went deeper. She reached over and touched his hand. 'I want to tell you something,' she said quietly.