When Fernandez was done, Parish got to her feet. She was an accomplished cross-examiner. Kennicott could see right from the start what her technique was. Ask only leading questions, limit him to answers that were either yes or no, gradually work him into a corner, like an endgame strategy in chess, when the player with the advantage slowly cuts off his opponent’s avenues of escape.
As he expected, Parish started off asking about his notes.
“Taking notes is an essential part of your job. Correct, Officer Kennicott?”
“That’s right, it’s required,” he said.
“You’re trained to take notes, correct?”
“We are. They even bring in an ex–homicide detective to do a special seminar on note taking. It is very thorough.”
“You’re required to take notes under the Police Act. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And as a defense lawyer, you cross-examined hundreds of police officers about the accuracy of their notes. Correct?”
There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom. Kennicott smiled. Keep it casual, he told himself, don’t be stiff.
“With great pleasure,” he said, and everyone laughed, even Summers.
Here it comes, Kennicott thought. He’d read his notes over a dozen times, looking for something he’d missed. He hadn’t found anything. But she must have found something.
“Could I look at your book, please, Officer?” Parish asked. “I have a photocopy, but I’ve never seen your original notes.”
“Be my guest,” Kennicott said. This was strange. Was Parish looking to see if he’d somehow doctored his original notes?
She approached him on the witness stand. He watched her eyes as she slowly flipped through his notes. Taking her time. What was she looking for?
She moved back to her place behind her table. “Your notes and the photocopy you provided are exactly the same. Correct?”
“Correct.” Damn it, Kennicott thought. Here he was echoing her with that damn word “correct.” His first one-word answer. Now he got it. She’d done her little act looking at his notes just to try to rattle him.
“Officer, you’ve looked at these notes many times before you testified today.”
“At least ten times.”
“Is there anything you can think of that you’ve left out?”
It was the first question she’d asked that was not a leading question, that didn’t suggest an answer of either yes or no. Parish had just broken the first rule of cross-examination: Don’t ever ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
But Kennicott realized it was a smart move. If he said he didn’t leave anything out—and there was always something—then he was stuck with that answer and she had a free shot at him when she found something. If he said he noticed something he’d left out, then he’d have to explain his error. Either way, she’d put him on the defensive.
On top of that, she’d established a quick rhythm in her cross-examination, an underlying beat to their conversation. He knew that if he hesitated too long, it would break the pacing and make him look unsure of himself. Kennicott heard Summers’s pen stop. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fernandez and Greene look up at him.
“Of course I didn’t put every minor detail in my notes,” he said. “Things like the color of Mr. Singh’s shoes, for example. But I can’t think of anything important that I left out.”
“When you first saw Mr. Brace, he was having tea with Mr. Singh. Correct?” Parish had moved off the notes and was heading into the meat of the cross. Here we go, Kennicott thought.
“I was told they were having a special tea that Mr. Singh had given Mr. Brace.”
As much as he wanted to keep focused on Parish, Kennicott’s eyes were drawn back to the scale rendering of the apartment. When Fernandez was examining him, he’d noticed something that had never occurred to him before. How, he demanded of himself, did I miss that?
Parish lifted her copy of Kennicott’s notes. “On page forty-eight you’ve written, ‘Brace and Singh seated at breakfast table. Brace on the left—west side, Singh on the east. Drinking tea.’ And you even made a little drawing of the location of both people.”
“I did,” Kennicott said. He was staring at the full-scale drawing. His mind slipped back. Suddenly he wasn’t in courtroom 121. He was in Brace’s condominium. First man in on a murder call. He could see it all in his mind. “Mr. Brace didn’t look at me,” he said. “He was looking down at his cup, stirring his tea with a spoon and pouring in honey. Mr. Singh said the tea was a special blend and that it was good for constipation.”
“That’s not in your notes, Officer Kennicott.”
Kennicott looked at Parish. It was as if he’d just come back from a short journey.
“What’s not in my notes?” he asked. “The constipation?” There was a murmur of laughter in the audience.
“No. In fact, Mr. Singh’s comment about the constipation is in your notes, on the next page. But I’m talking about the honey and the spoon.”
“The honey and the teaspoon are not in my notes,” Kennicott agreed. “But I remember them distinctly. I simply didn’t think they were important details.”
“Less important than the constipation?” Parish asked.
There was another murmur of laughter, a little louder this time.
“The constipation was part of the statement made by Mr. Singh. It was the first thing he spoke about after he’d introduced himself. That’s why I noted it. I noted every word Mr. Singh said to me. No one said anything about the honey and the teaspoon, it was just an observation.”
“What did you observe about the honey and the teaspoon?”
Kennicott took a moment to put himself back in the breakfast room again. He looked at the drawing. It was important as a witness not to rush things. When he was a lawyer, he’d always told his clients to tap their feet three times before they answered a question. It was easier said than done, he’d learned once he started to testify himself.
“Brace had the teaspoon in his left hand, and he was pouring the honey with his right. I thought it looked awkward, and now that I think of it again, I guess it occurred to me that Brace must be left-handed.”
“Thank you very much, Officer Kennicott. No further questions.” Parish smiled. It seemed as if she couldn’t wait to sit down.
Fernandez had no reexamination, and a moment later Summers was thanking Kennicott and he was climbing down from the witness-box. It had all ended so quickly. He took another look at the drawing as he walked out of the courtroom.
He could see what Parish was trying to do. The position of Torn’s body in the bathtub made it clear that the obvious way to stab her was with the right hand. But even a lefty could have stabbed a naked, vulnerable woman in the bathtub using his other hand.
That was not what had distracted him while he was on the stand. It was what he’d seen looking at the scale drawing of Suite 12A. It was so obvious. As he reached for the swinging doors leading out of the counsel area, Kennicott sneaked one last look back at the drawing. It was right there in front of him all the time. And he’d missed it. They’d all missed it.
47
I realized this afternoon that I made a big mistake in your case,” Nancy Parish said after Kevin Brace took his seat in interview room 301 and Mr. Buzz had closed the door. She noticed, as he walked in, that he’d stomped down the back of his prison running shoes. “We now have a serious problem.”
Brace didn’t look away. For once, she seemed to have gotten his attention. In fact he seemed surprised.
He brought out his notebook and reached for his pen, but Parish put up her hand to stop him.
“No,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “It’s my turn to talk. That’s the mistake I’ve made. Every other client I’ve ever had, I tell them the same thing. I call it ‘the speech.’ And I’ve never given it to you. So here it is.”
Brace took his hand off the pen. He kept his eyes on her. Well, well, we’re makin
g progress here, Parish thought. But to her chagrin, her own internal voice sounded the way her mother’s did when she was angry.
“I take cases because I want to win. Straight-out. And why do I want to win? Because if I don’t win, I don’t sleep. And that’s our problem. I like to sleep. Is that clear?”
Brace looked at his notebook.
“You don’t need your notebook to answer this question,” Parish said. She was mad. “Is that clear?” This could be the best cross-examination I do all day, she thought.
Brace nodded his head. That’s a first, she thought. We’ve moved from written communication to gestures.
“And I can’t win a case when my client isn’t listening to me.”
Brace tilted his head a bit. He looked confused.
“I’ve told you over and over again, don’t talk to anyone in this place about your case. But that move Fernandez pulled today in court about the ban on publication, saying he might need to challenge it in ‘exceptional circumstances.’ I know what that means. He’s got a rat in here somewhere. Any minute now I’m expecting to be told about a statement you made to some asshole that’s going to torpedo our case. And then we’ll lose. And then I won’t sleep. Got it?”
Brace reached again for his pen. Parish didn’t object. He started writing furiously. At last he passed his book over to her.
I’ve never said a word, with but one exception. Back in February, when the Leafs were losing, I said to my cell mate that with the older goalie, the Leafs would be better. That’s it.
Parish read the note twice. Was Brace deranged? Did she literally need to get his head examined? Finally she passed the notebook back to him.
He wrote again.
Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I was right about the goalie.
Parish took the notebook back. It was true. The thirty-eight-year-old journeyman goaltender had taken over on the Leafs’ West Coast trip. Much to the amazement of all the sports pundits, he caught fire. He recorded two shutouts in a row, and the team’s fortunes turned on a dime. Suddenly they just couldn’t lose. Now they were one game away from winning the Stanley Cup. By tomorrow night they could be world champions.
Still, what did that have to do with his case? Parish threw the notebook down. The spiral wire binding made a hard, clicking sound on the metal table. “You’ll talk some gibberish with your cell mate, but you won’t talk to me? What the hell’s going on? Enough is enough. Will you talk to me or not?”
Brace shook his head. Parish tried to read his look. He wasn’t defiant or angry or defensive, like most of her clients became when she challenged them like this.
Brace picked his notebook up and wrote:
I can’t talk to you.
Parish ran her hand across her face. She was bone-tired. It was only Monday night. She had four more grueling days ahead of her before the weekend. And right now she had no idea what to do.
“Look, Mr. Brace,” she said at last. “Summers will totally freak out, but tomorrow I’m going to have to go into court and tell him that I’m unable to communicate with my client or take instructions from him, and I’m going to resign from the case.” This was a bluff. Parish knew there was no way that Summers would let her off the case now, short of her saying that Brace had tried to strangle her. And knowing Summers, maybe not even then. The only way off the case was for Brace to fire her.
Brace was no fool. He picked up his book and wrote:
But I am communicating with you.
Parish closed her eyes. “Why the hell did you hire me? You could have had any lawyer in the city. Why me?”
Brace looked genuinely taken aback by this. He wrote again.
I thought you were brilliant today. Proved I made the right choice picking you.
It was, Parish realized, the first compliment she’d ever received from him. Although she hated to admit it, it felt good. Her anger began to melt away.
“Okay, Mr. Brace, help me. I’m missing something here, and I know it. You’ve got to stop holding out on me.”
Brace looked at her long and hard, like a man weighing his options. At last he picked up his notebook and turned his pen upside down, so the rounded side touched the page, not the ink. He pointed to a word he’d written.
Parish read the word. She furrowed her brow. What did he mean by that?
To emphasize whatever point he was making, he underlined it with the back of the pen, indenting the page. For once, he was staring right at her, his smoky brown eyes alert, knowing. He looked down at the page and underlined the word again.
She read the word again. It seemed innocuous enough. She read it a third time. Then it hit her. So hard that her breath rushed out of her lungs as if she’d been bashed in the chest full force.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, leaning forward across the table toward Brace. “That never, ever occurred to me,” she said.
Brace closed his notebook, looked at her, and shrugged his shoulders.
“That changes everything,” Parish said. She felt a sense of vertigo, as if her feet weren’t really touching the concrete floor. And for the first time since she’d taken the case, she saw the thing she needed more than anything else to keep going. More than pats on the back from her client, more than sleep, more than food itself. At last she saw the one thing that every defense lawyer lives for: hope.
48
For Albert Fernandez, the advantage of having Detective Ho as his main witness the next day was that he didn’t have to do any preparation. Sure, the forensic officer would bore the hell out of everyone in the courtroom and he’d drive Summers nuts, but all Fernandez would have to do was ask, “What did you do next?” every few minutes, and Ho would fill in the narrative. So tonight Fernandez could take a bit of a breather.
Not that it was easy to do. Being involved in a big trial made a lawyer suspicious of downtime. Fear it. Fernandez knew that if he let himself lift his head and look around, he’d realize that three billion people in the world didn’t care about the length of the knife that pierced Katherine Torn’s abdomen or the statement Kevin Brace made to Mr. Singh. Earlier this week the Chilean soccer team had won a crucial game in the World Cup qualifying round, and Fernandez had made a point of not reading anything about it.
He was tired. He sat back in his office chair and let his eyes drift closed. Just for five minutes, he told himself, it would be nice if he could think of something other than the case. It was almost eight o’clock. Thankfully, Marissa would be here soon. He’d left a stack of papers for her to photocopy.
Ever since she’d come back from Chile, Marissa had been a different person. She’d put a big push on to learn English, insisting that they speak no Spanish when they were together, and she’d started coming down at night to help him with his work. It turned out that she was very organized, and they made a good pair. She’d even encouraged him to contact his parents, something that to date he’d resisted.
There was a light knock. His eyes flew open, and he rushed to the door. Marissa was wearing a very short black skirt and a low-cut blouse. She slipped inside, and he gave her a kiss.
“I have a lot of papers for you to photocopy,” he said, turning back to his desk.
She reached out, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward her.
“Don’t be such a stick in the earth,” she said, giggling as she shut the door.
He smiled. “Stick in the mud.”
“Shhh,” she said. “I brought you something.”
“What?” he asked.
“Sit on your chair and I’ll show you . . .”
“Really, we can’t do it now. I’ve got a lot of work to do . . .”
“Sit,” she purred. “And take your mind out of the ditch.”
“The gutter,” he said, sitting down.
Marissa sat astride him and hitched her skirt up high.
“Really, Marissa . . .”
“This is something you really desire,” she said. “Here, feel.”
She took his hand and p
laced it on her inner thigh. Instead of feeling warm flesh, Fernandez felt something cold and hard, covered in plastic.
“What the heck?” he said as he pulled the thing out.
“A refund,” Marissa declared as he stared at the bag of gumballs in his hand.
“A refill,” he said. They both started to laugh.
“I’ll refill the machine, and you do the photocopying,” he said as they got up. It felt good to laugh with his wife.
She went down the hall. He was still filling the gum machine when she came back. Not nearly enough time to do all the copying.
“Marissa,” he said without looking up, “this work is important.”
“This is more important,” she said in a surprisingly solemn voice.
He turned and saw that she was holding a sheet of paper. Her hands were shaking a bit. “I found this on the machine.”
“What is it?” he said, reaching for the paper.
“I don’t think it is supposed to be there.”
Fernandez took one look, and he understood as he read the handwritten heading:
Confidential Solicitor-Client Communication Between Mr. Kevin Brace and His Lawyer, Ms. Nancy Parish
Below the heading were notes clearly written by Brace.
“Albert, this is not proper, is it? For your office to have the notes from the other team?”
“No, it’s not proper,” Fernandez said. He didn’t bother to correct her use of the word “team.” She’d gotten the important word right. He looked in her dark eyes and saw a depth there he’d never noticed before.
“You said it perfectly,” he said, his mind reeling. “This is not proper at all.”
49
Good morning, Mr. Singh. I hope I didn’t scare you,” Daniel Kennicott said as the elevator opened and Mr. Singh walked out onto the twelfth floor of the Market Place Tower, holding just one newspaper under his arm. “With Mr. Brace gone, I imagine you’re not accustomed to seeing anyone up here.”
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