02 - The Guilty Plea

by Robert Rotenberg

  Raglan was gaining momentum. She talked about how Terrance reconciled with his family after Samantha charged him with threatening her, and how he was found not guilty of the charges. Raglan moved on to Samantha’s angry e-mails and voice mails and the contentious divorce proceedings. About the last few days before Terrance’s murder. The family court trial set to start on Monday. Terrance’s e-mail to Samantha on the Sunday night saying he’d accepted her offer and inviting her to come to his house.

  “And you will hear, ladies and gentlemen of the jury”—Raglan cranked her voice up a notch—“that Ms. Samantha Wyler, the accused, was right next door, with her eighteen-year-old neighbor, a boy named Brandon Legacy, left home alone by his parents on the hot summer weekend. The last person to see Samantha before the murder.”

  Raglan emphasized the word “boy.” Some of the jurors were nodding, now not feeling so shy about looking at Wyler.

  “And this boy, Brandon, will tell you that the accused was angry when she left, saying she was going to the victim’s house to ‘settle this once and for all.’”

  Raglan stepped out from behind the podium and walked to the center of the jury box, no notes in hand. Taking her time.

  “And you’ll meet the Wylers’ son, Simon. Only four years old. He won’t be here in person, thank goodness. But on videotape, talking to that gentleman, Detective Ari Greene.” She gestured toward Greene. “The officer in charge of this case, who’s worked on it nonstop since early in the morning of August the seventeenth.”

  Greene looked up from his note taking and nodded to the jury. Short and sweet. As they’d rehearsed it.

  “On that tape you’ll hear Simon talk about the night his father was murdered. Fortunately, he never saw what happened. But you’ll see the pictures. And let me tell you, they’re not easy to look at. Seven stab wounds. The victim, Mr. Wyler, his body left lying on the kitchen floor while his son was upstairs in his bedroom.”

  Raglan scanned back and forth across the jurors, like a slowly rotating spotlight.

  “Simon tells Detective Greene that his mother came into his room that night. That she was crying. That she told her son she wouldn’t see him for a long time.”

  Raglan went back to Greene, who handed her a slim folder. Inside was a photo of Terrance Wyler on the kitchen floor, his body slashed. Back at the end of the jury box, she looked at the picture as if she’d never seen it before. The jurors were watching her.

  “I’m only going to show you one photo,” she said, still holding it back from their view. “And I’m going to read the e-mail the accused sent to the victim on August twelfth, five days before the murder.”

  Greene glanced up at Norville. The judge was leaning forward.

  Raglan turned the picture and held it low for the jurors on the bottom row, higher for those on the top. Jaws dropped, as if on cue.

  At the far end of the jury box she put the picture down and reopened the file.

  “Here’s what she said in the e-mail.” Raglan spoke softly. Letting the power of the written words speak for themselves: “‘August 12. One week from the trial and now your lawyer amends her pleadings and asks for full custody. Says it’s not safe for Simon to stay overnight with me???!!! Who the fuck do you think you are? Just like you to stab me in the back. You want to go to war. Watch out. You’re not the only one with a knife.’”

  She finished reading and whirled toward Samantha Wyler, raised her arm, and pointed directly at her. “The Crown will prove that the accused used the victim’s own kitchen knife.” Raglan’s voice was loud. “Stabbed him seven times. Committed first-degree murder.”

  Pointing at someone in a public place is an extreme gesture. Combined with Raglan’s contained fury, the effect was powerful.

  Greene had an eye on Wyler, who had managed to look straight ahead the whole time Raglan was speaking. But now, with the finger directed at her, under the glare of all twelve jurors, she rotated her head in a slow, mechanical way, like an owl in no hurry to spy a noisy woodpecker, and she didn’t even blink.

  53

  “What’s wrong, Ted?”

  “Nothing.” Ted DiPaulo had tried to slip out of bed without waking Chiara. He’d checked the clock radio on his side table. It was three in the morning. “I’m not sleeping much. Happens whenever I’m in a trial.”

  “I can go home if you want.” She sat up, a pillow at her back.

  In the new year, Chiara, DiPaulo’s girlfriend—a word that sounded absurd given that he was turning fifty-one this year and she was fifty-three—had started spending the night at his house. Lauren had insisted that she was “cool with it,” but DiPaulo still felt awkward having breakfast together, the three of them in their pajamas. But that had nothing to do with his inability to sleep right now.

  “Please stay,” he said. “The first week of a trial is always the worst for the defense. We’ve had three days of forensics, fingerprints, blood splatter, photos of the dead body, the bloody knife, the towel it was wrapped in. Then Samantha’s angry e-mails and voice mails. It keeps piling up. When they played the videotape of the boy talking to Detective Greene, saying that his mother had been in his room that night, the jury looked at me as if I were some beast defending a monster.”

  DiPaulo was perspiring. Olive used to make fun of the flannel pajamas he always wore, and when Chiara finally spent the night, she’d laughed at them too. Poky, she called them, and Lauren agreed. It was nice to see his daughter and his “girlfriend” form an alliance. He was glad to be the butt of their gentle chiding.

  Maybe I should buy a lighter pair, he thought. The sweat layered on his shoulders and back. He walked to the window that faced his long backyard. His mind, as usual, was in overdrive. He always left the blinds open, since there was nothing back there but trees and the deep ravine at the end of the yard. It was what he loved most about the house, the sense of being alone. He could never imagine how people lived in those boxlike condominiums downtown.

  The sky was black, as if an enormous blanket had been thrown across it. Early February, the deepest part of the winter.

  “How’s Samantha holding up?” Chiara was at his side. He hadn’t heard her get out of bed. She slid her hand under his pajama top, letting in cool air.

  “She almost lost it yesterday,” DiPaulo said.

  “What happened?”

  DiPaulo peered out into the darkness for a long time before he spoke. “There’s a little cafeteria in the basement of the courthouse. It’s always overcrowded at lunchtime. This reporter, Zachery Stone, who works for the Sun, was in line and started pestering her.”

  “You told me you never took your eyes off her in court.”

  “I had to go the library to look up some cases. I rushed down and Sam was at the cash register, her face all red. Stone was right beside her. He’s a little guy, about half a foot shorter than she is.”

  “Oh, no.” Chiara ran her fingers up and down his spine.

  “She slammed her tray down and hissed at him, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Fuck off. Leave me alone.’” DiPaulo shuddered. “I got there just in time.”

  “He can’t put this in the paper, can he?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m worried about. Detective Greene was right behind them. He heard the whole thing.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Greene’s a quiet guy but I know what he was thinking: Looks like your client has an anger management problem.” DiPaulo’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he spotted a weak strand of light in the sky.

  Chiara was using her fingernails now. Almost tickling his skin. Not saying a word.

  “And you’re thinking, Ted—face it—he’s right. Samantha’s a very angry woman,” DiPaulo said.

  Chiara intertwined their fingers.

  “My first-year law school professor gave the best advice about being a trial lawyer: Forget the law. Make the judge or the jury like your client and they’ll always find a way to acquit.”

  “How do you do
that with someone like her?” Chiara asked.

  “Sam’s her own worst enemy. A loner. Socially awkward. More comfortable teaching adults how to read than dealing with people who are her equal. She comes across as cold, uncaring. Her emotions are all bottled up, and they explode. Doing stupid things like sleeping with that teenage boy. Raglan’s going to make the jury despise her.”

  Chiara unclasped their hands and rubbed the inside of his forearm.

  He heard a tiny click noise. “I think Lauren’s awake.” He kissed Chiara on the cheek and slipped silently into the hall.

  A sliver of light was under his daughter’s door. She must have heard him, because there was another small click and the gap under the door turned dark. DiPaulo and his daughter had been playing this little cat-and-mouse game since she was about four years old: Lauren reading all the time, DiPaulo trying to get her to sleep.

  He paused for a moment. Not sure what to do.

  “Lauren, you up?” He opened the door the tiniest crack. He heard her sniffle.

  “Kind of,” she said.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Okay.”

  The little light by her bed snapped back on. She’d been crying.

  The worst part about being on a murder trial was the toll it took on your family. As if for weeks and weeks you were living on the other side of the moon. Even when he was home, DiPaulo’s mind was elsewhere. Over the years the kids had learned to compensate. They’d say “We can take care of breakfast, or dinner, or putting the recycling out for pickup on Wednesday.”

  But with his son, Kyle, off at school, he’d had to leave Lauren alone so many nights. Despite her protestations that she was fine, that she had tons of homework and the revolving circuit of friends who passed through her Facebook page and their living room, he knew that for her as well, the big house felt lonely.

  He sat on the edge of her bed. “I know it’s a drag. I’ve been so tied up with this case.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “The trial will be over in a few—”

  “Lenny and I split up.” She threw her hands over her eyes and wailed.

  Lenny. DiPaulo searched in his mind for the name. He thought that part of her summer-school pack of friends included a Leonard. And he’d heard the name mentioned as part of the ever-long list of friends Lauren was “hanging with” most weekend nights. But he could never keep them straight. At some point it had occurred to him that Leonard’s name was popping up more than the others, but the thought had slipped away under the torrent of trial work.

  Watching her cry, DiPaulo felt as if someone had sliced open his chest and torn a piece of his heart out with a scalpel. He put his arms around her.

  “I didn’t tell you we were going out,” she said between deep breaths.

  “It’s okay.”

  “You were so busy with the trial, and …”

  He couldn’t remember holding his daughter this tight in the last few years.

  “Everybody knows about it.” She sniffled. “Lenny and Lauren. People liked making fun of our names.”

  DiPaulo loosened his grip. “When I’m on a trial, Friday’s the only night in the whole week I can really relax. Let’s go for sushi tonight. Just the two of us.”

  “But, Chiara—”

  “The one near Dovercourt that Mom loved. You can get your own spider roll.”

  DiPaulo’s wife had discovered the place a year before she’d gotten sick. Tokyo Sushi, tucked away in a grimy part of Bloor Street, was run by a young couple who worked seven days a week.

  “Chiara won’t mind?”

  “She’ll be happy about it.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” She reached under her sheets and pulled out a beat-up stuffed animal. It was a koala bear Olive had brought back from their Australian trip. “Sometimes I still sleep with this when I really miss her. I don’t like to talk about Mom, because I know it makes you upset.”

  DiPaulo stroked the bear’s worn-down ear.

  Lauren rubbed its legs. “Chiara’s great, Dad. But sometimes I miss Mom so, so much. It’s not fair.”

  He was holding her again. Rocking back and forth.

  “I’m sorry. You’re in this trial and everything. But Lenny was my first boyfriend.”

  “I’m the one who should apologize,” he said.

  Without a word, she slid over in her bed. He lay beside her, clicked off the lamp, and put his arm around her. The room was at the front of the house, and the light from the street filtered in through the corners of the curtains. DiPaulo found himself staring upward, knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep.

  His mind drifted back to the book he’d most loved to read to his daughter when she was a child. Over and over again. Madeline. How it made Paris come alive in her mind. Two lines were his favorite:

  And the crack on the ceiling had the habit

  Of sometimes looking like a rabbit.

  He felt Lauren’s head settle on his shoulder. As she slipped into sleep, DiPaulo’s mind wandered from the streets of Paris to Samantha Wyler in the courthouse cafeteria—her face contorted in anger—to Detective Greene’s knowing grin. A loop that would keep playing until the sun came up.

  54

  Forget TGIF, Jennifer Raglan thought, it was more like TGGIFF, as in Thank Goodness God It’s Fucking Friday. She looked up at the courtroom clock ticking toward ten and felt like a kid in school waiting for the weekend. One more day of this. She was tired but satisfied.

  They’d had three full days of evidence. The nanny, Arceli Ocaya, had been the first witness on Tuesday morning. Although nervous, she’d done well. The forensic officer, Zeilinski, came next. Despite her Polish accent, she was impressive. Raglan ended the day by passing around the bloody knife encased in a clear plastic box. Always good to send the jury home with something gruesome to think about.

  The next day, she’d called Detective Greene. He put in the bulk of the evidence: background about Terrance and the divorce, Samantha Wyler’s voice mails and e-mails to him, the late-night e-mail from Terrance to Samantha saying he’d accepted her offer, and her response that she was coming over. He ended with the videotape of himself and Simon building trains in the playroom at police headquarters. Good to send the jury home weepy.

  Yesterday was the boring stuff. All the other officers who’d been at the scene: the photographer, the artist who’d produced the scale drawing that sat on an easel situated so the judge and jury and lawyers could all see it, various scientists from the CFS—the Centre of Forensic Sciences—who’d tested blood and hair and fibers. An easy day for Raglan, who’d mostly just asked, “And what else did you find in your investigation?”

  Sitting quietly at his defense table, Ted DiPaulo had been almost invisible all week. He asked each witness a few perfunctory questions—enough so the jury wouldn’t forget he was there—flashed them his charming smile, but never objected, even when Raglan slipped into leading her witnesses. She sensed that he was holding his fire, waiting for the moment. Right now she had to get through this day and make it to the weekend.

  “The first witness for the Crown will be Dr. Arthur Burns,” Raglan said after the judge and jury were all settled.

  Burns, the pathologist who’d done the autopsy, was an arrogant man. He firmly believed that he’d never met anyone who was as smart as he was, and he usually found a way to work that bit of information into the first five minutes of every conversation. He had a wandering right eye that never seemed to focus on anything, so when you talked to him, he appeared to be looking away. It was disconcerting. And he was extremely short. Perhaps that’s why he loved to testify, because in the witness stand he was elevated two steps off the ground.

  Raglan had received his postmortem report a few weeks earlier and passed a copy to DiPaulo. It was straightforward. Seven stab wounds to various parts of Terrance Wyler’s body. Cause of death—blood loss.

  Burns scurried from his seat in the front row, an elf-like creature with a battered brown briefca
se under his left arm, and scooted up into the witness stand.

  “Dr. Burns,” Raglan said once he was duly sworn and faced her. He always stood, never sat. “I understand you are a pathologist with the Centre of Forensic Sciences here in Toronto and have worked there for twenty-three years.”

  “Yes.” Burns reached into his case and pulled out two thick folders. “I’ve done more than two thousand autopsies, testified in court more than four hundred times, for both the defense and the Crown. I’ve also appeared in courts and coroners’ inquests in every province in Canada, the Northwest Territories, twelve American states, and six other countries. I’ve prepared a copy of my curriculum vitae for Her Honor, as well as an extensive list of my publications. More than three hundred, translated into seven languages. I’ve provided copies of all these to the defense, naturally.”

  Without being asked Burns passed his thick résumé over to the judge. She recoiled, as if the pages were infected.

  “Doctor, if you don’t mind, please give it to me,” Raglan said. This was typical of Burns. The smartest kid in the classroom, but you had to control him. “I’ll pass it to the registrar, who can mark your resume as exhibits and give it to Her Honor.”

  The little man looked at the jury and shook his head, letting them know he thought this was a waste of time.

  “The Crown submits that based on his testimony and the materials filed, Dr. Burns should be qualified as an expert in the field of forensic pathology for the purpose of testifying at this trial.” Raglan sat down.

  She looked at DiPaulo and noticed a large stack of photocopied papers on his desk that weren’t there moments before. Raglan had assumed that DiPaulo would agree that Burns was qualified. Clearly he had something else in mind.

  “Defense counsel, any comments?” Norville didn’t even bother to look up from reading Dr. Burns’s résumé, which the registrar had handed to her. She too thought this was a nonissue.

  DiPaulo rose slowly to his feet. He waited until Norville looked up, an expression of surprise on her face.

  “You object to the doctor being qualified as an expert witness?” The judge sounded shocked.