by D. W. Buffa
“Did Stanley Roth ever tell you that he wished he had killed his wife?”
With a worried look, Julie quickly shook her head. “Yes, but he didn’t mean it. He was angry, hurt—he... ”
Van Roten cut her off. “He told you that he had hit her, hit his wife, Mary Margaret Flanders—isn’t that true?”
Julie Evans was used to having people go out of their way to make her feel comfortable. More than that, she was used to being in charge. Stanley Roth might interrupt her before she had finished what she had to say, but that was different. Stanley Roth was ... well, Stanley Roth, not some poison-tongued lawyer who drove a used car and bought her clothes off the rack. She gave Annabelle Van Roten a cold-eyed stare.
“Stanley was very upset about what had happened,” replied Julie. She spoke much more slowly than before, as if she had decided that Van Roten lacked the intelligence to understand something said more quickly. It seemed almost to amuse Van Roten, this attempt by some expensively dressed woman to assume an attitude of superiority while being questioned in a murder trial.
“And after he told you he hit her, he told you he wished he had killed her?” asked Van Roten, measuring out the words exactly the way Julie had done. If Julie disliked interruption, she hated mockery. Her blue eyes smoldered with resentment.
“Ms. Evans,” said Van Roten impatiently; “you’re here under subpoena. It simply doesn’t matter that you don’t want to be here or that you don’t want to answer the few questions I have to ask. There’s no choice—not if you want to stay out of jail for contempt. Now, did Stanley Roth make the statement that he wished he had killed his wife—yes or no?”
“Yes,” replied Julie reluctantly. “He did, but... ”
“No, Ms. Evans, not ‘but.’ He made that statement. He said he wished he had killed his wife.”
Smiling to herself, Van Roten took a step in the direction of the jury box. “Finally,” she sighed under her breath, “an answer.” Pivoting on her next step, she turned to the witness. “You worked for Stanley Roth a long time, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Worked closely with him?”
“Yes.”
“He confided in you?”
“Well, I... ”
“No, Ms. Evans. You just testified that he told you he hit his wife. You just testified that he told you he wished he had killed her.” She paused long enough to hold out her hands and turn up her palms, a gesture meant to suggest that the answer was plain on the face of it. “He confided in you.”
“There were things he told me, and there were things he did not.”
Van Roten shrugged. Folding her arms, she studied the tip of her toe as she pushed one foot slightly ahead of the other.
“Among the other things he told you, did he tell you that he quarreled frequently with his wife about—other men?”
“How do you mean?”
Van Roten brought her head up quickly, a frown on her face. “Did they, or did they not, quarrel about her involvement with other men? Yes or no, Ms. Evans!”
“Yes, they sometimes quarreled about that.”
“So it would not be true to say that Mr. Roth didn’t concern himself with the possibility that his wife might have had affairs with other men, would it?”
“I wouldn’t know how to answer that,” coolly replied Julie.
“You wouldn’t know how to answer that,” Van Roten muttered to herself as she shook her head in derision.
“They quarreled about it, though, didn’t they?” she fairly shouted. “Isn’t that what you just testified?”
“I testified that they sometimes quarreled about her involvement with other men,” Julie shot back. “You’d have to ask him how concerned he was about it!”
Van Roten threw up her hands and stared incredulously. “And those quarrels,” she said presently, “did they ever become violent?”
I almost could not watch, it was so insidious, the way Annabelle Van Roten took advantage of the one weakness Julie Evans had. She was still in love with Stanley Roth—I suppose she would always be in love with Stanley Roth—and she was, despite herself, so eager to help him, or at least not to hurt him; and then, on top of that, she had such contempt for the woman posturing here in front of her, the woman who was trying to send Stanley Roth to his death. She could not stop the look of triumph that raced through her eyes as she realized what she had been given the chance to say.
“Yes, they became violent. Mary Margaret once threw an ashtray at him and hit him on the side of his head. It could have killed him. It would have, too, if it had hit him just a little lower, on the temple. It took a dozen stitches to close the wound. He didn’t call the police. Maybe he should have.”
She was almost breathless at the end. Her blue eyes darted toward Stanley Roth, hoping for some sign of approval, some sign that she had done the right thing. Roth never saw it. He was peering down at his hands. Julie’s gaze became stoic as she looked back at her interrogator who was waiting silently, her hand resting on the cheap wooden railing of the jury box.
“So Stanley Roth hit her,” said Van Roten, nodding wisely, “and wished he had killed her, and she became so angry at him she threw something at him that, as you put it, came within an inch or two of killing him. Tell us this, Ms. Evans: Given this history of violence, when you first heard that Mary Margaret Flanders had been murdered, wasn’t your first thought that she must have been killed by her husband, the defendant, Stanley Roth?” she asked, shouting the end of her question over my vigorous objection.
“What the witness did or did not think is irrelevant to any issue in this case, Your Honor, and Ms. Van Roten knows it every bit as much as I do.”
“Sustained!” thundered Honigman, both to make himself heard and to quiet the boisterous crowd.
“In addition to what you’ve been told about the defendant’s violence, you’ve witnessed it yourself, haven’t you, Ms. Evans?”
Julie gave her a blank stare.
“You were a guest in the home of Louis Griffin the night the defendant assaulted his other partner, Michael Wirthlin, weren’t you?”
“Your Honor,” I said, springing back to my feet, “the defendant has testified to the fight he had with Mr. Wirthlin. This is supposed to be rebuttal testimony.”
“Ms. Van Roten?” Honigman inquired.
“The testimony is offered to rebut the defendant’s characterization of his encounter with Mr. Wirthlin, Your Honor.”
Honigman stroked his chin, then stroked it again. “Very well,” he announced. “For that limited purpose, I’ll allow it.”
Van Roten looked at Julie Evans.
“Yes, I was there.”
“Mr. Roth was drunk, wasn’t he?”
“He had been drinking, yes.”
“He threw a chair at Mr. Wirthlin, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t hit him with it.”
“Mr. Wirthlin managed to duck and the chair flew into the glass door behind him, shattering the glass—is that correct?”
“The chair hit the glass, yes.”
“Then Mr. Roth grabbed a wine bottle and raised it, ready to strike Mr. Wirthlin with it—isn’t that correct?”
“I didn’t see that,” insisted Julie.
“You had dropped to the floor?”
“I’m not sure. I just remember pulling my arms in front of my face, closing my eyes when the glass broke.”
“But you saw what happened next, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw what happened: you saw who stopped Mr. Roth from hitting Mr. Wirthlin with that bottle, didn’t you?”
“Stanley wouldn’t really have hit him,” Julie tried to insist. “He never would have... ”
“You saw what happened,” insisted Van Roten with a grim stare. “You saw Mr. Roth’s attorney, Mr. Antonelli; you saw him, sitting on the other side of the table; you saw him dive over the table and wrestle Mr. Roth to the floor, didn’t you? Mr. Antonelli saved Mr. Wir
thlin’s life, didn’t he?”
“Stanley wouldn’t have hit him,” protested Julie, her eyes open wide.
“Mr. Antonelli jumped over the table, didn’t he?” demanded Van Roten.
“Yes.”
“And he wrestled Mr. Roth to the floor, didn’t he?”
“It was more like they both ended up on the floor because of the collision.”
“A collision that knocked Mr. Antonelli unconscious, a collision that resulted in a cut over his eye, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Evans,” said Van Roten, spinning on her heel. She looked up at the bench. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
She took a step toward the counsel table and then, as if she had just remembered something, stopped and turned her head to the side. With a haughty, teasing sparkle in her coal dark eyes she looked at me and said loud enough for the jury to hear:
“And to think you said you slipped and fell because you were thinking of me!”
In the space of less than an hour, Annabelle Van Roten had destroyed what little defense we had. She had taken my ill-advised promise to tell the truth, no matter who it hurt and no matter how ugly it might be, and made it seem the criminal confession of someone who, versed in the arts of concealment, admits a lesser evil to disguise the commission of a greater one. With all the evidence against him, the only chance we had was to somehow persuade the jury that, despite all appearances, Stanley Roth really had nothing to hide. Now, because of what Van Roten had been able to get Julie Evans to say, the members of that jury must have wondered if Stanley Roth had told the truth, or at least the whole truth, about anything. When I rose to face Julie Evans several of the jurors shifted uneasily in their tightly cramped chairs, several others coughed uncomfortably. For one of the few times during the trial, the court clerk lifted her tiny eyes to watch.
“You and I have been acquainted for some time now, haven’t we?” I asked, smiling gently as I stood in front of the counsel table. Julie looked at me like someone grateful to find a friend in a room full of strangers. She seized my eyes with her own and did not let go.
“Yes,” she replied, smiling back.
“Acquainted from the very beginning of the case, starting the first day I met the defendant, Stanley Roth, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You were Mr. Roth’s executive assistant, and in that capacity you helped me become better acquainted with his various business dealings as well as other matters that had some relevance to his defense, didn’t you?”
“I tried to be helpful, yes.”
“We have spent a lot of time together, haven’t we?”
Julie tilted her head back to the side, the way she often did just before she opened her mouth to speak. Something —a glimmer of light, a slight change of color, a warmth that wasn’t there a moment before—appeared in her eyes.
“I wouldn’t say a lot,” she said in a soft, soothing voice that suggested she had not gotten tired of it.
I felt my face redden, and for a moment felt compelled to look away. Suddenly, on an impulse, but an impulse guided and given shape by the situation in which the three of us—Stanley Roth and Julie Evans and I—now found ourselves, I told the one truth no one would think to question:
“You knew—didn’t you?” I asked, gazing at her again. “I started falling in love with you that first day I saw you— and you knew it, didn’t you?”
In open-mouthed astonishment, the jurors temporarily forgot all about Stanley Roth and the murder of his wife. While everyone looked at her, Julie looked at me, a subtle smile on her mouth, the cryptic confession of all the things she knew and would never say aloud. Annabelle Van Roten broke the silence.
“Your Honor,” she said in a droll, languid voice, “while you can imagine how utterly heartbreaking this revelation is to me personally, I must at the same time question what conceivable relevance Mr. Antonelli’s infatuations have to the issue before us.”
With an upraised eyebrow, Honigman waited for my response.
“I’m getting there, Your Honor,” I said with an irritated glance at Van Roten.
Honigman shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Please hurry.”
“I’m not trying to embarrass you,” I said to Julie. “But there’s a reason I have to ask you this. I was falling in love with you, but you were already in love with Stanley Roth —isn’t that true?”
“Your Honor ... Really!” exclaimed Van Roten from the counsel table behind me. His eyes riveted on Julie Evans, Honigman swatted away Van Roten’s objection with his hand.
“Yes, that’s true. I was in love with him for a long time.”
I wondered if she had meant it, that use of the past tense as if it was something she had finally gotten over, or whether she used it because she was still trying to convince herself.
“He knew you were in love with him, didn’t he?” I asked with all the seriousness I could command.
“I’m sure he must have.”
“And because of that—because he knew you felt that way—he confided in you, told you things about himself that he would not have told anyone else. Isn’t that true?”
“You mean things about his life at home? Things about his marriage? Yes, I’m sure he never told anyone else.”
“All the questions you were asked by the prosecution —you answered all of them truthfully?”
“Yes.”
“So you told the truth about Stanley Roth?”
“Yes.”
“But not the whole truth?”
Though Julie thought she knew what I meant, she waited until I explained.
“Because the questions you were asked didn’t allow you to tell the whole truth, did they? For example, while it is the truth that Stanley Roth made that remark Ms. Van Roten finds so infamous—that he wished he had killed her—he said it to you in private as an expression of how frustrated he was with everything that had happened. He didn’t say it the way someone would who was actually contemplating taking someone’s life, did he?”
“No, that’s true. He didn’t say it anything like that. I knew he didn’t mean it.”
“Because if he had wanted to kill her, he could have done it easily enough that night, couldn’t he? But instead, after he struck her that one time in anger, he was mortified, angry with himself—isn’t that correct? Isn’t that what he told you—if not in those exact words, in words to the same effect?”
“Yes. That was how he described the way he felt about what he had done. He was disgusted with himself.”
“And about that business with Detective Crenshaw— you are aware, are you not, that he did in fact send a screenplay to Stanley Roth?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Was anything ever done about it? To your knowledge, did anyone—Stanley Roth or anyone else at Blue Zephyr—even read it?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You testified that there was a consulting contract between the studio and Detective Crenshaw. Was the amount he was paid under that contract at the high or the low end of those kind of agreements?”
“The high end.”
“Had you ever seen one that high before?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen one that high at any time since?”
“No.”
“You testified that according to the studio records, Detective Crenshaw was at the studio a dozen or more times; you also testified that you had on one occasion seen him on the set talking with Mary Margaret Flanders. And though you didn’t hear what was being said, it was your observation that this was a friendly conversation as opposed to an angry confrontation, is that correct?”
“It wasn’t a confrontation.”
The next question came of its own accord; the first I consciously thought of it was when I heard myself asking it.
“Did you ever see them together, having a friendly conversation, somewhere other than the set?”
She said she had not and I moved on,
wondering to myself what it was I was missing, what without knowing it I must have seen, that made me ask that question.
“Did you check the records concerning Detective Crenshaw’s visits to the studio because Ms. Van Roten asked you to do so?”
“Yes.”
I played a hunch. “And did Ms. Van Roten also ask you to check the studio records for any information you could find that would support Detective Crenshaw’s claim that he actually worked as a consultant on a movie in which Mary Margaret Flanders was the star? I mean apart from the number of times he visited the studio.”
“Yes, she did.”
I turned to the jury, a skeptical expression on my face.
“And did you find anything—notes, letters, written critiques of the script—anything at all?”
“No, I did not.”
“Finally, then, about that night Stanley Roth came to the home of Louis Griffin and got into an altercation with Michael Wirthlin. You were there with me, weren’t you? You picked me up at the hotel and we drove there in your car, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did.”
“And during dinner—before Stanley Roth showed up—Michael Wirthlin made very clear his belief that Stanley Roth had to go if Blue Zephyr was going to survive, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“He went further than that, though, didn’t he? He insisted that Stanley Roth was finished and so was Louis Griffin. And it was just then—wasn’t it?—that Stanley Roth showed up, just as Louis Griffin was getting ready to throw Michael Wirthlin out of the house. Isn’t that what happened?”
She agreed, but it was now Wirthlin Productions, and she had to be careful. “Yes, but a lot of things were said no one meant.”
“Stanley Roth was angry because Wirthlin had left him a letter of resignation to sign?”