“Denise McGregor,” I say.
She nods. “Yes. She was here, tracing what happened. She was piecing it together. I felt so badly for her.”
“How long was this before she was murdered?”
“I think a few months. I didn't find out about her death until much, much later.”
“Had she learned who was there that night?” I ask.
“She only knew about the same two people that I did … Mike and Victor Markham.”
IT'S ELEVEN-THIRTYBEFORE I LEAVE BETTY Anthony's. Court is going to reconvene at two, but I have someplace where I must stop first, even if it means being late. It's not a newsstand, and it's not some superstition that has to be indulged.
I have to go talk to my father.
I get to the cemetery, not swarming with people as it was the last time I was here, only a few visitors paying their respects to those they loved. I find my father's grave, and take a few moments to get my emotions in check.
“Dad, I have something to do today … I don't know how it's going to come out.”
I am overcome by a feeling of closeness to him; I have never really believed in an afterlife, yet I know in the depths of my being that he can hear me.
“I know about the money … and Victor … and Mike Anthony … and now I know what happened that night. But I don't know about you. Were you a part of it, or did you just know about it? Why did you take the money, if you'd never let yourself touch it?
“Dad, I know who you are, nothing can ever change that. But please understand, I need to know what you did.”
A woman walks by, and she speaks to me, hesitatingly.
“Excuse me,” she says. “Were you talking to me?”
Not wanting to look like a complete lunatic, I say, “Yes. I asked you what time it was.”
She looks at her watch. “One o'clock.”
“Thank you,” I say. And then I turn back to my father. “It's time to move on.”
I race back to the courthouse and arrive a little after two. When I enter the courtroom, Kevin is questioning Edward Markham. Obviously Hatchet had not granted him a further delay.
I stay in the back of the room for a while, watching Kevin and deciding exactly how I am going to handle things. Kevin really has nothing to ask Edward; I have not given him any instructions on what I want to accomplish. He is vamping for time, taking Edward through what is basically a rehash of his direct testimony for Wallace.
“So after you found her, what did you do?” asks Kevin.
“As I said previously, I called the police first. I wanted them to get an ambulance there right away, just in case there was any hope. Then I called my father.”
“He was at home?”
Wallace objects, stating the obvious, that all these questions have been previously asked and answered. Hatchet overrules the objection, but his patience is wearing a little thin.
“No, it was Friday night,” says Edward. “He's always at the club on Friday nights.”
Kevin prepares to ask another question he already knows the answer to, when he turns and sees me coming toward him. The look of relief on his face is palpable.
“No further questions, Your Honor,” I say.
“Well, Mr. Carpenter,” says Hatchet. “So glad you could join us.”
“Thank you, Your Honor, nice to be here.”
“Would you like to call another witness, or do you have any more errands to run?”
“If it pleases the court, the defense would like to call Victor Markham.”
Victor does not seem surprised to hear his name called, nor does he seem in any way worried. He's quite willing to take the time from his busy schedule to help further the cause of justice. The bigger they are, the nicer they are.
I approach Victor with a nonthreatening smile on my face, and speak softly. “Mr. Markham,” I begin, “did I have occasion to question you under oath in the office of your attorney a couple of weeks ago?”
“You did.”
“Would you like to have a transcript of that interview so that you can refer to it?”
“That won't be necessary. I just told you the truth about what I know. That hasn't changed any.”
“Do you remember my asking if you knew what story Denise McGregor was working on in the days just before her death?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told you I had no idea.”
“But you did know her?” I ask.
“I really only knew her casually. She seemed very nice. The important thing to me was that my son liked her. And he certainly did.”
“And she liked him?”
“She seemed to.” He answers quickly, so that Wallace gets to his feet but does not have time to object that Victor could not possibly know what Denise's feelings were.
Hatchet instructs Victor to wait a beat before answering, to give Wallace time to object if he chooses to do so.
“Is it possible that she didn't like him at all, but went out with him for the purpose of finding out information?”
“I can't imagine why she would do that.”
“Perhaps that information would be of help to her in the story she was working on?”
“I'm certainly not aware of any such thing. I don't believe Edward would have had any information that would be useful to a reporter. You might have asked him that when you had him on the stand.”
Victor is good; he must be worried about where this is going, but he doesn't display any sign of it.
I nod. “Maybe I'll be able to help you with that. When your son called you that night, to tell you that Denise McGregor had been murdered and that he had discovered the body, did he seem upset?”
“Obviously.”
“And you shared his distress? You were upset at the news as well?”
He shakes his head slightly, conveying to the jury his frustration with such obvious questions. “Of course I was. A young woman had been murdered.”
“What were you doing at the time?”
“I was in the lobby of my club, chatting with some friends.”
“Which friends?”
A frown. “I'm afraid I really don't remember. This all took place a number of years ago, Mr. Carpenter, and I'm sure the conversations were casual. Besides, I am blessed with a great many friends. We were relaxing at our club on a Friday night.”
I smile my understanding. “But might the conversations have been about golf, the weather, that kind of thing?”
He returns the smile; we're getting to be good buddies. “Most likely about golf.”
“So you're in the lobby, probably talking about golf, and this call comes in. Who called you to the phone?”
“I don't remember. I assume the concierge.”
“Your club has a concierge? Wow.”
“Objection. Relevance.”
“Sustained. Mr. Carpenter, move this along.”
“Yes, Your Honor. So you got the call, Edward tells you he found his girlfriend's body in an alley, and boy, were you upset. Did you rush to your car?”
“Yes. Immediately.”
“By the way, where do people keep cars at fancy clubs like that?”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Are they parked out in front? Do you park far away and take a tram to the main building?”
“There is valet parking.”
“Of course, valet parking.” I slap myself in the head, as if to say, “How could I be such a stupid peasant.” The jury laughs.
“So you get this news and you rush out, and you say, ‘Valet parking person, get me my car, and pronto.’ ”
I pause a moment. “Do rich people say ‘pronto'?”
Wallace objects again, effectively getting on my nerves. “Your Honor,” he says, “I fail to see the relevance of this.”
“Your Honor,” I respond with some anger, “I have a certain momentum going here, which is being interrupted by Mr. Wallace's constantly claiming that he doesn't see the relev
ance in what I am saying. Therefore, I would request two things. One, that the court instruct Mr. Wallace to stop interrupting; and two, that you force him to take a night course in relevance detection techniques.”
Wallace is angry. “Your Honor, that is the most-”
Hatchet's gavel cuts him off. “That's enough, both of you. Mr. Wallace, I'm going to overrule your objection. Mr. Carpenter, I'm also having trouble figuring out where you are going with this, and I have no intention of going to night school. So get to it.”
I promise that I will and turn back to Victor. His attitude has become more hostile, sensing that the jury will agree I am wasting all of their collective time.
“So after you got your car, did you head for the bar where the murder took place?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a bar you frequented yourself, that you were familiar with, or did Edward tell you where it was?”
“He told me. It was not hard to find.”
“Did you drive quickly?”
He nods. “Very. I was quite upset.”
“I know. You've told us that. How far would you say it is from your club to the bar?”
He shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe twenty miles.”
“Actually, it is twenty-nine point seven miles. I drove it. I made it in forty-seven minutes, but I wasn't rushing because I wasn't as terribly upset as you were. How long would you say that it took you?”
“I don't know, but I'm sure it was faster than that.”
“How fast?” I press him.
“I don't know; I had no reason to time the trip. But I was driving quickly.”
“Because you were so upset.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you could have made it in forty minutes?”
“Maybe … I can't be sure.”
I walk toward him, firing questions almost before he finishes his answers.
“Thirty-five? Thirty?”
He is getting flustered. “I told you, I can't-”
“Twenty-five? Twenty? Fifteen? Do you think you could have made it in fifteen minutes?”
“Of course not,” he says.
“Because according to the police records and tape recordings, the police were at the scene fourteen minutes after Edward's call, and you were already there.”
“So?”
“So Edward testified that he called them first.”
Victor can't conceal the worry permeating his brain. “That's impossible. He must be mistaken about the order in which he made the phone calls. It was a very stressful time. A woman had been murdered.”
“He told this jury that he called the police first. He was quite definitive about it.”
“Well, he was mistaken. People make mistakes.”
“Yes, they do,” I say, “and then they'll do whatever is necessary to cover them up.”
“You're making things up, trying to make something out of nothing. To make my son and me look bad, as if we're lying …”
“You are lying.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Mr. Markham, why did you rape Ms. McGregor?”
Wallace jumps up as if he had been in an ejector seat. “Objection, Your Honor, this is crazy! There is absolutely no evidence that Denise McGregor had sex of any kind that night, consensual or otherwise. To accuse Mr. Markham like this is unconscionable.”
Hatchet peers at me sternly. “Mr. Carpenter, if you have any evidence whatsoever to indicate that the victim had sexual relations the night of her death, I suggest you bring it forth now.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say, “I wasn't talking about that night … I was talking about a different night. And I wasn't talking about Denise McGregor, I was talking about her mother.”
The courtroom explodes in slow motion, but Victor Markham alone does not seem excited or agitated by what has been said. His eyes are glued to the back of the courtroom as the door opens, and Betty Anthony comes striding in, immediately lending dignity to the proceedings with her presence. He seems to sag; his dread of the last few minutes has become his certainty.
He knows that I know.
I want to savor the moment, I want him to twist in the wind up there as long as possible. I want him to sit and deal with the fact that justice is about to be realized for Denise and Julie McGregor. So I wait a few moments before continuing, until Hatchet orders me to.
Finally, I say to Markham, “It was thirty-five years ago, but you remember it as if it were yesterday.”
Markham denies everything, and I let him off the stand, subject to recall. I call Betty Anthony as the next defense witness. Wallace objects, accurately claiming that Betty is not on the witness list that we provided for the prosecution.
I ask for a meeting outside the presence of the jury, and Wallace and I head for Hatchet's chambers. I state that Betty had not come forward with information until just this morning, and I lay out in detail exactly what she is going to say.
To his everlasting credit, Wallace withdraws his objection, and Hatchet allows Betty to testify. I believe he would have ruled so anyway, but Wallace takes it upon himself to ensure that he does. Wallace is that rarest of prosecutors, of lawyers, one who believes that finding out the truth is more important than winning. When the truth comes out, everyone wins.
Betty Anthony takes the stand to tell the story that she swore she would never tell, to reveal the weaknesses in her husband that she would never reveal, to right the wrong that she had concluded she would never right.
I take her through a brief discussion about who she is, where she works, and who she had been married to, just enough to establish her as a good and decent, hardworking woman, who certainly would be credible to a jury. Then I lead her to that night, and how Julie met and followed the group back to the house. She is telling the secret that her husband kept for his entire adult life, a secret which caused him to end that life.
“Mike said she wanted to swim, and to drink, and maybe to tease,” Betty said. “But that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to have sex with her. It would cap off an incredible evening in the big city, one they could tell their friends about for months to come.”
She starts to falter, so I'm forced to prod her. “But it didn't happen that way, did it?” It's a leading question, but Wallace doesn't object.
She shakes her head sadly. “No. They became too forward for her, groping her, and she wasn't too drunk to put a stop to it. She got angry at them, then got out of the pool and started to walk to her car. But I guess the alcohol had increased their courage and decreased their intelligence, so they chased after her and pulled her back. They weren't going to let her spoil their night, not after it had gone that far.”
Betty takes a deep breath, drawing in the strength to continue. “She lashed out, kicking and screaming and scratching two of them. This got them angry, and they attacked her. She screamed and fought, but they were too powerful for her, too far out of control.”
Betty is verbally staggering, having trouble keeping her own emotions in check. “Tell the rest,” I say very gently. “It's time for the truth to come out.”
She nods. “They gang-raped her, taking turns holding her down, paying no attention to her screams. Finally she broke away and ran, but in her panic she slipped and fell on the wet surface near the pool, smashing her head into a cement table. She was unconscious and bleeding, and they didn't know if she was alive or dead. Then one of them …”
“Go on, Betty …” I say.
“One of them … I don't know who, pushed her into the pool with his foot. She went under the water and stayed there.”
The jury and everyone else within the sound of Betty Anthony's voice is spellbound by her story. Even Hatchet seems mesmerized by her as she weaves the tale she has protected for so long.
I look in the gallery and see that Victor has left the courtroom; that's okay, he'll read all about it tomorrow. All that is left now is for me to wrap up Betty's testimony.
“Mrs. Anthony, did you ever
have occasion to meet Denise McGregor, the woman whose murder has caused all of us to be here today?”
“Yes. She came to see me.”
“Why did she do that?”
“She told me that she was a reporter, doing a story about a murder that she believed was committed many years earlier. She told me that the victim was her mother.”
“Go on, please.”
“She knew quite a bit about it, about my husband's involvement, and about one other man who was part of the group.”
“Did she say who that was?”
“She did … Victor Markham. I already knew that.”
A rumble goes through the courtroom, which Hatchet quiets with his gavel.
“Thank you, Mrs. Anthony,” I say. “Your witness.”
Wallace dreads this cross-examination, but must go through with it. He gets Betty to admit that she has kept this information a secret all these years, implying that this means what she has to say is somehow suspect. He also brings out that she has no physical evidence of the crime, only the word of her late husband. He does a very professional job in a very difficult situation.
On redirect, I introduce my father's photograph as evidence. It tends to corroborate her testimony by placing the conspirators together with Julie's car. Clearly, though, it does not show any conclusive proof of their guilt.
When I go back to the defense table, Willie leans over to ask if we've already won. He thinks they're going to come over and cut his handcuffs off, and he can go home. I tell him we're a long way from that, and I arrange to meet at seven with Kevin and Laurie at my house.
THE GUEST HOUSEON PHILIP'S PROPERTY has been converted into a small hospital. Nicole has a hospital bed, modern medical machines, a full staff of nurses, and a doctor who does regular rounds. It is an amazing transformation.
Philip is out at a political dinner, a small blessing for which I am grateful. I had called ahead and asked Nicole if I could come over, and she didn't say that I shouldn't. It is not a visit that I am relishing, for obvious reasons, but one that I know I must make.
I tell one of her nurses who I am, and she informs Nicole, who comes right out. She is doing remarkably well, and is wrapped in bandages around her upper body, so as to help her broken collarbone heal. But she is up and around, albeit gingerly, and though she looks pale, it is hard to believe that it's only a few days since she was lying unconscious behind those rocks.
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