by W. A. Winter
“Mr. Casserly,” DeShields says, getting down to business, “according to Anthony Zevos, you were acquainted with Teresa Hickman. Is that correct?”
“Well, I saw her at her place of employment—the Palace Lun-cheonette—and we’d chat when I sat at the counter.”
“What would you chat about?”
Casserly smiles.
“Oh, this and that. Usually nothing of any consequence.”
“‘Usually,’ but not always. Sometimes she would have something of consequence to tell you. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Casserly?”
“Well, yes. In retrospect, I suppose that’s true.”
What Teresa Hickman had to say of consequence was this, he tells the jury:
Teresa Hickman was the “victim” (Casserly’s word) of a “loveless marriage” (Mrs. Hickman’s phrase, according to Casserly). Her child, Harold Hickman Junior, resulted, “miraculously” (her word, he says), from the “few times” (her words) she and Harold Hickman Senior slept in the same bed, which occurred during the week or two following their wedding. Private Hickman was a “decent fellow,” but once their brief courtship ended in marriage, “the thrill was gone—he even seemed afraid to let me touch him.” (All her words.)
“Terry had a boyfriend, Kenny Landa, she told me, and he would—well, see to her needs,” Casserly continues. “There were other men, too, she said, both at home and here in the city, who she liked and spent time with.”
As his testimony draws the predictable murmurs from the gallery, Casserly tries to keep the smile off his face, but it’s obviously difficult. His eyes flick once or twice toward the pretty girls in the jury. Both his words and his audience’s reaction to those words seem to add to the momentum of the narrative.
“Did Mrs. Hickman tell you about other men in her life since moving to the city—men who were not her friends?” DeShields asks.
“Yes,” says Casserly. He is sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, his words seeming about to lift him to his feet. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, and proceeds, gravely, with what seems exaggerated precision, his hands clasped between his knees.
“She was terrified of both Anatoli and Tony Zevos at the Palace. She said Tony touched her in a sexual manner and offered her cash bonuses in exchange for sex. She thought Richard Ybarra was her friend until he tricked her into posing for smutty photographs, some of which, she found out, he sold to other men. And her brother-in-law, Bud Montgomery, forced her to have sexual relations after she moved into the Montgomerys’ apartment.”
Now there is total silence, and a different look comes over Casserly’s face. He appears uncertain and uncomfortable, as though he’s afraid he’s said too much.
DeShields pauses a moment, and then asks another question.
“Did Mrs. Hickman, during these conversations, ever mention Dr. Rose?”
“No,” the driver replies. “Not once.”
DeShields pauses again and then says, “But, earlier today, when we discussed your pending testimony, you told Mr. Haydon and myself that you happened to see Mrs. Hickman and Dr. Rose on the night of April 8. Isn’t that correct?”
“That’s correct,” the driver says.
He describes parking along the east side of Lake of the Isles, behind a black Packard, observing a man and a young woman in the front seat, apparently having a heated discussion. He recognized Teresa Hickman from the lunchroom, but not her companion until he saw Rose’s photo in the paper. He recounts Mrs. Hickman’s sudden departure from the Packard, her walk up the hill away from the lake, and the Oldsmobile sedan with two men inside parked on Euclid Place. After a brief conversation with the men, he says, one of them jumped out of the Olds and forced her into the front seat, and then the car sped off.
Casserly says he could identify only the man who got out of the green car. He was tall, thin, and mustachioed, and wore a light-colored fedora.
He says he would have spoken up sooner, but was afraid for himself and his family. He realizes that he’d forgotten some of the detail he’d intended to tell the court, such as the man looking for something in the street and the Oldsmobile’s squealing tires when it roared away.
“Thank you,” DeShields says dryly. “Your witness.”
Assistant County Attorney Blake stands, says something to Scofield, and stares at the witness. Not for the first time, Rose notices that Mr. Blake’s uppers are ill-fitting and probably uncomfortable.
“That’s all a load of hooey, isn’t it, Mr. Casserly?” Blake says. “At least everything you told us after the ages of your kids.” He pauses to give his mordant opening a chance to register with the audience. “Teresa Hickman never spoke to you at length and in detail, much less confided in you about her private life. You didn’t see Mrs. Hickman with Dr. Rose on the night of her murder, and you didn’t see two men whisk Mrs. Hickman away in a green Oldsmobile. What you didn’t glean from previous testimony and the newspapers, you made up.”
Casserly glares at the lawyer.
“Isn’t it true that you had a prurient interest in Teresa Hickman, that you pestered her boss and coworkers about her whereabouts and activity when she wasn’t at the luncheonette, and that you tried to follow her around afterhours?”
Before the witness can respond, Blake says, “Isn’t it true that you purchased from Richard Ybarra your own set of suggestive photographs of Mrs. Hickman, which you hid in your garage at home and perused for your private enjoyment?
“And isn’t it true that you were twice detained on peeping Tom charges when you were in high school, the charges dropped because you were a juvenile and through the intercession of a Brother Cecil Moreland, one of your teachers?”
“Objection!” says DeShields. “Mr. Casserly is not on trial here, Your Honor. What’s more, we are unaware of any duly authorized search warrants pertaining to the witness’s personal property and records.”
“The pornography, at least a portion of it, was brought in unsolicited and voluntarily just this morning by Mrs. Margaret Casserly, the witness’s wife, Your Honor,” Blake responds. “Mrs. Casserly informed detectives at that time about her husband’s peeping Tom arrests, which have only within the past hour been confirmed by police records.
“She also produced a carbon copy of what appears to be a doctor’s letter dated November 14, 1942, alleging a trick knee suffered during a high school basketball game that would excuse Mr. Casserly from military service. Both the doctor and the trick knee, said Mrs. Casserly, were fictitious. Mr. Casserly dictated the letter, and Mrs. Casserly, who was doing part-time secretarial work in the Medical Arts Building downtown, typed it up on a doctor’s stationery.
“So it would seem, Mr. Casserly, that you’re a draft dodger as well as a liar and a fantasist.”
DeShields, in sudden counterattack mode, thunders, “This information constitutes a shocking violation of the discovery process, Your Honor! We should have been informed of anything relevant to the witness’s history, record, and personal property.”
“It was your responsibility, Mr. DeShields, to vet the background of your witness,” Blake fires back, clearly pleased with himself.
“You’re both correct, gentlemen,” Nordahl says. For the first time since the trial began, the starchy jurist seems to be enjoying himself. “In any event, the jury will disregard Mr. Blake’s references to pornography, the peeping Tom charges, and draft-dodging, said references to be stripped from the record. The jury will then decide whether Mr. Casserly’s recollections about Mrs. Hickman, Dr. Rose, and the green Oldsmobile are credible or not. The witness may step down.”
But the witness doesn’t seem to hear the judge. He remains seated on the witness stand, eyes wide and slack-jawed, his body depleted like a punctured balloon.
If Robert Gardner’s subpoena wasn’t bad enough, there was a letter from Meghan Mckenzie in his apartment mailbox the same afternoon. There was no return address on the envelope, but he’d seen enough of her prim, backward-slanting ha
ndwriting to recognize it immediately.
Dear Bob, she wrote.
I want you to know how much I’ve enjoyed your friendship over the past several weeks. You are a sweet young man and a pleasure to be with in every sense of the word.
But I must tell you that Howie and I have recently spent a considerable amount of time (and money) examining and evaluating our marriage, which, as you can surely understand, has had its ups and downs this year. The bottom line is, we have after much introspection, discussion, and counseling rededicated ourselves to our marriage and to do our best to start a family. (Imagine me a mommy!)
I have no regrets about our time together, but now it must end.
Fondly, M.
P. S. Of course I will count on your continued discretion.
Ninety minutes and three Grain Belts later, Robert dialed Pam Brantley’s number. He was relieved when a man answered because he didn’t have the vaguest idea what he was going to say to her, other than something slurred and stupid such as, “I’m going to commit perjury in court tomorrow, which is a felony punishable by several years in prison, in order to protect the two of us, so can I please get naked with you tonight?” He hung up and went to bed, having already laid out his sport coat and dotted tie and run his wingtips through the shoeshine protocol his father learned in the Army Air Corps and passed along to his only son.
The male voice that answered Pam’s phone wasn’t Karl’s. Could it have belonged to the son of a bitch who left his glasses under the Brantleys’ bed? Robert fell asleep wondering if he and the other guy looked alike, with or without their glasses and their clothes, and if the guy had pleased Pam in bed as much as he did.
Now, fourteen hours later, Robert is a witness in a first-degree murder trial in which he might be considered a suspect and may have to perjure himself. He almost has to laugh at this latest unlikely chapter in his unlikely autobiography. If there were such a thing, he’d call it A Bumpkin Gets Fucked in the Big City.
Surreal is the word right now. He sits in his spiffy clothes and spit-shined shoes a foot above the rest of majestic Courtroom No. 1 (not counting the judge and the two elevated rows of the jury box), fifteen feet from the Upper Midwest’s most infamous murderer (alleged), the murderer’s legendary attorney, and most of the region’s first-string journalists—not to mention twelve citizens who will decide whether Robert is a liar, a truth-teller, or just another sap caught in the meat-grinder known as the American criminal-justice system. All of that plus a hundred-odd men and women (mostly women) whose lives are so boring they got up before sunrise, stood in line for several hours, and now sit cheek-to-jowl on unforgiving planks for several more hours to share the bad end of lives even sadder than theirs.
He does his best to avoid the eyes of Miles Mckenzie and Tommy Pullman at the reporters’ tables (he has not yet been fired, but expects to be shortly) and scans the gallery for familiar faces: Meghan’s, Pam’s, Gwen’s, or—God help him—those of Dr. and Mrs. William Gardner. He sees none of them, but spots Detectives Curry and Anderson, who stare at him with cold eyes, as though he’s either their prime suspect or they’ve never laid eyes on him, he can’t decide.
He’s been called to testify for the defense, to answer questions put to him by Dante DeShields. He conferred with DeShields and his assistant earlier this morning, going over the points they will cover.
“Just answer the questions,” Michael Haydon told him. “Don’t volunteer anything you’re not asked to provide.”
On the stand, after the first several innocuous questions from DeShields—name, age, current residence, occupation, employer—Robert begins to relax a little.
Then, responding to DeShields’s questions, he describes his return to his sister’s Linden Hills apartment shortly before midnight on April 8. He describes the weather conditions as best he remembers them—“dry, chilly, but not really very cold”—and his route from the bus stop on Forty-fourth and Xerxes to his sister’s building a block away.
“Did you see anyone on the street at that time?” DeShields asks.
“No, sir,” Robert says. “Maybe a car or two going down Forty-fourth, but no pedestrians.”
“Did you notice any unfamiliar cars parked along that route, with anybody inside?”
“No. There were a couple of cars parked on Forty-fourth, but I didn’t notice anybody inside them.”
“Did you see the defendant?”
“No.”
“Did you see a black, late-model Packard Clipper either moving or parked along the street?”
“No.”
DeShields stares at Robert for a long moment, and Robert feels a chill inside his snappy jacket.
“At some point, Mr. Gardner, you decided to leave the sidewalk on the north side of Forty-fourth Street and proceed home instead along the abandoned trolley tracks that run behind the buildings on Forty-fourth. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
The question strikes Robert as harmless enough, but DeShields’s tone is ominous.
“I’m not sure,” he replies. “I guess because I usually go into my sister’s building through the back door.” So now he has told the court two lies.
DeShields cocks one of his formidable eyebrows.
“You could access that back door by simply walking from the front sidewalk around the side of the building, couldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s usually what I do. As I said, I’m not sure why I came by way of the tracks that night.”
“Did you see anybody or anything out of the ordinary at that time, Mr. Gardner?”
“No. It’s pretty dark back there.”
“A good place to not be seen, yes?”
Speaking of dark, Robert has a sudden sensation of descending a dark set of stairs. Slippery. Perhaps obstructed. Perilous.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a girlfriend, Mr. Gardner?”
“No.”
“Did you have a girlfriend on the night of April 8?”
“No.”
Robert has perjured himself five times in less than a minute.
“What time did you leave the United Press office that night?” DeShields asks.
Robert knows he can’t play fast and loose with this one, not with his colleagues sitting twenty feet away.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “Nine-thirty, ten maybe. We don’t punch a clock,” he adds, casting a glance at Mckenzie.
“And you caught a bus, southbound on Hennepin. Is that correct?”
“I might have stopped for a drink or two first,” Robert says. He has lost count of his perjured statements. Six now? Seven?
“You’re not sure?”
“No.”
DeShields sighs, picks up a sheet of paper, peruses it for a moment, and then puts it down.
“How tall are you, Mr. Gardner?”
“Uh, about six feet,” Robert says. “Six feet, one-half inch, to be exact.”
He manages a foolish smile. At least he’s telling the truth this time.
“And how much do you weigh?”
Robert shrugs. “Last time I checked, maybe a hundred and forty-five, one-fifty.”
“How would you describe your body type—thin, underweight, skinny?”
“I don’t know,” Robert stammers. “Thin, I guess. Maybe skinny.”
“And, obviously, Mr. Gardner, you wear eyeglasses. How long have you worn glasses?”
“Since I was eight or nine. Since the fifth grade.”
The judge peers down at the lawyer.
“Can this line of questioning possibly have an objective, Counsel?” Nordahl asks.
“I believe it does, Your Honor,” DeShields says. “Earlier in this trial a police officer was heard referring to an eyewitness report of an unidentified male seen moving along the Forty-fourth Street trolley tracks late on the night of April 8 or early on April 9. The man was described as, and I quote, ‘young, skinny, and wearing glasses.’ Mr. Gardn
er is young, by his own account skinny, and he wears glasses. And he was in the immediate vicinity that night.”
Now Rudy Blake is on his feet, crying hearsay.
“Your Honor, this witness has not been charged, much less indicted, in regard to Teresa Hickman’s murder,” he says. “I don’t believe he’s been questioned by the police or ever been considered a suspect. This is a diversion, another bald-faced attempt on the part of the defense to draw the jury’s attention away from the evidence against Dr. Rose, who has been indicted and is on trial for Mrs. Hickman’s murder.”
“That’s all,” DeShields says. “I have nothing more.”
Rudy Blake, who sighs and shakes his head, has three questions for the witness.
“Mr. Gardner, did you know or, to the best of your knowledge, ever meet Teresa Hickman?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you murder Teresa Hickman or have anything to do with her murder?”
“No.”
“Do you have any knowledge at all about Mrs. Hickman’s murder?”
“No, I don’t,” says Robert, lying one more time.
And then, at last, he is excused.
Over the course of the next two days, DeShields directs his fire at Anderson and Curry. The courtroom senses that he’s building to the climax of the defense’s case.
The fact that DeShields doesn’t call Detective Inspector Evangelist and Detective Captain Fuller, never mind the MPD’s senescent chief, sixty-four-year-old Orwin Samuels, could mean he holds the top brass in as low regard as the investigators do themselves. More likely, he wants to concentrate his attack on the two men closest to the Hickman investigation. DeShields’s efficient pantsing of Detective Hessburg earlier in the month left little doubt about his intent and tactics.