by D. W. Buffa
“You knew them both, Gloria Baker and Driscoll Rose? They both worked for you?”
“Yes – to both questions.”
“They both made movies for your studio?”
“Yes.”
Stanton was wearing a tan suit, white shirt and a pale green tie. He had on a pair of Italian loafers. At odd moments, in a habit of long standing, he would pull on one or the other of the French cuffs, making sure they were each of them at the proper length of exposure. It was just another of the ways in which he insisted on precision.
“There has been testimony that a portrait of Gloria Baker hung in the living room of her home, and that the painting had been a gift from you. Is that true: was it a gift from you?”
“Yes.”
“What was the reason you had it done, why did you give it to her?”
There was no one word answer to this. A smile full of nostalgia flashed for an instant over his closed mouth.
“It was after her first picture - the first major one, I should say; the one that made her a star. I wanted her to have something that would always remind her of that, of what she was on the screen.”
“Were you in the habit of doing things like this: giving things to someone after they made a successful picture for your studio?”
“No; but on occasion.” For the first time, he glanced toward the counsel table. “I had a sculpture done – of a horse, as I recall – for Driscoll after one of the pictures he made: a western, a very good one. He was nominated for it.”
“So you knew them both, and both had made successful pictures for the studio. You knew them off screen as well. They were both guests in your home?”
“Yes,” he said, turning to the jury. “I had great affection for them both. They were both extremely talented people, and, like all of us, both had their flaws.”
“You mean, they did things they shouldn’t have done?”
“On occasion, yes.”
“I want to take you back to something that happened more than a year ago. Do you remember getting a phone call from Gloria Baker late at night telling you she’d been hurt and needed help?”
Stanton looked down at his hands, held in his lap, and seemed to tense. Slowly, and as it were reluctantly, he raised his eyes.
“Yes, I remember.”
“What did you do when you got that call?”
“I drove over there as fast as I could. She was lying on the floor, unconscious. Her face was a bloody pulp; her eyes, especially the left one, were battered shut. At first I thought she was dead; but then I saw she was still breathing, and then, when I knelt down beside her, she opened her eyes, opened them as far as she could, which wasn’t much.”
“Did she tell you what happened, who had done this to her?”
“Driscoll. She said he tried to kill her. And he nearly had. She thought she was dying. She didn’t know why I was there. She didn’t remember that she had called me, and given how badly she was hurt, I’m not sure how she did. Instinct, I suppose; something that told her that if she didn’t get help she might not survive.”
Listening intently, his hand resting on the railing of the jury box, Alfonso nodded in the slow, measured cadence of a man deeply affected by what he had heard. He turned and with a cold, withering glance looked at the defendant.
“Driscoll Rose beat her like that and then just left her there to die?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“What did you do, after you found her there like that,” he asked, his eyes still fixed on Driscoll Rose. “Did you call for an ambulance, did you call the police? What exactly did you do?”
“I called a physician who came at once. He did what he could for her, and then he called for an ambulance and she was taken to the hospital.”
Alfonso had spent days wondering how he should handle the next set of questions, how he should ask about what had been a concerted effort to keep what had happened that night a secret. Roger Stanton could be viewed as either a helpful friend, willing to do what was best for people he cared about, or a scheming merchant whose only interest was protecting the reputation of a violent misfit who made money for his studio. Alfonso still had not decided the best way to approach this, and, as he often did when plagued by indecision, he let someone else, in this case the witness himself, decide. He fell back on the kind of question that is not so much a question as an invitation to say whatever you please. Only Hector Alfonso could have made it sound profound.
“Would you like to tell us why you did this?”
“You mean, why I called a physician, someone I knew, instead of calling 911, instead of asking for an ambulance at once?”
Alfonso’s only response was a slight nod and a brief, sympathetic smile.
“Gloria wanted it kept private. She knew what would happen if the press learned about it. There wouldn’t be any end to the stories. That was the last thing she wanted. And your next question, I imagine, is why no one called the police. But, again, you have to understand – the publicity, the coverage, would have been devastating. It would have ruined them both. What had been done had been done. The question was what to do next. She knew what Driscoll was like; she knew what happened to him when he got angry. She thought if he got counseling, treatment of some kind – if he learned to control himself… Despite what he had done to her, she didn’t want him going off to jail. You didn’t know her. She had a generous heart, perhaps too generous; she didn’t want to hurt Driscoll, or anyone else. She didn’t think like that. I don’t think she was ever really angry with anyone in her life.”
Alfonso was finished with the witness; Harlowe was not sure where to begin.
“I’m a little confused, Mr. Stanton.” Standing in front of the counsel table, Harlowe narrowed his eyes in the way of someone trying to work through a puzzle. “You say that Gloria Baker called you, but didn’t remember that she had. Is that what you said?”
“Yes, that’s right,” replied Stanton, who looked puzzled himself.
“And you said you think she must have done this, made that call, out of an instinct for survival?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Why would she have done that? – called you, I mean. I understand why you didn’t call 911, but why didn’t she? It’s odd, isn’t it, that at a moment like that, when she could have dialed three numbers and got help right away, she called you instead?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it odd. I was the head of the studio. She knew she could rely on me.”
Harlowe jumped on it. “Rely on you? You’re not a doctor; you weren’t someone who could give her medical help. You mean rely on your discretion, rely on you to handle things in the way they needed to be handled. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Mr. Stanton?”
“She knew she could trust me.”
“That’s just what’s so odd about it. Not that she thought that – I’m sure that’s not odd at all – but that the first call, the only call she made, this woman who thought she might be dying, was to the head of the studio and not to the emergency line anyone else would have used; not to a doctor she might have known herself, not to anyone who could help keep her alive, but to you, Roger Stanton, someone she trusted! There’s only one explanation for this, isn’t there, Mr. Stanton? – She was hurt, she had been hit, she may have been in considerable pain, but her life was not in danger and she knew it. Isn’t that true, Mr. Stanton?”
“He had broken her jaw, done great damage to her eyes. He had -”
“But nothing she would have died from. There was no chance of death, was there, Mr. Stanton?”
“I’m not a doctor; I wouldn’t know how to answer that.”
“It would have been more helpful, Mr. Stanton, had you given that answer when the district attorney was asking you questions. She was hurt, she wasn’t dying, and she relied on you to take care of things. You made the decision not to involve the police, not to tell anyone what had happened – isn’t that true?”
“She asked me not
to.”
“Really? Wasn’t the defendant also under contract to you?”
“Yes, he was.”
“If he had been charged, arrested – that wouldn’t have been good for the studio, would it?”
“No, it would not.”
“So you had an interest in keeping this incident to yourself, didn’t you?”
“If you want to put it like that. But I also had an interest in the future of two fine actors. A scandal like that would have hurt them both.”
“Yes, we understand,” said Harlowe as he began to pace back and forth, his mind apparently on something else. Three steps in one direction, three steps back, twice, three times the same small circuit, the silence more significant with each turn he made. Something was coming, something, as it appeared, even he did not yet know. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks, his head flew up and he fixed the witness with an intense, penetrating stare.
“Why? Why did he hit her, why did he do that? She trusted you; she called you; she asked you to handle things, to take care of things – what did she tell you about that? What did she say, Mr. Stanton, about why Driscoll Rose suddenly went crazy and did what he did?”
“She didn’t say anything about it that night; she didn’t -”
“She never said anything to you about it?” demanded Harlowe. “That night, or any time after?”
“Later, when she was in the hospital, she told me.”
“Told you what, Mr. Stanton?”
“That it happened because she told him that the reason she had broken off the engagement, and why she wouldn’t see him anymore, was that she had fallen in love with someone else.”
“Did she tell you who it was, who she had fallen in love with?”
“I didn’t ask. I was too shocked, too angry, at what he had done to her.”
“So you don’t know who she had fallen in love with, but you know – you’re certain – that she said it was the reason he hit her: because he was jealous, angry because she didn’t love him anymore, but loved someone else?”
“Yes.”
Harlowe nodded twice, signaling satisfaction with what had been achieved, the fact, now established, that Driscoll Rose had committed an act of violence against the victim out of jealousy and not for any other reason. The next question followed with remorseless logic.
“He hit her; beat her – whether or not he almost killed her – in a jealous rage. They were working on a picture together when she died, weren’t they?”
“We were in the preliminary stages; we were getting close.”
“We have had testimony that they were getting together the night of her death to discuss that same project. Did you know they were doing this?”
“I knew there were discussions; I didn’t know when or whether they might be meeting.”
“Did you know – you knew them both well – did you know they had also been talking about getting back together again?”
Stanton tugged at his shirtsleeve, pulling it into place. “I wouldn’t have known anything about that.”
“Does it surprise you that they were?”
“After everything that has happened – Gloria dead, Driscoll accused of murder – do you really think I’m surprised at anything?”
Roger Stanton was the last witness for the prosecution. As he left the witness stand, Alfonso announced with studied formality that “the prosecution rests, your Honor.”
Now it was up to the defense to decide if it was going to put on a case, call witnesses of its own, or whether it, too, would rest, argue that the evidence presented by the prosecution was not sufficient to sustain a conviction, that there was more than just a doubt, there was a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was guilty as charged.
Harlowe was tempted. There was no direct evidence connecting Driscoll Rose to the crime: no weapon, much less one with his finger prints on it; no eyewitness, no one who had actually seen Rose enter or leave Gloria Baker’s Malibu home. The prosecution had been able to show that Rose had been expected there that night and that he had told his agent at dinner that that was where he was going, but once he had left the restaurant no one had seen him go anywhere. So far as having a motive for the murder, it was possible to argue on the prosecution’s own evidence that Rose had less reason than anyone to kill her: instead of jealousy born of rejection, they were talking about getting together again; and, again by the prosecution’s own evidence, they were almost certainly planning to spend the night together. Could he have gone crazy again, been driven into one of his well-known violent rages? – Yes, possibly; and that was certainly what the prosecution wanted everyone to think, but that was only conjecture and could be dismissed as such.
Harlowe was tempted to announce that the defense did not think it necessary to put on a case of its own. He might have done it if he had not told the jury not only that the defendant would testify, but what that testimony would be. He regretted that now; or rather, did not so much regret it as wonder if he had made the right choice. Harlowe understood that in a trial there are no second chances: you trust your instincts and live with whatever decision you make.
“Mr. Harlowe, is the defense ready to proceed?” asked Bannister.
“Yes, your Honor.”
Bannister glanced at the clock on the wall opposite the jury box. It was quarter to four and, with the prosecution just finished and the defense ready to begin, a good time to stop.
“We’ll begin again in the morning,” he announced, and with the usual instruction to the jury not to discuss the case, left the bench. Everyone in the courtroom stood in silence until the door to the judge’s chambers shut behind him.
Bannister’s clerk was glad he had decided to adjourn early. There were a dozen different things she had to talk to him about: hearings on motions had been postponed, not once or twice, but over and over again because of the trial; rulings on motions that had already been argued had not been made. It was so unlike Judge Bannister to let things slide like this. The trial of Driscoll Rose seemed to consume all his attention, though it was hard to know exactly why. It didn’t seem any more complicated than any of the other murder trials over which he had presided. Something was different but she did not know what.
She waited a few minutes before she knocked on his door. He always liked to have a little time alone after he left the bench. There was no response. She knocked again, but still nothing. She opened the door and found him sitting at his desk, staring into the distance, his mouth moving as if he were trying to speak but had forgotten how.
“Judge Bannister,” she whispered.
His mouth kept moving. It reminded her of people she had seen in the nursing home where she visited her mother, old people barely able to read, sounding out the letters the way they had learned as a child. It suddenly occurred to her that the judge might have suffered a stroke.
“Judge Bannister!” she cried in alarm. “Are you all right?”
His head snapped up; his eyes came quickly around to hers.
“Jessica! What’s the matter? Of course I’m all right. I was thinking about something; I didn’t hear you come in.”
Relieved and a little embarrassed, she sat on the edge of the chair in front of his desk and began to list the various things that needed his attention. He stopped her before she had gotten through the first three.
“The trial will be over in a few days. Whatever there is can wait until then. But I’m glad you came in. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Yes, judge; what can I do?”
“Nothing; nothing at all. I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me, how much easier you’ve made my job. I don’t know how I would have handled all the work without you to sort everything out, keep track of all the things that needed to be done. I owe you a lot, and that’s why I wanted to tell you that I may not be on the bench too much longer.”
“You’re not ill, there isn’t anything wrong is there?”
“No, I’m
fine; it isn’t that at all. There are things about this case, this trial, things I can’t tell you. I don’t think I had realized before this….” Suddenly, he laughed, a strange, bitter laugh, and then looked at her with anguished, rueful eyes. “I’m probably going to have to sentence someone for a murder he did not commit; and the worst part is that there is a way I could stop it, but instead I’ll probably just let what we foolishly call justice take its course. I’m a coward; worse than that, too much a coward to make a full confession.”
She had known him too long, seen too much of the way he took everything to heart, to take him seriously. He was tired, exhausted by all the responsibilities he carried on his shoulders, and she told him so.
“You need to take a vacation; go away somewhere, forget about court and all the work. You keep on like this and you’re going to start to think you’re responsible for everything. You might even start to think that you’re the murderer and the murderer is the judge. I’ve seen it happen; you can get too close to things. Just get away for a while. Things will look better then.”
He told her he was sure that was good advice, that he probably should just take a vacation. He told her what he knew she wanted to hear. And then, when she left, when the door closed behind her and she could not hear, he started laughing and could not stop.
Chapter Nineteen
Driscoll Rose had not slept in days. All through the trial, he had listened as witness after witness described someone who bore little if any resemblance to the person he thought he was. Violent, dangerous, someone who could not control his emotion; everything had been twisted out of proportion, made to seem much worse than it was. Twice, or perhaps a few times more than that, he had lost his temper, struck out in frustration, hit someone before he knew what he was doing; twice, just those two times - once with Gloria, once with that clumsy arrogant waiter at Stanton’s place in Santa Barbara - he had hit someone hard enough that they had to get help. But use a knife, murder someone? – He was not capable of that. And yet here he was, on trial for something he did not do and, from what his lawyer had been telling him, with no better than an even chance at getting an acquittal.