Unlucky in Law

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Let go of me,” Gabe said to Paul. “Who is this guy to manhandle me anyway?” At Paul’s nod, Eddie took over. “Now let’s just mosey on back to the courtroom,” Eddie suggested in a polite Southern accent, picking up the discarded subpoena. “You don’t want to keep the judge waitin’, do you? ’Cause let me tell you, he looks sweet, but he ain’t.”

  They returned to the courtroom, Nina feeling like a baton twirler leading the parade.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have to work out some matters out of your hearing,” Salas told the jury. “We will resume as soon as possible.” He gestured with his chin again. One of the additional bailiffs escorted the jury out.

  “Mr. Wyatt, come forward and bring that subpoena with you. Now then,” Salas said, “we are on the record.” For a man who hated disruption, he had controlled the situation admirably. Buoyed by the judge’s decisiveness, Nina felt as though he understood that the job was to get the truth out, not follow process to the dead letter. She had been wrong about him. He was the first Mexican-American judge in Monterey County’s long history, and she had thought last time around that he had a chip on his shoulder that might weigh him down forever.

  He didn’t. Nina was thinking about sending him roses when the trial was over, whatever the result. A bigger bouquet if they won, of course.

  “Am I under arrest?” Gabe said.

  “No, sir. I’m keeping you here while we sort some things out. Ms. Reilly? You wish to speak?”

  “Thank you. I have no further questions for Dr. Hirabayashi at this time. I wish to call Mr. Wyatt here as my next witness. He is under subpoena. I request that the court caution Mr. Wyatt as to his rights before any testimony is taken.”

  “I feel sick. Can’t I go, Judge?” Gabe asked.

  Salas ignored the question. “Mr. Sandoval, what is the State’s position as to the defense motion to take testimony out of order?”

  “We oppose it. The defense case is in disarray. The jury is confused and that’s not good. The defense called Alex Zhukovsky, and then Mr. Zhukovsky didn’t return after the bomb threat. I agreed to withhold my cross-examination due to the confusion while he was located, and I did not request a continuance. So Dr. Hirabayashi was actually put on out of order. The defense surprised me with a new expert report and I did not object to the taking of testimony regarding that report. That was my mistake, since Dr. Hirabayashi took advantage of my cooperation by making wild accusations during a disorganized direct examination.

  “Now it is suggested that instead of my cross-examining Dr. Hirabayashi, she be allowed to step down and we put Mr. Wyatt on the stand. The defense wants us in a state of uproar, and that’s a setup, Your Honor. Next, she’ll ask for a mistrial on grounds that the whole trial is compromised by the confusing way the evidence is being presented.”

  “Ms. Reilly?”

  “Counsel is right in most respects, Your Honor.” She saw surprise flit over Jaime’s face out of the corner of her eye, but the judge just listened. “I admit that the defense case has not run smoothly thus far, and I apologize to the Court and counsel. But there is no intent to ask for a mistrial. Sometimes the evidence-the evidence runs off with the case, Your Honor. It may mean that we are pursuing the wrong line of inquiry in this trial. In any case, the Court has inherent power to make adjustments in the order of presentation of evidence in the interests of justice. Section 1385 of the Code of Civil Procedure.”

  “Mr. Sandoval, if you let her put this witness on, I’ll give you tonight to prepare a cross-examination of Dr. Hirabayashi and order her to stay over,” Salas said. “I’ll also make sure you have a full and fair chance to do the cross on this witness.”

  Jaime gave him an incredulous look. “I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he said. “I’m going to be surprised by this witness’s testimony, too.”

  “He’s on the witness list we supplied several weeks ago,” Nina interrupted. Judge Salas looked through the court file for this token correctness and found it.

  “He is,” he told Jaime.

  “Does it say he’s going to testify about the blood evidence?”

  “The description is so general he could testify about Mao Tse-tung. You could have filed a pretrial motion objecting to the vagueness of the description.”

  Of course Jaime hadn’t done that, because his own witness list, provided to Nina on the last possible day, had also featured vague descriptions.

  “I object to putting Mr. Wyatt on out of order,” Jaime said grimly. “I move for a continuance to allow me to prepare a cross-examination of Dr. Hirabayashi.” He had decided to stand on procedure. Nina couldn’t fault him for that, but she had a strong sinking feeling that if they recessed now, Gabe would find a way to be absent in the morning.

  Before she could protest some more, Salas told Jaime, “Your motion for a continuance is granted. You may have until tomorrow morning to prepare an examination of Dr. Hirabayashi.”

  “I didn’t mean that-I meant, we should adjourn…”

  The judge ignored his flustering. “Your objection to putting on this witness out of order is overruled. Mr. Wyatt?”

  Gabriel Wyatt, who had been following all this with the shocked expression of a seal in the mouth of a shark, said, “Me?”

  “You. I am going to bring the jury back in. We’ll take your testimony at this time. However, it has come to my attention that you need to be cautioned, and I am going to tell you about certain rights you have at this time.” Salas pulled out a card to let Wyatt know that he could take the Fifth Amendment if at any time he felt his testimony might be self-incriminatory, and told Wyatt he could have time to consult a lawyer if he needed one.

  When he finished, Gabe’s expression remained the same-stunned, resigned, and maybe just a little cagey. During a long silence he thought about his rights. To Nina’s vast relief, he finally said, “Oh, let’s get it over with.”

  She turned and walked decorously back to the counsel table. When she got there, she squeezed Stefan’s hand so hard he said, “Ow!”

  She took a deep cleansing breath and exhaled it. She would have to fly by the somewhat worn seat of her pants a while longer, which was okay. Somehow, she felt more comfortable in that position.

  She only wished Klaus was there to see.

  Then again, this streak of Tahoe gambler’s luck couldn’t keep up much longer. Judging from Gabe Wyatt’s face, he had no plan to confess. Jaime was conferring with Detective Banta. The jury filed back in and the judge muttered to his clerk, looking not a bit perturbed by the rash of on-the-spot decisions he had just had to make.

  “You may step down,” Salas told Ginger. Ginger passed Nina on her way out to the hall where the witnesses had to wait. She leaned down to whisper, “Am I cool or what?”

  “Stick around outside. I didn’t get half your testimony.”

  “Don’t forget to check out that death certificate for Constantin. We should definitely discuss that when you get a second.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Nina shuffled through her paperwork to find the certificate, then looked down at her legal pad, which held a few Q and As and a comic-booky series of sketches showing a glass thrown, connecting, shattering.

  She called Gabe Wyatt to the stand. He was sworn in, giving his name in a strong enough voice. She imagined that he would have dressed differently if he had known he’d be giving a show today-the khaki pants weren’t pressed and he wore a green polo shirt. Examining the back of his head as he swore to tell the whole truth, he looked a lot like Stefan, but better.

  “You are the defendant’s older brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much older?”

  “One year.”

  “What is your occupation?”

  “I’m a junior executive at Classic Collections.”

  So let the jury think he had friends in fashion. Nina didn’t care. “Where did you attend school?”

  “Pacific Grove High, then Monterey Peninsula College for a while.”

&nbs
p; “Did you graduate?”

  “Yeah, from high school. My family wasn’t well off,” he explained. “College was a luxury we couldn’t afford.” He nodded as if to himself and Nina realized with a stab of joy that he wanted to tell a story, was dying to tell it. All she had to do was get out of the way.

  “You and Stefan lived with your mother, Wanda Wyatt?”

  “In a two-bedroom shack we rented. Our mother worked as a maid most of the years we were growing up.”

  “You’ve done well,” Nina said.

  “I don’t like my work, but I work hard. I’m paid enough to get by.”

  “Where was your father while you were growing up?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “He didn’t live at home?”

  “My mother told us he left us, and died somewhere else. She told us a lot of lies about him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Recently, she told me the truth.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last spring. I stopped by the house. My mother was looking at an old picture of the old man she had worked for before we were born. She’d had a few.”

  “Do you remember your father?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. I guess he must have come around sometimes, but I don’t remember him. Neither does Stefan.” He sounded resentful.

  “What truth about your father did she tell you?”

  “She said my father was Constantin Zhukovsky.”

  This much Nina knew from Wanda’s testimony, but now she wanted to go further. She let her own curiosity lead her in her questions. If Jaime wanted to object, he would.

  “What was your reaction to that?”

  “Anger. He died in 1978. I was only four, but she told me that, other than when I was an infant, he wasn’t around. He must have been ashamed of me and my brother, ashamed of our mother. He had married her, though, I saw the marriage certificate. We were his legitimate children, but he was fixated on his first two. The father’s name on our birth certificates said John Wyatt. Our mother told us he was an insurance salesman who died when we were young.”

  “The ‘first two’ children you’re referring to are Christina and Alex Zhukovsky, is that correct?”

  “Exactly. They had not been told, either. I decided to check into the whole situation.”

  “The situation being your father’s marriage?”

  “The situation being my whole fake childhood. The situation being the deprivation he let us grow up in. The situation being how the first two got coddled, while Stef and I couldn’t-didn’t have anything.” Envy and bitterness flavored his words.

  Nina let them spread over the courtroom, then asked, “And how did you go about checking into this?”

  “First, I looked at the death certificate. I saw how and when he died.”

  Nina brought the copy of the certificate for him to examine. “Is this it?”

  “Yes.”

  It was entered into evidence.

  “According to this, your father, Constantin Zhukovsky, died in 1978 of a syndrome known as thrombocytopenia.”

  “That’s right. I did some reading on the topic, and questioned my mother some more. Turns out, he had a blood disease, aplastic anemia, which led to a syndrome, thrombocytopenia, that had made him sick off and on for years, especially toward the end. That got me thinking. After all, I had aplastic anemia that led to a serious blood disease, when I was a child.”

  “So you came to believe what your mother had told you?”

  “It was a weak link, but yeah, I believed her. By then I was hooked. I took a look at my new siblings. I found out where Alex was teaching and I shadowed him for a few days. I knocked on his door in Carmel Highlands one day when he was out and the cleaning people were there, and I saw his furniture. Roche-Bobois sofa and chairs, rug worth a fortune. He drove a new Coupe de Ville.”

  “And what was the purpose of this shadowing?”

  “Curiosity. I wanted to see what he was like. I wanted to see if he had money. Then I did the same with Christina.”

  “You checked her out?”

  “She got up late, sat on her balcony making phone calls, ate lunch at nice restaurants in town. She dated now and then and had friends over to lavish spreads. She was working on some kind of Russian conference at the college, but there was something more going on. She drove a Caddy, too, an Escalade SUV. Any idea what those cost?”

  “Why don’t you tell us, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “Fifty grand stripped down.”

  Nina said, “Were you jealous of how well your new siblings lived?”

  “Hey, no. I prefer my mom’s hand-me-down Taurus to her Escalade. I like going forty-five because it won’t go any faster on hills. Of course I was damned jealous.”

  “What happened then?”

  “This conference happened. The Russian one that Christina organized.”

  Nina continued to ask open-ended questions. Gabe went on with his story.

  Gabe Wyatt went to the conference on post-Soviet Russia at Cal State. In spite of what he had recently learned about his father, he didn’t care about Russia. He had a different agenda, to follow Christina. Unlike their father, she was alive. He understood Alex. Now he wanted to understand her.

  He had ruminated upon the fact that she had grown up with their shared father, and that she and her brother were somehow the favored ones, being legitimate in the eyes of the world, while he and Stefan were the ugly secrets. It was almost worse than before, when at least he could fantasize that his father loved him.

  The lack of money mixed in with the lack of love. Too late on the love front. Maybe he could still get some of the money, do something big with it, something important. He had waited all his life for a break. Maybe this was it.

  At the opening ceremony, Christina introduced the keynote speaker. From the second row, Gabe studied her, listening for a familiar note in her voice but discovering none. He looked at her blue eyes, and thought maybe they looked like Stefan’s. Certainly, nothing about this woman reminded him of himself. She was a complete stranger who had gotten between Gabe and his father.

  Getting antsy to see if she recognized something in him, he tested her a few times, trying to catch her eye, walking close by that first day. During lunch, he sat down beside her on a bench briefly while she ate. But she didn’t notice anything unusual. She didn’t seem any more connected than he did. She faded into the woodwork after the duty of introductions, a forceful but quiet intellectual woman.

  “So you followed her around without her knowledge at this conference?”

  “Right. I got kind of obsessed. I couldn’t figure her out.”

  “Did she have any repeated contacts with any of the attendees?”

  “Sure. A Russian Orthodox priest, Father Giorgi. Plus her brother Alex was there. She spent a lot of time in little sessions outside with both of them. And a man I figured for an ex-boyfriend, judging by the way she reacted to seeing him lurking around. Very blond. He figured out I was watching her, but he didn’t do anything.”

  “And did you learn the name of this man?”

  “Sergey Krilov, supposedly an economist from St. Petersburg, at least that’s how he was listed among the participants. He didn’t know a euro from a hole in the head. I knew something was up, and it didn’t have anything to do with the Moscow stock exchange.”

  “Did you come to realize what this something was?” Nina said.

  “Well, Christina was such a busy bee, hitting people up for money, secretly meeting with this priest from San Francisco. She talked to Krilov, but didn’t look happy about it. Then she’d sneak off somewhere to talk to her brother.”

  “So you were suspicious that the conference was-what?”

  “Rigged. A front.”

  “For what?”

  “She organized it to raise money for a pet cause of some kind. I never got details, because they were very discreet, but I think it had to do with some scheme she had… a
nd then Christina was attacked. It was late in the first day of the conference. She had just left a presentation and walked by herself toward her car with a heavy briefcase. I followed her. It was getting dark. To tell the truth, I had made up my mind to talk to her. I was starting to feel foolish, and I had a lot of questions. I-”

  “Hold on. You say she was attacked?” Nina asked.

  “A heavyset bald man, big as a grizzly, came around the corner and took hold of her from behind. I didn’t have time to think, much less do anything about it. If he had really meant to kill her, I couldn’t have gotten to her. He held her tight and whispered something into her ear, something that scared the hell out of her. Then Krilov popped up, jumping him from behind. I don’t even know where he came from. He did something to this man’s neck that made him scream. He dropped his hold on Christina and took off. Krilov dusted off his hands like he’d been handling something dirty and tried to talk to Christina, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She brushed him off.”

  Nina took a second to go to the table. Stefan wanted information, but she shook him off with a finger to the lips. She drank water and tried to think. A big bear of a Russian man? She didn’t know if Gabe was telling the truth or inventing folk tales to distract attention.

  But the jury members were listening. Just as she did, they wanted to know who in hell had killed Christina Zhukovsky. Maybe not Sergey Krilov, if he had been so keen to defend her from attack. She decided to let Gabe run with his story until somebody, the judge or Jaime, shut her down.

  “That’s quite a tale, Mr. Wyatt,” she said, putting the glass down, looking at the jury. Santa Ana definitely didn’t believe a word of his testimony so far.

  “You know what? I’ve been wanting to tell what happened,” Gabe said. “But I was afraid. You’ll get why in a minute.”

  “Do you know who this attacker was, as you sit here today?”

  “No. Although later I overheard more about him.”

  “What did Christina do then?”

  She was tough, Gabe gave Christina that. She talked sharply to Krilov, sent him away, then she walked uncertainly a few more steps to an old wooden building and made it inside, but reappeared soon after with her brother Alex. Gabe stood back behind the building, watching them, listening.