Guilty as Sin (66 page)

All Ellen could think was that someone had already paid—Josh.

"It is within counsel's rights to attempt to prove someone other than the defendant committed the crime," Dorman recited. He stood at Costello's shoulder like an overeager valet.

Costello had settled himself into one of Grabko's visitor's chairs, legs crossed, suit coat arranged to minimize wrinkles, manila envelope in one hand. Ellen could feel his eyes on her, calm, sharp.

"It's a goddamn smear campaign and it's unconscionable!" she snapped, beyond circumspection, beyond anger. She may have drawn blood from some of his witnesses, but he had nicked a major artery and was waiting to see if Grabko would allow it to bleed out. She was too furious to sit, but she kept herself planted in the chair with Cameron standing guard behind her.

The judge glared at her in affront. "Ms. North, I won't have that kind of language in my chambers, particularly from a lady. This is a place of civil discussion."

"There's nothing civil about what Mr. Costello is attempting to do here, Your Honor. I don't care if he couches it with excerpts from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It stinks to high heaven!"

Grabko had ordered them into his chambers before all hell could break loose in the courtroom. The dissonant clamor of the gallery as they adjourned from the room had been deafening. Ellen could only imagine what was going on out there now. A feeding frenzy. Paul Kirkwood pinned up against the gallery railing as the rabid mob tore chunks out of him. She wouldn't have minded tearing some chunks out of him herself if what Karen Wright claimed was true, but his infidelity was an issue of its own.

"Paul Kirkwood's sexual exploits are well outside the scope of this hearing," she said, turning toward Costello. "Although, if it's true, it gives your client motive beyond mere evil."

"On the contrary," he said coolly. "It gives Paul Kirkwood motive."

"Which is what?"

"We think the boy might have discovered his father's dirty little secret and Paul saw abducting the child as a way of killing two birds with one stone—shut the boy up and get his rival for Karen's affections out of the way."

"Why stop there?" Ellen said sarcastically. "Don't you think he might have been on the grassy knoll the day Kennedy was shot?"

"Ellen, facetiousness is not called for here," Grabko chastened.

"Not unless it's in the guise of a defense," she muttered, then winced as Cameron surreptitiously pinched her arm.

"Mrs. Wright is prepared to testify she had a tryst with Paul Kirkwood in a vacant office in the Omni Complex the night Josh disappeared," Costello said. "That Paul was to meet her at six forty-five that evening and did not show up until seven. He wouldn't account for the time he had been gone, and he seemed extremely agitated."

"So says the wife of your client," Ellen said. "It's absurd that she's even on the stand."

Costello ignored her. "Her testimony sets the stage, Your Honor. Paul Kirkwood has been under suspicion from the first. He's without an alibi for the time of the abduction, had a connection to the van owned by Olie Swain—who may well have been his accomplice. He repeatedly lied about the van. In her statement to the police the Ryan's Bay witness said the man who came to her house was looking for his son's dog and called it by name. Who's to say it wasn't Kirkwood himself?"

"Anyone with half a brain," Ellen grumbled. "If you'll recall, that witness identified your client in the lineup."

"She identified a man in a parka and sunglasses."

"She singled him out by his voice."

"Paul Kirkwood wasn't in the lineup. She did the best she could. For all we know, Kirkwood disguised his voice. He was trying to pin this thing on Dr. Wright—"

"Then why didn't he introduce himself as Garrett Wright?" Cameron asked. "Why implicate himself in any way? It makes no sense."

"And I say there's room for doubt," Costello declared with an elegant shrug. "The police went so far as to fingerprint him."

"For elimination purposes!" Ellen argued.

He gave her a look. "You know perfectly well the difference between what the police say and what they mean, Ellen."

Ellen sniffed. "Two days ago you thought they were too stupid to tie their own shoes; now you think their every action is fueled by an ulterior motive."

"And there's still the matter of the actual arrest," Cameron began.

"Easily explained if Kirkwood set out to frame Dr. Wright," Costello said. "The hairs on the sheet, the hairs in the stocking cap—evidence easily planted. In fact, the criminalist stated there were unidentified hairs on both items. I suggest Mr. Kirkwood be asked to surrender hair samples." He turned to Ellen with exaggerated seriousness. "For elimination purposes, of course."

She curled her fingers around the arms of her chair and resisted the urge to take samples of Costello's hair with her bare hands. He undoubtedly would have been delighted to have her try. His goal from the first had been to make her look bad in front of Grabko, to get any edge he could any way he could. And she had let herself be drawn into his traps again and again. That truth made her want to tear her own hair out. She was supposed to have got over him, not just away from him and his kind. She was supposed to have changed her life and herself, not simply let the old Ellen go dormant to be reawakened.

"Your Honor," she said with forced calm, "Paul Kirkwood is not on trial here. He was investigated and eliminated as a possible suspect. There appears to be a direct connection between the abduction of Josh Kirkwood and the abduction and murder of Dustin Holloman. In fact, the Holloman case has been used to taunt the authorities in such a way as to make Wright look innocent. If Paul Kirkwood is the villain here, and trying to make Garrett Wright take the fall, it doesn't follow.

"We have to proceed with this case, make our judgments about this case, on the basis of the evidence we have. The evidence we have points clearly to Dr. Wright and an accomplice who has yet to be apprehended." Grabko pursed his lips and dug a fingertip into his beard as if in pursuit of a tick. "The Holloman case is outside the scope of this hearing," he said. "Paul Kirkwood is directly related to the case before us. Although I don't necessarily care for your method in bringing Mr. Kirkwood's possible involvement to light, Mr. Costello, this is a hearing and not a trial, and I am inclined to allow more leeway. After all, it is the truth we're after."

"Absolutely, Your Honor," Costello said gravely. "We sometimes lose sight of that ultimate goal in our adversarial system," Grabko pontificated, warming to his topic.

"Ambition crowds out purer motives. The rules of court are bent and corrupted. The truth is lost a scramble to win."

He paused, pleased with the ideals he had just brought out like shining jewels to show off to his small audience. It never occurred to him to look beyond his own brilliance to see which of the factions before him was guilty of the sins he had named.

"We'll hear what Mrs. Wright has to say," he said, snapping out of the afterglow.

Costello waited until everyone else was halfway out of their chairs to speak. "Before we adjourn, Your Honor," he said, lifting the envelope. "My associate, Mr. York, has brought in a piece of evidence I believe will add validity to our defense." As smooth as a magician performing sleight hand, he opened the envelope and produced a microcassette tape, this is a tape from Paul Kirkwood's office answering machine with messages from the night his son was abducted."

"And how did you happen to come by that?" Ellen asked sharply.

Costello's expression was carefully blank. "Apparently, someone slipped it through the mail slot at my office suite—anonymously."

"I'll bet."

"You've heard this tape, Mr. Costello?" Grabko asked.

"No, sir. My assistant, Ms. Levine, listened to it and deemed it important enough to send it straight over. I suggest we all listen," he said, placing the cassette on Grabko's desk.

Ellen felt as if she'd been broadsided with a mallet. The hell he hadn't heard it. He would never have wasted a dramatic moment on a pig in a poke. Tony Costello knew exactly what was on that tape, and he was betting it would score him big points.

She shot to the front edge of her chair, bracing one hand against the desk, her fingertips inches from the tape. "I have to object, Your Honor, there was nothing in counsel's disclosure about this tape. We have no idea where it came from or how it was obtained or who allegedly left it or what their motives might be."

"Mr. York has already managed to check with two of the parties who have, messages on the tape, Your Honor," Costello said. "They confirm having made the calls on the night of the twelfth."

"Let's have a listen," Grabko said, reaching for the cassette. "We can hear the tape now, and, if there is any question as to its validity or admissibility, we'll deal with those issues later."

Ever efficient, Mr. Dorman produced a microcassette recorder from the pocket of his Brooks Brothers suit, popped his own cassette out of it, and handed the machine to Grabko.

The first thing they heard was background noise, the sound of an engine; then came the voice, and it pierced Ellen's heart like a needle.

"Dad, can you come and get me from hockey? Mom's late and I wanna go home."

CHAPTER 33

Dad, can you come and, get me from hockey? Mom's late and I wanna go home." His son's voice played through Paul's head over and over, as had been doing for the last three weeks. An endless loop of innocence and accusation that raked through his brain like talons. And layered over it, Mitch Holt's voice, low and tight. "What the hell were you thinking, Fault Jesus Christ, Josh called you for help! You didn't so much as answer him. You pretend you never heard him. You hold on to the goddamn tape for three weeks and never say one fucking word! How do you explain that, Paul?"

And layered over that, Ellen North's icy tone.

"The defense is building a case against you, Mr. Kirkwood. I'm not so sure that shouldn't be my job. You lied to the police. You withheld information--"

"You blamed Hannah," Holt said. "All this time you dumped the guilt her on head. You son of a bitch. You never even had the guts to stand up and tell the truth."

The truth will set you free.

The truth would ruin him.

He couldn't believe this was happening to him. After all he had been through. After all he had suffered. Now this. Betrayal by the one person thought had loved him. Karen.

It was incomprehensible to him to think that she could turn on him so completely. She loved him. She wanted to have his children. Her marriage to Wright was a sham—she had said so more than once. Garrett Wright couldn't give her what she needed, what she wanted. Garrett Wright loved his work, not his wife.

Paul shuddered at the memory of that moment in the courtroom. Every eye had turned on him, avid, accusatory. The press he had courted and played to from day one had turned on him. Damn them all. They had wanted Hannah for their heroine from the first. The grieving, guilt-ridden mother. Hannah, with her golden tresses and tragic blue eyes. Hannah, the dedicated doctor, the woman of the year. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah.

They would turn to her now with gushing sympathy, and he would be the sacrificial goat. They would never ask what had driven him from his home. They would never want to hear that Hannah wasn't any kind of wife, that she ignored her children in favor of her precious career, that she had done her best to emasculate him.

He had thought of trying to get to her before they could, but they had been all over him, swarming around him, their questions stinging his ears and stabbing his conscience. They had followed him to his car and followed his car as he tried to escape. He had finally turned out on the interstate and opened up the Celica's engine, leaving them behind as the speedometer swept toward ninety.

It was dark now. The press would have been to the house and gone long ago. Hannah had given them nothing in the past—a single interview, a photo op as the priest helped her into the volunteer center downtown. Paul had to think she would shun them again, even if it meant giving up a chance to publicly humiliate him. And the reporters would call her noble and long-suffering and paint her as the good woman betrayed. The idea turned his stomach.

The anger and anxiety churned inside him like acid, like a virus that raced through his system and pulsed just beneath his skin. It spread over his brain like a fungus and left him feeling feverish and bruised.