Murder One

by William Bernhardt

  “Ah.” Christina leaned forward. “So you only changed your mind after the murder happened—because you assumed Keri had done it.”

  “Well … given the circumstances …”

  “Dr. Fulbright, Keri Dalcanton has not been convicted of this crime.”

  “Perhaps not, but it’s obvious—”

  “It’s obvious that you’re assuming she’s guilty. Even though she hasn’t been convicted.”

  “I just—”

  “So the truth is, you’re testifying against her, not based upon what she said, which you thought was harmless at the time, but based upon your assumption—your guess—that she’s guilty.”

  Fulbright frowned. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t, but that’s the truth of the matter. You thought Keri’s fantasies were harmless. Only after the murder did you think they were significant.”

  “But who wouldn’t—”

  “Doctor, let’s assume, just for the moment, that Keri is innocent, and that someone else committed the crime. In that case, Keri’s fantasies would go back to being harmless delusions, wouldn’t they?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “So the truth is—your testimony doesn’t prove anything—except maybe that you can’t be trusted to keep your patient’s secrets secret.”

  “Your honor,” LaBelle said, jumping to his feet. “That’s uncalled for.”

  “Never mind,” Christina said. “I think I’ve made my point.” Or she hoped she had, at any rate. Because it was the only one she was likely to make. But she wanted to go out with a bang, and she had a pretty good idea how to do it. “Tell me, Dr. Fulbright—do you like kinky sex?”

  “Objection!” LaBelle shouted. “This is outrageous!”

  Christina plowed ahead before the judge had a chance to rule against her. “It’s a fair question. What about it, Doc? You look as if you might like it rough. You sure talk about it enough.”

  “Again I object!” LaBelle bellowed.

  “Excuse me,” Christina said, “but a minute ago, when I objected to the same line of inquiry, I was told it was relevant to the credibility of the witness’s testimony. Apparently if you engage in sex in any way but the missionary position in the dark, you’re not trustworthy. So, since I’m inquiring into the veracity of this witness’s testimony, I think I’m entitled to ask the same questions.”

  “The objection is sustained,” Judge Cable said, not amused. “This witness is not on trial.”

  “I never said she was,” Christina replied. “I’m just trying to find out if she’s an honest person. Maybe she has some barely suppressed violence in her, too.”

  “Your honor,” LaBelle protested, “this is beyond the bounds.”

  “Really? Well, then let me rephrase.” She turned back toward Dr. Fulbright. “Do you like doing it with chains? Handcuffs? Maybe the occasional threesome? Maybe by yourself in the shower?”

  “That’s none of your business!” Fulbright answered angrily.

  “That’s exactly right,” Christina shouted, over the pounding of the judge’s gavel. “It’s nobody’s business but your own. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you do, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.” She paused, glancing at the jury. “And the same thing goes for Keri Dalcanton.”

  41

  THERE WAS A DISCERNIBLE change in Keri as she watched the wife of her deceased lover approach the witness stand. Ben could feel it from where he was sitting, even with the tangible barrier of Christina between them. There was a certain stiffening, a detectable apprehension, as she watched the tall slender figure of Andrea McNaughton approach. There was an electric moment, as Andrea passed through the gate separating the gallery from the front of the courtroom. Neither woman looked at the other, but Ben knew each was keenly aware of the other’s presence. The hostility was palpable—and understandable. Both had shared the same man—and each apparently suspected the other had killed him.

  There was a discernible change in the jurors as well, Ben noted. Their eyes were now filled with anticipation. Ben supposed that should be no surprise. The prosecution could go on for days with forensic evidence, police officers, and rabid psychologists, but when all was said and done, there were two witnesses the jury wanted to hear from, two witnesses who would make the greatest impact on their ultimate decision. And given the ever-present Fifth Amendment, they might never hear from one of them. That left Andrea McNaughton the star attraction.

  Ben leaned across Christina to whisper into Keri’s ear. “Remember, whatever she says, whatever happens, you do not react.”

  Keri didn’t answer. Her eyes were still focused front and center, on the witness box.

  “We can’t have any more outbursts. The judge won’t tolerate it and the jury won’t like it. You have to seem interested but unconcerned. You don’t agree with what she says, but you don’t act defensive about it. You are innocent. You remain above the fray.”

  Keri still didn’t respond.

  “Do you understand me?”

  Keri’s lips seemed to move more slowly than usual. “That woman hates me,” she said, her eyes never wavering. “She absolutely hates me. It’s so strong I can feel it.”

  “Stay calm, Keri.”

  “Don’t you understand? She could say anything. Anything at all.”

  D.A. LaBelle took Andrea on a leisurely tour of her early life, giving the jury an opportunity to feel as if they knew the woman in the witness box. Andrea answered in a firm, if somewhat halting voice. This was clearly an emotional experience for her, but she was struggling to keep herself together.

  The testimony only began to be directly relevant when Andrea described how she first met her late husband. “Joe and I met in high school, out in Broken Arrow. He was on the football team—first-string quarterback. I was in the Pep Squad. We fell in love and decided to get married. Both of our parents opposed it, but of course we wouldn’t listen. It’s an old story. I realize now that we should’ve waited to get married, but who listens at that age? We were in love, Joe had an entry-level job with the police department, and our hormones were raging. So we got married.”

  Despite their youth, as Andrea described it, the early years of their marriage were happy ones. “Sure, we had problems, just like everyone else, but nothing we couldn’t work through. Joe felt strongly that I shouldn’t work. ‘I don’t want to see my wife slinging burgers,’ that’s what he used to say. It was a matter of personal pride to him. And I think he wanted me to be free, in the event we should be blessed with children. We never were.” Her head tilted lower, and for the first time Ben heard a slight tremor in her voice. “The doctors said we were both healthy and capable, but it never happened. That was probably our greatest disappointment, but we were still young and we both believed it would come in time. Except now,” she added softly. “Now it never will.”

  Gradually, LaBelle brought her to the present, the twelfth and final year of their marriage. “A marriage changes over time. People change. It’s part of life. But we still had a happy marriage. We were still close. We were still … intimate. We were important to each other. We went out on dates—and we called them dates, just like when we were kids. We laughed and played and giggled. Joe had a real silly streak in him. I suppose his friends at work didn’t see much of it. But I did. I loved that about him.” She turned her face away, but Ben could still see the tiny twitch of her lips. “I loved everything about him.”

  LaBelle cleared his throat. “When did you first suspect there was something wrong in your marriage?”

  “When did I suspect? Never.” Her neck craned unnaturally. “I was such an idiot. I never had the slightest inkling. I thought everything was perfect.” She shook her head. “A fool in paradise.”

  “When did you learn otherwise?”

  “At lunch. That final day. I was visited by the wife of one of Joe’s partners on the force. Marge Matthews. I believe you’ve already met her husband, Arlen Matt
hews. I only slightly knew Marge, but for some reason she still felt it was incumbent upon her to spill my husband’s dark secret. She kept saying I had a right to know, which was a crock. She wasn’t there because I had a right to know. She was there because she wanted the dirty pleasure of being the one to tell me. To tell me what everyone else already knew.”

  “What was that?”

  Ben knew this question technically called for hearsay, but he saw no purpose in objecting. Everyone already knew the answer.

  “She told me my husband was having an affair. That he had been having an affair for some months. With a teenager. A young girl the—well, the same age I was when he married me. All those years ago.”

  “What was your reaction?”

  “Oh, I went through the typical stages. At first I didn’t believe it. Deep denial. But Marge kept pounding away at me, inundating me with details. Where they met. Where they slept together. How often they did it. She even knew the dates, for God’s sake. And sure enough, the dates Marge said he’d been sleeping with this child were the same dates he claimed he’d been in Oklahoma City working on some big new investigation. After a while, I had to give in. It was obviously true. Joe had betrayed me.”

  “What did you do?”

  She turned her head away again, and for a moment, Ben was certain they were going to see tears, but Andrea managed to fight them back and continue. “I cried for the better part of the day. I walked into the shower, fully clothed, and screamed for an hour at the top of my lungs. I stared into the mirror and hurled insults at myself. I just felt so … cheap. So used. So pathetic.”

  Ben dutifully made his check of the eyes of the jurors and saw that many of them—especially the women—were deeply affected.

  “How long did this continue?”

  “Too long. I was punishing myself. Finally I realized that this was not the right approach. After all, had I done anything wrong? No. I needed to stop tearing myself apart, and to start gathering my strength. So I confronted Joe.”

  “What happened?”

  “He didn’t deny it, but he wouldn’t agree to stop seeing her, either. I think he was embarrassed, ashamed. Like a little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Anyway, his pride got in the way and he refused to break it off. So I went to see her.”

  “And by her you mean …”

  “The defendant. Keri Dalcanton.” Her eyes moved to the defendant’s table only fleetingly, but the anger and hatred Ben felt as those eyes swept past was frightening in its intensity. “I rummaged through Joe’s address book till I found out where she lived. Then I hopped into my car and went over to see her.”

  “When exactly was this?”

  “After dark. About nine P.M. The night before he turned up in Bartlett Square.”

  LaBelle nodded solemnly. The grim spectre of Bartlett Square awaited them, but apparently LaBelle wanted to postpone that for later. “What happened when you arrived at her apartment?”

  “At first, it was almost comic. You see, she didn’t know who I was. I guess Joe never showed her my picture, which is understandable, I suppose. I showed up, ranting and raving and demanding that she break it off, and she didn’t even know who the hell I was. She was totally confused—until I said the W word. ‘I’m Joe’s wife,’ I told her. The instant I said that, she became hostile and threatening.

  “She was wearing some kind of exercise suit,” Andrea continued. “A skimpy thing—not much to it. Her little teenage heart was pounding away in her chest. She was sweaty and breathing hard—but not as hard as once we started talking.”

  “Did you ask her to break it off?” LaBelle asked.

  “No, I didn’t ask her to break it off. I told her it was over.”

  “And her reaction?”

  “She laughed at me.” Andrea’s jaw tightened. “Do you understand what I’m saying? She laughed at me. Laughed in my face.”

  “This is not true,” Keri murmured, under her breath. She was being careful not to let her face betray her feelings, but Ben could hear her just the same. “This never happened.”

  When Andrea’s face turned up again, a single tear was tracing its way down her cheek. “She was so heartless. So … smug. She told me that I couldn’t satisfy Joe. That he loved her. That they had done things together that … that I never dreamed of doing. She held nothing back. She wanted to destroy me.”

  LaBelle took a step forward. “I’m sorry to make you relive this, ma’am. If you need a break—”

  “No,” Andrea insisted, “I want to go on.” She swallowed hard. “I told her she couldn’t have my husband. She laughed and said he wasn’t my husband anymore. Nothing was mine anymore, she said. ‘Everything you have is mine.’ And then, just to make her point, she whipped back her hand and slapped me, right across the cheek.”

  “This is a lie,” Keri whispered, back at the defendant’s table. “A complete fabrication.”

  LaBelle continued the questioning. “And what happened after she assaulted you?”

  Andrea licked her lips, then wiped the tear from her face. “I lost it. Just totally lost it. I slapped her back. And then we were fighting.”

  “By fighting, you mean—”

  “I mean the real thing. Not just words. A real knock-down-drag-out. She grabbed me by the shoulders and slung me onto the carpet. I remember I fell on some exercise machine she had—felt like I’d broken my spine. We rolled around on top of each other, clawing and scratching and hitting. She even bit me.” She held out her wrist. “You can still see traces of it, after all these months. It left a scar, for God’s sake. It was a serious fight.”

  “When did it end?”

  “When her brother Kirk came home. If not for that, we might still be fighting. Or one of us would be dead, more likely. I was bleeding from half a dozen places when he finally pulled us apart. And she wasn’t in the greatest shape herself.”

  “Did anything else happen before you left?”

  “Yes. As I stumbled out the door, she spat at me. Really truly spat at me. Her brother held her arms behind her back, but she struggled and shouted.”

  “What did she say?”

  Andrea drew in her breath. “The last thing she said was, ‘If I can’t have him, no one can!’ ”

  The effect of these words on the jury was profound. Ben watched as, one after another, the jurors turned, shocked and appalled, to scrutinize the face of the woman who had allegedly spewed out these incriminating words.

  LaBelle had been trying to establish a motive for murder, but now he had even more. This was not just a mere motive. It was more like a promise.

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I went home. It was obvious that I was going to get nothing out of her. It would have to be Joe that broke it off. So I waited for him.”

  LaBelle nodded sympathetically. Ben had to marvel at his sensitive performance; he was more like a daytime talk-show host than a district attorney. “What happened when Joe got home?”

  Andrea waited a long while before answering, as if gathering her strength, mustering her control, choosing her words. “I’m sure you can imagine,” she said slowly, “that it was not a pleasant experience. Do you really want all the details?”

  “I’m afraid I do,” LaBelle said.

  “Very well.” She brushed her dark hair back behind her ears. “I had managed to collect myself enough to be at least somewhat rational. I didn’t scream and shout. I simply told him what I knew and what I expected to happen next, in no uncertain terms.”

  “Did he agree?”

  “Not at first. He was a man, after all. He puffed up his chest and told me no one could boss him around, yadda yadda yadda. But I gave him no choice. I told him it was her or me. If he didn’t break it off, I’d leave him. We’d be divorced—and everyone would know why. Everyone would know how young his little whore was, too—which I didn’t think would exactly contribute to his advancement on the force.”

  Ben felt the heat rising from Keri whe
n she heard the word “whore.” She too appeared to be struggling to maintain control—struggling to keep her face from revealing the bitterness she felt inside.

  “So in the end,” Andrea continued, “he agreed to break it off. He wanted to wait till the next day to tell his little tramp the bad news, but I wouldn’t hear of it. ‘It ends today,’ I said. ‘You’ll tell her now.’ So he went over to her place to do just that.” She paused. “And I never saw him alive again.”

  She turned away, and tears tumbled out of her eyes like the spray of a fountain. “The next morning, the police woke me up and told me—told me—” The anguish in her voice was so intense it hurt to hear it. “Told me he was dead. Not just dead—but dead in such a horrible, inhuman way. I was devastated. Just the day before, I learned I had lost his heart. Now—I’d lost everything.” Her hand covered her face. “And through it all, I just kept thinking of what that horrible woman had said to me. ‘If I can’t have him,’ she’d said, ‘no one can.’ And after that—no one did.”

  The judge, bless his heart, called for a recess after LaBelle finished his direct examination. After that emotionally draining testimony, everyone needed a break, not just Andrea but every warm body in the courtroom. During the five-minute respite, Ben chatted briefly with his client.

  “It didn’t happen like that,” Keri said “I swear. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  Ben nodded. “I know. I’ll try to bring that out on cross.”

  “But she made me seem so—evil. It wasn’t like that.”

  “I understand. But I have to tell you, Keri—I was watching the jurors while she testified. And they believed her. She was very convincing.”

  “You have to tell them the truth,” Keri said. “Make them understand.”

  “I’ll do my best. But I think we have to face reality at this point. Only one person can tell them what really happened. Only one person can make them believe it. And that’s you, Keri.”

  She turned her head away. “I’ve told you this already, Ben. I can’t testify. Absolutely not.”

  “Keri, I don’t like putting my defendant on the stand, either, but there are times when I realize it’s necessary, and this is one of them.”