by Paul Levine
“The question's repetitive,” Pincher said. “Asked and answered. Argumentative. And improper predicate.”
“That all?” Judge Thornberry said.
Judges were like basketball referees, Steve thought. Some were whistle-blowers, in-your-face activists who jumped on every infraction, no matter how minor. Others just let you play, establish your own limits, create your own rhythms of the game. Judge Thornberry let you play, especially if he was otherwise engaged.
“Improper form, too,” Pincher said.
“Overruled,” the judge said.
“Everything's in the report,” Dr. Yang repeated.
Steve walked to the clerk's table. He picked up the document labeled State Exhibit 3. “This is your report, correct, Dr. Wang?” He waved it like a checkered flag at a NASCAR race.
“My final report, correct.”
“Psst.” Victoria was trying to get his attention. Steve walked back to the defense table. Victoria's face was flushed, a lioness capturing the scent of the kill. He leaned close enough to feel her breath as she whispered: “Ask him if there's a first draft.”
“I'm going to,” he whispered back.
“Ask him what was changed between the first and final drafts.”
“Gonna do that, too.”
“So go. Do it.”
“Your Honor, I must protest this starting and stopping of the inquiry,” Pincher said. “If the defense has no further questions, the witness should be excused.”
“Not so fast,” Steve said, turning back to Dr. Yang.
Flipping a page of his novel, the judge grunted at them without looking up. Steve interpreted the sound as: Keep going, Counselor. So he moved closer to the witness.
“Dr. Yang, would you reach into your briefcase and give us the first draft of your autopsy report?” Steve said.
“No can do.”
“No?”
“We destroy the first drafts when the final drafts are printed out. That way we don't mix them up.”
“But surely you have a copy stored in your computer's memory?”
Dr. Yang shook his head. “We overwrite first drafts to keep lawyers like you from picking them apart.”
“Why do a second draft at all?”
“Mostly to correct typos. The transcribers misspell medical names, get numbers wrong.”
“Who reviewed the first draft of Dr. Barksdale's autopsy?”
“I did.”
“Did you show the draft to Mr. Pincher?”
Again, a hand flew to the bow tie, fiddled with the knot. “I think I may have shown the State Attorney. Yes, I believe I did.”
“Did Mr. Pincher ask you to change anything?”
“Objection!” Pincher sang out.
“Now what?” Judge Thornberry looked up this time.
“I resent the implication of Mr. Solomon's question,” Pincher said.
“This is cross-examination,” Steve said. “If the State Attorney didn't resent the implication, I'd be guilty of malpractice.”
“Overruled,” the judge said.
“I can't recall,” Dr. Yang said.
“You can't recall if the State Attorney asked you to change anything in your report?”
“I perform many autopsies,” Dr. Yang said. “I talked to Mr. Pincher many times. It's hard to remember everything.”
“Of course, there's one way to find out,” Steve said with a slight smile. He waited a moment, letting the silence fill the courtroom. “You mentioned a transcriber. You dictated your autopsy report into a tape recorder, didn't you, Dr. Yang?”
The ME's eyes shot to Pincher, then back to Steve. The doc hadn't looked at the jury since Steve stood up. After a long moment, his head bobbed up and down.
“You have to speak audibly so Ms. Hernandez here can take it all down,” Steve said, and Sofia gave him a seductive little smile. At the defense table, Victoria rolled her eyes.
“Yes. We make tape recordings.”
“And you keep those tapes in a safe in the Records Division of the morgue, don't you?”
“Yes.”
Steve turned to the judge. “Your Honor, I request a recess.”
The judge seemed startled. “Didn't we already have lunch?”
“Yes, sir, but the state should be made to produce the original tape recording of the autopsy so we can check it against the so-called final report.”
“We object,” Pincher said. “That tape's confidential.”
Victoria, legal eagle, was on her feet. “To the contrary, Your Honor. The tape's covered by Public Records Law.”
“This is an untimely request,” Pincher said. “Discovery deadlines have passed.”
“It's the state's duty to provide all exculpatory evidence, under Brady v. Maryland, up to and through the trial,” Victoria shot back.
“You're suggesting the tape has exculpatory evidence?” the judge asked. Paying attention now.
“I'm suggesting the State Attorney is guilty of obstruction of justice,” Victoria said, and a ripple of murmurs went through the gallery.
“That's outrageous!” Pincher thundered. “I ask that Counsel be admonished.”
Holy shit, Steve thought. Wasn't she the one who said to attack with a rapier, not a sledgehammer?
With a stern look, the judge rapped his gavel and said: “Counsel, in my chambers, now!”
Forty-seven
POETIC JUSTICE
In the corridor, on the way to Judge Thornberry's chambers, Steve whispered: “You keep quiet. I'll take it from here.”
“Why?” Her feelings were bruised.
“You were great just now. But this is for the big mojito, so just cheer me on.”
“Go, team,” she said, peeved.
“C'mon. You know the first rule of arguing to judges?”
“Try to stay out of jail?”
“Know your audience. Play to their interests, fulfill their expectations.”
“That's called ‘pandering.'”
“Actually, it's called ‘lawyering.'”
They settled into leather-upholstered chairs, Pincher scowling at them.
Judge Thornberry said: “The defense has made a serious allegation of prosecutorial misconduct.”
“To which I express my outrage,” Pincher said.
“And which we'll prove,” Steve said.
“Okay, let's get to the bottom of this quick,” the judge said. “I want the jury back before they're at one another's throats like in Twelve Angry Men.”
“If Your Honor orders the original autopsy tape to be produced,” Steve continued, “you'll see how the state altered evidence.”
“Keep up the character assassination, I'll sue your ass,” Pincher roared.
Troubled, the judge stood and paced in front of a bookshelf, scanning his volumes. Victoria looked, too. Where were the legal books? Just shelves of novels written by lawyers: Turow, Grisham, Scottoline, Martini, Meltzer, Grippando, Latt, Mortimer, Margolin. Dozens more. Victoria wondered if the judge read any law that wasn't fictional.
He reached to a high shelf, fingered a book by Louis Auchincloss, another by Barry Reed, one by Barbara Parker, then pulled down Kennedy for the Defense by George V. Higgins. “Are you saying the State Attorney framed Katrina Barksdale?”
“Not intentionally,” Steve said. “Mr. Pincher believes my client is guilty.”
“You're damn right I do,” Pincher said.
“It's Charles Barksdale who framed Katrina Barksdale,” Steve said. “The State Attorney only added basil to the bruschetta.”
The judge sat down in his high-backed chair. “How'd a dead man frame his wife?”
The judge sounded confused, Victoria thought. Could Steve pull this off?
“Charles Barksdale tells us how,” Steve said. “He speaks to us from the grave.”
The judge's eyes lit up. “Like Poe.”
“Sir?” Steve asked.
“Edgar Allan Poe. The Tell-Tale Heart.”
“More like Agatha Ch
ristie.”
The judge eagerly grabbed a legal pad. “Does it have a double twist? Like Witness for the Prosecution?”
“A double twist with a full somersault,” Steve assured him.
“Where does the story start?” the judge asked. Eager as a puppy.
“A beautiful young woman marries a rich, older man,” Steve said.
“And kills him,” Pincher said.
“This is my story, Sugar Ray, not yours. The couple—call them Charlie and Kat—have a very active, very kinky sex life.”
“A little sex always spices up the story,” the judge said.
“And Charlie really loved her, which is why the next plot point is so painful. He discovers Kat is having an affair with their boat captain.”
“Highly cinematic,” the judge said, “if they did it on the boat.”
Pincher said: “I've got the pictures if you'd like to see them.”
“Now comes the conundrum,” Steve said, ignoring Pincher.
“Like the missing beer glass in Presumed Innocent?” the judge said. “That Turow's a clever fiend.”
“Charlie had his lawyer prepare a divorce petition but he never signed it and he never said why. All we have to go on is a three-line poem Charlie wrote on the petition:
‘Hide a few contretemps.
Defer a competent wish.
Cement a spit-fed shore.'”
“Odd poem,” the judge said.
“It's really an anagram with a message.”
“Word games. Arthur Conan Doyle would have loved this.”
Now the judge was deep into it, Victoria thought. Okay, so maybe Steve knew his audience. But could he deliver the payoff?
“Unscrambled, the anagram says, ‘The woman is perfected,'” Steve continued. “It's from a poem by Sylvia Plath. She committed suicide just a few days after writing it. Then, the day before he dies, Charlie sends a card to Kat. Of all the things he could write—I love you; I hate you; Have a nice day—he steals a line from Virginia Woolf's suicide note.”
“I get you,” the judge said eagerly, “but just why would Barksdale commit suicide?”
“He was dying of cancer, and there was no time to divorce Katrina and cut her off from his money.”
“But suicide doesn't help,” the judge said. “The widow would still get her share of the estate.”
“Unless—”
“Unless she's convicted of killing him! Outstanding. Perry Mason never came up with anything like this. Not even in The Case of the Daring Divorcee.”
“Barksdale wanted Katrina to be charged with his murder. That's why he didn't just take an overdose or drive off a bridge.”
“Mr. Solomon has a vivid imagination,” Pincher said. “But where's the proof?”
“The anagram,” Steve said. “It tells us everything.”
Here it comes, Victoria thought. Wrapping it all up in a pretty package. But would the judge buy it?
“When Charles scrambled the line of the Plath poem, he had thousands of choices,” Steve said, “but he picked phrases that revealed how he felt about his wife, and what he planned to do. ‘Hide a few contretemps.' That's Katrina, keeping her affair secret. ‘Defer a competent wish.' That's Charles, wanting revenge, but not being able to live to see it. And ‘Cement a spit-fed whore.' That's the biggie. That's Charles sending her to a prison cell, or a tomb, take your pick. That's him framing her for his murder, a murder that never happened.”
“Excellent story. The film rights will be worth a bundle. But what's all this got to do with Mr. Pincher and the autopsy report?”
“When Sugar Ray sees the first draft of the autopsy report, he gets a real jolt,” Steve answered. “Charles was dying of stomach cancer. No way that's gonna make it into the final draft.”
Pincher fixed Steve with a toxic glare.
“Why delete it?” the judge said. “She's still guilty of murder if she strangled him, no matter how sick he was.”
“Because—”
“Wait. I figured out Murder on the Orient Express. I can get this.” The judge took off his glasses, wiped them on his robe, and put them back on. “Give me a clue. Did Charles ever tell Katrina he had cancer?”
“Nope,” Steve said. “He died without her knowing.”
“Then I've got it! The autopsy would give Katrina a defense. She'd come into court and say she knew Charles was dying all along. Why bump him off if all she had to do was wait a bit and collect her inheritance?”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “Sugar Ray assumed she'd lie, and he'd have no way to disprove it.”
“I've heard enough,” the judge said. “The state will furnish the defense with the original tape recording of the autopsy dictation. I warn you, Mr. Pincher, if Mr. Solomon is correct, I'll make a full report to the Ethics Commission. And the Attorney General's Office.”
“This is outrageous!” Pincher said. “We'll appeal.”
Victoria cleared her throat and said: “It may not be necessary to produce the tape.”
Steve gave her a sharp look but said nothing. She was confident he wouldn't stop her. He'd told her several times about his Sonny Corleone rule: Never contradict your partner in front of the opposition.
“Now you don't want the tape?” the judge asked. “Why, Ms. Lord?”
“Because Mr. Pincher is an honorable man. He will do the honorable thing.”
“How's that?” the judge asked, bewildered.
“Yeah, this I gotta hear,” Steve said.
“Mr. Pincher never would have tampered with the evidence had he believed Katrina Barksdale was innocent,” Victoria said. “He thought he was just . . .”
“Adding basil to the bruschetta,” the judge said.
“Exactly. Now that Mr. Pincher knows the truth, he can dismiss the case, and there'll be no need for anyone to hear the tape.”
Pincher scratched at his chin. “Intriguing suggestion, Counselor.”
He's doing the cost-benefit analysis of dumping the case, she thought. And Steve was giving her a sideways glance. He wouldn't do this, she knew. A total advocate, a total warrior, he'd go for the win in front of the jury. She thought there was a safer way to get the same result.
“Wait a second,” the judge said. “You can't end a legal thriller by settling a case!”
“It would be best, Your Honor,” Victoria said.
“There goes the movie sale,” the judge said, sadly.
“I'll need an explanation for the press,” Pincher said.
“We have no objection to your taking credit for clearing an innocent woman,” Victoria told him.
“Hang on,” Steve said. “We should get the credit.”
“Steve, the client comes first.”
“Since when?”
“Mr. Pincher, give it any spin you want,” Victoria said, ignoring Steve, “as long as you dismiss the case against Katrina Barksdale.”
“Who made you senior partner?” Steve said. Violating his Sonny Corleone rule.
“I could say that my office has uncovered new evidence,” Pincher mused. “Evidence missed by overworked detectives and overlooked by defense counsel.”
“Screw that,” Steve said. “I didn't overlook anything.”
“Quiet, Steve,” Victoria said. “Doing justice is credit enough.”
“They teach that in the Ivy League?”
“I diligently pursued every lead until justice was done,” Pincher continued, rehearsing his statement to the press.
“Make up your minds, then,” the judge said. “Are we going back to trial or not?”
Pincher proclaimed formally: “Judge Thornberry, let's call in the court reporter. The state has an announcement to make.”
Forty-eight
MOJITO MAKER
“Go, go, go,” Victoria said. “We have an hour to get to Juvie Court.”
“I want to talk to the press.”
“No way. We'll be late.”
She dragged Steve down the corridor. They sidestepped Ray Pincher
, who was telling the reporters of his sage and courageous decision to dismiss all charges against Katrina Barksdale.
“Just one little sound bite,” Steve pleaded.
“No time.”
They shoved their way through the wolf pack of reporters and photographers and hustled to the parking lot.
“You were great today,” she said, as they got into his car.
“You, too. Getting Pincher to dismiss. I wouldn't have thought of it.”
“And I wouldn't have thought of turning the case into a Perry Mason novel. I've learned a lot from you.”
“Ditto.” He smiled, forgiving her, she supposed, for taking over at the end.
Twenty minutes later, they were in the bungalow on Kumquat Avenue, where Steve tossed Bobby into the shower, then hastily dressed him in a navy sport coat, gray wool slacks, a white shirt, and a striped tie.
By the time they all piled into the old Caddy, the little preppie's shirttail was out, his glasses were smudged, and his hair was mussed. He sat in the backseat, knees pulled up under his chin, rocking back and forth, looking like the class weirdo genius being carted off to jail for blowing up the science lab.
Steve tuned the radio to the all-news station but punched another button when he heard Pincher saluting himself for uncovering the truth about the death of Charles Barksdale. On the reggae station, Desmond Dekker & the Aces were singing “Israelites,” promising a calm after the storm.
Victoria glanced at Bobby and started to worry. He lay on his back, his feet pressed against a window, as if trying to break out of the car. “Maybe we should rethink our strategy for tonight,” she said, cryptically.
Translation: I'm scared to death to put Bobby on the witness stand.
“Not your call, cupcake.”
“Tell me you didn't just call me ‘cupcake.'”
“Don't make some feminist thing out of it. I'm starving, and I'm thinking about the Fink's Krispy Kremes.”
She wondered why he couldn't see the danger of having Bobby testify. He knew Bobby always spoke the unvarnished truth. And surely Solomon, of all people, knew that the truth sometimes needs a fresh coat of paint.
