by Buffa, D. W.
"What did you do then?"
"I called the police," he said.
She was standing right in front of him, her arms folded in front of her. "What did you do while you waited for the police?"
He thought about it for a moment. "I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. I wanted something to steady my nerves. I was upset."
"Your witness," Gilliland-O'Rourke remarked, as she returned to her chair.
I stood at the side of the counsel table and squinted at him. "You lived in Russell Gray's home. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Where exactly did you stay? Did you have separate quarters outside the main house, an apartment inside the house itself, a room?"
"I have a two-room suite on the second floor."
Nodding, I moved across the hardwood floor to the front of the jury box. "It's a very large stone house. Three full stories, I believe. Correct?"
"Yes," he said, watching me carefully.
"High ceilings, solid floors, long hallways that run off in a number of different directions?"
"Yes," he replied, a touch of impatience in his voice.
"A house in which it would be extremely difficult to know whether someone else was present or not?"
"If you mean, is it hard to hear people moving about, yes, of course."
"When you're upstairs in your private quarters, for example, people visiting Mr. Gray in the living room would not know you were in the house, would they?"
"No, they wouldn't," he agreed. "Unless, of course, Mr. Gray happened to mention it."
I looked at the jury, and then I looked back at him. "You mentioned that among your other duties, you hired staff. Did any other employee of Mr. Gray live in the house?"
"No. The rest of the staff—the cook, the maid—were only there during the day or as needed."
"When someone came to visit Mr. Gray or called him on the telephone, did you answer the door or answer the telephone when the maid wasn't there?" I moved closer to him, running my hand along the railing of the jury box.
"Yes, of course."
"So during the course of the nearly three years you worked for Mr. Gray, you became fairly well acquainted with most of the people he knew, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said with assurance.
"Thank you, Mr. Barbizon. That's all I have."
I took a step toward my chair and then glanced back. He was looking at the judge, waiting to be told he could go.
"One last thing. In a house that large, how could you be so certain after you found the dead body of Russell Gray that the killer wasn't still somewhere on the premises?"
"I just assumed it," he stuttered. "I saw the gun on the floor."
I held up my hand. "No further questions."
Barbizon was excused, and the judge announced that because of another matter before the court, we would stand in recess until after lunch. As soon as the jury left, I moved over to where Gilliland-O'Rourke stood, closing her briefcase.
"I'm very sorry about your husband," I told her. "Is he going to be all right?"
She finished fastening the clasp on her briefcase before she turned to look at me. "He'll be fine," she said tersely.
"Which hospital is he in?"
"He's in a private clinic." She swung the briefcase off the table and held it in front of her, waiting for me to finish whatever I had to say.
"I'm glad he's going to be all right," I said, and started to turn away.
"If you wanted to talk to my husband," she said, with an icy stare, "you should have talked to me first."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You've been calling his office for weeks."
"Yes, that's true. I wanted to talk to him."
"What about?" she demanded.
Her husband was in the hospital with a heart attack. I tried to make allowances. "Look, Gwendolyn," I whispered. "This isn't the time—"
"What did you want to talk to him about? Something about this case?"
"He was Russell Gray's best friend."
"They barely knew each other," she said, with a dismissive glance. "If you had asked me, I could have told you that," she added, as she turned on her heel.
"If it's that simple," I said, sympathy exhausted, "why didn't he just take my call and tell me that?"
She hesitated, as if she was going to stop and turn back, but then she walked away.
Chapter Twenty Two
Andre Barbizon had found Russell Gray's body on the living room floor. The next witness called by the prosecution explained how he got there.
Dr. Reuben Santana walked to the witness stand in long, brisk strides. He had close-cropped hair and a thin, slightly off-center nose.
"You performed the autopsy on the decedent, Russell Gray?" Gilliland-O'Rourke asked, standing at the counsel table, her long painted fingernails resting on the edge.
"Yes," the coroner replied. His brief nod seemed to parallel the clean, efficient movement of a surgeon's hand.
"Based upon your examination of the body, Dr. Santana, what in your professional judgment was the cause of death?"
Shifting his gaze to the jury, he replied, "Trauma from a gunshot wound. The victim was shot in the chest. The bullet essentially exploded the pulmonary artery. Death was instantaneous."
Gilliland-O'Rourke went to an easel, where she removed a blank sheet of paper that had been covering a simple line drawing of a front view of the human body.
"When you examined the corpse of Russell Gray, were you able to discover the precise entry wound?"
Santana left the witness stand. With a felt-tipped pen, he carefully drew a small circle in the middle of the chest area. "The bullet entered here." Standing at the side of the easel, he waited while Gilliland-O'Rourke unveiled a drawing of the back view.
"Were you able to find an exit wound?"
Santana drew a circle halfway across an imaginary line running between the lower edges of the shoulder blades.
"Taking into account the location of both the entry and the exit wounds," he was asked when he returned to the witness stand, "what conclusions can be drawn about the trajectory of the bullet that killed Russell Gray?"
"The line was virtually horizontal."
"Which suggests that the gun did not go off during a struggle, for example?"
This called for speculation, but I decided not to object.
"All I can say with certainty is that he was shot by someone firing at neither an upward nor a downward angle."
Gilliland-O'Rourke wanted to make certain everyone understood. "So he couldn't have been shot, for example, during a struggle to get the gun away from the other person if the barrel was forced either up or down as it went off?"
"No."
On the following day, Gilliland-O'Rourke took up the same line of questioning with her next witness.
Pigeon-toed and round-shouldered, Detective Thaddeus Oliver brushed his mustache with his fingers, waiting for the chance to answer.
"Were there any signs of struggle when you investigated the scene? Furniture thrown around, things broken, anything like that?" she asked briskly.
"Nope. Everything was in the place it was supposed to be."
"What about the victim's clothing? Anything that showed signs of a struggle?"
"His shirt was torn where he got shot," Oliver replied, his eyes darting toward the jury, thinking he had made a joke.
"Nothing else?" Gilliland-O'Rourke asked, with a glance of disapproval.
"No," he said, looking down at his feet.
Moving closer to the witness, she lifted her head. "This is very important, Detective Oliver. Were there any powder burns, any evidence of any sort, that would indicate that the victim had been shot at close range?"
A well-trained witness with years of courtroom experience, he looked directly at the jury. "There was nothing."
"If someone had been shot while struggling for a gun, would you expect to find such evidence?"
"Yes, we would," he
replied firmly, his eyes on the jury.
It was a preemptive strike, an attempt to prove premeditation by eliminating the possibility of either sudden impulse or self-defense. Gilliland-O'Rourke was thorough, but it was all beside the point. Our defense was simple. Someone else killed Russell Gray.
Day after day, the prosecution called its witnesses and fastened together each link in the chain of evidence against Alma Woolner. Lab technicians and forensic experts testified that the bullet that killed Russell Gray had in fact been fired from the gun found beside the body and that the only fingerprints found on the gun belonged to the defendant. It was almost a relief when they finally called a witness who did not spend most of her waking hours staring down a microscope.
The old woman leaned on the silver knob of her black lacquered walking stick and reluctantly raised her right hand while the clerk recited the oath. When Gilliland-O'Rourke asked her to state her full name and spell her last name for the record, she looked at her as if she could not believe the younger woman was really serious.
"Roberta Hope Caldwell," she said finally, each syllable pronounced like the next note in a building chorus of resentment. Resting her liver-spotted hands on the knob of the walking stick, she spat out the letters of her last name: "C-A-L-D-W-E-L-L." Mrs. Caldwell served on the ballet company board and, though few people were old enough to remember it, had once been one of the most beautiful women in Portland.
"You were vice-chair, and Russell Gray was chairman, is that correct?" asked Gilliland-O'Rourke, keeping her distance.
"Yes," she replied, sniffing the air as if there were something not quite right about it.
"You attended the meeting of the executive committee the night of his death?"
"I did." She planted herself on the walking stick and waited for the next question.
"How many people attended the meeting?"
Raising her wispy eyebrows, she thought about it for a moment. "Six, I think. No, seven. Counting Mrs. Woolner."
Gilliland-O'Rourke had carried with her from the counsel table a pencil which, consciously or not, she kept tapping against her finger.
"What time did the meeting end?" she asked patiently.
"I suppose about ten or ten-thirty. I didn't check the time."
Pensively, Gilliland-O'Rourke gazed down at the floor. "And did everyone leave at the same time?"
"I stayed behind a few minutes. I had something I wanted to say to Mr. Gray in private."
Her eyes still lowered, Gilliland-O'Rourke nodded and then moved a few steps toward the jury. Pursing her lips, she tapped the pencil on her finger, then stopped abruptly. "Did any of the others," she asked, looking up, "including Alma Woolner, happen to come back to the house during the few minutes you were still there?"
"No," Mrs. Caldwell replied slowly.
"So when you left, Russell Gray was entirely alone?"
"Yes."
I was certain she was mistaken and as soon as it was my turn to examine the witness I tried to prove it. "Mr. Gray lived in a very large house, didn't he?" I asked, as I approached her.
She did not seem to think so. "No larger than my own."
"But large enough that someone could be in one part of the house and someone in another part wouldn't know it?" I asked the question as if it were a matter of no great importance.
"Yes, of course."
"So then, as far as you know," I asked, turning up my hands, "Alma Woolner could have been down a hallway somewhere—in a bathroom, perhaps—and you only assumed she left with all the others?"
Gripping the walking stick, she stared down at her sensible oxfords. "That would be possible," she agreed, as she lifted her gaze, "except for the fact that I said good-bye to her myself outside and watched her drive away." It was the last answer I expected, and I had to force myself to sound as if it was the only answer I wanted.
"You saw Alma Woolner leave. Good. No further questions, your Honor." I headed toward my chair.
Gilliland-O'Rourke was on her feet. "Mrs. Caldwell, just one or two more questions. What was the reason you wanted to have a private word with Russell Gray before you left?"
"I wanted to confront him with some rumors I had heard."
"What rumors were those?"
For the first time, she seemed to lose a little of herself assurance. Her eyes moved away from Gilliland-O'Rourke and settled for a moment on Alma, who was now following every word.
"Rumors that he had started an improper relationship with Mrs. Woolner," she replied finally. "Mr. Gray was rather well known for that sort of thing," she added as she shifted her attention back to Gilliland-O'Rourke. "Surely you knew."
Gilliland-O'Rourke passed it over. "What did you say to Mr. Gray?" she asked, as she turned away and faced the jury.
"I told him that he was to leave Mrs. Woolner alone, that she was a married woman, and that if he persisted, I would have him removed," she said, raising her withered chin.
Gilliland-O'Rourke looked back. "Removed?"
"Yes. As chairman of the board. Everyone thought he was so charming," she muttered. "Not a bit of it. He was a beastly man, willing to take advantage of anyone."
It made no sense. Alma had told me she had stayed behind, and Mrs. Caldwell had just sworn that she left. And she was not the only one. Everyone who had been at Russell Gray's home that evening came into court and testified to the same thing.
Alma denied it and argued semantics. She had not left with the others, she insisted, not in the sense of going for good. "I left with everyone else. Then I remembered I needed to talk with Russell, so I went back," she explained.
We had gone to my office, late in the afternoon, after the prosecution had finished with the last witness who saw Alma leave. "That isn't what you told me," I reminded her. "You told me you stayed. You never said anything about leaving."
Dark clouds closed out the sky, and the rain had begun to fall, the way it would for months, sweeping in from the sea, day after dismal day. Standing at the window, my hands in my pants pockets, I took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, despondent sigh. I turned my head, just far enough to see her. In the shadows of the fading yellow light of the lamp, her smooth skin glowed like burnished brass.
"What does it matter?" she asked softly. "Whether I stayed, or whether I left and came back a little while later? I was still there."
"They'll say you left, and when you were sure he was alone you came back, and that you came back carrying a gun," I replied, as I crossed the room and sat down next to her.
She looked at me without expression.
"They'll say you were having an affair with Russell Gray, that you were in love with him but he wasn't in love with you, and when you found out he didn't want anything more to do with you, you couldn't stand it and you killed him."