A Crime of Passion

by Scott Pratt

  “And why is that?”

  “Objection!” I said, and I stood immediately. “Sidebar, Your Honor?”

  Judge Graves waved us up and said, “Keep your voices down, both of you. State the grounds for your objection, Mr. Dillard.”

  “The question is designed to elicit testimony regarding Mr. Milius’s extramarital affairs. She’s going to say they haven’t gotten along because he can’t keep it in his pants or something along those lines. You’ve already ruled that kind of testimony inadmissible.”

  “Mr. Frye?” the judge said.

  “I have no idea what her answer will be,” Frye said. I wanted to kick him in the shin because he was obviously lying.

  “If she mentions other women, I’m going to ask for a mistrial,” I said.

  “Step back,” the judge said, and Frye and I returned to our tables. “The objection is sustained, the question is withdrawn. Mrs. Milius, do not answer the question Mr. Frye just asked you. Mr. Frye, move along to something else.”

  “Did you witness an argument between your husband and Kasey Cartwright that night?” Frye said.

  “I saw her throw a glass of tea into his face, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

  “What time did you leave the show at the Bridgestone Arena that night?”

  “Around midnight, the same as everyone else.”

  “And where did you go from there?”

  “To the Sambuca restaurant where Paul was hosting an after-party for some of his company’s employees.”

  “Did anything unusual happen at Sambuca?”

  “I called Kasey a cow and told her she didn’t have any talent, and Paul wound up calling my driver to come and pick me up and take me home.”

  “What time was that?” Frye asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’d had too much to drink, but I think my driver, Bennett, probably got there around one forty-five or so,” Lana said.

  “And you went back home?”

  “Yes. Went home and went straight to bed.”

  “When was the next time you saw your husband?”

  “I saw him when he came in from talking to the police the following night. It was probably around nine thirty, ten o’clock.”

  “What was his demeanor? Did he seem normal?”

  “He was scared,” Lana said. “He was fidgety and was pacing around the bedroom. He told me he’d been at the police station, that someone had killed Kasey and that he felt like the cops were trying to pin it on him. He said it so nonchalantly, though, the part about Kasey, like it didn’t matter that she was dead, just that they were trying to pin it on him. I mean, I almost fainted when he said she was dead. We weren’t close or anything, but just the night before I’d seen her singing live in front of that huge audience at Bridgestone, and then I’d been sitting right across the table from her at the restaurant. It was surreal to think that she was dead. But Paul just kept harping about some detective named Smiley and how he was so smug.

  “And then he let it slip that he’d actually been in Kasey’s room after the party. And I looked at him and I said, ‘Paul, you went to her room?’ And he said, ‘Yes. I went to her room. Not only did I go to her room, I slapped her, Lana. I actually slapped her in the mouth.’ And I said, ‘Why did you slap her?’ And he said, ‘Because she was an ungrateful little bitch. She wanted to change labels. Can you believe that? After everything I’d done for her, she wanted to just leave and go to another label. It made me so mad I popped her right in the mouth, which is how I cut my finger right here, which means the police are probably going to come up with some kind of blood evidence or DNA or something.’ I said, ‘Paul, did you do this? Because if you did, we need to start figuring some things out. You need to get a lawyer.’ And he said, ‘No, no lawyer. That just makes me look guilty.’ So I said, ‘Are you? Did you kill that girl?’ And he just looked down and said, ‘It happened so fast. It was like a dream, like I was watching myself but I couldn’t stop myself.’ He said he grabbed her by the throat and just started choking the life out of her, and the next thing he knew she wasn’t breathing. He said they were standing next to the bed, so he just laid her down on the bed and walked out of the room. And then he said, ‘She deserved it, Lana. I swear to God she deserved it. If it hadn’t been for me, she would have been on her way to a junior college. I made her a star.’”

  “Just so the jury is clear,” Frye said, “when did he tell you all of this?”

  “That night. It was the same day they found her body, that night after he came home from talking to the police.”

  “This would have been four full months ago,” Frye said. “Why have you waited so long to come forward?”

  At this point, Lana broke into tears. She was so convincing that I found myself thinking she should have taken up acting instead of singing.

  “Paul is a very, very rich man,” Lana sobbed. “After he told me, I think he regretted that he’d done it, and he said if I repeated a word of it to anyone, he would hire someone to kidnap and kill me and dump my body where it would never be found. I’ve been terrified ever since, but I’ve decided that I just can’t live with Kasey’s death on my conscience, even if he can. I have a fair amount of money myself. I’ll go into hiding if I have to.”

  And then, for the coup de grace, she looked directly at Paul, leaned forward, and shouted, “I’m not afraid of you anymore, Paul! Do you hear me? I’m not afraid of you anymore!”

  CHAPTER 40

  The judge gave me thirty minutes to prepare for my cross-examination of Lana Milius, but I didn’t think it would matter. I felt like we were pretty much dead in the water. If I went at her too hard, I might come off looking pathetic and desperate, but if I went at her too softly it could appear as though I thought she might be telling the truth. In all my years of practicing law, I’d never had a surprise witness inflict such devastation on one of my clients. Jack, Charlie, Paul, and I were sitting in a small anteroom about thirty feet down the hall from the jury room. Paul had ranted for ten minutes about his lying bitch wife, but other than that, we hadn’t really said much. Finally, I stood, and Jack said, “What are you going to do, Dad?”

  “I’m going to get her on her heels and try to keep her there. I’ll just give her hell and hope for the best.”

  We walked back into the courtroom and took our seats at the defense table. Pennington Frye and his crew walked in a few minutes later. The gallery was packed, as it had been for the entire week. Judge Graves and his clerk entered about five minutes after Frye.

  “Bring the witness back in,” the judge said to the bailiff, and Lana reappeared shortly thereafter.

  “Bring the jury back in.”

  The jurors filed in and took their seats.

  “Mrs. Milius, I’ll remind you that you’re still under oath,” the judge said. “Mr. Dillard, you may cross-examine the witness.”

  I stood up and looked at Lana. She was staring back at me, a look of defiance in her eyes.

  “So your husband told you he went to Kasey’s room, they argued about her switching record labels, he slapped her, and then he strangled her, correct?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And he told you all of this the day after it happened, so it was fresh in his mind.”

  “I suppose it must have been,” she said.

  “There’s a problem with it, though,” I said. “Wait, let me rephrase that. There are a million problems with it, but one that jumps out at me immediately is that what he told you doesn’t work with what the police found at the scene.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said he told you they argued, he slapped her, and then he strangled her. He said it happened very quickly, according to you. But what about the blood in the bathroom?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lana said.

  “Of course you don’t because you’re lying. The police found traces of Kasey’s blood in the bathroom sink where she cleaned up after Paul admittedly slapped h
er. You left that part out. Did you forget or are you lying?”

  “I don’t know anything about any blood in any bathroom,” Lana said. “All I know is what Paul told me, and what he told me is what I testified to a little while ago.”

  “So you’re saying Paul lied to you?”

  Lana looked confused for a second. I’d managed to do what I wanted. She was on her heels, at least momentarily.

  “He might have.”

  “He might have? He might have lied to you about strangling Kasey? Why would he do that?”

  “He didn’t lie to me about strangling Kasey, Mr. Dillard. He admitted it right there in our bedroom.”

  “Are you saying he admitted to a false version of what may or may not have happened in that room that night?”

  “I don’t know what version he admitted to. He’s a practiced liar, Mr. Dillard. You know the old saying, ‘If his lips are moving, he’s lying’? That’s Paul.”

  “Yet you’ve been married to him for fifteen years.”

  “Yes. Fifteen miserable years.”

  “I’m sure we all feel terribly sorry for you, Mrs. Milius. What do you have, fifteen, sixteen servants out there on your thousand-acre estate? Your very own private jet? You’re worth close to $200 million on your own, aren’t you?”

  “Objection,” Frye said. “Relevance.”

  “Overruled,” Judge Graves said. “I told you I was going give him plenty of latitude.”

  “Aren’t you, Mrs. Milius? Worth close to $200 million?”

  “I suppose it’s somewhere in that neighborhood.”

  “And that’s your money. Not his. Yours.”

  “Do you have a point, Mr. Dillard?” Lana said.

  “The point is if you’ve been so miserable, why not just leave? You can certainly afford it. Why not just pack up and hit the road? Go someplace else?”

  “I have no intention of leaving,” Lana said, her voice becoming more intense, a bit shriller. “Xanadu is my home. It’s mine. He spends hardly any time there. He’s usually off gallivanting around the world or shacking up with some little whore.”

  “Wait a minute, Mrs. Milius,” I said. “Wait just one second. That isn’t what you told me at all. You told me your husband is impotent. Remember that? At the restaurant the first night we met? You told me he was impotent, didn’t you?”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “But if you did, you were lying, correct? Just like you’re lying now.”

  “I said no such thing. You’re just trying to twist things around and make me look bad.”

  “You’re doing a fine job of that all by yourself,” I said. “What happened to your personal assistant, Mrs. Milius?”

  “My what? Why, she’s in the building somewhere, I believe.”

  “I’m talking about your first cousin, Tilly Hart, the young woman who was your personal assistant for almost fifteen years but who disappeared back in November, just a short time before Kasey Cartwright was killed?”

  Lana turned to Judge Graves and said, “Why are you letting him dredge up this sort of thing?”

  “You wanted to testify,” Judge Graves said. “This is what you get.”

  “What happened to your first cousin and personal assistant, Mrs. Milius? Tilly Hart. What happened to her?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “She disappeared, didn’t she? Along with Paul’s personal assistant, a young man named Alex Pappas?”

  “They stole from us,” Lana said.

  “Stole from us? From you and Paul? What did they steal?”

  “They used a credit card of Paul’s to buy things. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of items.”

  “And you discovered this theft? You personally?”

  “I did.”

  “And you called the police immediately, correct?”

  “Nobody called the police.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars and nobody called the police? That’s because nobody stole anything from either you or Paul, isn’t that right, Mrs. Milius? In fact, that entire allegation was a ruse so that you could apply pressure to Alex Pappas to get him to do what you wanted him to do, isn’t that right?”

  “Now you’re being absurd, Mr. Dillard.”

  “Am I?” I decided to go for it and let my voice get louder. “Let’s see if we can’t bypass absurd and go straight for obtuse, then, shall we? You blackmailed Alex Pappas into hiring a contract killer to murder Kasey Cartwright and your husband because you thought Kasey and your husband were having an affair, isn’t that right?”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Lana said, her voice rising to meet mine.

  “Your Honor,” Frye said over her, “don’t you think this is getting out of hand?”

  “But something went wrong that night and only Kasey was killed.” I was almost shouting now. “Isn’t that right, Mrs. Milius? And now you’re in here lying about what you say your husband told you so you can send him off to prison! Isn’t that right, Mrs. Milius? You’re lying, aren’t you? Your personal assistant and your husband’s personal assistant both disappeared on the same day, didn’t they?”

  “Your Honor!” Frye was shouting, too.

  The wooden gavel banged and banged and banged.

  “That’s enough!” Judge Graves said. “Enough!”

  He glared down at me, then at Frye, then back to me. He looked over to the bailiff and jerked his head toward the jury.

  “Take them out of here,” the judge said. As soon as they were out of the courtroom, he looked back at me and said, “Mr. Dillard, I told you I’d give you some latitude, but I’m not going to let you turn my courtroom into a circus.”

  Too late, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut and stared back at him.

  “Do you have any proof, anything you’re going to offer in your case, regarding the allegations of contract killing that you just made against Mrs. Milius?”

  “I have no intention of revealing our case to either you or the prosecution at this point in the trial,” I said.

  “Don’t!” Judge Graves said. “Don’t test me, Mr. Dillard.”

  “All I can tell you is that I had a good-faith basis for the questions,” I said. “I was afforded an opportunity to talk to Alex Pappas and Tilly Hart while I prepared for the trial. Alex told me Mrs. Milius forced him to set up a contract killing. He said she falsified credit card receipts, forged his name, and made it look like he’d stolen $200,000. Beyond that, he and Miss Hart were in a romantic relationship, and Miss Hart’s life was threatened. He said he emailed information to the contractor and wire-transferred money to an offshore account and that Mrs. Milius was with him when he did it.”

  “Why in God’s name isn’t he here to testify then?” the judge said.

  “He’s in a foreign country. I honestly don’t know where he is now. What I do know is that both he and Miss Hart are terrified of Mrs. Milius. I also know Alex is afraid he would be prosecuted for his involvement in Miss Cartwright’s murder.”

  Judge Graves shook his head slowly.

  “What a mess,” he said. “In all my years on the bench, I’ve never seen or heard anything like this. I don’t have any idea exactly what’s going on here, but I think it’s gone far enough. Mrs. Milius, you’re excused.”

  Lana looked at him, confused.

  “You’re excused,” the judge said. “You’re done testifying in this case. I’ll instruct the jury to make no inference from your absence when they return, but your testimony in this case has come to an end.”

  Lana stood and straightened her skirt. Then she gave me a look that made me remember what Tilly Hart had said in Ecuador: “Be careful, Mr. Dillard. She’ll kill you if she thinks she needs to. Don’t doubt that for one minute.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Pennington Frye rested his case after the judge told the jury that they could believe all, part, or none of Lana Milius’s testimony, and they should make no inference as to her being excused. I didn’t know quite
what to make of everything, but I felt as though I’d done a pretty good job of attacking Lana’s credibility in front of the jury. The fact that the judge had given her the boot would have to make at least some of the jurors question what she’d said.

  Once Frye rested his case, Judge Graves excused everyone until the following morning. As soon as I left the courtroom, I drove to the house where I was staying in Belle Meade. I didn’t want to stay in a hotel because they were full of reporters, I didn’t want to stay with Jack or Charlie because I didn’t want to be a problem for either of them, and I certainly couldn’t stay at Xanadu, so Caroline had helped me find a nice, privately owned, two-story house in Belle Meade that I could rent by the week. I drove there after court, took a short nap, talked to Caroline on my cell for about half an hour, took a shower, and headed to Franklin where I met Paul Milius at a restaurant called Stoney River. Paul said he’d been there hundreds of times, knew the owner, and could get us a private room where we wouldn’t be bothered by anyone.

  After we took our seats and ordered something to drink, I looked at Paul and said, “What did you think?”

  “What you did to Lana made me wonder what Frye will do to me tomorrow,” he said.

  “Testifying in a murder case isn’t for the faint of heart,” I said. “Do you think you’re up to it?”

  “Is it really necessary at this point?” Paul said. “If you take Lana out of the mix, and I think you did that pretty well, they still don’t have motive. They haven’t proved I killed her, and they haven’t offered anything in the way of motive.”

  “Maybe not, but you have to admit it’s a pretty strong circumstantial case. They have testimony that Kasey threw the tea in your face, they have the hotel security videos and your driver that put you at the scene at or near the time of her death—not to mention your own admission to the police—plus they’ve proven you slapped her and they have the DNA match. It’s pretty strong, Paul. I’ve seen juries convict on less.”

  “So you’re saying I should testify?”