Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "Why did you do it, Horace?" I asked. A pensive expression covered his face, as if he was not completely sure himself. Turning away, he sat sideways to the desk, his arms folded over his barrel-like chest, and sipped the coffee, meditating.

  "I knew what was going on between Alma and Gray," he said finally, his eyes fixed on the dark-colored surface of the half-empty cup. "I knew it from the beginning. I could tell she was falling in love with him."

  "Didn't it bother you?" I blurted out. His head came up, an ominous look in his eyes warning me I was on dangerous ground.

  "It wasn't her fault," he insisted. "It was never her fault."

  "And it didn't bother you?" I asked, intent on knowing everything.

  Cocking his head, he looked right through me. "Maybe it's time you understood," he said, standing up.

  He walked toward the small private bathroom at the far end of the room. A few moments later, I heard behind the closed door the clatter of something hitting the floor. Then he was standing in the doorway, and I had to force myself not to look away. Half of Horace had disappeared. He stood there, like someone who had fallen through the floor. He had removed his suit coat, and his pants, and the legs that held him up. All that was left of him were two black stumps, not even long enough to keep his shirttails from dragging on the ground. He was the grotesque remnant of a human being. Standing up, he was at least six foot two; without his artificial legs, he was less than four feet tall.

  "This is what Alma Woolner married," he said, looking at me with the bleakest, most desolate eyes I had ever seen. "This is what she goes to bed with every night. You want to know if it bothered me that she was sleeping with another man? You want to know if I cared?" His head was shaking hard, his mouth trembling, as he fought to keep at least the semblance of control. "What difference does it make? Don't you understand? She deserved more than me."

  I started toward him, but before I had taken a step, he reached up, grabbed the handle on the door, and threw it shut. When it opened again, it was Horace the way I had always known him, moving stiffly across to his desk, lowering himself slowly into his chair. Only now, instead of the grinning exuberance and quiet confidence which I had for so many years taken for granted, there was on his face no expression at all.

  "Why did you do it, Horace?" I asked again, swallowing hard. The light from the window struck the side of his face and shadowed his large graying head in a yellowish haze.

  "I knew that if you believed I killed Russell Gray out of jealousy, and tried to blame it on Alma out of revenge, that you'd hate me for that, and that you'd put me on the stand and try to convince everyone that I was the one who did it, that I was the black man who murdered his wife's white lover. Who wasn't going to believe that?"

  I had believed it, and I was his best friend. Caught up in my own delusion, swept away by the certainty that he had killed Russell Gray, I had taken his belligerent defiance for an admission that I was right and never once entertained the suspicion that I might be wrong. I had done exactly what he had wanted me to do. I was the last chess piece on the board, and Horace had seen it before the first move had ever been made.

  "You're the best I've ever seen," he was saying, while I thought about how quick I had been to turn on him. "You did just what I thought you'd do."

  I looked at him, almost as angry now as I had been in court. "And did Gilliland-O'Rourke do just what you thought she'd do?"

  He stared down at his hands, a pensive expression on his face. "I gave Gilliland-O'Rourke a way out, a way to protect herself, and I gave her a way to get even."

  I still did not understand. "But why? All Alma had to do was keep telling the truth: that she left and came back; that she heard the shot; that she picked up the gun. We would have won."

  He raised his head and stared at me, his face an impenetrable mask. Then he looked away, and suddenly I knew. "She did it, didn't she? Alma killed Russell Gray."

  He did not answer, not at first. "Alma is safe," he said finally. "That's all that matters."

  There was nothing more to say. Wearily, I slid back my chair and got to my feet. "You don't have to do this," I said, nodding toward his signed letter of resignation. "You didn't commit any crime."

  He pushed himself up in the chair and looked right at me. "I was under oath."

  "But you didn't lie. You didn't commit perjury," I insisted. It was a lawyer's argument, and he treated it with contempt.

  "I didn't tell the truth, either, did I?" He raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. "I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew what everyone would think when I wouldn't answer the questions you were throwing at me. I lied, Joseph, I lied by my silence. I made everyone believe something that wasn't true. So what if I'm not guilty of perjury? It was still a lie, and just because the law won't punish me for it doesn't mean that there isn't a price to be paid."

  His eyes still on me, he slowly shook his head. "I did enough damage to the law. I'm not going to hide behind it now."

  "What are you going to do?" I asked, wondering if he had even thought about it.

  "I don't know," he replied without a trace of self-pity. "Whatever I have to do to take care of Alma," he said, looking away. "She needs me." I could almost hear him, talking to himself, years before, out in that jungle half a world away, each time he carried a wounded soldier to safety and then made himself go back for another.

  I never told anyone what Horace said that morning, no one except Kristin Maxfield, and not all of it even to her. When I invited her to dinner a week later, she seemed surprised it had taken me this long to call. She had plans that evening, but, she added after a pause, she could get out of them.

  She picked me up in front of my office in a silver Mercedes.

  "It was time to get a new one," she explained, as she drove along the busy, rain-spattered street.We went to an Italian restaurant in the heart of the city and sat at the bar while we waited for a table. It was only a few minutes after six, but on Friday night a lot of people had dinner in town before they headed home.

  "Here's to our next governor," Kristin said, raising her glass. "She owes it all to you," she added, after she had taken a drink. "I was there. I watched you crucify Horace Woolner." She stirred the ice with the tip of her finger, then looked at me, an unmistakable sense of vindication in her gaze. "Remember what I told you? Those people play by different rules."

  "You think it's a better set of rules?" I asked. I took a sip of my scotch and soda.

  Her mouth formed the kind of knowing smile that made you believe she knew everyone's secrets, including your own. "They get what they want," she replied.

  Our table was ready. As we left the bar, I remarked, "What if I told you that of all the people involved in this, the only one who got what he wanted was Horace Woolner?"

  She thought I was making a joke and then decided I was only making a mistake. "Gwendolyn is the one who got what she wanted," she insisted over dinner. "No one is ever going to find out about her husband, and because of the way the trial ended, everybody believes she was only trying to do the right thing. What did Horace Woolner get? He resigned from the bench, and a lot of people still think he must have had something to do with the murder."

  "He saved the woman he loved."

  A look of disdain crept along her lower lip. "She was sleeping with Russell Gray, for God's sake."

  "You don't think someone can love someone enough to live with infidelity?"

  "Would you?" she retorted.

  A picture of Horace standing in the doorway, his shirt hanging down to the floor, flashed through my mind.

  "I suppose if you loved someone more than you loved yourself," I said.

  She was not listening. "What I can't believe is that Gwendolyn got away with murder."

  I looked at her and said nothing.

  "Her husband isn't capable of it, and she's the only one left with a motive," she explained. Because the case had been dismissed, she assumed like everyone else that someone other than Alma must h
ave done it. Horace was right. Alma was safe. Not only could she never be tried again, she was now beyond suspicion.

  "The night Russell Gray was murdered," I informed her as I paid the bill, "Gilliland-O'Rourke was speaking at a benefit dinner in front of five hundred people." The waiter took the money and left.

  "Of course, that doesn't mean she's innocent, does it?" I asked, as I put my wallet away. "I suppose she could have hired someone to do it."

  There was a question in her eyes, just for an instant, and then it was gone. It was only when we left the restaurant that she noticed my briefcase. "Why are you carrying that?" she asked with a laugh, as we waited for the car.

  "I have to go by the jail. I have some papers I have to drop off with a client," I explained. "Would you mind? It shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

  The parking structure across from the courthouse was nearly deserted. Her high heels echoed on the concrete floor as we walked out the front entrance, then faded into silence as we waited on the corner for the light to change. We cut through the park that separated the courthouse from the correction facility. Inside, under the watchful eye of a uniformed guard, I signed the visitor's log.

  "Why don't you come along," I suggested. "You must have come in here a lot when you were in the DA's office." We passed through the metal detector and followed the guard down a long hallway.

  "Tell me, what do Conrad Atkinson and his friends think about what happened? They never much liked Horace, did they?"

  "I don't see Conrad very often," she replied. "I told you before. We're just good friends." The guard stopped in front of a door and inserted a key.

  "I forgot," I said, peering into her eyes. "This is where the police interviewed you, isn't it?"

  She looked at me, wondering what was going on. The guard turned the key, unlocking the door, and then, with his hand on it, waited for me.

  "Would you take Ms. Maxfield around the corner?" I asked. "She might like to see what it's like to observe someone inside when they don't know they're being watched."

  Shutting the door behind me, I sat down at the rectangular table and waited. A few minutes later, another door opened. His wrists handcuffed behind his back and his ankles shackled together with a chain, the inmate was shoved inside by two armed guards.

  "Sit down," I said, as I reached inside my briefcase. Placing a hand-held tape recorder on top of the table, I glanced at the two-way mirror on the wall and then looked back at Marshall Goodwin.

  "I had them bring you over from the prison because I have something I think you might want to hear."

  I pushed the button that activated the tape, a copy of a court-ordered recording of a late-night telephone call between Kristin and her former fiance. He listened in silence.

  Whether it was the often-repeated complaint that she had been seduced by a murderer and a liar, or the sensuous insistence that she could barely wait for the next time she could show Conrad Atkinson all the things she wished she had been doing with him instead of her husband, Marshall Goodwin was no longer convinced that saving Kristin's life had been worth risking his own.

  "I'll tell you everything you want to know," he said.

  I looked straight at the mirror, trying to imagine the look on Kristin's face as I asked him whether she had known what had been in the envelope she had delivered to Travis Quentin.

  "The whole thing was her idea," he replied.

  I almost felt sorry for him. Then, remembering what they had done, I felt a sense of relief that I had not convicted the wrong person after all and that, at least this time, no one had gotten away with murder. I opened the door and motioned the guard to bring Kristin into the room. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back. They looked at each other like two strangers who for just a moment thought they might have met somewhere once before.

  It had almost worked. If Travis Quentin had never killed again, if he had never been arrested, if he had been caught in a state without the death penalty, if the state police had taken what they knew to the district attorney's office instead of giving it to Horace Woolner—if any of those things had happened, the only thing that could ever have found them out was their own guilty conscience, and the odds against that were higher than most people could count.

  Nearly a month went by before I tried to see Horace Woolner again. Early one afternoon I drove to his building and called from the intercom phone. There was no answer, and when I asked the doorman when Horace might be back, I was told that the Woolners had put their condominium up for sale and left for New York. At first I did not believe it, and then I realized it was the only thing that made sense. There was nothing left for them here. Outside, I looked up at the windows of the twelfth floor, remembering the night I was there and the proud, lonely expression on Horace Woolner's face when everyone was applauding his wife. I turned and headed for the street, wishing I could somehow turn back time and change the way everything had happened.

  I kept walking. A half hour later, I found myself in front of the courthouse. There was someone I wanted to see. Scribbling a message from one caller while she answered another line, the receptionist looked up just long enough to get my name. As I took a seat, the door to Gilliland-O'Rourke's office swung open and two young men, engaged in an intense, excited conversation, walked out. A short, energetic young woman bounced right past them on her way in. A few minutes later, the receptionist caught my eye and signaled that it was my turn.

  Gwendolyn was standing at a round table on the far side of the room, examining a set of black-and-white photographs of herself. "Yes, I think you're right," she said, putting her finger on one of them. "We'll go with this one."

  Beaming, the young woman gathered up the pictures and, without a glance, left the room as quickly as she had entered.

  "I don't have much time," Gilliland-O'Rourke informed me as she sat down behind the glowing antique desk. "The announcement is tomorrow, and there are a thousand things left to do." There were a lot of things I had thought I wanted to talk to her about, things I could never talk about with anyone else. But now, face-to-face with her, there was nothing to say.

  "I just dropped by to wish you luck," I said as I got to my feet. "Give my best to your husband," I added before I turned to go. "I'm glad he's all right."

  Except for the years I had been at school, I had lived my life in the city. But now, wandering the streets, I felt out of place, like someone who dreams of coming home only to find when he gets there that nothing is the way it used to be. All around me, people were going about their business, to all appearances certain of what they were doing and why they were doing it. I was adrift, cut off from the world, without anything to which I could look forward. I was desperate for a familiar face, a friendly voice, someone with whom I could talk. I found my way to the newspaper office and asked for Harper Bryce. I was told that he was over on the coast, in Astoria, covering another murder trial. There was no one left for me to go see.

  That night, for the first time in weeks, I slept straight through and did not wake up until late morning. Sunlight slanted through the bedroom window, and the sky outside was a brilliant blue. When I was dressed, I started down the long spiral driveway toward the iron gate at the bottom. The paving glistened black, still wet from rain that had fallen sometime before dawn. Water dripped from the branch of a sycamore tree where a bird sat, cocking its head from side to side, searching for a place in its nest to add the twig it held in its beak. After the dead days of winter, spring was about to begin again.

  Outside the gate, I picked up the morning paper, tucked it under my arm, and trudged back up the drive. After a few steps, I stopped and, squinting my eyes, turned my face to feel the sun. A noise from down below broke the stillness. Two boys were pedaling their bicycles on the sidewalk that ran along the other side of the spite fence. One called the other a liar, a charge repeated each time it was denied, as they took turns riding their bikes off the curb.