“Nothing. She was crazy, is all. She still is. Was mental all her damn life.”
“What was going on in that house, Mr. Cutlip?”
“They needed a firm hand, is all.”
“What was the dark secret of that house, Mr. Cutlip?”
“There was no secret. We was just like everybody else.”
“This last picture, Mr. Cutlip, who is that?”
“Where’d you get this?”
“It was with all the others.”
“She kept all this crap?”
“Is that Jesse Sterrett?”
“I suppose.”
I stepped up to the witness box. Cutlip flinched, but all I did was take the pictures. “I’d like Defense Exhibits Twelve to Fifteen placed in evidence.”
“Objection, relevance.”
“Overruled. Exhibits so entered.”
One by one I showed them to the jury, the “before” and “after” pictures of the family, the pictures of the twins, and, finally, the picture of the sad, serious Jesse Sterrett. I handed this last to a woman in the front row, and as she examined it, I said,
“Another letter. I’ll mark this Defense Exhibit Sixteen. Look it over closely, Mr. Cutlip. Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
“You ever see it before?”
“No.”
“You sure, Mr. Cutlip? It’s got a jagged line through it, doesn’t it, as if someone wanted to cross it out?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I want to show you the picture of Guy Forrest you crossed out this morning. I want you to compare the cross-out lines. Are they great large Xs, Mr. Cutlip?”
“No.”
“They’re like Zs, aren’t they? Both of them.”
“Yes.”
“They look alike, these Zs, don’t they, as if they were made by the same hand?”
“Maybe they do.”
“Your hand.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Objection.”
“This is a letter from Jesse Sterrett to your niece Hailey, written on the day of his death,” I continued, over the objection. “Read the first paragraph of that letter, Mr. Cutlip.”
“Objection, Your Honor. This has gone too far. There is no foundation for this or the other letter presented.”
“I think there is, Mr. Jefferson,” said the judge. “Mr. Cutlip earlier identified the author of the letters as Jesse Sterrett. He has now admitted that the zigzag mark on the letter is possibly his. The jurors can compare the mark on the picture of Mr. Forrest with the mark on the letter to see if they find a match. There is a sufficient foundation laid for Mr. Carl to continue with this line.”
“Again we take exception.”
“Exception noted. Continue, Mr. Carl.”
“Read the first paragraph, Mr. Cutlip.”
“I got nothing more to say.”
“Read the first paragraph.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Read it.”
He glanced at the judge, who was staring down at him with no pity. He squirmed in his seat and began to read. “’I am so angry I could strangle a porcupine, and scared too, so scared, impossibly scared. I love you so much, want you so much, but now I have learned that secret you’ve been hiding, my anger burns least as bright as the love.”’
“What was the secret, Mr. Cutlip? What was Hailey’s secret?”
“There was no secret.”
“In the letter Jesse tells Hailey either he will run away with her or he will take out his anger on the man who inflamed it. He says there will be blood, no doubt about it. He tells Hailey it is up to her. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Now read the last paragraph.”
“No.”
“Tell the jury where he planned to meet Hailey to figure it out.”
“No.”
“The last paragraph.”
“Read it, please, Mr. Cutlip,” said the judge.
“’I’ll be at the quarry tonight, I’ll be waiting for you. If you trust me enough to come I’ll dedicate my every waking hour of the rest of my life to making you happy, I will. I swear. But if you don’t come, if you won’t run away with me, then I’ll do it the other way. I’ll do what I need to do to protect you and whatever consequences that come my way I’ll bear gladly because I’ll be bearing them for you. Tonight, I’ll be waiting. Tonight.”’
“And he was at the quarry, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He died there that night at the quarry, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
“And only two people knew he would be there, Hailey and the man who intercepted the letter, the man who tried to cross it out with a zig-zag-zig as clear as a signature.”
“He was going to steal her away from her family.”
“And that’s why you killed him.”
“I didn’t.”
“And that’s why, just a few days later, you left Pierce for good.”
“I told you, it just happened like that.”
“No, it didn’t, Mr. Cutlip. You told us an untruth. It was only after meeting with the Reverend Henson in the church that you left, wasn’t it? After he threatened to disclose everything, wasn’t it?”
“That’s a lie.”
“He’s here, just outside the courtroom, the good reverend. He remembers everything.”
“You’re making that up. He’s most likely dead by now.”
“Should we bring him in and ask him?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“This isn’t poker, Mr. Cutlip.”
I turned around and nodded to Beth. She stood, left the courtroom for a moment, and then came through again, accompanied by the Very Reverend Theodore H. Henson.
Cutlip pushed himself to standing in the witness box when he saw the clergyman, and his face turned crimson, and I feared he would collapse right there with a heart attack. He raised his hand and pointed at the reverend and said,
“Ever thing he told you is a lie, ever damn thing.”
“But still, it was after your confrontation with the reverend in the chapel of his church that you left Pierce forever.”He dropped down heavily into his chair. “I was ready to go anyways, and I didn’t need him spreading his lies, getting ever one’s tongues a wagging.”
“Like the way you cheated at poker.”
“Lies.”
“The way you killed Jesse Sterrett.”
“Lies.”
“The things you did to Hailey.”
“Lies, lies, and damn lies.”
“Bingo,” said Beth.
I stepped back as soon as I heard Beth relay our subtle signal. I stepped back and stopped and took a few breaths. This was it, now or never. I had made progress, strong progress, I had tied that bastard to a murder sixteen years ago, but still there was only accusation and denial, still there was no direct evidence relating to the death of Hailey Prouix. I had set the stage, and now was my chance, my one chance. I wanted to stop, take a break, I wanted to hold on to the hope for a little longer before it turned to hard reality, either way, but now was not the time for timidity. I faced the jury.
“I have one more letter,” I said.
It was lying there, with my other papers, on the podium. Beth had two copies on transparencies, with certain of the phrases on one of them now underlined.
“Let’s have this marked Defense Exhibit Seventeen,” I said as I dropped still another copy before Troy Jefferson. “It’s just a torn piece of envelope with a message on it, and I give it to you, Mr. Cutlip, and I ask you if you’ve ever seen it before?”
I stepped up to the witness box and placed the torn piece of envelope in front of him. He was startled to see it, I could tell. He read it slowly and shook his head as he read it and said nothing.
“Have you ever seen this before, Mr. Cutlip?”
“Where’d you get this?”
“It was with the others.”
<
br /> “She kept it?”
“All these years. Yes.”
Cutlip put his hand on his chest and struggled for breath. “She kept it.”
“Yes, she did, Mr. Cutlip. All those many years after you wrote it.”
“I…I…No, this isn’t…”
“This is your writing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wrote this to Hailey years ago, immediately after you left Pierce.”
“I don’t…I…”
“I originally thought this, too, was written by Jesse Sterrett. The other letters were typed, but this was handwritten, so I couldn’t really compare. But now I know it was written by you. Everyone’s voice is unique—word choice, expressions. I had Ms. Derringer underline all the expressions in this letter that matched the very expressions you used in your testimony. Should I have her put it up on the screen, Mr. Cutlip? Over half the words are parts of the same sentence constructions used in your answers yesterday and today. Should I have her put it up on the screen?”
“No.”
“It’s your letter, isn’t it?”
“She kept it.”
“You wrote this, didn’t you? You wrote this to her.”
He sat there staring at the torn piece of envelope, not moving, not moving, but all the while I could see him psychologically getting closer, closer, a moth circling a flame, getting closer, closer. And then, slowly, he nodded.
Flop.
“Let the record reflect,” I said, “that the witness nodded yes.”
“Record will so reflect,” said the judge.
“Read your letter to the court, please.”
“I can’t.”
“Read it, Mr. Cutlip, read your desperate note to your fifteen-year-old niece.”
“I won’t.”
I took hold of a copy of what I had given Cutlip and read it out loud myself.
“’It’s killing me ever day, ever damn day, that we’re not together. My heart weeps in the wanting. I’m less than a man without you, a carcass already near dead, dying of lost love. You done this to me, you stole my world like a thief. Don’t listen to what they are saying, it’s nothing but lies, lies and damn lies.’ ”
“Stop.”
“’I’m sorry for what I done but I never had no choice, I only done what I had to.’”
“Stop it, damn it.”
“’Never a love been so fierce or fearsome, never has it cost so high or been worth the entire world.’”
“She kept it, don’t that prove nothing?” he said. “She kept it, don’t that prove it all? You just a fool who don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand, Mr. Cutlip?”
“It wasn’t like that, not something dirty. It was love, real and hard, the truest in the world. Fearsome and fierce, like I said, but also something alive, more alive than anything you’ll ever see, like it had a mind of its own. And it wasn’t my doing, it was her doing. It wasn’t me that started it, it was her that started it. She seduced me. I had no choice in it. Whatever she wanted, she got. I had no choice. She seduced me.”
There it was, the shift I was looking for, the shift of blame. I was wondering where it would fall, and I now I knew. The person he was scapegoating would be Hailey herself. I turned to look at Reverend Henson, who had prophesied what Cutlip would do. He stared back at me, his eyes glossy, but he was nodding. He had seen it, too. They all had seen it.
I turned back to that cur on the stand. I could barely stand to look at him, he disgusted me so, but still, along with the disgust I couldn’t help feel a drop of empathic pity for the man. He was right, in his way, when he said that whatever Hailey wanted she seemed to have gotten. And what girl doesn’t try to seduce her father, or the substitute that comes in to take his role? The poor fool, I almost believed it when he said he had no choice in it—almost—because there is always a choice. When you have the power, the responsibility, when you take hold of a child’s hand, there is always a choice. And he made his. And in so doing he took from Hailey Prouix something she maybe didn’t even know she had, but something she spent the rest of her life struggling again to find. “How old was she?” I said in a voice so soft the jury leaned forward to hear. “How old was she when she seduced you, Mr. Cutlip?”
“I got nothing more to say.”
In a voice still soft, weary with resignation, I laid out the charges. “You were jealous of Jesse Sterrett, weren’t you, Mr. Cutlip? And you weren’t going to let him take Hailey away from you, so you killed him.”
“I want to go home.”
“And you tried to kill Guy for the same reason, because he was taking Hailey away from you, and also to quiet his complaints about the money.”
“I’m sick, I’m dying.”
“And by accident, by tragic mistake, the killer you sent, your man Bobo, ended up murdering Hailey Prouix instead.”
“Whatever Bobo done, I had nothing to do with,” said Cutlip.
I stopped and turned to the jury. I watched their eyes as they watched him. It is often hard to read a jury, but I could read those eyes.
“Will the court reporter please read back that last answer?” I said.
As the reporter was reviewing the tape spit out by her stenographic machine, Cutlip spoke up.
“Maybe I want a lawyer,” he said.
“One moment, Mr. Cutlip,” said the judge as she waited for the court reporter.
The court reporter read from her tape in a halting monotone. “Question: ‘And by accident by tragic mistake the killer you sent your man Bobo ended up murdering Hailey Prouix instead.’ Answer: ‘Whatever Bobo done I had nothing to do with.’”
“I ain’t saying nothing no more without a lawyer,” said Cutlip.
“You are refusing to answer any more questions?” said the judge.
“I want a lawyer. I got rights. I’m asking for a lawyer. I’m not saying nothing no more without a lawyer. Do I get a lawyer or not?”
“We’ll see, Mr. Cutlip,” said the judge. “We will see. This court is in recess. Bailiff, keep an eye on Mr. Cutlip and see that he does not leave the courtroom. Counsel, in my chambers. Now.”
51
“IMAGINE,” SAID Judge Tifaro, leaning back in the chair behind her desk, sucking on the earpiece of her reading glasses, “all this from a failure to agree on a stipulation.”
“We were set up,” said Troy Jefferson.
“Yes, you were, Mr. Jefferson. And I must say, Mr. Carl, it was far easier to believe you were screwing up royally out of sheer incompetence than to believe you cleverly arranged everything so you could grill this Mr. Cutlip on the stand.”
“Thank you,” I said, “I think.”
The judge shook her head with a disgusted admiration. The two sides had fully assembled in the judge’s chambers, not a wood-paneled old-school type of place but, instead, a soft, pleasant room filled with country French furnishings. Beth sat with me. Along with Troy Jefferson and his other lawyers were the tag team of Breger and Stone. The court reporter had set up her machine just to the left of the judge and was taking down every word for posterity.
“Do you have any more questions for this witness?” said the judge.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Do you think you’ll get any more answers?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I am going to appoint a lawyer to represent Mr. Cutlip, and my expectation is that he will be advised to say nothing more and will follow that advice. So what do we do now?”
“Put him back on the stand,” I said. “Let me ask the questions and let him plead the Fifth in front of the jury. That’s what we ask.”
“Of course you do. Mr. Jefferson?”
“We are asking instead,” said Troy Jefferson, “on the record, that Cutlip’s entire testimony be stricken.”
“He was your witness, Mr. Jefferson.”
Jefferson turned and frowned at Breger. “Yes, he was, but you repeatedly ignored our objections an
d allowed Mr. Carl to run roughshod over the rules of evidence while dredging up a death and unsavory happenings of fifteen years ago that have nothing, nothing to do with the present case. Reading letters into evidence without proper foundation; using the threat of extrinsic testimony to badger the witness into all manner of confession, even knowing such extrinsic testimony to be not admissible; using a comparison of scrawl marks sixteen years apart to authenticate documents—all of this is contrary to the spirit and letter of the rules of evidence. With all due respect, you were wrong to permit it over our objections, Judge. Allowing in this inflammatory and irrelevant testimony was hugely prejudicial to our case. The testimony should be stricken and the jury instructed to ignore everything they heard.”
“I don’t think that would be possible, do you, Mr. Jefferson?”
“Then we ask for a mistrial. A mistrial based on misconduct on the part of the defense so that jeopardy does not attach and we can try this sucker again.”
The judge turned to me. “Mr. Carl?”
“If the question of the trial is who killed Hailey Prouix, then I could hardly imagine any testimony more relevant, Your Honor.”
“Testimony about abuse of the victim a decade and a half ago at the hands of this witness?” said Jefferson.
“Yes.”
“Testimony about the death of that boy in that quarry?” said Jefferson.
“Absolutely.”
“It all seems rather distant, Mr. Carl,” said the judge.
“Exactly, Your Honor,” said Jefferson.
“Still, Mr. Jefferson, the question of relevancy is solely a question of whether the evidence makes some fact of consequence more or less likely to have occurred. Do you think that the testimony of Mr. Cutlip has no bearing on the question of whether it was the defendant who killed Miss Prouix?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Really. The testimony raised no doubts?”
“Not reasonable doubts, Judge. And as to the question of prejudice—”
“The question is not prejudice, Mr. Jefferson, but unfair prejudice. My guess, Mr. Carl, is that your new theory is that Mr. Cutlip, out of fear of Mr. Forrest’s complaints regarding the money, and with the added spur of jealousy, sent…Bobo, is it?”
“Yes, Judge.”
“Sent Bobo to kill Guy Forrest and that Bobo, by mistake, because of the low light and the comforter covering the whole of the victim’s body, killed Hailey Prouix instead. Will that be your theory in closing?”
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