So she used one of the tricks she had learned many years before, when the fighting at home was unbearable but she couldn’t leave the house and couldn’t keep from hearing it and didn’t dare speak up because it might draw the rage down upon her.
She sang.
Much later, she described how it worked. She sang silently to herself, out loud inside her head but not moving her lips, not even the smallest amount. The songs were her private mantra, leaping and spinning and dancing inside her head where no one could hear it except her.
The police bodyguards took care of her physical safety, but the songs took care of her heart. Warding off the outrage and the sadness and the dread, the song/mantras played on invisibly inside her.
This way, when they finally called her name and brought her into the grim-faced courtroom, and when they walked her down the aisle and sat her down in the witness stand, she wasn’t smiling anymore. But she still felt strong enough to tell them all about it, one more time.
Hour after hour after hour.
For the next three days she allowed Craig Richman to gently pull the details of every event out of her. She held fast to her memories when Donald Green stepped forward to retrace every detail from a different angle, trying to expose some uncertainty on her part, some conflict of fact, some aura of dishonesty.
Shortly after she had taken the stand she noticed that sitting forward on her witness chair was the only position from which she could actually see her father at the defense table. If she leaned back, the corner of the judge’s bench blocked Robert from her view. Not long afterward it turned out to be a handy detail. When the lawyers were called forward to the bench to quietly go over some technical detail, Tasha, sitting forward, felt eyes boring into her. Before she could stop herself she glanced up to meet her father’s piercing stare.
He silently mouthed something to her, steadily burning into her with his gaze. She felt the natural reaction of trying to read someone’s lips, but it was a response she immediately switched off. A little feeling of freedom burst through her as she realized that it didn’t matter what he was trying to tell her anymore; she didn’t have to figure it out. She didn’t even have to watch.
She just leaned back in the chair while the lawyers continued haggling at the bench. Her father was blocked from view, simple as that. Whatever little message Daddy had for his girl was lost with that single movement. She turned up the music inside her head and watched events play out before her as if they were some odd passion play that she could only hope would someday soon have very little to do with her life.
She made it through most of her testimony calmly. The mantra failed her only once, when she was led through the details of being hog-tied and hooded and left to lie on her mother’s bed while she listened to the thudding impacts vibrating the floor of the family room. Tasha felt the invisible wall that she had learned to hold up around her feelings turn to vapor and leave her raw emotions exposed. She broke down and sobbed quietly.
Finally the questioning paused long enough to give her time to recover her composure.
Then it began again.
At the end of the third day, after Craig Richman had finished laying out her story for the jury and Donald Green had gone back over it to try to cast doubt upon her testimony, working to give Robert Peernock that one little slice of reasonable doubt that had to be found somewhere, Richman got back up for the last time for a very short redirect examination. With it, he laid to rest once and for all any thoughts in the jury’s minds that Natasha Peernock had somehow conspired to set up her father for murder.
“Whether you know it or not”—Craig smiled at her up on the stand—“you’re quite the clever person.” He pulled out a pile of papers and showed them to her.
“Do you remember signing any of these documents?”
“No, I don’t”
“Do you know what these documents are?”
“They’re papers to release money for the funeral expenses.”
“You signed these documents in order to pay for your mother’s funeral; is that right?”
“Correct.”
“And you used an insurance policy to do that, at least that’s what these documents say; is that correct?”
“Yes,” she answered softly. Talking about her mother’s funeral seemed to turn off the music inside again. Now there was just the thick silence of the courtroom. She later spoke of feeling the jury’s stares on her skin. She could almost feel their thoughts flying through the room as they sized up every word she said. Is this true? Is that a lie? Do we believe her?
Craig seemed to feel their thoughts too. And he was ready to lead them to the answers.
“Your father, as far as you know at least, he wasn’t around to handle the insurance proceeds and to take care of the funeral and things like that; is that right?”
“Correct.” She kept her answers short and sweet, as Craig had told her to. Don’t confuse the jury with detail. Let the simple truths work on them.
“They came to you on July thirtieth to ask you to release your mother’s body from the coroner’s office so that she could be buried?”
“Correct.”
“Do you think that would be something that a husband would deal with as opposed to a daughter?”
“Objection,” Donald Green shot out. “Calls for a speculation.”
“Sustained.”
“But as far as you know, Father wasn’t around to take care of burying Mother?”
“Objection. It’s been asked and answered, Your Honor.”
“Overruled.”
“… Did you arrange to have your father go to Las Vegas and register in a hotel under an assumed name?”
“Objection, Your Honor. It’s argumentative.”
“Overruled.”
“Did you do that?”
“No.”
“Did you arrange to have your father get plastic surgery to change his face?”
“No.”
“Did you arrange the handwritten notes that were found in your father’s car that the jury will decide whether or not they have anything to do with this murder?”
“No.”
“Did you plant the insurance policies that were found in your father’s house that deal not only with you, but with your mother?”
“No.”
“That would be pretty clever, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you arrange to have your father at the house that night as opposed to any other night—reminds me of a Passover service”—he grinned, shaking his head—“Did you arrange to have your father at that house that night?”
Natasha: “No.”
“Did you arrange to have your father force-feed alcohol to you?”
“No.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
And with that, Tasha was finally excused. The rest of the day went by in a blur: being taken out of courtroom and hustled through the court building by armed guards, being driven back to Louise’s house.
Her emotions were in a shambles. There was no single feeling at that point, but among the mix was a small, quiet sense of simply being glad that Craig had laid it out for the jury so clearly. It had been completely unlike the last time on the stand during the civil case, where her father had been his own attorney and had managed to combine cross-examination with sneering insults and mockery. This time her portion of the testimony was kept simple by Craig Richman and dignified by Donald Green. This time she finally had the chance to tell it as clearly as possible.
And with that her participation in the four-year process of courtroom nastiness came to a close. As she left the building she felt hungry to rub the soiled energy off herself, to get away from anything that might remind her of the case.
She needed to be among young people who didn’t wear suits and who didn’t know about this awful case and who wouldn’t ask her the same endless, probing questions. The idea of dancing all night to very loud music tugged at her like the thought
of a hot shower after a long and bitterly cold day.
If any of the guys she ran into in the dance clubs should be crass enough to ask about her facial scars, she could always give them the old car-wreck story—and then ask if they had come there to dance, or what.
A Prosecution Witness: “May I have a drink of water?”
Judge Schwab: “Bailiff, get the witness a glass of water, please.”
Donald Green: “May I have a drink, too, Your Honor?”
Judge Schwab: “Certainly. Bailiff, please bring Mr. Green a glass of water, or some tea if he prefers.”
Donald Green: [mutters] “Actually, I was thinking of something a little stronger.”
CHAPTER
27
Victoria Doom found out that she was going to be the very last of the dozens of witnesses called by the prosecution. By the time her turn came, trial had been going for nearly two months and the case had dragged out for more than four years. Up to that point she had kept up with progress reports and with Peernock’s evolving alibi stories through phone calls to Craig Richman.
She had already become slightly acquainted with Craig Richman a few years earlier when he was a novice prosecutor in the Newhall DA’s office and when she worked for the public defender there. Now, as she drove to the courthouse early on the morning of her testimony, she thought back to the beginnings of their relationship. They had once squared off against each other on some case she no longer remembered. Before proceedings began, Victoria noticed that Craig had brought a little stuffed donkey into the courtroom and had it sitting next to his legal papers.
“What’s that thing?” she asked him.
“Oh, that?” he responded innocently. “That’s the Donkey of Justice, here to make asses out of your clients.”
She laughed and went back to her last-minute preparations before the judge came in, but later, after she had dragged out the proceedings to her own advantage, Richman leaned over to her and whispered that if she didn’t speed things along, the Donkey of Justice was going to crap on her case.
She had just laughed it off, but for a long time after that, whenever they ran into each other, she used to ask him how the Donkey of Justice was doing. He would always grin and say, “Just fine,” until one day he groused that some jerk had ripped off his Donkey of Justice and that now he was just going to have to get convictions on his own.
The memory of the little donkey story made Victoria smile and helped her breathe a bit easier as she headed for the DA’s office to check in with him.
“Craig,” she told him nervously, “Peernock keeps saying that I somehow set this thing up just to get my clutches on Natasha and to get at his money or something.”
“Don’t worry about that, Vicki, just keep your answers short and sweet. I’m the lawyer in this thing today, you’re just a witness. Lawyers are always the worst witnesses.”
“Yes, but the jury will know I’m an attorney. A lot of people hate attorneys. They want to believe any bad thing about us that you can think of. What if they accept his story that I’m some kind of a—”
“I’m telling you, trust me. And keep it simple. Don’t think you can improve upon my work by giving some kind of a speech. You’ll just make a bunch of little messes that I have to go back and clean up.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Craig. What if they decide to believe him and think that I’m actually behind all this? My God, this man twists facts like they’re made of Silly Putty.”
“Relax.” Craig grinned at her. “If you wind up being charged with any of these crimes, I promise I’ll tell the DA we’re friends. He’ll just have to get some other prosecutor to convict you.”
“Gee, Craig, thanks a heap,” Victoria grumbled. “I feel so much better.”
And so she was surprised and relieved when her time on the stand seemed to go without a hitch. Richman kept the questions focused on the legal aspects of Claire Peernock’s attempt to divorce Robert. He had Victoria draw out the details of the civil actions and probate actions pending in the family’s estate. Then he just finished up. Victoria was surprised that it was so simple.
As Richman sat down, Donald Green spoke up regarding the whiskey bottle that had been held in evidence since the day it was recovered from Claire Peernock’s car.
“Your Honor, in light of the fact that we have been in trial almost two months, I would certainly like to renew my motion to have that Seagram’s bottle opened up and maybe passed around.”
“Even though I’m a teetotaler,” Schwab replied, “I’ll take it under submission.”
Then Green rose to take his turn at her. So much for the easy part, Victoria told herself. If there was going to be serious trouble, if she was going to be accused of having been complicitous in Claire’s murder, it would surely come now.
But it didn’t. And Victoria couldn’t believe how easy her cross-examination was. Green basically just went back over her testimony, are you sure about this, are you sure about that. No accusations, no sly hints that she was the mastermind of Natasha’s tragedy and an evil manipulator who had controlled Natasha’s part in the conspiracy against her poor father.
She walked out of the building in a daze, accompanied by her former law clerk, Elke Schardt, who had since become a lawyer herself and taken over Victoria’s old office in Saugus.
“My God, Vicki,” Elke marveled, “did you see the jury?”
“Are you kidding? I was too nervous to look at them. I didn’t want them to think I was sucking up to them or something.”
“Well, I watched them the whole time. Their body language was incredible! Whenever Richman was speaking, they looked open and relaxed, but when Green got up to try to pick your testimony apart, their positions changed completely. They crossed their legs, folded their arms, they scowled. Some even looked in the other direction!”
“You think they like me, then?”
“Oh, hell, no. You’re an attorney. But Craig has them eating out of his hand.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
“He might actually get a conviction.”
“Sure, he might. But what if he doesn’t? I mean, what if the jury just doesn’t get it? What if they actually believe Peernock didn’t do this?”
“Well”—Elke smiled sweetly—“there’s always you ….”
The prosecution finally rested its case. Now, after four years of pretrial jockeying for position and nearly eight weeks of the prosecution phase of the trial itself, the defense of Robert Peernock was about to begin at last.
And Donald Green felt as if he were being led to his own execution.
Only days before the trial began, he had received a phone call from Mary Grace Ball, who had been running his office for years. She reluctantly brought news that a new complaint had been served by mail. Peernock was actually suing Green for malpractice while the trial was still in session. He was charging Green with having been bribed by the prosecution to throw the case. Now in addition to Green’s work on the defense phase of one of the most difficult trials he had yet had to face, he would somehow have to make time to plan his own defense against the very client he was trying to save.
Peernock was handling the malpractice suit as his own attorney, which gave him almost nothing to lose and a case that cost him next to nothing to pursue. If he somehow made his charges stick it could easily mean the end of Donald Green’s career, even though he was still in his thirties and had a new family to support.
And then, as if the gods of stress had decided to place a few bets on how much the Las Vegas attorney could take, another unforeseen element entered the mix. Mary Grace called again to tell him it appeared that someone had sent private investigators to find the exact location of Green’s hotel room in Los Angeles. She had received calls to the Las Vegas office from mysterious “investigators” who claimed to need Green’s hotel-room number because they had “important new information” that could only be given to him.
But they would not say who they were.
; Donald didn’t like paranoid thinking and hated to believe that his own client might try to get a mistrial by having his attorney drop dead at the last moment, but the accusations being leveled against him by Peernock did nothing to reassure him that his client might not resort to the same sort of thing he had been accused of trying on Victoria Doom and Natasha.
Green knew that any inmate with money can arrange to have someone on the outside killed.
Is this man that desperate? Green asked himself. Or am I just getting tired and picking up on everybody else’s paranoia? Could there be some natural explanation? But who else, he asked himself, would send unidentified “investigators”? It took effort to push the thoughts out of his mind.
Leaving the courthouse, Donald returned to the Mission Hills Inn, where he had been staying during the trial, feeling as if he had iron weights strapped to his shoulders. His wife, Samantha, was waiting up in the room, ready to handle his paralegal work for him and do whatever she could to get him ready to mount his case, but with this malpractice suit hanging over him, he hardly knew where to begin. Peernock was demanding the right to testify on his own behalf, despite the months of arguments that Green had given him against taking such a risk. Now the malpractice suit was a club in Peernock’s hand forcing Green to let his client have his way in order for Donald to prove that he was doing nothing to hinder the case. But he suspected that to allow Peernock to get on the stand and be subjected to Craig Richman’s verbal laser beam could amount to the same thing as simply throwing in the towel.
A Checklist for Murder Page 26
