by Jeanne Winer
The next day, I asked Donald to meet with me at noon. Donald was an excellent investigator, but so physically unappealing that none of the lawyers in the office used him unless they had to. As far as anyone knew, Donald lived in a battered VW van, which he parked behind our office. He was somewhere between thirty-five and sixty, with dark ferret eyes, a bad complexion and long greasy hair. His belly strained ominously against the one shirt he always seemed to wear, which was always stained with whatever food he’d eaten in the last month. Worse, he smoked Marlboros nonstop and reeked like an overflowing ashtray.
In a town like Boulder, where everyone jogged, meditated and made their own granola, it was hard to believe a guy like Donald would be successful, but almost everyone he tried to interview was willing to talk to him. They let him into their homes and answered his questions not, as you might think, because they felt sorry for him, but because he made them feel better about themselves; no matter how bad off they were, here was a loser in much worse shape. I imagined potential witnesses thinking, What harm could there be if I talk to someone like him?
At exactly noon, Donald clumped into my office without knocking and sat down on one of the two client chairs that faced my desk. Without looking up from my reports, I asked him to put out his cigarette.
“I’m not smoking.”
I looked up. He wasn’t. He just smelled like he was.
“Oh,” I said.
I gave him a copy of the police reports and quickly filled him in on what I knew, then handed him a sheet of paper. “Here’s a preliminary list of witnesses I’d like you to start interviewing today.”
“This the lady that killed the ex-cop?”
“Her husband was an ex-cop?” Shit. Emily hadn’t bothered to tell me. “How did you know?” But Donald always knew things the rest of us didn’t.
“A guy I know from Greeley told me. The vic used to be a cop up there about ten years ago, got shot in the leg and had to go on disability. I’m sure the police down here know all about it by now.”
“That’s a bad fact,” I said.
“It ain’t good,” he agreed. “Accident or self-defense?”
“Self-defense.”
Donald nodded. We talked strategy for another thirty minutes, and then he stood up to go. “When you see her,” he said, “ask if she’s ever gone to the doctor or a hospital. Maybe we can get some records to show he’s hurt her in the past.”
“I will.”
“In the meantime,” he said, “I’ll nose around, see if anyone in the neighborhood has ever seen her with any bruises.”
“Great. I’ll get the names and addresses of all her friends, relatives and acquaintances. Let’s meet again on Friday.”
“Okay,” he said. There was a huge red smear across the front of his shirt. Normally, I refrained from commenting on his appearance, but this time I couldn’t help it.
“That’s not blood, is it?”
Donald had no sense of humor. He looked down at his shirt and considered the stain. “Unlikely. Probably ketchup.”
***
The next time I saw Emily Watkins, she had a black eye.
“What happened?” I asked as a female guard was escorting us into another tiny interview room.
The guard grinned and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Last night, this one here got in between Alicia and one of the other inmates. The first one who ever stood up to Alicia. If it wasn’t for her, that other lady would have been hurting pretty bad before we could have stopped it.”
After the guard left, I examined Emily’s eye and said, “So now you’re Superwoman?”
Emily smiled at me. “Is there only room for one in this relationship?” She had pulled her thick blond hair into a youthful ponytail. Barbie goes to jail and gets a black eye.
I sighed audibly. “Yes, but not because I’m selfish. You’re in jail facing first-degree murder charges. I need you to keep a low profile and keep yourself safe.”
“No one’s safe.”
“Okay, you’re right, but I’d prefer you don’t get a reputation as a fighter. If we’re going to rely on self-defense, I want the jury to believe you’d never fought back before, that you were too afraid.”
Emily’s face grew serious. “That’s absolutely true. But now that I’ve done it, I’m not afraid to do it again. Now, I wish I’d resisted Hal from the very beginning. He either would have killed me right away or he would have respected me.”
“Which do you think?” I asked, pulling out my legal pad.
“Oh, he would have killed me. He used to be a sheriff in Weld County. Did you know that?”
“I found out yesterday.”
Emily nodded. “Hal was eleven years older than me. He started working for the sheriff’s department right after graduating from college. It was his boyhood dream. When I met him, he’d been a sheriff for fifteen years and still loved it. He was tall and lean and incredibly self-confident. We’d been married for only six months when a teenage boy shot him in the knee. He had to go on disability and that’s when he started drinking.”
“I see.” While I wrote down what she’d told me, I asked, “Did he ever hit you before that?”
She hesitated. “Just once, when I asked if he’d like to have children. For some reason, that upset him. Later, after crying and apologizing, he said he wanted it to be just the two of us. I never brought it up again. It was one thing to risk my own safety, but I would have never risked anyone else’s.” She rubbed her injured eye. “Oh dear, now I have a headache. And I’m feeling so ashamed. Not about Alicia, but about my relationship with Hal. I think I might need to go lie down. Could you possibly come back later?”
“There’s a lot more questions I need to ask you.”
“I miss him,” she confessed. “I’m sorry I killed him. I don’t wish we were still married—oh, yes I do—I just wish we were happily married.”
“Makes perfect sense.”
She shook her head. “I just want to plead guilty and get this over with.” She closed her eyes then and sat very still. She was gone for only a minute or two, but her absence was palpable; clearly she’d been practicing this for a long time. The art of vanishing. I watched and waited. According to the police reports, she was thirty-six, only a year older than me, but the skin on her face was prematurely lined and drawn, living proof that a decade of being battered by your loved one isn’t good for your complexion. Eventually, she opened her eyes.
“Hey, you promised not to give up,” I reminded her.
“Did I?” She sighed, sat up a little straighter. “Besides Frost and Eliot, I’ve always loved Emily Dickinson’s poetry. I was named after her, you know. She was such a brave young woman. Very tender, but saw things clearly. She had a weak constitution and died young. I think I must be like her.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head. “I don’t think so. You’re a fighter. You told me, you’re Superwoman.”
She laughed, which made her look ten years younger. “Why does that appeal to us?”
“That’s easy. Nobody likes to feel helpless. It’s a sickening feeling.”
“You want to know what’s worse?” she asked.
“What?”
“When you get used to it.”
***
The preliminary hearing was set for the end of November. During the five and a half weeks leading up to the hearing, I probably visited Emily about ten times. If I had to go to the jail to see another client, I’d drop by the women’s section and visit Emily as well. Each time I gleaned a little more information, but after a while, I mostly came to keep her company.
Each week I checked her inmate sheet. No one else ever visited her. We talked poetry, politics, theories about battered women, co-dependency and addiction. One day, I described rock climbing (my other passion besides saving people) and promised to take her up an easy pitch after we won her case.
From those hours we spent together, I learned a few surprising things. Despite never finishing college, my
client was fluent in both French and German, she knew how to ride a unicycle, and the only time she’d ever cried was at her mother’s funeral. And though I revealed some personal information too—that I wished I were closer to my mother, that I was ethnically Jewish but thought all religions were irrational—I never told her the most important thing: that my partner was a woman and that we’d been together for eight and a half years. I knew it wouldn’t matter to her, but keeping it to myself was a way of maintaining the attorney-client relationship with someone I was already beginning to care too much about.
A preliminary hearing is just that, a hearing to determine preliminarily whether there’s probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and that the defendant committed it. A few days before Emily’s hearing, Jeff Taylor, the prosecutor, called me.
“What do you need on this one, Rachel?” he asked. Jeff had been a prosecutor in the Boulder County District Attorney’s office for as long as I’d been a public defender, almost twelve years. We’d actually gone to law school together and even went out a few times during our first year when I was still dating men. We had a good working relationship and generally trusted each other.
“I need you to dismiss it,” I said.
“Right,” he laughed. “It’s fine if you need to do the prelim. I understand. Let me know when you want to talk. This case could be a little sticky, though, because the victim was an ex-cop. His buddies have been calling every week. They want me to hang tough.”
“He was an abusive bastard,” I said.
“Can you prove it?”
I hesitated. So far, Donald had located a few hospital records that established Emily had sought medical attention for a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder and a torn ligament in her knee. These were significant injuries, but she’d always lied about how they happened. None of the neighbors were helpful. Hal’s mother wouldn’t rat on her son (she’d seen a number of bruises on her daughter-in-law, but claimed not to know where they’d come from), and none of Emily’s acquaintances had suspected a thing. My client’s best friend had moved to New York about eight years earlier and had visited only twice. For years, she’d wondered if Hal was an abuser, but Emily would never confirm it.
“There wasn’t a scratch on her when she was arrested,” Jeff reminded me.
“So what?” I said, a shoo-in for Miss Bravado of 1985. “It doesn’t mean she wasn’t acting in self-defense.”
“You’re a great lawyer, Rachel, but I don’t think even you can pull this one off. Anyway, you know I’ll eventually offer second-degree murder. Maybe we’ll find a number she can live with.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s the best I can do. See you on Wednesday.”
I stared out the window at a bluebird roosting in the branches of a naked tree. The wind was blowing steadily, ruffling his short feathers. He looked cold, but resolute. The rest of his clan had long since headed south. I tapped hard on the windowpane and wondered for a moment if he’d frozen to death, but then saw his head move slightly in my direction.
“Hey,” I shouted, “it’s almost winter, you idiot. Get the hell out of here.”
On Wednesday, I let Donald sit with Emily and me at the preliminary hearing. At trial, however, I would try to hide him in the audience. Donald didn’t clean up well, even when he tried. The last time he’d testified at a trial for me, he’d worn a pair of brand-new polyester pants that were at least two sizes too small, the same shirt he always wore, and a brown wrinkled tie with hula girls on it.
At two o’clock, Jeff was calling his last witness, the lead detective on the case. By two thirty, Judge Thomas would find probable cause and bind the case over for trial on first-degree murder. After quizzing the detective about Emily’s statements to the police, Jeff looked up from his notes and addressed the court.
“Your Honor, I’d like to ask the detective a few questions about a search of the defendant’s house that was conducted early this morning. The defense hasn’t been given notice of this because I just found out about it myself.”
Judge Thomas said, “Ms. Stein, do you object?”
I thought for a moment. “No, Your Honor.” Since the case would be bound over regardless, there was no reason not to learn as much as possible.
“Detective Moorehouse,” Jeff began, “could you tell the court what you found at the defendant’s home early this morning?”
The detective turned to the judge. “We found some papers in the back of a kitchen drawer. One of them pertained to an insurance policy on the deceased’s life.”
Oh-oh, I thought, here comes a little surprise. God, I hate surprises.
“How much money was the deceased insured for?” Jeff continued.
The detective spoke in a careful monotone. “The deceased was insured for a quarter of a million dollars.”
“And who was the beneficiary on the policy?”
“The defendant.”
“Detective Moorehouse, were you able to determine who had taken out the policy on the deceased’s life?”
I heard Emily make a small distressed mewing sound.
“Yes,” the detective answered, “we called the insurance company. They informed us the defendant had taken out the policy three weeks before her husband died.”
“That ain’t good,” Donald muttered.
“No, it ain’t,” I agreed.
We both looked at Emily.
“You probably won’t believe this,” she whispered. “I mean I can hardly believe it myself, but until now it never occurred to me it was even relevant. That’s pretty naïve, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say,” Donald muttered.
I gave Donald a dirty look and then turned to Emily. “It’s okay, I believe you, but in order for us to help you, you have to start thinking—”
“I understand,” she interrupted. “If I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison, I have to start thinking like a criminal.”
Donald and I considered this and then nodded. “Exactly,” we said.
Chapter Two
Judge Thomas cleared his throat and everyone in the courtroom immediately stopped talking. “Thank you,” he said. “The court will start by calling People versus Watkins, 85CR1260.”
I grabbed my file and walked to the podium, signaling Emily to join me. She was seated in the jury box where the prisoners always sat except during jury trials. She was dressed in the usual Boulder County jail uniform: loose cotton navy blue pants and matching pullover blouse. On Emily, somehow it looked more like an outfit than a uniform.
The district attorney stood up from his table and said, “Good morning, Your Honor, Jeff Taylor for the people.”
“Good morning, Mr. Taylor. And Ms. Stein, how nice to see you so early in the morning.”
I grimaced. “God, I hate these early morning court appearances.”
Judge Thomas smiled at me. He was a thin, distinguished looking man with graying hair who looked exactly like what he was: a district court judge. “And yet you were on time. I’m impressed.”
“It was an accident, judge. I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Well I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Stein.”
“Thank you, Judge. For the record, Rachel Stein appearing on behalf of Emily Watkins, who is now standing next to me at the podium.”
“Your Honor,” Jeff said, “the case comes on for arraignment. This court heard the evidence at a preliminary hearing in November and bound the case over on the original charge of first-degree murder.”
“I remember,” the judge said. “Is the defendant ready to be arraigned?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “The defendant pleads not guilty and asks that her case be set for a jury trial sometime in late April or early May.”
“Very well,” Judge Thomas said, and then leaned over to confer with his court clerk. “All right, a jury trial will be set for the week of May second. Both sides have thirty days to file any pretrial motions. I’ll set a motions he
aring for March twenty-sixth. I assume you’ll need the entire day. Is there anything else?”
“Nothing from the defendant.”
“Nothing from the people,” Jeff echoed. “Thank you.”
I walked Emily back to the jury box. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow or the next day,” I told her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I just wish I were here under different circumstances. It’s actually quite interesting. If this was a field trip, I’d love it.”
A heavyset guard, whose face was pitted with scars, approached us. “Emily,” he said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to take you downstairs and get someone else that I forgot to bring up.”
Emily smiled graciously. “Of course.” She put her hands out in front of her so that he could refasten her handcuffs.
“Does everyone at the jail know your name?” I asked. The county jail was a busy place where hundreds of inmates came and went every week.
“Larry’s niece is one of the women I’ve started teaching to read,” Emily explained. “She’s in here for stealing her mother’s Vicodin. Listen, try some hot milk with honey and a dash of nutmeg. It’s always worked for me.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“For your sleep,” she added.
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
I watched her being escorted out of the courtroom. She was doing remarkably well for a middle-class housewife suddenly living among sociopaths, drug addicts and prostitutes. Too well. A jail is one of the strangest, most artificial, almost surreal environments you can imagine. Actually, you can’t unless you’ve been there. Reading about it is like reading about cancer—until you or someone very close to you has been diagnosed, you can’t truly comprehend it. And yet my shy, bright, poetry-loving client had quickly adapted to it. I felt my stomach lurch. Emily, I thought, stop worrying about your lawyer’s insomnia and wake up. Denial is an excellent short-term coping mechanism, but this is a coma. Don’t get used to it.