Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  But that was bullshit, a lame excuse. There was a major reason none of these doctors had ever gotten serious about her. She had a past—a man in her life, a sick, violent bastard who thought he owned her. He had been part of her life forever, and she had never been able to shake him. An upwardly mobile doctor doesn’t bring a woman with that kind of man in her background home to mother, even if she is smart, pretty, and charming, and has excellent manners and a master’s in clinical/surgical nursing.

  Many years earlier she’d had her one big romance. A resident, a surgeon, of course, a nice man, quiet, very shy, even a little dull—an atypical surgeon—but sweet, and he cared for her like she’d hung the moon.

  Despite all her efforts to keep that part of her life a secret, the man from her past found out about her relationship with the sweet doctor. He stalked them for weeks, without them ever knowing it. Then he made his move. Out of sheer evil and possessive sickness he waited outside her apartment building one evening while her shy doctor lover kissed her good night and came outside, heading for his car. She lived in a decent, quiet neighborhood; her lover had no reason to expect trouble.

  The first blows hit the doctor like a pallet of bricks falling off a roof. The sick bastard had jumped him—blindsiding him—and for ten minutes solid he proceeded to beat the poor man, who’d never raised a hand in anger, within an inch of his life.

  “You’re fucking Violet? I’ll fuck you up, shithead, I’ll fuck you up so you’ll never fuck anyone again.” Fists raining down, long after her lover had collapsed into unconsciousness in a flood-pool of his own blood.

  The damage had been extensive. Recovery was slow—it took months. The doctor’s hands had been broken so badly, especially his thumbs (the son of a bitch knew exactly where to cause the greatest damage), that he couldn’t use them in his work, and had to quit practicing surgery. He moved all the way across the country, as far away from her as possible, and became a teacher of doctors. And from that same night, when she’d gone rushing into his intensive-care room, out of her mind with fear and grief, and had been told in a firm voice by the nurse on duty that he’d given instructions that she was not to see him, she had never laid eyes on or heard from him again.

  Not once.

  More than a decade later she still thought about him sometimes; mostly when she was lonely, but occasionally out of the blue, for no conscious reason.

  She would have made him a great wife.

  That was life.

  The word about her spread like an out-of-control brushfire. For months afterward, people passing her in the hospital’s corridors would look at her the way you look at a train wreck. No one blamed her—not to her face, anyway—and her lover’s assailant went to prison. But that was it for the possibility of snagging one of the hospital’s doctors for a husband.

  She never saw the attacker again, except to testify against him at his trial. The few letters he sent her from prison, early into his sentence, she threw unopened into the trash, and she obtained a permanent restraining order against him.

  After a while he figured it out and stopped writing. She hadn’t heard from him in years. If she never heard from him for the rest of her life, she’d be happy.

  But she’d had to give up nursing. The burden was too much to carry. All those years of studying at night, the giving up of having fun to stay in and hit the books, because she was going to rise above her station—gone.

  She went to trade school and learned how to be a butcher. The work was bone-tiringly hard in the huge slaughterhouse where she’d been employed the last seven years, but it paid well. It was a union job, she made over twenty dollars an hour, plus good health benefits and a pension plan. A single woman needed to plan for her medical and retirement.

  Now and again she dated men she met at parties, at church, social functions. Nothing serious came of any of these encounters; the men weren’t up to the standards she’d worked so hard to set.

  She never dated men from work. The image of the smell from the floor, on them and her both, had no romance to it. And besides, she had a college degree.

  Wyatt poured himself some more Scotch. A generous amount this time. He freshened up Violet’s drink, too.

  “The man who attacked your doctor … friend—that was Dwayne Thompson.”

  She nodded her head.

  “Dwayne Thompson had been your lover, before you and the doctor met up,” Wyatt continued. “Dwayne couldn’t stand the thought of losing you to another man. So he made sure he didn’t.” He felt sick to his stomach as he thought of the ramifications of such a vile action; even worse was knowing that she had been romantically involved, regardless of the circumstances, with Thompson.

  She looked up at him. “Not my lover,” she said. She drank down her glass, poured herself another, drank it. Then she started crying: loud, gut-wrenching sobs.

  If I’m being set up, he thought, it’s a masterpiece. Setting his drink down, he went around the table and put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

  She rose up and fell against him, wrapping her arms tight against him, pressing her body against his, head to toe. She was shaking, her fingers digging into his back, holding on as hard as she could. He could feel her tears on his neck.

  He shouldn’t be holding her. He shouldn’t be here at all. He could get thrown off the case, disbarred, his career ruined, his marriage as well.

  He held her tight to him, his hand on the back of her head, caressing the still-damp hair.

  They stood there like that for minutes, until she stopped shaking. Then she looked up at him, her eyes raw.

  “Not my lover,” she said again. She buried her head in his chest. “My brother.”

  They talked for hours. About everything, no pattern, no order. Who they were, where they had come from. He talked mostly about his work. She talked about her work, her friends, the things she liked to do. It was all easy and comfortable, as if they’d known each other for a long time.

  The conversation (as it had to) got around to the upcoming trial. “I have no ax to grind,” she said, “except I want to see whoever killed Paula and the others put away forever.”

  “Why are you so sure Marvin is the killer?” he asked, feeling anxious. They had built up a reservoir of good feelings, and he didn’t want to burst the bubble. But he had to know.

  “I never said he was. They asked me to come down and see if the man I’d seen in the parking lot that night was in their lineup. And he was.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He wasn’t about to contradict her—Marvin had already told him he’d been in the parking lot and had been accosted by a white woman. She was the woman, that was certain. “What can you tell me about Dwayne?” he asked her, moving the conversation toward his primary target.

  “He’s evil.” She shuddered. “He always was, since I can remember. No one in our family could ever understand how he was that way. It was genetic, right from conception. Like he came from somewhere else and got dropped in on us.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “To the marrow. Dwayne never told the truth if there was a lie he could think of, even when telling the truth would have been easier for him. He’s a liar, a user. He’s hateful. Pure hate.”

  “Could he be …” He wanted to say “making this up,” but that wasn’t the fit he was after. He couldn’t have made his story up; he had the facts.

  “If someone fed him the information he’d run with it,” she said, anticipating his line of thinking. She paused. “Do you think someone did?”

  “I don’t have any other explanation.”

  “Unless your client really is the killer, and really did tell Dwayne. Isn’t that a possibility?”

  That was the state’s entire case, so of course it was. “It’s a possibility,” he said, “but I don’t believe that’s what happened.” He could tell her about his belief regarding Marvin’s inability to retain all those specific facts, years after they h
ad occurred, but there was no reason to. She wasn’t the jury.

  He was at a dead end here.

  He excused himself and went into her bedroom to call the hospital. He couldn’t come tonight, he had to work late, interviewing a witness. He’d stop by in the morning.

  Michaela was fine with that. Her father was in pursuit of justice. Moira could care less about justice. All she knew was that her husband wasn’t going to be with her again tonight, that she was stuck in this crummy hospital room with no relief. She had major cabin fever: she was sick of the hospital food, sick of take-out Chinese and pizza. She’d call Cissy. Cissy could come by and take her out for a few hours.

  It was painful to listen to her, even though he knew her complaints were legitimate. In a few days Michaela would be discharged and they could go home, be a semblance of a family again—her description.

  If Moira knew what was really going on, she wouldn’t be thinking of them in family terms, even lousy ones. She’d be hiring her own lawyer, or blowing his brains out with a new gun.

  He disengaged from the call as rapidly as was judicious; he didn’t want to hear it. The guilt of lying and deceit was too painful. He wanted to hear about this other woman, Violet Waleska.

  “You changed your name,” he said to Violet, coming back and sitting next to her.

  “Waleska was my mother’s maiden name. I changed it during Dwayne’s trial. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. I especially didn’t want to have the same name.”

  “If you didn’t want to have anything to do with him, why did you go see him now, after all these years?” This was the question that had been nagging at him: why had she gone?

  “Because I couldn’t believe it was him. After you let slip his name that time I came to your office I called the district attorney’s office. They confirmed it. I almost had a heart attack; but I was drawn to go down there, I had no choice. I know that sounds stupid, even crazy, but I don’t have any other explanation. Why does the moth fly to the flame, when he knows it will kill him?” She leaned toward him. “How do you think I feel? That the person I hate the most in this world turned out to be the same person who was going to be the one to convict my best friend’s murderer. It was too surreal. I had to see him in the flesh to know it was true.”

  He sat back, looking up at the ceiling.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said.

  “Would you? A man you hate so much you changed your name so you wouldn’t have any connection with him? Who you completely lost touch with over the years, by your choice? Who almost killed the only man you say you ever loved?”

  “I can’t help what it sounds like,” she answered. “It’s true.”

  “And it was,” he said. “The same man.”

  Bitterly: “Yes. You don’t know how horrible I feel about that. You have no idea.”

  He got up and paced around the room. “You’re a hell of a woman,” he told her, “but I have to think this could be a setup, even an unintentional one. Let’s face it, I’m out on a limb here the way we’ve been with each other. This has gone way past professional propriety.”

  She nodded in understanding. “If I was setting you up why would I admit that Dwayne was my brother? No one knows that, I’ve taken great care to make sure of that. The District Attorney’s office certainly doesn’t know it,” she said emphatically. “Look, Wyatt …”—it was the first time she had called him by his first name—“I would never have told you this stuff if I wanted to mess things up.”

  If that was true—and he believed her, he realized that he did believe her, because he truly believed her or because he wanted to, it didn’t matter—Pagano would shit his pants. And where did this information put him? He was defending Marvin White, whom she was going to be testifying against.

  “You can’t say that with certainty,” he responded to her declaration. “You don’t know me. I’m the lawyer for the man accused of raping and murdering your friend. I’m going to have to cross-examine you, and that’s going to be a bitch now—for both of us.”

  A colossal understatement. That she was the sister of the state’s star witness, which by every canon of his profession he should divulge, was a major ethical and professional dilemma.

  She took a goodly amount of time to answer. When she spoke, the words came slowly, gravely. “You held me when I needed to be held. You helped me say something I’ve been holding in, that I needed to get out.” The tears were coming once more, silently this time.

  They were on the couch. He took her in his arms again. She pressed herself against him and he held her tight, comforting her, knowing it was all passion behind this, that it wasn’t about helping someone through a crisis. Passion—how a man wants a woman, how she wants him, how this passion is insane, dangerous, destructive, ruinous. Inevitable, unstoppable, impossible.

  “I will never hurt you,” she said, looking up at him and reading his thoughts. “I will never betray you. No one will ever know of this. I’d kill myself first.”

  “There’s been enough killing already,” he said, “so don’t talk like that.”

  “I know. You’re right. But I mean what I say about protecting you.”

  He wanted to believe her. He knew she was telling the truth, as it felt in her heart, this moment. But things could change, and somewhere down the line she might have to hurt him, even betray him. As he might her. Although he didn’t want to, and would try as hard as he could not to.

  That was in the future, and the future was unknown.

  Their lovemaking went on for a long, long time. While they were in it, it felt like it was going to go on forever, and if it did, that would be all right. Everything—her touch, her taste, her smell, the way she felt when he entered her—it was right. All of it.

  He showered and put his clothes back on. It was two-thirty in the morning. She watched him, sitting on the edge of her bed, naked. He stood over her, buttoning his shirt, tucking it into his pants. “We can’t do this again. At least not until everything’s over.”

  She nodded. She understood. She would want to—she would want to the moment he left—but she understood. And she had this. They had each other, for this.

  “We can’t be seen together.”

  “I know.”

  “You know I’m married.” He didn’t wear a ring, but he knew that she knew.

  “I know that, too. Let’s not talk about that. That’s for later. Everything else is for later.”

  They said good night at her front door. “Thank you,” she said.

  “And you.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  One final kiss, and he was gone.

  He didn’t remember the drive back to the hotel. He was in his room, lying in bed, looking at the clock, when it hit him. What had he done? My God, what had he done?

  She would never hurt him. She would never betray him. He knew that she meant that to the depths of her heart. But he was defending the man who was accused of murdering her best friend. How would she feel when she saw him in the courtroom with that man, standing shoulder to shoulder?

  By all rights, he should bust her. Tomorrow morning he should tell Judge Grant that the state’s two most important witnesses were brother and sister. The judge, after recovering from the shock of this incredible news, would declare a mistrial. Most likely the DA’s office would be censured as well, even though they hadn’t known. In the short run that wouldn’t matter, because they should have.

  But in the long run, what difference would the information make? Worst case scenario, Violet wouldn’t be allowed to testify—they’d drop her from their witness list. It would be a hit against them, but one they could survive. They would still have Dwayne, and Dwayne was their case.

  Wyatt had another reason for why he wasn’t going to discredit Violet, a much bigger and more personal one. A mistrial—that was a given—would push this case back at least a year. And when that happened it wouldn’t be his case any longer. H
e’d be long gone, and there would be issues with the ethical side of it even if he did somehow figure a way to stick around that long.

  He knew the argument—he was jeopardizing his client’s defense. Well, maybe he was; it didn’t matter. He couldn’t give this case up. He had too much invested in it, on all sorts of levels.

  Someone else would be trying his case. And after all that had gone down, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

  THEY BROUGHT MICHAELA HOME, stretched out on the backseat so that her leg could be propped up. School would be out in a week, and she couldn’t wait to go for that one week. She would be on crutches and she wouldn’t be up to the work but she was out of the hospital, finally, on the road to recovery.

  Moira was down on him. It was his fault she had shot Michaela—she was blunt about that. Bringing gangbangers into their home, street hoods, crack dealers—who wouldn’t have armed themselves, having to live with that? The fact that the instigation of it all was the falsity of the robbery next door, and what had really happened—that didn’t matter to her in the least. She was adamant that she would have bought the gun even if nothing had happened next door.

  He didn’t argue with her. He slept in the guest room. Neither of them said anything; it was an unspoken feeling that they wouldn’t sleep together, occupy the same intimate space. That he had been with another woman the night before was a reason, but not the important one. The connective tissue between them had been ruptured before that.

  He would keep their relationship at arm’s length, which was the only way he could deal with it. He was about to go to trial for a man’s life. Their problems would have to wait. When it was all over they would go into therapy and see if it—they—could be fixed. More and more, he was beginning to doubt that it could, and at the moment he didn’t know if he cared, one way or the other.

  “WE CAN’T HAVE ANYTHING to do with each other anymore. Sheriff Lowenthal chewed me out but good. I thought he might suspend me.” Blake started shaking as she recounted the incident, still scared about it.