by Buffa, D. W.
“What three promises did you make?”
“I promised that I would be faithful, and I promised I would have his child.”
“And the third promise, what was that?”
Danielle pulled back her shoulders and did not blink.
“I promised that I would kill him, and I did.”
CHAPTER Six
Danielle had a talent for confusion, a way of making things sound completely different than they were. She had killed her husband, shot him after he had finished with her in bed, a fact she had not even admitted to anyone until she admitted it to me, and she had not admitted it to me all at once. She told me the day she came to my office that she had killed him, but, strange as it may seem, not the meaning of what she had done. That third promise, the promise to kill him, the promise she had carried out, had not meant at the beginning anything like what it meant at the end. St. James had said it, made her promise she would kill him, in a way that was playful and nothing serious. Perhaps he said it, after what they had done that day in his office; to convince her that he would never do anything against her will. Perhaps there was not any reason at all, perhaps he was just in a mood to make a noble sounding gesture, when told her that he thought that men who mistreated women ought to be taken out and shot, and, while he was still laughing about it, made her promise she would kill him, shoot him dead, if he should ever treat her like that.
It had been, as I say, a lover’s gesture, whose only meaning was as a pledge of gentle treatment and devotion, a promise that, having served its purpose, they would both certainly forget, a promise there was no reason to remember until she began to hate him and wish he were dead. Then the words, with a new and bitter meaning, came flooding back, and with a kind of vengeful pride that long forgotten promise became the definition of betrayal and a justification for what she did.
And that was the problem. Her justification was no defense. She killed him, the fact was indisputable, and however she might insist that she had good reason to have done what she did, it was, by any definition, still murder. I had looked at it every way I knew how, examined the question from all sides, read every reported case that appeared to have even a remote connection with the issue, and there was nothing, nothing that would allow a woman to kill her husband for breaking the vows he had made. The law was all on the side of the prosecution. Danielle St. James was guilty of murder and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could do to save her. The only chance she had was luck, and the only thing I knew for certain was that I could not let her testify. If she told a jury the truth about what happened, not even luck could save her. I could not let her testify and I had no other witness I could use, no one who could help persuade a jury of her innocence. The only chance I had, and this had happened to me more than once in a trial, was to use the witnesses of the prosecution to prove, not her innocence, but a doubt, a reason to question whether, despite its best efforts, the case against her was sufficient.
It was easy to know what you had to do; the trick of course was how to do it, and the night before the trial I still did not know. I had gone through the police reports and statements of the witnesses, everything the prosecution had, dozens of times; I had gone through them so often that I only had to glance at the first line on the page to know everything that was written there, but it had not helped. I was going to have to challenge everything the prosecution did, seize on any inconsistency, no matter how minor, wait for the other side to make a mistake; but there were no inconsistencies, no mistakes, nothing that had been left out in anything I had read. The only hope was the trial itself. A witness on the stand was a different creature than a witness on paper, easier to trap in a life, easier, if the truth be told, to make seem a fool.
I lay on the sofa in the living room of my Nob Hill apartment, staring at the ceiling, driving myself a little crazy each time I tried to think of some flaw in the prosecution’s case against Danielle St. James. I hated nights like this, the night before a trial, when no matter how hard I tried, I could not think of anything except the trial and all the unexpected things that were almost sure to happen. It was never easy, the night before a trial, but this night was the worst one of all, because I already knew I had made a mistake, and it was too late to do anything about it. I had known almost from the beginning that I should never have taken the case, that I should have done what I had meant to do and told Danielle to find another lawyer. The words of Philip Conrad, the court reporter, kept echoing in my over cluttered mind, that a jury would not like her, that they would not trust a woman that was so beautiful and rich.
I suddenly remembered that I had wanted to remind Danielle to wear to court in the morning something simple and understated, and wondered if I had. Then, in my confusion, I remembered that though it was nearly eleven, I had not eaten anything. At least that was something I could do something about. I got up and was headed for the kitchen when the telephone rang. It was the doorman, calling to tell me that ‘Mrs. St. James’ was there to see me.
“I thought you might have some last minute things you wanted to talk about,” said Danielle.
Her voice had none of the anxiety, none of the trepidation, expected from someone about to go on trial for murder. She walked through the marble entryway and into the wood paneled living room as if, despite the late hour, this was nothing more than a social visit. Hesitating, not quite sure where to sit, she settled on a pale blue easy chair across from the sofa where I had spent half the evening and next to the fireplace I had never used. She seemed in no particular hurry, as she glancing around, making herself familiar with the room. Pushing her legs farther out in front of her, she sank lower in the cushioned chair. The gray silk dress, made by some designer especially for her, inched up above her knees.
The easy certainty, the sense, not exactly of entitlement, but of utter confidence that she could do whatever she chose to do; the way that with a single lifted eyebrow, the bare beginning of a smile, she thought she could command my attention; the very things that made her so damnably attractive, were now, with the trial just hours away, the source of as much irritation as I had ever felt. I was not sure if I was angry because of the way she was, or because, despite those solemn promises I had forced her to give me before, against my better judgment, I had agreed to become her lawyer. In a strange way it was funny.
“You’re on trial for murder, I still don’t know how I’m going to save you, and you come over here with that ‘I don’t give a damn attitude’ of yours, as if nothing can touch you! Why? Because you’ve always been able to lie your way out of anything?”
Her reaction was immediate. She sat straight up, a look of icy contempt in her blue-green eyes, and with slow precision parted her red painted lips, ready on the instant with some withering reply. But I was past the point of caring what she thought or what she felt.
“Every time I ask you to tell me what happened that night,” I shouted over her, “there’s always something missing, something you’ve left out. You haven’t told the same story twice - and you think I’m so stupid I don’t notice it?”
I was standing a few feet away, staring at her with all the built up frustration of months of what seemed useless effort, a search for the truth that had only gone in circles.
“You swore you’d never lie to me, and that’s damn near all you’ve done!”
Her face turned white, her eyes were wild with rage. She was on her feet, starting for the door, determined not to listen to another word. I grabbed her by the wrist and would not let go, and the harder she tried to get away, the tighter I squeezed.
“You…!” Her eyes burned with a proud, defiant intensity, daring me either to take her, or let her go. “At least Nelson knew what he wanted and how to get it!” she shouted with naked candor into my face
Everything - all my hard-earned resolution, all my honest, well-meant intention to treat Danielle St. James like any other client and think only about the case, - went the way of all illusions. I wanted her, and nothing el
se now mattered. I kissed her, but she twisted away, a look of triumph in her eyes. She had won, taught me that whatever else I thought I wanted, I wanted her. And then she kissed me back and my hand was off her wrist, moving down around her waist, while her long arms curled around my neck and her lithe body pressed against my own. We stumbled blindly toward the bedroom, tearing at each other’s clothes.
We were wrapped around each other, just about to start, but I had to see her, I had to see how she looked I raised my head, and in the moonlight, streaming through the window, that gorgeous face of hers, bright and shining, was staring past me, her mind on something else. Swearing under my breath, I rolled away.
Danielle’s face was a study in confusion.
“I thought you wanted me.”
“You didn’t want me back.”
“I thought you wanted to make love.”
“I would have been having sex alone,” I said with a cold stare. “This was a mistake.”
I got out of bed and started putting on my clothes, disgusted with everything, and especially myself. Propped up on one elbow, Danielle seemed puzzled by how abruptly I had changed my mind. It was a rare, and for all I knew, unique experience, one she did not know quite how to handle, a seduction that had failed in the last moments.
“Why did you come here tonight?” I asked while I buttoned my shirt. “Did you think you had to sleep with me to make sure I’d do everything I could to win? I’ve won cases for a lot of people charged with murder, and, believe it or not, I didn’t sleep with any of them!”
Her knees were pulled up, the sheet tucked under her chin. Something I had not seen before, a wounded, frightened look, entered her eyes.
“I’ve watched how hard you’ve worked these last few months. I wanted to give you something before the trial began, before it ever goes to the jury, before they come back with a verdict, so you’d know it wasn’t out of gratitude for what you had done. I wanted to give you what I thought you wanted, and I thought you wanted me.”
It almost did not matter that she looked the way she did, her voice alone was irresistible, something you did not so much listen to as feel, like a soft warm wind in the evening of a perfect summer day, reminding you of every good day you ever had and, more than that, all the good days you had somehow missed, the days you wished you had had and never did. That was what drew you toward her: not just the face that graced the cover of so many magazines, but the promise of things you had not known and had never quite thought possible. She was the girl you saw in a crowd, the girl you never met, the one who could have made everything right, who would have made you happy with the life you had, made you forget forever the restless search for something new and different. She was the girl with whom sex would be the beginning, and not the end, of what you felt, what every man was looking for and felt foolish to admit.
“You were never in love with him, were you? Ever?”
“Nelson? No.”
“You’ve never been in love with anyone, have you?”
A bashful smile slipped unbidden across her soft and girlish mouth, and she bent her head to the side.
“Not since I was sixteen, no.”
Finished with the last button on my shirt, I did not bother with socks or shoes, but barefoot and disheveled left her in the bedroom and padded out to the kitchen, threw open the refrigerator and looked for something to drink. It was after midnight and I had a trial in the morning. Angry with myself, angry with the world, I muttered a few mild obscenities, slammed shut the refrigerator and made a cup of coffee instead. If I was not going to be able to sleep I might as well try to work.
I had told Danielle to get dressed, that she had to leave, but when she came into the kitchen all she had on was one of my abandoned shirts, a shirt she had not bothered to button. She sat across the table, holding a cup of coffee next to her mouth, waiting for me to say something, but I would not look at her. I took a sip of coffee, but, still too hot, it burned my mouth. Already too much on the defensive, I ignored the pain, crossed my arms and, finally looking at her, tried to assume an attitude of indifference.
“I don’t want you. It was a mistake. It isn’t going to happen again.”
She ignored me.
“I wasn’t in love with Nelson, but that didn’t matter to him. He thought I’d never been in love with anyone, and that I never would be.” Raising her head, she gave me a significant look. “He thought I wasn’t capable of loving anyone more than I loved myself.” A smile that seemed to know everything moved bright and golden across her lips. “I imagine a lot of women have fallen in love with you, besides me, when I was sixteen. Have you fallen in love with any of them – other than my sister?”
I did not understand what she was saying, where she was going with this. I was not kept in the dark for long.
“Tell me the truth: with all the women you must have slept with, have you always wanted them as much as they wanted you? Are you going to tell me that you never slept with a woman you weren’t in love with but who was in love with you?”
When I did not answer, her eyes glittered with vindication at this brief summary of my life as a failed romantic. She bent forward, eager to press her advantage.
“Are you going to tell me that you never made love to a woman and for just a quick, passing moment, thought about something else.”
“Or someone else,” I reminded her in a cold, determined voice.
“I wasn’t thinking of someone else,” she replied, quick to deny it; but then, just as quickly, she changed her mind. “Or maybe I was. But not because I was wishing I was with someone else. It wasn’t that at all. Tonight was the first time since….”
Her eyes clouded over, and in a brooding silence struggled with her emotions, the conflict she felt. Staring straight ahead, a pensive expression darkened her brow. Finally, after what might have been only a few seconds but seemed like a very long time, she turned again to me.
“Tonight was the first time I’ve been near a man since the night he died.”
She said this without remorse, without regret, without, so far as I could tell, the slightest sense of responsibility or guilt. I understood what she wanted, understood it as clearly as if she had taken the time to explain it: She wanted to know if I believed her, believed what she had told me about what happened the night she killed her husband. She kept looking at me, searching my eyes, too proud to ask and, beneath it all, perhaps too scared not to want to know.
“I suddenly remembered,” she started to explain. “I suddenly saw it all over again: the way he felt, hard up inside me; the way his body tensed the moment he finished – started to finish. That look he had in his eyes, the look that was there every time he did it, every time he had me; that look that said -”
Her eyes were wild with – I was not sure what: anger, fear, excitement? – Or all of them at once, the long suppressed reaction to what she had done.
“He did that, he always did that – that look that said he owned me, that no one else could ever have me, that he was better than everyone because of it. They say that men rape women to show they have power over them. He had sex with me to prove he had power over other men.”
More than with resentment, she said this was something close to pure hatred. She fed on it, took pleasure in it, the thought that what he had done to her was as bad as rape, and maybe worse.
“You could have made love to me, but you didn’t, because you thought I didn’t want you as much as you wanted me, because you wanted something more than sex. Nelson didn’t want that, he didn’t want to make love. He didn’t know what that was. Nelson wanted what we did that day in his office: he wanted to fuck! That’s all he knew. Beneath all that money and charm and that handsome face of his, beneath all the expensive clothes and private school manners, all Nelson cared about was what he owned. Nelson in love with me? – It’s what he told you that weekend on Blue Zephyr: the only thing he loved was the knowledge that everyone else wanted what he had. Make love with me? – All I was to
him was a dressed up whore!” she cried, becoming more agitated with each word she spoke. “And that look he had on his face! I couldn’t stand it anymore. That lie he told me before we were married, that there was nothing worse than a man who mistreated a woman! That promise he made me make that I would never let him mistreat me! I wonder if he remembered all that when he looked at me like that again that night and I pulled out a gun and shot him.”
She began to cry, hot, bitter tears, and I held her close and did what I could to comfort her until, finally, she told me she was all right and with a brave smile said I better get some sleep. I waited while she dressed in the other room, and then I walked her back to her hotel the other side of Nob Hill. We stood just outside the entrance, away from the doormen with their whistles and all the noisy cars, and she kissed me on the side of my face and said she knew that everything would work out the way it should. And then I walked back and tried not to think about what was going to happen in the morning when we started the first trial I had had that I knew I could not win.
CHAPTER Seven
Intrigued by the marriage of money and beauty that had ended in murder, reporters came from all over the country, and as far away as Europe, to cover the trial. Sex and violence always sold papers, and brought higher ratings to television, and never in such numbers as when power and celebrity were involved. In the tabloid mentality of the age, it was a simple question of a woman’s greed. From the time Danielle St. James was arrested it was all about the money and nothing else. It was obvious, plain on the face of it, that she was guilty as charged. The morning the trial started, the always impartial Philip Conrad, waiting patiently at his machine, may have been the only one in the courtroom who had not already reached that conclusion. The first words out of the prosecutor’s mouth only repeated what everyone claimed to know.
