Fatal Conceit (44 page)

“If you have any proof of that, I hope you're going to be able to show it to the jury,” Stupenagel retorted icily. “If not, you're just trying to blow smoke up their—”

“Objection!” Karp interrupted while rising and raising his hand.

Hart raised his eyebrows with an amused look on his face. “To what are you objecting, Mr. Karp, the defense attorney's question or the witness's anticipated . . . um . . . colorful rejoinder?”

Karp laughed, as did most everyone else in the courtroom, including Stupenagel, Lindsey's lawyer, Bill Caulkin, and the jurors, though not Faust or Fauhomme, whose face had turned crimson when Stupenagel pointed at him. “Both, Your Honor,” Karp replied to more laughs.

“Well then, as for Ms. Stupenagel's near-utterance, you objected in the proverbial nick of time, so no harm, no foul, eh? Therefore that objection is denied on the grounds that it is moot,” Hart replied. “In regard to your objection to Ms. Faust's question, please proceed.”

Stupenagel began that morning when she entered the courtroom wearing a blue dress. The direct examination had followed the script as she struck just the right balance between the former lover who had lost a dear friend and the hard-nosed investigative reporter. Recounting her meeting with Allen in the White Horse Tavern, there were tears when she talked about how they'd met and there were stone-cold responses as she testified about what he'd told her regarding the situation in Chechnya and the blackmail threats to keep him in line.

The same emotional roller-coaster had accompanied her account of the events at Loon Lake. Anger, fear, and even a little grim satisfaction as Ray Baum and his partner died in a shoot-out on a dark night in upstate New York alternated with the journalist's objective recounting of events.

As she told her part in the story, Karp could tell from looking at the jurors' faces that the narrative was taking shape in their minds. They could see how Gertie Malcom's visit from “the handsome man with the Marine Corps tattoo” fit with the testimony of Huff, Spooner, and Stupenagel. However, the journalist's testimony about her personal involvement in the case was new. Not just for the jurors, some of whom had admitted at jury selection to having read her newspaper accounts, but for the members of the media in the gallery, who listened with their jaws dropping when she talked about hitting Baum with a shovel.

Like an author polishing his manuscript as he went, Karp filled in details around the main story line of his major characters. At one point he'd submitted old photographs Stupenagel gave him of her and Allen together with their arms around each other in Nairobi and Nicaragua. The defense had objected to the photographs as “irrelevant,” but he'd insisted that they corroborated her testimony about the nature and length of their relationship, and Hart had agreed to admit them.

Ramping up the drama, and to give the jurors a visual impression they wouldn't soon forget, Karp had asked Stupenagel to step down from the witness stand and walk over to stand in front of the jurors. There he requested that she lower the right strap of her blue dress and show them the pink and puckered scar where Baum's bullet had entered the front of her shoulder three inches from the joint; then he asked her to turn around and show them the crater in her back rib cage where it exited. It made a shooting eight months earlier more real.

After Stupenagel returned to the stand, Karp led her through the remaining Loon Lake events and concluded with questioning
her about her newspaper stories. He'd then listened patiently as the defense attorney began her cross-examination.

As with any good novel, in which each chapter might have its own minor complications to be resolved, so did trials, including confrontations between attorneys. Some potential fights he let pass for strategic reasons. However, not all of them.

When he objected to Faust's sneering accusation that Stupenagel was part of the conspiracy to blackmail Allen, he'd decided it was time to step in. Looking back up again at Judge Hart, he was no longer smiling.

“Your Honor,” he said, allowing his indignation to seep into his voice, “beginning with the opening statements in this trial, the defense has been making a habit of insinuating . . . no, outright lying . . . to the jury, and the public through their continuing contact with the media in violation of your gag order, that the charges brought against the defendants are political in nature and have no basis in fact. In addition to the many contemptuous and groundless accusations made in regard to my office and me, defense counsel continues to defame. For instance, the defense has just accused the witness of being part of a conspiracy to blackmail the deceased, and by association, the murder of the deceased. But there is not one scintilla of real evidence to support any of these allegations.”

Pointing behind him at the defense table while he continued to face Judge Hart, Karp said, “The people's case against the defendants, Rod Fauhomme and Tucker Lindsey, is based solely on the admissible evidentiary facts in accordance with the rules of evidence, not making little speeches and leveling accusations disguised as questions.”

Pausing, he then stabbed his finger in the direction of Faust, who had backed away to the other side of the court well. “Defense counsel's use of inflammatory comments during cross-examination is simply an improper effort to influence the jury with speculation, fabrications, and innuendo that the defense presents as though
their allegations were already established facts. So I'm asking Your Honor to require an offer of proof from the defense that is factually based and not empty words and conspiracy fantasies. Either they present evidentiary facts—now—or be prohibited from pursuing these lines of inappropriate questioning. Put up or shut up.”

Judge Hart barely had enough time to turn toward Faust before she stomped over to stand in front of the judge to reply. “As Mr. Karp is well aware, or should be by this point in his legal career, we are in the stage of the trial when the people are presenting what evidence they have, not the defense. I am rightfully challenging his witnesses' credibility, not presenting our case. If we decide that it's even necessary, we will present our evidence after the people rest.”

“Miss Faust, the DA rightfully challenges your accusations. Do you have any factual basis to pursue your alternate theory?” Judge Hart asked.

Faust just stared in silence.

Judge Hart looked at her balefully. “Well, if you choose not to respond, then I will sustain the objection and caution you yet again that if you persist in the use of that tactic, be prepared to satisfy the offer of proof requirement. Please proceed.”

Although his face revealed nothing about what he was thinking, Karp was satisfied that whatever Hart decided, he'd accomplished what he intended. He could not let the defense continue to plant the seed in the jurors' minds during direct examination that the charges were political or that there was a second, more viable theory regarding the murder of Sam Allen without challenging it.

Chagrined, Faust stalked over to the witness stand. “Did anyone else see you and General Allen together?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“So as far as we know, this meeting never happened.”

“Is that a question?”

“Let me rephrase,” Faust replied. “If no one saw you together,
or overheard your conversation, how are we to know that it ever occurred?”

“Just my word, I suppose.”

“Ah, right, the word of a
journalist
,” Faust snorted. “And we all know we can trust the word of journalists, isn't that right?”

Stupenagel shrugged. “Just like lawyers, some you can; some you can't. I'm telling the truth.”

Faust's eyes widened at the retort but then her face hardened and she came back at the witness. “Even if we were to accept your account of this meeting,” she said, “did General Allen say who among the, and I quote, ‘powers that be' were pressuring him to toe the company line on Chechnya by threatening to reveal his affair with Jenna Blair? Did he give any names?”

“No.”

“Can you hazard a guess as to why he wouldn't have told you? I mean, according to your testimony, anyway, he told you all of this classified information about the events in Chechnya, but he didn't name names? Or was it that he didn't really trust one of his little wartime flings?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Karp said, rising partly from his seat. He'd seen Stupenagel tense and wanted to intercept whatever she might say. They'd talked about the probability that the defense would attack her on a personal level and the need for her to keep her cool, but the journalist had a volatile temper and on occasion had a mouth like a longshoreman.

“Sustained,” Hart said drily. “Let's keep the superfluous remarks for the newspapers after the trial, Ms. Faust; you asked your question, now let the witness reply.” He looked at Stupenagel and nodded. “Your answer, please?”

“I can think of a couple of reasons. He might not have told me because he wasn't ready to go public with it,” Stupenagel said. “After all, I'm a journalist and that sort of information would be like having a big piece of chocolate cake in the refrigerator that starts calling to you about midnight. You know there are a lot of reasons
you shouldn't eat it, but you'll find the one why you should and the next thing you know, you can't fit into your Victoria's Secret jeans.”

The tension in the courtroom passed with a ripple of laughter at Stupenagel's remark. Then with the defense attorney glaring at her, Stupenagel finished her answer. “Or he might not have told me the names in order to protect me. As he said, he wasn't sure how high up this went, other than it was high, and someone willing to threaten a decorated, retired general and acting director of the CIA wouldn't have hesitated to go after a journalist.”

“Did anybody try to go after you?” Faust demanded.

Stupenagel hesitated before she replied. “I received several threats over the telephone that were reported to the police.”

“Any idea who made these threatening calls?”

“Oh, I have ideas where they originated,” Stupenagel replied, “but nothing concrete.”

“And yet you're still among us,” Faust said. “Apparently these all-powerful people—powerful enough to order drone strikes on the other side of the world—didn't think it was worth the effort to go after a journalist. And if General Allen was so concerned with your safety, why did he tell you anything . . . if he did?”

“Insurance. To make sure the story about what really happened in Chechnya got out if something happened to him,” Stupenagel replied. “He knew that I wouldn't be too afraid, or biased, to write the truth. And if something did happen to a friend of mine, he knew I wouldn't rest until I found out who did it.” Stupenagel emphasized her point by looking over at the defendants.

Karp turned to follow her gaze with a slight smile. Even if he was the sort of lawyer to coach a witness in courtroom theatrics, and he wasn't, he couldn't have asked for a better performance. Every juror had turned to look at the defendants, too. Lindsey, who thus far had spent most of the trial making notes and passing them to Caulkin, who sat between him and Fauhomme, found a reason to start writing furiously on a legal pad. Meanwhile, his codefendant, Fauhomme, kept his eyes on his attorney.

Faust blinked and cleared her throat. Instead of settling for the answers that mattered to her clients the most—that Allen had not named names and that there were no witnesses to their meeting—she'd asked one too many questions and opened the door to a counterattack from a clever witness.

Trying to regain control of the cross-examination, she pressed quickly on to Stupenagel's efforts to find Blair and the events at Loon Lake. Here she changed her theory of the case slightly. Now the insinuation was that Stupenagel might have been an unwitting participant in the conspiracy between Blair, Connie Rae Lee, and Ray Baum. She asked Stupenagel if it was “possible that Allen was being blackmailed by his girlfriend and her cohorts.”

“I suppose it's possible. But he didn't talk about her like a man who was being blackmailed by the woman he was clearly in love with.”

Faust shrugged. “How do you know she didn't make her demands that weekend at the cabin or even his hotel?”

“I've met Miss Blair and heard her talk about Sam . . . General Allen . . . I believe she loved him very much, too.”

“Ms. Stupenagel, are you aware that in addition to being a paid escort, Jenna Blair was a professional actress who'd appeared in a number of off-Broadway productions?”

“I'm aware of that.”

“Is it possible that she was putting on an act the night you and the district attorney's wife, Marlene Ciampi, found her at the Loon Lake cabin?”

“I don't believe so.”

“But it's possible.”

“You're not making any sense,” Stupenagel said with a scowl. “At the White Horse Tavern he indicated that the threats were coming from someone within the administration who didn't want him to spill the beans on Chechnya. But he did say he wanted to marry Jenna; doesn't sound like a man being blackmailed to me.”

“Yes, of course, at this meeting that no one else saw or heard,” Faust shot back. “At least no one who is still alive!”

“That's right,” Stupenagel replied. “Because of your clients!”

“Yes, of course, those all-powerful people,” Faust scoffed. “And if I'm to understand your testimony, you came up with the idea of looking for Miss Blair at the Loon Lake cabin because you saw a photograph of her and General Allen taken at the lake?”

“That and because Sam asked if I remembered how to get to the cabin.”

“Oh, that's right, the oh-so-subtle hint to a woman he once had a fling with.”

Stupenagel's eyes flashed but she kept her cool. “That's correct. I think you've got it now.”