“How close were you to each other?” Abramowitz asked.
“Ten to fifteen feet. No more.”
“And you looked at him? You got a good look at him?”
“He turned and looked right at me. He stared right at me for a good five seconds.”
“Were you at all afraid then?” Abramowitz asked.
“A little,” Violet admitted.
“But you stared back at him for at least five seconds.”
“Yes.”
“What were you thinking, looking at him?”
“His eyes looked like they were blank; devoid of feeling. So that scared me. He looked like he wasn’t feeling anything.”
“He had a frightening look?”
“Yes. Not like he was crazy, or out of control. More the opposite, that he operated without feeling.”
“Objection,” Wyatt had to speak up.
Involuntarily, she looked over at him. He turned away, looking at Judge Grant.
“Prosecutor is asking the witness to draw conclusions rather than state facts. Your Honor,” he said, explaining the objection.
“Sustained,” Grant agreed. “Let’s stick to verifiable and observed facts, please.”
Abramowitz nodded. “How much time elapsed between the time you went out to your car and saw the defendant, and the time that Paula Briggs went out to the parking lot?”
“Less than five minutes.”
“And how much more time passed before you and Peggy Knox realized Ms. Briggs hadn’t come back inside?”
“Between twenty and thirty minutes.”
“Where were you during that time?”
“On the dance floor. We both were. We dance with each other—the fast ones,” she added with some embarrassment. “We dance with men, too, of course, but we don’t go out looking to get picked up.”
“When you noticed she wasn’t there, what was your reaction?” Abramowitz asked her next.
“We were … I don’t know if worried is the right word. Concerned would be better.”
“Why were you concerned?”
“Because she wasn’t there, of course. I did flash on that kid … man … I had seen by my car.”
“The defendant.”
“Yes.”
“You thought he might have done something to her?”
“It wasn’t that rational. I just remembered him.”
“What did you do?”
“We went out to look for her.”
“Did you find her?”
“No.” Violet looked down. “We didn’t find her.”
The court recessed for fifteen minutes. When they came back, it was Wyatt’s turn. He wasn’t looking forward to it—he’d had butterflies in his stomach the entire break.
Violet looked pale. He wanted to protect her—but he had a client to defend.
He questioned her from the lectern—he wasn’t going to get any closer to her than he had to. “Ms. Waleska,” he started off. “You identified my client from a police lineup, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“They called you and told you they had a suspect and would you come down and see if you could identify him?”
She thought for a minute. “Not in so many words,” she answered, trying to recall the exact conversation she’d had with Detective Pulaski, “but that was the gist of it, yes.”
“Okay.” He glanced at his notes. “You had previously told the detective who interviewed you”—he looked at his notes again—“Detective Pulaski. You told him that the man you saw outside the club that night by your car was African American, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did the police present a lineup of black men?” he asked. “Only black men?”
“Yes,” she said, remembering. “There were three groups. He was in the third group.”
This was going nowhere. The lineup had been conducted legitimately. He changed tactics. “Let’s get back to the night you were at the club. You went out to your car right after the band took a break?”
“Yes. They were just leaving the stand.”
He shuffled through his notes until he found the one he wanted. “That was following their first set?”
“Yes.”
“According to the club’s performance schedule that would have been at nine-forty, give or take five minutes. Does that time sound right to you?”
“I wasn’t looking at my watch, but that sounds right.”
“So at approximately nine-forty you went out to your car and saw a man who you have identified as the defendant.”
“Yes.”
“You saw him for about how long, a minute? From the time you first spotted him by your car until the time he walked away and was out of your sight?”
She thought back. “That sounds about the right amount of time.”
“And of that minute, you saw his face clearly for about ten seconds?”
Thinking of the moment again, she said, “Yes. Maybe a little longer.”
“And then you saw him leave. He walked away, turned the corner, and was gone. He didn’t linger on the edge. He was out of sight, off the premises.”
“I saw him leave.”
“Completely.”
“Completely.”
“By the way, did you see any weapon in his hand? Like a knife?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have approached him if I’d seen him holding a knife.”
“After this man left, how long were you out there by your car?”
“Thirty seconds, tops. I opened my trunk, grabbed, a handful of Tampax, locked up, and went back inside.”
“So you got back inside around nine-forty-five.”
“I guess so.”
“You went to the ladies’ room, applied a Tampax? Did you freshen up? Fix your lipstick, wash your face?”
“I took two minutes,” she told him.
“You’re one in a million,” he said, the light bantering of a lawyer wanting the other side’s witness to be comfortable with him. “Continuing on our timetable. At about ten to ten you returned to your table, all freshened up, and Paula Briggs promptly got up and left. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“She left right away? It wasn’t five or ten minutes later?”
“No. As I was sitting down, she stood up.”
“Did you think to tell her about the man you had seen by your car?” he asked.
“After she left, I did.”
“How long after she left?”
“I don’t remember.”
“But you didn’t follow her out to warn her.”
“No.”
“Because you didn’t think there was any real danger there, did you?”
She looked down. Somehow her hands had come together in her lap, clinched tightly. “No,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t.” She looked up. “I’ve been tortured about that ever since.”
He stepped away to let some air blow that one away. That was a strong emotional hit against Marvin.
Continuing on: “So then the band came back on”—he checked his notes again—“at ten. And you and Ms. Knox danced several dances.”
“Yes.”
“Continuously. You didn’t take any breaks to go back to your table?”
“No. We stayed on the dance floor.”
“You didn’t glance over, see if she was there at all during that time?”
“No, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You couldn’t see our table from where we were dancing.”
“So it would have been about ten-ten or ten-fifteen before you noticed that Paula Briggs was missing?”
“Maybe longer.”
“But maybe less time?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It could have been a little less time.”
“You noticed she was missing and you went out to look for her, but you couldn’t find her. Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Why not, if you were concerned?”
She looked
away for a minute. When she looked back, she answered, “Because we weren’t that concerned.”
“You weren’t, were you,” he said, supplementing her statement. “That man you had seen out there by your car—you really weren’t worried about him, were you?”
“No.”
“What did you think had really happened to your friend, Paula, Ms. Waleska?” he asked. Before she could answer, he continued, “Wasn’t what you thought, you and Ms. Knox, was that Paula Briggs had met a man? Either inside, earlier in the evening, and she didn’t tell you, because she knew you would disapprove; or outside, when she went to catch some air. And that she had left with him. Isn’t that what you thought had happened?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s what we thought.” Her eyes started to tear up. She dabbed at them with a Kleenex. “We were angry with her. I admit it. Not that she’d stood us up, although that was part of it. The real reason we were angry was that she’d gone off with someone she didn’t know. But that’s how she was. She was impulsive. And she was lonely.” She bowed her head, the tears flowing freely. “And now she’s neither.”
ALREADY, AT 6:45, THE thermometer was well above 70, going up like a hot rocket. The humidity was brutal, too; you couldn’t dry your hair with a blowtorch; shirts and blouses stuck to clammy skin straight out of the shower. Half the fire hydrants in the city would be illegally open by midmorning—the kids who were stuck in the furnace of the streets, whose families couldn’t take them on vacation or send them to camp, would be dancing in the festive, heat-beating spray.
Even at this early hour the block around the courthouse was crowded with press, spectators, security. Today was the main attraction, what everyone had been waiting for—the state’s key witness was going to take the stand.
Wyatt slowly drove down the street and into the underground parking garage. He’d been up well past midnight, reviewing everything he knew about Thompson. He had the material down cold, backward, forward, and sideways. In and of themselves the informant’s story and presentation were rock solid.
Marvin was brought over from the jail at eight o’clock. The two sat in the small meeting room off the courtroom.
“You have to be on your toes for this,” he cautioned Marvin.
The defendant listened carefully. He’s done some growing up, Wyatt thought as they talked. Events like the ones that had happened over the past few months had to mature you in some way.
“You have to listen to everything Thompson says—without flinching, no matter how ugly or full of shit you think it is. And you’re going to have to be real alert, because I’m going to need your help.”
“I hear you, Mr. Matthews,” Marvin said solemnly.
They would have the grand jury testimony in front of them, and he would be taking notes as Thompson testified, checking it for discrepancies against the previously given testimony. “What I need from you, Marvin, is to try to remember what you told Dwayne, and more importantly, what you didn’t, in every instance. I’ll be writing down, as best I can, everything Dwayne professes to have been told by you, and you have to let me know whether or not Thompson’s telling the truth.”
Marvin nodded nervously, trying to take it all in.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Wyatt warned Marvin sternly. “If he says you told him something and you did, admit it—to me. Put a check mark next to the things you told him, and an X next to whatever you didn’t. You’ve got to pay attention. No daydreaming, no nodding off. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Wyatt left Marvin in the care of his deputy-keepers and went into the courtroom. Josephine, Walcott, Darryl, Marvin’s family, and Dexter were already in place in the first rows on the defense side of the aisle. Wyatt chatted briefly with his people, then went over and talked to Jonnie Rae. On the other side of the room, Abramowitz, Windsor, and their minions were huddled, heads together, going over last-minute details.
“How are you holding up?” Wyatt asked Jonnie Rae solicitously.
She shook her head. “Not too good. I lost my job ’cause of all the time I’ve been taking off.”
How much more was this poor woman going to have to endure? “We’ll take care of you until the trial’s over,” he assured her, “and then I’ll find you another job. A better one,”
Better was relative—she had no marketable skills. He’d talk to the firm’s office manager about putting her on their nighttime cleaning crew. It would mean her kids would be alone all night, but it was the best employment he could think of.
The courtroom doors were flung open and the spectators, those lucky enough to have entry, pressed in. Most were press—they took up two-thirds of the available seats. The rest were people who had specific reasons for being there, relatives and friends of the seven murder victims.
Violet wasn’t among the spectators. She’d told him she wouldn’t come while her brother was on the stand, but he looked to make sure. Better she wasn’t there, he decided. If she took only one percent of his attention, that would be too much.
Marvin was brought in under guard. He sat down at the defense table. Wyatt excused himself from his client’s mother and sat down next to him, patting him on the shoulder, one last buck-up. A moment later the jurors filed in and took their assigned seats. Most of them looked across the room at Marvin, as if checking to make sure he was still there.
“All rise!”
Judge Grant strode into the courtroom. He took his seat, asked everyone to take theirs, looked toward the prosecutors. “Call your next witness,” he instructed them.
“Call Dwayne Thompson,” the bailiff sang out.
Thompson was led in through a side door by a sheriff’s deputy. His albino blond hair had been freshly cut, short. It lay lightly on his skull, an inch of white neck showing above the slightly darker but still pale skin that was normally exposed. He was dressed like an off-duty cop would be—they bought his wardrobe at the store where they buy their own, Wyatt guessed: generic gray lightweight wool sports jacket, button-down white shirt, a red-and-green striped tie. Polyester-blend dark blue slacks, dark socks, black loafers. But if you looked carefully you could still see the signs of the sociopath, Wyatt thought—Thompson couldn’t hide the emptiness behind his eyes.
As Dwayne took the stand his eyes flickered rattlerlike over to where Marvin was sitting. Looking at his fellow inmate for a second, he flashed a light smile, as if to say, “Shit happens, man. Too bad for your sorry ass you had to get in my way.”
“Do you swear to tell the truth? The whole truth? And nothing but the truth?” the bailiff recited for the millionth time, pausing between each phrase.
Kabuki, Wyatt thought. Meaningless ritual. Truth to a man like Dwayne Thompson? A word, nothing more.
“So help you God?”
“I do,” Dwayne drawled. He eased down in the witness chair and made himself comfortable.
Abramowitz got up from the prosecution table and walked toward him. “Good morning, Mr. Thompson,” she greeted him impersonally. She was going to maintain her distance from him.
“Good morning,” he answered her. He could feel himself coming alive between the legs.
She knew exactly what was going on in his mind. She looked away from him, taking a moment to compose herself. “Before I begin questioning you about the events relating directly to this trial, I want to establish certain things for the jury about who you are—and who you are not. You are currently incarcerated in the state’s prison system, is that true?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am an inmate at Durban State Penitentiary.”
“How long have you been in custody there?”
“A little less than five years.”
“And how much more time do you have to do?”
“Three more years, assuming I meet the conditions of my sentencing.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I don’t get into trouble. Keep my nose clean. Which I’m doing.”
“What a
re you in prison for?”
“Second-degree murder.”
The jury gawked at him.
“Was that your first offense?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How many other times have you been convicted of a crime?” she asked, reading from her notes.
“Two others. But one was nonviolent.”
“I take it, then, that you’ve spent a considerable amount of your adult life in the prison system?”
“Over half of it.”
“While you’ve been locked up in prison,” came her next question, “has anything out of the ordinary happened to you? That you brought about? I’m not referring to prison-related activities, such as what you’re going to be doing here today. I mean on a more personal level.”
He nodded vigorously. “I got my college degree.”
“Really,” she said enthusiastically, as if she’d never heard of that until this very moment. “You got your college degree while you were in prison? Isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “About one-half of one percent of prison inmates have done it, nationwide. But the government’s cut off the grant, so there won’t be any more of us.”
“That’s a shame,” she threw away. In truth, the Pell Grant program, which was the program under which Dwayne had gotten his degree, was a waste of time and taxpayer money, in Helena Abramowitz’s staunch law-and-order opinion.
She kept her opinion to herself. “What is your degree in?” she asked.
“I have a bachelor of science degree from the University of Maryland. They run a worldwide extension university, mostly for the armed forces. I graduated cum laude,” he added.
“So people can change,” she commented. “Even people who have spent much of their lives in jail, for doing bad things.” She didn’t believe a word of that, of course; but she was going to do anything that could help ingratiate him with the jury.
Opening her file, she got to the matter of hand. “Would you tell the jury in your own words how Marvin White confessed to you that he committed seven rape-murders?”
The informant sat up straight in his chair, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and began talking.
“I’d been brought down to your local jail here to testify in another criminal matter. While I was waiting to give my testimony and be returned to Durban, I was assigned to work in the jail infirmary, because I had done that kind of work before and they were shorthanded. The defendant, Marvin White, was brought in with a shotgun wound. It was pretty nasty—he had to have his dressings changed several times a day, to prevent infection. It’s not the most fun part of the job, so the guy in charge of the infirmary assigned it to me.”
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