by Sydney Bauer
“It’s okay, James,” said David. “Tell us about that night at the university bar. Your friends said you confessed, and you just told us everything they said was true.”
“It was—in that I did say I felt responsible. The truth is, if I had been with her that night this would not have happened. I had held her only the day before, and then the next thing I knew she was gone, and there was nothing I could do.”
“And you expressed these feelings to your friends?”
“Yes.”
“Which they misinterpreted.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t their fault. Like I said, I was rotten drunk.” James looked at the jury as if asking their forgiveness for drowning his sorrows. “And when I look back on it now, I realize I did feel like I was the one who killed her.”
“In what way?” asked David.
“Well, I was her boyfriend and when it came down to it I was unable to protect her. I am sure it all came out the wrong way. I had, after all, misrepresented my relationship with Barbara, and then there was the thing with the shoes.” James took a breath.
“Okay, James,” said David at last. “We can see how your friends may have misconstrued your meaning when it came to your feelings of responsibility, but that last point you made, about Jessica’s shoes . . . I think the thing we all need to know, I think the question that most begs an answer, is how did you know about the shoes?”
He was losing her.
“Miss Rousseau . . . Miss Rousseau. Where are you calling from? You are breaking up.”
“I’m still in Paris, Lieutenant. I was meant to be on a plane to Boston hours ago, but didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”
This was useless, thought Joe as he waved at Dean Johns, who was now approaching from the other end of the garage and pointing at the entrance to the dorm. The dean joined them with a nod, obviously noting the cell now crushed to Joe’s ear. Johns gestured with his head for them to follow him into the building, and Joe and Frank were flanked by two newly arrived uniforms who brought up the rear.
“Miss Rousseau,” yelled Joe into his phone. “I can hardly hear you. I am going to have to call you back on a landline. I’m gonna hand you to my partner who will take down your number so that I can call you in about ten minutes, okay? Did you get that, Miss Rousseau? Ten minutes. But right now I need you to sit tight.” Joe handed his cell to Frank.
“I need access to a landline,” said Joe, calling out to the dean who was a good ten paces ahead of him. The corridors were now filling with inquisitive students who were obviously wondering why their honored leader was paying them an impromptu visit—and why he was flanked by two men who could only be detectives, and two uniforms asking them politely to go back into their rooms.
“There is an RA’s office on every floor,” said Johns. “We’re headed for level three so you can use the phone up there.”
They opted for the stairs over the slow moving elevator and hit level three within seconds. They pulled open the stair exit door and turned left into the gray carpeted corridor, moving quickly, almost to the end, before Johns stopped in front of a green-painted door marked with the number 312.
“This is the dorm you are after,” he said.
“Open it,” said Joe. And Johns retrieved a single silver key to oblige.
The room was small and sparsely decorated, the bed a single, the wardrobe old and worn. The brown calico curtains were drawn back to reveal an impressive view of the university grounds beyond—the red-roofed gazebos now covered in snow, the odd squirrel tracks forming lines like a dot to dot puzzle linking tree to tree to tree.
“Where do you want me?” asked Johns after a time.
“Outside,” said Joe. “In fact, I want everyone outside apart from me and Detective McKay here.”
“Frank, you take the bathroom,” he said, turning to McKay and pointing to the tiny en suite. “And I’ll check things out in here.”
Despite its old age and small size, the room was extremely neat and reasonably comfortable as a living space for one. A computer desk sat snugly in the corner by the window, while a bedside table against the far wall held an alarm clock, a novel about the Sudan, and one of those skinny, bendable study lamps. Every second Joe searched, every time he opened a book or lifted a cushion or checked under a bed, he felt a small wave of relief—that he found nothing untoward, nothing but class notes or folded laundry or empty space in the case of the metal-framed bed.
Then he hit the closet, the oversized built-in that sat flush against the thin bathroom wall. It was one of those cheap formica structures with sliding doors that never remained on their tracks. The inside was incredibly well organized with shirts up top and pants down on the bottom and sweaters and T-shirts folded like they did in stores. The bottom held four pairs of shoes—shoes that looked small enough to be worn by a child. Two pairs of sneakers—one Adidas and one Nike, one set of dress shoes and a pair of rubber flip-flops, which sat one on top of the other with the heel part slotting into the thong.
In the far corner, under a hanging overcoat, sat a cardboard box that was only half shut, the top spouting what looked to be some old high school trophy and a rolled up certificate of sorts. Joe reached in to pull the box from its nook, the room’s only sign of dust now releasing itself as he slid it across the scratched wardrobe floor.
And then he saw it. There was an uneven board that hung in a concave slump having dipped under the pressure of the box. He moved his knees forward and crawled inside the closet, before retrieving a pen from his pocket and flicking the ballpoint up so that he could use it to prize the wobbly board free.
And it came up, pop! just like that—so that Joe could slide in even farther and reach down with his now gloved hand, and pull out a clear plastic bag and drag it out of the wardrobe and into the light to see that it contained a pair of small and narrow, plain black women’s shoes.
“You have to understand,” said James after reaching for the small water glass in front of him and taking a long, slow sip, “that I wish, more than anything, that I could explain that reference to the shoes.
“I have thought about it and thought about it,” he said, shaking his head, “to the point where the whole thing makes me sick. I realize I was drunk, and that all of this information about Jessica—who she was, and what she was like, what she thought and how she felt—was all pouring out of me at once.
“I am sure I told my friends that she had this thing about taking off her shoes near the water and dangling her feet in the pool, or the river, or the pond. She told me how she used to do that as a kid and how it made her feel free.” James paused there, a look of pure confusion on his face.
“But in all honesty,” he continued after a time, “as much as I would like to, as much as I know I need to,” he said, sparing a glance at the jury, “I cannot sit here and provide a 100 percent logical explanation as to why I would have told them about her shoes—or more to the point, that the killer took them, as some sickening keepsake after the fact.”
In that moment David felt a surge of admiration and fury all at the same time—admiration for his client’s honesty in the face of devastating consequences, and fury at H. Edgar Simpson for putting James in a situation where the truth looked more like a lie than the lie. There was no doubt in David’s mind that Simpson and Westinghouse had concocted the detail about the shoes. There is no way James could have known about them then, at least not at such an early stage, considering his contact with the police had been limited. But Simpson and Westinghouse had been questioned, and were no doubt being courted by a panicking ADA. And while David knew he could never prove it, he suspected a desperate Katz may well have shared some privileged information to his two star witnesses in order to guarantee their “confession” would stick.
“Okay, James,” he said, needing to take this step-by-step. “Let’s backtrack a little for a moment. When was the first time you were told of Jessica’s missing shoes?”
“After I was arrested,” he said. “I t
hink it was Lieutenant Mannix who mentioned them first.”
“And then I told you what your two friends had claimed?” added David.
“Yes.”
“And your first impression was . . . ?”
“That maybe they misconstrued my mention of Jess’s love for going barefoot, or that perhaps they heard it somewhere else first and then got confused as to how it came to their knowledge in the first place.”
“Objection!” yelled Katz, jumping to his feet with such force that James, who was still cupping his water glass in his “safe” left hand, spilled half its contents into his lap.
“If this young man is insinuating that the police informed either Mr. Simpson or Mr. Westinghouse about this confidential piece of evidence prior to their testimonies then I take most serious offense on their behalf,” he said.
“I don’t think he was referring to the police,” said David, simply because he could not resist.
And then the room took a universal breath, and a clenched-fisted Katz turned to face David, and Stein, clearly reading the building animosity between the two opposing counsel, lifted his arms in the shape of a “T” before calling for an immediate time-out.
“Enough,” said Stein, now signaling for the ADA to sit. “Mr. Matheson,” he said, turning to James. “I know you are an accomplished student of the law, and as such, understand that any unfounded speculation, no matter how unintentional on your part, can land you in some seriously deep water.”
“I can’t see the bottom as it is, Judge,” said James, a simple truth that disarmed Stein with its honesty.
And the judge nodded, a nod that soon turned into a shake, before focusing on David once again.
“Mr. Cavanaugh,” he began. “Mr. Katz’s objection is sustained. Your client must refrain from . . .” he started, before changing tack. “Just be careful how you word your questions,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” said David, before catching his breath and moving on.
Sawyer had found a spot in the second back row directly under one of the narrow open windows. He shivered, the icy breeze now catching the sweat on his narrow face and licking it with a cold that seemed to tingle his spine.
He took off the Red Sox cap he had worn “incognito,” realizing just how ridiculous he looked in a room full of hatless spectators. His small stature was a plus and a minus—a good thing considering there was no way the judge could spot him behind a row of taller people, and a bad thing considering he could barely make out the defense table at the far left-hand side of the room.
From what he could tell, David seemed to be doing a fine job, and James certainly looked as good as ever up there where everyone could see him. He was hoping to see Mannix or McKay hunkered down in the back as Sara said they had tended to do, but duty must have called, leaving them unable to offer support in their presence.
Well, at least I am here, he said to himself as David started asking James some questions about the Australian, Lawson Flinn. In case there is some last errand they need me to run.
The RA’s office was small and cluttered. Joe was crammed into a corner behind the wooden rectangular desk, the plastic bag still clasped tightly in his now sweating hand, the telephone making international connection beeps in his ear. The cop in him had finally kicked in. There was a minute as he stood in Sawyer’s room, holding up the bag for Frank to see, when both of them felt like a pair of useless idiots—too emotionally involved to even consider what they knew they had to do next.
“I don’t believe it,” Frank had said.
“Me neither,” Joe had replied, still staring at his partner. “But here they are,” he added, holding up the shoes, just as Johns came to the door, a look of complete shock on his puffy, ashen face.
“Dear God,” the dean had managed.
“I’ll be needing that phone now,” Joe had replied, subconsciously putting the bag behind his back.
“Lieutenant?” said the frail French-accented voice, now on the other end of the phone.
“Yes,” said Joe. “I’ll be honest with you up front, Miss Rousseau. I got a bit of a situation here, so I am going to have to ask you to get straight to the point.”
“Yes,” she said, but then failed to offer anything further.
“You got something you need to tell me, Miss Rousseau?”
“Yes,” she said again, this time without hesitation, as if any attempt to slow her down might see her backtrack for good. “I lied, Lieutenant. I lied about James.”
“What?” said Joe, who at this point gestured at Frank to come in to the tiny windowless office and shut the door behind him. “Miss Rousseau, I need to you be very clear about what you are about to tell me. I need you to explain exactly what you mean.” Joe looked up at Frank.
“I lied, Lieutenant.”
“About Matheson,” finished Joe.
“Yes.”
“Regarding your testimony as to your dealings with him on the night of Jessica Nagoshi’s death and the original statement you gave to the police some weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying you were with Mr. Matheson on the night in question, Miss Rousseau, that you did go home with him after the Lincoln and engage in sexual intercourse?”
“No,” she said, and even Frank jumped as he could hear her voice project clearly down the receiver from the other side of the room. “I did not sleep with James, Lieutenant. I wanted to but he was not interested. After he came back to the Lincoln, after his friends had left, I attempted to convince him again but he politely refused my advances.”
“So you didn’t lie,” said a now frustrated Joe. “You just failed to fully explain the degree of your persistence.” Joe could not believe it. The girl was so vain she had been worried about confessing the intensity of her come-on. Now she felt bad about not telling the whole story, and was holed up in Paris in a state of egotistical guilt.
“Miss Rousseau, forgive me, but to be honest we don’t really care how hard you may or may not have tried to get the defendant into bed with you.”
“No,” she said again. “That is not my point. You see, Lieutenant, this isn’t about my striking out with James, although I agree that does not happen to me often—in fact, it had never happened to me before and that was part of the problem. This is not about my dignity but my lie, about his alibi or lack thereof.
“I followed him home, Lieutenant, hoping I could change his mind. I knew he lived in his parents’ pool house, so I climbed over a back wall and I watched him enter his home and drink some water, and strip, and eventually fall asleep on his sofa.”
“You went to his house?”
“Yes. But I did not approach him. I intended to. It was my last night in Boston and I was determined not to end my stay in the United States with my first sexual rejection. I was offensé, Lieutenant—offended. My pride was hurt. You see?”
“Yeah, I get it,” said Joe, his eyes never leaving McKay’s. “Go on, Miss Rousseau.”
“I was a little drunk. I should not have been driving, but in the end I suppose the trip, the cold night air, they cooled me down inside and out. I had followed him intending to give him a night he would never forget, but in the end, I sat on one of those pool recliners and watched him sleep. Pathetic, yes?”
“How long did you stay, Miss Rousseau?” asked Joe, realizing timing was everything.
“I am not sure, but long enough to see the slightest trace of light in the sky—five-thirty, perhaps six a.m.”
“And you watched him this entire time?”
“Yes, in fact, it was hard to take my eyes off him. He was like a sleeping work of art. Of course if I had known he was dating Jessica I would never have done such a thing, and perhaps in a small way this stupidly gave me comfort as I realized his rejection was more to do with his love for her than his distaste for me. But, Lieutenant, I realize what I have done. What I said, and failed to say, was unforgivable. I went home to Paris and licked my wounds and even after I spoke to yo
u never dreamed that it would come to this.”
The girl took a breath and Mannix could hear the slightest trace of relief in the exhale—like she had got a weight off her shoulders by finally admitting the truth.
“James is innocent, Lieutenant,” she said after a beat. “He is not capable of doing what the newspapers describe. Mr. Katz has been extremely persistent and I feel ashamed of my failure to be honest with him. He will be very angry, and rightly so,” she said, and Joe could now hear the beginnings of tears in her voice. “You see, I have done a terrible thing by not speaking up for James earlier, and for that I am dreadfully sorry.”
“You have no idea how sorry I was,” said James, his voice still even, despite now having spent over ninety minutes on the stand. “Lawson was one of my best friends and I was the one who put him in that wheelchair. I know it was an accident, and I know Lawson doesn’t bear any ill will, but I still have to live with the fact that some stupid schoolboy fight left him, well . . . the way he is.”
“Perhaps you could tell us what happened after the accident, James—I mean, in regards to your friendship.”
“Well, he didn’t want to see me for a while, which I completely understood. And then it was time for me to move back to Boston, so I am afraid we kind of drifted apart.”
“And Lawson’s family, how did they feel toward you, James?” asked David.
“Well, they were extremely upset, understandably. And the hospital bills were pretty steep and the rehabilitation long and expensive.”
“And how did they manage to pay for it, James. Correct me if I am wrong but Lawson’s parents were farmers, is that right?”
“Yeah, they have a small cattle property in Gundagai and, considering the drought, found it tough to make ends meet. So my mother and I, we kind of pitched in.”
“You paid his hospital bills.”
“Yes.”
“And did Lawson ever know of this?”