Bennett delegated his associate, Bob Burdette, to commence the proceedings as an opening act. This was the first time that the younger assistant district attorney had opened his mouth during the trial, and the jurors were surprised to hear the strength of his argument. A little thick in the hips, he nonetheless darted about the room with style, stopping behind Lilla Paulus’ chair to accuse, “Here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, here is our Brownie leader widder lady who totes a pistol in her handbag.… You’re finally going to be able to consider the fact that she also owns whorehouses in Galveston, that she went on runs to pick up bookmaking money, that she brought up her own daughter to be a prostitute. For two weeks these facts were kept away from you. Now, only now, do you know them. The jury box is on the same side of the courtroom as the witness stand, and there is a reason for that. The reason is so that you can look intently and closely at the witnesses and determine for yourselves who is telling the truth and who is lying.”
Then it was DeGeurin’s turn. He had not slept much the night before either, sitting for a long while in a steaming tub, sipping an iced tea glass of fine whiskey, entertaining a modest degree of paranoia. He felt that the entire experience was unfair to both him and his client. He had not counted them up, but his snap impression was that the judge had overruled at least eighty per cent of his motions. During Marcia McKittrick’s days in court, he had even discovered the prostitute rather happily sitting in Judge Price’s private office, munching a fried chicken box lunch that the bench had provided. Where were the ethics of a judge buying lunch for the state’s star witness? DeGeurin asked himself. He still harbored the idea of filing a complaint about that, alleging further that the judge was advising Marcia what to do. And then there was Mary Wood. Lilla had sworn to him that the girl was lying, that she had dreamed up psychotic fantasies as revenge for her defeat in the matter of her grandmother’s estate. Whatever, the inequity of her appearance for the state was as devastating as a grenade lobbed into his bath. Jerry Carpenter paraded back and forth across his consciousness during the long soak. The lawyer had never believed the detective’s version of how Marcia had suddenly abdicated her previous position of silence to so rapidly make confession. The way he saw it, Carpenter squeezed the little whore until her eyeballs rattled, shoving out a paper of confession with one hand, figuratively holding a syringe of heroin in the other. He would light up the detective’s “diligence” with 1,000-watt bulbs in his summation.
Now, as DeGeurin stood and nodded good morning at the jurors, he elected to speak with softness to turn away the prosecution’s wrath. DeGeurin was eminently capable of slapping the table and playing the organ of his voice with all stops pulled. But he sensed that this had to be an interlude of quiet logic, of low-key persuasion.
“I know I’ll be able to sleep at night,” he began, “for I have done the best I can. If in representing Mrs. Paulus I have been overzealous, I do not apologize for that. If, in attempting to get the facts to you, I have offended Mr. Bennett, I do not apologize for that.”
He had ordered a giant, bulletin-board-sized blowup of Ash Robinson’s telephone records made, and he dwelt for ten tedious minutes on the matter of the briefly unlisted private telephone number. It seemed crucially important to him that this number was installed after the murder of Dr. John Hill, and not before, as the prosecution had suggested.
Then he moved to the people of the tragedy. “The prosecution has asked you to vote a conviction, in effect, on a dispute between this woman and her daughter. Mary Jo Paulus Wood is a girl who hates her mother so much that she would bring lies before you—and that’s what they are, lies.” Marcia McKittrick? “I feel frankly sorry for her. I don’t think she has much future. I don’t think she can live with herself after what she did. When she first had the opportunity to implicate Lilla Paulus and Ash Robinson, she wouldn’t do it. Then she was offered immunity—she was offered freedom—if she would say what Jerry Carpenter wanted her to say.” Heavy scorn now came to his voice. “Marcia McKittrick was almost comatose when Jerry Carpenter got through with her.”
He sought to wreck Joan Jaworski Worrell. “Oh, by the way, why did she use her maiden name when she was sworn in? How many of you women jurors still use your maiden names? Why didn’t she use some of her other married names—Moncrief? O’Connor? … It took some work, but we finally found out that Joan Worrell lied. They keep records at the Fairmont Hotel, thank God! They prove what Joan Worrell said was just a hoked-up lie. Hoked up in the hopes that you would believe it.” This was boldness; he was accusing one of the most prominent names in Houston—and daughter of one of the nation’s most celebrated lawyers—of perjuring herself.
He gestured at the folder containing the color pictures of John Hill murdered. “They’re terrible!” he agreed, his voice rising for the first time. “Awful! But you can look at these until the moon drops out of the sky and you won’t see a clue to connect Lilla Paulus with this terrible death.…
“With every ounce of energy I have left in me, I beg you not to be blinded by the prejudicial testimony. I beg you to judge this case on the evidence. Please give Mrs. Paulus that chance. You are her only chance. You are the only thing standing between her—and Mr. Bennett and Mr. Carpenter. If you have that doubt, that reasonable doubt that you must have, then that doubt belongs to Lilla Paulus. Even though it is in your mind, it is her property. The law gives her that doubt. She is entitled to that doubt. For God’s sake, don’t surrender that. She is not guilty of this offense.”
Bob Bennett saw no need for calm. He wanted a storm to rise and build and rage until it shook the walls of the jury deliberation room.
“The only issue at trial here,” he began, “and has been from Time One, is whether Lilla Paulus aided and abetted the murder of John Hill. And this is murder particularly foul, when you shoot a man until he is dead, and then go back and collect money from a defendant like this.” He thrust out his arm in condemnation of Lilla Paulus.
“On September 24, 1972, John Hill ended his life as a very brave man. He ended his life by saving Connie’s. Like any life, there was good and bad in John Hill’s, but he ended his life with courage!” Quickly Bennett looked out at the widow and the mother of the dead man. Both were crying softly. It did his case no harm to turn a kind phrase in memory of the victim. It was time someone in this town did.
The prosecutor ceremoniously picked up one of the bullets and the revolver he had introduced as evidence. “This was fired through the barrel of this gun because Ash Robinson wanted it done, and because Lilla Paulus wanted it done for profit. The contest here has not been over the death or, in essence, the motive. The contest here has been whether Lilla Paulus knew Ash Robinson, and whether Lilla Paulus knew what Marcia McKittrick and her life style were all about.…” He paused, realizing it was time to defend Marcia against DeGeurin’s denigration. “If there was one iota of difference in what Marcia’s statement was—and in what she testified before you—don’t you think Mr. DeGeurin would have jammed this in your face a thousand times?” This was a worth-while comment. The defense attorney had not attempted to soil Marcia’s account of the crime—not a line of it—only the manner in which she was arrested and gave confession.
As long as he was propping up people, there was Jerry Carpenter to defend. “And you bet Jerry Carpenter’s vigorous! You bet he stayed on this case. So did Joe Gamino. And aren’t you glad! Would you have wanted them to quit—sometime late on the night of September 24, 1972? If you hold his diligence against Jerry Carpenter, then hold that against every honest cop on the force.” The prosecutor’s eyes swept the jury hurriedly. Were there any faces before him which stared back with hostility for police? He could not tell, but the worry still nagged him. Perhaps he should have left the detectives out of his summation altogether.
Bennett did not dwell at length on the evidence that he had submitted. He well knew that the four slips of paper were not, to use the phrase that had suddenly become voguish in the wake of Watergate
, “a smoking gun.” But he did reduce the issue of the private telephone number to basics. “The significance of this is that it ‘tends to connect’ Lilla Paulus with Ash Robinson. It was found in her purse on April 25, 1973. There’s no question and no dispute that it was private, unlisted, and found in Lilla’s purse. Lilla had it because she wanted to get in touch with Ash Robinson. She had it because they were designing the annihilation of John Hill.”
Bennett bobbed and weaved as he talked, bringing to mind a welterweight boxer. He spoke extemporaneously, and his thoughts tended to become jumbled, clauses tangling hopelessly, but there was no misunderstanding the depth of his convictions. He moved quickly to the subject of Mary Wood, noting that his hour was almost done. He agreed that her testimony was shocking, perhaps incredible. “But you take her testimony … in the light of everything that has happened to her … and you read those hospital records … and you see how her main problem quote seems to be her mother end quote … and in the light of all that, her testimony does become credible. And it does lend you some assistance, I hope, in deciding upon … what kind of person it really is who participates in the killing for money of someone else.”
He returned to the phrase that had so delighted him the moment it slipped out of Lilla’s mouth in the witness box. “Well, I wouldn’t be able to recognize Marcia McKittrick as a prostitute,” he paraphrased, mimicking Lilla’s tiny, tremulous, old woman’s voice, “her life is a little bit different from mine.”
Bennett nodded. For a moment he seemed to endorse the quotation. Then he roared with scorn: “It really was different, ladies and gentlemen! It was worse than Marcia McKittrick’s! Oh, there were some similarities. They each had a history of criminal conduct. They each were married or living with law violators. They neither one of them were strangers to violence. And both were involved with prostitution.… But the similarities ended there, and Lilla’s got worse. She’s the one who profited off of the proceeds of people like Marcia, and from ‘turning her daughter out.’”
DeGeurin jumped up and broke into his opponent’s summation. “Objection, your honor. There’s absolutely no evidence of that. It’s a complete falsehood and I object to it.”
Judge Price overruled the complaint. “The jury heard the evidence,” he said tersely.
Bennett nodded in gratitude. “Yes, they did hear the evidence. And the evidence is there. There’s no falsehood about it.… And I tell you something else that’s different from Marcia McKittrick’s life style and hers. Marcia McKittrick has at least shown some signs of reform. One of the last questions asked of her was, ‘Well, why are you testifying?’ And she answered, ‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’ There’s no sign of reform in this defendant.”
The weary prosecutor searched back through what he had said. Was there any point of business left unattended? This was his last shot, the dying moments in the forum where he could seek not only conviction but a purge for his system. His attention lodged against the father: the man who wasn’t there. “Oh yes,” he cried, his face more vengeful than his own wife, sitting in a back row of the courtroom, had ever seen him. For a moment she was alarmed.
“Where’s the guy who’s most important, and who could have been called as a witness?” Bennett’s tone made it clear that the lack was not his fault. “Who is missing most in this case thus far? If there was someone who could refute the allegations made against his friend, Lilla, it is Ash Robinson.…
“The coffin picture! Remember that? Does that show you what Ash Robinson thought and how his mind works? Cutting the picture of John Hill out in the shape of a coffin and giving it to her for identification purposes so that the killers … would be able to recognize the victim. Ash said, I guess to himself, ‘I will not leave it to the law to decide John Hill’s fate.’ So he and Lilla Paulus together played some supreme being. They decided, ‘Ye shall live, but John Hill, ye shall die.’
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is what is very wrong in this case. There will always be murders of passion, and there will always be people who may go crazy and berserk and shoot other people … but you, as members of the government, must take a stand and cry, ‘There cannot be people who are playing God and decreeing when an individual must die.’ When that happens, people like Lilla Paulus cannot make their profit off it.…”
The prosecutor interrupted himself. He noticed the pile of murder photographs turned face down on his table. Snatching them up, they gave him his final shot of fuel. “And Mr. DeGeurin says these are ‘not material.’ Mr. DeGeurin says these are ‘prejudicial.’ Mr. DeGeurin says, of me, ‘Mr. Bennett just put those in there so the jury would get mad at Lilla Paulus.’ Well, if that’s what effect these pictures have, then fine! Is it not material when a woman participates in annihilating another human being, with these as the result?”
Bennett fanned out the pictures, as if performing a macabre card trick, in one hand. “Look at these,” he implored, “and see what Lilla Paulus did! And she couldn’t even do it with her own hand. She had to hire some depraved ski mask bandit …”
With an abrupt softness, he then asked that the jurors convict Lilla Paulus for hiring the death of John Hill. And, with a silent thought sent to Bobby Vandiver, wherever he was, in small apology for his choice of adjectives, Bob Bennett sat down exhausted.
Less than five hours later, at 7:35 P.M., just when Judge Price had been dealt a sufficiently promising hand to bid a grand slam in bridge, his bailiff interrupted the game in his chambers to announce that a verdict had been reached.
The judge reached for his robes. The courtroom was almost deserted. Snail trails of suspense and worry were marked across the faces of the opposing lawyers. The amount of time spent by the jury in deliberation was puzzling. Had they returned within an hour or less, then Bennett would have felt confident of conviction. Conversely, they had not remained out long enough to stir a fire of hope within DeGeurin. When a jury stays behind locked doors until the hours outside become almost unbearable for those waiting, then tradition holds that the panel is confused, contentious with one another, apt to report back hopelessly split, or so anxious to break out of their sequestration—it was, after all, Friday night—that their votes go to the defendant in contradiction of their feelings.
“Would you rise, please?” instructed Judge Price in a voice of kindness.
Lilla Paulus obeyed promptly. She commanded her body to an erect position of dignity. Her lawyer gestured a hand of help, but she shook it off. In her was contained the strength to confront this moment. She had even put on fresh lipstick, and against her drained face, pale and white and empty of emotion for the public to see, it was as vivid as a river of blood on the full moon.
The judge opened the folded slip of paper that had been delivered to him by the foreman, a newly widowed man in his middle forties who was the superintendent of a factory.
He read the words once, hurriedly, then shut the paper and leveled his gaze at the old woman standing before him: “We the jury find the defendant guilty of the offense charged.”
She was sentenced to thirty-five years in the state penitentiary with the anticipation that, given the condition of her health, she would perish there.
Within the hour, Ash Robinson heard the news. He received the verdict in a telephone call from a well-placed source at the courthouse. The old man had cultivated alert ears for more than six years. It was his belief that very little took place in the DA’s office that he did not quickly come to know about.
Then the doorbell rang. Ash looked through the peephole. A friend had come to dissect the day’s surprising events. The old man was pleased to talk to someone, and he found a half cup of thick coffee left from the dinner pot. The two men settled into chairs and sipped. Clippings were scattered about Ash as if he were a Father Christmas whose stuffing had come out.
“Well,” asked Ash, “I wonder what it all means?”
The friend shrugged; he had no answer.
“I suppose that bastard Bennett
will keep tryin’ to get something on me,” Ash went on. His tic jerked his face violently, and he threw his hand to his chest, perhaps to gain reassurance from the beating of his rusted heart. He chuckled ruefully. “You know, it could be that Lilla and them made up this story to blackmail me,” he suggested. “Man makes a little money in his life, and he’s lucky if there’s enough left to bury him once the vultures eat their fill.”
Oh, he knew Lilla all right. He would own up to it, even if she would not. For a few rambling moments he wandered erratically through their association, and during his journey he became a man who walked to the very brink of confession. But he did not plunge into its purifying waters. “All I ever did—so help me!—was ask Lilla to find things out on John Hill,” he wanted his friend to know. At the time, three or four years ago, there had been critical need of malicious information concerning his ex-son-in-law to use as defense against the ingrate’s $10-million slander suit. “Lilla told me she could find out everything about John Hill,” reminisced the old man. “I offered to pay her all right, but she told me, ‘Mr. Robinson, I loved your daughter. Joan was so good to my own child, Mary Jo. Joan put Mary on her first horse. Mr. Robinson, I wouldn’t take a nickel off of you. I just want you to get justice.’”
The friend looked at his watch. It was past ten. He knew that the old man traditionally went to bed early. Already Ma was asleep on a couch in the den. The drone of the television was her sedative. But Ash did not want to be left alone with the terrors of this night. He found a sliver of cheesecake and insisted that his friend stay and talk some more. Ash eased his heavy body back down into his chair and put his feet on the throw rug below. On it was woven the faded, almost invisible portrait of a pale horse. Threadbare, soon it would wear away to nothing.
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