“Sustained,” the judge responded.
“Let me rephrase,” David suggested, without missing a beat. “Based on your knowledge of the defendant, when you overheard her say that there were ways of taking care of things, what options came to your mind?”
“I thought she would take it to the Board of Directors.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he could lose his job. There was a morals clause in his contract.”
“And to your knowledge, did she indeed take it to the Board of Directors?”
James Lilly shrugged. “No, not to my knowledge,” he said. “I guess the threat was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Well, enough to get him back in line,” James explained. “Because it wasn’t very long after that when Mr. Durant stopped talking about getting a divorce.”
David glanced over at Sundstrom and then turned back to the witness. “Mr. Lilly, as Richard Durant’s assistant, you were privy to most if not all of his business dealings, were you not?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“I mean, he didn’t often make a move without you arranging it, is that right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” James replied with obvious modesty, “but I know he did rely on me to pretty much take care of things for him.”
The defense attorney fixed the witness with a sharp glance. “At any time on the day of October 19th of last year,” he asked, “did Richard Durant inform you that he was coming home early from his last business trip?”
“No,” James said clearly. “He did not.”
***
“Did Mr. Durant always tell you when he was returning from a business trip?” Sundstrom asked on redirect.
“Well, he usually did, but apparently not always,” James had to concede.
“So, it’s entirely possible that he might have told his wife he was coming home a day early from his last trip, but didn’t think it was necessary to tell you?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s possible.”
“Thank you. Now, after Mr. Durant decided to stop pursuing a divorce, did he stop seeing Ms. Burdick?”
“No, James replied. “He went right on seeing her, same as always. It was kind of weird, actually.”
“What was weird?”
“The one thing not tracking with the other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the more he talked about his marriage being back on track, and everything being just fine at home, the more time he was spending with Ms. Burdick.”
***
Erin Hall’s responsibility in the Durant matter had been discharged. Once she completed the investigation, arrested the suspect, finished off the paperwork, and testified in court, her involvement was officially over. Yet she made a point of reading the newspaper accounts of the trial every morning, and listening to the television reports every evening. She couldn’t help it. There was still something about this case that didn’t add up, and she was still hoping she could figure out what it was. She wished the trial was being televised, as so many were these days, so she could hear every word for herself, but it wasn’t, and she had to rely on secondhand accounts. It was frustrating, it was distracting, and it was making her irritable.
“You haven’t had a vacation in ages,” Dusty said finally. “You need a break. Why don’t you take some time off, relax, go sit in a courtroom, work it out?”
“Are you sure?” Erin asked, perhaps a trifle too eagerly.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “It’s a fact you’re no good to me the way you are now.”
Fortunately, the captain agreed, and the next morning, Erin found herself being waived into the courtroom by a friendly bailiff and put in a seat ahead of dozens of others waiting in line.
***
With the aid of a cane, Emma Durant walked slowly into the courtroom and down the center aisle. She had suffered a stroke several months after Richard’s death, and lost control of much of her right side. The bailiff helped her onto the witness stand, and didn’t insist she put her hand on the bible to take the oath.
“Mrs. Durant, did you have occasion to talk to the defendant shortly before your son’s death?” Sundstrom began his examination.
“I did,” Emma replied.
“Why?”
“Because she’d been threatening Richard with all sorts of terrible things -- divorce, dismissal from Nicolaidis Industries -- if he didn’t break off his relationship with the woman he was seeing.”
“Stephanie Burdick?”
“Yes, I guess that’s who she meant, although I didn’t know anything about her at the time.”
“And your conversation consisted of?”
“I asked Clare to reconsider both. I said it wasn’t Richard’s fault if she couldn’t keep him interested at home, but it was Richard’s fault that her father’s nice little company had made her a multi-millionaire. And the one thing should have nothing to do with the other.”
“And her response?”
“She as good as told me to shut up,” Emma declared. “She said I didn’t know anything about anything, and I should mind my own business. But I did know -- Richard talked to me all the time. I knew exactly what was going on.”
***
“And when exactly did this conversation you had with your daughter-in-law take place, Mrs. Durant?” the defense attorney inquired on cross-examination.
“It was in October,” Emma said, “barely a week before my Richard was murdered.”
“You mean, two days after Clare returned from the hospital with a concussion and a spinal contusion, after having been run off the road, is that correct?”
“I guess so.”
“And during that conversation, did my client ever once tell you that she was going to murder your son if he didn’t break off his relationship with Stephanie Burdick?”
“No, of course not,” Emma had to admit. “If she had, I’d have done something about it, now wouldn’t I?”
David’s tone changed abruptly, from interrogative to sympathetic. “Well then, did she ever tell you, so you could be prepared, that she was going to murder your son for any other reason?” he asked softly.
“No,” Emma said, tearing up. “But, of course, she couldn’t have, now could she? Because, if she had, she wouldn’t now be able to hide behind this ridiculous claim of self-defense.”
David considered that for a moment. “No, she wouldn’t have,” he said finally.
***
In her seat in the second row of the gallery, Erin’s eyes narrowed. Being able to see and hear what was going on put a totally different slant on everything, and made all the difference. For example, there was something about that last question the attorney asked, something about the way he asked it, that the witness missed, but that sent a little shiver down the detective’s back.
***
“You believe Clare Durant planned to murder your son, Mrs. Durant?” Sundstrom asked on redirect.
“Yes.”
“You never liked your daughter-in-law?”
“On the contrary, I always loved her,” Emma said. “She was a wonderful wife and an excellent mother.”
“Then what changed your mind?”
“Clare changed my mind. She changed. After she fell off that mountain, she was never the same. It was like she didn’t trust anyone anymore, not even Richard. So he had a few other women on the side. So what? He was discreet about it. He didn’t rub her nose in it. A lot of wives go through that sort of thing. They learn to live with it, or they leave their husbands. Clare didn’t do either. And then, when Richard got serious about Stephanie Burdick, and Clare realized that threatening him with losing his job wasn’t going to keep him tied to her, and she was going to be unceremoniously dumped, she decided there was only one thing left for her to do.”
“Objection, Your Honor,” David declared. “There’s been no evidence presented here to back up this fantasy.”
“Sustained,
” the judge said mildly. “The jury will disregard the witness’s last statement.”
But of course, again, the jury had already heard it.
“I have nothing further,” Mark Sundstrom declared. And then he turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” he said, “the People rest.”
Eleven
David Johansen stood in the shower, the hot water pelting down on him, making no move to reach for either the shampoo or the soap. He knew he was as ready as he would ever be, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it, but there was always that possibility, when you held someone’s life in your hands, that your best wouldn’t be good enough.
His witnesses were solid, and it was clear he had the advantage. While he had been privy to all the evidence in the prosecution’s case, the prosecution had only his list of witnesses to go by -- not what they would testify to in court. The element of surprise was his. And in a case like this, that could mean everything. All he had to do was stay focused and stick to his plan and do his best not to blow it.
It wasn’t just that Clare was as good as a sister to him, or that he owed so much that could never be repaid to Gus, it was that he believed in his case -- in its truth and its justness -- with his whole being, and he would fight to win it with every ounce of his strength.
He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and reached for the shampoo.
***
It was the third day of the third week of trial. The courtroom was packed, and there was a nervous tension in the air. Everyone knew what evidence had been presented -- now they were waiting to hear how it would all be explained away.
There had, of course, been a great deal of speculation in the media, with everyone from legal pundits to the neighborhood gardener jumping in to provide his take or her spin. The Durants’ trusted caterer had already gotten rich providing juicy tidbits, having nothing at all to do with food, to the smear magazines.
“If she knew it was her husband,” everyone agreed, “then she can’t claim self-defense.” And the general consensus was that the prosecution had pretty much established that. So everybody waited to hear what evidence the defense could possibly produce that would change anyone’s mind.
***
“The defense calls Elaine Haskell to the stand,” David said.
Clare’s sister-in-law walked directly down the aisle, avoiding eye contact with her brother and her parents who were now allowed to sit in the courtroom. With her dark hair and flashing eyes, she, more than anyone else in the family, resembled Richard.
“How well do you know your sister-in-law?” David asked, once he had established her identity for the jury.
“I couldn’t know her any better or love her any more if we were blood relatives,” Elaine replied without hesitation.
“It’s been put forward by the prosecution that your brother thought his wife was having an affair,” David suggested. “Do you have an opinion about that?”
Elaine chuckled. “That’s nothing but poppycock,” she said. “Even if she’d wanted to, when would she have found the time? If she wasn’t at work, she was at home with the children. If she wasn’t at home with the children, she was out at some charitable meeting or event. Her life was an open book for anyone who wanted to look. If you ask me, that was nothing more than Richard trying to justify his own affairs.”
“How would you assess the marriage?”
“Clare was madly in love with Richard, right from the start. As far as she was concerned, he walked on water. Or maybe more to the point, she enabled him to walk on water.”
“And your brother?”
At that, Elaine shrugged. “My brother was madly in love with Nicolaidis Industries,” she told the jury.
“Did it come as a surprise to you to learn that your sister-in-law was seeking a divorce?”
“No, it didn’t, because she wasn’t doing anything of the kind,” Elaine declared. “Like the affair, that was another fabrication of Richard’s.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I asked her right out about it. She was very upset that Richard would even think she would do such a thing.”
“But she had to know about his numerous affairs, didn’t she?”
“Oh yes, she knew,” Elaine confirmed. “And it hurt her deeply. But she also knew he would never leave her for any of them.”
“Why was that?”
“Because leaving her could well have meant losing his position at Nicolaidis Industries,” Elaine explained, “and Richard would never have done that.”
“But how can you be so sure of that when that’s exactly what some witnesses here have testified he was going to do -- divorce his wife?” David wondered aloud.
“He could have talked to all the divorce attorneys in the world, and it wouldn’t have mattered,” Elaine asserted. “Look, I knew my brother. Apparently, I knew him better than anyone else in my family. If divorcing Clare meant giving up his position at Nicolaidis Industries, he just plain wouldn’t have done it.”
“Not even for Stephanie Burdick?”
“Well, I have to admit, that was the first one that stuck. The rest of them were pretty much here today and gone tomorrow. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think even she would have been enough to pry him out of the marriage.”
“Then how do you explain his telling Ms. Burdick, on the night he was killed, that he was going to marry her?”
“I can’t explain it,” Elaine said. “Except to say she was either deluding herself or Richard was deluding her, or maybe he had something else in mind.”
“What sort of something else?”
“I don’t know, maybe he thought there was another way he could get out of the marriage.”
David nodded slowly. “Thank you,” he said. “I have no more questions.”
***
“Mrs. Haskell, you didn’t live with Clare and Richard Durant in Laurelhurst, did you?” Mark Sundstrom asked on cross.
“No, I didn’t,” Elaine said.
“You live in Ravenna, some fifteen minutes away, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then how can you be so positive about how and where Clare Durant spent her time before her husband’s death?”
“Because we talked on the telephone almost every day, sometimes more than once,” Elaine explained. “We still do. We’re very close. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask Doreen. She did live with Clare. She still does.”
“You didn’t like your brother very much, did you?” Sundstrom tried.
“I loved my brother,” Elaine assured him. “But that doesn’t mean I was blind to his shortcomings.”
The prosecutor gave up. “Nothing further,” he said.
***
Henry Hartstone took the stand next.
“Clare may not have been part of the day-to-day operations of the company during Richard’s tenure, but she always knew exactly what was going on,” he said. “I know that for a fact because she’d been having me send her monthly reports for years. Of course, I can’t say whether Richard knew that or not.”
“Was she happy with the way Richard was running her father’s company?” David inquired..
“Perfectly happy,” Hartstone confirmed. “As she should have been. As everyone was. With all due respect to our new CEO, Richard will be very hard to replace. He had a brilliant mind for the business. Gus Nicolaidis knew it. That’s why he put him in charge.”
“What about the marriage?” David queried. “Was it a good one?”
“That’s not exactly my area of expertise,” the chief financial officer replied. “But I have no reason to think otherwise. As far as Clare was concerned, all I can say is it was obvious she was in very much in love with her husband. There was never any doubt about that.”
“But you won’t venture an opinion on whether her husband was very much in love with her?”
Hartstone shifted somewhat uncomfortably in the witness chair. “Let’s just
say that the opportunity to run Nicolaidis Industries was a powerful motivator.”
“Are you saying that Gus promised Durant the reins only if his daughter was part of the bargain?”
“There are worse reasons to marry,” Hartstone said.
“Well then, let me ask you this, sir -- what would have happened, professionally, that is, if the Durants had divorced?”
“I guess it would have depended on the divorce,” Hartstone said.
“What do you mean?”
“Specifically, it would have depended on who was seeking the divorce,” the witness clarified for the jury. “If Clare wanted the divorce, or if it were mutual, I expect Richard could have made his continuing employment a condition. However, if Richard wanted the divorce, I suspect it would have been something else entirely. And that’s what I told him?”
“Him? You mean Richard Durant?”
“Yes. About ten months or so before he died, Richard came to me with much the same question.”
“And what was it you told him?”
“I told him I couldn’t advise him in any legal manner, but that Gus’s wishes were clear.”
“And they were?”
“Contract or no contract, Richard stayed at Nicolaidis Industries at the pleasure of his wife.”
***
Erin made a beeline for police headquarters as soon as court adjourned for the day.
“What are you doing here?” Dusty asked.
“I just want to check on something,” she murmured.
“What something?” her partner wanted to know.
She looked at him for a long moment. “Something we may have missed,” she said finally.
***
“Defense calls Dr. Susan Bridges,” David announced, and a petite woman in her mid-forties with hazel eyes and short brown hair walked to the stand. “Dr. Bridges, will you please tell the jury what your specialty is and what your credentials are?”
“I’m a doctor of psychiatry,” the witness responded. “I earned my bachelor of science degree from Northwestern University and my medical degree from Stanford University. I’m currently in private practice here in Seattle, I’m associated with the Swedish Medical Center, and I also teach classes in trauma rehabilitation at the University of Washington. I’m a member of both the American Psychiatric Association and the Washington State Psychiatric Association, and I’m certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.”
In Self Defense Page 20