Lion Plays Rough (10 page)

I took Teddy's arm and turned him, and we began walking as fast as he could manage, his limp now more prominent than it had been in months. We were about four blocks from home. The sky was growing brighter by the minute. I was supposed to be in court in about two hours.

“It was her,” Campbell called behind us. Startled, I glanced back. He stood just where we'd left him. “She tipped you off again. Just try to tell me she didn't.”

Teddy paused, but I made him keep walking.

Chapter 15

I'd like to say that I rose to the occasion, that the pressure of the situation brought out my best performance, but it was all I could do to get myself shaved, showered, and out the door in a suit.

Teddy was in bed, and I hoped he'd stay there. I'd had to support most of his weight as we walked from the elevator to our door, his right leg almost as useless as it had been at the very beginning of his rehabilitation. He was out of his head, making no sense, asking insistent questions in a voice like a drunkard's about a file he seemed to think I'd borrowed from him.

Jeanie came into court just before nine and dropped into her seat at the defense table with a loud exhalation. Scarsdale was between us. “I thought we were going to walk through your opening,” she said, leaning back to speak past him. “I've been trying to call you.”

“I must have lost my phone.”

“Walking in here, I was wondering what the hell I'd do if you didn't show. So tell me you're ready to go.”

“Ready as I'll be.”

Before she could say anything more the bailiff commanded us all to rise, and the judge entered. Our chance at conversation washed away like water down a drain. This was the chance I'd been looking forward to ever since the day I decided to go to law school. And I felt like I'd already lost the case.

The judge dealt summarily with a few issues, then called in the jury and instructed them briefly that what they were about to hear was not evidence, that the opening statements were offered by the lawyers for no other reason than to guide their understanding of the case. After this, Mooney stood up and delivered one of the best openings I'd heard, an objective but carefully crafted summary of the evidence. When he spoke of what he expected Erica's testimony to be it was so quiet that I heard the swish of his trousers and the scuff of his shoes. The eyes of the jurors never left his face. Neither did Cassidy Akida's.

When he finished, I did something I'd promised myself I would never do. I rose from my chair and told the judge that I was deferring my opening statement until after the close of the state's evidence. Scarsdale didn't stir, but Jeanie made a noise in her throat.

Judge Conroy peered over at me, then turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, a little explanation is in order. The state has just finished its opening statement, and in the normal course of things the defense would now give its version of the facts. However, the defense has the option, after hearing the prosecution's opening, of deferring its opening statement until after the close of the state's evidence.

“The purpose of the opening statement is to aid the jury in its understanding of the evidence that is about to be presented. As I explained a moment ago, what the lawyers say is not evidence. In no way should you hold it against Mr. Scarsdale that his lawyer has decided to let the prosecution present its own version of the facts without similarly attempting to preview the evidence the defense expects to elicit. The defendant, of course, is under no obligation to present any evidence whatsoever, or indeed, to present a defense. You must presume Mr. Scarsdale to be innocent and you must not accept the prosecution's version simply because Mr. Maxwell has decided not to speak at this time.”

The judge nodded to Mooney. “The state may call its first witness.”

Mooney rose. “The state calls Erica Lawler.”

The first surprise. I'd expected him to build up to the girl's testimony, to set the stage, but his style was to be exceedingly direct; at all points he sought the quickest path to his goal. Erica's eyes sagged, and her face was pale. Though a victim's advocate walked right beside her, the girl seemed somehow beyond her reach.

As the pair arranged themselves in the witness box, Jeanie passed me a sheet of paper folded in half. Her note said, “If you were working on that other case instead of preparing for this one, we need to talk.”

Scarsdale, meanwhile, was oblivious to me, to Jeanie, to everything in the courtroom but Erica. A few jurors glanced in our direction. I was conscious of Erica's family on the other side of the aisle behind the prosecutor's table. The uncle was there. Tomorrow or the next day I'd get my shot at him.

Standing at the podium, Mooney began the examination conventionally enough, asking her name, how old she was, where she went to school. Under his questioning she seemed to come to life, seeking his approval. They had obviously established a rapport.

But once they'd moved past the preliminaries the life went out of her voice, and I remembered how unconvincing her story had seemed when I first heard it. For the prosecution there was no getting around the fact that she'd recounted the same facts over and over, and that each retelling had accumulated catch phrases, moments where I sensed that repetition had muddied truth.

Mooney worked his way slowly but deliberately to the topic of Scarsdale's daughter, Erica's best friend.

“Did you ever stay over at Angela's house?”

“Yes.”

“When, most recently, did you stay at Angela's?”

“Last summer,” she said. “June.”

“June what, if you remember?”

On the night of the alleged crime, Erica had helped herself to a bottle of vodka from home. The two girls had mixed the Stoli with fruit punch.

“Weren't you afraid that your parents would miss the vodka?”

“I took it after a party they had for my dad's work. They didn't know.”

Angela's mother went to bed early. They started drinking around ten o'clock. Angela went to bed around eleven thirty. Erica stayed up watching a movie by herself.

When she opened her eyes the movie was over and Marty Scarsdale was there with her on the couch. Her shirt was unbuttoned and her pants were down. Angela's bedroom was right off the TV room. All Erica could think was that she had to endure it as quietly as possible, that if she made the slightest noise, Angela or her mother would wake up and blame her for what was happening. Mooney did not spare her the details. He made her describe everything Scarsdale did to her, everything she'd felt.

She went home the next morning and didn't tell anyone. Then she found out she was pregnant—or felt certain she was. Her uncle was staying with them that winter. He was the one who dropped her off before her activities, picked her up, and drove her home. Her parents were distracted by their jobs and not getting along. One day in the car with him she started to cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him a lie about a boy at a party. She begged her uncle for help, pleading with him to keep her secret.

She asked him to take her to get an abortion, and he did. That evening, however, she broke down and told her mother the truth. The next day her mother drove her to the police station, where she was interviewed by the detective. This was the taped interview Scarsdale had been watching during his breakdown at the motel.

Mooney finished sooner than I expected, without exploring Erica's story as thoroughly as I'd guessed he would.

We'd known from the beginning that Jeanie would cross-­
examine her. You do not send a male attorney up to cross-examine a young female victim of sexual assault. In a competent cross it is the attorney who testifies, not the witness; the witness is merely a prompt, a voice repeating yes.

“Isn't it fair to say that you drank more alcohol the night of June seventeenth than on any other night in your life?” Jeanie asked.

“Yes.”

“You and Angela, you girls finished the bottle?”

“No. There was some left. Angela poured it down the drain.”

And so on, with Jeanie seemingly trying to show that Erica had drunk so much she could have no idea whether anything had happened later or not.

Except that wasn't really where Jeanie was going. We had a few cards to play, and this was the first. That bottle of vodka hadn't come from Erica's father's party, as she'd testified. Car had obtained the liquor store invoice, spoken with the caterers, and confirmed that no hard liquor had been served at that party—only wine and beer.

Almost as soon as Jeanie started to push, Erica folded, admitting that she'd lied. “Was that because someone bought it for you, and you didn't want to say who?” Jeanie asked. Erica said yes.

Jeanie went on to question her about her uncle, establishing that for a period of several months she'd spent more time with him than with any other person, that they'd been alone together each afternoon in the house and often eaten dinner alone, that her parents were preoccupied and sometimes didn't come home until seven or eight o'clock. This morning, during Mooney's direct examination, all had seemed lost. Now the cracks in the DA's case were starting to show. I felt the same dirty elation I'd felt when I'd kicked Scarsdale. On the topic of the assault, Erica admitted to Jeanie that her memory of the rape was hazy. Here that was all she admitted. We were a long way from proving she'd invented the assault, but the first seed of doubt had been planted.

Jeanie turned from the podium. “One last question. Would you like to tell the jurors who bought that vodka for you?”

A long pause. “Do I have to?” Erica finally said.

Jeanie looked at her for a moment, then looked pensively at the jury, held the gaze of a man in the front row, and shook her head.

The judge might have chosen to ask the question again, but he didn't. Instead, he asked if the state had any redirect. This was Mooney's opportunity. “No redirect, your honor.”

Like many crucial questions in criminal trials, the question of who bought the vodka for Erica was destined never to be asked, at least not of Erica.

We broke for lunch.

~ ~ ~

The detective, Razlo, was still in his thirties, young, and ambitious. He answered Cassidy Akida's questions with a look of intense concentration, his eyebrows in motion. He wasn't just some cop on the stand, his expression seemed to say. He was a genuine intellectual. It was going to be up to me to make him pay for wanting everyone to see how smart he was.

He was led through a workmanlike tour of the investigation, beginning with Erica's mother's call, then the interviews with Erica in which she'd described the rape, followed by the arrest of Scarsdale. Cassidy's direct took less than an hour. An open-and-shut case.

Yet Razlo had skimmed over Erica's visit to the abortion clinic, hardly mentioning it. I was up from my chair almost before Cassidy sat down.

“Detective Razlo, more than six weeks elapsed between the date of the alleged rape and the date when Erica first reported it, correct?”

“That's about right. Early August to mid-September.”

“During the course of your investigation, did you locate any physical evidence?”

“I'm afraid not.” He smiled as if indulging a child.

“So without physical evidence, the results of your investigation were based solely on what Erica told you?”

“Yes. That's basically right.”

“You must have done some investigation to confirm her version of events.”

“She was an entirely credible witness, and she'd been through hell.”

“You must have confirmed that she had an abortion, at least.”

He didn't answer. In his eyes I saw a brief glint of every investigator's worst fear, the colossal blunder exposed for the first time on the witness stand. Then his confidence visibly returned.

“Did you ask her the name of the clinic?”

“It was the Foothill Plaza Medical Clinic in Santa Rosa.”

“You must have sent them a subpoena.”

“I didn't see the need.”

I looked at him sharply.

“No,” he said. “I didn't send a subpoena.”

“She came to you immediately after she'd had the abortion, correct?”

“I don't know about immediately. The next morning. She was still weak. The uncle told me that he took her there. He sat in the waiting room. He drove her home. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd been pregnant and that she'd chosen to terminate her pregnancy, which is her constitutional right to choose.”

“Her uncle—Nate Blair—told you that he'd gone with her?”

“Yes.” He wet his lips.

“You interviewed him?”

“Not a formal interview. I wanted to find out if he knew anything. He didn't. He was trying to help the girl. A little misguided, maybe, keeping the parents in the dark. They weren't very happy about that, understandably, but at bottom this was a well-­intentioned individual.”

“Do you know if it's possible to run a paternity test on an aborted fetus?”

“I don't know. I suppose it's possible. Anything's possible these days.”

“You didn't try to do that, though, did you?”

He shrugged. “You can come in after the fact and invent all sorts of things you say I should have done. I ran my investigation based on the actual evidence in this case. There was absolutely no reason to question Erica's story.”

“Wouldn't the aborted fetus have been physical evidence?”

“In what sense?”

“Wouldn't that have either confirmed or contradicted your suspicion that Martin Scarsdale committed this crime?”

“It wasn't a suspicion. She told me your client raped her.” He pronounced each word separately, his expression righteous and indignant. “I don't know how many times I have to say it. Here was a thirteen-year-old girl telling the truth.”

“Didn't this physical evidence potentially exist at a time during your investigation when, if you'd acted promptly, you might have obtained it?”

Cassidy stood. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

The judge said, “I'll allow the question.”

Razlo shook his head. “It would have told me what I already knew. Erica had already described to me in graphic detail how she became pregnant when Martin Scarsdale raped her.”

“But if you'd obtained that physical evidence when you had the chance, you'd be able to tell us to a medical certainty who the father of Erica Lawler's child was, wouldn't you?”