The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  Every day, every night, for months – from the moment he was arrested - it was all he had been able to think about: the trial and what was going to happen. He watched it, the trial, start to finish before it even began; watched it over and over again like a movie he had seen a thousand times; watched it and knew every time that it was wrong. There was always something missing and it was always the same thing: the face, the name, of the one who ought to be on trial, the one who had been there inside the house, the house in Malibu, before he got there, the one who really murdered Gloria and then left her there for him to find. It drove him mad, knowing that while he was going through this agony, witnessing in advance his own destruction, someone else was watching, the only person who could save him and the only person who never would.

  With an actor’s instinct, and an actor’s craft, he tried to understand the role, the precise situation of someone who commits a murder for which another man is blamed, but he could not do it, he could not pretend anymore. He realized, slowly at first but then with an overwhelming sense of finality, that he was on his own, with no one to give him direction and nothing down in writing that would tell him how it would all end. Left to his own devices, he fell back on one of the worst fictions of all.

  “They can’t convict me if I just tell the truth,” he told his lawyer the night before he was to testify.

  The fierce insistence that only the guilty were convicted, the sudden fanatical belief that because he was innocent everyone would know when he took the stand and looked the jury in the eye that he was telling the truth - Desperation always wore the same face. He understood that the innocent sometimes got convicted, but that did not happen very often and surely it could not happen to him. Harlowe, relying on a fiction of his own, told him, what he had told countless other defendants before, that telling the truth was all that anyone could do. And then he told him how to lie.

  “The question you’re going to get, and Alfonso is going to ask it a number of different ways, is why, if she was dead when you got there, you didn’t call the police, didn’t call 911, didn’t call for help.”

  They were sitting in Harlowe’s office a little after eight o’clock at night. Shop lights and traffic lights reflected off the glass-walled buildings and the western sky had turned a purple blue. Harlowe had his shirt sleeves rolled up. Driscoll Rose still had on the dark suit and tie he had worn that day to court.

  “I panicked; I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  With a frown, Harlowe signaled his disapproval. This was not good enough.

  “Panic. That’s an easy word. People panic out of fear. What were you afraid of? She’s laying there, blood all over – she’s dead, for Christ sake – but you’re afraid? What were you afraid of?”

  “That I’d be blamed for it.”

  Harlowe slapped his palms on the hard surface of his desk. “Because of what you had done to her before? Alfonso will have a field day with that. By the time he’s through with it, everyone will think that what you said was that you knew you’d be blamed for it because you did it!”

  “But I did panic,” insisted Rose. “I was scared. I’d never seen anyone dead before. It was Gloria; it wasn’t….”

  “You were scared; you didn’t know what had happened - only that Gloria, the woman you loved, had been murdered, and that whoever had murdered her – the killer – might still be there. Isn’t that what happened? Isn’t that why you didn’t think to call the police – you didn’t have time?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, suddenly realizing that that was exactly the way it had happened. “All I knew was that Gloria had been murdered and that the killer, whoever he was, might still be there.”

  Harlowe’s eyes, a moment before lit with the certainty of what he described, went cold with doubt.

  “Then why didn’t you call the police as soon as you were safely away?”

  Rose’s mouth hung half open waiting for a hint what he should say next, but Harlowe maintained a skeptical silence. Rose could expect no help when he was under the withering cross-examination of the district attorney.

  “I should have, and if I had been thinking clearly that is exactly what I would have done. I drove around for hours; I’m not sure where I drove to. I was in shock, I guess; nothing made sense. I remember thinking at one point I should go back to Malibu, back to the house; that I must have been hallucinating, must have imagined it, that Gloria wasn’t really dead, that she was still alive.”

  Harlowe nodded his approval, and then, showing more confidence than he felt, told Rose he thought he would do fine.

  “Just tell the truth; that’s all any of us can do,” he said, an hour later when he walked him to the door.

  At three o’clock in the morning, unable to sleep, Driscoll Rose got out of bed, drove out to Malibu and parked across the street from the house he had once shared with Gloria Baker and later, as an act of atonement, given her as a gift. He tried to see himself running out the door, tried to remember what he had felt, not the panic at the thought of being blamed, but fear for his own life. Then he drove away, following the haphazard, aimless course he might have taken had he really been in a state of shock, confused by what had happened and what it all might mean. It was possible that he had imagined that it might not have happened, that Gloria had not been murdered, that she was still alive; possible that he had even turned around and started back. He did not know what had happened that night or why he had reacted the way he had. The only thing he was really certain about was that he did not kill Gloria Baker, that someone else had done it, that it was not him.

  A crowd, any crowd, however big or small, takes on a life of its own. It becomes in a courtroom the spectator of the play, caught in the emotion of the moment, tense with anticipation as the last act begins. From that moment in the trial when they were promised that the defendant would testify, the crowd had looked forward to what they were now about to see, Michael Harlowe, rising from his chair and, in a bare whisper of a voice, announcing in the cathedral quiet that the defense called the defendant, Driscoll Rose.

  Dressed in a dark gray suit and a dark gray tie, with an expression that seemed puzzled, and even irritated, that he was forced to be there, Rose sat on the witness chair and began to rub his hands together.

  “I didn’t do it!” he cried suddenly. “I didn’t kill Gloria! I didn’t murder anyone!”

  Harlowe had meant to give him a moment to get comfortable, to get used to sitting there, with the jury on his immediate left and the staring courtroom crowd right in front of him. He had not expected this.

  “Mr. Rose,” said Judge Bannister before Harlowe could say anything. “Like any other witness you are here to answer questions put to you by the two attorneys.” He looked at him with a sympathetic understanding. “I’m sure Mr. Harlowe will give you a chance to say everything you wish to say.”

  With an awkward smile of apology and comprehension Rose shifted position and waited for his attorney to begin. Harlowe did not miss a beat.

  “You’ve already answered the most important question, but just to get it on the record, I’ll ask it again: Did you murder Gloria Baker?”

  Clutching the arms of the chair, Rose held his head high and looked at the jury.

  “No, I did not. I was in love with her; I wanted to marry her. We were going to try to work things out. That’s why I went there that night: so we could talk more about it.”

  Harlowe stood at the side of the counsel table, just a few short steps from the jury box. His eyes stayed on the witness and, except when Rose turned to the jury, Rose kept his eyes on him. Harlowe had told him to do that, to act as if the two of them were having a private conversation that others, especially the jury, could overhear.

  “So there’s no mistake about this, so I understand exactly what you are saying, you went there that night; you were there, at the house in Malibu, where Gloria Baker was murdered?”

  “Yes, I was there. I got there around eleven. She knew I was coming over. We had not
set an exact time. What some of the others said earlier is true: I wasn’t any good at keeping track of time. I got there, as I say, around eleven; and I found her – Gloria – dead on the floor. I knew she was dead as soon as I saw her. There was blood everywhere, and her eyes were wide open in an awful, vacant stare.”

  “What did you do then, when you saw her there, lying dead on the floor? Did you call the police?”

  Rose ignored the question and seemed even to ignore Harlowe. He seemed to draw inside himself and change into something different. With a strange, uncanny smile he faced the jury.

  “I must have been in shock, or maybe I’m just a coward. I should have called the police, I should have called for help, but I wasn’t thinking. All I felt was fear. It had me by the throat. Gloria had been murdered. The killer might still be there, maybe in the next room. Maybe he was a burglar, looking for jewelry or something before he left. Maybe he was some lunatic, ready to kill anyone he met. I got out of there, ran as fast as I could. I got in my car and just drove, drove for hours, I didn’t even know where, the whole time going crazy because of what I’d seen. I should have called the police; I should have done a lot of things. I don’t have any excuse for that, except I was out of my mind with grief and fear.”

  Rose seemed to come back to himself, as if what he had just said to the jury had come from some inner compulsion to confess fully his own failures and that, having done that, he had obtained a kind of release. Harlowe could only marvel at the effect that had been achieved. The jury believed him; at least they seemed as if they wanted to.

  “The prosecution spent a lot of time trying to show that you have a violent temper. How do you explain what happened the time you hit Gloria Baker and she had to be taken to the hospital?”

  “I have a temper; I can’t deny that. But I didn’t hit her because of my temper; I hit her because of the drugs.”

  There was a low, rumbling noise from the crowd, registering surprise and disapproval. Harlowe was surprised as well. He knew of course – everyone knew – that Rose had at various times been treated for addiction, but Rose had never mentioned this in connection with the assault. Harlowe pretended that he had expected this answer all along.

  “Would you explain that to the jury: how drugs played a part in what happened?”

  “I had a drug problem. I had been in treatment. I was clean, I wasn’t using. It felt good, to be free of that vicious habit. I owed it all to Gloria. She made me do it, get treatment, get my life back in order. That was the condition she set when I asked her to marry me, when we got engaged: that I go through treatment on my own – not because I got in trouble with the law and was ordered to as a condition of probation – but because I loved her and because I had to do this for myself. And I did, and it felt good, and everything was going great, and then something happened. She began to change, became distant. I didn’t know what it was; I didn’t know what I had done. It got worse. We were living together, but she would disappear for days. There was always some excuse: there was something she had to do or she just had to get away. I was losing her and I knew it and then she told me she didn’t want to get married, that she didn’t want to live with me, that she didn’t want me around. That’s when I started again, drinking, using drugs: I didn’t care what happened to me. I felt sorry for myself. It’s inexcusable – I know that – but that’s what happened. Then I found out that she had been seeing someone else, that she was in love with someone else. She told me herself. That’s when it happened. I was on God knows what that night, the night I did that, hit her like that and then just ran away. When I realized what I had done, that I’d hurt her like that – that’s when I went into treatment, that’s when I got clean for the last time. I haven’t used anything since.”

  “You haven’t used anything since,” repeated Harlowe, as if to witness the veracity of the claim as well as to underscore the significance of the fact. “You weren’t on drugs - you weren’t under the influence of anything - the night Gloria Baker was murdered, the night you found her dead in the living room of her Malibu home?”

  “No, I was not,” insisted Rose, staring at the jury with all the puzzled innocence he felt. “I wasn’t on drugs; I wasn’t on anything – and I didn’t kill her, I swear I didn’t!”

  Harlowe subjected him to a long, searching glance, as if the test of the truth of this all-important question was whether the defendant would shrink from the contest and look away. Satisfied, Harlowe started to turn away, apparently finished with the witness, but then, abruptly, turned back.

  “She was in love with someone else when she broke off the engagement. Did she tell you who it was?”

  “No; the only thing she ever told me – and that was only later, when we started seeing each other again – was that she knew it was a mistake.” Rose grasped one hand with the other and then, just as quickly, let go; and then he did it again, tighter this time, rubbing them together like someone trying to get rid of something stuck to his fingers. “She said – and I never was quite sure what she meant – that she had a habit of falling in love with the wrong people.”

  The line stuck in the mind of Hector Alfonso. He stood at the middle of the jury box, ready to begin the cross-examination. The ease with which he could shift from one emotion to another, angry one moment, full of compassion the next, was not a conscious choice of tactics, a calculated decision which face to show the public, but the natural reaction of an adaptable intelligence which, without an inner moral compass to guide it, looked only to its own advantage. He was like most politicians, only quicker.

  “She had a habit of falling in love with the wrong people. Is that what you said?” he asked, lifting a thick eyebrow as if he was not sure he had heard him right.

  Rose looked at him with suspicion. “Yes, that’s what she said.”

  “A habit of falling in love with the wrong people. That’s really quite interesting, isn’t it, that she would say that? She was in love with you – you were engaged – and then she was in love with someone else – and then she wasn’t. But she didn’t say she had fallen in love with the wrong man – she said she had a habit of falling in love with the wrong people.”

  “Is there a question in there somewhere?” protested Harlowe, as he got to his feet with a much put upon expression. “Or does the district attorney intend to start his closing argument a little early?”

  Bannister turned an inquiring eye on Hector Alfonso who simply ignored him.

  “Had a habit of falling in love with -”

  “Mr. Alfonso!” cried Bannister with a stern, unforgiving look. “Don’t ever do that again! You can give a speech somewhere else – not here. If you have a question, ask it; if you don’t, sit down and I’ll ask Mr. Harlowe to call his next witness.”

  Alfonso turned slowly, and quite on purpose, as if he were about to challenge Bannister’s authority to tell him what he could or could not do when he was cross-examining not just any witness, but a witness who was also guilty of murder. His eyes were full of anger, his mouth locked tight; and then, just as his gaze met the warning on Walter Bannister’s implacable face, his look changed on the instant, became friendly, eager to avoid any misunderstanding.

  “Sorry, your Honor. I do have a question, and with your permission, I’ll ask it.”

  But he did not wait for permission. He wheeled around and confronted Driscoll Rose.

  “Gloria Baker had fallen in love with the wrong person not just once or twice, but a number of times – Is that what you took that remark to mean?”

  “I didn’t say what she might have meant by it,” countered Rose, determined not to give the prosecutor anything he did not have to give him. Alfonso continued to press the point.

  “She called it a habit – falling in love with the wrong person. A habit – correct?”

  “Habit; yes, that’s what she said.”

  “Not something she had done once or twice, but a habit?”

  “Yes,” said Rose, becoming visibly annoyed.
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  “Which means that there wasn’t just one other person, as your lawyer was arguing, who must have fallen in love with her, but that there were a number of people with whom she had at one time or another been involved, does it not?” demanded Alfonso with a certainty Rose was beginning to find insufferable.

  “You make her sound like some whore!”

  “No, not that at all: but a woman who was not ready to make a commitment. That must have made you crazy: being in love with her, knowing she did not feel that way about you?”

  “But she did, damn it! She did! We were going to -”

  “You thought you were going to get back together, but she didn’t want that, did she? She changed her mind again, told you she wasn’t going to try again, that it was over – Isn’t that what she told you; isn’t that the reason you murdered her?”

  “No!” shouted Rose, rising up from the chair. “I didn’t kill her; she was dead when I got there!”

  “Of course she was,” said Alfonso with a mocking grin. “It was just the way you said it was. You’d never do anything to hurt her. You loved her too much for that – the way you loved her too much the night that by your own admission you almost beat her to death!”

  “Objection!” thundered Harlowe, flinging up his arms in angry frustration.

  “Sustained!” said Bannister, banging his gavel to quiet the crowd, brought to life by the ferocity of Alfonso’s attack. “No more,” warned the judge. “And that means you, too, Mr. Alfonso. I won’t have it.”

  Alfonso nodded but kept his eyes on the witness, almost daring him to come out of the chair after him if he wanted to do something about it.

  “All right,” he said, waving his hand as if to signal an end to hostilities; “let’s go back to the beginning and start all over. You testified that the night you hit her you had found out she had broken off your engagement because she had fallen in love with someone else – correct?”