The trick with every witness was to let them be their true selves. Warts and all. The jury would never like Samantha. At best, he could make them understand who she was, and in that context they might believe her.
He started by asking her about growing up in Cobalt, discovering her father dead at the service station, the scholarship to the University of Toronto. He moved on to her job at the bank, Nathan’s recruiting her to Wyler Foods, meeting Terrance, getting married, having a baby, opening their own store.
“Would you call your marriage a success or a failure?” DiPaulo asked. She looked down, placing her hands together, the way they’d rehearsed it. “The success was Simon. The failure was both of ours. Perhaps more mine. After our son was born I was working all the time at the new store. Not paying enough attention.”
DiPaulo waited until after the morning coffee break to start asking about Brandon Legacy. “Ms. Wyler, we’ve heard from the young man who lived next door.”
“Brandon.” As they’d practiced it, she crossed her arms in front of her. “I was at his house that night, it’s true. And he was right—the intimacy only happened occasionally. But that’s no excuse.”
They’d spent a lot of time coming up with the right word to describe the sex. “Intimacy” fit the bill.
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have let it happen. But I blame myself, one hundred percent. I felt more like a mentor than a—a … I don’t know what else to say about it.”
Wyler had hit the right balance between shame and bashfulness. They’d chosen the word “happen.” A good passive verb that made it sound as if sex with a teenager were a natural event, like a sudden thunderstorm, which mere mortals were hopeless to prevent.
“Let’s talk about your anger. Those e-mails and voice mails.” DiPaulo painstakingly played each voice mail and read out every e-mail. It took so long it became boring.
When he was done, Wyler uncurled her arms and put her hands to her side, to signal how defenseless she was to control her own emotions. “I admit it. There were days when the anger would overtake me. I’d write. I’d call. It was stupid. I don’t have an excuse to offer. They’re very embarrassing. I wanted some contact with my husband. Not to hurt him. But to be in touch.”
“Husband.” That was the word DiPaulo wanted. Let the jury see her as the woman left alone. Lonely but not murderous. They’d decided she’d keep her wedding ring on.
He filled in the rest of the morning with Wyler telling the jury about being with Brandon on the Sunday evening, playing video games, and then getting the e-mail from “her husband” saying that he’d accept her offer.
Samantha was unflinching in her self-criticism and hour by hour the atmosphere in the courtroom changed.
“What did you see when you walked into the house?” DiPaulo asked as his first question after the lunch break. This was the one part he’d been careful not to over-rehearse. It was critical that her testimony be authentic. Spontaneous. Juries knew when a witness was reading from a script.
Her eyes fluttered over DiPaulo’s head, seeming to look nowhere. “It was like that day my father was killed in our service station. The hydraulic lift broke. I was the one who found him. It was the same thing when I saw Terry on our kitchen floor. The exact same.”
A tear rolled down her cheek.
“My whole body tightened up.” It was taking all of Samantha’s effort to hold her head erect. More tears were falling but she ignored them.
Judge Norville proffered a box of tissues. “Would you like one?”
Wyler shook her head. She wiped the tears off with the back of her hand, as if she were shooing off pesky mosquitoes.
“I rushed upstairs to see Simon. I was crying. I thought my life was over. I was in shock. I wrapped up the knife and took it with me. And then I walked. A few hours later I was at the door of my family lawyer’s office and it was the morning. I don’t even know how I got there. That’s what I remember.”
DiPaulo hadn’t scripted his questions for this part. There was great value in moments of high drama in court to let them have a life of their own. Be confident, he told himself. Use your instincts.
He looked at the clock. It was 3:30. If he stopped now, Norville would break for twenty minutes and then Raglan would be squeezed. She could start her cross-examination at the end of the day or risk letting the jury go home with Wyler’s good performance as the last thing on their minds.
On the stand, Samantha looked vulnerable. Determined. This is as good as it’s going to get, his inner voice told him. “Your Honor, those are my questions.” He turned to Raglan before he sat down. “Your witness,” he said.
Norville looked at the clock. “We’ll take our afternoon recess.” She rose from her chair.
Jennifer Raglan shot to her feet. “Excuse me, Your Honor.”
“Yes?” Norville looked cross.
“If it please the court, I’d ask for a small indulgence. As you have probably noticed, my officer in charge, Detective Greene, hasn’t been with me since we came back into court after lunch.”
DiPaulo looked at the Crown’s table. He’d been so concentrated on Samantha he hadn’t even seen that Greene wasn’t there. Where’d he gone?
“He’ll be back in the morning,” Raglan said. “I’d prefer to start my cross-examination at that time.”
Norville raised her hands in objection. “Ms. Raglan. You’re experienced counsel. The jury is here and I don’t want to waste valuable court time.”
“Your Honor, this trial has moved along quickly.” Raglan was standing her ground.
“Mr. DiPaulo, what do you say to this?” Norville asked.
He didn’t know what Raglan and Greene were planning, but if he forced the issue, she’d insist that the jury be removed, then say to the judge something like “An issue came up when the defendant was testifying this morning, and Detective Greene is out investigating it. I can’t and won’t start until he reports back to me tonight.”
Norville would have to grant Raglan the adjournment. It would focus the jury on her upcoming cross-examination. Besides, jurors always liked leaving court early. Best to take the high road and score some brownie points at the same time.
“Your Honor, I really shouldn’t editorialize,” DiPaulo said, “but I suppose that since my client was such an impressive witness my friend might need some extra time to prepare her cross-examination.”
A few members of the jury chuckled. “The jury will disregard Mr. DiPaulo’s editorial comment,” Norville said with a snicker. “I appreciate seeing courtesy between counsel. Ms. Raglan is correct, we have all been working hard. We will start tomorrow morning at ten.”
Tomorrow morning at ten, DiPaulo thought, looking at his client alone in the witness-box. It was like watching his children walk out into the world. He’d done everything he could for Samantha Wyler. Now she was on her own against the formidable skill of Jennifer Raglan. Add to that Ari Greene. Where had the detective gone? What had he found?
64
It was the crunching of his boots on the snow that was so different, Ari Greene thought as he walked across the main street in New Liskeard. He’d spent most winters of his life in Toronto, where the temperature wasn’t this cold, nor the air this dry. Tonight, in this small northern Ontario town, it was minus forty degrees, the point where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet. The air had a dry snap to it, making his footsteps sound hard and treble, but clean.
No one up here seemed bothered by the temperature. “Ah, you get used to it,” the man at the gas station on Highway 11 had said at about seven o’clock when Greene pulled in to fill up his Oldsmobile. The guy didn’t even wear gloves.
“I hate the cold in Toronto—too damp,” a woman at the central stoplight in town told him. She didn’t even wear a hat.
The main street had an old-fashioned 1950s feel to it. It was all local merchants: a shoe shop, two women’s clothing stores and one men’s, a butcher, a barber, a jeweler’s and an electronics store, a bike shop,
a few restaurants. Not one chain store. In the window display of the travel agency, a beach umbrella was stuck into a pile of white sand. A number of southern vacation books were circled around its base. Cruise Vacations for Dummies was prominently displayed.
New Liskeard was across the lake from Quebec, and in the store signs and the talk on the street, there was an easy bilingualism about the place. So Greene wasn’t surprised when he spotted a bookstore named Le Chat Noir.
The store had a homey feel, with a touch of sophistication, including dark wood bookshelves, a well-preserved tin roof, and an Italian-looking café over to the side. At the checkout counter, a handmade poster announced that it was “P.J. Party, Reading Night.” Greene watched a parade of children and parents wearing long winter coats take them off to reveal that they were dressed in pajamas. Slippers were pulled from carrying bags and everyone sat on a round carpet in front of the fake fireplace.
Greene found a seat in the café and ordered an herbal loose leaf tea, which came in a small French-press glass pot. It poured easily without spilling. An improvement on the thin metal teapots in most Toronto restaurants that seem guaranteed to leak all over the place. He settled in and looked at the Carnegie library to his left, across the street.
He’d read the historical plaque staked on the snow-covered front lawn before stopping in at the café. After the turn of the century, Andrew Carnegie endowed libraries all over North America, and most shared the same classic architectural design—built with local stone, a wide front stairway leading up to a functional center hall.
With time to kill, he picked up a local newspaper, The Voice … of the Shores. man pleads guilty to removing road signs was the headline. Apparently an eighteen-year-old resident had been apprehended by the local constabulary, and a search of his bedroom had uncovered a collection of stop, yield, and moose crossing signs, plus a pile of hubcaps stashed in his closet. What a crime wave, Greene thought.
At about ten to eight a small stream of people walked out of the library, pulling their coats tight against the cold night air. All lights but one on the main floor were turned off.
Greene paid for his drink and bought a teapot for himself and, for his dad, a biography of Tim Horton, the late hockey player so well known for the ubiquitous coffee shops named after him. Horton, who was born in another Northern Ontario mining town, Timmins, was still a hockey hero up here.
Grabbing his coat, Greene slipped it on as he went outside. In the cold night air there wasn’t any wind, only the crisp sound of snow underfoot. Greene crossed the street as Lillian Funke, the librarian, was locking up. He recognized her from the bail hearing, when Samantha’s mother had pointed the woman out in court.
“We’re closed,” she said, startled by the sudden appearance of a stranger out of the dark.
“My name’s Detective Greene, from the Toronto Police Homicide Squad.” He pulled out his badge to show it to her. “I need to speak to you.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“This will only take a few minutes.”
She took a deep breath. “Couldn’t we talk tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid not. Can we go inside?”
Funke hesitated. “Sam obeyed her bail when she was here. She taught reading in the basement and went home with her brother, or she’d take the tri-town bus. Sometimes she even walked. Sam loves to walk.”
Even though there was no wind, it was so cold that Greene was getting chilled. “I have a search warrant.” He tapped his breast pocket. “I’d rather not have to execute it on the New Liskeard Public Library.”
Funke looked torn between her friendship and her role as a public servant. “Okay,” she said. “I should be more hospitable. It’s the northern way. Come on in and I’ll make some tea. What do you need?”
The main foyer was packed with books and posters and warmth. This would have been my refuge too if I’d grown up here, he thought. “I need Samantha Wyler’s library card.”
The librarian stepped back. “That’s confidential information.”
Greene smiled. “I couldn’t agree more. Like Samantha, I practically grew up in my local library. At Bathurst and Lawrence down in Toronto. I still remember Mrs. Calvert. She gave me Animal Farm when I was ten years old.”
“So you understand,” she said.
“I understand libraries and I understand privacy. That’s why I didn’t have the local police execute this warrant. I drove all the way up here so I could explain to you that this is different.” He held up the subpoena. “Ms. Wyler’s charged with first-degree murder. This could be crucial evidence. It might help her more than hurt her. I don’t know. All I can tell you is, you have to give it to me.”
65
Most defense lawyers would have their client on the stand for an hour or two for the examination in chief and pray that they’d survive the cross-examination, Jennifer Raglan thought. But not Ted DiPaulo. He’d had Samantha Wyler testify for most of the day yesterday. It was a brilliant strategy.
Raglan had been determined to dislike Wyler from the moment she hit the stand. But as her testimony went on and on, Raglan felt herself warming to this hard woman, with all her compelling contradictions. There was something lonely and vulnerable about Samantha. Of course, this was why DiPaulo kept her up there for so long. Why he went over every last bump in the road of her life, so that by the time he sat down and said to Raglan, “Those are my questions. Your witness,” it felt as if there was nothing left to ask.
This morning Greene was back and sitting at the counsel table. He’d done a twelve-hour round-trip and gotten back to Toronto at four in the morning. But you’d never know it. He looked as composed as ever.
Raglan knew the jury would be waiting for fireworks. Expect her to crack Wyler’s far-fetched story wide open. But Raglan knew that Hollywood-style Perry Mason moments never happened in a real courtroom. Wyler wasn’t going to break down and admit her guilt. Nor was anyone in the audience going to jump up and say, “She’s telling the truth. I did it.”
So where to start? Her goal wasn’t to cut Wyler’s story to shreds—but to poke a few big holes. Even one would do.
“Ms. Wyler, you stabbed your husband seven times, didn’t you?” She came out from behind the counsel table. Of course Wyler would deny it, but Raglan had to make it clear to everyone that the battle was joined right from the get-go.
“I didn’t kill my husband. He was dead when I got there.”
“You’re sure? No problem with your memory on that point?”
“I didn’t stab him.”
“Answer my question. Do you have a problem with your memory on that point?”
“No.”
“But you were in his house that night?”
“After he was killed.”
“Ms. Wyler, answer my question. Were you in the house that night, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“You went there to settle things once and for all. Didn’t you?”
“That’s what I said to Brandon. I wanted to avoid the divorce trial.”
“Conveniently, you were right next door.”
“Convenience had nothing to do with it.”
“But you were next door, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Raglan tried to make every question a leading question. Limit Wyler’s responses to either yes or no.
“And the first thing you saw was—”
“Before I saw anything, I smelled something horrible.”
This was something new. “You remember the smell?”
“Vividly.”
Raglan realized she’d made a mistake. Emphasized a piece of evidence that made Wyler’s story believable: that she walked in and smelled a dead corpse. Raglan needed to counterpunch fast. “You didn’t mention that yesterday when you testified, did you?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“You didn’t remember it?”
“I just … just didn’t think of it until now.”
Raglan
had to keep on the attack.
“But you do remember going up to see your son in his bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“And telling him you wouldn’t see him for a long time?”
“Yes.”
“You remember picking up the knife?”
“I wrapped it up in a kitchen towel. It was red and white.”
“Is there anything you don’t remember about that?”
“No.”
“It’s all clear in your mind?”
“And my breathing. I remember the sound of it. After I turned off the music.”
“Music, what music?” As soon as she’d asked the question, Raglan regretted it.
“There was a CD playing. Billy Joel. He was Terry’s favorite.”
“That’s another thing you didn’t mention yesterday, did you?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“You didn’t remember it?”
“I remember the blood. I remember the smell and my breathing. I remember the music.”
There was always a risk of what lawyers called cross-examining a witness into credibility. Overdoing it. Raglan was in danger of looking as if she were nitpicking at someone who was doing her best to recall complex and shocking events. Time to switch gears. Go for Samantha’s weak underbelly.
“You were rational enough to check on your son, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“To wrap up the knife?”
“Yes.”
“As we’ve heard, you have no criminal record. Correct?”
“Yes. No. I mean, correct. I have no record.”
Wyler was starting to get flustered. Raglan kept up the pace of her questions. “You’ve never been arrested before, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And when the police went to talk to you about those phone calls and e-mails you sent Terrance before this happened, they were polite, weren’t they?”
“Very.”
02 - The Guilty Plea Page 28
