Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "Russell may have taken advantage of Arthur," Barbizon told me, as we said good-bye at the door. "I don't know anything about that. But I care about Arthur, and I'm worried about him."

  "A heart attack is serious," I replied. "But at least he's in stable condition."

  "You don't understand, Mr. Antonelli. I don't think he had a heart attack. That was just an excuse so you couldn't talk to him. They didn't want you to find out about him and Russell."

  I did not know whether to believe him. Barbizon was afraid, and fear feeds on itself. Everyone involved with Russell Gray had found they had something to fear. Most of all, they feared that people would learn they were living a lie.

  We can spend a lifetime misleading others and deceiving ourselves, but most of us still believe there is nothing more important than the truth. I could see it on the faces of the clerk and the judge as they walked single file toward the bench, the twelve men and women who entered the jury box, the spectators who waited on benches for the proceedings to begin. A courtroom is the only place in which no one is allowed to answer a question who has not first sworn an oath not to lie.

  Serious and precise, Judge West explained to the jury the next stage in the trial. "You will remember that last Friday the prosecution finished with its case. It is now the turn of the defense, if it wishes, to call witnesses of its own. Let me remind you all," he said gravely, "that because the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the defense is under no obligation to do anything." As he turned toward me, I rose from my chair. "Is the defense ready to proceed?"

  "Yes, your Honor."

  "You reserved your opening. Do you wish to make it now?"

  When I said I did, he looked back at the jury."At the beginning of the trial, Mr. Jenkins made an opening statement in which he gave you an outline, a preview, of the evidence the prosecution was going to offer. Mr. Antonelli is now going to do the same thing for the defense. I will tell you again what I told you then. The statements of the attorneys are not evidence; they are simply a description of what they believe the evidence will be."

  Unbuttoning the jacket of my dark pinstripe suit, I stood at the end of the jury box and stared down at the floor. "The State has methodically put on one witness after another to prove that the defendant, Alma Woolner, was in Russell Gray's home the night he was killed and that her fingerprints were on the gun that killed him."

  I moved my feet closer together. "She was there," I said, raising my head. "Her fingerprints are on the gun. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the prosecution is right, that she left with everyone else, came back later with a gun, shot him point-blank, and then, having gone to all this trouble, left the gun with her fingerprints on it for the police to find and just ran away?"

  Gilliland-O'Rourke jumped to her feet. "Objection! He's supposed to be making an opening statement, not a closing argument."

  Judge West raised his moody eyes from what he was reading. "She has a point, Mr. Antonelli."

  "Yes, your Honor," I replied. We exchanged a brief glance. "The State has proven that the defendant's fingerprints were on the murder weapon," I said, as if I were starting over. "The defense will explain how they got there. The defendant, Alma Woolner, will tell us. She will tell us that she was in another part of the house, she heard something, she came into the living room, she found Russell Gray lying dead on the floor, she saw the gun, and in a state of shock she picked it up, looked at it, and then, terrified, let go of it, and, too frightened to know what to do next, ran away."

  Pausing, I looked around the courtroom until my eyes settled on Gilliland-O'Rourke. "But if Alma Woolner did not kill Russell Gray, who did? The defense will call a witness who may be able to help us answer that question." Her face a rigid mask, Gilliland-O'Rourke stared back at me, waiting for what I was going to say next.

  "The prosecution knows all about this witness. They called him first. Andre Barbizon will now testify for the defense." There was no reaction, nothing in her green eyes to tell me what she felt or what she thought.

  "Andre Barbizon will testify that he did rather more for Russell Gray than run his household. He will testify that he was once the lover of Russell Gray and, over the course of time, the lover of several of Mr. Gray's prominent friends as well."

  She shot out of her chair. Judge West hit his gavel once and then, with a baleful stare, waited until the last sound died away.

  "Ms. Gilliland-O'Rourke, did you wish to make an objection?" he asked laconically.

  "Mr. Antonelli's remarks are deliberately inflammatory, your Honor."

  He looked at me, waiting for my reply.

  "It's what I expect the witness to testify," I insisted, my eyes locked on Gilliland-O'Rourke.

  "Go on, Mr. Antonelli," the judge instructed, as he sank back in his chair.

  I turned to the jury. "Andre Barbizon has had a number of lovers, and Russell Gray knew about all of them. He used that knowledge for his own advantage. When he needed money—and in the last year or so of his life he needed a great deal of it—he borrowed it from people who wanted to keep their private lives private. He borrowed money, but everyone understood it would never be repaid.

  Finally, someone decided this had to stop. But there was only one way to stop it, only one way to make sure he would never be able to reveal the secrets he knew, secrets that would have ruined the lives and destroyed the careers of more than one well-known person in this city."

  I had everything I needed. Barbizon's testimony would convince the jury that there were powerful people who had every reason to want Russell Gray dead. Alma Woolner's testimony would convince them that she was incapable of murder. We were going to win. I knew it. All Alma had to do was walk to the witness stand and swear she did not kill Russell Gray.

  Wearing a white high-collar dress with large black buttons down the front, Alma sat on the witness chair and looked at me with large, frightened eyes. I began with the only question that really mattered.

  "Mrs. Woolner, did you kill Russell Gray?"

  She took a long time before she answered. "Yes," she said finally, "I did."

  Had she misunderstood the question? "No," I said quickly, "I asked you if you killed Russell Gray."

  "I didn't want to, but I did."

  In ten words Alma had destroyed my defense. Everything I had just said to the jury would be seen as the lie of a lawyer who did not even know what his own client was going to say. I was trapped. All I could do was keep asking her questions, hoping she would say something that would give me a way out. If I stopped now, Alma Woolner would be convicted of murder by her own confession.

  "Why don't you just tell the jury what happened?" I suggested, trying to pretend that none of this was a surprise.

  She became remarkably calm. Looking away from me, her eyes came to rest on the jury. "I had been having an affair with Russell Gray," she explained. "It had been going on for some months. That night I wanted to see him alone, to tell him that it was over. That's the reason I left and then came back. He got very upset. He told me I'd change my mind after we'd gone to bed again. He tried to force me, and that's when it happened. I told him to leave me alone and I pointed the gun at him. He laughed at me. I didn't mean to shoot him. It just seemed to go off. I was scared. I didn't know what to do."

  My mind was racing. She was telling the truth about her affair, that much I was certain about. But if she had shot Russell Gray in self-defense, why would she not have told me that right away? It did not make sense. She was lying, and I did not know why.

  "Russell Gray was trying to force you to have sex with him?" I asked.

  "Yes," she replied, her eyes downcast.

  "But somehow you got away?"

  "I managed to pull away. That's when I got the gun," she explained, looking again at the jury.

  "Yes, the gun. Let's talk about that." I walked up to the jury box. "It was your gun?" I asked, looking straight at her.

  She looked dow
n. "Yes."

  My hands behind me, I leaned against the jury box and crossed one foot in front of the other.

  "Where did you get the gun?"

  "I bought it."

  "Where did you buy it?"

  "At a gun store."

  "The gun that killed Russell Gray was not registered to anyone. How do you explain that?"

  For the first time, she looked at me, a puzzled expression on her face. "I remember. I bought the gun when I was on a trip to New York. A friend of mine helped me."

  "I see. You happened to be in New York, and you just happened to decide you wanted a gun?" I asked.

  "It was my gun," she insisted, looking away. "I shot Russell. I didn't mean to, but I did."

  Three times I took her through her story, from the moment she first arrived early in the evening until the moment she supposedly shot Russell Gray late that night, and each time it was always the same, the artificial account of someone who had memorized the words because there was nothing real to remember. She insisted she was the one who killed Russell Gray and she had not meant to do it.

  Meticulous and remorseless, Gilliland-O'Rourke made her repeat it. "Is it your testimony that after you left Russell Gray's house with the other board members, you came back alone?"

  "Yes."

  "With a gun?"

  "Yes."

  "And is it your testimony that your hand was on the gun when it was fired and Russell Gray was killed?"

  "Yes, but I didn't mean—"

  "Thank you," Gilliland-O'Rourke interjected. "That's all I have, your Honor."

  Alma sat down next to me. She started to say something but changed her mind and stared down at her hands, lost in thoughts of her own.

  "You may call your next witness, Mr. Antonelli."

  Gilliland-O'Rourke did not give me the chance.

  "Your Honor," she said, "I'd like to request that we recess until tomorrow morning. There are matters that need to be discussed between counsel."

  "Mr. Antonelli?"

  For a different reason, I had been about to make the same request. "No objection, your Honor."

  The jury was sent home for the day, and I took Alma into a small conference room down the hallway. Angrily, I demanded to know why she had done it. "You didn't kill Russell Gray, not by accident, not in self-defense. Why did you say you did?" We were standing just inside the doorway. She had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling. "You would have told me if it had happened that way. You wouldn't have waited until now. You made up the whole thing, didn't you? Why?"

  I grabbed her arm, ready to shake the truth out of her if I had to. She pulled away, her eyes flashing. She stared at me, biting even harder on her lip. Then I knew. There was only one way it could have happened.

  "Horace told you to do this, didn't he?"

  Her eyes grew wider and she still would not speak.

  "Horace told you it was the only way to explain how your fingerprints were on the gun, didn't he?"

  She looked away and would not look back.

  "You weren't even there when Russell Gray was killed, were you? You left with everyone else, and you never came back."

  She would not answer. She did not have to.

  Thirty minutes later, I sat in front of Gilliland-O'Rourke's ornate writing table and listened to her make an offer only a fool would turn down.

  "Plead her to manslaughter. She'll do two years."

  "You were charging her with murder."

  Brushing a strand of hair away from her eye, she reminded me of Alma Woolner's testimony. "She admitted it. No one can prove it didn't happen the way she said it did. There was no premeditation." She was talking like an overworked prosecutor, anxious to deal out one case so she could get on with the next one.

  "It doesn't matter what she said in there," I said, before she could remind me again. "She didn't do it. I have another witness to call."

  She assumed I meant Barbizon. "That would be a very serious mistake," she warned. "Are you trying to threaten me?" I asked as I stood up. "You really think you're in a position to do that?"

  Her hands folded on the table, she fixed me with a murderous stare. "I've made you a plea offer," she said in a hard, thin voice. "You have an obligation to take it to your client. Let me know what she decides." Turning away, she picked up the telephone as if she were late making a call.

  Outside, on the courthouse steps, breathing in the misty air, I heard the voice of Richard Lee Jones echoing in my mind, describing the secret pleasure we feel when the powerful are brought down. I had been so eager to believe that Russell Gray had been killed to conceal a scandal that I had missed what had been right in front of my eyes. I was certain now who had done it, and the only thing I felt was pain and a growing sense of anger. All that evening I sat in the book-lined library at home, plotting the destruction of one of the few people I had ever really admired. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I wandered aimlessly down the creaking hallway and through the empty rooms, listening to the hollow beat of the endless rain, and in the first somber light of dawn, I stared out the window at winter's ruined landscape.

  When it was time, I dressed and drove down to the city. I had been lied to from the beginning, lied to by people I thought I could trust, but even the worst news has a certain cathartic effect. The feelings of anger and betrayal gradually subsided until, when I entered the courthouse, all that was left was the strange sense of relief that comes with the knowledge that something has come to an end and nothing will ever be quite the same again.

  Two hundred people crammed the courtroom benches and rose as a single body when Judge West appeared at the side door and began his short journey to the bench. "Please be seated," he said, as he settled into place. For a moment, the room was filled with a muffled rumble and then, once again, total silence.

  "Are there any matters to take up before we begin?" he asked, glancing at me with an expectant look. "No, your Honor," I replied. He seemed surprised. Pursing his lips, he studied me through eyes half hidden by dark lashes. "In that case," he said finally, motioning toward the clerk, "bring in the jury, and we'll get started."

  She disappeared inside the jury room and emerged a few moments later, all twelve jurors in tow. As they filed into the box, one of them, a slight bespectacled man in his twenties, stumbled on the step and sprawled against a first-row chair. Embarrassed, he pulled himself to his feet and grinned sheepishly at the judge.

  "Are you all right?" Judge West asked, looking down from the bench.

  "I'm fine, thank you," the juror replied, as he turned and found his assigned seat in the back.

  The judge nodded affably, leaned forward, put his elbows on the bench, and clasped his hands together. "Mr.. Antonelli, please call your next witness." "Your Honor," I announced, clearing my throat, "the defense calls Horace Woolner."

  The prosecutor was on her feet. This was not the witness she had expected.

  "Ms. Gilliland-O'Rourke?" Judge West asked, waiting to hear her objection.

  She changed her mind. "Nothing, your Honor," she said, sinking back down.

  There was a noticeable stir among the crowd when Horace entered the courtroom and made his way up the aisle. His eyes stayed focused on a point ten feet ahead of him as he made his way toward the wooden gate. Other than Alma, he was the only black person in the room. I wondered how often before he had found himself running a gauntlet of white resentment or sympathy.