“…and nothing but the truth.”
“I do,” Norma said.
“You may be seated,” Judge Ballsack told her.
I turned toward the witness. “Good afternoon, Ms. Cross.”
She nodded curtly.
I said, “I want to make sure that the Court and I correctly understand your position today. Should the Court determine that the property grant at issue here is invalid because of the Rule Against Perpetuities—a determination that would trigger my client’s malpractice claim against your law firm—and should the Court then determine that your firm’s representation of my client constitutes malpractice, is it your position that Adam Fox himself was a victim of extortion by Mr. Sliman?”
“Absolutely.”
“In other words, you contend that Mr. Sliman was the proximate cause of any malpractice, correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“Stated simply, you blame Mr. Sliman, and not Mr. Fox, for my client’s predicament.”
“Absolutely.”
“And thus,” I said, “if your firm is held liable for the damages suffered by my client, you contend that your firm would have a claim against Mr. Sliman.”
“Absolutely.”
I glanced down at my notes. I’d covered all my topics. I looked up at Norma, who was glaring at me, and back down at my legal pad. Might as well have a little fun, I said to myself.
I looked up at Norma. “Finally, Ms. Cross, you’ve heard the expert witness testimony on the Rule Against Perpetuities, correct?”
“Yes.”
“In light of that testimony, can we all agree that you and your law firm did a terrible job representing my client?”
“Absolutely not!”
“I see. So is it your testimony that your law firm is perfectly fine with having its clients sign property settlements that are fatally defective?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Okay. Help me understand. Is it your testimony that clients of the Cross Law Firm should not expect their attorneys to have even the most basic knowledge of property law?”
“Absolutely not!”
I smiled. “Thank you, Ms. Cross.”
I turned to the judge. “Nothing further.”
As I returned to my seat, Ballsack looked over at Larry Blatz. “Any follow-up, Counsel?”
“Nope.”
Ballsack turned to Tom Sterling. “Questions for the witness?”
“None, Your Honor.”
By then, Myron Dathan was standing at the podium. “I do have a few questions of my own, Your Honor.”
Blatz jumped to his feet. “Whoa, Nellie! I most certainly object. Mr. Dathan is present today solely as Mr. Sliman’s lawyer. I remind Counsel and the Court that Mr. Sliman is not a party to this case. He is merely a fact witness, and he has already testified.”
“Your Honor,” Dathan said, “this woman has impugned my client’s integrity and besmirched his reputation. That bell, once rung, cannot be unrung. If I may borrow from the Bard, she who steals my client’s purse steals trash; but she who filches from my client his good name robs him of that which does not enrich her and makes my client poor indeed. Accordingly, I request the Court’s indulgence here.”
Leave it to Dathan, I told myself, to find inspiration in a line from Iago.
The judge nodded, lips pursued, as if he were actually contemplating the issue instead of pretending to do so, presumably having already discussed this topic with Irving Sliman during the lunch recess.
“You may proceed, Mr. Dathan,” Ballsack said.
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Dathan turned to Norma Cross. “So, Ms. Cross, my client is the bad guy, eh?”
Norma crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes.”
“And you, yourself, Ms. Cross? You claim innocence?”
“I most certainly do. I had no idea that your client was blackmailing my associate.”
Dathan smiled. “Ah, yes, and you also had no idea that your associate was sleeping with someone other than yourself, correct?”
Norma frowned as she parsed that sentence. She turned to the court reporter. “Could you read back the last question?”
The court reporter lifted the ribbon of paper, found her place, and cleared her throat. “Ah, yes,” she read in her court reporter monotone, “and you also had no idea that your associate was sleeping with someone other than yourself, correct?”
Norma turned back toward Dathan. “I had no idea,” she said slowly and deliberately, “that my associate was sleeping with Mrs. Knight.”
Dathan chuckled. “A good answer, Ms. Cross, but not to the question I asked. Madame Court Reporter, could you read my question to the witness one more time? And I would ask the Court to instruct the witness to answer my question.”
“Yes,” Judge Ballsack said, “listen to the question, Ms. Cross.”
And once again the court reporter read the question: “Ah, yes, and you also had no idea that your associate was sleeping with someone other than yourself, correct?”
“I can’t answer that question,” Norma said.
“Pray tell, why not?”
“It assumes a fact not in evidence.”
“And what fact is that?”
“That I was sleeping with Mr. Fox.”
Dathan chuckled. “Good point, Ms. Cross. We should not assume a fact not yet in evidence. So let us put that fact into evidence. Were you having sexual relations with Mr. Fox during the time he was representing Mrs. Knight?”
A pause. “I don’t recall the period during which Mr. Fox was representing Mrs. Knight.”
“Let’s make this easy. Did you ever have sex with Mr. Fox?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Objection!” Blatz shouted. “This attempted invasion of my client’s privacy is entirely unwarranted.”
Judge Ballsack frowned. “Mr. Dathan,” he said, shaking his head, “you appear to be going far afield here. How are you planning to connect this line of inquiry to any issue in the case?”
“I would ask the Court’s indulgence. I have only a few more questions for this witness. But before I proceed, I would respectfully request that the Court provide Ms. Cross with a summary of her Miranda rights.”
Ballsack lurched back in his chair, eyes wide. “What?”
“Please, Your Honor.” And here he paused, looked back toward Detective Aloni, and then turned back to the judge. “I believe we are about to move into a territory where such a recital is appropriate.”
Ballsack frowned. “Just a minute.”
He shuffled through some papers on his desk.
Jacki leaned in close to me and whispered, “That pin has most definitely been pulled.”
I nodded.
“Okay.” Ballsack was squinting at an index card in his hand. “Ms. Cross, the Court advises you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say can and may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present before and during—well, you already have one present. Never mind that. And if you cannot afford the services of an attorney—well, that one doesn’t apply either. There you go, Mr. Dathan. I have honored your bizarre request. Proceed, and hurry it up.”
Dathan nodded and turned back to Norma. “Ms. Cross, you were here earlier when my client, Mr. Sliman, testified, correct?”
Norma looked confused. She glanced over at Blatz and then back at Dathan.
“Ms. Cross?” Dathan said.
She frowned. “What?”
“I’ll repeat the question. You were here earlier when my client testified, correct?”
She paused, seemingly repeating the question in her head. “Yes, I was.”
“You heard him testify about the meeting he had with you at the St. Louis Club approximately three months after the
conclusion of the Knight divorce case, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find any of his testimony about that meeting inaccurate?”
She mulled that over. “Not that I recall.”
“He said you were visibly angry and upset when he told you about your associate’s sexual relations with Mrs. Knight, correct?”
“Absolutely. I was, and justifiable so.”
“Why is that?”
“I had learned that Mr. Fox had engaged in conduct that was in violation of the Code of Professional Responsibility.”
“And you were also upset to learn that your associate was cheating on you with another woman, correct?”
She leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “Certainly not.”
“That didn’t bother you? That he was cheating on you?”
“You are disgusting, Dathan. I’m not answering that question.”
Dathan chuckled. “I believe you just did, Ms. Cross. But let’s move ahead to the morning of his death. Just you and him on that hike in Castlewood State Park, correct?”
“Yes. It was one of the team-building exercises. Nothing unusual. I do several of those a year, each involving some form of vigorous and challenging activity.”
“But normally those exercises involve several members of your firm, correct?”
“Some do, some don’t.”
“But this time—just the two of you, correct?”
“So what?”
“You brought donuts and coffee that morning, correct?”
“I don’t recall.”
“You even told Mr. Fox in advance that you were bringing donuts and Starbucks coffee, correct?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Did you know that Mr. Fox sent his sister a text the night before that hike in which he told his sister that you told him that you were bringing donuts and Starbucks coffee?”
“How would I know what he texted his sister?”
“If you look into the courtroom gallery, Ms. Cross, you will see Shannon McCarthy. As you know, she is Mr. Fox’s sister. She has brought her smartphone to court today. At my request. She will testify, if necessary, that her brother sent her that text regarding the donuts and the Starbucks coffee. Does that refresh your recollection?”
Norma Cross was showing signs of unease. “No, it does not refresh my recollection. But if that’s what he told her I said, then I suppose that’s what I said.”
“Did you bring those donuts?”
“I think so.”
“And the Starbucks coffee?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Yes,” she said, a bit more defiantly. “Probably.”
“And what did you put in his coffee?”
“What did I put in his coffee? As I recall, he liked his coffee black.”
“That wasn’t my question, Ms. Cross. Listen carefully. What did you put in his coffee?”
“I just told you. He liked his coffee black.”
“So you did not put any cream in his cup?”
She snorted. “Of course not.”
“And you did not put any sugar in there?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Of course not.”
“And no artificial sweetener?”
“Of course not.”
“What about gamma-hydroxybutyric acid?”
Cross frowned. “What about what?”
“It’s a drug, Ms. Cross. Known more commonly by its initials: GHB.”
Cross stared at him.
Finally, Dathan said, “Well, Ms. Cross. Did you? Did you add some GHB to his coffee?”
Cross turned her gaze toward the empty jury box. “No.”
Dathan said, “You understand you are under oath, Ms. Cross. Did you add some GHB to his coffee?”
Still staring at the jury box, she said, “No.”
“And when you and Mr. Fox reached the top of those bluffs, and after the drug had taken effect and made him drowsy and off-balance, did you shove him off that cliff to his death?”
“No.”
“So you deny you killed him?”
She turned back to Dathan. “Yes, I deny it.”
“So be it.” Dathan shook his sadly. “We have your answers, and they are all under oath. Nothing further, Your Honor.”
After a clearly shaken Norma Cross returned to counsel’s table, Dathan announced, “We have one final witness, Your Honor, a witness whose testimony is now essential to this case and to the cause of justice. We call to the stand Dr. Muriel Gilberg.”
The woman in the navy pantsuit stood and stepped forward. She was carrying a folder. As she passed by, I could make out three words on the folder label: FOX AUTOPSY REPORT.
“Please state your name, Doctor.”
“Murial Gilberg.”
“What is your occupation?
“I am a professor of clinical pathology at the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri.”
Section 6
Man begins in dust and ends in dust—
meanwhile, it’s good to drink some vodka.
—Yiddish proverb
Chapter Forty-four
It was a Wednesday night about a month after the two trials ended. The four of us were seated around my kitchen table—Benny, my mother, Abe Rosen, and me.
Abe was there at Benny’s special request.
“What am I?” Benny had demanded last week. “Chopped liver? You’re dating a nice Jewish boy—better yet, according to your mother, a Jewish doctor—and I still haven’t had a chance to vet him? It’s time I meet this dude.”
So I set up a potluck dinner for us. I made the salad and the sides. My mother baked her chocolate babka. Abe brought the drinks—a bottle of Malbec, a bottle of Chardonnay, and a six-pack of beer. Benny insisted on bringing the entrée, which consisted of two large bags of barbecue takeout from Sugarfire: ribs (four slabs), pulled pork, smoked brisket, and a half-dozen spiced pork sausages that Benny claimed were so celestial that they would have caused Rabbi Akiva to create a special exemption in the laws of kashrut.
Benny’s vetting seemed to be going well. Sam had been awake when the three of them arrived. While I was upstairs putting Sam to bed, my mother went into the kitchen on some pretext, leaving Benny and Abe alone. When I came back downstairs, Benny was laughing over something Abe had said.
And on our way into the kitchen, Benny had pulled me aside. “That boy’s a keeper.”
Over dinner I’d filled them in on the latest, and increasingly curious, developments in Marsha Knight’s Rule Against Perpetuities battle. The last witness in the case had been Dathan’s pathologist, Dr. Muriel Gilberg. Her presence confirmed what I had suspected, namely, that the other person who’d obtained a copy of the Adam Fox autopsy report—the person Detective Aloni declined to identify to me—was Irving Sliman. Dr. Gilberg’s opinion confirmed what my pal Izzy Feigelman had already concluded: that Adam Fox had imbibed an abnormally large quantity of GBH the morning he died.
The trial ended after Dr. Gilberg’s testimony. Judge Ballsack took a one-hour recess, and when he returned he issued his rulings from the bench. Specifically, he (1) invalidated the property bequest to Marsha Knight, thus restoring ownership of that apartment complex to Jerry Knight’s widow, Danielle, (2) entered judgment in Marsha Knight’s favor on her malpractice claim against the Cross Law Firm, and (3) awarded her $5.2 million in damages.
Although those three rulings did find their way into Duncan O’Malley’s front page article in the next morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they were buried in a paragraph after the jump on page sixteen. As with the opening paragraphs of the story, the headline focused on a different aspect of the lawsuit’s conclusion:
BIZARRE ENDING TO POST-DIVORCE LAWSUIT:
Pro
minent Divorce Lawyer Implicated
in Death of Alleged Boyfriend; Taken
Into Custody for Questioning
Norma had been questioned for several hours, but she’d been released later that evening without any charge.
Yet.
According to Detective Aloni, quoted in the follow-up story, “the investigation is ongoing.” Norma Cross has since retained one of our town’s top criminal defense lawyers, who told Channel 5 News that his client “was as innocent as the freshly fallen snow.” I’m told he said that with a straight face.
Nevertheless, I’ve been around long enough to know the challenges a prosecutor will face if and when Norma gets indicted. Real life is not an episode of Law & Order. Proving homicide with just circumstantial evidence would be a challenge, especially if the investigators are unable to link Norma to the purchase of the GBH detected in the post-mortem blood of Adam Fox. Nevertheless, there are rumors of ongoing plea bargaining negotiations.
Meanwhile, Myron Dathan, presumably hoping to fend off any disciplinary charges against his client over the extortion allegations and to deter any lawsuit by the Cross Law Firm, launched his own public relations offensive, describing Irving Sliman as “a true white knight” who, at great personal risk, “sought to shine the bright light of justice on the sordid circumstances surrounding the tragic death of an innocent young man.”
As for me, my responses to Duncan O’Malley’s requests for quotes have been consistent: in all three of his articles, the following sentence appears: “Ms. Knight’s trial attorney, Rachel Gold, declined to comment.”
“How is Marsha doing?” Abe asked.
“She’s doing okay,” I said. “Ironically, an award of money is a better result for her than having to deal with all the managerial issues surrounding that property.”
“But will she get paid?” my mother asked.
“The judgment is against the Cross Law Firm,” I said. “They have three million in malpractice insurance. The carrier has agreed to pay the full amount of the policy. They’d rather be done with the case now instead of incurring the additional expense and risk of an appeal. We should have that check next week.”
The Dead Hand Page 19