‘Your honor. This is the first we are hearing of this. The state has declined to produce its pathology report.’
‘It’s simple,’ says Cassidy. ‘The victim, Melanie Vega, was four months pregnant when she was murdered by your client.’ Smug, righteous indignation. A morality play for the press.
I don’t turn, but I can see Glen Dicks’ pencil flailing out of the corner of my eye. Tomorrow morning’s headline: CLIENT HAS FOOL FOR LAWYER.
‘But the state’s pathology report…’ I say.
Bone is looking at her, eyes that could kill from the bench.
She pops Pandora’s box once more, and this time has Lama span the gulf to hand me a copy of the coroner’s medical report, five pages single-spaced, little drawings on every page.
I scan it quickly, and nearly weep. Medical evidence of a potentially viable fetus. It is the stuff that Cassidy lives for. A cause. She will have pro-life groups stacked in the halls outside, placards and chanting, amidst pictures of pale and washed-out embryos floating in mayonnaise jars.
We have not yet started, and Cassidy has headed me at the pass. She has crushed one of the few advantages of our case, that if placed on the stand, my client on a single shining issue would ring true and loud, a beacon to the jury, the picture of Laurel, the image of the good mother. She sits here now sullied and seemingly with the blood of some unborn child on her hands.
I am told that going to trial against Morgan Cassidy can be a little like a honeymoon: every day there’s a new surprise, and all the while you are constantly being fucked.
Having been ripped in the arraignment, I waived a formal reading of the charges, scooped my slackened jaw off the floor, and retreated to the relative safety of the holding cells and the more amiable society of career felons.
On my way out I fired my only bullet, a motion to keep sealed the grand jury transcripts, the details of the evidence away from the prying eyes of the press and public, and a request for a restraining order to gag the prosecution and the cops.
Judge Bone, who was already in an ugly mood, having been transported there by Cassidy and her conduct, granted both, though only on a temporary basis. We are to return in ten days to argue the merits of a permanent restraining order. Cassidy may be able to screw me in court, but if she talks about it on the air or to the scribes in the front row, Bone will put her butt behind bars.
Laurel and I sit at the little table in the client conference area, door closed, a guard outside. I am struggling to put the pieces of our tattered case back together, my brain trying to communicate with damage control. In the courtroom I was unable to finish reading all the details of the indictment. I get to this now, language at the bottom of the page, further allegations of special circumstances. This is Morgan’s coup de grâce.
The unlawful killing of a woman carrying a potentially viable fetus constitutes two murders – what is known in the law as a multiple-murder special. This is true even if the perpetrator did not know of the pregnancy, and a single act kills both mother and child. In points and authorities delivered to me, Cassidy cites chapter and verse, case law directly on point. The only way Laurel can beat death now is to convince a jury that she didn’t do it, or if she did, that there were mitigating circumstances, some excuse that does not warrant the death penalty. With Cassidy stamping around in the blood of an unborn child, this will be no mean feat.
‘This is awful,’ she says. Laurel’s talking about the fact that Melanie was pregnant. ‘A baby.’ She’s shaking her head, looking at the tabletop as if maybe there’s an answer in the scarred metal surface.
‘I may have been capable of killing her,’ says Laurel. ‘God knows I hated her enough.’
Thoughts I would keep from a jury.
‘But not with a child,’ she says. ‘Never with a child.’
Laurel is one of those people to whom the young always seem to gravitate. Every family has them, aunts and uncles who speak a special language of love. These people know what makes kids move. On family outings Laurel would spend endless periods talking to Sarah, off in quiet corners. She knows more about my own daughter, her secret desires, the things that terrify her in the night, than I do. So this dead child, and the thought that others at this moment think Laurel is responsible, is a blow of staggering proportions.
‘They really think I did this?’ she says. For the first time she looks at me.
I don’t respond, but she knows the answer.
‘You didn’t know that she was pregnant?’
Laurel’s head is back in her hands, supported by fingers at the forehead. Eyes focused down once more.
‘How could I?’ she says. ‘Melanie didn’t share such things with me. Did she look pregnant to you?’ she asks.
‘I thought maybe Julie or Danny …’ I say. Like perhaps Melanie talked to one of the kids during periods of visitation at Jack’s house.
‘No. They would have told me,’ she says.
I have been wondering why this didn’t tickle Jack’s rage earlier, the death of an heir. His male ego, the fact that his seed was snuffed before it had a chance to come to full flower, is not something Jack could easily walk from, even if an extended family was not something high on his agenda. The reason for Jack’s seeming heightened hostility this morning now makes sense. Jack got his own surprise. The first hint that his wife was pregnant came from the medical examiner, after the autopsy.
‘One thing doesn’t make sense,’ I tell her. ‘Why would she keep it from Jack? Another child on the way. Seeds of a new family. Domestic tranquillity. With what they were doing in court, they could have used it in the custody fight.’
‘You’re assuming the child was Jack’s,’ she says.
‘I know there was no love lost,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not a matter of animosity,’ she says. ‘I know the child could not have been Jack’s.’
‘What?’
‘It was not something we talked about, even to the family,’ she says. ‘But Jack had a vasectomy twelve years ago,’ says Laurel. ‘Right after Julie was born. He could no more father a child than I could.’
Chapter 8
She arrives wearing beige pants, a white blouse, and a long flowing caftan, yards of shimmering silk and open down the front. It is the feminine counterpoint to the rough cowboy’s duster on an abandoned street with guns slung low on the hip.
Dana Colby looks from across the room, the smile of recognition as she negotiates the small tables of the crowded restaurant, mostly couples paired off. She is a contrast in striking features, amethyst eyes against pale skin, and hair the color of burnished copper. She moves with a saucy confidence that screams divorced and in demand.
A score of male eyes wander from their dinner companions to stare at this electric beauty, the lusty-eyed look of children who have suddenly spied something better on the shelf.
I rise. She does the thing that is chic, takes my hand, then leans across the table and plants a kiss on my cheek, nothing amorous. To those initiated in the ceremony it says we are merely friends.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘Friday night. Traffic was hectic,’ she tells me. ‘Have you been waiting long?’
‘A few minutes.’ Looking at her, I know it was worth it.
Dana’s hair, like Rapunzel’s, if undone could lower a family from a burning building. Tonight it is braided in a single course, shimmering to the center of her back.
We are standing in the middle of the Chievas, the most expensive restaurant in Capital City, on main level, off the dance floor, a legion of envious eyes on her, male and female. I feel like the winner of the last jackpot on bingo night.
She sits. I slide her chair in.
‘Thanks.’ In her smile there’s enough heat to fire a boiler.
The waiter is on us. Something to drink?
‘A glass of white wine,’ she says.
A dozen choices, she picks Gewürztraminer.
I order a liter. I will ply her with wine.
I called her yesterday and asked if she could meet me for lunch, a couple of items I wanted to discuss, perhaps renew old acquaintances. I have a more specific agenda, but I kept it to myself. She was busy for lunch, so tonight we do dinner. It is business, and I am still feeling married, a daughter at home who expects me before the witching hour of her bedtime, at nine. I would lack the confidence to ask this woman on a date. Still Dana has the grace to make this look social.
In law school she had a boyfriend, four years ahead of me, a prophet who’d already crossed over into the land of milk and honey, a lawyer with all the accoutrements, Porsche Carrera, and a condo at the Point. While it turned out later to be an exercise in futility, he’d given her a ring with a stone the size of a glass doorknob. It was our semester of ‘Equity,’ and to this day the thousand maxims born of the ancient law of chancery are a mystery to me. I spent my time, like a dozen other guys, dazed by the kaleidoscope of the colors radiating from the prisms on her finger, and dreaming at my desk.
‘You look spectacular,’ I tell her.
She blushes just a little.
Men are funny. Do a thousand trials, some silver-toned Cicero on the jaded edge in front of a jury, and a woman in a caftan, dressed for adventure, can steal your tongue.
‘I’m sure we both look better than we did the last time,’ she says. She’s talking about the street out in front of Jack’s house the night of the murder.
‘I love this place. Have you been here before?’
‘A few times,’ I tell her. ‘You?’
‘Once or twice.’
No doubt on the arm of sterner stuff than this.
The waiter arrives and pours our wine.
‘Lately I see your name in every newspaper,’ she says.
‘Mostly taken in vain,’ I tell her. ‘It’s hard to turn an arraignment into disaster. But it seems we managed.’
She laughs a little. ‘Morgan has a positive talent for other people’s disasters.’
‘You know Cassidy?’
She nods.
‘We belong to the same club,’ she says.
‘Ah.’ I’m a thousand expressions, all of them bad.
She has both hands on the stem of her wineglass, holding it just off her lips, the pose of meditation.
‘And no, it is not “bitches anonymous.” ’ She’s smiling at me.
‘Hey – did I say it?’ But she can smell my thoughts.
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Am I that transparent?’
‘Window to your soul,’ she tells me. ‘Though on the subject of Morgan it’s not difficult to read the mind of another lawyer who’s crossed her path. She has been known to play the ball out of bounds,’ she says.
‘Where were you last week, before the arraignment?’
‘Hey, she’s not all bad. Has some good points.’
‘I guess I haven’t seen that side.’
‘She does people without discrimination. In terms of gender,’ she says. ‘Half the women lawyers in Queen’s Bench, the club we belong to,’ she says, ‘won’t talk to her. Fortunately I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of Morgan’s free kicks. So I guess we’re still friends.’
‘You sound like an admirer.’
‘In my own way. It’s a tough world out there.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘You should try it in a skirt and heels sometime.’
‘Somehow I don’t think it would help,’ I tell her.
She smiles, little laugh lines forming around the eyes.
‘We do lunch once a week,’ she says. She’s talking about Cassidy. ‘Maybe I can put in a word.’
‘Not on my account,’ I tell her. I have known people like this before. To those on a crusade, efforts to influence are often taken the wrong way.
‘Maybe you just haven’t seen her softer side.’
‘Not so I noticed.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ she says. The smile on her face tells me this is a fruitless gesture. Idle chatter over lunch is not going to get Cassidy to ease off on multiple murder. Maybe with some other deputy DA, if the victims were homeless vagrants and the press weren’t in attendance. But with Cassidy the juices of obsession run fast and furious, like a white-water ride down the Colorado.
‘This is really an excellent wine,’ she says.
I agree. The Gewürz is going down smooth. Something to give you that light liquid buzz, jelly in the stomach and knees when you go to rise.
‘So what’s this thing you wanted to talk about?’ she says. ‘I suspect you did not call me simply for a session of Morgan-bashing.’
‘No. Not that it hasn’t been fun,’ I tell her.
She smiles again. ‘I’ll tell her you said that.’ She winks at me over her glass.
‘I wanted to talk to you about the Merlows. George and Kathy,’ I say.
A blank stare, searching her mind, like maybe the Merlows are players in some coffee ad on the tube.
‘You remember?’ I say. ‘The young couple out in front of Jack Vega’s house the night of the murder?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. The light of recognition.
‘I thought you might know where they moved.’
Head slowly shaking. ‘No. I didn’t know they had.’
‘Small neighborhood, little cul-de-sacs backing up onto each other. I thought maybe you might have talked to them,’ I say.
‘No, can’t say that I have. The east side is full of strangers. People who commute but never talk. Fact is, I’d never met them before that night. And haven’t seen them since. When did they move?’
‘Soon after the murder. Like maybe the next day,’ I say.
‘And you’re thinking this is highly coincidental?’ She’s a smirk across the table from me. I can tell what she’s thinking. The desperate defense attorney grasping at straws.
‘A little strange,’ I say, ‘that they didn’t mention it.’
‘You’re thinking maybe they saw something? Or at least hoping?’ She is now a full smile. The prosecutor as cynic.
She hasn’t seen Jack’s bathroom window.
I make a face, a concession that it’s a long shot, but unwilling to convert her to a laugh.
‘Good luck,’ she says. Then, all serious. ‘If I knew I would tell you. Are you sure they’ve moved?’
‘The house is empty. There’s a for-sale sign.’
‘It does sound like they’ve moved,’ she says. ‘Listed with a realtor?’
I nod.
‘Well, there you are. I’d talk to the realtor. They must know something.’
‘We’re checking. I just thought maybe if you knew them you could save me some time.’
‘If I could,’ she says. ‘But the fact is they wandered up and introduced themselves that night. First time we ever met.’ She shrugs her shoulders, like wish I could help, but can’t. ‘You’re in a box on this case, aren’t you?’
‘A firefight,’ I tell her, ‘and I’m low on ammunition.’
‘Gotta be tough,’ she says. ‘Is it correct what I hear, that she is family?’
She’s followed the case closer than I thought.
‘My wife’s sister.’
She sips her wine and nods like she understands.
‘There are children, I hear.’
‘Two. Teenagers.’
She’s shaking her head. ‘That is awful. Hard on them.’
‘Tell me about it.’ I sneak a look at my watch. Not carefully enough.
‘Do you have to be somewhere?’ she says.
‘Oh, no. My daughter,’ I say. ‘I told her I’d be home in time to say goodnight. But I have plenty of time.’
‘Oh.’ She softens, little crinkles around the mouth.
‘How old is she?’
‘Seven,’ I say. ‘Going on twenty. The price we pay for living in the global village. MTV and the loss of innocence,’ I tell her.
‘It must be difficult,’ she says. ‘Raising a child, alone.’
‘It
has its moments.’
‘Do you miss her a lot?’
‘Emm.’
‘Oh. Never mind.’ A lot of flailing hands across the table, looks of embarrassment.
‘I’m prying,’ she says.
Then I catch her drift. ‘You mean Nikki?’
‘Yes. But it’s none of my business.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘Yes. I do miss her. More than I like to admit. Especially to myself. It’s the thing about the people we know best. The ones we love. We take them for granted. I never realized how much I would miss her until she was gone.’
She nods like she understands. But I can tell she doesn’t have a clue.
‘You spend a lot of time preparing, and then it’s over, you’re alone, and you discover that all that preparation was a waste of time. Because there’s really no way to get ready. No matter how much time you have. In the end there’s just a great big hole left in your life.’
‘It must have been a very special relationship.’
‘I wasn’t a particularly good husband,’ I say.
‘You’re being modest.’
‘No. We had more than our share of problems. My obsession with work. A wandering eye during a period of separation,’ I tell her. I could tell her that more than my eyes wandered.
She looks at me, a little startled by my frankness.
‘But I suppose if the measure of a good marriage is how much you miss someone when they’re gone, then ours was a good marriage.’
I notice that we are no longer making eye contact. It is getting maudlin. A session of true confessions.
‘The story of my life,’ I say. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh. Three years of marriage. No children. One divorce. And for the record, I don’t miss him.’
‘The advantages of dying,’ I say. We laugh a little, but for me it is bittersweet.
We pick up our menus and scan the entrées. The waiter arrives with a list of specials, a dozen more dishes given to us like a pop quiz in physics. We order, and afterward there is small talk, mostly about work. My venue being mostly state and hers federal, there is wide latitude for talk without breaching confidences.
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