Proof of Intent

by William J. Coughlin

“Alright. Back on the stand, Mr. Dane.”

  He walked up and sat down, then the jury filed in.

  “Mr. Sloan, please continue with your examination of the witness.”

  I have, on occasion, felt at a loss in a court of law. But never has my mind been so entirely blank, so empty of stratagems or plans or theories or lines of attack, as it was at that moment. I stood and waited for the master plan to come flooding into my brain.

  It didn’t. Not a flood, a trickle, not even a drop.

  “Mr. Sloan?” Judge Evola said.

  The silence seemed to go on and on. It might have only been a few seconds, but it seemed interminable.

  “Mr. Sloan?”

  I turned to my witness. “Okay, Miles. Let me wrap this up. Did you lie to Detective Denkerberg about what happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the real story just seemed so implausible.”

  “So did you kill your wife?”

  “I loved her so much. More than anything in my life.” He looked down, and was silent for a while. Finally, he began to cry.

  “Miles,” I said softly. “Did you kill her?”

  He shook his head, the tears streaming down his face. “No. No, never.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “And will you tell me who that person is?”

  He shook his head, wipes his eyes. “I’m sorry, no. I have my reasons, but I just can’t say.”

  “You’re covering for someone, aren’t you? And you have been since the beginning.”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “That’s why you told the ridiculous story you told to Detective Denkerberg, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t answer that,” he said again.

  “That’s why you lied.”

  “I just can’t . . .” His voice broke off and he looked out the window of the courtroom. A long time seemed to pass. The room was completely silent.

  “Your Honor,” I said finally. “Mr. Dane and I seem to have gone about as far together as we can go.”

  Mark Evola turned to Stash. “Mr. Olesky?”

  The prosecuting attorney didn’t even stand up. “I believe we’ve all heard enough lies from this man. I’ll refrain from compounding the problem.”

  “Please return to counsel table, Mr. Dane,” the judge said. Miles wiped his eyes then, walked slowly back to the table, where he sat with a pacific, resolved expression on his face, a martyr calmly heading off to the face the lions.

  “Next witness, Mr. Sloan.”

  I stood again, on the theory that altitude might put some ideas in my brain. I had no witnesses, no strategy, nothing left to do. Unless . . . I looked at my watch. It was barely eleven o’clock.

  “Your Honor,” I said. “It’s practically lunchtime.” It was, of course, no such thing. “My next witness will require extensive examination. If I may, I’d request we adjourn until lunch.”

  Evola didn’t even blink. “It’s not even eleven o’clock. Call your next witness or be ready to close.”

  I had, of course, no more witnesses. Other than Blair Dane, that is, and there was no sign of him. Evola had studied my witness list and knew this as well as I did. I needed to stall—but how?

  There was only one possibility.

  “One moment, Your Honor.” I took out the witness list, ticked off everybody who had testified. There was nobody left on mine but Blair Dane. And only one name left on Stash’s list.

  I looked up and scanned the room. There he was, right on the front row.

  “Your Honor, if I may, I’d like to call a witness from Mr. Olesky’s list.”

  Evola raised his eyebrows questioningly at Stash.

  Stash drummed his fingers for a moment, thinking. “Your Honor, I’m not sure I approve of that,” he said finally.

  “I’m entitled to call anybody who’s on the list,” I said. “My list or yours.”

  The judge took out his casebook and thumbed through it for a while. Finally, he looked up, and said, “Counsel’s right, Mr. Olesky. Call your witness.”

  “Defense calls Roger van Blaricum.”

  Fifty-eight

  I saw the look of surprise on van Blaricum’s face. He frowned, then stood and walked stiffly to the witness box. I had forgetten how tall he was, six-three at least, but with somewhat stooped shoulders. He was dressed in tweeds, double-vented, double-breasted—an English squire dressed for the provinces. His white hair floated above his face like a cloud.

  After he was sworn in I began by asking a long, drawn-out series of questions about his background, his hobbies, and his education. Maybe the jury didn’t find it interesting, but I was quite fascinated to know that he had received a doctoral degree in Japanese literature from Cambridge, and that he was fluent in three Asian languages, and that he had studied some obscure Japanese martial art at a shrine outside Tokyo, that he collected Japanese art, and that he had never actually held a salaried job in his entire life. I had asked just about everything I could think of about his background, and it was still barely eleven-thirty.

  “Mr. van Blaricum,” I said. “In 1968, your sister got pregnant, did she not?”

  Stash Olesky stood. “Objection. We’ve been treated to a rather impressive display of irrelevancies here, and I’d ask Your Honor to draw this to a close.”

  As it happened, this was the first relevant question I’d asked. “Your Honor,” I said, “the relevance of this question will be made crystal clear in the fullness of time. It goes, in fact, to the very heart of Mr. Dane’s defense.”

  “It better,” the judge said. “Continue.”

  I repeated the question.

  Van Blaricum gazed vaguely into the distance. “I don’t believe I recall that, no.”

  I blinked, went back to my table, pulled out Blair Dane’s birth certificate. “Does this refresh your memory, Mr. van Blaricum? The birth certificate of Unnamed Child van Blaricum, daughter of Diana van Blaricum?”

  Roger Van Blaricum fussed with a pair of reading glasses, making a long show of studying the document. “I was in Cambridge at that point.”

  “I thought you got your Ph.D. in 1967.”

  He cleared his throat. When he spoke his voice had gone defensive. “Well, I was in and out of the country. Maybe I was in Japan. It’s possible she did, yes, get pregnant at that point.”

  I looked disbelieving. “Your sister not only got pregnant, but gave birth and gave up her child to the state of New York . . . and you can’t even say whether you were aware of it or not?”

  Van Blaricum cleared his throat. “Alright, yes. It was an embarrassment to our family, and I, well, it’s still a bit painful to speak about it.”

  “Embarrassment does not abrogate the oath you just swore, Mr. van Blaricum,” I said.

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  “Good. Isn’t it true, Mr. van Blaricum, that you and your mother applied a great deal of pressure on your sister to have an abortion?”

  Van Blaricum’s gaze was cool. “No.”

  “Isn’t it true that you and your mother threatened to disown your sister, to cut her off from her trust fund if she kept the child?”

  Van Blaricum cleared his throat again. “It was a typical family spat. Things get said in the heat of the moment. I can’t imagine that anything quite so strong would have been said.”

  “Oh no? Isn’t it true that you and your sister haven’t spoken in over thirty years?”

  “No.”

  “Oh?” My voice went frosty. “Mr. van Blaricum, when was the last time you spoke to your sister?”

  Van Blaricum thought about it for a long moment. “About a week before she died, I suppose.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Miles had said they hadn’t talked in almost thirty years. “By what means? Phone? Fax? In person?”

  “Phone.”

  “Really?” I went to my pile of exhibits, pulled out Miles Dane’s phone records, which ha
d been entered into evidence during the prosecution’s phase of trial, tossed it on the witness stand. “Does this refresh your memory? Show me the call.”

  Van Blaricum scanned the phone bill. “Right there. October 11. She called me. That’s my telephone number.”

  I stared at the call he had pointed out. A 212 number, New York City. I read out the number dubiously. “There are quite a few reasons she might have called a 212 phone number. Can you verify your claim that this is your number?”

  He took a slim wallet out of his breast pocket, slipped something out of it. “Let the record reflect,” Van Blaricum said, “that I’m showing Mr. Sloan my business card. It has the same number on it as the one listed in my sister’s phone records.” I looked at the cream-colored card he had handed me. The number matched the one on the phone record.

  I was unsure quite what to do. I decided to trust Miles, see where it took us. Van Blaricum really couldn’t do us any harm, and, after all, I was mainly just trying to stall until lunch. “I was given to understand that you hadn’t been in touch for thirty years.”

  Again, a long period of consideration. It looked like Van Blaricum was trying to figure out whether he should lie or not. “Well, there was an extended period during which we didn’t speak terribly, ah, frequently . . .”

  Suddenly I felt a twinge of something, the sort of odd sensation you feel when you’re sure that somebody is watching you. But what the source of this feeling was, I couldn’t quite identify. “Why all of a sudden, a week before her death?”

  “You asked me the last time. We’d spoken quite a few times in the past month or so. I had decided that we had been out of touch for too long and that it was time for reconciliation.”

  “One moment.” I walked back to the counsel table.

  “He’s full of shit,” Miles whispered to me. “If he’d called trying to reconcile, she’d have told me.”

  “Did she tell you anything about this?”

  Miles hesitated, finally shook his head slightly. “No.”

  I addressed van Blaricum again. “What did you talk about with your sister that night?”

  Stash Olesky stood. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I’m going to object. I really see no relevance to the case here.”

  He was right. This line of questions had revealed something puzzling—interesting in a gossipy way—but I didn’t see that it had any relevance to the case. “I’m happy to move on, Your Honor,” I said. Then I turned back to the witness. “Mr. van Blaricum, let’s go back to 1969. At that time, did you or did you not force Diana to give up her child for adoption?”

  “We convinced her that it was in her best interest.”

  “And did you or did you not convince her to break up with the child’s father, Miles Dane?”

  Van Blaricum looked at Miles through cold eyes. “Well, if we did, it didn’t work terribly well, did it?”

  “What happened to that child, Mr. van Blaricum?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I walked back to the counsel table.

  “Mr. van Blaricum, do you recall having a conversation with my assistant, Lisa, about a month ago?”

  “Your daughter lied to me, misrepresented herself to me.”

  “So you did have a conversation with her.”

  “She posed as an art dealer so that she could dig up dirt about Diana.”

  “Answer the question. Did you speak to my daughter?”

  “Yes. We spoke.”

  I scrabbled through my exhibit bag, picked up a pocket tape recorder, and pressed the button on the side. It seemed to take forever to cue up the portion of tape I wanted. But when I did, I pressed PLAY and held it up to the witness box microphone. Out came the conversation from the Oak Room.

  Van Blaricum’s voice came out of the tape recorder. “You want to know the funny thing, Sloan? It doesn’t matter if he gets off or not. He wants her money. But that’s the one thing he’ll never get. Never, ever. Or didn’t MacDairmid tell you that?”

  Then my voice: “He never had any interest in her money.”

  Then van Blaricum again: “Oh? Well, watch his face when the bastard shows up to take her fortune. Then you’ll know the truth.”

  “I was puzzled at the time, Mr. Van Blaricum, by what you meant. I thought you were calling my client a bastard. But you weren’t, were you? You were saying, watch Miles’s face when his illegitimate son, Blair Dane, shows up to inherit Diana’s trust fund. Which, as her blood issue, he is entitled to do, correct?”

  Stash threw up his hands. “I really have to object, Your Honor. This tape has no foundation. It may have been obtained illegally. And I have a continuing objection as to the relevance of this entire line of questioning to this proceeding.”

  “Can’t you see what’s going on, Judge?” van Blaricum added. “He’s attempting to smear my sister, to paint her as immoral or detestable so that the jury won’t feel sorry for her. This is loathsome.”

  “Could we have a sidebar please, Your Honor?” I said.

  “Approach.”

  Stash and I walked to the front, and I said to the judge, “It’s my contention that my client’s son—who is on my witness list by the way—probably killed Diana Dane. I’m trying to establish motive. My client has every right to a defense.”

  “So far his defense seems to be limited to taking the Fifth,” Stash growled.

  “My client believes that his son Blair killed his wife. We already have testimony affirming that fact that Blair Dane, as her blood issue, would inherit the trust. But right now my client is unwilling to testify against his own son. He’s between a rock and a hard place. That’s the stone-cold truth here.”

  Evola leaned toward the court reporter. “Off the record for a moment.” Then to me: “You wouldn’t know the truth if it hit you in the head, Sloan,” Judge Evola said, smiling broadly. “Okay, Mrs. Rathrock, back on the record.”

  “My client has a right to put on a defense. It’s the jury’s job to decide what the truth is, Your Honor. Not yours. You better believe that if I appeal on the grounds my client was denied the right to an affirmative defense, this conviction will be reversed in a heartbeat, and you’ll be the goat on national TV.”

  Evola’s face was hard, and I could see the wheels turning, weighing everything against that congressional seat. “Alright,” he said finally. “Keep going. I’m ruling against Mr. Olesky’s general objection. But on the narrow issue of the tape, Mr. Olesky is dead right. This tape lacks foundation. Further, I’m not convinced that it was obtained legally under either Michigan or New York law. Moreover, you never disclosed it to the state, as you are obliged to do under the rules of reciprocal disclosure. Therefore, no tape. And if I decide that you’re just slinging mud, I’m shutting you down.”

  I was satisfied. The tape didn’t need to be entered. It had already done its work. And the longer we blathered, the more the clock ticked toward a break.

  Stash sat down, the judge instructed the jury to disregard the tape, and I began my examination again. I still had a lot of time to kill before lunch, and Lisa still wasn’t here with Blair. I asked a number of additional questions about Blair Dane—details regarding his adoption, his history in foster care, and so on—but it seemed clear that van Blaricum simply didn’t know the answers. I was reduced to asking questions, slightly rephrased, that he’d already given the answers to. I could feel the sweat on my brow, on my lip, soaking through my shirt. Eleven-forty, eleven-forty-one, eleven-forty-two. Time seemed to be standing almost still.

  “Asked and answered. Asked and answered!” Stash was looking exasperated. “If Mr. Sloan has no more questions for this witness, let’s move on.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Judge Evola said, smiling brightly.

  “Could I have a very brief break to explore a couple of issues with my client?” I said. “Just ten minutes.”

  “You should have explored them last night.”

  “Your Honor, this witness has raised a couple of issues wh
ich I simply have to discuss with my client.”

  Judge Evola kept flashing his broad smile at me. “Back when I played ball at Michigan State, Coach managed to break down a whole game plan during one commercial break. You have two minutes.”

  “Thank you.” I walked over and sat next to Miles. “Thoughts?”

  Miles shook his head. “It’s just weird. Why would he have gotten back in contact with Diana? I don’t get it.”

  “Forget about that,” I said. “We need to keep the ball rolling with your son. How can we get him to cough up some more stuff about that?”

  “Thirty seconds, Mr. Sloan,” Judge Evola called cheerily.

  We sat in glum silence. My eye had swollen so much where Miles had elbowed me that I could barely see out of it, and it was beginning to throb. When I was a kid I’d fought Golden Gloves for a while, and it brought back memories of how it felt to be beaten up, to sit there in the corner of the ring right after getting pounded in the face by some better, faster, stronger fighter, knowing you were just going to have to go out and get pounded some more.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Sloan!”

  I stood and walked toward the witness stand. My eye was really hurting. I just wanted to go home, take an ice bag and a bottle of scotch, lie down in the corner and get crying drunk. I touched the cut over my eye, took a deep breath. When I pulled my fingers away, the tips of my fingers were red with blood.

  Blood.

  The word, or at least the idea of it, ran around in my brain for a while, like a gunshot echoing in a cave.

  “Blood,” I said.

  The courtroom was very quiet.

  “Excuse me?” van Blaricum said.

  “Blood!”

  “Is that a question, counselor?”

  And suddenly, I realized, yes, it was.

  “One moment,” I said. I walked back over and picked up a photograph taken by Agent Pierce of Miles Dane’s living room. On the coffee table was something that jogged my memory. A book of Japanese erotic woodblock prints. And something else. When Miles had talked about the night of the murder, he said Blair had indicated that somebody else was supposed to be visiting the house that night. I guess he’s not coming, was the phrase Miles had reported. The tumblers in my mind were beginning to fall into place. And then there was Leon Prouty’s testimony about a second man, an old guy.