Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  Edward heard that Paul had been about to say ‘… if she finds me with another woman.’ Acknowledging there were others. But they already knew that.

  ‘I’m afraid that might push her over the edge. So I thought it would be prudent to make this record and give it to a friend, who will mail it to police if I’m murdered. As I said, I’m probably being melodramatic or overly – what’s the word? – but at any rate, I wanted to do this. Thank you.’

  The screen went dark.

  ‘Pass the witness,’ David said, which was hilarious. The witness still on the stand was the technician who’d testified to the accuracy of the recording, but there was nothing to cross-examine him about. The real witness had been Paul, and as Edward had pointed out to the judge multiple times, he was beyond questioning.

  Edward turned and looked at his sister for the first time since the recording had started playing. Amy sat there with a hand up to her mouth, a tear streak running down her cheek. She looked devastated, trying hard to hold herself up. She had found the right expression for watching her late husband accuse her. Amy just looked unbearably sad, as if her heart had been pierced by seeing the man she loved one last time, with him unable to respond or know she was near.

  Edward stood up and said to the judge, ‘I can’t cross-examine the witness who just testified, Paul Shilling. I can’t ask him why he made that recording or how he came to that wrong conclusion. I can’t question the person who was holding the camera. Can’t ask Paul how much he’d had to drink before he—’

  ‘Objection, objection,’ David Galindo said. ‘Object to counsel testifying.’

  ‘Sustained,’ the judge said, looking sternly at him.

  Edward turned and looked at his opponent, David Galindo. Edward’s former rival in the D.A.’s office, but that was a long time ago. David had far surpassed whatever Edward had accomplished as a prosecutor. And he was a decent guy, or so Edward thought. But a lot of lawyers take on trial personalities that are different from their day to day ones. Even opposing lawyers who were good friends in real life couldn’t necessarily trust each other in the courtroom. That wasn’t me, that was my evil trial twin.

  Edward decided to take the chance.

  He said, ‘Let the record reflect that the effect of that completely inadmissible evidence was devastating. The jurors were riveted. One woman on the jury began crying. They were sneaking looks at the defendant, obviously thinking: How could you do this? There is no way for the defense to recover from this piece of evidence.’ Turning to the prosecutor, he says, ‘Mr Galindo, do you disagree with anything I’ve said for the record?’

  After a long pause the prosecutor said, ‘No. No, I don’t disagree about the effect of the evidence. Only about its admissibility.’

  ‘I have no more questions of this witness,’ Edward said.

  David rose slowly, because it’s a terrible moment, frightening to give up control and said, ‘The State rests, Your Honor.’

  Cynthia turned. ‘Does the defense have witnesses to present, Mr Hall?’

  ‘You bet we do, Your Honor.’

  She glanced at the clock on the back wall.

  ‘We’ll begin the defense case after lunch. Be back at one thirty, ladies and gentlemen.’

  SIXTEEN

  Amy turned quickly to Edward. ‘Put me on first.’

  He shook his head. Even if the defendant testified, it wasn’t until last. Amy would have the advantage of hearing all the other trial witnesses first; she could tailor her testimony to address all the evidence of trial. It was one of the very few defense advantages.

  ‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘Now while that recording is fresh in their minds. Let me explain it for them. Let me point out what’s wrong with Paul. Let me tell my story before we put on the others. Yes, Edward. That way what I know and what I tell the jurors is the background for everything else we put on.’

  He had two other witnesses waiting in the hall. Edward was ready to start his case today. But Amy made a good point.

  ‘It’s not a fight with the prosecutors, Amy. Looking mad is the worst thing you can do. If the jurors see you angry they can picture what you—’

  ‘Do I look mad? Do I sound angry?’

  He had to admit her voice was calm, her gaze steady.

  ‘I just want to tell my story, Edward. I’m ready.’

  He shrugged. ‘OK. Let’s go to lunch just you and me. I want to go over the main points again.’

  Amy smiled. ‘I thought you said you didn’t want me to be over-rehearsed.’

  Edward stood up. ‘Lawyers say a lot of bullshit.’

  ‘Please identify yourself.’

  Amy turned to the jurors. ‘I’m Amy Shilling.’

  ‘It’s Dr Shilling, correct?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m a pediatrician.’

  ‘How old are you, Amy?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘You were married to Dr Paul Shilling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Two years. A little longer.’

  Amy was composed on the stand but not bloodless. She moved easily in the hard chair when she turned, but didn’t fidget. For some answers she looked directly at the jury. For some she paid close attention to her lawyer.

  ‘How did you and Paul meet?’

  ‘In medical school. Paul was ahead of me, already doing a residency in the hospital when I started. He asked me out not long after the first time we met.’ She smiled, obviously still flattered.

  ‘Did you work together?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Never. We were in different fields. Paul was an internist and a researcher. He worked with my father, but not with me.’

  ‘Who is your father?’ Edward corrected himself. ‘Our father.’

  ‘Dr Marshall Hall. He’s a well-known diagnostician. Paul began working with him after Paul and I started dating.’

  Again, hearing her say that, Edward thought Paul sounded like an opportunist. He didn’t want to hit that note very hard. Amy didn’t seem to hear the implication of what she’d just said, which was good. Thinking her husband had taken advantage of her would be another motive for murder. In his peripheral vision, Edward saw both prosecutors bent over their legal pads making rapid notes.

  ‘Tell me about Paul, about your relationship.’

  Edward asked the broad, open-ended question and sat back. At first Amy kept looking down. Then she raised her head and smiled.

  ‘He was a wonderful man. Driven, focused on what he was doing, which didn’t just include his work. When he turned those brown eyes on me he still had that same focus. It could make you feel like a research subject, but then they would soften so much when he smiled and he had the gentlest touch.’ She looked up and sniffed, then turned toward the jury. ‘He was a good listener. The best. If I said his name he’d look up and put down whatever he’d been doing, the newspaper or tying a fishing fly. Look right at me and listen. We had such great weekends. Just us. Taking a little trip or just staying in. He had a gift for shutting out the world, wherever we were.’

  To Edward it sounded as if she was talking about, at least in part, bed. Those intense weekends of not leaving the house, looking into his eyes. That would best be done from a supine position. He shied away from that subject. Passion begat passion. That was why he told himself not to ask. But the real reason was that he just couldn’t ask his little sister to describe for strangers what a great lay her husband had been. Edward didn’t want to hear it himself.

  ‘Yet you were separated at the time of his death. Why?’

  ‘Paul’s idea,’ Amy’s eyes fluttered. ‘We had only been married for two years, yes, but we’d been together much longer than that. It was like a very early seven-year itch for Paul. He was becoming well-known for the breakthroughs that were rumored about his cancer research, he was getting attention and I sensed he felt tied down.’

  ‘“Sensed”?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t say that, but I thought that was
the reason. He told me other reasons – I was smothering him, he needed time apart, things like that – but I thought he felt restricted by being married. His behavior after we separated confirmed that for me.’

  ‘So you knew about the other women in his life?’

  Amy grimaced. ‘Of course. The medical community in Houston is a small town. A small gossipy town. Of course I heard about Paul’s social life.’

  ‘What did you think about that?’

  She looked at the jurors. ‘I thought, at least he was honest enough to leave me first instead of having affairs. Later I thought, I guess he needed to get this out of his system.’

  ‘Did you go out yourself?’

  ‘I went out a handful of times. Very unsatisfactory for my dates, I’m sure. I was still in love with Paul.’

  ‘What was the status of your relationship at the time Paul died?’

  ‘We were reconciling. He’d spent a couple of nights back at the house; I’d been to his two or three times. I even started keeping clothes there. It seemed to me that Paul had had the fling he needed – flings – and discovered he still loved me and still wanted to be married to me. We’d even talked about getting pregnant.’ She actually blushed. ‘I think he was on the verge of coming back. We were going out that night to the dinner where he was going to receive his award. It was going to be a kind of a coming-out occasion for us; our first public reappearance.’

  Edward was studying the jury as covertly as he could. A couple of them were leaning toward Amy ever so subtly. More than that still hung back in attitudes of skepticism – eyes hooded, hands covering mouths – but all of them studying her closely.

  ‘So how were you feeling towards Paul as you stood on his porch that Saturday night?’

  ‘In love. More than ever. Happy. Excited we were going out together. Happy for him about his award. Just happy. Standing there, I was happy.’

  ‘Did you have anything in your hands?’

  ‘Just a little clutch bag for my car keys. I’d left my purse in the car.’

  ‘Amy, let’s watch this DVD that Paul made again.’ Without asking the judge’s permission, Edward strode toward the television. He turned to his sister. ‘Ready?’

  She nodded. The jurors turned their lines of sight in Edward’s direction, there was such a tight collective focus he could feel it. He turned on the television, picked up the remote control and pressed Play.

  Edward stepped aside and talked over the first few words. ‘What did you notice about this the first time you saw it, Amy?’

  ‘That Paul was drunk when he made this.’

  There were actually a couple of gasps from the audience. The jurors’ faces changed too, frowning in concentration. Edward hit Pause. Paul stopped talking in mid-word, his mouth focused in a little o.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Paul wasn’t much of a public drinker. Not many people had seen him intoxicated, I think. But I had. He drank more in the couple of months before he left me. I learned his pattern.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘He’d start speaking more precisely, as he does here. Listen. “If-I-am-found-murd-ered,” he’s hitting the consonants very distinctly.’

  Edward hit Play long enough for the jurors to hear that. Yes, he did sound like a man taking elocution lessons. But these jurors had no basis for comparison.

  ‘What else?’ he said over the still-playing DVD.

  ‘At the same time,’ Amy said, ‘no matter how hard he tried, he’d still slur his words a little. There. Hear it? “Lesh jusht say …” He couldn’t help himself. See him frown? He heard it himself. Now he’ll try even harder for the next sentence or two to sound like Laurence Olivier.’

  They all listened very hard to Paul trying very hard to sound sober and reliable. This time Edward let it play to the end. With Amy’s commentary, they could all hear Paul stumble occasionally.

  When it ended and Paul was frozen on the screen, Amy said, ‘I could tell there at the end, too. When he can’t find the word he was wanting? Paul was never at a loss for words. He sometimes sounded as if someone had written his lines for him ahead of time and he’d memorized them perfectly. If he was going to make something like this, something so supposedly important, he would have known what he was going to say. Here he was stumbling along, making it up as he went.’

  ‘You heard the part where he said you had attacked him physically in the past.’

  She made a sound between a laugh and a snort.

  ‘Was that true?’ Edward asked.

  ‘No. It’s ridiculous. I’ve never attacked anyone in my life, least of all Paul.’

  ‘Amy, stand up, please. Come down off the witness stand.’ She did, right in front of the jurors. Edward walked toward her.

  ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘Five four.’

  ‘How tall was Paul?’ By the time Edward asked that he was standing right in front of her, looking down. He couldn’t help smiling at her, his little sister.

  ‘About six feet, a little taller than you.’

  At that moment, Edward seemed to soar over her. He’d told her to wear flats today.

  Without being asked, she added, ‘And he worked out, too. He worked out and ran, even more so since we’d separated. I would have been crazy to try to assault him.’

  That wasn’t a very good remark. The answer to it was: That’s why you used a gun.

  Amy went back to the witness stand.

  ‘Amy, how were you feeling when you arrived at Paul’s that day?’

  ‘Happy. Paul and I were getting back together, I had a new dress and I was expecting a beautiful evening.’

  ‘Did you ring the doorbell or knock or just go on in?’

  ‘Both, sort of. I rang the bell, knocked, then started reaching for the doorknob.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I heard the shot.’ Amy’s voice had changed again. Her eyes were open and suddenly tearful. Edward looked at the jurors. He thought he had them then. Or rather, Amy did. It was very clear she was reliving the moment and on her face the jurors seemed to be too.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I hesitated, I’m ashamed to say. It was a gunshot, it was dangerous. I thought about running back to my car for my phone and calling police. But then I thought it must have been an accident and maybe Paul was hurt. So I ran inside, calling his name.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘In the bedroom. I ran back there and immediately saw him on the floor. He was lying on his back like he’d slumped forward onto the bed then slid down to the floor. The gun was on the floor. I kicked it out of the way as I ran to Paul and I immediately started trying to apply CPR. His phone was on the nightstand, and I called 911 and talked to the operator while I worked on him and kept telling them to hurry, hurry.’

  ‘Was Paul – gone?’

  ‘No. Not entirely. He was looking at me. I stopped for a couple of seconds to see if he could talk, but he just stared at me. Then his eyes got wider. I kept working, telling him to breathe. Breathe, damn it. But he couldn’t. His eyes got wider, like I said, then they changed. Paul just – left. Suddenly, just like that, he was there then he wasn’t. I started trying to keep oxygen going to his brain, so he wouldn’t suffer brain damage if he could be revived, by doing chest compressions. I was still doing that when the paramedics arrived and took him. Then the police took me.’

  She sounded and looked tired. In the short space of her testimony, Amy had relived the event and, aside from everything else, it had been hard physical work trying to keep her husband alive.

  ‘Did you see any sign of anyone else when you went into the house?’

  ‘No. But I wasn’t looking for any. I thought I heard the bang of the back door closing, but I was focused only on Paul.’

  Edward asked a few more questions, but he was done. He had never seen a more sincere-seeming witness than Amy had been, but maybe he was biased. Most of the jurors were looking at her sympathetically.


  But Edward knew what was wrong with his case. That’s why he was reluctant to stop questioning Amy, to turn her over to the opposition. Finally there was no choice, though.

  ‘Pass the witness.’

  ‘That was very selfless of you, Dr Shilling, running into that house in spite of the personal danger to you.’ Yes, David Galindo knew the problem with Edward’s case too. It just wasn’t believable, the timing.

  ‘Well, as I said, I did hesitate. I’m ashamed of myself for that. But I thought Paul might be injured. I knew he had that pistol and I was afraid there’d been an accident with it.’

  ‘So you knew about the gun?’ David slouched back in his chair, watching Amy.

  ‘Yes. He bought it a few years ago, for protection of the house, he said. Sometime after he left I noticed he’d taken it with him.’

  ‘You went looking for the gun at your house?’

  Amy understood where he was going. ‘No. I was looking for something else in the drawer where I knew he kept it and saw it was gone.’

  ‘Why did you look?’

  ‘I was worried about Paul. He acted so strange in those days just before we separated, I was afraid he might, might be going to hurt himself. Plus he wouldn’t tell me where he was living at first and when I saw he’d taken the gun I was afraid he might be in some dangerous neighborhood. I worried about him.’

  They were reasonable answers Amy gave, but the prosecutor had accomplished something else with this line of questioning. Amy no longer looked tearful and sympathetic. She was staring at David, dueling with him. Very quietly, but still, her precise answers made her look careful rather than spontaneous as she’d seemed under Edward’s guidance. Edward cleared his throat, trying to send her a signal, but Amy didn’t glance his way.

  ‘Did you see any other car when you parked in front of Paul’s house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As you stood there on your estranged husband’s porch—’

  ‘Objection to fact not in evidence,’ Edward said quickly. ‘They weren’t estranged, they were reconciling.’

  ‘Quibbling over semantics, Your Honor. They remained separated.’

  ‘Overruled.’