The Heavens May Fall

by Allen Eskens

  Once Boady chiseled Anna’s motive for murder into stone, he turned to the real point of his cross-examination. Like a long-distance runner, he had paced himself, holding back for this final burst. Now he stood so that the attention of the jury would remain with him for the remainder of the cross-examination.

  “Let’s talk about where you were on the night your sister was murdered. I’ve read Detective Rupert’s report. You told him you were at an event at the Guthrie Theater. Is that right?”

  “Yes. There was a party for the opening of a play that night. I’m on the board of directors of the Guthrie Theater, and as a board member, I get invited to those events.”

  “And what time did the event start?”

  “After the opening-night performance, so around 10:30.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “I probably got there around 11:00.”

  “What time did you leave the event?”

  “I left at 1:30 in the morning.”

  “Are you sure about that time?”

  “It could have been a little before or after that, but it was around there.”

  “How much before or after?”

  “I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes? There were photographers; I have proof I was there. I gave those to the detectives.”

  Boady gave a nod to Lila Nash, who opened her laptop and began queuing up a CD-ROM disc that Lila had secured from the Guthrie Theater.

  “Objection.” Dovey interrupted. “Defense hasn’t disclosed this footage to the State.”

  “It’s impeachment, Your Honor,” Boady said in a bored tone. “This evidence will contradict the statements Mrs. Adler-King just made under oath.” Boady looked at Anna as he spoke and saw in her eyes a mingling of recognition and concern.

  “You may proceed, Mr. Sanden.”

  The surveillance video showed people entering the lobby of the Guthrie Theater. In the top right corner of the screen was the date and time. At 10:48 p.m., a woman entered wearing a dress that shimmered in the black-and-white footage.

  Boady jogged a finger at Lila, and she froze the frame. “Mrs. Adler-King, that’s you entering the Guthrie Theater?”

  Anna’s face had taken on the expression of a woman who was watching a kitten walk in front of a moving car. She stared at the paused footage, her eyes wide, her brow furrowed, giving no indication that she had even heard Boady’s question.

  “Mrs. Adler-King?” Boady said. “Please tell the jury if that is you entering the theater on the night your sister was murdered.”

  Anna looked into the gallery at a man Boady didn’t recognize, her pained expression telegraphing to the entire courtroom that something very bad was about to happen.

  “Mrs. Adler-King.” Judge Ransom nudged her out of her trance.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s me.”

  “And this is the opening-night reception you attended on the night your sister was killed.”

  “Yes.” Her voice shook as she spoke.

  Boady again signaled to Lila, and the footage zipped forward to the time stamp of 11:37 p.m. The footage showed Anna walking through the lobby of the Guthrie Theater, stopping at the door to glance around, then exiting. Lila stopped the footage.

  “Mrs. Adler-King, you left the Guthrie at 11:37 that night, didn’t you?”

  “I . . . I must have stepped out for some air.”

  “Mrs. Adler-King, I can play the rest of this footage. Is that the answer you want to stand on?”

  “Objection,” Dovey interjected. Boady didn’t respond. He had locked eyes with Anna Adler-King. He had expected to see the fear of a cornered animal, but instead he saw sadness. It caught him off guard.

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  Anna looked down at her hands folded on her lap and said nothing.

  “What time did you return to the reception Mrs. Adler-King?”

  “I didn’t kill my sister. I loved her.”

  “You were gone for nearly an hour and a half, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Just a little bit ago, you swore under oath that you were at the Guthrie Theater when Jennavieve was murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that was a lie.”

  “I . . . I can’t.”

  “It takes about twenty minutes to drive from the Guthrie to your sister’s house in Kenwood, correct?”

  “Mr. Sanden.” Anna sat up in her seat, her voice finding a foothold. “I did not kill my sister.”

  “Mrs. Adler-King.” Boady shot his words back with equal defiance. “That’s not the question I asked. You can drive from the Guthrie to Kenwood in about twenty minutes, yes or no?”

  “I suppose . . . but—”

  “If you left the Guthrie at 11:37, that would put you at your sister’s house around midnight—the time that Malena Gwin says she saw a red car pull up and park in front of your sister’s house.”

  “I didn’t go to Jennavieve’s house. I had nothing to do with—”

  “And you own a red car, do you not? A Porsche Panamera, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yes, but what does that—”

  “And you drove the red sedan that night?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mrs. Adler-King, you lied under oath to this jury.”

  “I . . . I—”

  “You weren’t at the Guthrie when your sister was murdered.”

  “No, but I can explain.”

  “Explain what? How you killed your sister—”

  “I didn’t—”

  “To gain control of your father’s company?”

  “Objection.” Dovey sprang to his feet. “Argumentative and—”

  “Withdrawn, Your Honor.”

  Boady sat down and pretended to leaf through his notes. Anna Adler-King would never admit to murder, but she didn’t have to. Boady had exposed that she had motive and opportunity. Boady only needed reasonable doubt. Now he let Anna’s words waft through the air for a minute or two while the jury took their notes. Then he said, “I have no more questions for this witness.”

  Anna again had tears flowing down her cheeks, and this time, Boady thought they looked genuine. She made no effort to wipe them.

  “I have a follow-up, Your Honor,” Dovey said. “Mrs. Adler-King, you said you could explain where you were in that time after you left the Guthrie. Would you like to do that now?”

  Anna nodded slowly. Then she raised her head and looked again at a man in the gallery. “That man there.” She raised her finger to point at the man. “That’s my husband, William King. He’s a good man and better than I deserve.”

  Anna Adler-King drew in a deep, shaking breath. She slid a finger under each eye to wipe away the tears. Her mouth pulled down at the edges and she fought against the full-blown cry that wanted to get out. Then she looked at another man in the gallery, the man who came with her to Boady’s house the day they tried to take Emma. Anna Adler-King raised her hand again, pointed at the man, and said, “That’s Roger. He’s my lover, and he’s the man I left the party to be with that night.”

  Chapter 47

  To Boady Sanden, waiting for a verdict had always been a difficult thing. His world conspired to deprive him of even the slightest measure of comfort. Chairs turned hard, clothes itched, and his bed seemed to grow lumps that hadn’t been there before. It didn’t help that he had to suffer this restlessness alone. He and Diana thought it best if she took Emma to Missouri to visit relatives. There would be no way to keep Emma protected from news of the trial, and nothing else Boady and Diana tried seemed to lift the girl out of her despondency. Diana and Emma would stay in Missouri until it was safe to bring her back—until the jury acquitted her father.

  So Boady wandered from room to room in his house, alone, unable to escape incessant arguments that choked his brain, the second-guessing of every tactic, every decision, and every question asked in the course of the trial.

  Had he done the right thing by not laying do
wn the wood when Malena Gwin testified? He had an entire tablet of cross-examination questions that went unasked. He had proof that the streetlight had been burned out on the night that she saw the red sedan. But once she testified that she no longer thought the man in the car was Ben Pruitt, that burned-out light would have worked against his case. Boady needed Gwin to be as certain as she could be that it was not Ben Pruitt.

  And what about Everett Kagen? Had he missed something there? What had been the source of that tension between Kagen and his wife? There was something he felt he missed. But in the end, Kagen’s alibi rested with his wife, who was willing to swear that he was home by 11:45. If Mrs. Kagen was covering for her husband, her lie would stand.

  And then there was the decision not to call Roger, the process server and Anna Adler-King’s accused lover. After Anna’s testimony, Lila approached him in the hallway to see what he might tell her, and he sent her away. Boady and Ben debated the merits of subpoenaing him to the stand. He was married and might deny the affair. On the other hand, if he confirmed the affair, Anna Adler-King would be off the hook as an alternative perpetrator, and the biggest part of Boady’s closing argument would circle the drain.

  In the end, Boady decided that he could use Roger’s absence to hint that Anna Adler-King was lying about the affair, lying about her alternative explanation as to why she couldn’t have killed her sister. “After all, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if this mysterious suitor could prove that Anna Adler-King didn’t drive to Kenwood that night, Mr. Dovey would have called that witness to testify. Don’t you think?”

  But the biggest question that haunted Boady, as he waited for a verdict, was the decision to have Ben Pruitt remain silent.

  At the conclusion of each day of the trial, Boady and Ben would rehash the day’s events, plan the next day’s path, and discuss whether Ben should take the stand. There were hard and fast considerations that they explored and analyzed anew after every turn in the case. No matter how deep the hashing and rehashing went, it still felt like they were trying to read tea leaves.

  Ben was a criminal-defense attorney and knew as well as Boady did that humans are hardwired to want to hear both sides of a story. Jurors felt that they were entitled to have a defendant look them in the eye and say that he didn’t do it. It went against their nature to tell them that a guy staying silent shouldn’t have his silence held against him.

  But Ben had a public sanction, a punishment handed down from the Minnesota Board of Professional Responsibility. That sanction told the world that Ben Pruitt had been caught committing a fraud on the court. It didn’t matter that the forged document he introduced had been given to him by his investigator. It only mattered that the sanction put a stamp of approval on the beating Dovey would have inflicted on Ben had he taken the stand.

  Lila had uncovered a transcript where Dovey attacked someone with a similar black mark. He told the jury, “Credibility is like a bucket full of water. Every witness carries that bucket with them to the witness stand. If they tell the truth, they leave with their credibility intact. But if they tell a lie—if they try to defraud the judge or the jury—they punch a hole in that bucket. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small hole because of a small lie, or a big hole because of a big lie. It’s a hole, and that bucket won’t hold any water.”

  From the beginning, Boady leaned toward having Ben remain silent. Ben wavered. He wanted to tell the jurors, face-to-face, that he loved his wife and had no part in her death. In the end, Boady prevailed. He pointed out to Ben that everything Ben wanted to say to the jury had already been said. The interview he’d had with Max covered every point that Ben wanted to make. Boady explained to Ben that he would merely be repeating those words if he testified. The risk outweighed the benefit.

  All of these competing thoughts squeezed at Boady’s chest as the third day of jury deliberation began. Long deliberations tended to favor acquittals or a hung jury—at least that was the conventional wisdom. That conventional wisdom, however, didn’t prevent Boady from chewing his fingernails down to the nub. At 10 a.m. on that third day, he got the call that the jury was ready to deliver a verdict. The churning in his gut and chest kicked into an even-higher gear.

  Ben was already at counsel table when Boady arrived. When all the players had assembled, the judge called the jury in.

  They filed in from the jury room, their eyes fixed on the floor or the back of the juror in front of them. They looked at neither counsel table. When they had all taken their seats, Judge Ransom spoke.

  “I’ve been informed that the jury has reached a verdict. Is that true, Madam Foreperson?”

  “It is, Your Honor,” said juror number seven.

  “Would the bailiff bring the verdict form to the bench?”

  The gray-haired bailiff took the piece of paper from juror seven and handed it to the judge. Judge Ransom read the document to himself, then said, “Would the defendant rise to receive the verdict?”

  Ben and Boady both stood. Boady thought he might throw up, and he couldn’t imagine how Ben must have been feeling.

  “In the case of the State of Minnesota versus Benjamin Lee Pruitt, to Count One of the indictment, murder in the first degree, the intentional killing of another, committed with premeditation, we the jury find the defendant—Guilty.”

  Chapter 48

  The day had turned to night before Boady could bring himself to call Diana. He sat at his desk in his home office, surrounded by small piles of law books. He had two different legal pads, one with notes for the motion for a new trial; the other filled with precedence and case law to be used in the appeal. He would argue that a new trial was necessary because Judge Ransom allowed the jury to hear Malena Gwin’s grand-jury testimony. The motion for a new trial would be heard by Ransom and the appeal would be going over Ransom’s head to the Minnesota Supreme Court. He didn’t expect Ransom to reverse himself, but he wanted to give it a shot.

  After hearing the verdict, Boady remained at Ben’s side as Judge Ransom sentenced him to life in prison—no parole. Ben could barely stand as Ransom pronounced the sentence. Boady had his hand on Ben’s shoulder and could feel his friend’s body convulse as he struggled to breathe.

  Boady left the courthouse and drove home to begin work on the motion. He hadn’t eaten lunch or supper. He looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 9 p.m. Although he didn’t have the stomach for it, he knew he needed to eat. Chicken noodle soup, maybe. That usually went down easily.

  When he stood to go to the kitchen, he got a look at his image in the window behind his desk. Maybe it was the imperfect reflection against the glass or the eerie glow that rose from the desk lamp behind him, but he looked half-dead, bags under his eyes, his hair cresting in an odd direction atop his head, his cheeks hanging slack from his bones. Diana would have scolded him for not taking better care of himself. If she’d spoken her mind, Boady was fairly certain that Diana would have scolded him for going back into the courtroom to begin with.

  He needed to call her. He would let supper wait.

  “We got the verdict today,” Boady said, struggling to gather the words together. Then he added, “They found Ben guilty.”

  Diana inhaled sharply, but said nothing.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong. I thought . . .”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, honey. This isn’t on you.”

  “I’m the attorney. It’s absolutely on me. I should have won this. A better attorney could have gotten an acquittal. The State had nothing. Just speculation. I don’t know how I messed this up. It’s Miguel Quinto all over again. I’ve sent another innocent man to prison.”

  “A better attorney? Like who, Ben Pruitt? Remember, Boady, he’s an attorney too. He was there in court with you every step of the way. If he thought you were missing something, he’d have told you. This isn’t Miguel Quinto. Ben was as much of a co-counsel as he was a client. You prepped the case together down to the last detail. I will not let you blame yourself for this. Yo
u did everything you could.”

  “No. I missed something. I had to have missed something. I don’t know what, but it’s got to be here, right in front of me, and I missed it.”

  “Boady,” Diana said in a gentle voice, “honey, don’t do this. Don’t let this eat you up. Guilt nearly killed you before. Don’t let that happen again. You’ll be no good for anyone, including Ben.”

  Boady closed his eyes and noticed how much effort it took to open them again. “What are we going to tell Emma?”

  Diana didn’t answer.

  “Judge Ransom already sentenced Ben. He’s on his way to prison.”

  “Do we . . . are we Emma’s parents now?”

  With everything else going on, that thought never crossed Boady’s mind. “This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. The decree was only supposed to be for the time being, but it was binding.”

  “What do we tell her?” Diana asked.

  “We have to tell her the truth. We tell her that her father was convicted. Tell her that sometimes people get wrongfully convicted, and we have a Supreme Court that can fix that. Tell her we’re appealing her father’s case, and we won’t give up.”

  “I’ll tell her. But is there a chance? Do you have a realistic shot to win at the Supreme Court?”

  “I have some arguments. I’m still researching, but I think we have a chance.”

  “Did you eat tonight?”

  She knew him so well. “Yes, I had a bite.”

  “A bite?”

  “I’m on my way to the kitchen as we speak. I’ll eat something.”

  “Boady, you did everything you could.”

  He shook his head, even though there was no one there to see it. “I wish I knew that to be true.”

  Chapter 49

  Cases often lingered with Max Rupert, long after the jurors went back to their lives. The smell of death, the faces of the victims, the words of the guilty as they tried to talk their way out of the punishment they deserved, those fragments floated free in the waves. But the Pruitt case clung to Max heavier than most, sticking to his skin like old cigarette smoke. He would see Jennavieve’s face in the sideways glance of a passerby.