Unlucky in Law

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Klaus had an awful lot of success in the past with this strategy, attacking the psychology, not the actual testimony of the witness. Opening the door to the court, she reflected that what worked for him would not work for her in this case. As many jurors would hate her as hail her for bringing Lumley down a few pegs in a personal attack. Anyway, that was not the way she practiced law. She liked coercing doubt by letting the elegant framework of the cross-examination do exactly what it was intended to do. She didn’t make a good bully, except when it came to logic.

  Nina and Klaus greeted Stefan and sat down. Some lingering procedural issues for the judge were dispatched quickly, and she stood up to start the cross-examination.

  “Mr. Lumley, in most murder cases, fingerprints provide compelling evidence that a certain person can be proven to have been in a certain place, holding certain items, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve testified at many trials. Aren’t fingerprints often the most telling evidence against a defendant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you’ve made short work of the fingerprints found at the scene of Christina Zhukovsky’s murder today. Why?”

  He smiled genially. “We found little of relevance.”

  “Did you find a single fingerprint that would place my client, Stefan Wyatt, at Christina Zhukovsky’s apartment that night or at any other time?”

  “We were unable to match fingerprints found at the scene with any on record.”

  “No fingerprints in the kitchen that matched his prints?”

  “No.”

  “No fingerprints in the living room that matched his prints?”

  “Correct.”

  “In fact, in that entire apartment, which is very large by most standards, nearly two thousand square feet, is there any fingerprint evidence proving my client was there?” She didn’t want him deviating from the point, bringing up the obvious proof Stefan’s blood provided. “Answer yes or no, please.”

  “No.”

  “Not even a partial print?”

  “No. It’s my view that the killer wore gloves.”

  “And nothing on any of the pieces of glass recovered?”

  “No.”

  “Move on, Counsel,” Judge Salas said.

  “So the killer wore gloves while he was doing this glass cleanup?”

  “That’s my opinion.”

  “Then we have a match, don’t we? You found gloves in the defendant’s Honda, didn’t you?”

  “Correct.”

  “How many pairs?”

  “One. Gardening gloves, very dirty.” He was holding People’s Exhibit 37.

  “Made of cloth?”

  “A loose-weave cotton.”

  “And how much glass did you find on the gloves?” Nina turned to the jury, eyebrows raised.

  “None.”

  “They were made of rough fabric, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you picked up pieces so small they were almost microscopic off the kitchen floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “So wouldn’t you have expected to find glass on those gloves?” She had People’s 37 passed along the jury box. The fabric was rough and porous.

  “Maybe he had another set.”

  “Did you look for another set of gloves at the victim’s condo?”

  “We made a thorough search for anything that might be relevant.”

  “And no luck?”

  “We found no second pair of gloves there.”

  “What about at the cemetery?”

  “No.”

  “Stefan Wyatt’s house?”

  “There were several pairs of gardening gloves similar to those found in Wyatt’s car.”

  “Any with glass on them?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s see,” Nina said. “Your theory is that the killer wore gloves, hence the lack of fingerprints on the broom and dustpan. But they weren’t Stefan Wyatt’s gloves, because those gloves probably would have retained at least a microscopic speck of the glass, isn’t that right?”

  They all waited for the response.

  “Am I stating your testimony correctly?” Nina said.

  “To a point. Maybe the defendant didn’t do the cleanup. Maybe the victim did. There were plenty of her prints on both broom and dustpan. Even on the kitchen trash can.”

  Nina had been waiting for that. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s follow that theory. The defendant, fearful for her life, threw her glass of brandy at the killer, and the glass hit him and shattered when it hit. With me so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “So then, putting aside her fear, the victim calmly got out her broom and dustpan and carefully swept all the glass she could into the dustpan and put it into the trash. Was this before or after the killer was strangling her?”

  “It could have happened. Some period of time could have elapsed between the glass being thrown and the murder.”

  “Isn’t it much more likely that the killer did wear gloves, the killer did attempt to clean up the glass after the murder, and the killer wasn’t Stefan Wyatt since they weren’t his gloves?”

  “Then how come he buried the body at the cemetery?”

  “Who says he did? After the body was found, and Stefan Wyatt was arrested, did you also conduct a search of the defendant’s home?”

  “We did.”

  “Did you find any evidence there linking him to the crime of killing Christina Zhukovsky?”

  “No.”

  “Any trash bags of the same type used to cover her body?”

  “No.”

  “Any broken glass which matched glass found at the crime scene of the same type in his vacuum?”

  “No.”

  “In his trash?”

  “No.”

  “In his vehicle?” Again, Nina was talking to the jury. She wanted them to know how important this lack of evidence was.

  “No.”

  Very interesting, Madeleine Frey’s rapid nod said.

  “Now let’s get back to that blood. Mr. Lumley, did you supervise the physical examination of my client on the morning of April thirteenth, right after he was arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there any proof, however small, that he had handled broken glass recently? Any cuts, any invisible shards, anything?”

  “No.”

  “You found no evidence of broken glass on his clothes, in his pockets, on his hands, in his car, or in his home, correct, Mr. Lumley?”

  “Objection,” Jaime said. “Asked and answered.”

  “Overruled,” said the judge, happy to be exercising his voice again.

  She repeated the question.

  “No.”

  “Making it very difficult to imagine how he left blood at the crime scene less than twenty-four hours before, wouldn’t you say?” Might as well grab the opportunity to pound that nail in further.

  The jury nodded, meditating on the question. How did Stefan leave blood behind in Christina’s apartment? They should take this conundrum to bed with them tonight, and work it, Nina thought. Maybe they would figure out what Nina couldn’t.

  “Mr. Lumley,” she said, when he didn’t answer. “How could my client, Stefan Wyatt, leave blood behind at that crime scene, when he never bled?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, showing with a deep sigh how disgusted he was that it was so.

  15

  Tuesday 9/23

  THE BAILIFF OPENED THE COURTROOM DOOR AND BECKONED. NINA watched Alex Zhukovsky straighten his tie and follow him in.

  On Nina’s left and right, people fidgeted, always keen to see a new face. Zhukovsky walked the central aisle, all eyes fastened on him, looking as conspicuous and anxious as an executioner on his way to the hanging. Passing through the low gate, he looked toward the tables on his left and right, defense on the left, Stefan’s miserable gaze following him, the jury on the left against the wall. Klaus glared at him. Alex didn’t look at the old man but le
t his own glance catch on Nina, who ignored him and doodled on her legal pad. As if embarrassed by her indifference, he looked at Judge Salas, a head and black-robed shoulders visible above the massive wooden dais. He stopped where directed. The court clerk told him to raise his right hand.

  “My name is Alexis Constantinovich Zhukovsky,” he said, swearing to tell the truth. He mounted a step and entered a lower, smaller box attached to the judge’s dais and turned around to the roomful of faces. He looked toward the prosecutor. The questioning began.

  Sitting, not standing, the D.A., asked him a series of simple questions about his work. Alex Zhukovsky responded, sounding stiff to Nina. “I am an instructor in Russian language and history at Cal State Monterey,” he said. “I also teach other courses. I’ve been there for the past six years.” He told the court he liked his job, and was brother to the victim in this case, Christina Zhukovsky, and son to the man whose bones had been disinterred.

  “My father was named Constantin Nicholaevich Zhukovsky. Our mother, Davida Zhukovsky, died in a car crash when we were young. My sister was eleven. I was only seven.”

  For a while Jaime’s questions were simple, and Zhukovsky, required to explain very little, answered yes or no. Then Jaime began asking Zhukovsky about Christina, her life and work.

  “How can you reduce a person’s life to a few sentences?” Zhukovsky complained. “She had many facets.”

  He told the court about her work at the university. “Her last job was working at Cal State Monterey in the Romance Languages Department as the Public Affairs Officer. She helped with organizing the conference, and was very involved in all aspects of it. It was one of the largest and most successful conferences held at the college so far. People came from all over the world to attend.”

  Sandoval gave him a photograph of Christina and, shaking, Zhukovsky studied his sister’s image. In this picture, which Nina also studied, Christina, wearing a neat designer suit, smiled proudly, intelligently. Her face wore hope, ambition, and all the glorious things a human face, a living face could hold, when born to optimism. Holding the photograph, Nina felt sad that nobody would ever see her again as she had undoubtedly been, with shiny brown hair and a shy way of looking up at an observer. Nina would bet she used the weak glasses to disguise a driven nature.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” her brother told the D.A. His voice quivering, he gave the pictures back with a shaky hand. Looking sympathetic, Sandoval gave his witness a minute to get composed, obviously loving this show of emotion and milking it. He wanted the jury to feel for this nice woman with a public conscience, Nina realized. Christina was just like any other friend, family member, or coworker they might call to mind. People could identify with her. She was nobody, just like them.

  Except that she had been murdered.

  Wasn’t this what the psychologists called cognitive dissonance? Christina Zhukovsky was nobody! She appeared so small in the picture, insignificant, and yet she loomed so very, very big in this courtroom. If Nina had known her as her brother did, would she like her as a woman or pity her as a victim?

  While the D.A. returned the photo to a file, Alex grabbed for the carafe of water in front of him, poured, and drank. “Yes, I went to the police station.” He had been shown his father’s body first, what remained of it. He described what he saw, the skull, the eyebrows, the silver hair lying in strings over a dark serge suit. Bones, loosely assembled. Fine shreds of his white collar, tatters that had once been sleeves. Bits of a sash across his chest, bearing the distinctive three black strips on a yellow background, which Zhukovsky said he well remembered. But the medal of Saint George? It was gone by the time he saw his father’s body.

  All this he confirmed, remembering, wiping wetness from his brow. Maybe he was having a heart attack, Nina thought.

  Stefan hardly blinked at Alex Zhukovsky’s testimony, even though several of the jurors appeared squeamish at many of the details. What a self-absorbed, overgrown adolescent he must be, thinking this was easy money, Nina thought along with them. Only a fool would have agreed to do that job in the first place.

  Holding up the appraisal, Jaime Sandoval started on the medal. Alex acknowledged the facts. The appraiser had assigned a value of at least five thousand dollars. He had discovered the medal was created of precious materials and seemed to be the correct age for an original, first-class war medal. He suggested it might have been privately commissioned as a memento or honorarium by someone of wealth for a courageous member of his staff or family.

  The D.A. showed Zhukovsky a photo of the familiar white embellished cross with the blue stone at its center, and the tiny image of Saint George slaying the dragon. Zhukovsky barely looked. “My sister and I saw it many times in my father’s study when we were growing up. We thought it was a toy, a replica. We had no idea how he came to own such a thing. As far as I know, he never fought in a war.”

  The medal and appraisal were introduced into evidence. The prosecutor had to explain why Stefan would steal Alex’s father’s body after killing his sister, and the medal seemed to be the only motivation he could come up with.

  Yes, Zhukovsky reported, after identifying the other body in the grave as his sister’s, he had been taken to Natividad Hospital in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 13. He let loose with indubitable facts: his sister’s eyes bulged. Her tongue stuck out of her mouth. Her neck had blue marks. He had fainted and his head had hit the steel wheel of a cart, and had required stitches.

  He was shown photos of his sister’s dead body. “That is my sister, Christina,” he said, only his voice betraying hints of his extreme dismay.

  Nina watched as Alex wiped his forehead again. Were this witness’s reactions entirely within the realm of normal for a grieving brother? Naturally, these very personal, gruesome images were upsetting.

  Zhukovsky went on. “I gave the key to my sister’s apartment to a woman detective because I couldn’t accompany the police to her apartment. I-couldn’t.”

  The judge called a recess.

  Klaus had barely moved throughout Zhukovsky’s testimony. His face showed nothing of his thoughts, but Nina felt his scrutiny of this witness as rigorous, piercing.

  Questioning resumed. Jaime Sandoval wanted to know about Christina’s last days. Zhukovsky told some things about the conference, about her mood. He identified personal items of hers-her appointment book, her purse. He told them he missed his older sister.

  The D.A. finally stood. He buttoned his coat, preparing himself. Nina could see how Jaime wanted to signify this moment, the heart of Alex’s testimony. Alex swallowed as if preparing to live up to the prosecutor’s hopes.

  “Do you know Mr. Wyatt, the defendant over there?” Jaime asked.

  Rustling and muttering burst forth from Stefan’s table. Stefan wanted to speak, but Klaus put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

  “No.”

  “Did your sister ever mention the names Stef Wyatt or Stefan Wyatt to you?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hire the defendant to dig up your father’s grave?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you pay him the sum of five hundred dollars in cash at any time for any purpose?”

  “No, sir.”

  Nina let her breath out. He had stuck to his story.

  Before the trial, when they went over Zhukovsky’s statements, Jaime Sandoval had seemed certain Stefan Wyatt was responsible for killing Christina Zhukovsky. Now her brother had given the jury no reason to believe otherwise.

  “Did you have any reason to wish her dead?” Jaime asked.

  “My own sister? Of course not,” Alex said.

  After the break, Paul stood at the counsel table. “You have plenty to attack him with,” he said. “Blow him off the stand.”

  She put her lips together and blew toward the witness box. “Shoot,” she whispered. “He’s still there.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s no pushover.”

  Nina stood. Jaime Sandoval,
the prosecutor, noticed, then turned his eyes toward the papers spread out on the table in front of him, mad. He had obviously hoped for Klaus.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Zhukovsky,” she said. “My name is Nina Reilly and I represent the defendant, Stefan Wyatt.”

  “Good afternoon,” he replied coolly.

  She asked him questions about the identification of his father’s bones and his sister’s body, fairly rapid-fire, but with a logical progression that she hoped made it easy to follow. She cleared up points about how he had offered a key to the police to let them into Christina’s apartment. She tried to lull him with a pleasant manner, a singsong voice, a tone that said, And we all know what’s coming next, so no worries. She watched for the tension in his shoulders to leave him. She listened for even, unsuspecting breaths.

  He answered her quick questions more and more quickly, with less and less premeditation.

  And she dropped a bomb upon a dumbly grazing sheep.

  “Your father, Constantin Zhukovsky, claimed he was a page to the last tsar of Russia, did he not?”

  Alex Zhukovsky’s pale, professorial skin whitened.

  “Would you like the question repeated?” The clerk read it back. The reporters, aroused, whipped out pens, poising them like arrows.

  “He told stories,” Zhukovsky finally croaked out.

  “When was the first time you heard him tell you that one?”

  “I was a little boy. But you know, my father wasn’t reliable. I never knew if any of that talk about his early life was true. Here in America, he was a baker, a pastry shop owner. That’s the man I knew.”

  “And he told you he was a page to the tsar of Russia, did he not?” Nina said, worrying him like a ferret worries a rat.

  An alarmed Sandoval said, “Objection, relevance.” He hadn’t seen this coming.

  Nina left Alex Zhukovsky to sit like one of Nabokov’s moths, pinned to his seat, and approached the bench.

  “Objection overruled,” said the judge.

  “He told you he was a page…” Nina prompted.

  “To tsar Nicholas the Second, yes,” Zhukovsky admitted. “Yes. But you have to understand. He was full of stories, like fairy tales.” He was glaring at Paul, apparently having recognized Paul as the source of his present discomfort.