cartons. Barry hadn't eaten much, she recalled. He'd com
plained he had a cold, or the flu, or something like that.
Typical Barry.
Within twenty minutes they'd found themselves arguing
over whatever it was Barry had wanted to talk about.
Perhaps it had been his humiliation over her latest antic,
or perhaps she was just saying that to fill in the blank in
her memory, she couldn't be sure. In any event, the
argument quickly turned nasty and loud, and ended when
Samara called Barry a name she knew he hated and
stormed out.
MR. JAYWALKER: Do you remember the name
you called him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I do.
MR. JAYWALKER: What name?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I called him an asshole. I'd
called him lots of things at one time or another, but
that was the only one he really hated. He'd told me
it made me sound like a slut, like the trailer trash I
was. I'd told him I didn't care. If I was trailer trash,
I was trailer trash. Whatever. Anyway, that's what I
called him that night, just to push his button. That's
how angry I was.
MR. JAYWALKER: And yet you don't remem
ber what it was you were
angry about?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Exactly. I mean, how stupid
is that? But that's how it
was with the two of us.
From Barry's, she'd caught a cab and gone straight home. She hadn't bathed or showered, washed her hair or her clothes, or done anything else out of the ordinary. She no longer recalled what time she'd gone to bed or fallen asleep. Only that sometime the next afternoon two detectives had come and rung her doorbell, asking to talk with her, and she'd let them in. When she'd asked them what it was about, they'd refused to tell her, which had annoyed her.
MR. JAYWALKER: What did they ask you?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They wanted to know when
was the last time I'd seen
my husband.
MR. JAYWALKER: What did you answer?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I asked them why, or what business it was of theirs. Something like that. They still wouldn't answer me. So I said about a week ago.
MR. JAYWALKER: Was that the truth?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, it was a lie.
MR. JAYWALKER: Why did you lie to them?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I don't know. Like I said, they were piss—they were annoying me, telling me I had to answer their questions but refusing to answer any of mine. Maybe that's why I lied, to get even. I'm honestly not sure.
MR. JAYWALKER: What happened next?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They told me I was lying. They told me they had a witness who could put me in Barry's apartment the night before. So I said yes, I'd been there, so what?
MR. JAYWALKER: What happened then?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They asked me if we'd had a fight, Barry and me. I didn't think it was any of their business, what went on between my husband and me, and I think I told them that.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever say yes or no
about having had a fight the
previous evening?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I said no. We hadn't had a fight. To me, a fight is when two people hit each other, throw things, stuff like that. What we'd had was an argument.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you volunteer that?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I wasn't volunteering any thing. As far as I was concerned, I'd let these guys into my home, and they didn't have the decency to tell me why they were there and what it was all about. I was just supposed to listen up and answer whatever they asked me, like some five-year-old.
MR. JAYWALKER: What happened next?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They told me I was lying again, that they had another witness who'd heard us fighting. I told them again that we hadn't been fight ing. They said how about arguing? And that's when I said sure, we argued, we argued all the time.
MR. JAYWALKER: What's the next thing you
recall happening?
MS. TANNENBAUM: One of them, the one who
testified here the other
day—
MR. JAYWALKER: Detective Bonfiglio?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yeah, Bonfiglio, the nasty one. He told me my husband was dead, that somebody had killed him. He said it just like that, to hurt me.
Jaywalker knew he had to tiptoe here, in order to avoid revealing that at that point Samara had asked to call her lawyer, triggering an end to the questioning.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did there come a time, a
minute or so later, when
something happened?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes.
MR. JAYWALKER: What happened?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They put handcuffs on me, behind my back, real tight. And they told me I was under arrest for murdering my husband.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you murder your hus
band, Samara?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Absolutely not.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you do anything to him
physically that evening?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No.
MR. JAYWALKER: At any time while you were
in Barry's apartment, did you
have a knife in your hand?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Never.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you stab him in the
chest with a knife or any
other sharp instrument?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, absolutely not.
MR. JAYWALKER: Have you told us everything
about that evening that you
can recall?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, except for what the fight—the argument was about. I still can't remem ber that.
Jaywalker was aware of the salty taste before realizing he'd bitten the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Had she really said fight, instead of argument, before correcting herself? Shit, he thought. Shit, shit, shit. Burke would have a field day with that slip, he knew. Even a couple of the jurors could be heard mumbling over it. So into the breach he went.
MR. JAYWALKER: I noticed you used the word
fight.
MS. TANNENBAUM: Fight, argument, whatever you want to call it. I've heard those two words so many times since that day that I'm dizzy. All I know is, I didn't touch Barry that night. And I certainly didn't stick a knife into him or anything like that. That I'd remember, I'm pretty damn sure.
For an impromptu recovery, it wasn't bad, and Jay walker left it at that. He walked over to Burke then and asked to borrow several of his exhibits. The first one he showed Samara was the towel.
MR. JAYWALKER: Do you recognize this?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I'm not sure. It looks like the towels I have, but there's no way for me to know for sure if it's mine or not. It might be. That's the best I can say.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever wrap a blouse and a knife in it, and stick it behind the toilet tank in your upstairs guest bathroom?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Absolutely not.
MR. JAYWALKER: How about this blouse?
MS. TANNENBAUM: It's mine.
MR. JAYWALKER: How do you know?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I just do.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you wear it to Barry's
apartment that last evening
you saw him? Or have it
with you?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, definitely not.
MR. JAYWALKER: You say definitely not. How
can you be so certain?
MS. TANNENBAUM: It's part of a set I own, a blouse and a pair of slacks Barry bought me. Same pattern, same colors. I only wore them as an ensem ble. You know, together. Also, look at the material. It's silk, too heavy to wear in the summer.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever wrap this blouse, along with a knife, in the towel I just showed you and hide it behind a toilet tank?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, never.
MR. JAYWALKER: And this k
nife? Do you rec
ognize it?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I do.
MR. JAYWALKER: How do you recognize it?
MS. TANNENBAUM: It's identical to a set of steak knives I own. It's the same size and shape and every thing else, as the others in my kitchen drawer.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you have it with you at
Barry's apartment the last
time you were there?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I did not.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you hide it behind your
toilet tank?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I did not.
Jaywalker asked her if she could explain the dark stains on each of the three items. Samara replied that she had no idea how they'd gotten there. Yes, she'd heard Detective Ramseyer testify that they were bloodstains, specifically Barry Tannenbaum's. No, she hadn't stabbed Barry or cut him with that knife, any other knife, or anything else. Nor could she explain how the three items had ended up behind the toilet tank. Obviously someone had put them there, she said, but it definitely hadn't been her.
From his own exhibits, Jaywalker showed Samara the life insurance application and had her identify her signature. She had absolutely no recollection of having signed it, however, and she'd never sought to take out a policy on Barry's life or anyone else's. She often signed papers that were presented to her by Barry's accountant or lawyer, and rarely took the trouble to read them, instead trusting their as surances that it was in her interest to sign them. Shown the cancelled check that had paid for the six-month premium, she agreed with the testimony of William Smythe that it didn't bear her signature and denied that she'd ever seen it, either before or after it had been deposited by the insurance company. Nor had she noticed the significant dent it made in her account. She rarely if ever opened her bank statements or balanced her checkbook, leaving those tasks to others.
Jaywalker took a deep breath. It was four-thirty, and he was down to one or two remaining topics on his notes. The first of those involved Samara's discovery of the Seconal. Even though she adamantly denied any prior knowledge of it and claimed never to have heard of the phantom pre scribing physician, Jaywalker was afraid the whole thing looked too suspicious. Asking the jurors to believe that whoever had murdered Barry and framed Samara had also been diabolical enough to plant the Seconal in her spice cabinet, hoping the police would find it, was a stretch of immense proportions. Even to Jaywalker, it seemed much more likely that Samara herself had phoned in the prescrip tion, posing as someone from a doctor's office, had been surprised when the pharmacy had asked for the doctor's name, and in her haste had made up a name on the spot, a name that just happened to have the same initials as her own. What were the odds of that? He tried multiplying twenty-six by twenty-six in his head, but couldn't. But he was able to remember that twenty-five squared was six hundred and something. He took his pen and crossed the word Seconal off his list.
It was time to wrap it up.
MR. JAYWALKER: Samara, you've told us there were times you got angry at Barry, very angry. Is that correct?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, I did.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever, in all of your eight years of marriage, get angry enough to want to harm him physically?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, never.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever strike him, ei
ther with part of your body
or with something else?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Only once. One time, about
five years ago, I threw a
soda bottle at him. It hit him
on the shoulder, I think.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did it break?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Break? It was one of those
plastic ones that you can't
break even if you try.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did it appear to injure him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, it just bounced off him.
It was empty. It wouldn't
have injured a mouse. We
had a good laugh over it.
MR. JAYWALKER: Other than that incident, did
you ever physically harm
your husband, or attempt to?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, never.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you love him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I'm honestly not sure. I know I thought I did, at first. But Barry was hard to love, the way he was obsessed with his businesses. And I've never been good at loving. I think I learned early on in my life to close up, to not give of myself. So maybe love was hard for both of us.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you want to get out of
the relationship?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Only when we were ar guing, or fighting, as some people call it. Other than those times, no. I was Mrs. Barry Tannenbaum. Plus I had my own place, my own friends, my own life. As they say in Vegas, it might not have been black jack, but it was good enough to stick with.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you murder Barry?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, I did not.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you take this knife, or
anything else, and plunge it through his chest and into his heart?
MS. TANNENBAUM: God, no.
With her denial, Jaywalker walked back to the defense table and took his seat. On a scale of one to ten, he would have given her a solid nine, deducting half a point for too much emotional control down the home stretch and another half for the argument-fight slip. Though he had to give her credit for patching that up a second time, entirely un prompted, near the very end of her testimony.
The only problem was that, given the sheer weight of the evidence against her, he knew a nine wasn't going to be good enough. Hell, a perfect ten might not even do it.
Then again, there was still cross-examination. Jaywalker had learned over the years that jurors subconsciously deducted points on their own during a witness's direct examination. The reason was simple. Direct examination, they intuitively understood, was spoon-fed. It could be re hearsed, re-rehearsed and re-re-rehearsed until it flowed from the witness's mouth with something approaching per fection. Cross-examination was different. On cross, the witness was suddenly confronted with unexpected ques tions and forced to come up with unrehearsed answers.
Most lawyers, if they were aware of the difference at all, regarded it as nothing more than an accepted fact of the trial process. To Jaywalker, it was an opportunity. If he spent twenty hours preparing a defendant for his own questions, and he did, he spent forty preparing that same witness for the prosecutor's questions. What they might include, how to pause reflectively before answering, what the absolute best answer was, and precisely how that answer should be delivered. The result was that, unlike most witnesses, who tend to come off well enough on direct but not so well on cross, Jaywalker's witnesses—and especially Jaywalker's defendants—did even better on cross than they did on direct. And the same jurors who'd deducted points during direct without ever realizing they were doing so were equally prone to give extra credit on cross. So it was entirely conceivable that Samara's best might still be yet to come.
The Tenth Case Page 28