Line of Vision

by David Ellis

  “He told me,” says Deb.

  “And earlier that week, you hadn’t noticed that his hand was bruised and purple and swollen, had you?”

  “That doesn’t mean it hadn’t happened earlier in the week. I don’t make it a point to examine Marty’s hands every day.”

  I can’t help but smile. Deb can get quite an attitude when she wants to. Although I’m not unaware that her defensiveness reinforces to the jury that she is trying to help me.

  “Please answer my question. You hadn’t noticed that his hand was swollen and purple earlier that week, had you?”

  “No. All I’m saying is, it could have been, and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “Ah, but you certainly noticed it on November nineteenth, didn’t you?”

  Deb folds her arms. “Yes.”

  “In fact, it was one of the first things you noticed.”

  Deb lets out an audible sigh. “I don’t know if it was first or tenth or fifteenth. I was showing him the contract I had been revising. I was holding it, and he was holding it. His hand was right in front of me. I couldn’t miss it.”

  “But you had been revising that contract all week, hadn’t you?”

  Deb pauses. “Yes.”

  “And yet, this was the first day you noticed his swollen purple hand.”

  Deb nods.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Flaherty checks her notes on the lectern. Finally, she looks up. “Pass the witness.”

  Deb blinks and looks over at me. I look away but give her a brief smile. She did the best she could.

  Paul stands at the lectern. “Ms. Glatz, can you describe how Marty’s office looked on November nineteenth of last year?”

  “Yes,” she says with renewed animation, turning to the jury. “Well, the contract he had been working on was on his computer screen. There was a half-eaten brownie and a bag of potato chips on his desk. He had worked through dinner the night before and just ate some junk.”

  Gretchen Flaherty stands.

  “He tends to do that when he works late,” Deb adds quickly.

  “Objection,” Flaherty says with a cold look at Deb. “The witness has no idea if the defendant worked through dinner, or if he was even at the office at all. Move to strike.”

  “Judge,” Paul says, turning to face His Honor, “Marty’s secretary should know her boss’s propensity to work late and eat junk food.”

  Judge Mack asks the court reporter to read back Deb’s testimony. The reporter reaches back to grab the tape that spills from her little machine. She pulls it back, piece by piece, like she’s pulling a rope on a ship.

  The judge listens again to the testimony, then turns to Deb. “Ms.”—he checks his notes—“Glatz, what time did you leave the office the day before this, November eighteenth?”

  She looks up at the judge. “I’m sure the same time I always do. Four-thirty.”

  “All right. I’m going to sustain the objection and strike the last two sentences of the testimony. Just tell us what you know personally, Ms. Glatz.”

  Paul continues. “So there was a half-eaten brownie and bag of chips.”

  “Yes. And a cup of coffee, half full.” Deb looks at me.

  “What else did you tell them?” I asked Deb when she called me.

  “That’s it, Marty. Just about your fingers and the cold, and the document on your computer screen.”

  “Did you tell them how my office looked?”

  “Well . . . no. I mean, I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t? Remember, you said, ‘Nice breakfast,’ and you pointed at it.”

  “I—did . . .?”

  “Yes, Debra. You did. You did.” I sighed. “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

  Silence at the other end of the phone.

  “And there was also a cup of cold coffee sitting on my desk. I had drunk half of it the night before. Come on, you don’t remember?”

  Silence.

  “It’s important, Deb.”

  “Well, maybe . . .”

  “I’m not asking you to lie, Deb. I would never, never do that. I’m just asking you to tell the truth.”

  “There was—a half-eaten brownie, and chips, and coffee. . . .”

  “Right.”

  “And were there also papers spread out all over Marty’s desk?”

  “Yes, I believe there were.”

  “You also had a message from Marty when you arrived at work on November nineteenth.”

  “Yes. Marty had left a message on my voice mail.”

  “Does the voice mail tell you what time the call was made?”

  “Yes. Marty left the message at about three-thirty in the morning. He asked me to do some more revisions on the contract for the meeting the following day.”

  “He left the message for you at three-thirty the prior night?”

  “Right.”

  “And he asked you to do some more revisions.”

  “Yeah.”

  Paul looks over at the jury. “Now, Marty had a very big meeting on November nineteenth.”

  “Oh, yes. He had been working on the Madison deal for weeks. He had been stressed out about it all week.”

  “Marty had worked at McHenry Stern for seven years, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that meant he was a year, maybe two, from making partner at the firm.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And—”

  “It was very important to him.”

  “Making partner was very important to him.”

  “Very important. He talked about it all the time.”

  “And was this deal as big as any deal Marty had done since you worked for him?”

  “Bigger,” she says. “This was the biggest deal Marty had put together himself.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Glatz.”

  Deb starts out of her chair as Flaherty stands again. Deb settles back in.

  “Just so we’re clear,” says Flaherty. “You don’t have any personal knowledge that the defendant was working all night in his office on November eighteenth, do you?”

  “You’re right,” Deb says, a little more comfortable now that Paul has built her up. “For all I know, he took out a couple of hours to play basketball.”

  A snicker from the jury. Flaherty just smiles. “Well, whatever he did, you have no idea, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Now, Ms. Glatz, I believe you described the state of the defendant’s office on the morning of November nineteenth.”

  “Yes. I did. Would you like me to describe it again?”

  “No. Do you recall that you and I had a conversation about a month ago about this case?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “And that’s when you told us about the defendant’s cold, and his bruised hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I asked you if there was anything that would make you believe that the defendant had been working late into the night on November eighteenth?”

  “I remember you asked me. And I told you that he had left me the voice message.”

  “And then I asked you if anything else would make you believe that?”

  “I remember that.”

  “And you said you couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “I don’t know if I said that or not.”

  “Well, you didn’t say anything about food wrappers or coffee, did you?”

  Deb thinks about this. “I guess I didn’t.” She knows she didn’t. But again, she’s straddling that line. She’s not lying.

  “So since our conversation a month ago, your memory has suddenly gotten much clearer?”

  Deb does what she always does when she’s cornered: She gets that pouty look and grinds her teeth. I hold my breath; I didn’t tell my lawyers that Deb and I had talked.

  “Ms. Glatz? Do you have an answer?”

  “Just because there was food and coffee doesn’t mean he was working late,�
�� she says. Not a bad answer; she didn’t tell the cops because it wasn’t necessarily relevant.

  “That’s true,” Flaherty says. “For all you know, the defendant could have eaten that food at five o’clock the prior night, and not at three in the morning.”

  “Right.”

  “Or that morning, before you came in.”

  “Right.”

  “It doesn’t say anything about what time the defendant left work the prior night.”

  “Right.”

  Score one for the prosecutor. “Even still,” Flaherty muses. “You didn’t remember the food and coffee on his desk when we talked, did you?”

  Deb already gave a good answer for that: It had nothing to do with the questions she was asked back then. Or she could get all confused and act like she doesn’t remember what she said, and the whole thing would be a wash to the jury. But she’s on the spot here, she might not be thinking so fast. Or she might choose to tell the truth.

  Come on, Deb.

  “No, I didn’t remember it then,” she says sheepishly.

  Flaherty stiffens, suddenly empowered. “And in between the time we talked and today, you now remember these things.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Interesting,” the prosecutor says. I believe, at this moment, that I have underestimated Ms. Gretchen Flaherty. “Tell me, Ms. Glatz, after you and I talked, did you talk to the defendant?”

  All eyes on the jury fall on me. I try to look uninterested. Dignified-calm-personable-these-are-outrageous-charges-I’m-not-obsessive-easygoing-innocent.

  “Yes.”

  Mandy, who has been scribbling notes, stops in her tracks. She doesn’t look up, or even move. Paul’s hands, which are clasped on the table, tighten up.

  “You talked with the defendant.”

  “Yes.”

  “You talked about your conversation with me.”

  “That wasn’t the reason I called. I wanted to see how he was doing.”

  “But you also talked about our conversation.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell the defendant the things I asked you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him the answers you gave me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you about the food, and the coffee on his desk.”

  Deb pauses. Her eyes shoot briefly at me.

  “The answers aren’t over there,” Flaherty says, pointing to me, actually walking toward me. “Isn’t it true that the defendant told you to say that there was food and cold coffee sitting on his desk the morning of November nineteenth?”

  “He didn’t tell me to say that.”

  “But he told you about it, didn’t he?”

  “He reminded me.”

  “Oh, he reminded you. So he told you about the food and coffee, you said you didn’t remember, and he said, well, now you do.”

  “Objection,” Paul says. “It’s a compound question.”

  “Well then, I’ll be happy to break the question up,” Flaherty offers, hitting full stride now. “Ms. Glatz, when you had this conversation with the defendant, he told you that there was food and coffee sitting on his desk on the morning of November nineteenth.”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “He mentioned it. And you told him you didn’t remember that.”

  “I—I hadn’t—it hadn’t—”

  “You didn’t remember it at that time, did you?”

  “I guess”—Deb looks down and takes a breath—“no.”

  “And he said, well, that’s what happened.”

  “Something like that.”

  I grab Mandy’s pen and notepad and start scribbling.

  “So you’re covering for him, aren’t you, Ms. Glatz?” Flaherty gives her accusation quietly, with an edge of sympathy, making it even more deadly. “You’re covering for your boss.”

  Deb’s hands grip the railing. “I’m not lying. If Marty says it’s the truth, then I believe him.”

  Flaherty nods, keeping her calm and getting further under Deb’s skin in the process. “You accepted it as the truth, because he told you it was.”

  “If he says it’s what happened, then I believe him.”

  The prosecutor bows her head slightly, like she’s talking to a child. “But just for the record, when you were telling this jury about the food and coffee from your boss’s desk—you didn’t know that from your own personal memory.”

  “No.” Deb is near tears now.

  “You were telling us what your boss told you to say.”

  “I—he didn’t—” Deb shakes her head as a tear falls.

  Flaherty gives Deb a moment, so the jury can fully take in the protective secretary doing what her boss told her to do, before she thanks Deb quietly and sits down.

  Paul reads the notes I’ve scribbled to him. Then he stands. “Ms. Glatz, did Marty ever tell you to lie?”

  “No,” she says, dabbing at her cheek with a tissue, “he didn’t.”

  “In fact, he told you only to tell the truth, didn’t he?”

  Deb is pale now, and she has me to thank for this basting she took. She has every reason to crucify me if she wants to.

  “Yes,” she says. “He only told me to tell the truth. And that’s all I have done.”

  “Everything you have said here, you believe to be true.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s all I have, Your Honor,” Paul says calmly. That’s all he has for Deb, he means. It is by no means all he has for me.

  69

  “SHE CALLED ME, PAUL. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO do?”

  “Tell her to call us, first of all,” Paul says. “Don’t talk to her yourself! And if you do talk to her, tell us about it! Marty, haven’t you learned anything?”

  We are in Paul’s office in the law firm. He is hovering near his desk, pacing back and forth. He has spent the last ten minutes lambasting me. Mandy sits silently in the chair next to mine.

  “Can you honestly say it would have affected the way you examined Deb?” I ask.

  Paul looks at me with exasperation. “Is that the criteria you use in deciding whether to tell me something? Whether you think it will change the strategy?” He sits down in his chair, a tall oak chair with a maroon back. His glass desk is covered neatly with personal memorabilia, a pen set with a marble base, the inscription from one of our former mayors; a photo of his wife and three kids in a simple all-glass frame; a rectangular silver tray that holds his incoming mail; a glass ashtray that he fills with cinnamon candy. “I’ve seen dozens of people think they’re amateur lawyers, think they know what’s best for them. Let me tell you, Marty, they don’t.”

  “What we don’t know can hurt you,” Mandy says quietly, eyes forward. “You can’t expect us to win this trial if we don’t know everything. I wonder how many times we’ll have to say that before you believe it.”

  I turn to Mandy. “Did you have something specific in mind?”

  Mandy still doesn’t look at me. “How would I know what I don’t know?”

  My relationship with Mandy hasn’t been the same since I changed my story and said I didn’t kill the doctor. There is something lost between us. Trust. It hurt her more than I ever would have realized. Since then, she has been nothing more than my lawyer. Sympathetic, attentive, supportive, polite in conversation, but distant. Not my friend. Not like before. It wasn’t that I killed Dr. Reinardt, because I said I did all along. It was that I changed the story, that I didn’t trust her and Paul to help me tell the truth. Paul welcomed the change in my story; Christ, he practically begged me to do it without saying so directly. But not Mandy. She was disappointed. I wasn’t the person she thought I was. Whoever that was.

  “So?” Paul says. “Any other surprises lurking out there for us?”

  I say nothing.

  “Do you want to walk out of that courtroom a free man?”

  I stare at him.

  “Because if there’s some bombshell out there, a
nd I don’t know about it, I can’t help you.”

  “I get the point.” I rise from my chair, unsteady. “I have enough people trying to beat me up now. Including two people who have a metal chair and a cyanide pill with my name on it.”

  Paul shakes his head.

  “I’m the client,” I say. “You work for me. Got that? I will tell you what I goddamn want to tell you. And if that means we lose, well then, that means I lose, not you. You’ll still get your fee, then you’ll run off to your next trial and your next million. You won’t spend your next five or six years waiting to die, meeting your friendly neighbors who think you’re the next best thing to a woman. You won’t taste cyanide gas while you try to breathe another breath.” I head for the door, turning before I leave. “This is happening to me, not you. This is happening to me!”

  70

  IT TURNED OUT HE WAS MARRIED, TOO.

  He had a son I went to high school with. I actually liked the kid. I wonder if he knew.

  I waited for her to leave the house first. At fifteen, I only had a driver’s permit, but my parents had already handed down their old Chevy for when I got my license.

  It wasn’t hard to follow her. Once I saw her turn left out of the driveway, I knew she was headed for the main east-west street that essentially took you anyplace you were headed. There would be enough traffic so I could hang back but keep an eye on her. She wouldn’t be looking for me, anyway.

  They met at an apartment complex near the high school baseball field. The parking lot was bordered by a hedge. Once I saw her turn into the lot, I parked my car and sprinted along the hedge, keeping low.

  They weren’t even that discreet. It was pretty far removed from the main thoroughfare, a good three towns over from where both of them lived. Still, they could have waited until they got inside before embracing, running their hands over each other.

  The winds are much calmer than they were six months ago. It’s a pretty mild evening, no lower than thirty-five or so outside. I probably don’t need a jacket; at any rate, I don’t have one, just my suit coat from court today. There are no leaves this time, only a dry crumbly path for my wing tips to plod over.

  When I make it through the trees into the clearing, I look up, as I always did. The stars are littering the sky tonight, promising, reassuring, casting a shiny silver light on my face, lending a dreamy quality to the scene. This is why I have always stopped here when I crossed through the woods—the surreal calm, the fantastic hope of a future with Rachel, all of this I could find in this impossibly vast sky. Now, as I gaze upward, the hope is for something that is surprisingly less urgent, but no less heartfelt. It is not simply that I want to be free. That is not nearly enough. It’s that I want to start over. And for a moment I believe that I will never bring my eyes back down from the stars, that if I stare into them long enough I will be lifted from everything in my life, that I’ll be given that clean slate. But I know that I will lower my eyes again, as I always do. Despite their majesty, their purity, their promise, the stars are impossibly distant.